Calm

https://ilovehistory.utah.gov Hopefully one of these fits your learning style. Chat recommends starting with the PBS documentaries and then going more in depth. With history to go.

https://video.pbsutah.org/show/utah-history/ chttps://historytogo.utah.gov

Resorting to chat because I don’t do podcasts:

Leonard Arrington’s a highly respected historian. Decent writer too as his books were enjoyable reads for me. His Great Basin Kingdom might be out of date because it’s as old as I am, someone more knowledgeable than I am in history scholarship is needed, but it was the go to history for quite sometime and you can read it online here, hopefully for free. https://archive.org/details/greatbasinkingdo0000arri_q8o0/page/n5/mode/2up

The ones who put time into it, who are serious and trying to understand, yes. I still see a lot of dismissive comments of the witnesses all being related, etc online when I venture there….which I admit isn’t as often as I used to. Have other things to occupy me.

The low church tradition was the background of many early members. It still permeates our Sunday observances imo, pretty much everything outside the temple. There used to be an element of pride among some members that we did so much with so little in the past in my experience. Pride in the minimalism in our buildings and services as well as leadership (not hiring people for jobs where many other faiths did, depending on the willingness to donate time as well as money, etc). I believe as the culture around us becomes less obviously religious, we will develop more rituals we can bring into our homes to create sacred space there. Family Home Evening is a long time practice (few would call it a ritual, but I tend to have a broad definition of the term, I will use practice for the less structured rituals of religious life for this post, I think). The push to begin and end the day with prayer and daily scripture study are other practices that have been going since at least my childhood (60s). I include seminary as a more communal structured version of this for youth. I don’t know if it was just my mom talking about how homes should be refuges from the loudness and chaos and busyness of the world or they talked about homes as refuges from the world as well in my childhood, but it was a theme at least by the 70s in my ward if not beyond. Part of this was not only avoiding contention, being a home of love, but also having visual reminders of faith, especially for children. I think there’s been a big push for religious artwork in homes in the past 50 years or so. It may be just that my own family didn’t have religious artwork, including my grandparents and extended family, but the grandparents and most of my aunts and uncles were born and raised in Utah and most devout, all had scriptures and many books by church authorities in their homes, so I am assuming artwork just wasn’t pushed that much. I didn’t have LDS friends growing up, except for one family when quite young. I also don’t remember any trips to Deseretbook when visiting relatives in Utah though there were likely some, so I can’t remember what offerings of artwork they had prior to my college years (late 70s). I haven’t much to base my conclusions on therefore except for my extended family. While I don’t remember religious art, I always remember the books because I would read anything within my reach (hands and mind). Even when there were no Deseretbooks around, there was the Seventies? libraries/bookstores in the churches iirc. Then suddenly Greg Olsen’s work seemed like it was everywhere. We even have a few of his now, but it’s the fantasy stuff, not the religious. The kids wanted his Jesus pictures growing up, they even gave them as birthday gifts in primary, so they joined kids’ artwork as the only non coordinating art in the house (either the art had to work with the room or I made the room work with the art, everything has to look like it belongs, it’s part of the family, not just visiting in my home or I get antsy). When I worked in the churchish bookstore my favorites were Chad Hawkins’ line drawings of temples, at the time he was working on getting all of them, but I wonder if he fell too far behind and gave up. I have one religious piece in my home now, but it’s not the usual, Cherubim and a Flaming Sword by J Kirk Richards. The symbolism that draws me is the tree of life, the cross (sword), and the otherworldly and threeness of the angels. The Tree of Life motif is probably my favorite visual theme….though probably mostly because I love trees. Our walls are too bumpy for wallpaper or I would have one basement room full of a forest mural, very green, very old earth, quiet and enclosed. Pity we don’t have sacred groves attached to all our chapels. I think we are quite late to the table with sacred holidays for increasing experience of sacred time and space. Christmas wasn’t a huge deal in my view at Church with much additional celebration beyond what could fit into Sundays and personal family time (the choir would sing and there would be a Christmas program during Sacrament Meeting instead of talks), though the Church had the Tabernacle choir performances and lighted temple square for decades and both were semi rituals for BYU students while I was there. And of course the was the yearly Nativity story to be told by us kids using the Primary diorama? setup we got in church to help us remember what Christmas was really for….our contribution to the home’s decorations (Mom decorated the tree, they were always beautiful). I am expecting more holiday observances, not in the sense of sacraments, but in creating more opportunities for bringing our minds to faith to create more spiritual anchors throughout the year. Makes sense to adapt traditions of others rather than attempting to create our own as there will likely be additional reinforcements beyond what we can just get at church. If This Little Light of Mine can find a place in our hymnbook, who knows what we will adapt for our needs!

But this would depend a great deal on whether these witnesses were independent, just bystanders or they had a reason to benefit from the defendant being named as the murderer….say they had as much reason or more to want the victim dead as the defendant (an inheritance was involved, for example).

Unfortunately the easiest to understand evidence here, the witnesses, is also the easiest to dismiss, imo (added: I see Analytics brought up the key issues). While it seems unlikely for 14 men and more to keep quiet if they were involved in fraud, it is not inconceivable that they cared enough about how their loved ones thought about them that they kept the fraud to themselves even when on their death bed because they knew the anguish and bitterness they would cause since at least some of their families sacrificed tremendously to follow Joseph, join the Church, move with the members, etc. Not saying it’s likely, but I see it as plausible, especially if the original motivation was hope for a utopian society or something similarly valued. Avoiding humiliation and disdain, being seen as a person of integrity is highly meaningful to many people. Sure, they may be applauded and be able to dine out for the rest of their lives on stories that trashed Joseph and Mormons, but how would they be treated in their homes by spouses and children, parents and siblings who believed them? There is also a possibility all were concerned about retaliations from angry members, either because it was believed they were lying or because they didn’t. If one had family killed because of commitment to the faith and then later heard someone confess to lying about the plates or angels, it would be very possible imo to want to exact vengeance from those directly responsible for the suffering and deaths of one’s family. If the level of fraud they were committed to was not full out because they had been duped themselves, but rather they were just helping Joseph a true prophet in their eyes at that time by exaggerating some, it would be even easier most likely not to admit to that exaggeration, imo. So while I personally believe the witnesses are very important for bringing the sacred into the mundane world, creating the narrative that laid foundation for the faith, I don’t see them as the strongest evidence. Unknown until after the creation of the scriptures ancient elements in the Enoch or Abraham traditions are stronger potential evidence, imo. The issue with these are how unique and detailed are the story elements as well as what number of them takes it past plausibility for a coincidence based on Joseph’s creativity and ability to pick up hints (if they exist) to flesh them out. Otoh, demonstrating the text couldn’t have been produced by Joseph or anyone else in the vicinity or of his or any previous time period because of word usage in the text is evidence that is the most independent of the motivations of those directly involved in the founding of the Church it seems to me. Personality doesn’t really come into it, though language skills do. It’s not a slam dunk (in the sense of being able to show one way or the other), of course, as can be seen here because this kind of evidence using statistics and requiring hours, if not days and months to truly familiarize oneself with it isn’t that accessible to most people. We have to depend on experts to evaluate this type of evidence for us and explain why it matters. Those who want to discredit it to be taken seriously by believers would need to show they put the same level of effort into the analysis, using the best sources, etc similar to those making the claim their analysis supports Joseph. How do you determine the probability that someone is consciously trying to imitate sacred language or create new language that feels sacred? I don’t think it’s particularly reasonable to expect that of non believers, so it’s likely the evidence will end up satisfying believers while they are able to dismiss critics’ work as not thorough enough at least until there are ways to not only remove bias from AI so one can dump all known texts into their maw so they can complete what would take a lifetime for a human to do, but also have a mistake proof way of calculating probabilities…is that last even possible? Is there a way to remove subjectivity so that all agree the weight given to the occurrences are reasonable?

Isn’t this the same thing Analytics is stating when being pushed for an explanation of how Joseph produced the text, just from the opposite view with a slight variation….the mechanism doesn’t have to be known in order for the prediction of an ordinary (naturalistic) outcome to still be significant? Just making the observation…not saying it impacts any arguments. I just found it interesting. (This may have been pointed out before, I may have missed a couple of posts with interruptions the past few days).

My husband is off exploring Down Under. His mom was Australian, so it’s been a life long dream. He may have gotten there before for a few days for a conference, but they blur in my mind even if I do know he’s been on every other continent in the world multiple times. He is down there for over 3 weeks. Would have loved to join him, but first it was limited wealth and now limited health. Anyway… He hit New Zealand for the first part. Yesterday was Hobbiton. Today it’s Hoggiton where MiddleEarth hogs hang out (actually it’s an agricultural research facility if I understood him correctly, managed by someone with either a sense of humor or an eye out for tourists…or both):

I just did a search in the corpus of LDS conference talks and while early on there were quite a few uses of “whore” and “abominable” (assuming most of these are quoting “great and abominable” but I used my quota up trying to figure out how to search two separate words in the same talk so I can’t be sure how many), there’s significantly less as time goes on. There’s been over the years waxing and waning of the word “Catholic” as well, but I could find no talk that had either of the first two words linked with “Catholic”. So while the Catholic Church wasn’t always talked about in positive terms from the conference e pulpit, it would appear those specific labels/insults were not used there. https://www.lds-general-conference.org Last time “whore” was used was 1988 and it was coupled with the GandA referring to plain and precious things removed, this time in reference to the word “Atonement” only be once in the NT. There was no implication it was the Catholic Church that was the culprit. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1988/04/atonement-agency-accountability?lang=eng

They are primarily used these days in my experience in connection with the Restored Church by critics, often trying to make the Church look bad as in exaggerating the impact of certain more extreme beliefs among members and leaders or trying to ignore the fact that change is built into our system through the doctrine of continuing revelation and eternal progression (line upon line learning) and acting as if old beliefs are still current even if no one has taught such for a long time. When active members use the phrase for the Catholic Church in my experience, they are either pointing out we have never had that as a doctrinal belief or making a joke using it, which is unfortunate imo, but it’s seen as humorous because members don’t typically hold that view these days. There are no doubt some members who still believe this, but there are members into conspiracy theories, who take gospel hobbies to the extreme, and do all sorts of things counseled against by leadership. I would say the sincere, devout member not into fundamentalism or other ideas verging into problematic territory who believes such things is rare and less educated in church doctrine and practices (possibly they have not had access to such materials while forming their ideas while encountering for some reason the more extreme claims…like an uneducated young missionary making unfounded claims they weren’t instructed to make).

There is also the disparity in purpose, how to measure success when the goals are different. Utah was not about maximizing wealth to begin with, but more about attempting to meet the needs of all of its residents, not prioritizing wealth building overall, either for the territory as a whole or a small percentage of its population. It would be interesting to compare poverty levels…but exactly how is beyond me. Variations needing to be controlled for seems insurmountable to me as I start to think of them. You can’t just pick two areas with similar environments because they also would need similar interactions with surrounding areas if goods and people move in and out of the area.

You are too entertaining… IMO, what got people banned when lying about things was lack of civility, vulgarity, etc. IOW, it was more how they did it than what they did.

What environment would have this variety in your analysis?

After how many years?

Meaning?

Discussions on the brass plates: https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/a-backstory-for-the-brass-plates https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/interpreter/vol34/iss1/8/ https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/interpreter/vol45/iss1/8/ Dropping this here to look at later.

If the record was much older, the plates Laban had could have been a personal copy made for Laban off the original that was the record his fathers kept. Nehor was thinking it had to be pretty new as there is no evidence of something like it existing for all that time, but maybe it wasn’t identical, but just some of the collected stories, etc. It’s logical to me that a record of the kings were kept by the court and if the prophets were supported by the court that their prophecies became a part of that…and if not supported, but condemning the court, still makes sense to include them. Still why would Laban’s family have that. There is no claim of royalty or even family leadership though descending from Joseph. Maybe they were a family of scribes and were the court historians and kept their own copy modified with their own genealogy added. If the family was typically devout, would explain all the prophecies being included. The genealogy of Laban’s family who had custody of the plates makes sense as well. If you are going to keep records in the family, of course you would track the genealogy. The five Books of Moses is the biggest problem that I am aware of. The Book of the Law, which was most likely one of them was said to be found in the temple not that many years before. It would hardly have been a lost text if Laban’s family had a copy of it. Does seem to be something special given the elders of the Church were interested in it. If they were a family heirloom treasure or even a treasure if the kingdom (that’s seems unlikely as it would have been in the King’s treasury), so a clan/tribe thing) there’s an excellent reason for pursuit even if Laban was dead. They might be irreplaceable. Killing Laban and taking Zoram with them might delay the discovery of the missing plates since it seems like no one saw Zoram and Nephi leaving…though surely there were guards at the city gates. But if so, then they would know it wasn’t only Zoram but someone dressed up in Laban’s armor (since they would find his body in the city, not outside it). The servants might not bring attention to the theft out of fear of punishment, but a murder of an elite commander? Seems like there would still be some pursuit. What happened to the body? Did he hide it to delay discovery? Got to wonder if Joseph was making up the story, why would he have his hero do such a morally disturbing killing?

At that age with no children? Seems unlikely, they would likely have married quickly again, especially Laman as the firstborn and expected heir. Having his own heir would make his expected position more secure. Makes more sense not to see them as that old. Makes it more believable if closer in age that they gave into Nephi as much as they did even if they constantly whined about him. I don’t see any advantage to making the two that much older and a lot of advantages not to (makes Sariah having two more kids under a great deal of stress more likely if she is younger than 50 or more when she had them).

Which has nothing to do with the fact Nephi was still a kid. Kids can be smart…smarter than many adults, but they are still kids. We don’t know their ages, I am just speaking to your “they weren’t young kids”. If you are thinking Nephi was 14, he qualifies as a kid in my view based on brain development even if in that society he was viewed as an adult (but certainly not equal to someone of Laban’s age even if they happened to be same social class). Laman and Lemuel likely weren’t kids even if Nephi was 14, they seem quite preoccupied with more adult type thoughts early on to me, no sense of adventure, more concerned with living well. Seems unlikely there was a huge age gap though. I don’t care how well spoken Nephi is or physically powerful, if they were teens and out doing ‘adult’ stuff when Nephi was in nappies, they wouldn’t forget that. And Laman obviously looked on himself as the rightful heir/leader after Lehi with Lemuel backing him up. Age matters when it comes to accepting authority and one doesn’t yet have the angel as a backup. Giving up all their treasure because their baby brother thought that was a great idea when they were in their 30s? Nah. Laman and Lemuel as 20ish and still new to the I am an adult thing, brains still not fully mature but closer and most important still being treated by lots of people older than them as youngsters probably and therefore less confidence and therefore easier to be swayed, that seems more reasonable. I also find it hard to believe they were in their 30s and unmarried, so I would place them early to mid 20s at the latest. With the family wealth, they wouldn’t need to wait as long to be able to afford a family. I don’t know about Sam as not much said about him in the text. I see him as not much older than Nephi as Nephi treats him as his shadow more or less, no distinct personality, but they had a good, seems like close relationship.

Speculation: People with high status generally have others who deal with those looking for favors unless they are of equal or superior status…at least to screen them to see who would be worth their master’s time. I don’t see why that would have been different back then. Laman also went to speak with Laban with no retainers himself, not impressive. His clothing might have still been in decent repair and was likely high class given the family’s wealth, so that would have been in his favor assuming he took the time to tidy up. The family connection makes more sense, but still seems like with Lehi being out of favour with the community (as in they were going to try and kill him if he stuck around), seems like Laban would not have been friendly to begin with, though perhaps he might have indulged in some diplomatic fishing for information. Can’t decide if Laman was more likely to put off asking for the plates as long as possible or would just get to the point to get it over with so he could get out of there. Laman had nothing to trade to begin with, it is strange to even expect Laban to consider giving them up even if they were close family members, which given Laban’s reaction seems highly unlikely. I don’t understand why they didn’t first go get the riches….except for wanting to hold on to them so they could return to wealth when they returned as Laman and Lemuel wanted to do, but it would make sense to take substantial gifts at least. Makes me wonder what Nephi left out. Maybe Lehi originally had higher standing in the family, so they thought that prestige would add weight to the request.

I never knew who they were even when my son was in his teens. I may register now who they are if talked about on the board (but will forget who they are pretty quickly), but I never heard them referred to in church…I was in Primary or the library so that might have had something to do with it. I will have to ask my son, who was very active in youth activity when young if he remembers any from that time or if they had influence on him in his view. Will also ask my grandson, who is 19 iirc. I will have to ask my granddaughters about the female leaders as my daughter withdrew socially when she hit teens. None of my grandkids have ever mentioned such leaders around me, but that doesn’t mean much, lol. There are people like Bytheway who wrote books and did the talk circuit and youth conferences, who had an impact on youth in the past in my experience…at least they talked about them and bought their CDs when I worked in the bookstore (privately owned, but similar to Deseretbook), I don’t know who the current ones are. Many in the past didn’t hold church positions at that time. I assume with the internet options there are more opportunities to influence, whether they actually influence is another thing though.

What makes you think that? Laban was an important man, why would he sit and chat with any of these young and youngish men whether Laman or Nephi (assuming your ages are right)? Not a challenge, want to know what leads you to that besides pure speculation (which is what I do above). BTW, 14 is still a kid in my view. While the culture may have treated the youth differently back then in giving them adult responsibilities, that doesn’t mean the brain was fully developed by the age of 14. It is not just how one is treated that allows someone to think and plan in more adult ways, brain development matters too.

Speculation and thinking out loud: And likely a sacred responsibility as well. Not that fond of the custom order to create the brass plates instead of being given the responsibility (added: I have changed my mind, see below). I wonder what his position was that Nephi speaks of his fifty and even tens of thousands. Zoram thought Nephi as Laban wanted the plates to take to the “brethren of the church”. This seems more than just showing off to the neighbors. We are told Joseph Smith went through much suffering and difficulty when he was the custodian of the plates to keep them and Moroni devoted his life and afterlife as far as we know primarily to the care and safety of records that included them. Why would Laban not be as invested in their protection and care even if he was a greedy, ruthless *******? Why would he think losing the plates for the community (which could even be the kingdom and not just the extended family/clan/tribe) would be an acceptable idea since apparently Lehi and company were traveling far off, more than just a trade caravan since they abandoned their land…which was a major thing biblically speaking. Especially since the brothers couldn’t even manage to protect themselves? Why would he expect the plates to even stay in the possession of Lehi/Nephi and not get ripped off by bandits, slavers, soldiers patrolling the lands the wanderers were going to pass through? Thinking of their home/land of inheritance….. I wonder if the Lehites told extended family to move in, never thought of that before because of the ease the brothers got the treasure…the context makes it seem like their home was abandoned and empty of people when they went to retrieve the loot because it doesn’t speak of any complications. Still it speaks of the land of their inheritance and not the house, so before they had left they could have chosen to bury the treasures somewhere away from the house on the land while giving/selling/trading their home for needed supplies. They could have had the house in the city and the land outside the city. I assume once it became clear they were gone, the land would revert to the clan or maybe a sibling or cousin of Lehi’s. Another aside….Lehi just says “Laban” without details, not Laban the general or Laban who lives in that ostentatious mansion a few blocks away from our house…you get the idea I hope. Now Nephi may have left those out, but it is also possible that Laban was well known to them, perhaps a close family member since Lehi’s family genealogy was on it. Seems like he might have even been a half brother or cousin of Lehi, someone who wasn’t fond of Lehi or his kids as half siblings can often be, of a different branch that was perhaps in competition with Leah’s branch…making it more likely that Laban’s go to solution was murder. Being family would also explain why they thought Laman could just waltz in there and ask for the records. Maybe they figured a family member would respect Lehi’s calling as called of God and turn over the plates. If so, it would make it more logical if the plates were something Laban had made for himself rather than had the custody of where he wasn’t the actual owner in the sense they belonged to the tribe or the church community. Now that I think of it, they wouldn’t likely try to buy the plates if Laban was only a custodian more or less rather than outright owner. So it does make more sense to think of the brass plates as something Laban either had made for himself that could be replaced with effort or it was a gift that someone else had made for him and not something tied into the family wealth an eldest son was caretaker of to pass down to his eldest son, etc for the overall benefit of the family.