Could the Book of Mormon be a 17th Century pious fraud?

[JarMan]

20 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The tower, or rather the confounding of languages, is mentioned quite often. It was a favorite theme of the Jesuits who were hard at work 'translating' Indian, Chinese and American history to accommodate their efforts. This effort to translate 'native books' as a means of conversion extended well into the 19th century, and I would argue, culminates at Dartmouth where Solomon Spaulding, Ethan Smith, Hiram Smith, and Levi Spaulding studied the curriculum (which included a fair amount of Grotius) authored by the cousin of Joseph Smith's grandfather. Joseph Smith was too young of course, but the native American missions centered at Dartmouth were waaaay closer to Palmyra than the Medieval Netherlands.

I'm not sure the 17th century Dutch prophet model is the only place where all the stars align.  

For all the people you just mentioned there’s just so much we don’t know about their world views. The best we can do is place certain ideas in their general environment. They haven’t left behind an extensive body of work such that we can dig through it and compare it to the Book of Mormon. Or if they have, I’m pretty confident the scholars looking for a 19th Century connection would have found the connections by now. 

To me this Dartmouth connection could serve to get the manuscript from Europe to Joseph 200 years later. But I don’t think you’ve shown their ideas are similar enough or comprehensive enough to encompass the Book of Mormon. And then of course you’ve got the Early Modern English to account for. 

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

For all the people you just mentioned there’s just so much we don’t know about their world views. The best we can do is place certain ideas in their general environment. They haven’t left behind an extensive body of work such that we can dig through it and compare it to the Book of Mormon. Or if they have, I’m pretty confident the scholars looking for a 19th Century connection would have found the connections by now. 

To me this Dartmouth connection could serve to get the manuscript from Europe to Joseph 200 years later. But I don’t think you’ve shown their ideas are similar enough or comprehensive enough to encompass the Book of Mormon. And then of course you’ve got the Early Modern English to account for. 

Yes, their general environment was 20 miles from Joseph Smith. 

I'm having trouble understanding how Grotius solves the problems that all the other author theories could not solve.

I mean, couldn't we also identify Solomon Spaulding as an 18th century prophet who translated the Book of Mormon text which was then transmitted to a rock in Joseph Smith's hat? That would resolve all the problems scholars have with the Spaulding Theory. Or better yet, why can't we just say our hypothetical author was named Moroni, a 5th century American prophet?

[Glenn101]

10 hours ago, JarMan said:

In my model Joseph Smith reads the 17th Century English text off the seer stone. Alternately, the 17th Century English text is preserved and comes into JS's possession. What could be more straightforward? Seriously, I haven't heard a better explanation than this.

That is the understanding that is pretty much the norm. Looking here there and everywhere for the source of that text is and will be an exercise in superfluity because none of the models account for everything. But being translated by the gift and power of God does. Simple,, straightforward. (It does not answer the question why? but does answer the question how?)

Glenn

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The mysteries of the Book of Mormon are no more unanswerable than the mystery behind who wrote the (pseudo) Book of Jasher, the Ezourvedam, the Chatre Bhadre Shasta (pretty much the Plan of Salvation word for word written in India), or those other Mormon golden plates of Rajah Manchou, which are so very obviously a hoax for us true Mormons. Or even the 300+ page manuscript written in a strange 17th century script that ended up buried underneath Steven Mack's business partner's house in Detroit. 

We don't torture ourselves searching for the true authors of all these equally unique texts. How many Mormons even know about Rajah Manchou's Hill of Promise and the plates buried within. I'd say less than 1%. Yet somehow the mysteries of the Book of Mormon are a source of nonstop entertainment.

To me there is only one foundational mystery and that is whether or not we should adjust our lives according to its teachings and why we would do that in the first place.

The rest might as well be a Von Daniken tale  about space aliens if all we are interested in is entertainment.

We might as well be discussing "Chariots of the Gods" searching for "true history".   If it is not reasonably justified to believe in the book enough to change our lives, it might as well be a video game

And no discussion of history can justify the "truth" of true principles of morality and ethics.   No discussion of history can give us a reason to get out of bed in the morning unless you are getting out of bed to watch star wars movies or decipher hieroglyphics.  Fun and interesting stuff but not what gives you the meaning of your life.

And a book that can genuinely be proven to be old does not mean it is scripture.  The question is not finding other versions of the "Plan of Salvation" which are historical, the question is whether or not the Plan of Salvation should be a force in our lives and whether or not it is from God or if He even exists to give such a message.   THAT is the real mystery here.

Von Daniken finds entertaining parallels too but what do they teach us?

Edited February 16, 2018 by mfbukowski

[JarMan]

6 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Yes, their general environment was 20 miles from Joseph Smith. 

I'm having trouble understanding how Grotius solves the problems that all the other author theories could not solve.

I mean, couldn't we also identify Solomon Spaulding as an 18th century prophet who translated the Book of Mormon text which was then transmitted to a rock in Joseph Smith's hat? That would resolve all the problems scholars have with the Spaulding Theory. Or better yet, why can't we just say our hypothetical author was named Moroni, a 5th century American prophet?

Grotius is not part of this model to solve a problem per se. He's part of it because every bit of the Book of Mormon points to him. This is purely an evidence driven model. . . not a model to justify my pre-existing personal beliefs. In fact it conflicts with my personal beliefs. (If I wanted a model that conformed to my personal beliefs I would be pushing the standard mesoamerican apologetic model.) This is a pretty straightforward case of whodunnit. The evidence doesn't point convincingly to Solomon Spaulding or anybody else in Joseph's environment.

[JarMan]

6 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

That is the understanding that is pretty much the norm. Looking here there and everywhere for the source of that text is and will be an exercise in superfluity because none of the models account for everything. But being translated by the gift and power of God does. Simple,, straightforward. (It does not answer the question why? but does answer the question how?)

Glenn

Not many years ago the stone in a hat method wouldn't have qualified as "by the gift and power of God" in many people's minds. It still doesn't for some people. I believe God created the universe and everything in it but that doesn't mean I think science should stop trying to understand astronomy or evolution or geology or any of the other sciences. By the same token, just because the Book of Mormon was brought forth by God doesn't mean we shouldn't try to determine what natural processes occurred to make this happen. If it so happens that an actual 17th Century manuscript came into Joseph's hands and is the basis for the Book of Mormon, this doesn't change my opinion that this was done by the gift and power of God.

[JarMan]

58 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

To me there is only one foundational mystery and that is whether or not we should adjust our lives according to its teachings and why we would do that in the first place.

The rest might as well be a Von Daniken tale  about space aliens if all we are interested in is entertainment.

We might as well be discussing "Chariots of the Gods" searching for "true history".   If it is not reasonably justified to believe in the book enough to change our lives, it might as well be a video game

And no discussion of history can justify the "truth" of true principles of morality and ethics.   No discussion of history can give us a reason to get out of bed in the morning unless you are getting out of bed to watch star wars movies or decipher hieroglyphics.  Fun and interesting stuff but not what gives you the meaning of your life.

And a book that can genuinely be proven to be old does not mean it is scripture.  The question is not finding other versions of the "Plan of Salvation" which are historical, the question is whether or not the Plan of Salvation should be a force in our lives and whether or not it is from God or if He even exists to give such a message.   THAT is the real mystery here.

Von Daniken finds entertaining parallels too but what do they teach us?

I think you are making some incorrect assumptions about peoples' motivations for engaging in this exercise.

Part of the problem in this discussion is that we Mormons think the Book of Mormon is "our" scripture. We understand it as coming forth from an angel to a modern prophet and that story cannot be easily separated from, for instance, the restoration of the priesthood keys by angels and the visitation of the Father and the Son in the sacred grove. But I think the Book of Mormon is actually intended for a much larger audience. . . an audience that doesn't necessarily accept Joseph as a prophet or the LDS Church as the true church. But in order for this appeal to widen, people are going to have to understand the Book of Mormon's coming forth in a different way than we Mormons have traditionally understood it. In order for the Book of Mormon to takes its rightful place in the globally recognized canon of inspired wisdom stories (as if there really is such a precise thing) people are going to need to understand the non-supernatural processes that actually occurred, meaning that somebody wrote it down at some point in time before it fell from Joseph's lips. Imagine the interest that would be generated world-wide if a 17th Century Book of Mormon manuscript was discovered. Imagine what it would mean to the Mormon community. We could possibly have the lost 116 pages restored. Possibly even the sealed contents brought forth. But short of an actual manuscript, what if scholars reached a consensus that the Book of Mormon was a 17th Century document produced in Europe? It would become required study in every religious department of every university in the west. In short, it would be taken seriously by people who now have virtually no reason to even consider it.

[cdowis]

48 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I think you are making some incorrect assumptions about peoples' motivations for engaging in this exercise.

Part of the problem in this discussion is that we Mormons think the Book of Mormon is "our" scripture. We understand it as coming forth from an angel to a modern prophet and that story cannot be easily separated from, for instance, the restoration of the priesthood keys by angels and the visitation of the Father and the Son in the sacred grove. But I think the Book of Mormon is actually intended for a much larger audience. . . an audience that doesn't necessarily accept Joseph as a prophet or the LDS Church as the true church. 

He has several videos about the "Baptist" Book of Mormon.

[JarMan]

1 hour ago, cdowis said:

He has several videos about the "Baptist" Book of Mormon.

This is remarkable. I've never heard of this guy before. Thanks for posting.

From the video: Sometimes I tell my baptist buddies, "The Book of Mormon is more baptist than the baptist hymnal."

In support of that, here's an article that identifies 5 Christian denominations that follow Arminianism. Number 1 is Baptists.

I have been making the case that the Book of Mormon is basically Arminian, particularly in its soteriology. Here is a paper originally published in Sunstone  several years ago that makes the case much better than I have.

Edited February 16, 2018 by JarMan

[Glenn101]

3 hours ago, JarMan said:

Not many years ago the stone in a hat method wouldn't have qualified as "by the gift and power of God" in many people's minds. It still doesn't for some people. I believe God created the universe and everything in it but that doesn't mean I think science should stop trying to understand astronomy or evolution or geology or any of the other sciences. By the same token, just because the Book of Mormon was brought forth by God doesn't mean we shouldn't try to determine what natural processes occurred to make this happen. If it so happens that an actual 17th Century manuscript came into Joseph's hands and is the basis for the Book of Mormon, this doesn't change my opinion that this was done by the gift and power of God.

I would have some problems with that because it does not comport with the story that Moroni told, as relayed by Joseph Smith.

Glenn

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

Grotius is not part of this model to solve a problem per se. He's part of it because every bit of the Book of Mormon points to him. This is purely an evidence driven model. . . not a model to justify my pre-existing personal beliefs. In fact it conflicts with my personal beliefs. (If I wanted a model that conformed to my personal beliefs I would be pushing the standard mesoamerican apologetic model.) This is a pretty straightforward case of whodunnit. The evidence doesn't point convincingly to Solomon Spaulding or anybody else in Joseph's environment.

Just a 17th century genius ghost.

In fact a ghost who seems to be omniscient.   Like maybe the "HOLY Ghost".

Simple and straightforward as can be.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, JarMan said:

This is remarkable. I've never heard of this guy before. Thanks for posting.

From the video: Sometimes I tell my baptist buddies, "The Book of Mormon is more baptist than the baptist hymnal."

In support of that, here's an article that identifies 5 Christian denominations that follow Arminianism. Number 1 is Baptists.

I have been making the case that the Book of Mormon is basically Arminian, particularly in its soteriology. Here is a paper originally published in Sunstone  several years ago that makes the case much better than I have.

Clearly this guy figured out this 17th century ghost problem then because all literature has to have the right historical provenance to be correct.

 

[JarMan]

6 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Clearly this guy figured out this 17th century ghost problem then because all literature has to have the right historical provenance to be correct.

 

There is no ghost in my model. Did you not read my explanation on the previous page?

[Rajah Manchou]

6 hours ago, JarMan said:

I But I think the Book of Mormon is actually intended for a much larger audience. . . an audience that doesn't necessarily accept Joseph as a prophet or the LDS Church as the true church. 

This is certainly true. But let's say it can be shown that this hypothetical 16th/17th century prophet intended the opening narrative of the Book of Mormon to be the Indies, which were known to Grotius (source) and everybody else in that period be the islands of Southeast Asia and the Americas.

Voila

More than half of the world's population is now included in the intended audience of the Book of Mormon. Would it not make sense that God intended it all along? I'd guess if this perspective were adopted, the Church would be nearing 1 billion within 100 years. 







 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 17, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Robert F. Smith]

38 minutes ago, JarMan said:

There is no ghost in my model. Did you not read my explanation on the previous page?

No soup for him today.  

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

................This is a pretty straightforward case of whodunnit. ...................................

So, if we were to find a 17th Latin MS in the Bodleian at Oxford, which told the Book of Mormon story, and which included the Book of Lehi (Liber Lehi), then we would virtually have the missing 116 English pages.  Then, if it could be proven not to be a forgery, would that mean mass conversions of Jesuits?

[JarMan]

3 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I would have some problems with that because it does not comport with the story that Moroni told, as relayed by Joseph Smith.

Glenn

Well I would have some problems with it too. But it appears to me that at least some of what Joseph has said about his earliest experiences with divine beings contains some amount of later expansion. I’m not sure what to take at face value. 

[mfbukowski]

40 minutes ago, JarMan said:

There is no ghost in my model. Did you not read my explanation on the previous page?

They did not sink in.

I must absolutely admit that the BOM clearly agrees with the kind of pragmatism Grotius displays in his philosophy, and Alma 32 is actually quite like something Grotius could have written.

So then Grotius is the author of the BOM, and it is about the Indians?  The book is then essentially inspired fiction not compiled by the person Mormon and delivered by Moroni, but a story written by Grotius?

Or did Grotius "translate" it?

And Joseph got the translation- how?

I was not making the link between Grotius' philosophy of a kind of pre-pragmatism and the pragmatism of the BOM, that is an interesting point, but I am still not getting the Joseph Smith connection.

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

Well I would have some problems with it too. But it appears to me that at least some of what Joseph has said about his earliest experiences with divine beings contains some amount of later expansion. I’m not sure what to take at face value. 

Ah, you are sepaking of the differeing accounts of the First Vision??? I just tend to take at face value his words that he penned (or probably dictated) that he wished to promulgate as the official (inspired) version, as he stated "I have been induced to write this history, to disabuse the public mind, and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts, as they have transpired, in relation both to myself and the Church, so far as I have such facts in my possession."

I used the word inspired because there are many elements that would depend upon memory which has been proven to be an unreliable document and I do feel strongly that the version published in the Pearl of great Price is inspired. That still leaves us mortals the option of seeking that spiritual confirmation or struggling to understand the many otherwise puzzling and inexplainable things that are continually being uncovered within the text of the Book of Mormon, etc.

Glenn

[JarMan]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

They did not sink in.

I must absolutely admit that the BOM clearly agrees with the kind of pragmatism Grotius displays in his philosophy, and Alma 32 is actually quite like something Grotius could have written.

So then Grotius is the author of the BOM, and it is about the Indians?  The book is then essentially inspired fiction not compiled by the person Mormon and delivered by Moroni, but a story written by Grotius?

Or did Grotius "translate" it?

And Joseph got the translation- how?

I was not making the link between Grotius' philosophy of a kind of pre-pragmatism and the pragmatism of the BOM, that is an interesting point, but I am still not getting the Joseph Smith connection.

Grotius authored it. However, I’ve speculated that he was inspired to know, on some level, the actual events that occurred in the Americas. Perhaps his level of inspiration was limited to the knowledge that two great civilizations had been destroyed because of wickedness, having once had been God’s chosen peoples. Perhaps he learned through revelation substantially more historical details than that.

The original would presumably have been written in Latin and then subsequently translated into English by one of his contemporaries. Fast forward 200 years and Joseph reads it to his scribes either using the seer stone to “see” the text (the manuscript may or may not have been extant) or by reading a physical manuscript that had come into his possession or a combination of both.

[JarMan]

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

This is certainly true. But let's say it can be shown that this hypothetical 16th/17th century prophet intended the opening narrative of the Book of Mormon to be the Indies, which were known to Grotius (source) and everybody else in that period be the islands of Southeast Asia and the Americas.

Voila

More than half of the world's population is now included in the intended audience of the Book of Mormon. Would it not make sense that God intended it all along? I'd guess if this perspective were adopted, the Church would be nearing 1 billion within 100 years. 







 

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

So, if we were to find a 17th Latin MS in the Bodleian at Oxford, which told the Book of Mormon story, and which included the Book of Lehi (Liber Lehi), then we would virtually have the missing 116 English pages.  Then, if it could be proven not to be a forgery, would that mean mass conversions of Jesuits?

The thing is I think this would “reset” the Book of Mormon back to the plain text for new readers outside Mormonism. We have the various churches in the LDS movement that have almost 200 years of interpreting and reinterpreting and working it into their cultures given a 19th Century American Protestant starting point. But what if your starting point was, say, 21st Century Eastern Orthodoxy? Or even a non-Christian religion? As I mentioned before we tend to look at the Book of Mormon as “our” scripture. Similarly the Jews think of the OT as “their” scripture. But the OT has been adopted by many other religions and interpreted in many different ways. That’s ultimately the future I am imagining for the Book of Mormon. Perhaps it can even accomplish its stated purpose of convincing the Jews. 

[JarMan]

35 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Ah, you are sepaking of the differeing accounts of the First Vision??? I just tend to take at face value his words that he penned (or probably dictated) that he wished to promulgate as the official (inspired) version, as he stated "I have been induced to write this history, to disabuse the public mind, and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts, as they have transpired, in relation both to myself and the Church, so far as I have such facts in my possession."

I used the word inspired because there are many elements that would depend upon memory which has been proven to be an unreliable document and I do feel strongly that the version published in the Pearl of great Price is inspired. That still leaves us mortals the option of seeking that spiritual confirmation or struggling to understand the many otherwise puzzling and inexplainable things that are continually being uncovered within the text of the Book of Mormon, etc.

Glenn

Yeah, the First Vision accounts are part of it. Also, when I read the official JSH account of Moroni’s visits I can’t help but notice the level of detail JS is remembering after all those years. And the concept that the visitor was the Moroni of the Book of Mormon seems to have developed over time after going through some weird permutations. It seems likely to me that Joseph’s memory of these earlier events was strongly influenced by later events. So I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to learn that actual events were different than what Joseph recorded years later. 

[Glenn101]

3 minutes ago, JarMan said:

Also, when I read the official JSH account of Moroni’s visits I can’t help but notice the level of detail JS is remembering after all those years.

That is one reason I believe that it is an inspired account. The other reason is spiritual.

A seventeenth century manuscript lacks the explanatory power "by the gift and power of God" does. Of course, one wold have to believe in God, Jesus, and angels also. I seem to fall into that category.

Glenn

[Rajah Manchou]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

Grotius authored it. However, I’ve speculated that he was inspired to know, on some level, the actual events that occurred in the Americas. 

I'm all for new models, but there is still that same glaring problem with this one: Grotius was opposed to the idea that Israelites migrated to the Americas. He was also aware that there were no horses in the Americas.

It doesn't seem at all likely that a person who is on record saying there are no Israelites or horses in the Americas would author a book about Israelites and horses in the Americas. If he was inspired to know differently, wouldn't he change his views on the matter? From what I can tell, he always believed the Americas were populated by a Germanic people in the north and Chinese in the south, with some Ethiopians mixed in there somewhere. No Hebrews, Israelites or Jews. Almost as if Grotius foreshadowed criticism of the Book of Mormon claim that Israelites (with horses) founded America.

How can this be explained?

Edited February 17, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Rajah Manchou]

Another challenge to this exercise is defining 17th and 18th century geographic terms. Grotius and others in the 17th century usually lumped all the New World together into a geographic region called the Indies. That vast Pacific Ocean that so clearly separates the West Indies (America) from the East Indies (Southeast Asia) in our minds, was nothing more than a narrow strait to Grotius, a few miles across. This misunderstanding is the main reason why most of the theories about the origins of the Native Americans include lost tribes -- Nephthalites as they were known -- arriving from the Great Tartary and Malay. 

In the map to the left, Brema (Burma) is just a short canoe ride to California (Mendocino).