Zosimus

Granted all this is a new thread that requires context that hasn't yet been fleshed out in Mormon studies. but it feels relevant to me so i'll drop notes here as I research I start with an article in Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842: MOUNT ARARAT, AND THE EARLY ABODE OF NOAH AND HIS DESCENDANTS "In the opinion of the most learned among the moderns, Mount Ararat, where the ark of Noah rested, after the deluge, was in Armenia, or Thibet, and between 90o and 100o E. long. and between 30o and 35o north lat. north of Hindostan and Persia, west of the river Indus and of central Asia, and east of Mesopotamia and of the Caspian Sea." In the early 19th century there was a very small subset of Biblical apologetics that placed Ararat west of the Indus and east of the Caspian. If we use Feroe Islands as 0° longitude, the coordinates for Ararat in T&S would be: The T&S editorial places Ararat in the region of the Hindu Kush. This is a very clear fingerprint indicating the sources that the editors of T&S were using. Tracing the sources of this editorial, the influence of Sir William Jones, Francis Wilford and the Biblical mythographers Jacob Bryant and G.S. Faber becomes evident This material was circulating around America in the 1820s through the works of James McCulloh, Caleb Atwater, Josiah Priest and Ethan Smith to explain the origins of the moundbuilders

Couldn't agree more. Ethan Smith identifies his sources, and they all fit within a very public effort to counter the criticisms of Enlightenment-era writers that were an influence on Joseph Smith Sr, specifically Paine and Voltaire. Ethan Smith was heavily influenced by the writings of G.S. Faber, his "A Dissertation on the Prophecies" (1811) was a knock-off of Faber's earlier "A Dissertation on the Prophecies" (1808). From the Ethan Smith's book: "I HAVE believed the signs of the times to be very interesting and have wished that some able writer might succeed in opening and presenting, in a judicious and connected manner, the sacred Prophecies which are receiving their fulfilment. Mr. Faber , I think , has succeeded better in this, than any other writer on the subject." He then proceeds to pretty much copy/paste several themes and arguments from Faber's text, with over 62 citations, including the material I mentioned above from View of the Hebrews. Faber is a name I've never heard mentioned in the context of Mormon studies, so I've been going through his two most popular works: The origin of pagan idolatry ascertained from historical testimony and circumstantial evidence A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri: or the Great Gods of Phenicia, Samothrace, Egypt, Troas, Greece, Italy, and Crete Faber's "arkite" system is directly injected into the moundbuilder discussion through James McCulloh, Caleb Atwater and Ethan Smith. The Book of Mormon emerges from those broader themes.

My youtube algorithm must have seen me posting about Ethan Smith in the Secular Theory because this surfaced in my feed this morning: Did He Plagiarize It? Joseph Smith, Ethan Smith, and View of the Hebrews I've been re-reading all of Ethan Smith's works the past few months, and am convinced we've missed a lot of material there. Just a couple things: It's hard to imagine that 100 years after BH Roberts introduced "View of the Hebrews" into the discussion, we are still completely missing the most interesting bits in the book. In the appendix of the 1825 edition, Ethan Smith discusses a group of Israelites/Jews that cross the sea with manuscripts that pre-date the Babylonian captivity. He mentions that their skin became "black" and he says this happened for the same reasons (climate and habits of living) that gave the American natives a skin that was darker than their ancestors. Ethan Smith in View of the Hebrews directly compares the black Jews in India to the American Indians, which he considered to be lost tribes. Ethan Smith then asks whether these Israelites are a remnant of the lost tribes or not. He concludes that they are not lost tribes because: They called themselves Jews, not Israel. They had books (including the Old Testament) that date to just before the Babylonian captivity. Also, as pointed out in the video, Ethan Smith's most popular book was not View of the Hebrews, it was his 1809 work "A Dissertation on the Prophecies". This IMO is far more interesting for anyone looking for overlap between the Book of Mormon and contemporary sources. There's a lot in the video worth discussing, but i'll start with the above

Reformed Egyptian wasn't yet a thing when Harris visited Anthon in 1828. Mitchill did tell Harris the script was from a nation in the east, which would have thoroughly impressed Harris, so that's probably where we get reformed Egyptian from. It was accepted in the 1820s that Asia (and the Americas) were colonized by Egyptians, and that Chinese (and Mesoamerican) hieroglyphs were just a variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Anthon himself believed this and was actively seeking evidence for a sort of diffused language from Egypt across the Polynesian Islands and into the Americas

IMO this is the true intellectual backdrop behind the Book of Mormon. The book extends conversations taking place in the 1820s about Josiah’s reforms, the Babylonian captivity, and the location and identity of the Israelite diaspora. In the appendix of his 1825 View of the Hebrews, Ethan Smith mentions a group of Israelite exiles sailing to India shortly after the Babylonian captivity. He identifies them as "black jews" and mentions they had Biblical records or manuscripts that predate the Babylonian captivity. VOTH appendix also mentions another Israelite group that settled to the north of the black Jews that he identifies as "muloc, or kings". Mulek was spelled Mulok in the 1830 Book of Mormon We also know Asael Smith was a read of Paine's Age of Reason, and he encouraged Smith Sr. to read it until he believed it. Which meant there was a copy of the book flying around the homestead as Smith Jr. grew up. Paine wrote a lot in Age of Reason about the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity, and some have made a strong case that the Book of Mormon is a response to the secular criticism of Paine's Deism and Smith Sr's universalism. But, Paine also wrote a more controversial pamphlet about the Babylonian captivity, or rather the fallout of Josiah's reforms, called "On the Origin of Freemasonry", which was published after his death. In there, he argues that Josiah had put to death a number of temple priests who were too devout in their devotion to the sun, moon, stars and planets and the astronomical symbols that were found throughout the temple. These priests went underground, and embedded the earlier purer temple rituals and symbols in what we know today as freemasonry. If we're looking for a secular theory of where the Book of Mormon came from. Thomas Paine and Ethan Smith are a good start

Another prime hallmark that a society that has ripened in iniquity is when people are beheaded in the street because someone decides it is their job to clean up the streets its possible to object to both

you're not using the word sympathize correctly

I haven't seen anyone argue that Anthon could actually read and translate Egyptian. What I'm saying is he had an intense interest in Egyptian scripts and language, and as late as 1836 was actively advocating for the United States government to fund an expedition into the Pacific Ocean to gather philological evidence to prove his favorite pet theory that American Indians crossed the South Seas from Egypt. Anthon was a diffusionist just like Joseph Smith. Anthon would not have been immediately antagonistic to the idea that Egyptian script had been found in a hill in New York. If presented with such a claim, he would have compared to the books on his shelf. Even he would not be able to translate them, he would have been able to compare them to a number of Egyptian, Semitic and other ancient scripts

Anthon was afaict, the most knowledgeable about Egypt. For example, read his massive entry on Egyptus and Meroe in his Classical Dictionary. Also check the massive bibliography, the books on his shelf are a good indication of his interests. The only other person that would have been more knowlegable about Egypt was Luther Bradish, who had traveled deep into Egypt, all the way to Sudan, and then to Jerusalem (past the Red Sea) on camel back. Bradish was a friend of Harris, and his family lived in Palmyra. Imagine that, a local Palmyra boy riding on camel back on the trail of the Lehites.

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?