David Bokovoy's explanation of OT

[cinepro]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1979/10/a-witness-and-a-warning?lang=eng

 

Quote

 

Second: We must awaken to “a sense of [our] awful situation, because of this secret combination which [is] among [us]” (Ether 8:24). We must not tolerate accommodation with or appeasement toward the false system of Communism. We must demand of our elected officials that we not only resist Communism, but that we will take every measure to prevent its intrusion into this hemisphere. It is vital that we invoke the Monroe Doctrine.

 

So Moroni saw 1970s-era Communism and warned us about it?  Do you also think he saw the collapse of Communism in the 1990s?  Because that would be pretty amazing for a prophet in Moroni's situation to understand what he was seeing, and to know the difference between democratic capitalism and communism (and the democratic socialism of today under which many Church members happily live)  to the degree that he could distinguish between them (and not confuse communism with the communal system implemented in 4th Nephi where the people live with "all things in common.")

I guess you could be right. 

Or it's also possible that the Book of Mormon contains some very vaguely worded "prophecies" that are easy to adapt to different situations that commonly appear in different times and cultures, and President Benson interpreted it against his well-known feelings about Communism and the Cold War. 

It happens some times when it comes to these things.

Edited May 27, 2016 by cinepro

[ttribe]

36 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Sho nuff!

The "Who's Viewed Your Profile" feature strikes again!

[mfbukowski]

7 minutes ago, ttribe said:

The "Who's Viewed Your Profile" feature strikes again!

  

Thanks!  I am sure I will get a bunch more hits now so I better beef it up- I just got on it a couple of months ago

Edited May 27, 2016 by mfbukowski

[JarMan]

38 minutes ago, cinepro said:

 

 

So Moroni saw 1970s-era Communism and warned us about it?  Do you also think he saw the collapse of Communism in the 1990s?  Because that would be pretty amazing for a prophet in Moroni's situation to understand what he was seeing, and to know the difference between democratic capitalism and communism (and the democratic socialism of today under which many Church members happily live)  to the degree that he could distinguish between them (and not confuse communism with the communal system implemented in 4th Nephi where the people live with "all things in common.")

I guess you could be right. 

Or it's also possible that the Book of Mormon contains some very vaguely worded "prophecies" that are easy to adapt to different situations that commonly appear in different times and cultures, and President Benson interpreted it against his well-known feelings about Communism and the Cold War. 

It happens some times when it comes to these things.

Perhaps Moroni saw the hundred million people that died under communism in the twentieth century. That wouldn't be very hard to understand-especially after what he had already witnessed.

There's a reason ETB was so opposed to Communism.  Maybe it was prophetic insight based on Moroni's prophecy. If ETB was right, then we have a prophecy from the Book of Mormon that was fulfilled after the fact. 

If you think this is all a bunch of nonsense then you're probably who Moroni was talking to when he said to awake to a sense of your awful situation. 

[stemelbow]

15 hours ago, The Nehor said:

It does when Nephi and Jacob are offering commentary on something they did not have.

Right.  But the question then is was the quoted portions of Isaiah from them really what Joseph Smith included in the BoM?   Maybe they quoted currently non-existence forms of Isaiah, which only later became that which was found in the KJV.  Hecks if by the power of God He knows the scriptures.  Why not?  Maybe He saw it more of a mess to quote a non existent Isaiah in this case then to quote an existent form as it got the message well enough anyway. 

I would say if we're really dealing with God in this there are too many possibilities.  Thus going with the evidence isn't a strike against the BoM per se.  It's just introduces more unanswered questions, more theories to explore, more thought to uncover, more meaning to find.  Or we could just say, as it seems you have done, "enough...I've heard enough.  I dont' want my assumed position to be questioned therefore I won't go there." 

[jkwilliams]

9 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

  

Thanks!  I am sure I will get a bunch more hits now so I better beef it up- I just got on it a couple of months ago

If you need help with your profile/resume, I'm happy to help. That's part of my job description at work, to help AOL/Verizon employees with their resumes and profiles. 

[mfbukowski]

3 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

If you need help with your profile/resume, I'm happy to help. That's part of my job description at work, to help AOL/Verizon employees with their resumes and profiles. 

Thanks, am possibly changing directions though

[jkwilliams]

Just now, mfbukowski said:

Thanks, am possibly changing directions though

No problem, just putting it out there. I am pretty good at it, if I may say so. I just got a request from HR on Tuesday to use my LinkedIn profile as a model for employees in my division, so it must be sort of OK.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

Right.  But the question then is was the quoted portions of Isaiah from them really what Joseph Smith included in the BoM?   Maybe they quoted currently non-existence forms of Isaiah, which only later became that which was found in the KJV.  Hecks if by the power of God He knows the scriptures.  Why not?  Maybe He saw it more of a mess to quote a non existent Isaiah in this case then to quote an existent form as it got the message well enough anyway. 

I would say if we're really dealing with God in this there are too many possibilities.  Thus going with the evidence isn't a strike against the BoM per se.  It's just introduces more unanswered questions, more theories to explore, more thought to uncover, more meaning to find.  Or we could just say, as it seems you have done, "enough...I've heard enough.  I dont' want my assumed position to be questioned therefore I won't go there." 

Maybe Nephi was a woman masquerading as a man and thought the subterfuge would be too confusing to explain so just left the misinformation in.

Maybe the Book of Mormon is actually about a family of koalas and God changed it to liven it up a bit to make it more spiritually fulfilling for us.

Maybe Isaiah actually was a Nephite and wrote it while they were in the New World and then it got transported back to the Old.

[stemelbow]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Maybe Nephi was a woman masquerading as a man and thought the subterfuge would be too confusing to explain so just left the misinformation in.

Maybe the Book of Mormon is actually about a family of koalas and God changed it to liven it up a bit to make it more spiritually fulfilling for us.

Maybe Isaiah actually was a Nephite and wrote it while they were in the New World and then it got transported back to the Old.

It's funny how we're both getting after each other for bringing up different possibilities to support our competing points of view.  There are tons of maybes when we're dealing with stuff we don't know.  Whatever the case your position is less compelling, so game over. 

If Isaiah was the same form we have it today for Lehi, in your view, because it had to get in the BoM somehow, what do you do about other post-exilic passages that are quoted?  New testament Passages, or the like?  I mean the NT wasn't written in Jesus' life, after all. 

[Robert F. Smith]

10 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Did that when he included Isaiah in his Book of Mormon 

Did what when he supposedly included Isaiah in his bofm?  You aren't explaining yourself.

[Robert F. Smith]

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

I think Ether 8:24-25 was talking about a single thing since it uses the singular. I think ETB saw the worldwide Marxist movement as specifically fulfilling that prophecy. However the plural is used in verse 22 and elsewhere so I think there are multiple other fulfillments possible. 

I take it that you saw my earlier list of large conspiracies, even though I didn't list Mexican or Colombian drug cartels, or the like (which make billions smuggling drugs, weapons, and humans). Is it possible that there is nothing at all new about large-scale criminal conspiracies, and that they can pose huge problems for any nation state?  So almost any organized conspiracy of that sort could fulfill Ether 8?

[consiglieri]

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

 

If you think this is all a bunch of nonsense then you're probably who Moroni was talking to when he said to awake to a sense of your awful situation. 

I read Leaves of Grass recently and was surprised to hear Walt Whitman directly addressing his readers, and saying he knows them, even though he has been dead over a century.

I couldn't help but think of similar language from Moroni.

[Johnnie Cake]

26 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Did what when he supposedly included Isaiah in his bofm?  You aren't explaining yourself.

Robert...refer back to your original post that triggered my response... You listed Hebraic syntax as evidence for the Book of Mormon...I merely suggested that you'd need to ask Joseph why he put that in there cuz I don't know what he was thinking at the time he did that.  If I had to guess it was his intent to make the BoM read and sound as much like the Bible as possible

[flameburns623]

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

  

Thanks!  I am sure I will get a bunch more hits now so I better beef it up- I just got on it a couple of months ago

You didst tempt me and I didst look.

There are a lot of Mark Bukowski's though. 

[cinepro]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Maybe Nephi was a woman masquerading as a man and thought the subterfuge would be too confusing to explain so just left the misinformation in.

Maybe the Book of Mormon is actually about a family of koalas and God changed it to liven it up a bit to make it more spiritually fulfilling for us.

Maybe Isaiah actually was a Nephite and wrote it while they were in the New World and then it got transported back to the Old.

David Bokovoy, apologist.

[JarMan]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I take it that you saw my earlier list of large conspiracies, even though I didn't list Mexican or Colombian drug cartels, or the like (which make billions smuggling drugs, weapons, and humans). Is it possible that there is nothing at all new about large-scale criminal conspiracies, and that they can pose huge problems for any nation state?  So almost any organized conspiracy of that sort could fulfill Ether 8?

To me there is an ongoing general warning plus a very specific warning in verses 24-25. The specific warning-used in the singular-is unique because of its scale (all lands, nations, and countries). In the list you provided I didn't see anything that was worldwide or that seemed to approach the scale of what Moroni described. I'm aware of only one movement that fits the worldwide scale of verses 24-25. 

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Robert...refer back to your original post that triggered my response... You listed Hebraic syntax as evidence for the Book of Mormon...I merely suggested that you'd need to ask Joseph why he put that in there cuz I don't know what he was thinking at the time he did that.  If I had to guess it was his intent to make the BoM read and sound as much like the Bible as possible

And you think that he knew enough about Hebrew verbs to do that, and even to have it referred to at various places in the BofM (which I cited)?  Has nothing to do with syntax, by the way.

When confronted with the hundreds of such ancient markers in the BofM, Dan Vogel has always argued that it was part of Joseph's information environment -- that he could theoretically have known about such matters by some means and deliberately inserted them into the BofM -- and Bill Hamblin has always directed that sort of fantasy talk back to Joseph's Harvard years (when he must have been doing his dissertation there).  Of course, it is absurd, because even the best educated Harvard scholar could not have known about such ancient markers.

[canard78]

7 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

And you think that he knew enough about Hebrew verbs to do that, and even to have it referred to at various places in the BofM (which I cited)?  Has nothing to do with syntax, by the way.

When confronted with the hundreds of such ancient markers in the BofM, Dan Vogel has always argued that it was part of Joseph's information environment -- that he could theoretically have known about such matters by some means and deliberately inserted them into the BofM -- and Bill Hamblin has always directed that sort of fantasy talk back to Joseph's Harvard years (when he must have been doing his dissertation there).  Of course, it is absurd, because even the best educated Harvard scholar could not have known about such ancient markers.

How do you account for Hebraisms in the D&C?

Talking about the D&C, section 7 was a translation made in April 1829 of an unknown document. 

If Joseph was able to translate re record of John as early as April 1829, why would he need the Book of Mormon to be translated for him a couple of centuries earlier?

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/7?lang=eng

Edited May 28, 2016 by canard78
Adding link

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, canard78 said:

How do you account for Hebraisms in the D&C?

I don't, and it isn't necessary to point to so-called "Hebraisms" which can be discerned from the KJV text and replicated in other literature.  The only Hebraisms worth mentioning (if one feels it necessary) are those which are not available by simply replicating the KJV text.  KJVisms in the BofM, D&C, BofA, etc., are just not relevant, because anyone could produce them simply by aping the biblical language familiar from the KJV.  The only words, phrases, or grammatical constructions worthy of note are those which could not have been known to Joseph (or to some human translator from several centuries earlier).

In any case, since the BofM (like the Brass Plates) was written in Egyptian, we should be looking for Egyptianisms.

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

Talking about the D&C, section 7 was a translation made in April 1829 of an unknown document. 

If Joseph was able to translate re record of John as early as April 1829, why would he need the Book of Mormon to be translated for him a couple of centuries earlier?

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/7?lang=eng .

I don't know, although John's parchment would presumably have been in Greek, and translated by means of Joseph's seerstone -- from which he presumably read the words, just as he did when dictating the BofM to his scribes.  Your guess may be as good as mine.

 

[champatsch]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

In any case, since the BofM (like the Brass Plates) was written in Egyptian, we should be looking for Egyptianisms.

RFS: Where has that issue been addressed more recently than Sperry? I ask since I remember reading Sperry saying it was Egyptian script representing Hebrew language. Thanks.

[mfbukowski]

19 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

And you think that he knew enough about Hebrew verbs to do that, and even to have it referred to at various places in the BofM (which I cited)?  Has nothing to do with syntax, by the way.

When confronted with the hundreds of such ancient markers in the BofM, Dan Vogel has always argued that it was part of Joseph's information environment -- that he could theoretically have known about such matters by some means and deliberately inserted them into the BofM -- and Bill Hamblin has always directed that sort of fantasy talk back to Joseph's Harvard years (when he must have been doing his dissertation there).  Of course, it is absurd, because even the best educated Harvard scholar could not have known about such ancient markers.

For what its worth, I have confronted Dan V more than once using postmodern arguments about the nature of "truth" and he really does not understand postmodernism at all. He is very much a logical positivist.  

[Robert F. Smith]

12 minutes ago, champatsch said:

RFS: Where has that issue been addressed more recently than Sperry? I ask since I remember reading Sperry saying it was Egyptian script representing Hebrew language. Thanks.

More recent sources are  Stephen Ricks, ALanguage and Script in the Book of Mormon,@ FARMS Update #81 (Mar 1992), in Insights, March 1992, page 2; John Tvedtnes & Stephen Ricks, AJewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters,@ Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 5/2 (1996):156-163 = ASemitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters,@ in J. W. Welch & M. J. Thorne, eds., Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon (Provo: FARMS, 1999), 237-243; John Gee likewise maintains that the Book of Mormon “contains a scriptural text in a Northwest Semitic tongue written in an Egyptian script,” in JBMS, 6/1 (1994):100, citing Russell M. Nelson, “A Treasured Testament,” Ensign 23/7 (July 1993):61.

Hugh Nibley's response to Sperry and others in that vein was 

 

Quote

Did the wealthy Lehi learn Egyptian characters so that he could sit in his house in the land of Jerusalem and by writing Hebrew with demotic symbols save a few cents a month on writing materials?  And did he command his sons to learn Egyptian so that they could save space when they kept records?  Of course not: when they learned the language, neither Lehi nor his sons had any idea that some day it would be useful to keepers of records on metal plates.  They had no other reason for learning Egyptian characters than to read and write Egyptian.  It was only later when historians became cramped for space that they saw the advantage of continuing to write in Egyptian.  And the Egyptian characters can only have been preserved for their use because the language was also preserved; for people who were not crowded for space would not have continued to write Hebrew in the difficult Egyptian characters for hundreds of years, when all the time they might just as well have been writing in the twenty-two simple and practical characters of the Hebrew alphabet.  Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, 2^nd ed., Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, V:16. Cf. Brant A. Gardner, “Nephi as Scribe,” FARMS Review, 23/1 (2011):45–55.  Online at  http:// maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=23&num=1&id=818; Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (SLC: Greg Kofford, 2011). 

Nibley added that the Book of Mormon contains what are obviously ancient Egyptian names, along with similarities to the lives of Egyptian namesakes, similar statistical patterns of name elements, use of typical Egyptian literary forms (colophons, introductory phrases, etc.), and strongly idiomatic usage Apeculiarly adapted to the sounds and thought processes of one language,@ namely Egyptian, in an extreme short-hand style.^[1]  Indeed, Nibley later went so far as to graphically demonstrate just how abbreviated such short-hand Egyptian could be!^[2]

---

^[1] Nibley, ALehi in the Desert,@ part II, Improvement Era, 53/2 (Feb 1950):102 and nn. 60-67 = Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, CWHN V:15-18; Nibley, Since Cumorah, 2^nd ed. (FARMS & Deseret, 1988), CWHN VII:149-152.

^[2] Nibley, Since Cumorah, 2^nd ed., CWHN VII:149.

 

[consiglieri]

On ‎5‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 8:33 AM, stemelbow said:

If Isaiah was the same form we have it today for Lehi, in your view, because it had to get in the BoM somehow, what do you do about other post-exilic passages that are quoted?  New testament Passages, or the like?  I mean the NT wasn't written in Jesus' life, after all. 

This!

Why for goodness sakes are apologists damaging their credibility trying to make Deutero-Isaiah written before Lehi left Jerusalem when the same problem awaits them with patently New Testament passages in the Book of Mormon, as well?