elias being a multiple foreunner.

[Robert F. Smith]

Of course, I don

[Dan Vogel]

Sorry, Dan.

I have seen anti-Mormons on this Board actually cite you by name as making just such an assertion -- with which they disagree. So, maybe they got it wrong. They prefer to see Joseph as an ignoramus, I guess. Then too, you are cited from an August 2001 Sunstone Symposium presentation as maintaining that Joseph Smith had access to and used sources such as Hugh Blair (who uses Adam Smith and Bishop Lowth), John Newton (epanodos), and Samuel Knox (who uses Blair, Holmes, Stirling, et al.). Perhaps you were misquoted.

However, I had gotten the impression from previous correspondence with you (not to mention your publication on the subject) that you believe that Joseph had access to and utilized a variety of works on American Indian history in America. I even sent additional bibliography to you. At some point, such suggestions do require Joseph to be spending a lot of time at the Manchester public library, even if not at Harvard College doing his dissertation. I hope you don't mind too much, but it seems so ludicrous and absurd that I sometimes joke about it.

It isn't so much that some "wide community" of scholars rejects Book of Mormon historicity, since that "wide community" of scholars has not actually examined the Book of Mormon and cannot speak to any sort of imaginary "historical or literary anachronisms it commits." That wider community of scholarship is largely unaware of the Book of Mormon, and likely does not consider it an issue worth discussing -- much less examining seriously. As Jacob Neusner has said

. . . among our colleagues are some who do not really like religion in it living forms, but find terribly interesting religion in its dead ones. That is why an old Christian text, one from the first century for example, is deemed a worthy subject of scholarship. But a fresh Christian expression (I think in this connection of the

Book of Mormon

) is available principally for ridicule, but never for study. Religious experience in the third century is fascinating. Religious experience in the twentieth century is frightening or absurd.

Council on the Study of Religion Bulletin

, 8/5 (Dec 1977), 1.

That is Neusner, not me, speaking of the Book of Mormon. Perhaps he is just another complaining polemicist.

So, if I understand you correctly here, you have not been asserting that Joseph employed any sort of vast scholarship in producing the Book of Mormon, nor in any of his subsequent commentaries or scriptural productions. Well, maybe just a little scholarship?

Bob,

Outside the KJV of the Bible, I have never asserted that JS read anything, although he must have. I have explained in detail in American Apocrypha that pre-1830 sources are used to show the climate of the times, not what JS had to have read. There are other ways of learning things. Mining these sources often uncovers a mindset that explains how different people can come to the same conclusions independently. Who would argue that JS could not have known about the ten tribe theory of Indian origins? Yet no one can say exactly how he heard about it.

I have only seen apologists try a reductio ad absurdum with such evidence. Besides, apologists who claim that JS could not have known thus and such beg for this kind of approach. Moreover, if I want to explore how the BOM participated in the discussion of theology in 1830, there is only one way of doing that.

[Robert F. Smith]

Bob,

Outside the KJV of the Bible, I have never asserted that JS read anything, although he must have. I have explained in detail in American Apocrypha that pre-1830 sources are used to show the climate of the times, not what JS had to have read. There are other ways of learning things. Mining these sources often uncovers a mindset that explains how different people can come to the same conclusions independently. Who would argue that JS could not have known about the ten tribe theory of Indian origins? Yet no one can say exactly how he heard about it.

I have only seen apologists try a reductio ad absurdum with such evidence. Besides, apologists who claim that JS could not have known thus and such beg for this kind of approach. Moreover, if I want to explore how the BOM participated in the discussion of theology in 1830, there is only one way of doing that.

O.K. Dan,

I'd like to hold you to this, but doubt I can. The problem with soft environmental explanations is that they can only be used for very light and inconsequential beliefs, and at the simple rather than complex level. Which leaves us with no way to explain truly complex correlations, of which there is a veritable host. How, for example, do we explain Professor John E. Clark's comment that

[Dan Vogel]

O.K. Dan,

I'd like to hold you to this, but doubt I can. The problem with soft environmental explanations is that they can only be used for very light and inconsequential beliefs, and at the simple rather than complex level. Which leaves us with no way to explain truly complex correlations, of which there is a veritable host. How, for example, do we explain Professor John E. Clark's comment that

[LDS Guy 1986]

In Matthew mount of transfiguration. {chap 17} Moses, Elias. and Jesus appeared to ,Peter,James, and John... then fast forward a couple verses... while still talking to Jesus they asked of him "why say the scribes Elias must first come"? jesus said Elias truely must first come and restore all things..and he has already come.so then they knew he spake of john the baptist...

sevearl questions mainstream christians need to ask..; if john the baptist was the "ONLY" Elias,; then why did Peter,James,John not regonize him just moments before?;,.and if he has alleady come; {in finality} then why does he need to come again to restore all things?.;

i beleive this group of verses very clearly and undisputably shows that the name title "ELIAS" represents more than one person.

I agree with you on this as well, Elias is a title given to many forerunners, Elijah holds this title, so does John the Baptist.

When the keys were restored to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, and unknown Elias came before Elijah, and restored the keys of the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham.

There is obviously more than one Elias, it isn't a name as much as a title to many forerunners in the Scriptures.

[Robert F. Smith]

Sorenson also mentioned this bactun prophecy evidence in his book. Are we to assume the Nephites were Mayan? If, so why aren't the Nephites mentioed in any Mayan text? If not, on what basis are you making a connection between the Nephite system of time-keeping and the Mayan? In other aspects the Nephite system follows 12-month years and simply counts years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem, and the years of the judges and kings, similar to the OT. There is no other indication that bactuns are being used by the Nephites. Where is the complexity you claim?

You ask: 'what are the chances of Joseph Smith guessing correctly the vigesimal system f timekeeping and prophesying amoung the Maya?" But he didn't do that--you did that for him. You have merely pulled out of the BOM events that coincide with the bactun system and ignored the rest. What could be easier? Would a Mayan have seen any significance in Moroni's closing his record 420 years after Jesus' birth? Doubtful. Do you imagine Moroni sitting around waiting to bury his record at just the precise year to give it a Mayan significance?

JS tended to prefer round easy-to-remember numbers such as 600 years after Lehi left Jerusalem and 400 years after Jesus' birth. Note also that for no apparent reason Mormon waited until the 100th year of the reign of the judges (about A.D. 9) to mention a major change in timekeeping had occurred nine years earlier with Jesus' birth [3 Ne. 2:8].

In all this, there is nothing compelling us to interpret these statements in the BOM within a Mayan system. Indeed, they are only seen by assuming bactuns, which is a question-begging interpretation. It does not prove bactuns were used, as one might expect if the BOM were Mayan. Even if BOM historicity was established directly, your bactun interpretation would be merely a possibility with some scholars legitimately rejecting your theory. Under the current situation, how this could become evidence for BOM is mystifying to me.

Sorry to get back to this after so long a pause, Dan.

Actually, I was only quoting John Clark about the bactun correlation. You have to bear in mind that he is an experienced archeologist and anthropologist, who (at the time he made that correlation) was head of the New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF) based in Chiapas, Mexico. I don't think that he or Sorenson were trying to argue that such a notion proved anything, nor were they saying that the Nephites were Mayan. After all, the Mesoamerican calendar system(s) was widely distributed among all Mesoamerican peoples. They had gotten the system from the Olmec, whom the Nephites never even met (we only hear of Coriantumr staying with the people of Zarahemla for a time). Since the Olmec disappear at just about the same time as the Jaredites disappear, some have suggested that they might be the same. Sorenson makes a similar argument about the rise and demise of the Nephites closely correlating (archeologically-chronologically) with the non-Mayan peoples living in Chiapas along the Grijalva River. If the Jaredites and Nephites are a figment of Joseph Smith's imagination, then such correlations seem unlikely to occur by accident. After a number of such tight and complex correlations, one finds "coincidence" an unlikely explanation.

Taking the calendar question a little further, one is intrigued by the chronology internal to the Book of Mormon also tightly correlating with absolute chronology outside the Book of Mormon -- provided we utilize the local Mesoamerican Long Count calendar of 360-day tun-years. The Book of Mormon insists that Lehi left Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah. We can tie that absolutely to 597 BC, and to within a day or so of his ascending the throne (courtesy of Nebuchadrezzar II). The 600-year prophecy of the Birth of Christ is set in motion from that very year. Mesoamerican tun-years (360-day years) take us to 5 BC, shortly before the death of Herod the Great in early 4 BC. How odd that it should fit so nicely. The Book of Mormon also sets an exact length to the life of Christ, 33 years and 3 days. In tun-years that works out to 32.5 solar years, making the birth of Christ take place in the Fall of 5 BC, around 1 Tishri (the same date when Brother Joseph takes the gold plates from that hill convenient to Manchester, N.Y.), and his death therefore taking place at Passover, as required by the NT.

There is a plethora of such complex, systematic correlations between the Book of Mormon and the world of scholarship. Calling it all "coincidence" is the easy way out and constitutes ducking the question, just as surely as saying that Joe Smith was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in his early years.

[Thunderfire]

I'm glad this topic was bumped up because (in my opinion) there is a major piece to this coming which I did not find discussed.

In Church History we read of the time when Moroni visited young Joseph during the night. He quoted specific passages of verse, explaining their meanings. One in particular I believe is relevant here:

We are told that Moroni quoted portions of Malachi, though with a little variation from how our bibles currently read:

"Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood by the and of Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers; if it were not so the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming..."

I am also one who believes "The Elias" to be a title given to one called to a specific work for the Lord. Whether that be a forerunner or restorer role. In the last days, it will be "the Elias" who will not come to restore the priesthood (that was already done), but to REVEAL to mankind the fullness of priesthood potential.

Going back to what Moroni told Joseph, this latter day Elias could be BOTH forerunner and restorer in that he prepares the way for the Lord's return and "restores" the knowledge (turn the hearts of the children) back to the prophecies which God made to their fathers. The Book of Mormon speaks of the Lord's servant coming. Is this the "former Elijah" or a new Elias which the Lord raises up? I guess we must wait and see.