How an Ahistorical Book of Mormon Can Still Be Scripture

[ALarson]

20 minutes ago, Dexter Eli said:

Of course. But are you saying Peter James and John (and all the others) actually visited JS but that the BOM is not literally true? I get that you like the book, but I'm more interested in how you view JS regarding his other claims if you are willing to not believe his claims about the veracity of the BOM. 

I believe he was inspired to write the Book of Mormon.  I believe he was a Prophet but was fallible and made many mistakes along the way (I'm not a fan of polygamy at all).  I think the first vision story and others as well evolved over time.  (Benjamin has expressed many of my beliefs and feelings regarding the BofM here on this thread already.)

Edited August 15, 2017 by ALarson

[Dexter Eli]

Understood. Thanks, ALarson. 

[hope_for_things]

2 hours ago, Dexter Eli said:

I agree. But it is just good PR. In its heart of hearts, you and I both know the Church would much more emphatically state that the gospel was restored through ordinations, etc., literally and no other church has that authority. 

It's really both, and that is the great tug of war within the gospel message.  

[Pete Ahlstrom]

3 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

What about an alternative perspective.  Whatever Joseph was trying to accomplish with the BoM, whether a fraud to make money on one end of the spectrum, or as a divine revelation from God about a lost people on the other end of the spectrum, that original purpose of the book is largely lost to us in 2017.  We really have no connection to the time and place and cultural context of JS and his contemporaries.  Their world was so very different than the world we live in today.  I have a hard time relating to them.  

So what is the BoM for me today in 2017?  Well, isn't it exactly what I want to make of it?  Its literature, whether its loosely based on a true story or its an extremely accurate portrayal of real people, or its a completely invented moral tale, its still just words on a page that tell a story thats very far removed from my time period.  

I recognize what the tradition of Mormonism says about the BoM is very different from the way I'm talking about it.  Thats ok, I'm getting more comfortable all the time with my non-traditional approach.  I'm trying to approach the BoM as a way to look for lessons about life that I can apply to my modern day life.  I could do this with any numbers of books in a multitude of genres of writing, but for the LDS church tradition, they've chosen this text to review and explore.  Its not a perfect text, it has flaws and areas I think are problematic, but those problems also provide opportunities to learn as we point out the problematic elements.  I think there is much good we can get from the BoM, depending on how we approach it.  

I wish you luck in trying to make sense of this.  I couldn't without taking God out of the equation.  I don't think God would want to combine the all or nothing rhetoric of the church according to the "inspired" leaders and have His keystone be fiction.  In my personal opinion, I see man trying to make sense out of the world through mormonism yet it is still only man in the end, just like all other religions.

[Pete Ahlstrom]

1 hour ago, ALarson said:

I believe he was inspired to write the Book of Mormon.  I believe he was a Prophet but was fallible and made many mistakes along the way (I'm not a fan of polygamy at all).  I think the first vision story and others as well evolved over time.  (Benjamin has expressed many of my beliefs and feelings regarding the BofM here on this thread already.)

The problem I found with this is that the more the church comes down to man's level, the easier it is to simply say mormonism is just another man-made religion with a colorful original leader.

[hope_for_things]

43 minutes ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

I wish you luck in trying to make sense of this.  I couldn't without taking God out of the equation.  I don't think God would want to combine the all or nothing rhetoric of the church according to the "inspired" leaders and have His keystone be fiction.  In my personal opinion, I see man trying to make sense out of the world through mormonism yet it is still only man in the end, just like all other religions.

Religions are man made and man constructed, but can also be inspired by the divine.  Can I suggest a couple books that have helped me, I'm a very naturalistic believer and yet still try to find space for the ineffable in life.  

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1101906049/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502765246&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=finding+god+in+the+waves&dpPl=1&dpID=41zQKg1xW0L&ref=plSrch

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345503422/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502765324&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=how+god+changes+your+brain&dpPl=1&dpID=51KeRVZL9%2BL&ref=plSrch

God is an experience that happens in my brain, I don't believe in a theistic God anymore.  

 

[Rajah Manchou]

For those that hold to a historical Book of Mormon, there is much to explore. Up until the 15th century Judeo-Christian tradition held that there was indeed a Promised Land across the waters. The location was described as an island called Qamara (also known as DSRT or Deseret in some Arabic accounts). According to other Arabic histories, the island was inhabited by a Biblical clan that departed the Arabian Peninsula around the time of the Jaredites. There are other accounts describing a group from the Middle East that was carried to this island by the hand of God in 600 BC. This group has been compared to the Lehites by Mormon and non-Mormon scholars alike.

Is anybody hearing this?

Edited August 15, 2017 by Rajah Manchou

[Pete Ahlstrom]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

Religions are man made and man constructed, but can also be inspired by the divine.  Can I suggest a couple books that have helped me, I'm a very naturalistic believer and yet still try to find space for the ineffable in life.  

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1101906049/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502765246&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=finding+god+in+the+waves&dpPl=1&dpID=41zQKg1xW0L&ref=plSrch

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345503422/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502765324&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=how+god+changes+your+brain&dpPl=1&dpID=51KeRVZL9%2BL&ref=plSrch

God is an experience that happens in my brain, I don't believe in a theistic God anymore.  

 

Thanks for the suggested reading. I will definitely take a look at these books. What are your thoughts on meaningful financial disclosure? That's a deal breaker for me given all the other problems.

[hope_for_things]

9 hours ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

Thanks for the suggested reading. I will definitely take a look at these books. What are your thoughts on meaningful financial disclosure? That's a deal breaker for me given all the other problems.

Corporate Finance is my career, so this issue strikes really close to home.  I've served as a finance clerk for many years at the ward level and an auditor at the stake level, but that was back in my orthodox days.  I feel burned by the church's lack of transparency with finances.  Personally, I'm not currently donating to the church, I choose to give to charities that are transparently doing good in the world, and I have no confidence that the church is doing that much good from a charitable giving perspective.  Also, I look at the amount of money that I've donated over my lifetime and its in the six figures.  I don't know if this will change at some point in the future for me, I have a lot of frustration over this specific issue that I'm still dealing with.  

[Benjamin Seeker]

On 8/14/2017 at 2:38 PM, Dexter Eli said:

Benjamin, thanks for answering each of my specific questions. Your beliefs are very interesting to me because, if you hadn't noticed, I tend to view it as GBH and many others have directed, which is, take it literally or it's a fraud. I'm not saying that's the way to go, but it's what makes sense to me. I can't comprehend a God that would "inspire" JS in such non literal ways. If it's true, I think it's necessary that most of the things JS said really happened REALLY HAPPENED! If those things didn't happen, I don't see how it can be true. But that's just my view. And I can certainly recognize that even if not literally true, the BOM can still be a remarkable book that can change lives. 

 

On 8/14/2017 at 8:01 PM, Pete Ahlstrom said:

I wish you luck in trying to make sense of this.  I couldn't without taking God out of the equation.  I don't think God would want to combine the all or nothing rhetoric of the church according to the "inspired" leaders and have His keystone be fiction.  In my personal opinion, I see man trying to make sense out of the world through mormonism yet it is still only man in the end, just like all other religions.

A quick comment on the tension both of you are pointing out - I don't believe that God spurred JS into belief in things that, from my perspective, turned out to be not literally true. Instead, I believe that God accompanied JS on his search for truth, or, in other words, JS tapped into God in various way during his journey but largely set the course himself. Similar to how NDEs often feature the God or diety or guide that the experiencer expects, I believe that JS experienced the divine in the form he expected (e.g. a largely literal Genesis, a Hebrew heritage for Native Americans, etc.).  

Another clarification I'd offer is that I believe JS would have experienced visions/revelations/second-sight in any context he put himself. For example, that idea is consistent with him seeing treasure guardians and mystical treasure in his seer stone and later having experiences foundational to Mormonism using the same stone.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[clarkgoble]

28 minutes ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

A quick comment on the tension both of you are pointing out - I don't believe that God spurred JS into belief in things that, from my perspective, turned out to be not literally true. Instead, I believe that God accompanied JS on his search for truth, or, in other words, JS tapped into God in various way during his journey but largely set the course himself. Similar to how NDEs often feature the God or diety or guide that the experiencer expects, I believe that JS experienced the divine in the form he expected (e.g. a largely literal Genesis, a Hebrew heritage for Native Americans, etc.).  

Another clarification I'd offer is that I believe JS would have experienced visions/revelations/second-sight in any context he put himself. For example, that idea is consistent with him seeing treasure guardians and mystical treasure in his seer stone and later having experiences foundational to Mormonism using the same stone.

Ben, without criticizing in the least your views, I wonder if you have any views on the nature of God this view entails? It seems to me that it leads to a very non-interventionist God. That is more a view of God where Joseph accidentally touches the divine and gets limited divine influence but God really doesn't care. Would you agree with that view? I ask because it seems pretty hard to see a God trying to communicate in this model.

[Benjamin Seeker]

51 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Ben, without criticizing in the least your views, I wonder if you have any views on the nature of God this view entails? It seems to me that it leads to a very non-interventionist God. That is more a view of God where Joseph accidentally touches the divine and gets limited divine influence but God really doesn't care. Would you agree with that view? I ask because it seems pretty hard to see a God trying to communicate in this model.

You're definitely right about the non-interventionalist model. That would seem to make some sense out of the extreme inequity of various types in the world. 

On the flip side, God can still exercise a guiding hand if he is somehow pulling the destiny strings. Then the right people who ask the right questions and tap into the right ideas are in the right place at the right time to make significant things happen for the world. That way we are still learning and growing on our own (meaning the human race) and we move at our own pace, but we can still experience a personal God.

The above is a working draft of my general feelings that I have been giving thought to for a couple years now. I'm open to new ideas, data, and correction, but I think this model/theory does a nice job of dealing with the problem of multiple conflicting religious traditions, which spawn from significant revelatory events and whose adherents lead rich spiritual lives.

Oh, and God cares in my mind but just lets us figure things out for ourselves (i.e. learning through discovery, which I consitently find the most effective method).

Lastly, I think of this model of revelation as something akin to evolution. From the look of things, evolutoin allowed the creation of every variation of life with no intervention. Similarly, my model of revelation makes it so that the we can experience God with no little to no intervention on his part. I believe revelation is one of those phenomenon that is more built into the laws of nature than we have traditionally understood.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[Gray]

On 8/14/2017 at 10:28 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

In a generic sense, of course, a surface impression does give one the notion that lost Israelite tribes might be a stake, which a close reading immediately negates.  Scholarship depends on hard science and close reading, not on by-gosh-and-by-golly understanding.

By gosh and by golly, isn't Manessah on the lost tribes list? And isn't Lehi supposed to be a descendant of Manasseh?

 

 

Quote

We need a systematic look at such issues, so that we can see specifically how various Bible translations compare with the BofM.  Currently we can show some pre-KJV readings of biblical texts in the BofM.  How did that happen?

For example, "more parte" is in the 1535 Coverdale Bible - Eccl 9:6, Acts 19:32, and Acts 27:12. http://www.studylight.org/desk/index.cgi?sr=0&old_q=ge+1&search_form_type=general&q1="more+part"&s=0&t1=en_mcb&ns=0 .  The 1611 KJV also had it in the Book of Mormon form of  "more part" in the same verses of Acts, and it is still there in our modern KJV used by the church. It is also in the earlier Geneva Bible at Acts 19:32. 

Skousen says that

Let's assume that pre-KJV language is indeed present in the BOM, in a way not explainable by surviving bits of that language somewhere in Joseph Smith's environment. Is there a grand unifying theory that also explains the clear quotations from KJV, as well as the the KJV and post-KJV language artifacts?

 

Quote

I accept the major findings of critical biblical scholarship to date, and do not detect the "major problems" which you claim are present.  Perhaps you'd like to enumerate them for me.

Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount (or a version of it) 50 years before it was put together by Matthew. While the Sermon likely contains authentic teachings of Jesus, it almost certainly was never delivered by Jesus in that format.

It is said that Jesus will sweat great drops of blood in Mosiah 3 (~124 BCE) - an allusion to a late addition to the Luke manuscript, more than two centuries later

Atonement theology took many decades to develop in the first century of the Christian movement, and continued to develop beyond that time. But it appears more or less fully developed among the Nephites many centuries before even the birth of Jesus.

The early Christian use of the term Savior and Son of God to describe Jesus is a clear rejection of Roman authority. These were the terms the Romans used to describe Cesar - the Christians deliberately used them to say, no, not Cesar, but Jesus. But somehow the Nephites use these terms centuries earlier and another continent, completely divorced from the historical context that brought them about.

 

Edited August 16, 2017 by Gray

[Gray]

On 8/14/2017 at 1:07 PM, clarkgoble said:

If the speaker of the prodigal son story never lived, then that certainly undermines it as a command. That is the reasons for living by it are shaken up. 

Either it's a good teaching or it isn't. Authority is a pretty poor reason to follow any teaching. Spiritual principles stand or fall on their own merits.

[Gray]

On 8/14/2017 at 3:19 PM, Dexter Eli said:

This is a ridiculous comparison. The parable of the prodigal son was just that, a parable. It was known as a parable before the story was told, not changed to a parable thousands of years later, as well. 

I don't see the difference. Parable or history, the meaning is never at the surface level of the story.

 

On 8/14/2017 at 3:19 PM, Dexter Eli said:

A better example, Gray, would be this: If Christ didn't REALLY atone for our sins, you would admit that changes everything, right?

 

No, not for me. It changes nothing. The meaning is the same - unselfish sacrifice for others. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

 

On 8/14/2017 at 3:19 PM, Dexter Eli said:

So why are you trying to argue that whether things really happened or not doesn't matter. You would certainly admit it does matter. Certain things must have really happened: Christ actually existing, the atonement actually happening, the resurrection occurring. Right? Or does none of it matter?

It really doesn't matter, from a spiritual sense. From a historical sense, it's an interesting question.

 

On 8/14/2017 at 3:19 PM, Dexter Eli said:

 

It is certainly reasonable for one to believe that JS must have actually met with Moroni, Peter, James, John, etc, for the church to be true. Where the line is between must have happened and didn't necessarily need to have actually happened, well, that is an interesting question, and that is what I am asking the readers here. Where is your line? (Not just yours Gray, but anyone who is reading, I would love to hear your responses). 

The church's value doesn't depend on whether or not Joseph did this or that.

[clarkgoble]

47 minutes ago, Gray said:

By gosh and by golly, isn't Manessah on the lost tribes list? And isn't Lehi supposed to be a descendant of Manasseh?

This actually gets at the fact the Book of Mormon is pretty nuanced unlike most naive Indians as Jews model. Lehi appears to be from part of the northern Kingdom that avoided getting taken away during the Assyrian conquest by Sargon II. It's a minor point, but not the sort of thing I'd expect were the Book of Mormon a forgery fitting into the "Indians as lost tribes" motif many critics bring up. To my eyes it's a large number of little things like this that really undermine the fraud model. It bespeaks a sophistication and nuance I have a hard time seeing Joseph having.

[clarkgoble]

33 minutes ago, Gray said:

Either it's a good teaching or it isn't. Authority is a pretty poor reason to follow any teaching. Spiritual principles stand or fall on their own merits.

True, but authority can provide reasons for why something may well be true. So if Jesus says something most people would see those commands as very significant due to Jesus' place whereas they might be far quicker to reject something Paul says about women in passing. Not just because of how it relates to an overall model of commandments but simply because Paul's authority is much weaker. It ends up getting at burdens of proof and more circumstantial reasons for believing certain teachings.

Personal revelation is of course the ultimate reason to believe something. But I'll fully admit there's lots of things I have no revelation on (and haven't even prayed about truthfully) yet I believe because a prophet said it.

Edited August 16, 2017 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

Lastly, I think of this model of revelation as something akin to evolution. From the look of things, evolutoin allowed the creation of every variation of life with no intervention. Similarly, my model of revelation makes it so that the we can experience God with no little to no intervention on his part. I believe revelation is one of those phenomenon that is more built into the laws of nature than we have traditionally understood.

The analogy might be the woman touching the hem of Jesus' robes to be healed. Jesus doesn't appear to be consciously involved initially in what happens in Luke 8:44. Yet there seems something inherently problematic with a God who acts without really acting in an intentional fashion I must confess.  I know this isn't that uncommon a model - especially among more Platonic oriented people in the broad Judeo-Christian tradition. 

Again without criticizing, I'm curious as to how you resolve the central conundrum in such a view. God is indirect in inspiration yet the portrayal in the Book of Mormon and all other scriptures by Joseph is an extremely engaged and interventionist God. That seems a problem as you'd think the portrayal of God would be one of the things most influenced by this touch of the divine.

[Gray]

6 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

This actually gets at the fact the Book of Mormon is pretty nuanced unlike most naive Indians as Jews model. Lehi appears to be from part of the northern Kingdom that avoided getting taken away during the Assyrian conquest by Sargon II. It's a minor point, but not the sort of thing I'd expect were the Book of Mormon a forgery fitting into the "Indians as lost tribes" motif many critics bring up. To my eyes it's a large number of little things like this that really undermine the fraud model. It bespeaks a sophistication and nuance I have a hard time seeing Joseph having.

I would agree in some cases it's more nuanced than one might expect. I don't think fraud comes into it, whether it's historical or not.

[Gray]

12 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

True, but authority can provide reasons for why something may well be true. So if Jesus says something most people would see those commands as very significant due to Jesus' place whereas they might be far quicker to reject something Paul says about women in passing. Not just because of how it relates to an overall model of commandments but simply because Paul's authority is much weaker. It ends up getting at burdens of proof and more circumstantial reasons for believing certain teachings.

If Paul says love one another in passing, is that less true than when Jesus says it? If Jesus were quoted as saying something awful, would that make it a good teaching?

 

12 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Personal revelation is of course the ultimate reason to believe something. But I'll fully admit there's lots of things I have no revelation on (and haven't even prayed about truthfully) yet I believe because a prophet said it.

I understand, although I think it's best to follow commandments on their merits and not the authority of anyone who they are attributed to.

 

[clarkgoble]

15 minutes ago, Gray said:

If Paul says love one another in passing, is that less true than when Jesus says it? If Jesus were quoted as saying something awful, would that make it a good teaching?

I understand, although I think it's best to follow commandments on their merits and not the authority of anyone who they are attributed to

The question is how one discovers its merits. Ideally we'll try them (ala Alma 32) but we have to have a reason to try to follow them. So it's that more epistemological point that I think is key.

[Gray]

12 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The question is how one discovers its merits. Ideally we'll try them (ala Alma 32) but we have to have a reason to try to follow them. So it's that more epistemological point that I think is key.

Yes, I think both Alma 32 and the following statements by Jesus are good ways to discover the merit of any teaching:

John 7

17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

Mat 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit..... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

You try it out, you discover what effect it has.

I think you make a good point - having a reason to try them. Even though I say let each teaching stand on it's own merits, I'm more likely to pay attention to Jesus than to someone walking the streets in a sandwich board. Even though, at one point, Jesus didn't have much more credibility than that! But, I will still reject what I believe to be bad teachings, no matter what the source is.

 

Edited August 16, 2017 by Gray

[Benjamin Seeker]

3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The analogy might be the woman touching the hem of Jesus' robes to be healed. Jesus doesn't appear to be consciously involved initially in what happens in Luke 8:44. Yet there seems something inherently problematic with a God who acts without really acting in an intentional fashion I must confess.  I know this isn't that uncommon a model - especially among more Platonic oriented people in the broad Judeo-Christian tradition. 

Again without criticizing, I'm curious as to how you resolve the central conundrum in such a view. God is indirect in inspiration yet the portrayal in the Book of Mormon and all other scriptures by Joseph is an extremely engaged and interventionist God. That seems a problem as you'd think the portrayal of God would be one of the things most influenced by this touch of the divine.

My guess is that we can only be inspired to what we can conceive. It took me a lot of info and experience to come to the ideas I have. I think it's pretty clear that JS' scripture is heavily inflected by the issues he grappled with, and whether God was truly an interventionalist or whether there were universal mechanisms to facilitate deep religious experiences while allowing us to grow at our own pace probably just wasn't one of the issues he was pondering.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Benjamin Seeker

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Seeker said:

My guess is that we can only be inspired to what we can conceive. It took me a lot of info and experience to come to the ideas I have. I think it's pretty clear that JS' scripture is heavily inflected by the issues he grappled with, and whether God was truly an interventionalist or whether there were universal mechanisms to facilitate deep religious experiences while allowing us to grow at our own pace probably just wasn't one of the issues he was pondering.

I guess what I'm saying is that by portraying God as so interventionist it seems intrinsically something he was pondering. Even in the very early forms of the first vision narrative. Indeed the First Vision and the quest for the plates seems like intervention was his focus. I admit I kind of expected you to say that his focus on that meant that he was less influenced by inspiration. It's interesting you went the completely opposite route.

[Meerkat]

Moroni had buried the plates in the ground to come forth in our day. If the Book of Mormon plates were shown to 3 witnesses by the angel Moroni then 8 witnesses who hefted the plates, and the Holy Ghost witnesses it is a true book,  it is actually an historic book in my opinion.  One cannot dismiss the three  witnesses testimony.