Zosimus

I’m trying to get a better feel for the cultural and academic world the Book of Mormon came out of. To me, Harris’s trip to Albany, New York City, and maybe Philadelphia is one of the most important and under‑researched episodes in early Mormonism. People like Luther Bradish, Samuel Mitchill, and Charles Anthon are big pieces of that story we still don’t really have nailed down. The meme is that Anthon was a stuffy professor who shut Harris down the moment he mentioned Moroni. I don’t think that’s the whole picture. Anthon was arguably America’s leading classicist, and in the 1820s classics and biblical apologetics were joined at the hip. His Classical Dictionary opens with a chronology that follows Ussher's standard, which tells you a lot about where he was coming from. Around 1827 Anthon is working on a textbook laying out textual evidence from Herodutus and other classics proving out how religion in the East and West connect, drawing on what he later calls the “mystic” school. In other words, Anthon was a diffusionist in the vein of the German Romantics. And wow, that's a very long thread that researchers haven't even began to pull yet. In this Mystic school framework, civilization and revelation start with Melchizedek as their priestly archetype somewhere east of the Caspian, the "old doctrine" then moves through Europe, and eventually reaches the Americas. Even after the Harris visit, we still find Anthon hunting for textual and philological proofs that American Indians are tied to Egyptians from Meroe. Put all that together, and a guy shows up at his door with “Egyptian‑looking” characters from a mound in upstate New York. I doubt Anthon’s first reaction was pure hostility. Given his own pet theories, he had every reason to at least be curious. My hunch is that he initially gave Harris some kind of thumbs up or at least didn’t straight away dismiss him. Then Harris brings in the angels and gold plates, and the whole thing suddenly too risky for a scholar at Columbia College. At that point it'd make total sense for Anthon to rip up his letter of certification. Both Bradish and Mitchill have equally interesting backgrounds, and similar responses to the transcript

There are plenty of people inside and outside the Church who grapple with the data and try to approach it without bias. I find that I flip flop frequently depending on who I’m speaking with. At times I feel like defending a naturalistic explanation, and at other times a faithful one. Some friends label me a misguided critic and others call me an amateur apologist. As I flip flop, I hardly see much difference between the two extremes. Both sides lack strong answers and solid evidence to support them. neither side is short on hubris or overconfidence The good news is that the more I grapple, the more I sense there’s a workable middle ground, for myself at least

What was the prompt you used?

Like I said, I can understand your reading and I can mostly accept it. But I struggle because: "the animals upon which they rode" Try as I might, I can't imagine indigenous Americans riding animals. I don't buy the argument that there were domesticated horses, or that anyone was riding any animal in the Americas, at any point before Columbus. So I don't know how this comment could be describing a divine vision of historical events. For me, it feels like storytelling

The context literally is "Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined" I suppose you could see it that the recitals were amusing because the material was exciting, but to me it doesn't feel like that's what she's saying

Recounting things doesn’t require any story telling skills at all. Pulling off “the most amusing recitals that could be imagined” does.

My take is that the Book of Mormon was the attempt to evolve religion to keep up with the times. It was designed to align Biblical history with the science of it's day. I have dozens of examples, but here's one that is related to your comments on the Mesoamerican calendar: In the 1820s, the scientific consensus promoted by authorities like Humboldt, Carl Ritter and (surprisingly) Charles Anthon was that the Mesoamerican calendar was not native to the Americas. It was technology that was carried to the Americas by Indo-European migrants. In his Classical Dictionary, Anthon follows Humboldt in tracing the path of the Indo-Europeans from the IE heartland somewhere in northern India (Hindu Kush) over the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea and into Europe via the Danube, and ultimately into Mexico. Humboldt provided a striking bit of evidence for this migration, the days of the week in the Roman, Germanic, Indian and Mexican calendars. Roman = 4th day of the week is associated with Mercury: mercredi in French, miercoles in Spanish etc. Germanic = 4th day of the week is associated with Mercury and Woden: Wōdnesdæg Indian = 4th day of the week is associated with Mercury and Budha: Budhavara Mexican = A unit of time in the Mexican calendar associated with Votan: Just read this In 1828, the leading scholars in Europe (mostly Germany) believed that the Americas were peopled by an ancient priestly class of Samanians (Shemite Buddhists) from Egypt. Martin Harris visited the two leading advocates of this theory in America and showed them the gold plate characters. Anthon would later note that the transcript included a depicition of Humboldt's Mexican calendar. According to Harris, both Mitchill and Anthon confirmed the characters were authentic, and the rest is history. Book of Ether is an even better example of alignment with the apologetic efforts of scholars like Jacob Bryant, William Jones, and GS Faber to respond to critics like Voltaire, Paine and Volney

Philip Jenkins argues that if you want a glimpse of how Christianity might have developed outside Roman state power, look at the Peshitta. (source) The Syrian churches of the East developed canon independently and their NT was even narrower than the Western NT. They did not canonize 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude, Revelation. When the Portuguese reached India in the 16th century, they found ancient Thomas Christian communities that were long outside Roman jurisdiction and that were using the Peshitta. The Europeans took one look at their Bible and threw them in the bonfires, not because they had added books, but because they didn't have enough! These churches claiming direct descent from one of the 12 apostles were forced to conform to the western canon and add books like Esther, Tobit, Wisdom, 2 Peter, 2, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation that weren't considered by the Syrian churches as canonical. Protestant reformers would later remove some books, but these were never canonical in those traditions that never adopted the expanded canon of the Catholic/Orthodox traditions

Aliyah only applies to children of Jewish parents that have not converted to another religion. Jesus, I would assume, has converted to Christianity. As a Messianic Jew, Jesus is not entitled to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. (source) "Supreme Court decisions regarding the right to immigrate to Israel after conversion, most notably Beresford (1987) and Kendall (1990) determined that a Messianic Jew is considered to be a Christian. Therefore, a Messianic Jew is considered a “member of another religion”, and not entitled to making Aliyah after conversion to Christianity....Despite the different theoretical approaches, both judges reached the same conclusion – a Messianic Jew (ie, the child of a Jewish mother who believes that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel) is of “another religion” rather than Judaism. Justice Alon supported his claims with sources in Judaic tradition, which claim that a “convert” is not part of the Jewish people, and therefore is not entitled to join the Jewish state. Justice Barak expressed his opinion that even according to a secular outlook there is general agreement that “a Jew who believes in Jesus” is no longer a Jew, according to the national meaning of the term." Until Jesus denies that he is the Messiah, he will be issued a Palestinian passport. As of September 2025 Jesus will not be allowed to leave the West Bank (source), nor will he be allowed a visa to America (source)

I think the joke is that Jesus wouldn't be able to enter our country legally, because he was born in Palestine and would have a Palestinian passport. Its incredibly difficult if not impossible these days for Palestinian passport holders to get visas to America: https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-refusing-visas-to-palestinian-passport-holders-in-unannounced-policy/ So if Jesus tried to enter America on a Palestinian passport without a visa, he'd be illegal, and deported

Tiny setback, rapture postponed

That's the letter left under the keyboard, part of the private exchange between the shooter and the roommate (lover). Weebles was asking for any social media messages posted beyond that. The link I shared is supposedly from the gamer group the shooter was in. If the journalist isn't exaggerating, that group seems like nothing more dangerous or radical than a bunch of Mormon kids in Southern Utah chatting while they play video games

Antifa = Anti-fascism A historian once wrote: "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall" If small government conservatives don't stand up against any executive order declaring all people who have the wrong political ideas according to one single guy sitting in Washington DC, who will? If anyone else without conservative bona fides stands up, what...publicly shamed? Lose their jobs? Passports revoked? Jail? Something else? This is getting out of hand fast, and based on the responses I see in conservative forums, I have zero confidence that the people that can stop it will do anything to stop it. If anything they are too busy trying to decide which groups on their own side are fascist or anti-fascist 🫣

Beyond the private chat, I haven't seen anything reliably authentic. The closest I've seen is this report supposedly including screenshots from the Discord group Robinson was in. https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-leaked-messages-from-charlie If those are authentic, it's super sad. It seems to be a server of friends in southern Utah playing video games, seemingly apolitical. The last post in there makes me think the screenshots are authentic, and that the kids are active Mormons:

"I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION..." - President Donald J. Trump And here we are. From today, if you say anything against fascism in America, you are a terrorist and can be dealt with accordingly. Wasn't the second amendment to protect ourselves from this exact thing?

Does that make it ok? Charlie Kirk himself said accusing your political opponents of crimes to silence them is the stuff of dictatorships Its exhausting that we all feel so wedded to political ideologies that we can't think straight or consistently for ourselves. When anything happens in America or the world we immediately take to the TV or social media to understand how we are supposed to think about it. America needs to collectively turn all these people off

I was curious about this a couple days ago and did some searches for "Hortman" on a popular LDS Discord server that has been talking nonstop about the political assassination at UVU. 99% of the users in the politics forum are in agreement that the heartless liberals are the perpetrators of all political violence. Yet, in the entire history of that forum there is one single post about Hortman's assassination. The only response to it was "Not surprised, life goes on." I brought up Hortman's name in another LDS forum and someone who 10 minutes earlier had been complaining about America's heartless response to Kirk's assassination, asked "who's that?" Sources available upon request, but I'd rather not publicly shame anyone for their underwhelming responses to political assassinations

True but also nuanced. Kirk was also strongly disliked by a loud minority of conservatives led by Fuentes who, I've heard argued, was rapidly displacing Kirk as the rising star. There are speculations that this infighting contributed to the tragedy

I don't want to post the pics because the family doesn't deserve that, but the mother says in the caption that it was Tyler that dressed up as "some guy from a meme" The meme:

This Tyler kid is looking more and more like a groyper to me. He even dressed up as a groyper meme for halloween one year. If you don't know what a groyper is, they are a group that split off from the alt-right because people like Charlie Kirk were deemed too conservative. Nick Fuentes pushed his "groyper army" to sneak into Turning Point events and expose Kirk as a conservative fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers

Tyler Robinson, a 4.0 student with a university scholarship from Washington Utah. No indication whether or not he is LDS. It is southern Utah so the odds aren't as high as if he were from Orem https://x.com/RedPill78/status/1966494010052120672

There's definitely a heart disease. Things are only going to get rougher Odds have just gone up dramatically that the shooter was a young Mormon kid. His father, a "minister" turned him in.

Fair enough, I'm also curious what it means because I hear it almost every conversation and have always asked who these they are, and nobody seems to know

"They" is the pronoun given to a group of unidentified Americans that need to be dealt with swiftly and promptly using the full force of Executive power. We all might be a part of this They group in some way or another