An Open Letter To Dale Baranowski: Regarding Your Uncritical Look At The Book Of Mormon

[Ntrw]

http://averroes2.blogspot.com/2013/08/an-open-letter-to-dale-baranowski.html

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Huh?

[ERayR]

http://averroes2.blo...baranowski.html

Nice summary.

[bluebell]

Is it possible to put more info in the OP than just a link to your blog. Otherwise it kind of comes across like shameless self promotion.

Maybe some information about who Dale Baranowski is or something?

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Nice summary.

I see. Interesting.

[Questing Beast]

I got as far as the "critic" asserting that China was the destination of the Lehites, with a chance meeting with some "Ishmaelites", then I ceased. Anyone making such ridiculous claims of the BoM and its scholars is obviously not even starting his critique on the right foot. Whatever follows can be ignored as not worth one's time....

[phaedrus ut]

What is the benefit of arguing that the King James bible has also translation problems and anachronisms? I'm going to make the assumption that Dale Baranowski is a conservative Jew and not beholden to defend the King James bible.

Phaedrus

[canard78]

http://averroes2.blogspot.com/2013/08/an-open-letter-to-dale-baranowski.html

As others have said, at least a little context and key points in future OPs please.

I've enjoyed some of your blog posts. But I do wish we wouldn't keep perpetuating this dichotomy:

"There can be no middle ground. It is either a history or a forgery."

There are not only two options. There is a middle ground:

Elder Holland, 2007, PBS interview for 'The Mormons':

PBS: [You say] there are stark choices in beliefs about the origins of the book. Explain why there's no middle way.

Elder Holland: ... If someone can find something in the Book of Mormon, anything that they love or respond to or find dear, I applaud that and say more power to you. That's what I find, too. And that should not in any way discount somebody's liking a passage here or a passage there or the whole idea of the book, but not agreeing to its origin, its divinity. ...

I think you'd be as aware as I am that that we have many people who are members of the church who do not have some burning conviction as to its origins, who have some other feeling about it that is not as committed to foundational statements and the premises of Mormonism. But we're not going to invite somebody out of the church over that any more than we would anything else about degrees of belief or steps of hope or steps of conviction. ... We would say: "This is the way I see it, and this is the faith I have; this is the foundation on which I'm going forward. If I can help you work toward that I'd be glad to, but I don't love you less; I don't distance you more; I don't say you're unacceptable to me as a person or even as a Latter-day Saint if you can't make that step or move to the beat of that drum." ... We really don't want to sound smug. We don't want to seem uncompromising and insensitive.

http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html

[canard78]

Something else got my attention:

"Also, the Book of Mormon text itself does not reference the year 600 B.C.E. The dates were added by 19th century editors long after the first edition was ever published(1830)."

This is left hanging a little. What? So what? Now what?

You use 600BC yourself in the article a few times. So I was wondering what your sentence above is getting at?

Edited August 15, 2013 by canard78

[Buzzard]

Something else got my attention:

"Also, the Book of Mormon text itself does not reference the year 600 B.C.E. The dates were added by 19th century editors long after the first edition was ever published(1830)."

This is left hanging a little. What? So what? Now what?

You use 600BC yourself in the article a few times. So I was wondering what your sentence above is getting at?

I somehow missed that, but of course, the BOM says that Christ was born 600 years after they left Jerusalem.

[mfbukowski]

As others have said, at least a little context and key points in future OPs please.

I've enjoyed some of your blog posts. But I do wish we wouldn't keep perpetuating this dichotomy:

"There can be no middle ground. It is either a history or a forgery."

There are not only two options. There is a middle ground:

And probably 93 other ways of seeing it as well. Maybe 94

[Robert F. Smith]

What is the benefit of arguing that the King James bible has also translation problems and anachronisms? I'm going to make the assumption that Dale Baranowski is a conservative Jew and not beholden to defend the King James bible.

Phaedrus

"A conservative Jew"? I'm sure that you meant that in the sense of his tenacious conviction that Orthodox Judaism is true, rather than to associate him with Conservative Judaism in America. The big problem for Baranowski is, however, really that he doesn't know much about his own Jewish heritage nor about the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, as the Beast suggests, Baranowski knows even less about the Book of Mormon than most anti-Mormons. The Beast was disgusted, as well he should have been.

[cdowis]

600 BCE

 

FWIW, chronology is one of those difficult issues for the BOM.  Someone has actually suggested there was at least two people with the title of King Zedekiah.

[phaedrus ut]

"A conservative Jew"? I'm sure that you meant that in the sense of his tenacious conviction that Orthodox Judaism is true, rather than to associate him with Conservative Judaism in America. The big problem for Baranowski is, however, really that he doesn't know much about his own Jewish heritage nor about the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, as the Beast suggests, Baranowski knows even less about the Book of Mormon than most anti-Mormons. The Beast was disgusted, as well he should have been.

 

I had no idea who Baranowski is but at first glance I just assume that Yad L'Achim is on the conservative spectrum of Judaism but not making assumptions if they are Haredi, Hasidic, etc.

 

On what basis do you say that Baranowski doesn't know much about his Jewish heritage or the Hebrew Bible?  Do you think it's reasonable for the OP's open letter to suggest he should somehow defend the anachronisms in the KJV bible?

 

Phaedrus

[volgadon]

I had no idea who Baranowski is but at first glance I just assume that Yad L'Achim is on the conservative spectrum of Judaism but not making assumptions if they are Haredi, Hasidic, etc.

 

On what basis do you say that Baranowski doesn't know much about his Jewish heritage or the Hebrew Bible?  Do you think it's reasonable for the OP's open letter to suggest he should somehow defend the anachronisms in the KJV bible?

 

Phaedrus

 

Yad L'Achim is a Haredi anti-missionary organisation. They don't have the best track record for honesty, claiming among other things, that Mormons introduced AIDS into Israel.

[Damien the Leper]

Yad L'Achim is a Haredi anti-missionary organisation. They don't have the best track record for honesty, claiming among other things, that Mormons introduced AIDS into Israel.

Oh jeez...

[Robert F. Smith]

600 BCE

 

FWIW, chronology is one of those difficult issues for the BOM.  Someone has actually suggested there was at least two people with the title of King Zedekiah.

IMHO, someone long ago inserted "About B.C. 600" into the footing of the Book of Mormon based on the prophecy that Jesus would be born 600 years after Lehi left Jerusalem, which was in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah.  It was never meant to be a statement about archeology or exact chronology, and the person making that insertion into the 1920 edition was not a biblical scholar. 

 

Whoever suggested that this presents a difficulty for the Book of Mormon, or who might suggest the need for two Zedekiahs is baying at the moon.  We know the names and dates of each of the kings of Judah for that period, and we have contemporary non-biblical records which establish the dates in absolute terms, as I point out in my “Book of Mormon Event Structure: The Ancient Near East,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 5/2 (1996):98-147, online at  http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=5&num=2&id=126 .

 

Chronology is actually one of the items in the Book of Mormon which can be used to argue for its historicity, which I also point out in the first pages of my above study.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Robert F. Smith

[canard78]

So if Lehi didn't leave in 600BC, do we have a better date?

By the way, has Ntrw come back yet, or is this just a "drive by posting?"

Much as I'm enjoying the conversation I feel it's a little bad form to open a topic but not participate in it.

[Robert F. Smith]

So if Lehi didn't leave in 600BC, do we have a better date?

.................................................   

 

I discuss that in detail in the article that I cited.  However, to make a long story short: Lehi left Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of King Zedekiah, which is from Spring 597 B.C. to Spring 596 B.C.  King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon placed Zedekiah on the throne of Judah, and we have Nebuchadrezzar's contemporary cuneiform record on clay tablets telling us when and what he did.  About 592 solar years later Jesus is born in the Land of Jerusalem (= 600 years of 360 days each = Mesoamerican Long Count cycle).

[canard78]

I discuss that in detail in the article that I cited. However, to make a long story short: Lehi left Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of King Zedekiah, which is from Spring 597 B.C. to Spring 596 B.C. King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon placed Zedekiah on the throne of Judah, and we have Nebuchadrezzar's contemporary cuneiform record on clay tablets telling us when and what he did. About 592 solar years later Jesus is born in the Land of Jerusalem (= 600 years of 360 days each = Mesoamerican Long Count cycle).

Interesting, thanks. Even if we didn't have the Mesoamerican count bringing it back up to 600, I'd have been comfortable with it being 8 years different. That's still only 1% out. I have clients making multi-million dollar decisions on 95% accuracy. 99% accuracy is a luxury.

[Robert F. Smith]

Interesting, thanks. Even if we didn't have the Mesoamerican count bringing it back up to 600, I'd have been comfortable with it being 8 years different. That's still only 1% out. I have clients making multi-million dollar decisions on 95% accuracy. 99% accuracy is a luxury.

The problem, canard, is that this isn't the same as investing (gambling), but is part of a precision set of annals in the Book of Mormon, as applied to the most accurate calendar ever devised before the onset of modern technology (Mesoamerica had an interlocking set of calendar cycles bequeathed to them by the Olmec, and maintained for thousands of years).