Evidence That Bom Was Written By Js Or Some Other 19Th C Per

[Jeff K.]

Jeff,

I am a participant on this forum and in this thread. Would you like to address your comments and questions to me? Are you interested in a discussion with me, or do you only want to tell your fellow Mormons why you regard my position as hypocritical?

I am addressing them to the public, you surprisingly enough are part of the public and the questions reflect part of the public response.

[Rob Bowman]

Bob,

Regarding the lack of autographs for the Gospels and the lack of the gold plates for the Book of Mormon, you wrote:

The issues are the same. The Gospels, according to traditional scholarship, were not written by their putative authors. The Gospels were not written until perhaps 50 to 75 years after the crucifixion. Just as it is plainly evident that Moses didn't really write the Books of Moses, so did Mark not write Mark. Criticism of the Christian myth abound with these challenges.

Bob, the question of who wrote the Gospels or the Pentateuch is an entirely different question from whether we have the autographs of those books. Suppose we found the autograph of the Gospel of Mark. Would this convince anyone that Mark wrote it? No, and it shouldn't, because the issues are entirely different questions.

Liberal scholarship generally dates the Gospels 40 to 70 years, not 50 to 75 years, after Jesus' crucifixion, but let us not quibble. It makes absolutely no difference to my confidence in the historicity of Jesus Christ whether Mark was written in AD 60, 70, or 75. It makes no difference at all to me whether Luke was written in 60 or in the 80s. The evangelical British New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce held the early date when he was younger and toward the end of his career changed his view and accepted the later date. Did this change Bruce's estimation of the historical value of Luke's Gospel? Not one bit.

On the other hand, it makes all the difference in the world whether the Book of Mormon was completed in AD 421 or in 1829, as I'm sure you realize.

You wrote:

By contrast, we have attesting eyewitnesses to the gold plates, including apostates. At least from a lawyer's standpoint, eyewitness testimony by an apostate is far, far superior to the spurious notion that the Gospels derived from a hypothetical Q manuscript, a theory developed by 20th century contextualists.

First of all, as I pointed out already, the eyewitness testimony of the LDS "witnesses" is to the existence of the gold plates, not to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon text supposedly written on those plates. They had no knowledge of that text, nor did they have any eyewitness testimony of any of the events that the Book of Mormon claims took place in ancient times. Let's compare apples and apples here. Suppose someone in the nineteenth century named Bill Jones claimed that he was shown the autograph of the Gospel of Mark. Suppose Bill testified that he saw the papyrus on which the Gospel of Mark was originally written in Greek. Suppose he stood by this testimony adamantly even after he no longer believed in Christ at all. However, it turns out that Bill couldn't read Greek at all; he couldn't tell an eta from a theta. What can we conclude? Someone showed Bill a piece of paper that looked like papyrus and had some squiggles on it that Bill was told was Greek. Is this proof that Mark wrote the Second Gospel? Of course not. Nor is the lack of such an autograph evidence against Mark being the author. We don't have the autograph for Plato's Apology, but it is accepted fact that he wrote it.

Second, you might want to get better informed about Gospel scholarship before making pronouncements on the subject. The theory is not that the four Gospels derived from a hypothetical Q manuscript. The Q theory is concerned with explaining only how it is that Matthew and Luke share a considerable amount of material in common--mostly sayings of Jesus--that is not found in Mark. It is that material common only to Matthew and Luke that is called Q and is hypothesized to have been a source that both Gospel writers used.

You wrote:

Your argument could equally apply to Homer's The Odyssey. The existence of many manuscripts of the Odyssey is no proof that there was a Helen, or even a Homer. It is evidence, however, of a Homerian school, just as the Gospels are evidence of various schools of Christian thought.

Now you're getting it, though you may not realize it. The many manuscripts are not proof that the events reported in the book happened. However, they are proof that the book was written before any of those manuscripts were produced! They also authenticate the language in which the book was written, thereby enabling scholars to confirm the time period and culture in which the book was written.

You wrote:

You see nothing wrong with that? The standard Christian thesis is that the Markan School composed, eventually, the Gospel of Mark. Why wouldn't Paul have known about the life of Christ, the miracles, his journeys?

Who says he didn't?

You wrote:

1 Timothy 5:19 may appear to quote from the NT, but these are actually quotes from OT sayings.

It's 1 Timothy 5:18, and it has two quotations, one that is in the OT and one that is in Luke 10:7.

"For the Scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,' and, 'The laborer deserves his wages'" (1 Timothy 5:18).

"You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain" (Deut. 25:4).

"And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages" (Luke 10:7).

Let's get this much straightened out if possible.

[cdowis]

Issues of the 19th century.

The BOM was written specifically to address our issues. Mormon saw our day, and was writing specifically to us. It was not written to the Nephites or Lamanites of his day.

[Rob Bowman]

Charles,

You wrote:

Issues of the 19th century.

The BOM was written specifically to address our issues. Mormon saw our day, and was writing specifically to us. It was not written to the Nephites or Lamanites of his day.

The nineteenth century is not "our day." I repeat what I said earlier:

What you're missing is that the Book of Mormon addresses lots of topics that were hot in the early nineteenth century but misses the hot topics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There's nothing in the Book of Mormon about relations between Christianity and other world religions; nothing about contraception, birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and other hot-button ethical issues; no emancipatory insights into race relations (quite the opposite, the Book of Mormon is stuck morally in the early nineteenth century on this issue); etc., etc. It misses the hot issues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It seems to have been written specifically and only for Protestants in early nineteenth-century America!

[Bob Crockett]

"And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages" (Luke 10:7).

Let's get this much straightened out if possible.

An OT concept. Lev. 19:13, or so says the NIV study guide (also citing to Luke). The Expositors' NIV guide says that there is substantial debate as to whether the second phrase should be attributed to Jesus. This is the most slender of reeds to contend that Paul knew anything about Jesus's life and teachings. Of the hundreds of pithy sayings of Jesus, Paul cites only one, and this one? Interesting. A cynic, and they abound, would say that Paul invented Christianity, and that the Gospels followed, not preceded, Paul. In any event, there's a lot of doubt as to the provenance of the documents which attest to Christ's ministry.

Suppose someone in the nineteenth century named Bill Jones claimed that he was shown the autograph of the Gospel of Mark. Suppose Bill testified that he saw the papyrus on which the Gospel of Mark was originally written in Greek. Suppose he stood by this testimony adamantly even after he no longer believed in Christ at all. However, it turns out that Bill couldn't read Greek at all; he couldn't tell an eta from a theta. What can we conclude? Someone showed Bill a piece of paper that looked like papyrus and had some squiggles on it that Bill was told was Greek. Is this proof that Mark wrote the Second Gospel? Of course not. Nor is the lack of such an autograph evidence against Mark being the author. We don't have the autograph for Plato's Apology, but it is accepted fact that he wrote it.

You're just parroting standard Christian apologia. You're also defining away the meaning of an "autograph," but demonstrating an autograph of somebody 2000 years ago is an almost impossible task. Again, the textual sources of Christianity are highly suspect, and far, far weaker than the sources the prove that gold plates once existed and that there was some sort of translation going on.

They had no knowledge of that text, nor did they have any eyewitness testimony of any of the events that the Book of Mormon claims took place in ancient times.

Of course, that is an accurate statement. Proof that Joseph Smith had the gold plates and used means to translate them is not the same as saying that the plates recount ancient American civilization. Of course, you are probably aware that there is a large body of Mormons who believe the Book of Mormon could just as easily be God-breathed Midrash or parabolic statements, wherein there is no need to prove ancient authenticity. Whereas I don't stand in that camp as to the Book of Mormon (principally because I know there is a being known as "Moroni"), I believe for example that Job and Jonah are purely parabolic statements.

But it remains rather remarkable and fairly unassailable, at least from the number of eyewitness accounts which have never been recanted, that the gold plates existed and were indeed the source of the Book of Mormon. To me, that fact alone makes the book so significant that its historicity, which I believe, is not a test upon which to denounce its source.

The evangelical British New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce

For every Bruce there's ten Jacob Milgroms willing to concede the possible weakness of Biblical sources.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Bob Crockett

[Bob Crockett]

Joseph smith clearly believed the American Indians were Lamanites, which was my point. In light of DNA evidence the Church has taken measures to make sure this traditional LDS view is marginalized as much as possible. For example, the move to change the preface of the Book of Mormon to say Lamanites are "among the ancestors" of the American Indians, as opposed to the long lived view that they were the "principal ancestors."

Apologists are not the Church, nor are they monolithic so that they march in lockstep to some sort of belief pattern. Nor has the Church done "as much as possible" to marginalize traditional theology about the Lamanites and their claim to the House of Israel. But, the nasty "apologists" can certainly be good whipping boys for those who like their whips.

I can count on ten fingers the number of members of my stake who pay attention to the nasty apologists.

Apologists are akin to trial balloons. On occasion, they'll reveal valuable facts which may lead to know some truths. But on all occasions they are merely thinkers outside of the inspired priesthood structure. And as such, they're about as valuable as your local gospel doctrine instructor.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Bob Crockett

[Rob Bowman]

Bob,

The idea expressed in Luke 10:7 is based on the Old Testament, of course, but Paul uses the exact words found in Luke 10:7, which are not found anywhere in the Old Testament. There simply is no good reason to dispute that Paul is quoting Luke as Scripture.

Also, you're moving the goal posts. You has earlier claimed that Paul never quoted the Gospels. I gave you an example, and now you are complaining that he didn't quote them more, even though I also explained the chronological reason why (which you ignored).

Paul actually says quite a bit more about Jesus and shows more awareness of Jesus' teachings than you realize or are acknowledging. He knew the following about Jesus:

• Jesus was a Jewish descendant of David (Rom. 1:3) and perhaps that Jesus was born of a virgin (Gal. 4:4).
  
• Jesus was a poor man (2 Cor. 8:9).
  
• Jesus’ earthly life and example to his followers was one of humility and service, and Paul sought to imitate Jesus’ example (e.g. Phil. 2:1-5).
  
• Jesus was unmarried (implicit in 1 Cor. 9:5).
  
• Jesus had followers, including Peter (Cephas) and John, and brothers, including one named James (1 Cor. 9:5; 15:5, 7; Gal. 1:18-19). The fact that Paul calls Peter Cephas (Aramaic for Peter) demonstrates first-hand knowledge of Peter.
  
• Jesus’ use of the Aramaic term Abba (Father) for God (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6)
  
• Jesus’ summing up the entire Mosaic Law in the command to love one’s neighbor (Rom. 13:8-10)
  
• Jesus had been betrayed by one of his followers (1 Cor. 11:23).
  
• On the night Jesus was betrayed, he had instituted the rite of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:23-26)
  
• There is some evidence that Paul knew the Lord’s Supper was at a Passover meal (1 Cor. 5:7).
  
• Jesus had died by crucifixion (1 Cor. 1:13-18, 23; 2:2, 8; 2 Cor. 13:4; Gal. 2:20; 3:1; 5:11; 6:12, 14; Phil. 2:8; 3:18).
  
• The Jewish authorities were in some way responsible for Jesus’ execution (1 Thess. 2:14-15).
  
• Jesus had been buried (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
  
• Jesus had risen from the dead on the third day (1 Cor. 15:5).
  
• Jesus had appeared to Peter as well as to the other apostles and to other people as well (1 Cor. 15:5-7).
  

Given that Paul's epistles were largely occasional writings produced to address theological and pastoral issues, not to provide a narrative of the life of Jesus, this is a surprisingly substantial list of things that Paul says about Jesus that we know about in narrative form in the Gospels.

[why me]

Thanks for asking. You may realize that to present the evidence and address all of the factual controversies, objections, counter-objections, etc., would take several volumes. I answer your question fully aware of this limitation and also fully expecting that some will take deep offense at what I say.

I am still trying to understand how he wrote it with his head in his hat. That was quite an achievement. Also, why write a book that would have been destined to fail, complete with a promise from god that if prayed about, the holy ghost would testify that it was true? That really took cajoles. Also, we need a manuscript...that would be important. And I don't think that JS could have taken care of well over a thousand pages of loose paper without being spotted. What we have if JS wrote it is a young man with a vision to form a new faith based on a book who took extraordinary measures to keep everything secret. When in actual fact, he could have just started a church and sought converts without a new book that would bring untold persecution on him. He must have been rather stupid.

[why me]

The book of mormon is certainly an enigma. The witnesses to the book are a case in point. Now I can understand one witness going with it until the end, but all 12 witnesses, if we include the Whitmer's mother. That is quite unbelieveable. There are so many holes in the story that it was destined to fail if it were a fraud. Someone would have come clean especially after all the suffering that the believers experienced. All 12 witnesses, plus emma would need to be psychopaths. And Joseph would need to be a sociopath.

Edited February 22, 2012 by why me

[Bernard Gui]

There's nothing in the Book of Mormon about relations between Christianity and other world religions;

If you mean apostate Christianity, the Book of Mormon predicts the apostasy and the Restoration, the changing relationship between Jews and Christians, the blindness of modern Christianity, the restoration of the true gospel to the Lehites, Gentiles and Jews, the increasing influence of Restored Christianity throughout the world, the prediction that other books are yet to come forth to set the religious world aright, and the future return of the Christ who will unite all religions in one.

nothing about contraception, birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and other hot-button ethical issues;

The Book of Mormon teaches chastity is a most prized possession and is pleasing to God, the lethal effects of pride, the evils of class distinctions and unbridled prosperity, ethical treatment of the poor and their obligations to society, the dangers of secret groups that seek power through crime and murder, the abomination of adultery and extra-marital sexual relations, the corruption of prostitution, the critical importance of the nuclear family, the absolute sanctity of life, the duties of the father in the family and in the church, the responsibilities of children with regard to their parents, the nobility and power of motherhood, and the absolute respect God demands men have for women and children.

no emancipatory insights into race relations (quite the opposite, the Book of Mormon is stuck morally in the early nineteenth century on this issue);

The only cultures that practice slavery in the Book of Mormon are apostate and corrupt. Those who are true followers of the Christ declare the freedom of all people and even go to war to protect it. The BoM declares that all that come to Jesus, regardless of their color (black or white, bond or free, male and female) are accepted by God, and all are alike to God.

It misses the hot issues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It seems to have been written specifically and only for Protestants in early nineteenth-century America!

No, not really.

Bernard

Edited February 22, 2012 by Bernard Gui

[Fly Fisherman]

His claim that the pages were stolen and altered by people waiting for him to re-translate the same material so they could produce the altered manuscript to make him out to be a fraud was almost certainly false: it's been over 180 years and the pages have never turned up (among other problems with that claim).

Neither has the pages of manuscript of the fraud Book of Mormon been found after 180 years. Neither has a "smoking gun" about how the fraud was done (and by whom) after 180 years.

A genuine prophet would have been able to produce replacement pages without any trouble and would not have worried about what his enemies might do.

So would a genuine fraud have been able to produce replacement pages without any trouble. If it was a fraud, reproducing the lost 116 pages would have been the logical thing to do. Again, there must have been a pre-dictation manuscript that could have been used to reproduce the 116 pages. And, if it were a fraud, then the enemies altering the words was not a concern. For a fraud, reproducing the 116 pages seems like an easy task compared to dictating the 500+ additional pages, with all its complexity, etc.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Fly Fisherman

[Bernard Gui]

It's 1 Timothy 5:18, and it has two quotations, one that is in the OT and one that is in Luke 10:7.

"For the Scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,' and, 'The laborer deserves his wages'" (1 Timothy 5:18).

"You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain" (Deut. 25:4).

"And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages" (Luke 10:7).

Did Paul write 1 Timothy?

When did he write it?

Was it written before or after Luke was written?

Why would he call Luke scripture?

Is it not possible his phrase about the laborer is simply coincidental, or that he and Jesus are quoting an OT era scripture that has been lost?

Bernard

Edited February 22, 2012 by Bernard Gui

[Rob Bowman]

Fly Fisherman,

You wrote:

Neither has the pages of manuscript of the fraud Book of Mormon been found after 180 years. Neither has a "smoking gun" about how the fraud was done (and by whom) after 180 years....

So would a genuine fraud have been able to produce replacement pages without any trouble. If it was a fraud, reproducing the lost 116 pages would have been the logical thing to do. Again, there must have been a pre-dictation manuscript that could have been used to reproduce the 116 pages. And, if it were a fraud, then the enemies altering the words was not a concern. For a fraud, reproducing the 116 pages seems like an easy task compared to dictating the 500+ additional pages, with all its complexity, etc.

Your argument presupposes that Joseph must have had "a pre-dictation manuscript." I don't see why he must have had such a thing. There clearly was only one manuscript, the 116 pages that Martin took home and lost. Joseph evidently dictated the manuscript to his scribes off the top of his head. That's why he could not simply re-dictate a "translation" of the same material allegedly on the gold plates.

[Jaybear]

The book of mormon is certainly an enigma. The witnesses to the book are a case in point. Now I can understand one witness going with it until the end, but all 12 witnesses, if we include the Whitmer's mother. That is quite unbelieveable. There are so many holes in the story that it was destined to fail if it were a fraud. Someone would have come clean especially after all the suffering that the believers experienced. All 12 witnesses, plus emma would need to be psychopaths. And Joseph would need to be a sociopath.

You are trying so hard to be impressed that you lose credibility. How many people, for instance, claimed to have seen or even handled the Kinderhook plates. If more than 12, are we supposed to believe the Kinderhook plates were genuine? Does the claim that they were genuine artifacts become more credible or less, if they had disappeared on the pretext that an angel took them back to heaven?

What you seemingly fail to appreciate is that the only reason the witnesses are even relevant to the discussion, is because Smith was not willing to produce the plates to the world for inspection, first on the pretext that one had to be worthy to see the plates, and then on the pretext that an angel took them back to heaven.

So come on, do you really expect the world to accept the existence of the scripted witness testimony, warts and all, as full compensation for the fact that the plates are not available for public inspection?

I get it. The witness testimony is all you got, so you have real option but to put the lipstick on the pig, and pretend its the belle of the ball.

[Rob Bowman]

Bernard,

You wrote:

Did Paul write 1 Timothy?

Yes, in the sense that he was the primary author of the epistle. However, he had someone else do the actual writing (putting pen to paper), as he did with all of his other epistles.

When did he write it?

Probably about AD 64-65.

Was it written before or after Luke was written?

Evidently after the Gospel of Luke was written, since he quotes it. Furthermore, for reasons that have nothing to do with the quotation from Luke 10:7, it is most likely that Luke was written about AD 60-61. Here's why: the Gospel of Luke was Luke's first book, and the Book of Acts was the second (see Acts 1:1). The Book of Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome with his disposition in question. Paul had appealed to Caesar and was taken to Rome to have his case heard there. The book ends with Paul waiting to have his case heard. This makes it highly likely that Acts was written while Paul was still waiting, which would date Acts to about AD 61-62. Since the Gospel of Luke was written first, this means it was written about AD 60-61.

As you can see, this fits nicely with Paul, writing in AD 64-65, quoting Luke 10:7, which had been written just a few years earlier.

Why would he call Luke scripture?

Why not? It was, you know.

Is it not possible his phrase about the laborer is simply coincidental, or that he and Jesus are quoting an OT era scripture that has been lost?

We can rule out the first suggestion because Paul says he is quoting Scripture. The second suggestion is ad hoc when we have a book of Scripture available to Paul -- written by a close associate of his! -- with a statement that exactly matches his quotation.

[Buckeye]

...

Whoever wrote the Book of Mormon was familiar with the King James Version. We know this because the Book of Mormon quotes reams of Isaiah and other parts of the Bible, usually closely matching the KJV (even repeating its unusual and in some cases incorrect translations of specific passages). In many, many places it alludes to the KJV of the New Testament, i.e., it contains statements like the ones I quoted from Alma 5 that clearly show knowledge of such verses as Matthew 3:10 in the KJV. This evidence is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the Book of Mormon was written between 1611 and 1829, and of course no one thinks it was written in the 1600s or 1700s.

...

Hi Rob,

As you point out, these issues are much too extensive to adequately address in an online forum. But I do want to go on record as saying that at least one active church member (me) believes the BOM first came into existence in the english language during either the 17th or 18th century. Of course, I have no way of knowing the exact date, but I believe the evidence strongly points to an english translation existing sometime prior to Joseph's dictation. Joseph's work was dictation, not translation. The translation was done by other men of God sometime before Joseph's work.

As you point out, the english translation borrowed extensively from the KJV. It may also reflect cultural biases from the time. That doesn't bother me too much, as I have a pretty high tolerance for error when any men get involved in God's work (which is almost always). The whole purpose of the BOM is to teach 19th century (and later) peoples about Christ, not to provide a history lesson.

While we may draw different conclusions from the evidence, I do appreciate your dedication and attention to these issues. I mean that honestly. It takes opposition to flesh out the truth.

[Buzzard]

Fly Fisherman,

You wrote:

Your argument presupposes that Joseph must have had "a pre-dictation manuscript." I don't see why he must have had such a thing. There clearly was only one manuscript, the 116 pages that Martin took home and lost. Joseph evidently dictated the manuscript to his scribes off the top of his head. That's why he could not simply re-dictate a "translation" of the same material allegedly on the gold plates.

"Off the top of his head". For one as well read as you, that is a manifestly ignorant statement. Whatever the BOM is or is not, it is not an extemporaneous work created on the fly. Internally consistient, switching back and forth from a historical narrative to deep religous doctrine, Hebraisms integrated seamlessly into the text, I could go on, but you should get the point. Joseph Smith was a very intelligent man, but Stephen Hawking could not have just pulled the BOM out of his brain day after day, with little break.

Also, it is gratifying to see that you acknowledge, based on the testimony of credible witnesses, the existence of the plates. That's a start. You may yet see the light.

[Nevo]

Joseph Smith was a very intelligent man, but Stephen Hawking could not have just pulled the BOM out of his brain day after day, with little break.

People have, in fact, dictated complicated works by "just pull[ing it] out of [their] brain day after day."

"Having gone totally blind in 1652, Milton wrote Paradise Lost entirely through dictation with the help of amanuenses and friends." (Wikipedia)

[Buckeye]

People have, in fact, dictated complicated works by "just pull[ing it] out of [their] brain day after day."

"Having gone totally blind in 1652, Milton wrote Paradise Lost entirely through dictation with the help of amanuenses and friends." (Wikipedia)

The devils is always in the details. In the case of the BOM, the details make it virtually impossible that Joseph simply dictated the entire text from his own mind. The story is way too complex and internally consistent. Joseph had far too little education or literary ability to attempt such a feat, especially considering that the BOM was his first publication and that he would never again attempt something so monumental.

The very evidence Rob and others trumpet undermines Rob's claim that Joseph dictated the text from memory. The BOM contains extensive copying from the KJV. These passages have some theologically significant alterations from the KJV, but the vast bulk of the passages are word for word copies. While Joseph had read the KJV Bible, he had not memorized it, and there is no historical evidence to suggest he had an abnorminally astute memory, much less a photgraphic memory. So how could he have spit out the Isaiah passages found in the BOM? He couldn't. Either the scribes were in on the gig, or God was. There's no middle ground.

All of this begs the question "why doesn't someone just repeat Joseph's fraud?" If a 23-year old kid with a sixth grade education could make this stuff up out of whole cloth, all the while tending to a new wife and farm labors, why couldn't the fraud be easily duplicated by one of the great writers of our day? It should be so easy to disprove. And yet ....... (crickets).

PS - please remember that Joseph's work was not simply dictation, it was a single line of dictation going on for hundreds of pages without going back to fix inconsistencies. I've never heard of Milton or anyone else attempting something so audacious. Comparing a dictation where you are allowed to review and revise the story (Milton) vs. a dication where you have to get it right the first time (Joseph; albeit allowing for spelling and grammer fixes) is more than an apples to oranges comparison - its more like an apples to Saturn comparison.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Buckeye

[stemelbow]

Thanks for the response, Rob. I wish my own apology for how some reacted to your response meant something.

stemelbow,

You wrote:

Thanks for asking. You may realize that to present the evidence and address all of the factual controversies, objections, counter-objections, etc., would take several volumes. I answer your question fully aware of this limitation and also fully expecting that some will take deep offense at what I say.

Of course. if ever you feel up to writing something that would take several volumes I might venture to read them.

First, looking at the matter from an evidential, historical perspective, the burden of proof is really on the claim that the Book of Mormon originated any earlier than the 1820s.

I get it. But that is not what we are addressing here. I hope to address your claim...not the LDS claim.

No one seems to have known anything about it prior to Joseph's first announcements to other people that he had been given access to the gold plates on which this book was supposedly written.

I mean no offense here, but I don't see how this can be seen as evidence for anything. No one knew about the Bom before JS "discovered" the plates? no surprising. that was his claim, afterall.

The gold plates are not extant and no manuscript copy of any identifiable portion of the Book of Mormon in its original language is extant, either. (The characters supposedly copied from the plates and shown to Anthon do not represent any sizable body of text, cannot be translated, cannot be identified with any part of the Book of Mormon, and in fact if they had been copied from the plates they would have come from the "Book of Lehi," not the Book of Mormon.)

I see. I appreciate this particular point for what it is. The only issue I have with it is the claim of the BoM itself and of Joseph is the plates are not extant (being taken to heaven seems to make that clear) and the language was unique to the people in the BoM. I don't see how this works as evidence in your favor either since this is the claims of Joseph and the text itself. With that said, to each his own. There is always reason to find skepticism in religious claims.

No one reported ever seeing the gold plates except Joseph and about a dozen of his supporters among his family and friends, and there are legitimate questions that can be asked about those testimonies (e.g., the witnesses saw the plates only under circumstances tightly controlled by Joseph himself). All of this is to say that from an outsider's perspective the evidential burden is on the Book of Mormon, not on those who claim it originated in the 1820s.

That's fine if that is your claim. But your claim is that the evidence shows that Joseph or someone close to him wrote the BoM. I would suggest the evidence seems pretty split on that notion, at least.

That having been said, there is plenty of evidence showing that the Book of Mormon in fact originated in the 1820s. The thread to which you refer discusses some of this evidence. Whoever wrote the Book of Mormon was familiar with the King James Version. We know this because the Book of Mormon quotes reams of Isaiah and other parts of the Bible, usually closely matching the KJV (even repeating its unusual and in some cases incorrect translations of specific passages). In many, many places it alludes to the KJV of the New Testament, i.e., it contains statements like the ones I quoted from Alma 5 that clearly show knowledge of such verses as Matthew 3:10 in the KJV. This evidence is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the Book of Mormon was written between 1611 and 1829, and of course no one thinks it was written in the 1600s or 1700s.

I don't get this piece too well. of course JS was familiar with the KJV. Indeed, in his mind that was the Bible. Thus, any parts that quotes from the NT could have been something that expressed the same notion as the NT and was thus presented to Joseph in those words, since the NT was scripture to him and those of his era. If God is involved as Joseph claimed, then quotations from the New Testament are in essence God quoting Himself, or His Son if that's how you want to see it. Isaiah can work the same. If Isaiah, from KJV, is what is considered scripture then the inspired translation brought out the KJV Isaiah, for the most part.

Then there is the evidence that I mentioned in the previous thread that much of the material in the Book of Mormon reflects Joseph Smith's immediate cultural context of the Second Great Awakening in early America and especially in upstate New York in the first decades of the 1800s.

I had mentioned and explained in that thread the evidence that the sermon in Alma 5 reflected both the English idiom and the style and genre of revivalist extemporaneous preaching by Methodists and other evangelical Protestants right at the time and place in which Joseph produced the Book of Mormon. As Grant Palmer shows in his book An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, an awful lot of the Book of Mormon exhibits this same revivalist context. There is a lot more evidence of differing kinds that points to the same conclusion about the Book of Mormon's early nineteenth-century cultural and religious context. The Book of Mormon addresses theological, pastoral, and practical concerns of Protestants in the early nineteenth century, such as questions about infant baptism, the age of accountability, the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit in modern times, and many other such questions.

That's a very interesting criticism, I'd say. In fact, I can particularly understand it, which is rare for me. How likely would be it that these themes are found in the BoM? The claim the book has put forth is that its written for our modern time. If that claim is true, then its a wonder that it addresses many of the things that were a concern for those of Joseph's era. There is that point to consider. With that, I accept this as a fairly weak piece of evidence supporting your claim.

The history of the "coming forth" of the Book of Mormon also provides some powerful evidence that it originated not only around the time of Joseph Smith but that it originated precisely in 1828-1829 when Joseph Smith dictated it. Probably the most crucial element of that history has to do with the lost 116 pages that Joseph Smith had to replace after they were lost, stolen, or destroyed while in Martin Harris's possession. An inspired prophet who knew the sorts of things that Joseph claimed to know, who had an angel leading him to the gold plates in the first place, would have been able to know what happened to those missing pages--but Joseph never did find out what happened to them. His claim that the pages were stolen and altered by people waiting for him to re-translate the same material so they could produce the altered manuscript to make him out to be a fraud was almost certainly false: it's been over 180 years and the pages have never turned up (among other problems with that claim). A genuine prophet would have been able to produce replacement pages without any trouble and would not have worried about what his enemies might do. Instead, after some anguish and passage of time during which he could contemplate how to solve the problem, Joseph came up with a most implausible and suspiciously convenient story about a second, partially parallel account having been produced in ancient times as a contingency because of God's foreknowledge of what would happen to the 116 pages. (Why God, armed with such foreknowledge, would not have warned Joseph of what would happen if Martin was allowed to take the pages home is just one of a thicket of questions that are troubling at this point.) That back-up account (1 Nephi through Omni) is noticeably skimpy on narrative, chronological data, personal names, etc., in comparison to the rest of the Book of Mormon, being filled largely with visions, prophecies, and extremely lengthy excerpts from Isaiah (again, largely matching the KJV word for word in most places). The sketchiness of the narrative in these books is most plausibly explained as a device to avoid inadvertently contradicting the narrative of the lost 116 pages.

I would agree with others in that this appears to be largely your own assumptions. for instance, how do you know that a prophet could easily reproduce them? How do you know a prophet would not worry about what an enemy might do? There are other such assumptions I'd say. I don't think this is really evidence in your favor.

These are just some of the main lines of evidence that I find difficult to square with any other explanation but that the Book of Mormon was produced by Joseph Smith (and/or a close associate of his) in the late 1820s. Both external evidence concerning the process by which the Book of Mormon came to be published and internal evidence of the Book of Mormon's contents and sources (especially the KJV Bible) point directly and solidly to this conclusion. I am aware of the attempts by LDS scholars and apologists to respond to these problems or to counter with evidences supposedly authenticating the Book of Mormon, but I don't find them persuasive. I don't view this issue from the perspective of an agnostic or skeptic who doesn't believe in miracles, angels, or revelations. I believe in all those things. I simply find the factual evidence against the Book of Mormon compelling. I realize that Mormons will argue that similar criticisms have been made of the Bible, but honestly I don't agree. You will notice that I have not appealed to a lack of archaeological confirmation of specific details in the Book of Mormon, or imperfections and inconsistencies within its pages. I have not argued that Book of Mormon passages cannot be authentic because they claim miracles took place or because they purport to contain prophetic revelations about the future. In short, in my assessment of the Book of Mormon I don't use the kinds of arguments that skeptics use against the Bible. My academic training is as a biblical scholar, so I am very much aware of those sorts of issues. The Book of Mormon is in an altogether different evidential situation than the Bible.

That's all quite fair. We're all provided with a "to each his own" on this stuff.

Thanks again.

[wenglund]

The biggest hole in Rob's theory, aside from using secular means to assess the spiritual, is that with the Book of Mormon we are talking about a 19th English translation. Since it is entirely appropriate and even expected that Joseph Smith, by means of revelation, would translate the religious concepts in the Book of Mormon using common English phrasing for that day, particularly phrasing from the English translation of the most revered religious text of the day (the Bible). As such, it is entirely insufficient to point to anachronistic words or phrasing as a test for historicity in support of his theory. Instead, the underlining concepts and structure of the phrasing must be demonstrated as anachronistic. Good luck with that.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Buzzard]

"Why God, armed with such foreknowledge, would not have warned Joseph of what would happen if Martin was allowed to take the pages home is just one of a thicket of questions that are troubling at this point.) That back-up account (1 Nephi through Omni) is noticeably skimpy on narrative, chronological data, personal names, etc., in comparison to the rest of the Book of Mormon, being filled largely with visions, prophecies, and extremely lengthy excerpts from Isaiah (again, largely matching the KJV word for word in most places). The sketchiness of the narrative in these books is most plausibly explained as a device to avoid inadvertently contradicting the narrative of the lost 116 pages."

You may be unaware of the fact that JS prayed twice for permission to give Harris the manuscript, and twice was told no. On the third attempt, he was told "Have it your way". You don't believe that the good Lord allows all of us, even those with prophetic callings to learn hard lessons by experience? And the first several chapters of 1 Nephi can hardly be described as "skimpy" on narrative, given that modern day researchers have traced the probable route of Lehi's flight from Jerusalem from said narrative. While you say you do not come at the subject with a prejudice against miracles, etc..., you do come with one overriding prejudice: The Book of Mormon could not possibly be what it claims to be, so let's go looking for evidence to back up that assumption. I admit my bias is to the opposite. But it is not fair to present yourself as the soul of objectivity in this matter.

[Nevo]

The devils is always in the details. In the case of the BOM, the details make it virtually impossible that Joseph simply dictated the entire text from his own mind. The story is way too complex and internally consistent. Joseph had far too little education or literary ability to attempt such a feat, especially considering that the BOM was his first publication and that he would never again attempt something so monumental.

I think these are valid points. How could Joseph Smith possibly have dictated such a long, complex, and yet internally consistent, narrative. It does give one pause. The Book of Mormon isn't great literature, in my view, but it is enormously ambitious in scope. Spanning centuries, continents, and genres, it presents itself as nothing less than a new scripture, akin to the Bible. It's hard to imagine anyone conceiving, much less executing, such an audacious project. But as subsequent events showed, Joseph Smith was no ordinary 23-year-old farm hand. The big question, of course, is whether God's hand was in any of this or not. (I think it was.)

While Joseph had read the KJV Bible, he had not memorized it, and there is no historical evidence to suggest he had an abnorminally astute memory, much less a photgraphic memory. So how could he have spit out the Isaiah passages found in the BOM? He couldn't. Either the scribes were in on the gig, or God was. There's no middle ground.

I think he and/or his scribes probably worked directly from a KJV Bible for those chapters. However, I am convinced that the hundreds (thousands?) of shorter KJV quotations and allusions interspersed throughout the Book of Mormon did come from Joseph Smith's memory.

[wenglund]

As best I can tell, here essentially is Rob's secular methodology for determining the origins of sacred text (see HERE):

1) If the idioms and other speech forms of a given text all fit easily and obviously in the time frame of the earliest extant translation, then one may reasonably presume that the origins of the given text are the time of the earliest extant translations.

2) If the earliest extant translation of a given text contains similar phrasing, or seem to quote, another text available to the translator at the time of the earliest extant translation of the given text, then one may reasonably presume that the origins of the given text are at the time of the earliest extant translations.

3) If the genre or message of a given text is very much like what religious activists used at the time of the earliest extant translation, then one may reasonably presume that the origins of the given text are at the time of the earliest extant translations.

When Rob speaks of "text," he isn't necessarily referring to entire books or canon of scripture. He can, as in this case, be referring to a relatively short passage of scripture (several verses).

With this in mind, it would be interesting to see how various passages of the Bible may fare under his secular methodology. Bob Crockett already has a jump on this.

However, since this thread is specific to the Book of Mormon and not the Bible, I will take this discussion to another thread (see HERE.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited February 22, 2012 by wenglund

[why me]

People have, in fact, dictated complicated works by "just pull[ing it] out of [their] brain day after day."

"Having gone totally blind in 1652, Milton wrote Paradise Lost entirely through dictation with the help of amanuenses and friends." (Wikipedia)

Can you please tell us what kind of help these friends gave to Milton. My guess is these friends helped him by restating what he dictated, telling him where he left off, and by writing it down complete with revisions. I dont see that kind of help for Joseph.