Digging Into The Book Of Mormon

[mfbukowski]

Do want the parables of Jesus or BoM warnings?

You pick as long as they are about the redemption of the dead and include the idea of temple work for those who have passed on. Good luck with that one.

In case you hadn't noticed, statements about there being no repentance after death are in conflict with the notion of temple work. But we could certainly discuss that contradiction if you like.

[123]

Land Southward full of wild beasts and snakes. I've spent some time in Central America in the jungle.Very apt description. Great Lakes region,well other than a few bears and the occasional mountain lion and rattler,not fitting the description.

I take it then, your testimony is not a prior based on faith.

[blackstrap]

Please 123 , read the text of the BoM and see how people dressed. If you dress like that in NY in any time other than a couple of months in the summer, you will lose important appendages. Wherever the BoM took place it had to be WARM most of the time. I rule out anywhere north of the 45th parallel.

[123]

You pick as long as they are about the redemption of the dead and include the idea of temple work for those who have passed on. Good luck with that one.

In case you hadn't noticed, statements about there being no repentance after death are in conflict with the notion of temple work. But we could certainly discuss that contradiction if you like.

If I were a "troll" I would jump at the opportunity to derail the thread. No thanks.

Pray tell, on which paradigm is your testimony of the BoM found?

[Benjamin McGuire]

For 123 -

You know, there is always a certain amount of irony when someone creates an account, does it in a way that is aimed at maintaining anonymity, and then as their one post makes a rah rah set of comments as the ones here. I too have a few things to add to this discussion for the "newcomers".

At roughly the same time that Cowdery was suggesting this, Orson Pratt (early apostle) left on his mission trip and taught this:

After our Savior's ascension to heaven, that he came down to this continent and appointed twelve disciples, and that Christianity flourished for three or four generations.-- After that the inhabitants divided and wars ensued, in which the pagans prevailed.-- The first battle was fought nigh to the straits of Darien, and the last at a hill called Comoro, when all the Christians were hewn down but one prophet

If that last battle started in Panama and ended in New York ... well ....

The real truth is that we can all create lists of General Authority statements to back up just about every proposed geography that has been produced. That we do that isn't itself a bad thing. What is wrong, what is inappropriate, is to assert that our understanding (including our interpretations of various GA statements) is the only right understanding - the only real interpretation - and then on that basis to accuse everyone else of both disrespecting our leaders and of walking the low road to apostasy. That seems to me to be much more of a problem - and certainly not a model of appropriate behavior.

And let's not forget, that I suspect that there are a great many Latter-day Saints who are smarter than President Smith was. And a good thing too. I really don't want to imagine a church in which we chose our leaders by a litmus test of who was the smartest. That seems to me to be a very poor criteria for such things - and even our mainstream media would agree. After all, who wants a prophet that is absolutely brilliant ala Dr. House, right?

It is the text, and not commentary on it, that is the most important thing in resolving these issues (and personal revelation of course). The deathblow is the text itself, which many of read as completely incompatible with some geography theories. It doesn't really matter how many "authoritative" interpreters you cite - none of them have the authority of the text in this instance.

Ben M.

[mfbukowski]

Please 123 , read the text of the BoM and see how people dressed. If you dress like that in NY in any time other than a couple of months in the summer, you will lose important appendages. Wherever the BoM took place it had to be WARM most of the time. I rule out anywhere north of the 45th parallel.

Hilarious!

I am from that area originally. ... "lose important appendages"....

Everything dies for 6 months of the year.

But of course Al Gore taught us that climates can change!

[123]

Please 123 , read the text of the BoM and see how people dressed. If you dress like that in NY in any time other than a couple of months in the summer, you will lose important appendages. Wherever the BoM took place it had to be WARM most of the time. I rule out anywhere north of the 45th parallel.

My paradigm is on faith. If there were enough hard evidences the world would believe the BoM. Your ladder is against the wrong tree on offense.

[Anijen]

My paradigm is on faith. If there were enough hard evidences the world would believe the BoM. Your ladder is against the wrong tree on offense.

Here is the thing; whatever tree our ladder is against will not effect our salvation, we will be corrected if wrong. I am not weak in my faith, and I certainly am not an apostate. Wherever my ladder leanings my faith will not be affected. Edited July 20, 2012 by Jeff Holt

[Benjamin McGuire]

If I were a "troll" I would jump at the opportunity to derail the thread. No thanks.

Ahhh, but you are already a troll, and you have already derailed the thread. And you are welcome.

Ben M.

[mfbukowski]

If I were a "troll" I would jump at the opportunity to derail the thread. No thanks.

Pray tell, on which paradigm is your testimony of the BoM found?

Clearly you should know that testimonies are not based on paradigms, but on spiritual experiences. If I were to base my testimony on that story of the gold plates as a scientific "paradigm" I would be in trouble indeed. Troll detector now flashing, vibrating, and falling off the desk.

[blackstrap]

I take it then, your testimony is not a prior based on faith.

Faith is the evidence of things not seen,WHICH ARE TRUE.

My faith is based on a firm foundation (you know the one) but it also buttressed by rational study of the text.

[mfbukowski]

Ahhh, but you are already a troll, and you have already derailed the thread. And you are welcome.

Ben M.

Thanks for pointing it out- I shall cease and my replies to 123.

[Calm]

The bottom line is that two Hill Cumorah's is very confusing and feels like we're being tricked.

I don't feel like I am being tricked any more than I feel like I was being tricked by a teacher giving me and the rest of the class a challenging science problem for our lab work and then sent us off to solve it. God gives us challenges all the time to help us learn, even to just learn how to learn (some people lose the habit early in their lives and just run on autopilot....eventually they get throw off their smooth track and may get badly hurt, even broken beyond repair due to out of shape learning muscles.) The ultimate teacher would surely come up with the most interesting puzzles.

[123]

At roughly the same time that Cowdery was suggesting this

The real truth is that we can all create lists of General Authority statements to back up just about every proposed geography that has been produced.

Then do it, Bob asked; I'll second that request!

there are a great many Latter-day Saints who are smarter than President Smith was.

What I thought. Where's your humility? Let me guess, you were born this century.

[blackstrap]

Where's Billy Goat Gruff when you need him?

[Calm]

1. It was not named Cumorah as Benjamin McGuire has stated.

2. And the point being made is; how can it be trickery if the hill had no name?

3.God lead Joesph to a hill (that would later be called Cumorah after the hill mentioned in the Book of Mormon, this does not mean it is the same hill). God lead Joseph there so that Joseph could receive instruction and then later to retrieve the plates. These plates I believe were buried by Moroni centuries early after walking and avoiding hostile enemies. I believe God lead and protected Moroni to that hill because that would be in the distant future the area Joseph would live.

Some additional points from wiki:

The hill, which was unnamed prior to 1829, is situated a few miles from Joseph Smith's boyhood home on a farm that was then owned by a local farmer, Alonzo Sanders. This farm was 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Palmyra, on the main road towardCanandaigua from Palmyra to Manchester, and is not far from Carangrie Creek and the Clyde River. According to geologists, the hill was formed during the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers, and it rises approximately 110 feet (34 m) above the surrounding valley floor.

Since 1829, the Latter Day Saints have called the hill "Cumorah",[16] and local non-Mormons have called it "Mormon Hill"[2][3][4]or "Gold Bible Hill".[6] The hill has also been called "Inspiration Point".[2]

Given that its names are now Cumorah, Mormon Hill, Gold Bible Hill and even Inspiration Point, if this is God playing a trick, he is going all out.

It does seem strange that a hill that brings upon itself so little notice that it has no name prior to 1829 is yet noticed by Nephite commanders long distances away and decided upon as the perfect defensive place for a last stand, so perfect in fact that they jump at the chance to use it even though it takes 4 years (IIRC) to gather everyone there, four years that could have been spent in developing some pretty extensive defensive structures on a more strategically impressive hill. But for some reason intelligent, experienced military commanders chose as their last stand what was to become more or less little more than just another insignificant bump on the landscape by the 1800s.

It is having seen the hill in comparison to the surrounding terrain that makes me believe, barring a suggestion of some miraculous aid that for some reason Mormon and Moroni felt no need to mention, it is not the Cumorah spoken of in the Book of Mormon.

Edited July 20, 2012 by calmoriah

[ERayR]

Are your testimonies based on faith? Which side of the paradigm are you two on?

I can't answer for those two but I can answer for myself. My faith is not based on a geographic location nor your interpretation of events but is based on the atonement of Jesus Christ. The Book of Mormon, wherever it is located, (my vote from my reading of it is Meso-America) is a testament of that atonement.

[Calm]

I never knew that.

I can understand why you might be very confused about it if you thought there just happened to be a hill named Cumorah in the neighbourhood long before Joseph showed up there.

[123]

Some additional points from wiki:

Given that its names are now Cumorah, Mormon Hill, Gold Bible Hill and even Inspiration Point, if this is God playing a trick, he is going all out.

My testimony is based on faith, that's my paradigm. You people are questioning my faith in Joseph and Oliver, the first church history and BoM prophecy on current weather patterns? Where is your paradigm? Even if yours is not on faith, respect the fact that others will not be accepting the nephite record on theories of man, their interpretations, or whether current weather patterns match 2000 years ago. Have respect for the BoM witnesses and prophet, please.

[Benjamin McGuire]

Then do it, Bob asked; I'll second that request!

I don't have an interest in which geography is right. Unlike Bob, My interests lie in other directions. But, I did just provide one, didn't I.

Of course, knowing where the events took place is relatively inconsequential for the testimonies of nearly every member of the church. (Present company being a possible exception).

My issue isn't over the various theories or their evidence. Almost certainly all of the theories are wrong in their details. The issue isn't over reasonable discussion and competing ideas. It's over the fact that some people would rather win the argument not by reasoned discussion, but by claiming that others must be apostate for their views and attitudes - not towards the text - but towards the historical interpretations in the Mormon community. There is in this a suggestion that these interpretation should rise to an authoritative level equal to the text (something that Mormonism seems to strictly deny - at least in its theology). It is the call to repentance that I find repugnant. If the current leaders of the church become worried about it, I am sure they can make a formal statement or clarification. But until that happens, I think that the behavior of accusing others of falling into apostasy over an argument that they personally take a side in is far more egregious than any perceived slight to a past leader of the church - imputed because they have a different interpretation than you do.

In other words - that you claim others are disrespectful has nothing to do with whether they are or are not being disrespectful - it has to do with your using it as an argument to dismiss their point of view. It is (according to the definition I posted a while back) ad hominem attack.

Ben M.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Benjamin McGuire

[Calm]

Indeed- as recently as the last general conference.

http://www.lds.org/g...christ?lang=eng

And let us not forget this one:

Sidney B. Sperry, after whom an annual Brigham Young University symposium is named, was also one who initially supported the New York Cumorah view (that is, an area of New York as the final battlefield of the Nephites and Jaredites). During the 1960s, as he began to explore the issue, he came to a different conclusion... Reversing his earlier position, he wrote: "It is now my very carefully studied and considered opinion that the Hill Cumorah to which Mormon and his people gathered was somewhere in Middle America. The Book of Mormon evidence to this effect is irresistible and conclusive to one who will approach it with an open mind. This evidence has been reviewed by a few generations of bright students in graduate classes who have been given the challenge to break it down if they can. To date none has ever been able to do so."  Sperry, who was very familiar with what Joseph Fielding Smith had previously written, told him that he did not feel comfortable publishing something that contradicted what the apostle had written, but that he and other sincere students of the Book of Mormon had come to that conclusion only after serious and careful study of the text. Sperry said that Elder Smith then lovingly put his arm around his shoulder and said, "Sidney, you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. You go ahead and publish it."

http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Archaeology/Hill_Cumorah

[cursor]

From John L. Sorenson, in response to a personal email that I sent to him yesterday

Regarding “Cumorah,” no statement has ever been made in regard to its geography by other than individual general authorities with no standing to speak for the Church as a whole. The Church magazine published my two-article series in 1985 at the explicit invitation of a committee consisting of several of the Twelve and of the Seventy. It implied acquiescence for a Mesoamerican geography viewpoint, although the editor’s introduction, as I recall, said the magazine took no position on the content of my articles but thought it would “be of interest” to readers.

A statement by Elder Dallin H. Oaks [originally published in

Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures

, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2001, 237-48), republished in

Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture

21 (1): 66-72, 2012]. There he recalled

“the first class I took on the Book of Mormon at BYU.... Here I was introduced to the idea that the Book of Mormon is not a history of all the people who have lived on the continents of North and South America in all ages of the earth. Up to that time I had assumed that it was. If that were the claim of the Book of Mormon, any piece of historical, archaeological, or linguistic evidence to the contrary would weigh in against the Book of Mormon, and those who rely exclusively on scholarship would have a promising position to argue.

“In contrast, if the Book of Mormon only purports to be an account of a few peoples who inhabited a portion of the Americas during a few millennia in the past, the burden of argument changes drastically. It is no longer a question of all versus none; it is a question of some versus none. In other words in the circumstance I describe, the opponents of historicity must prove that the Book of Mormon has no historical validity for any peoples who lived in the Americas in a particular time frame, a notoriously difficult exercise. ...The opponents of the historicity of the Book of Mormon must prove that the people whose religious life it records did not live anywhere in the Americas.”

Elder Oaks (and others) continue to hold the same position today. They would not do so if the Church were officially committed to the illogical Cumorah-is-in-New-York-and-the-whole-New-World-was-the-Book-of-Mormon-scene position.

Recognition by the committee I referred to of the merit of the argument Elder Oaks outlines led to their request to me to prepare my articles for

The Ensign

.

Edited July 20, 2012 by cursor

[ERayR]

My testimony is based on faith, that's my paradigm. You people are questioning my faith in Joseph and Oliver, the first church history and BoM prophecy on current weather patterns? Where is your paradigm? Even if yours is not on faith, respect the fact that others will not be accepting the nephite record on theories of man, their interpretations, or whether current weather patterns match 2000 years ago. Have respect for the BoM witnesses and prophet, please.

I wouldn't want to be in any way responsible for the destruction of your faith so I will not comment at this time. I will admonish that it is not wise to put your faith in anyone but Jesus Christ. Your doing so worries me that at some point it is going to unravel leaving you with no place to stand.

[mfbukowski]

From John L. Sorenson, in response to a personal email that sent to him yesterday

Regarding “Cumorah,” no statement has ever been made in regard to its geography by other than individual general authorities with no standing to speak for the Church as a whole. The Church magazine published my two-article series in 1985 at the explicit invitation of a committee consisting of several of the Twelve and of the Seventy. It implied acquiescence for a Mesoamerican geography viewpoint, although the editor’s introduction, as I recall, said the magazine took no position on the content of my articles but thought it would “be of interest” to readers.

A statement by Elder Dallin H. Oaks [originally published in

Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures

, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2001, 237-48), republished in

Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture

21 (1): 66-72, 2012]. There he recalled

“the first class I took on the Book of Mormon at BYU.... Here I was introduced to the idea that the Book of Mormon is not a history of all the people who have lived on the continents of North and South America in all ages of the earth. Up to that time I had assumed that it was. If that were the claim of the Book of Mormon, any piece of historical, archaeological, or linguistic evidence to the contrary would weigh in against the Book of Mormon, and those who rely exclusively on scholarship would have a promising position to argue.

“In contrast, if the Book of Mormon only purports to be an account of a few peoples who inhabited a portion of the Americas during a few millennia in the past, the burden of argument changes drastically. It is no longer a question of all versus none; it is a question of some versus none. In other words in the circumstance I describe, the opponents of historicity must prove that the Book of Mormon has no historical validity for any peoples who lived in the Americas in a particular time frame, a notoriously difficult exercise. ...The opponents of the historicity of the Book of Mormon must prove that the people whose religious life it records did not live anywhere in the Americas.”

Elder Oaks (and others) continue to hold the same position today. They would not do so if the Church were officially committed to the illogical Cumorah-is-in-New-York-and-the-whole-New-World-was-the-Book-of-Mormon-scene position.

Recognition by the committee I referred to of the merit of the argument Elder Oaks outlines led to their request to me to prepare my articles for

The Ensign

.

We have had quite a few discussions around here recently about "others" in the BOM, and this is clearly of huge importance to that discussion

[mfbukowski]

I wouldn't want to be in any way responsible for the destruction of your faith so I will not comment at this time. I will admonish that it is not wise to put your faith in anyone but Jesus Christ. Your doing so worries me that at some point it is going to unravel leaving you with no place to stand.

This is the great quandary, isn't it?

How do you help those whose beliefs have already been damaged without damaging others? We need to educate all members on the issues of "science vs testimony" and the validity of each within their own sphere.

Once you understand that, no scientific questions can touch your testimony.