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Joseph Smith - Prophet of God
- Thread starter Polaris
- Start date
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
Why did you mention it?
O.K. to be slightly less silly, since no one seems to want to respond to the pages of actual evidence, including numerous cites from the Book of Mormon, obtained at great price to my state of consciousness, my point is that if there is no evidence to support your beliefs, and you believe regardless of or even despite the evidence, it would be nice if you would just say so, instead of paying a bunch of professors to spout obscure apologetics implying that there is something that could remotely be called evidence, or repackaging the non-evidence into deliberate ignorance. That's why I mentioned it. And, as a less, minuscule really, point, I guess it's you'alls tithing dollars at work, so why are you paying these guys to massage the absence of evidence and piles of counter-evidence until it sounds like it has a veneer of plausibility, if it's all irrelevant to your faith, anyway?
DeepShadow
White Crow
I'll be posting soon, I promise. I just got roped into some projects that might actually yield pay, and those always take precedence over the more fulfilling discussions on this board.
DeepShadow
White Crow
Do you have to be so snide, Melissa? Please, there's no need for it.
Well, clearly she is not snide in ALL her posts. Do you have to exaggerate in ALL your posts? Please, there's no need for all this hypersensitivity.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
I guess there is always time to call others to repentance.
DeepShadow
White Crow
Well, clearly she is not snide in ALL her posts. Do you have to exaggerate in ALL your posts? Please, there's no need for all this hypersensitivity.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
I guess there is always time to call others to repentance.
Thanks for the note. I fixed it!
Bishka
Veteran Member
Hypersensitivity?
I'd hardly call that. Do you realize how much we are attacked? I could show you dozens of threads that have to do with the Mormons that are constantly saying that we are cult-goers, devil-worshipers, that our religion is stupid/funny/not true/etc. It's hardly hypersensitivity.:sarcastic
Well, that devil-worshipping bit is just dumb.
Bishka
Veteran Member
You wouldn't believe what we get......:no:
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
Meanwhile back at the issues, a discussion regarding the substance ensued...not.
Bishka
Veteran Member
It's been sixty-four pages, do you really think either party is going to budge one way or another?
Unlikely, I agree. However, I have enjoyed reading the exchange between DS and AD and look forward to the response by DS .... I'm just saying.
Melissa G
Non Veritas Verba Amanda
There cannot be any change in positions, unless the believers come up with something more tangible than , 'I believe'. The onus is on the LDS to examine their personal beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence which is contradictory to the basis of the Mormon Church.
Melissa
Melissa
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
I don't know, you tell me. If I'm wrong, show me how. If I'm right, why don't you change your mind?
FFH
Veteran Member
Wow, an extremely confident and bold statement.
Care to cite any evidences contradicting our beliefs ???
There are none.
DeepShadow
White Crow
Lions and tigers were reported in Moctezuma's zoo by Spanish conquistadores
Columbus's letters to Spain reported wild boars in America.
(both of these references can be found in the wiki article on the "Onza." Onza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
The "boar" was probably a peccary, but we can't be sure what animals the lions or tigers were actually referring to. Now if I were to translate these things into Russian, would I try to guess what animals they actually were? No, I'd translate them into the Russian equivalent of "lions" and "tigers." They may have been jaguars, but that's not my call as translator. Could I make it a footnote or something? Sure, but it's very doubtful that Joseph Smith had the names of Mesoamerican fauna in his vocabulary. He only used words that he knew, and he probably didn't know "tapir," "peccary," or even "llama" or "alpaca," seeing as those animals were nonexistent in his parts of America. His descriptions to his family strongly suggest that whatever the Lehite people might have ridden, it wasn't a horse.
Your assumption about the horses pulling chariots is a great example of seeing what we expect to see, rather than what's there. Nowhere in the book does it say that BoM "horses" pulled BoM "chariots." They are mentioned as being part of a trip (once) but even here the relationship isn't specified. They might be pulling the chariots, or dragging them (sledges), or hauling them, or even walking beside them unattached (canoes). We don't even know that the chariots had wheels! The authors of the Book of Mormon don't see a need to describe these things, because they have no frame of reference; they assume the reader will be familiar with it. We have the same problem with many Roman, Greek and Egyptian intracultural works: we learn more about Egypt from what the Greeks wrote about them than from what the Egyptians wrote about themselves.
As I've said from the beginning, the Book of Mormon is a poor reference for archeological research. But that's not the same as saying it's false.
I don't know what you intended to prove by citing the metals they worked with; we have archeological confirmation on every single one of those metals in ancient American art. Not only does that fail to meet what I asked for--a description of metallurgy--but it fails to meet the overall intention of that information: where does it say that the armor was made out of metal?
I said, and have continued to say, that the beginning of the BoM meets all four, but the latter part is impossible to match. That's not to say it's a fraud; there are plenty of documents that would be impossible to match with their origin on earth strictly on their own merits. Try tracking the conquistadors soley on their journals.
First, I've brought up Albright because he's a great figure in paleolinguistics, well respected by his peers. Then again, I've also brought up Victor Von Hagen, and Kutz, and Ixtlilxochitl, and you haven't said boo to any of them.
Second, why is it that I'm getting flak for citing my sources?
You call an anonymous group lumped together in a single statement in a non-peer reviewed journal "the consensus of archeological knowledge on the subject"?
I've said many times on this forum that archaeology will probably never confirm the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. What you fail to grasp is that that's not enough to call it a fraud, in the eyes of science. When you start talking about fraud, the burden of proof is on you. If I were to say that the Mona Lisa was a fraud, I couldn't just say it was and ask my detractors to prove it was genuine. "Fraud" is a definitive statement.
"Not proven true" isn't the same as "proven false."
If you wanted to prove the Book of Mormon was a fraud, you can't just point to the mistakes in the text. You need to show how Joseph (or any other 19th Century author) managed to get names from the Amarna letters and the Elephantine Papyri before they were excavated. How Joseph knew the only place to get bow-wood in the desert south of Jerusalem. How he knew all 20 points for a proper Hebrew farewell speech (that Kurtz data that everyone has been ignoring). How he knew so much about Bedoin culture--how they traveled, ate their meat raw, used a compass-bowl to tell directions, swore very specific oaths to pacify strangers, etc. How did he know how to write a proper Egyptian colophon? Why does his phrase, "written with my own hand" so much resemble the Egyptian, "written with my own fingers"?
Columbus's letters to Spain reported wild boars in America.
(both of these references can be found in the wiki article on the "Onza." Onza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
The "boar" was probably a peccary, but we can't be sure what animals the lions or tigers were actually referring to. Now if I were to translate these things into Russian, would I try to guess what animals they actually were? No, I'd translate them into the Russian equivalent of "lions" and "tigers." They may have been jaguars, but that's not my call as translator. Could I make it a footnote or something? Sure, but it's very doubtful that Joseph Smith had the names of Mesoamerican fauna in his vocabulary. He only used words that he knew, and he probably didn't know "tapir," "peccary," or even "llama" or "alpaca," seeing as those animals were nonexistent in his parts of America. His descriptions to his family strongly suggest that whatever the Lehite people might have ridden, it wasn't a horse.
Your assumption about the horses pulling chariots is a great example of seeing what we expect to see, rather than what's there. Nowhere in the book does it say that BoM "horses" pulled BoM "chariots." They are mentioned as being part of a trip (once) but even here the relationship isn't specified. They might be pulling the chariots, or dragging them (sledges), or hauling them, or even walking beside them unattached (canoes). We don't even know that the chariots had wheels! The authors of the Book of Mormon don't see a need to describe these things, because they have no frame of reference; they assume the reader will be familiar with it. We have the same problem with many Roman, Greek and Egyptian intracultural works: we learn more about Egypt from what the Greeks wrote about them than from what the Egyptians wrote about themselves.
As I've said from the beginning, the Book of Mormon is a poor reference for archeological research. But that's not the same as saying it's false.
I don't know what you intended to prove by citing the metals they worked with; we have archeological confirmation on every single one of those metals in ancient American art. Not only does that fail to meet what I asked for--a description of metallurgy--but it fails to meet the overall intention of that information: where does it say that the armor was made out of metal?
I said, and have continued to say, that the beginning of the BoM meets all four, but the latter part is impossible to match. That's not to say it's a fraud; there are plenty of documents that would be impossible to match with their origin on earth strictly on their own merits. Try tracking the conquistadors soley on their journals.
First, I've brought up Albright because he's a great figure in paleolinguistics, well respected by his peers. Then again, I've also brought up Victor Von Hagen, and Kutz, and Ixtlilxochitl, and you haven't said boo to any of them.
Second, why is it that I'm getting flak for citing my sources?
You call an anonymous group lumped together in a single statement in a non-peer reviewed journal "the consensus of archeological knowledge on the subject"?
I've said many times on this forum that archaeology will probably never confirm the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. What you fail to grasp is that that's not enough to call it a fraud, in the eyes of science. When you start talking about fraud, the burden of proof is on you. If I were to say that the Mona Lisa was a fraud, I couldn't just say it was and ask my detractors to prove it was genuine. "Fraud" is a definitive statement.
"Not proven true" isn't the same as "proven false."
If you wanted to prove the Book of Mormon was a fraud, you can't just point to the mistakes in the text. You need to show how Joseph (or any other 19th Century author) managed to get names from the Amarna letters and the Elephantine Papyri before they were excavated. How Joseph knew the only place to get bow-wood in the desert south of Jerusalem. How he knew all 20 points for a proper Hebrew farewell speech (that Kurtz data that everyone has been ignoring). How he knew so much about Bedoin culture--how they traveled, ate their meat raw, used a compass-bowl to tell directions, swore very specific oaths to pacify strangers, etc. How did he know how to write a proper Egyptian colophon? Why does his phrase, "written with my own hand" so much resemble the Egyptian, "written with my own fingers"?
FFH
Veteran Member
From the movie Son's of Provo of course.
Movie link: Son's Of Provo (LDS actors and LDS film makers poking fun of their own culture)
My wife converted from Catholicism to the LDS church and she got a kick out of this low budget comedy film.
Also check out: Mobsters and Mormons
DeepShadow
White Crow
But we're never going to get to something more concrete until we know what the Book of Mormon is actually talking about! Unless we are willing to apply the same standards to it that we do to all the other ancient works of literature, we aren't treating it fairly.
We have ancient works that claim to have found animals in places where we know there were no such animals. So that alone is not good enough to say it's a fraud. We need more.
DeepShadow
White Crow
For those of you who've forgotten, here's the Kurtz data again, courtesy of Jeff Lindsay:
Non-LDS scholar William S. Kurz has examined numerous ancient farewell speeches and identified 20 elements that appear commonly (no one speech has all 20). Sixteen of the elements are directly present in Benjamin's speech, and two others are implied. No other ancient farewell speech has a greater number of these elements. Further, Benjamin's speech is well focused on the most important elements typical of Old Testament traditions. For details, see William S. Kurz, "Luke 22:14-38 and Greco-Roman Biblical Farewell Traditions," Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 104: 251-268 (1985); also see William S. Kurz, Farewell Addresses in the New Testament (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1990), both as cited by Welch and Ricks, p. 115).
According to Kurz, as summarized by Welch and Ricks (pp. 91-94), the 20 common elements from ancient farewell addresses are:
Welch and Hague also point out that Benjamin's speech is soundly aligned with the most important aspects of ancient biblical farewell speeches:
Other farewell speeches in the Book of Mormon were given by Lehi, Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Mosiah, Mormon, and Moroni. Adding King Benjamin's makes seven total. Each of them have over half of the 20 elements identified by Kurz, though King Benjamin's speech is the most complete, more complete than any single biblical speech. I find that impressive. As is shown in other chapters in Welch and Ricks, the speech also offers beautiful chiasms, follows patterns from ancient Jewish festivals, follows ancient patterns of assembly and atonement symbolism, etc. It is powerful evidence that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Semitic document, written by ancient prophets with Hebraic roots. An online copy is available for Chapter 11 by John W. Welch, "Parallelism and Chiasmus in Benjamin's Speech." (I hope that it is provided with proper permission.) The online version show pages 249-318, but my copy of the book spans pages 315 to 410, so it must be a different edition.
Non-LDS scholar William S. Kurz has examined numerous ancient farewell speeches and identified 20 elements that appear commonly (no one speech has all 20). Sixteen of the elements are directly present in Benjamin's speech, and two others are implied. No other ancient farewell speech has a greater number of these elements. Further, Benjamin's speech is well focused on the most important elements typical of Old Testament traditions. For details, see William S. Kurz, "Luke 22:14-38 and Greco-Roman Biblical Farewell Traditions," Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 104: 251-268 (1985); also see William S. Kurz, Farewell Addresses in the New Testament (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1990), both as cited by Welch and Ricks, p. 115).
According to Kurz, as summarized by Welch and Ricks (pp. 91-94), the 20 common elements from ancient farewell addresses are:
- The summons. The speaker calls people together to here his last instructions.
- The speaker's own mission or example. The speaker reviews his life and what he has done, and urges his listeners to follow his example.
- Innocence and discharge of duty.
- Impending death. The speaker states that death is near, but shows courage rather than fear, sometimes commending his soul to God.
- Exhortation. Listeners are urged to follow commandments they have been given by the speaker, to be courageous, etc.
- Warnings and injunctions. Consequences of sin are discussed to help the people.
- Blessings. In conjunction with the warnings, blessings are also offered (e.g., for obedience).
- Farewell gestures. Though more common in Greco-Roman literature, acts such as kneeling can be farewell gestures.
- Tasks for successors. Final orders given to the listeners, often conferring specific responsibilities.
- Theological review of history. Reviewing the past to show the works of God (e.g., the Creation, delivery from captivity, etc.).
- Revelation of the future.
- Promises. Biblical farewell speeches commonly include reference to eternal glory (e.g., Christ in Luke 22 and Mattathias in 1 Maccabees 2).
- Appointment or reference to a successor.
- Bewailing the loss. Friends and followers may mourn the speaker.
- Future degeneration. Warnings about the disobedience of future generations are made. The speaker is not responsible for this, however.
- Covenant renewal and sacrifices.
- Providing for those who will survive. Instructions are given to maintain guidance and comfort for people after the death of the aging leader.
- Consolation to the inner circle. The speaker comforts his closest associates.
- Didactic speech. Review of principles to teach listeners what to do.
- Ars moriendi or the approach to death. Dealing with the approach of the leader to death itself, this element is less common and is found only in a writing of Plato and perhaps implicitly in Josephus.
Welch and Hague also point out that Benjamin's speech is soundly aligned with the most important aspects of ancient biblical farewell speeches:
[FONT=Geneva,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Kurz has singled out four of his twenty elements as fundamentally characteristic of addresses in the Old Testament and the Old Testament Apocrypha, as opposed to the Greco-Roman tradition: (1) the speaker's assertion of innocence and fulfillment of mission, (2) the designation of tasks for successors, (3) a theological review of history, and (4) the revelation of future events. All four of these characteristically Israelite elements appear prominently in Benjamin's speech. Furthermore, Benjamin emphasizes the covenant relationship between God and man, and his text ends with an express covenant renewal. No preoccupation with death occurs here, as it does in the Greco-Roman texts. Benjamin's speech is not only one of the most complete ancient farewell addresses known anywhere, but it also strongly manifests those elements that are most deeply rooted in early biblical tradition. [/SIZE][/FONT]
For Benjamin's assertion of innocence, see Mos. 2:15 (cf. Mos. 2:12-14 and 2:27-28). For tasks for successors, see Mos. 1:15-16, 2:31, and 6:3. A theological review of history is found in Benjamin's review of his administration (Mos. 2, such as verses 11, 20, 31, 34, 35) and his references to Moses and the Israelites (Mos. 3:13-15). Future events are prophesied in Mos. 3: 1,2,5-11, where the coming of Christ is foretold. Other farewell speeches in the Book of Mormon were given by Lehi, Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Mosiah, Mormon, and Moroni. Adding King Benjamin's makes seven total. Each of them have over half of the 20 elements identified by Kurz, though King Benjamin's speech is the most complete, more complete than any single biblical speech. I find that impressive. As is shown in other chapters in Welch and Ricks, the speech also offers beautiful chiasms, follows patterns from ancient Jewish festivals, follows ancient patterns of assembly and atonement symbolism, etc. It is powerful evidence that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Semitic document, written by ancient prophets with Hebraic roots. An online copy is available for Chapter 11 by John W. Welch, "Parallelism and Chiasmus in Benjamin's Speech." (I hope that it is provided with proper permission.) The online version show pages 249-318, but my copy of the book spans pages 315 to 410, so it must be a different edition.