How an Ahistorical Book of Mormon Can Still Be Scripture

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, Gray said:

If you're assuming that Mormon composed the story instead of passing it on from earlier records, yes, not anachronistic. If the story is accurate, then it is anachronistic. Either way it doesn't see plausible for Mormon to have access to a 5th century copy of the NT. 

I'm not assuming anything. Rather, you are assuming that the Book of Mormon author(s) were cut off from any contact with the Old World from 600 BC. That's an assumption - speculation - that the text itself does not speak to. 

2 hours ago, Gray said:

Do authentic early Christian and Arabic texts talk specifically of the scenario you're hypothesizing - NT texts being transported by boat to the Americas? 

Not the Americas, but yes, an island across the great waters that was known to Christians for centuries as the land of the blessed, inhabited by Israelites. There are Arabic texts that describe a Biblical group leaving Mesopotamia in boats around the time of the tower, and arriving at this same island that by all appearances fits the Book of Mormon. The location of the island was unknown, but Christian texts describe a group of Israelites leaving Jerusalem in the 6th century BC and arriving there. There are accounts of Christian missionaries traveling to this island in the early centuries of the Christian era. There is archaeological and textual evidence to support my speculation.  I can provide if you are interested. 

Do you see what I am proposing?  I am suggesting we stop speculating about the location of the Book of Mormon account, and open it up to a broader interpretation of what the Promised Land was to early Christians. Doing so eliminates all the anachronisms you have listed.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Rajah Manchou

[cdowis]

4 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Do you see what I am proposing?  I am suggesting we stop speculating about the location of the Book of Mormon account, and open it up to a broader interpretation of what the Promised Land was to early Christians. Doing so eliminates all the anachronisms you have listed.

Why don't you simply say,

"We don't know.  This is an interesting question but we simply do not have the answer with the information we have at hand."

As DCP calls it, humble apologetics.    

 

Edited September 14, 2017 by cdowis

[mfbukowski]

On 8/14/2017 at 7:01 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.

But what is unique is the the Man happens to be God.

Mormonism is humanism raised to the nth degree, imo.  Anthropomorphism is actually its greatest strength- God seen as the Archetype of the Ideal Human.

Humans create their own worlds and make their own truths, and are the measure of everything humans can know.   That is a tautology.   If humans know anything, that "anything" is from a human brain.  To me, that is the brilliance of Mormonism- mankind raised to the level of Gods.   If God is "only" the best within each of us as an Archetype, it doesn't matter- everyone has their own level of belief in what the words mean.   That is why it can be interpreted all the way from fundamentalism to agnosticism about an external being.  Man is still the center of the universe whatever your perception of it is.

[Rajah Manchou]

6 hours ago, cdowis said:

Why don't you simply say,

"We don't know.  This is an interesting question but we simply do not have the answer with the information we have at hand."

As DCP calls it, humble apologetics.   

That works for me. We don't know where the Book of Mormon account took place. We don't know who wrote it and when. These are interesting questions, but we simply do not have the answers with the information we have at hand. The book could be ahistorical. Or it could be historical. We simple don't have enough information to know either way.

Now if you can get DCP and all other humble apologists to agree, then we're golden.

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

That works for me. We don't know where the Book of Mormon account took place. We don't know who wrote it and when. These are interesting questions, but we simply do not have the answers with the information we have at hand. The book could be ahistorical. Or it could be historical. We simple don't have enough information to know either way.

Now if you can get DCP and all other humble apologists to agree, then we're golden.

You might find this of interest

 

[Rajah Manchou]

4 hours ago, cdowis said:

You might find this of interest

Thanks. Do you think this humble apologetics allows for the view that an ahistorical Book of Mormon can still be scripture?

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Thanks. Do you think this humble apologetics allows for the view that an ahistorical Book of Mormon can still be scripture?

DCP makes a contrast between Mormon Studies and Apologetics, and the former certainly allows such a view, whilst Apologetics begins with the assumption that it is historical.

Edited September 15, 2017 by cdowis

[Gray]

On 9/14/2017 at 11:52 AM, clarkgoble said:

I don't see how that is an argument for late origin though. Again look at people who repeat presentations. Often they'll rework existing presentations to fit a slightly different theme. Further saying material can change isn't the same as saying it does - especially if there are lost written versions. There's really just not a whole lot of argument here.

It's an argument against the entire sermon surviving intact into the 9th and 10th decades of the first century. And we see in the case of Matthew vs Luke that it changes significantly depending on the source and tradition. It's simply not plausible for an unwritten sermon from the 30s to survive in the 80s.

 

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Definitely quite plausible, much as the Great Angel stuff from the pre-exile period becomes reworked in Merkabah texts. Plus we have more written tradition in the 2cd temple period leading to possibly more stability.

Are you confusing plausible with possible? What makes it plausible? This sounds like speculation.

 

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I think you miss the argument. If it's pre-Christian it's not caused by Christian belief but represents a rather robust way of reading it. Further since the text is pretty explicitly engaging the topic of a messiah and death, it's a rather obvious interpretation. We don't have a lot of interpretation of Isaiah in the pre-exilic period. Basically Jeremiah. Jeremiah doesn't have the martyr angle but has most of the rest and quotes/paraphases Isaiah in places like Jer 23. But the idea of a suffering servant is pretty key to Jeremiah to the point a common speculation is that the suffering servant of deutero-Isaiah is based upon Jeremiah. (This is a common medieval Jewish interpretation for instance starting with Rashi) This interpretation still gets debated in scholarly circles. 

It still looks to me like you're reading interpretations that came about centuries after Lehi back onto Lehi. Time moves forward, not backwards!

The interpretation makes sense in Joseph Smith's day, but it's completely out of place in Lehi's day.

 

 

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But the key point is that this isn't a late Christian interpretation (which was all I was really arguing about). Knowing how early Jews took the text is difficult to know given the paucity of texts from the time period you are asking about. So perhaps the real question is, why should we assume it is only a later interpretation given the fairly obvious features of the text?

Fairly obvious to whom? Modern readers already primed with these later interpretations? The Messiah was supposed to be a liberating military leader, a king chosen by God. Who would have expected, at that time, the exact opposite? Not a king, but a criminal executed in humiliation. Not a man, but a God (first in a somewhat metaphorical sense, eventually in a quite literal sense). Not a military savior, but a spiritual savior, one who worked a mysterious type of atonement that would not have been at all familiar to ancient Jewish peoples? The fact is the messianic profile changed to meet what people experienced in Jesus, which was altogether contrary to scripture as it had previously been interpreted.

 

 

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 i.e. I think the burden here is for you to argue this interpretation isn't natural but is caused by events that only make sense in later history. That seems difficult to do given the explicit ties to death in the text. Even those who tie it to later (say the martyrdom of Eleazar in the Maccabean revolt) are primarily dating the text to that period on the basis of that parallel. However if we're going to theories, it was for decades fairly common for scholars to see the Servant as an actual historical figure from early in the exile. That's pretty early, if true. (Not saying it is true - just noting that scholars don't seem to think it has to be a late interpretation) The main reason for the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Servant as Israel is due to the naming in some of the other writings of deutero-Isaiah. But of course if there isn't a single deutero-Isaiah but texts compiled in the exile then that reasoning falls apart. (And as I said, that's the reading I favor as explaining Book of Mormon use of deutero- Isaiah. It's speculative but defensible.)

I don't have the burden, I don't think. We already have a timeline for how these scriptures were interpreted and reinterpreted. I'm following the normal course of causality, while you're speculating that a late interpretation could have actually been much earlier based on no evidence whatsoever.

 

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But who's burden is this? Your original argument was that it was anachronistic in the 7th century. i.e. you're the one making claims about 7th century interpretations. I'm merely arguing it's a reasonable interpretation in the 7th century which is much easier to establish. It could be completely original with Nephi for my theory to work. (I doubt it is, but I'm just here noting the logic of the argument)

This is really backwards. You're suggesting late ideas came earlier than the evidence suggests. You can of course believe that to be the case, but the burden to demonstrate this to be true is yours. My argument follows the actual course of history as far as it's known.

Let's say I argue that the atomic bomb was invented in the 20th century, therefore it's anachronistic to the 19th century. I have no burden to prove that atomic bombs didn't exist in the 19th century - that would be trying to prove a negative. If you disagree, you can counter my argument effectively by producing evidence of atomic bombs in the 19th century. Otherwise you have no argument.

 

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That's circular logic.

Again in terms of structure rather than name there's nothing in the Book of Mormon Satan that's anachronistic. If you think there is please point to the passage and why it is anachronistic. i.e. what structural features are the problem. Again, please keep in mind Egyptian and Canaanite devil like figures.

Satan is the enemy of God and all righteousness in the BOM - not the case for Ha-Satan, the Satan Lehi would have known. If you're going to reach for other ancient figures to try to bolster your case, why not Chinese or Indian mythology? Again you seem to cherry pick not only in time (and frequently way outside the time of Lehi) but also in space for ways to bring the Book of Mormon in its proper time and place.  I think the term is parallelomania.

By contrast, Satan in the BOM very neatly fits Christian ideas about Satan.

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I already did. The Lucifer passage in Isaiah as a fallen angel as a type for the King of Tyre predates Lehi by a century. Further the Canaanite model has Mat as a fallen member of the heavenly court. Indeed these pre-existing Canaanite myths are usually taken to be basis for Isaiah's text. I even quoted to you the text Isaiah is borrowing from. So if you're going to make an argument you at minimum have to point to elements not already in proto-Isaiah. Further the fact Isaiah makes use of the Canaanite myths undermines your attempt to say the Canaanite context isn't part of pre-exilic Israel.

Again, you're trying to reach to any ancient source to find parallels.. Lucifer in Isaiah refers to the fall of an earthly king.

 

 

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What element of apocalypticism are you talking about?  Note that the apocalyptic elements in the Book of Mormon are quite different from the apocalyptic literature during the Hellenistic period. There are more parallels of course to the Enochian texts but that doesn't appear to be what you're referring to here. Note that scholars universally consider Isaiah 24–27 and 33 to be apocalyptic texts. The usual designation of Isaiah 24-7 is The Apocalypse of Isaiah.

i.e. do you have an argument here?

I think perhaps I don't have one! I'll table this one.

 

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Why? We have explicit in the text figures bringing texts from the ANE to the Nephites. I mean you can just dismiss that as supernatural but if we're dismissing the supernatural out of hand then all the Book of Mormon by definition is impossible. In terms of demonstrating a contradiction which is what I thought you were attempting to do then it's rather relevant that Mormon could have had the texts.

 

It's simply not plausible. We can accept that ancient peoples had stories about supernatural beings delivering them ancient texts, but a historical argument can't be made that it actually happened.

Edited September 17, 2017 by Gray

[Gray]

On 9/14/2017 at 12:43 PM, Rajah Manchou said:

I'm not assuming anything. Rather, you are assuming that the Book of Mormon author(s) were cut off from any contact with the Old World from 600 BC. That's an assumption - speculation - that the text itself does not speak to. 

The text doesn't talk about any contact with the East. In fact it does say they were cut off. Do you have any evidence to the contrary (not that we have real evidence for Nephites to begin with, but let's assume Nephites)

 

 

On 9/14/2017 at 12:43 PM, Rajah Manchou said:

Not the Americas, but yes, an island across the great waters that was known to Christians for centuries as the land of the blessed, inhabited by Israelites. There are Arabic texts that describe a Biblical group leaving Mesopotamia in boats around the time of the tower, and arriving at this same island that by all appearances fits the Book of Mormon. The location of the island was unknown, but Christian texts describe a group of Israelites leaving Jerusalem in the 6th century BC and arriving there. There are accounts of Christian missionaries traveling to this island in the early centuries of the Christian era. There is archaeological and textual evidence to support my speculation.  I can provide if you are interested. 

Do you see what I am proposing?  I am suggesting we stop speculating about the location of the Book of Mormon account, and open it up to a broader interpretation of what the Promised Land was to early Christians. Doing so eliminates all the anachronisms you have listed.

Specifically, what accounts? Who wrote them, when were they written?

[LittleNipper]

If the Bible says the exact same thing while applying historic fact and prophetic truth, why would an allegorical Book of Mormon be of equal value or necessary?  My spiritual witness comes in a Bible church. Why would I abandon my faith to assume one that appears to be secondhand information at best. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke John, Act, Roman... Read and hear the facts as originally presented, not as transposed in the Book of Mormon.

[Gray]

9 minutes ago, LittleNipper said:

If the Bible says the exact same thing while applying historic fact and prophetic truth, why would an allegorical Book of Mormon be of equal value or necessary?  My spiritual witness comes in a Bible church. Why would I abandon my faith to assume one that appears to be secondhand information at best. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke John, Act, Roman... Read and hear the facts as originally presented, not as transposed in the Book of Mormon.

Much of Matthew and Luke are rehashes of Mark. Why not go with the original, and throw out Matthew and Luke?

[Rajah Manchou]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

The text doesn't talk about any contact with the East. In fact it does say they were cut off. Do you have any evidence to the contrary (not that we have real evidence for Nephites to begin with, but let's assume Nephites)

Not specifically, but the text does talk about Nephites getting into a boat (or boats) and sailing into the west sea, and then later returning to the Land of Promise. It'd be safe to assume that this trade continued through to the closing of the Book of Mormon account.

"And behold, there were many of the Nephites who did enter therein and did sail forth with much provisions, and also many women and children; and they took their course northward. And thus ended the thirty and seventh year. And in the thirty and eighth year, this man built other ships. And the first ship did also return, and many more people did enter into it; and they also took much provisions, and set out again to the land northward." Alma 63:6-7

So we cannot assume that there was no contact between east and west, south and north, or even old world and new world. There easily could have been an exchange of ideas, and books and records of every kind (Helaman 3:14-15), through this trade.

 

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Specifically, what accounts? Who wrote them, when were they written?

All accounts, across several traditions, of the land beyond beyond the great sea, usually called (at least in modern English translations) India or China. Like the Book of Mormon, they refer to an island inhabited by Biblical clans resembling those found in the Book of Mormon. For example, the Akhbar al-Zaman was "composed no earlier than 904 CE and no later than 1140" but is based on much older Arabic and Christian sources "such as the chronography of Anianus, dating back to Late Antiquity." It says:

"A branch of the family of Amur, son of Japheth, separated and went to China. The leader of this tribe built vessels on the model of the ark of Noah, his grandfather, in which all his family embarked; they crossed the sea, reached China, multiplied, built cities, and there developed the sciences and arts, and exploited its gold mines. This leader reigned three hundred years." - Akhbar al-Zaman

The existence of an island far to the east that was believed by Christian and Arabic geographers to be inhabited by a Biblical group called "The Blessed" is quite easily established. According to the texts, the Blessed were carried by God from Jerusalem to the land of blessedness in the 6th century BC. From my comment above, in case it slipped past you.

“According to the Narrative of Zosimus, a righteous man named Zosimus, dwelling in a cave in a desert, prays to the Lord and obtains spiritual passage to a land of blessedness. In order to arrive at this land of promise, Zosimus must wander in the wilderness without knowing where he is being led. He is pushed to the point of exhaustion but attains his destination by constant prayer and divine intervention. Zosimus eventually arrives at the bank of an unfathomable river of water covered by an impenetrable cloud of darkness. Catching the branches of a tree, Zosimus is transported across the water where he sits beneath a beautiful tree, eating its fruit and drinking of the life-sustaining water which flows from its root. Zosimus is then met by an angelic escort, who asks him what he wants, shows him a vision in which he thinks he beholds the Son of God, and ultimately introduces him to a group of righteous sons of God. These elders tell Zosimus of their history and instruct him in their ways of righteousness. Their history is engraved upon soft stone plates. It explains how the group, led by their father, escaped the destruction of Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah and how as a nation they survived the scattering of Israel.” (source)

IMO, this land of blessedness described in ancient texts is the land of promise described in the Book of Mormon. Instead of insisting I am speculating and asking more questions, I'd be interested to hear your opinion on the evidence already provided.


 

Edited September 18, 2017 by Rajah Manchou

[carbon dioxide]

3 hours ago, LittleNipper said:

If the Bible says the exact same thing while applying historic fact and prophetic truth, why would an allegorical Book of Mormon be of equal value or necessary?  My spiritual witness comes in a Bible church. Why would I abandon my faith to assume one that appears to be secondhand information at best. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke John, Act, Roman... Read and hear the facts as originally presented, not as transposed in the Book of Mormon.

Anyone can create a book of fiction that contains spiritual truths in them.  If that is all the Book of Mormon is, why bother with plates and translation?  An angel should have just dictated spiritual truths to Joseph Smith sort of like how Muslims say Mohammad got the Koran.  Both the Bible and Book of Mormon might contain fictional stories within it to present truth but that does not mean the whole is fiction.  My spiritual witness comes for the great teaching of Jesus that man is to live by every word that proceeds forth for the mouth of God.  Whether it be the Bible, Book of Mormon, D&C, Pearl of Great price, General Conference, other ancient books.  We are not live by every word that comes from God and pick from a menu of what parts we will accept from God and what parts we do not based on our personal preference.

[clarkgoble]

18 hours ago, Gray said:

It's an argument against the entire sermon surviving intact into the 9th and 10th decades of the first century. And we see in the case of Matthew vs Luke that it changes significantly depending on the source and tradition. It's simply not plausible for an unwritten sermon from the 30s to survive in the 80s.

Not quite following you here. It seems to me that as a critique of the Book of Mormon we have to first acknowledge that as with Jesus in Palestine, the Nephites almost certainly didn't have shorthand scribes recording what Jesus says. Thus the text of Jesus in Bountiful represents later developments. In Palestine we have Matthew (post 70AD) modifying Mark and "Q" (standing for all oral or missing texts) and putting the sermon into a strict form. My argument was that this form may represent a tradition and not necessarily just a reworking of Mark. For the Bountiful version we only have a late version since 3 Nephi is written by Mormon around 400 AD. 

So there's two things going on. First whether this is a problem for the Book of Mormon. It's not since the text is late. But the second issue is whether the form is a problem. It's not for the same reason but beyond that it may represent a repeated form possibly encoded in texts Matthew had access to. But of course for the Book of Mormon there's not a lot of problem.

The counter-argument I took you to be making is that whatever Jesus spoke, even if it were the same as what he spoke in Palestine, it'd undergo a different evolution. That would be a problem not just for Mark but definitely Matthew. To the degree the Book of Mormon quotes any NT texts, even if there isn't a chronological problem there's an textual evolutionary problem since the Nephites would create their own texts modifying and expanding on Jesus which shouldn't match anything in the NT.

My argument to that was that Jesus likely gave the same sermon dozens if not hundreds of times. There is no reason to assume it wouldn't have a form like Matthew and there's no good reason to assume the Matthew account simply created this out of whole cloth. Whatever structural influence you have for Matthew (such as dependence on Deuteronomy) could apply equally to Christ. Thus we shouldn't be surprised to find a similar structure in Bountiful. Further when the translation was done, if the original resembled Matthew it'd be fine to quote Matthew if it was close enough.

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Are you confusing plausible with possible? What makes it plausible? This sounds like speculation.

Well both are ambiguous terms. Normally I consider plausible to mean that it might not be the best explanation for the evidence but it's a reasonably high possibility. (Speaking qualitatively) That is it isn't quite unlikley. For possible I usually just mean we don't have compelling evidence to think it difficult to have happened. So loosely I use them in a spectrum of:

Definite - Likey - Plausible - Possible - Unlikely - Impossible

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It still looks to me like you're reading interpretations that came about centuries after Lehi back onto Lehi. Time moves forward, not backwards!

I confess I don't see that when all the sources I quoted were before or contemporary with Lehi. Then I justified this reading of those sources by noting it was a common reading in the pre-Christian era. What else can I provide? There's clear sources with a straightforward reading and evidence people adopted the straightforward reading. I'm rather at the stage of wondering what evidence you'd accept. I mean the Isaiah passages are pretty straightforward.

How do you think they were read at Lehi's time and why do you think that? Afterall the only readings you've provided thus far were Christian arguing that since they matched loosely Nephi's reading that Nephi's obviously anachronistic. Yet that reading I falsified by demonstrating pre-Christian examples. It seems to me at this point the burden is on you to support your claim it's anachronistic. 

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Fairly obvious to whom? Modern readers already primed with these later interpretations? The Messiah was supposed to be a liberating military leader, a king chosen by God. 

The interpretation makes sense in Joseph Smith's day, but it's completely out of place in Lehi's day.

But again, these are pre-Christian interpretations. It's likely you're completely dismissing the evidence that independent of Christ people interpreted it this way. More significantly even by the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt when there were huge incentives to interpret in a way that doesn't support Christians, the Jews still interpreted it in that fashion. That's a huge argument for it being a strong interpretation.

Again, what level of evidence do you need? It's starting to feel like you won't accept any evidence and don't think you need to make a positive argument at all for how Jews at the time of Jeremiah read it. To me it seems like you're reading late Jewish interpretations back onto Jeremiah. (See how two can play the same game?) You're being anachronistic since you're simply taking late Rabbinical Judaic interpretations and assuming that was how the text was read at the time of Jeremiah. Do you have any evidence for how the Messiah was viewed at the time of Jeremiah? After all the Jews have just as big an incentive to read Messianic passages as not applying to anyone Jesus-like as Christians do to make the Messiah Jesus.

No matter what you do, you sometime have to explain passages about the suffering servant dying in Isaiah 53. 

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I don't have the burden, I don't think. We already have a timeline for how these scriptures were interpreted and reinterpreted. I'm following the normal course of causality, while you're speculating that a late interpretation could have actually been much earlier based on no evidence whatsoever.

Come on. You're making just as many assumptions as I am. You're making a positive claim of how Isaiah 53 was originally interpreted. Trying to make a dodge by saying it's all about causality is a way of avoiding dealing with that positive claim. 

Now of course if you're not making a claim about Isaiah 53 at all, then all bets are off. But then of course you don't have anything to criticize Nephi's interpretation with.

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You're suggesting late ideas came earlier than the evidence suggests. You can of course believe that to be the case, but the burden to demonstrate this to be true is yours. My argument follows the actual course of history as far as it's known.

It's like you've not been reading what I've been writing. That's not my argument at all.

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Satan is the enemy of God and all righteousness in the BOM - not the case for Ha-Satan, the Satan Lehi would have known.

Again, you've just refused to even acknowledge and engage with the evidence I provided. Ha-Satan isn't the only figure in question. I even quoted the text Isaiah was quoting as evidence that Ha-Satan isn't the only figure in question. 

I mean it's fine if you just want to pretend all the evidence I presented never happened. But at a certain point I'm just going to say this isn't a conversation and you're just putting your fingers in your ears and repeating yourself. I'm fine if you don't find my evidence relevant, but I'd hope you'd at minimum have a reason for doing so.

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If you're going to reach for other ancient figures to try to bolster your case, why not Chinese or Indian mythology? Again you seem to cherry pick not only in time (and frequently way outside the time of Lehi) but also in space for ways to bring the Book of Mormon in its proper time and place.  I think the term is parallelomania.

Dude, the text Nephi is quoting is quoting these texts. These are not way outside of the time and culture of Lehi but are overwhelmingly accepted as the context for pre-exilic Israel. This isn't even controversial in academic circles. 

Again you're the one being anachronistic here trying to portray Hellenistic Judaic beliefs as the beliefs in pre-exilic Jerusalem against the overwhelming consensus of scholars. Worse you don't even feel like you have to offer a single bit of evidence for this belief.

To say this is "trying any ancient source to find parallels" is ridiculous. EVERY contemporary commentary on Isaiah accepts that Isaiah is quoting the text in question. Honestly it seems like you know a bit about Hellenistic Judaism and are just reading that back despite what all the history says.

I'm completely open to where I'm being speculative. It's just fascinating to me that you can't see where you are.

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We can accept that ancient peoples had stories about supernatural beings delivering them ancient texts, but a historical argument can't be made that it actually happened.

Yes, which is what I predicted. There's no logical problem here. The problem is the very idea that Jesus appeared to the Nephites which invalidates the entire book.