Michael Coe Interview On Mormonstories

[robuchan]

and the reason for that is because the theology which confused the sects of Smith's day is clearly not analogous to the post-exilic edit that we have in the Old Testament and is instead "anachronistically" Christian -- yet "Christian" in a way which preserves the Tree of Life/Wisdom tradition (Nephi, Alma, etc.), the Council in Heaven (Alma, Ether, etc.), and an embodied plurality of Gods (Ether, etc.).

I see nothing doctrinally in the BOM that would have been confusing to 19th century Christians. Is there evidence that this tree of life/Asherah/Council in heaven/plurality of Gods/temple ritual stuff you see means anything to anyone outside of a small group of LDS apologists with Old Testament knowledge and an overactive imagination?

[robuchan]

I see nothing doctrinally in the BOM that would have been confusing to 19th century Christians. Is there evidence that this tree of life/Asherah/Council in heaven/plurality of Gods/temple ritual stuff you see means anything to anyone outside of a small group of LDS apologists with Old Testament knowledge and an overactive imagination?

Also, Brant, correct me if I'm wrong, but you would reject any of these kinds of parallels, right? You would attribute all this to Joseph's creation. Or do I misunderstand your position?

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

I think the Nibley essay I linked shows quite clearly that the religious world of Joseph's time was very confused and inconsistent in their labeling of the book, going so far as to claim that the book was arguing in favor of completely incompatible and mutually-exclusive theologies. It was like a game of hot-potato.

Edited July 5, 2012 by JeremyOrbe-Smith

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Not to speak for Gardner, but I think you indeed misunderstand his position: Monotheism, Messiah, and Mormon's Book.

[robuchan]

I think the Nibley essay I linked shows quite clearly that the religious world of Joseph's time was very confused and inconsistent in their labeling of the book, going so far as to claim that the book was arguing in favor of completely incompatible and mutually-exclusive theologies. It was like a game of hot-potato.

OK, you're right that Nibley's article does attempt to show there was confusion with respect to BOM doctrine. But Nibley's primary goal in this piece was to attack the criticism that the BOM is a ripoff of Campbellite Christianity. I don't think he does that good of a job. Nibley's the one intentionally confusing things as he includes reviews of Nauvoo Mormonism (after Joseph veered off from the basic Christian doctrine of the BOM) or includes reviews from people that obviously didn't even read the BOM.

[robuchan]

Not to speak for Gardner, but I think you indeed misunderstand his position: Monotheism, Messiah, and Mormon's Book.

OK, I totally misunderstand Brant, I guess. I'm at a complete loss at what he attributes to be ancient and what he attributes to be Joseph's recontextualizing or rephrasing of the ancient text.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Haven't we been over this before? "Nauvoo Mormonism" isn't incompatible with "basic Christian doctrine" or that of the Book of Mormon. If anything, it is "Nauvoo" theology which finally catches up to the Book of Mormon. I also completely disagree with your characterization of Nibley's essay; I don't think he's focusing particularly on refuting a connection solely with Campbellite ideas at all, I think he's showing the entire range of opinions on the book. Your original contention was that there was "nothing doctrinally in the BOM that would have been confusing to 19th century Christians" and yet the evidence is that they clearly were confused, or they would not have applied so very many inconsistent labels to it.

[robuchan]

Haven't we been over this before? "Nauvoo Mormonism" isn't incompatible with "basic Christian doctrine" or that of the Book of Mormon. If anything, it is "Nauvoo" theology which finally catches up to the Book of Mormon. I also completely disagree with your characterization of Nibley's essay; I don't think he's focusing particularly on refuting a connection solely with Campbellite ideas at all, I think he's showing the entire range of opinions on the book. Your original contention was that there was "nothing doctrinally in the BOM that would have been confusing to 19th century Christians" and yet the evidence is that they clearly were confused, or they would not have applied so very many inconsistent labels to it.

The reviews on the Book of Mormon in that article include references to "Old School Presbyterianism", Calvinism, Universalism, Cambell, Millerism, Methodism, Catholicism, Arminian. None of these doctrines include polytheism, Mother in Heaven, etc, that you're seeing in the Book of Mormon. The differences in these religions can be very subtle at times. They are all Biblical and all Christian. The most common reading of BOM is that it contains nothing outside basic Trinitarian Christianity. No confusion at all with Asherah or the Council of the Gods.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

You said that "Nibley's primary goal in this piece was to attack the criticism that the BOM is a ripoff of Campbellite Christianity." I was responding to that assertion by saying that such doesn't seem to be his primary goal at all. The issue of polytheism/Mother in Heaven etc is separate; regardless of what the "most common reading" of the Book of Mormon is (and noting that Nibley's article alone shows that a "common" reading has hardly been in evidence since the day it was published), the text is what we should be concerned about. And from what I can see, that text does show the markers of pre-exilic religion. But we've been there before, too.

[Cobalt-70]

I don't think you've been reading closely enough. During his time the hints were obscure. One hundred and fifty years later, they've been consolidated.

They are still obscure, except among a few apologetic researchers who have poured large amounts of time and money to elaborate their confirmation biases. And even then, their obscure confirmation bias "hits" have never outweighed the blatantly obvious anachronisms and simple errors that apologists work so hard to build plausible deniability around.

[Cobalt-70]

This part of your sentence is certainly incorrect in my case. I have tried very hard to remove those simple correspondences from any discussion of how the Book of Mormon fits into Mesoamerica. The time periods overlap and the regions overlap, so there are legitimate reasons to use what is known of those peoples (in general) as the cultural background that might inform the Book of Mormon--but that does not mean that I see them as equivalent. I don't even see "Olmec" as equivalent with the various peoples that are covered by that generic (and modern) label.

This is the part of the problem with people who claim there are Book of Mormon correspondences with real archaeology. They never commit to anything. They speak in generalities because that's all they can ever do, and that's all they will ever be able to do. If there really were Nephites and Lamanites in Mesoamerica, and we can rely on the Book of Mormon to tell us anything about them, then you should be able, by now, to identify them with a real culture, at the very least, and probably a political structure. If you can't do that, then you haven't made any contribution at all. It's like providing evidence that is "consistent with" the idea that there were fairies somewhere in Europe.

[cdowis]

Cobolt-70

I think you are unfamiliar with the nature of archeology, especially in an area where there are virtually no extant records. We are very limited on the understanding of religion, politics, etc where there are only physical artifacts.

It is well known that mesoamerica and the mayans were not one unified culture, but an amalgamation of many different cultures. To have a fine tuned understanding of each of those cultures is very difficult if not impossible.

Do your homework.

Edited July 6, 2012 by cdowis

[Cobalt-70]

The odd thing is, I think the structural parallels to the ancient context are more compelling than the linguistic veneer of the 19th century; as Nibley showed long ago, people have found everything from Methodism and Catholicism to Atheism in the book, and the reason for that is because the theology which confused the sects of Smith's day is clearly not analogous to the post-exilic edit that we have in the Old Testament and is instead "anachronistically" Christian -- yet "Christian" in a way which preserves the Tree of Life/Wisdom tradition (Nephi, Alma, etc.), the Council in Heaven (Alma, Ether, etc.), and an embodied plurality of Gods (Ether, etc.).

The Book of Mormon was religiously eclectic. Doctrinally, the vast majority of it was Arminian, but it had small amounts of Campbellism, some aspects of Universalism, Calvinism, and Congregationalism. It picked and chose among the smorgasbord of 19th century theological ideas. The "tree of life" idea came from his father's dream, not from ancient Hebrew polytheists. The Book of Mormon is thoroughly monotheistic, and if you think that there are passages in Alma or Ether that say otherwise, and are not simply examples of Smith using familiar KJV biblical terminology, then let's discuss what you think those passages are.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Cobalt-70

[Cobalt-70]

Cobolt-70

I think you are unfamiliar with the nature of archeology, especially in an area where there are virtually no extant records. We are very limited on the understanding of religion, politics, etc where there are only physical artifacts.

It is well known that mesoamerica and the mayans were not one unified culture, but an amalgamation of many different cultures. To have a fine tuned understanding of each of those cultures is very difficult if not impossible.

Yes, but the Nephites were supposedly a single culture that survived as a distinct entity from 600 BC to 400 AD. If they are one of the "Mayan cultures," as you describe them, then which one? You have the dates, you think you have the location, and you know the Nephites built temples, cities, and fortifications, wore armor, used swords, used metal, and practiced Christianity, and that the Lamanites were naked except for loincloths and shaved their heads, lived in tents, and constantly were at war with the Nephites. That sounds like a lot of information for any archaeologist to at least rule out some Mayans as being Nephites or Lamanites. And don't tell me that all the distinctive evidence of the existence of Nephites has conveniently disappeared because of jungle conditions, leaving behind only the ambiguous evidence.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Cobalt-70

[Brant Gardner]

This is the part of the problem with people who claim there are Book of Mormon correspondences with real archaeology. They never commit to anything.

You are clearly not acquainted with what I have written on the topic.

They speak in generalities because that's all they can ever do, and that's all they will ever be able to do. If there really were Nephites and Lamanites in Mesoamerica, and we can rely on the Book of Mormon to tell us anything about them, then you should be able, by now, to identify them with a real culture, at the very least, and probably a political structure.

But we have, and reading the Book of Mormon against that culture area elucidates the text in ways that not having that context cannot do. In particular, the political structures of the Book of Mormon rather directly reflect available Mesoamerican models.

It appears that you have a lot of reading left to do. In the very same way that understanding the politics and culture in Jerusalem during Christ's life elucidates the New Testament, the appropriate locations (and times) of the cultural background for the Book of Mormon show what was happening that led to the events and opinions in the text.

If you have missed that kind of specificity and correlation, then I suggest that you still have a lot of reading left to do. Your assertions about the state of LDS scholarship on the Book of Mormon do not match what is actually going on.

[Brant Gardner]

The "tree of life" idea came from his father's dream, not from ancient Hebrew polytheists.

One could certainly argue that. However, given that the only account we have is from about 50 years after the publication of the Book of Mormon, it is equally possible that much of the Book of Mormon depiction fed the recollection of the dream so that similarities might be due to the Book of Mormon rather than Joseph Sr's dream. There are other indications that Lucy was influenced by the communal discussions resulting from the creation of the new religion/society.

It also happens that the best explanation for he way the tree of life dream appears in the text comes from antiquity rather than a modern dream. I have examined that elsewhere, but since this appears to be a place for simple statements, I'll leave it at that.

[Cobalt-70]

But we have, and reading the Book of Mormon against that culture area elucidates the text in ways that not having that context cannot do. In particular, the political structures of the Book of Mormon rather directly reflect available Mesoamerican models.

It appears that you have a lot of reading left to do. In the very same way that understanding the politics and culture in Jerusalem during Christ's life elucidates the New Testament, the appropriate locations (and times) of the cultural background for the Book of Mormon show what was happening that led to the events and opinions in the text.

If you have missed that kind of specificity and correlation, then I suggest that you still have a lot of reading left to do. Your assertions about the state of LDS scholarship on the Book of Mormon do not match what is actually going on.

Okay, so maybe I'm not aware of how far apologists have been willing to go out on a limb recently. So lets have the list: which Mesoamerican cities are Nephite cities, and which Mayan dynasties are Nephite kings?

[Brant Gardner]

Yes, but the Nephites were supposedly a single culture that survived as a distinct entity from 600 BC to 400 AD. If they are one of the "Mayan cultures," as you describe them, then which one?

You ask this as if it has never been discussed or that there is no response. Don't you think that it would be better to be informed before you ask questions that indicate that you aren't current with the literature (or with the Book of Mormon).

The Book of Mormon indicates that there was a period of 400 years in which events took place in a region that is identified with early Preclassic Maya territory. After that, there is a movement of the recorded body of people (after indications of cultural infusions that no longer allowed the unique Nephite belief system in that area) to another location. That movement corresponds in both time and location to where there is another language group moving up the Grijalva river valley from a region where the Book of Mormon suggests that the people of Zarahemla would have come from. There is a very important and specific correlation of both time and location with the description of these events in the Book of Mormon.

At the very least, your suggestion that we pick "one" Maya culture misunderstands Book of Mormon history and certainly misrepresents LDS scholarship.

And don't tell me that all the distinctive evidence of the existence of Nephites has conveniently disappeared because of jungle conditions, leaving behind only the ambiguous evidence.

You could be very helpful to the cause here if you would please indicate what material remains the Nephites would have left that would identify them separately from any other culture in that region. You may reference the material remains in Israel and indicate how we might distinguish the temple of Solomon from a Canaanite temple, or lhe second temple from general regional temple styles. I would be interested in your analysis of how the Israelites are distinguished from the Canaanites when they appear to have retained pretty much the same material culture.

If you could speak to those issues, it would really help this discussion. (By the way, I don't think that much Book of Mormon history, if any, occurred in jungle locations.)

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Edit: Alternatively, one could just read Gardner, who clearly types faster than I do, thus rendering much of my addition to the conversation moot.

The Book of Mormon was religiously eclectic. Doctrinally, the vast majority of it was Arminian, but it had small amounts of Campbellism, some aspects of Universalism, Calvinism, and Congregationalism. It picked and chose among the smorgasbord of 19th century theological ideas.

It was translated into the theological terminology extant in Joseph's time and place. It was translated into English, and is therefore not Reformed Egyptian. Since the underlying ideas and structures had to be transformed into something that people of Joseph's day could understand, that meant that he had to find conceptual equivalents in the 19th century idiom. Since no one sect contained a doctrine exactly equivalent to that of the Book of Mormon, of course Smith had to range over the smorgasbord of all the creeds of his day, all of which had "some truth."

In order to express the underlying structure, Smith had to pick and choose between the language he had available. There's simply no way around that; he was a specific man writing in a specific place and time, for a specific audience. There were only a finite number of options available to him in his culture; if he was supposed to somehow transcend the culture, no one within the culture would have understood him.

It's a bit like saying that because the text says "Adieu" instead of פרידה that it must be false because the Nephites obviously didn't speak French. Or that the Bible contains anachronisms because the word "God" is actually the Old English version of the Proto-Indo-European word ghut, for That Which Is Invoked, when we all know that God's title is obviously the Northwest Semitic word El.

In Joseph's time and place, the concept had to be conveyed through the use of whatever language would be most clear. The Book of Mormon is the "most" correct book, not the "infallible" book. Most of the "anachronisms" critics dig up are issues of translation, in which the conceptual translation itself introduces the anachronism. (witness the KJV translating a non-anachronism [lamps] into an item which did not exist in the time and place asserted in the scripture [candles], but which conveyed the idea [something that gave off light] to what was then the modern audience.)

I realize you're coming from a paradigm where Joseph actually wrote the book and it contains no actual history; I'm sympathetic to that view, since I think a lot of the Creation story and various parables which really are inspired are, in fact, strictly symbolic or allegorical in nature. Nevertheless, I think there is a core of historicity in the Book of Mormon. The evidence is the same either way; only the paradigm shifts.

The "tree of life" idea came from his father's dream, not from ancient Hebrew polytheists.

Alas, there is simply no way you can possibly demonstrate that; even an appeal to "probability" depends on the assumptions of what is or is not probable. If anything, the reverse is true, and the Book of Mormon influenced Lucy's recollection of her husband's dream, altering the linguistic formulation so it seemed more "prophetic." (This is not a lie, this is a vagary of memory.) There have been uncountable numbers of people who have had similar dreams. The only difference is the cultural trappings, and in that department, Lehi's dream is clearly from 600 BC, regardless of whether or not Smith was borrowing the language from the KJV.

(This is where the never-ending quest for "influences" gets pretty silly; even if Joseph was merely producing a remix of Bible Themes, those themes would, of course, be a record of ancient times, and therefore whether one was looking at the Book of Mormon or the KJV version, one still hasn't proven the "truth" or "falsity" of either one. If the original was "true", then writing it down and printing it in another book would not change that truth.)

The Book of Mormon is thoroughly monotheistic, and if you think that there are passages in Alma or Ether that say otherwise, and are not simply examples of Smith using familiar KJV biblical terminology, then let's discuss what you think those passages are.

The KJV itself isn't monotheistic. The interpretation overlaid on it by monotheists is, of course, bent to support their point of view. But even if Joseph were simply copying the "familiar KJV biblical terminology" of, say, the title of the Most High God, the Most High God in the KJV is itself a specific title used to translate the concept of Ēl ʿElyōn from the original texts which definitely implied that there were other Gods who were Not The Most High. (It's not much of a title if the Other Gods were considered to be mere figures of speech. "O Real God! You are King Over All Flying Spaghetti Monsters!")

I've provided links in this thread to pages discussing the pre-exilic Wisdom tradition that I find so prevalent in the Book of Mormon. Yes, one can dismiss the Tree of Life dream as merely an autobiographical detail swiped from Joseph's father. There's absolutely no way one can "prove" that, tho; it's an interpretation of the evidence. I can't "prove" my view either; I can show that it lines up with what is believed to be the contemporaneous cultural details of a specific time, in ways which transcend culture-bound translational issues. And the underlying structure of the book seems to me that preexilic religion is favored over the particular point of view expressed in the editing of the Hebrew Bible.

As for my off-the-cuff examples, I was thinking of the Parable of the Seed in Alma 31 & 32, in which Alma prays for Wisdom, is filled with the Holy Spirit, and immediately launches into a discourse about planting the seed of what can very well be interpreted as a Tree of Life/Menorah testifying of the Anointed One, the Christ, and then listening to the Messengers who imparteth God's word unto men, yea, not only men but women also.

If we're not privileging monotheistic assumptions -- if Lady Wisdom and the Son who is the Anointed One are not mere Hypostases in the One Ousia of the Ontologically Unique Unmoved Mover God -- then right there we have at least two embodied Gods and a Goddess, and monotheism goes out the window. That it's possible to interpret the many, many passages like this in the book in such a way that they are understood allegorically does not change the fact that if one is not attempting to preserve the Unique Ethical Monotheistic Nature Of Israelite Religion Which Has Been Thus And So Since The Very Beginning, then it's perfectly consistent with the preexilic polytheism -- and for that matter, with Christ's admonition to His followers that they be One as He and the Father are one; ie, in intent.

Ether records a God who explicitly says that the body of His spirit is clothed in flesh and blood, and who will redeem all men from the Fall. (One must exist before the Fall -- before the foundation of the world, in a Divine Council in which one is called and prepared with others according to the foreknowledge of God -- in order to make that trip.) This anthropomorphism is pretty blatant in both testaments of the KJV as well, but since it is so very, very common to interpret that particular translation within the context of a culture so very, very rooted in the philosophy which refuses to consider a limited being, a mere man, a mere animal as a God, I find the Embodied God to be a little more striking in the Book of Mormon.

Edited July 6, 2012 by JeremyOrbe-Smith

[robuchan]

Edit: Alternatively, one could just read Gardner, who clearly types faster than I do, thus rendering much of my addition to the conversation moot.

It was translated into the theological terminology extant in Joseph's time and place. It was translated into English, and is therefore not Reformed Egyptian. Since the underlying ideas and structures had to be transformed into something that people of Joseph's day could understand, that meant that he had to find conceptual equivalents in the 19th century idiom. Since no one sect contained a doctrine exactly equivalent to that of the Book of Mormon, of course Smith had to range over the smorgasbord of all the creeds of his day, all of which had "some truth."

In order to express the underlying structure, Smith had to pick and choose between the language he had available. There's simply no way around that; he was a specific man writing in a specific place and time, for a specific audience. There were only a finite number of options available to him in his culture; if he was supposed to somehow transcend the culture, no one within the culture would have understood him.

It's a bit like saying that because the text says "Adieu" instead of פרידה that it must be false because the Nephites obviously didn't speak French. Or that the Bible contains anachronisms because the word "God" is actually the Old English version of the Proto-Indo-European word ghut, for That Which Is Invoked, when we all know that God's title is obviously the Northwest Semitic word El.

In Joseph's time and place, the concept had to be conveyed through the use of whatever language would be most clear. The Book of Mormon is the "most" correct book, not the "infallible" book. Most of the "anachronisms" critics dig up are issues of translation, in which the conceptual translation itself introduces the anachronism. (witness the KJV translating a non-anachronism [lamps] into an item which did not exist in the time and place asserted in the scripture [candles], but which conveyed the idea [something that gave off light] to what was then the modern audience.)

I realize you're coming from a paradigm where Joseph actually wrote the book and it contains no actual history; I'm sympathetic to that view, since I think a lot of the Creation story and various parables which really are inspired are, in fact, strictly symbolic or allegorical in nature. Nevertheless, I think there is a core of historicity in the Book of Mormon. The evidence is the same either way; only the paradigm shifts.

Alas, there is simply no way you can possibly demonstrate that; even an appeal to "probability" depends on the assumptions of what is or is not probable. If anything, the reverse is true, and the Book of Mormon influenced Lucy's recollection of her husband's dream, altering the linguistic formulation so it seemed more "prophetic." (This is not a lie, this is a vagary of memory.) There have been uncountable numbers of people who have had similar dreams. The only difference is the cultural trappings, and in that department, Lehi's dream is clearly from 600 BC, regardless of whether or not Smith was borrowing the language from the KJV.

(This is where the never-ending quest for "influences" gets pretty silly; even if Joseph was merely producing a remix of Bible Themes, those themes would, of course, be a record of ancient times, and therefore whether one was looking at the Book of Mormon or the KJV version, one still hasn't proven the "truth" or "falsity" of either one. If the original was "true", then writing it down and printing it in another book would not change that truth.)

The KJV itself isn't monotheistic. The interpretation overlaid on it by monotheists is, of course, bent to support their point of view. But even if Joseph were simply copying the "familiar KJV biblical terminology" of, say, the title of the Most High God, the Most High God in the KJV is itself a specific title used to translate the concept of Ēl ʿElyōn from the original texts which definitely implied that there were other Gods who were Not The Most High. (It's not much of a title if the Other Gods were considered to be mere figures of speech. "O Real God! You are King Over All Flying Spaghetti Monsters!")

I've provided links in this thread to pages discussing the pre-exilic Wisdom tradition that I find so prevalent in the Book of Mormon. Yes, one can dismiss the Tree of Life dream as merely an autobiographical detail swiped from Joseph's father. There's absolutely no way one can "prove" that, tho; it's an interpretation of the evidence. I can't "prove" my view either; I can show that it lines up with what is believed to be the contemporaneous cultural details of a specific time, in ways which transcend culture-bound translational issues. And the underlying structure of the book seems to me that preexilic religion is favored over the particular point of view expressed in the editing of the Hebrew Bible.

As for my off-the-cuff examples, I was thinking of the Parable of the Seed in Alma 31 & 32, in which Alma prays for Wisdom, is filled with the Holy Spirit, and immediately launches into a discourse about planting the seed of what can very well be interpreted as a Tree of Life/Menorah testifying of the Anointed One, the Christ, and then listening to the Messengers who imparteth God's word unto men, yea, not only men but women also.

If we're not privileging monotheistic assumptions -- if Lady Wisdom and the Son who is the Anointed One are not mere Hypostases in the One Ousia of the Ontologically Unique Unmoved Mover God -- then right there we have at least two embodied Gods and a Goddess, and monotheism goes out the window. That it's possible to interpret the many, many passages like this in the book in such a way that they are understood allegorically does not change the fact that if one is not attempting to preserve the Unique Ethical Monotheistic Nature Of Israelite Religion Which Has Been Thus And So Since The Very Beginning, then it's perfectly consistent with the preexilic polytheism -- and for that matter, with Christ's admonition to His followers that they be One as He and the Father are one; ie, in intent.

Ether records a God who explicitly says that the body of His spirit is clothed in flesh and blood, and who will redeem all men from the Fall. (One must exist before the Fall -- before the foundation of the world, in a Divine Council in which one is called and prepared with others according to the foreknowledge of God -- in order to make that trip.) This anthropomorphism is pretty blatant in both testaments of the KJV as well, but since it is so very, very common to interpret that particular translation within the context of a culture so very, very rooted in the philosophy which refuses to consider a limited being, a mere man, a mere animal as a God, I find the Embodied God to be a little more striking in the Book of Mormon.

You use words like "can be" a lot. I'm sure you could visit my house, see the oak tree in the front yard, and write a 10 page discourse on how the inhabitants "could be" worshipers of Heavenly Mother.

Simple question: why didn't God put the word El in Joseph's hat?

Here you have God starting over. He visits Joseph personally. He sends angels. He gives him a new book of scripture. He's restoring his full and complete truth. Yet he binds himself with trying to teach his children by piece mealing random, existing 19th century doctrines, hoping that scholars will come around in 200 years and figure the real truth out? Does this make sense to you when you take a step back and look at the 30,000 foot view?

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

You use words like "can be" a lot. I'm sure you could visit my house, see the oak tree in the front yard, and write a 10 page discourse on how the inhabitants "could be" worshipers of Heavenly Mother.

Simple question: why didn't God put the word El in Joseph's hat?

Here you have God starting over. He visits Joseph personally. He sends angels. He gives him a new book of scripture. He's restoring his full and complete truth. Yet he binds himself with trying to teach his children by piece mealing random, existing 19th century doctrines, hoping that scholars will come around in 200 years and figure the real truth out? Does this make sense to you when you take a step back and look at the 30,000 foot view?

Assuming that your online persona is indicative of your offline persona, I doubt very much that I would find sufficient evidence in your oak tree to write a ten-page discourse on how the inhabitants of your household "could be" worshippers of Heavenly Mother.

On the other hand, if you lived on the island of Delos a few millennia ago, I might very well find evidence that you could be a believer in Diana, the Goddess of the Oak. If you lived in a predominantly Hindu population and I happened to visit on the 12th lunar day of Kartik, I might very well find enough evidence to think you could be a celebrant in the marriage of Tulsi the Tree Goddess to Vishnu. If you were a big classics fan, I might discover you could be the kind of person to commemorate Demophon and Phyllis' reunion -- upon which she blossomed back into life as an almond tree -- with whatever tree you had available.

And if you happened to be a boy (exceedingly young, nevertheless being large in stature) around 600 BC during a time when your home in the Middle East was in close contact with Egypt (allowing you to make a record consisting of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians), and if you happened to be the kind of lad who would honor your father and mother (because they are goodly parents) by reciting their Proverbs, the Wisdom literature which had close ties to the Wisdom of Amenemope in Egypt, the land where Hathor was a Queen of Heaven, a woman whose image was reflected in Lady Wisdom and the tradition which eventually became the Holy Spirit of Wisdom who helped Mary to become the Mother-of-God in the flesh within the Christian tradition ...

... then yes, I might suspect that your Tree "could be" associated in your mind with your Mother in Heaven. Especially when you and the family you have taught give me an abridged compilation of your personal records, which contains as a major theme your shared belief that others who are not walking in Wisdom's paths towards the Tree of Life should pray to the Holy Spirit of Wisdom and be grafted back in to that very Mother Tree which they have in common with you. Especially when, in the very first book, you lament the fact that the Prophet Jeremiah has been thrown into prison -- the same Jeremiah who compared an attempt on his own life to the cutting down of the Tree -- and then go on to insist up until the very last chapter that bad things like that are a result of people rejecting that Spiritand the Holy One she bears.

I don't think your assumption that God's work with Joseph was to restore "complete truth" is accurate. We believe that He will reveal many more things in the future; that's what continuing revelation is for. I have no idea why El wasn't in Joseph's hat; on the other hand, the Most High God, which is the English translation of ʿElyōn, is in the Book of Mormon, which was translated into vaguely King Jamesian language by a man who, when speaking of the KJV's translation, said "I might have rendered a plainer translation to this, but it is sufficiently plain to suit my purpose as it stands." The doctrines in the Book of Mormon are certainly not "random," and yes, I think God is pleased when scholars seek out the best books to teach others the words of wisdom. We learn line upon line, precept upon precept, and we have to learn the same way as all others have done, by going from one small degree to another.

Edited July 6, 2012 by JeremyOrbe-Smith

[Cobalt-70]

The Book of Mormon indicates that there was a period of 400 years in which events took place in a region that is identified with early Preclassic Maya territory. After that, there is a movement of the recorded body of people (after indications of cultural infusions that no longer allowed the unique Nephite belief system in that area) to another location. That movement corresponds in both time and location to where there is another language group moving up the Grijalva river valley from a region where the Book of Mormon suggests that the people of Zarahemla would have come from. There is a very important and specific correlation of both time and location with the description of these events in the Book of Mormon.

You can't identify the people of Mosiah based on the movement of this "language group" up the Grijalva river valley, unless this "language group" is basically Hebrew. (Omni 1:17-18).

You could be very helpful to the cause here if you would please indicate what material remains the Nephites would have left that would identify them separately from any other culture in that region. You may reference the material remains in Israel and indicate how we might distinguish the temple of Solomon from a Canaanite temple, or lhe second temple from general regional temple styles. I would be interested in your analysis of how the Israelites are distinguished from the Canaanites when they appear to have retained pretty much the same material culture.

If you could speak to those issues, it would really help this discussion. (By the way, I don't think that much Book of Mormon history, if any, occurred in jungle locations.)

While the Israelites were, in fact, Canaanites. But the Book of Mormon describes two distinct people living next to each other, one being hunter-gatherers who lived in tents, basically like the "savage" Native Americans that Joseph Smith was familiar with. These "Lamanites" would be identifiable by being a huge population (dwarfing the Nephites) in proximity to the more advanced "Nephite" culture, but leaving behind no advanced technology except, apparently, chariots, prisons, sepulchres, and swords. You would distinguish the Nephites from their much larger Lamanite neighbors (and from the non-Lehite pre-classical Mayan "others") by the presence of forts, walled cities, a language that has some linguistic relation to Hebrew, metallurgy, evidence of mining, large amounts of "gold and silver," "machinery, and also [exceeding wealth] in iron and copper, and brass and steel, making all manner of tools of every kind to till the ground..." (Jarom 1)

[cdowis]

Yes, but the Nephites were supposedly a single culture that survived as a distinct entity from 600 BC to 400 AD.

I can see that you have not actually read the BOM text. Are you familiar, for example, of Ammonihah vs Gideon. Are you aware that the Christians were often in the minority. What about the kingmen?

Having devoted myself in study of the BOM for my entire lifetime, I find it interesting how many "experts" throw out nonsense, knowing absolutely nothing about this book.

If they are one of the "Mayan cultures," as you describe them, then which one?

That is EXACTLY the problem -- identification. Let us suppose you find various artifacts, a jade necklace, for example. How would you know if it were Nephite, Mayan, or something else?

Indeed, let's suppose you were in an excavation of an authentic Nephite city, how could you identify it as such. Were you aware that archeologists do not even know the ancient names of these cities or geographic features.

You have the dates, you think you have the location, and you know the Nephites built temples, cities, and fortifications, wore armor, used swords, used metal, and practiced Christianity, and that the Lamanites were naked except for loincloths and shaved their heads, lived in tents, and constantly were at war with the Nephites.

Do your homework. You have a grab bag of phrases that "define" the Nephites, but forget that they had a thousand year culture. They were Christian?

The Lamanites were naked? Live in tents? For an entire thousand years? The king of the Lamanites, Lamonai, lived in a gigantic tent?

That sounds like a lot of information for any archaeologist to at least rule out some Mayans as being Nephites or Lamanites. And don't tell me that all the distinctive evidence of the existence of Nephites has conveniently disappeared because of jungle conditions, leaving behind only the ambiguous evidence.

How do you find out if a group of people were Christian? What specific artifacts are you looking for in mesoamerica -- a picture of the Virgin Mary? Crosses on buildings? There were times when the Christians were in the minority among the Nephites.

Consider the city of Ammonihah. They killed any Christians in the city, destroyed their books, etc. So if you happened upon this city, what would you look for in order to show that they were Nephites?

This seems so easy for you, so tell us specifically how to identify artifacts they have discovered as being uniquely Nephite. Seriously, we need help to identify those artifacts that already have been found.

Give us your advice.

Edited July 7, 2012 by cdowis

[Brant Gardner]

You can't identify the people of Mosiah based on the movement of this "language group" up the Grijalva river valley. . . .

So the extent of your response is to tell me what I cannot believe without even attempting to understand why I might believe it? We disagree and I can't see that changing through further discussion.

[Pahoran]

The Book of Mormon was religiously eclectic. Doctrinally, the vast majority of it was Arminian, but it had small amounts of Campbellism, some aspects of Universalism, Calvinism, and Congregationalism. It picked and chose among the smorgasbord of 19th century theological ideas. The "tree of life" idea came from his father's dream, not from ancient Hebrew polytheists. The Book of Mormon is thoroughly monotheistic, and if you think that there are passages in Alma or Ether that say otherwise, and are not simply examples of Smith using familiar KJV biblical terminology, then let's discuss what you think those passages are.

As this is a conventional anti-Mormon view of the Book of Mormon, it is entirely expected that you would be proselytizing for it.

Regards,

Pahoran