Zosimus

don't know about everyone else, but i'd like to hear about how the jews stole your car

How do Heartlanders reconcile Cowdery and other early leaders, closer to the original source, making statements that the Lehites landed in Chile or somewhere on the coast of South America? The articles below report on the Lamanite Mission missionaries (Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, Peter Whitmer Jr.) preaching in Kirtland en route to Missouri, and the first article explicitly names Cowdery as the source. This is the earliest known mention of Chile as the landing, just months after the Book of Mormon was published, and before the Williams document everyone usually cites. Observer and Telegraph (Hudson, Ohio), 18 November 1830 "According to the narrative given by one of these disciples — Oliver Cowdery — at their late exhibition in Kirtland… This new Revelation, they say is especially designed for the benefit, or rather for the christianizing of the Aborigines of America; who, as they affirm, are a part of the tribe of Manasseh, and whose ancestors landed on the coast of Chili 600 years before the coming of Christ, and from them descended all the Indians of America." Another report on early LDS missionaries teaching a South America landing: Fredonia Censor (New York), 7 March 1832 "The Revelation commenced about 600 years before Christ, with a prophet of the name of Lehi, of the tribe of Joseph… He with another family who accompanied him, built themselves a ship and landed on the coast of South America, where they increased very fast…" Do you accept a landing in Chile? Is your narrow neck then Panama or somewhere in North America?

I've got a lot of thoughts wrt Nibley's Ancient State. In summary, Smith thought himself as a restorer, in a long line of restorers, of an "old forgotten doctrine of the divine plan" or "primordial revelation", as Nibley calls it in "Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic" Nibley himself sums up well in Eloquent Witness: "The idea of an “archaic wisdom,” prisca arcane, or “primeval revelation,” a knowledge of the ancients far in advance of later times, has always intrigued philosophers and theologians. But today it is the scientists who are taking it seriously. Joseph Smith was well acquainted with the idea..." According to that essay, Nibely was a Patternist. This loops him in closely with the likes of Bryant and Faber who laid the foundations of Patternism. Nibley makes the case himself, he just fails to acknowledge that the material was available in 1820s America. As I've mentioned elsewhere, Ethan Smith straight up copies Faber. Bryant and Faber influenced a number of Americans writing in the 1820s. For sure, Paine wasn't the first, he was the most widely distributed. Afaict Paine picked up his claim that Hilkiah forged the Book of the Law to justify Josiah's reforms from Voltaire. It was in the little pocket version of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary which was widely circulating in America. Voltaire seemingly gets it from earlier sources like Spinoza. This conflict between the skeptics and the Biblical apologists goes back a long way, at least as far back as Scaliger, who was a major influence on Nibley. He heaps praise on Scaliger in a separate essay in Ancient State. Like Campbell, I am impressed how well the Book of Mormon resolves all the great controversies of the period roughly between Scaliger forward to Joseph Smith.

If King Benjamin was the first to formulate it, then he wouldn't have done it by merging 1 Corinthians and Romans. The simpler explanation is that Rev Boston did the merging, Edwards borrowed from him a year later, and then Joseph wrote it into Mosiah 3:19.

Boston's sermons with both phrases had been republished in New York in 1811 by Evert Duyckinck, who coincidentally also published Anthon's Classical Dictionary, which IMO was another source for Book of Mormon narrative elements

Very funny, after you posted this I also looked up "plan of salvation" in Google Books and one of the same books that came up for my search on "natural man is an enemy to God" popped up again. Both phrases are in one text: Human nature in its four-fold state by Rev. Boston (1735) Plan of salvation is in there three times, and it looks like Wesley lifts his passage from Boston almost verbatim Boston: "Every natural Man is an Enemy to God, as he is revealed in his Word. An infinitely holy, just, powerful, and true Being, is not the God whom he loves, but the God whom he loaths. In effect, Men naturally are Haters of God..." Wesley: "Every natural man is an enemy to God, as he is revealed in his word, — to an infinitely holy, just, powerful, and true Being. In effect, men are naturally 'haters of God'..."

Also variations found in a sermon by Jonathan Edwards in 1736, and then published within America MEN NATURALLY GOD'S ENEMIES. AUGUST, 1736. SERMON, VII. "A natural man is as full of enmity against God."

WW Phelps was an editor of one in nearby Canandaiga. Phelps has a lot of telling phraseology that gives away his learning. He certainly had access to books, journals and editorials from all over the country, and Europe. Phelps read the Book of Mormon just 3 days after it was published and a year later was called to "to head printing and publishing for the Church" I think we often overlook that much of the unique theology in Mormonism was developed after 1830, when Joseph was swimming in theological, philosophical and political conversations, and lots of print

That was my first thought, but George's journal has far more detail, such as: "When the spies first began to question us, it was observed that they picked out the greenest looking fellows in the Camp to quiz. As I was only 16, very large of my age, my eyes weak and naturally deficient of sight, wore a pair of striped bed-tick pantaloons, which were worn off on the inside, nearly up to my knees on account of my interfering as I walked, my straw hat having been smashed by accidentally sitting on it in the tent, Joseph invited me to throw myself in a position to answer such questions; and on passing through the towns I generally fell somewhat in the rear cutting a sorry figure which naturally singled me out — on the principle that children and fools always tell the truth. In this way I had many amusing conversations with inquisitive strangers. I tried to treat them with kindness and urbanity, but presume very few of them gained much information by talking with me." And if History isn't sourcing the account from GAS, then I don't know where else it would be coming from

Yes, the George A. Smith journal is nearly word-for-word, so it must come from there, with the [as I was called] insertion added later. The question would be when did the editors gain access to George A. Smith's journal? He was only 16 during Zion's Camp, and it seems he is writing much of it from memory after the fact.

As Weebles mentioned, it is also in the A1 volume of the History of the Church, which was partly dictated and edited by Joseph Smith. The George A. Smith account published later is almost word-for-word, so the History of the Church version must have been taken from his journal? There is an insertion in the paragraph that attributes the account to Joseph Smith, suggesting the editors (if not Joseph himself) intended the account to be first person: After reading the full entry, I am surprised that the camp was not making an effort to fool the attendees into thinking they were a camp full of liberal freethinkers. They served sacrament to all attendees, and it was only Joseph's speech that was not related to a Christian topic like baptism or free grace or restorationism. It was Joseph who decided the topic and the speaker, so I wonder why Joseph chose to speak on liberal freethinking, when he could have given himself any topic he wanted. Makes me think either, 1. he was very comfortable with the topic, or 2. he wanted to communicate ideas that resembled liberal freethinking. I suppose there are other options, but those two seem most logical to me

The footnote in the Bushman article is confused or wrong. But found it here

I don't think we know the names of any other local youth who participated the debate club. There were the Lapham brothers, Increase Lapham (b 1811) went on to become an accomplished antiquarian and scientist. He was the first to excavate the burial mounds of Aztalan, Wisconsin, thought to be the location of the Aztec homeland at that time. So at some point he was able to become one of the leading experts on the moundbuilders. His brother Fayette would interview Joseph Smith Sr. in 1829. But they were a few years after Joseph and moved around a lot, so they don't fully represent the learning available to a young man in Palmyra in the 1820s. There's also Luther Bradish, who at the time Joseph would have been participating in the debate club, was traveling deep into Egypt/Sudan and was riding camels into Jerusalem and Syria before continuing on through Europe to Scandinavia. Bradish wasn't in Palmyra between 1820 and 1826, but since his parents lived in Palmyra at the time, I imagine his travels were closely followed and discussed by the locals. Bradish would of course become the first to give his opinion on the transcript of the gold plate characters. It was possible for a young man from Palmyra to access the outside world. That account was not Turner's, it was George A. Smith, Joseph's first cousin (source)

Turner was clear, he thought Joseph was lacking in intellect and ambition. Which makes it all the more convincing when he admits Joseph had enough intellect to help solve questions at the debate club, and that he had enough ambition and skill to very passably exhort on theological topics at the camp meetings. Portentous had a more specific meaning between 1830s and 1850s. This is how Turner used the word in a different context in the same book: "In 1786, '7, a boy, I saw the Revolutionary fathers in their primary assemblies. The scene was solemn and portentous! They found their common country without a constitution and govern- ment, and without a union. The supposed oppressive measures of an adjoining State had so alarmed the people of a portion of it, that open resistance was made for self-protection, and the protection of property." Source Regardless of any intended sarcasm, Turner is saying that Joseph Smith participated in discussions of topics that would have certainly required some overlap with texts that were sitting right there on the shelves of the print shop and of the old red school house on Durfee Street. I find it unthinkable that Joseph Smith wouldn't have picked up any of those books, and even if he didn't, that he didn't ponder deeply the questions others were discussing at the debate society. It raises another question. If Moroni had been instructing Joseph Smith on so many topics from theology to the ancient inhabitants of the Americas since 1823, then wouldn't Orasmus Turner have seen some of that learning sneak though? Why would Joseph be able to tell so many wonderful things to his family about the ancient inhabitants of America, but then Turner didn't notice anything remarkable? I think Turner was actually impressed by Joseph, and was simply underselling his intellect and ability

You think its far out that young boys are meeting at a debate society to discuss articles from a dictionary about the religions of the world that they found in the local iibrary? When exactly did Joseph learn enough much about freethinking deism to convince two to three hundred people over the space of an hour that he was one of the greatest reasoners they had ever heard? We need to explain where he picked up all that knowledge. I seriously doubt he was reading Paine, Hume and Volney after he restored the Gospel. I seriously doubt Moroni taught him enough freethinking deism that he could convince hundreds of people that he was one. The simple answer is, as one of the most respected Mormon scholars argues, he learned it while discussing books like Hume, Paine and Volney at the debate club. If those books were known to the youth at the club, why couldn't they also know the books like Dictionary of all Religions and Travels of Cyrus which were available at the Manchester Library? Both these books were widely circulating and popular. How is this far out?