Where did the Book of Mormon come from?

[ttribe]

44 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Synonyms: overstatement, distortion, hype.

Have a great day!

Meh. [shrug]

[Bernard Gui]

15 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Meh. [shrug]

My sentiments exactly.

I have spent a lot of time researching the UVirginia on-line database of American literature and other such collections comparing the BoM and Joseph Smith's writings with those of late 18th and early 19th century American writers with the purpose of seeing how the BoM fits in as a typical writing of that time in America.  The words and images they commonly use to describe Native Americans are not found in the BoM. It is not at all what one would expect to find coming from that time and place.

Have a great day.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

15 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

There was next to nothing written about American moundbuilders. But as mentioned above, most people of that period believed the American moundbuilders were Tartarian moundbuilders who crossed at the Straits. So the material available at the time on the Malays, Tartars and Scythians seems to be a better fit.

I'm slowly slogging my way through Joseph de Guignes' "General History of Huns, Turks, Mogols, and other Western Tartars" These would have been the types of books that Americans would have been reading to understand the Native Americans better.

I know a bit about mound builders, a bit about Native American culture, and a bit about late 18th and 19th century American literature. The latter is full of romances, novels, dramas, travelogues, journals, so it's pretty easy to form an idea of the image writers of that time had of Native Americans and their culture. There are words they commonly use to describe it. The Book of Mormon does not use those words and images, and does not fit within that milieu. 

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

I answered in a later post. 

Um, no. 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

I know a bit about mound builders, a bit about Native American culture, and a bit about late 18th and 19th century American literature. The latter is full of romances, novels, dramas, travelogues, journals, so it's pretty easy to form an idea of the image writers of that time had of Native Americans and their culture. There are words they commonly use to describe it. The Book of Mormon does not use those words and images, and does not fit within that milieu. 

People in the 19th century didn’t believe the mound builders were Native Americans/Indians, hence they wouldn’t have used those common words. Not surprisingly, the Book of Mormon doesn’t either. 

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Bernard Gui said:

Um, no. 

Um, yes, but have a nice evening. 

[Rajah Manchou]

11 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

I know a bit about mound builders, a bit about Native American culture, and a bit about late 18th and 19th century American literature. The latter is full of romances, novels, dramas, travelogues, journals, so it's pretty easy to form an idea of the image writers of that time had of Native Americans and their culture. There are words they commonly use to describe it. The Book of Mormon does not use those words and images, and does not fit within that milieu. 

Correct, it does not use those words.

Americans in the early 19th century believed that Native Americans were, quite literally, Mongols, Tartars and Malays. Like fresh off the boat. So we see terms that were more common in the 18th and 19th century accounts of Mongols, Tartars and Malays.

This could be why Hugh Nibley saw the world of the Mongols so clearly in the Book of Mormon.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Correct, it does not use those words.

Americans in the early 19th century believed that Native Americans were, quite literally, Mongols, Tartars and Malays. Like fresh off the boat. So we see terms that were more common in the 18th and 19th century accounts of Mongols, Tartars and Malays.

This could be why Hugh Nibley saw the world of the Mongols so clearly in the Book of Mormon.

That’s what I’ve been trying to say. The “dearth” of those words is what you would expect from a pseudo history of the mound builders. 

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

That’s what I’ve been trying to say. The “dearth” of those words is what you would expect from a pseudo history of the mound builders. 

Then throw in the terms found in the Book of Mormon that we would expect to find only on the other side of the straits: elephants, silk, horses, chariots, swords, scimeters, sheep, etc.

A close reading of Samuel Mitchill's lectures on Native Americans reveals some interesting details that aren't far off from what we find in the Book of Mormon, if we simply replace the word Malays and Tartars for Nephites and Lamanites For example:

"It is impossible not to look back to the common ancestry of the Malays who formerly possessed the country between the Allegheny mountains and the river Mississippi, and those who now inhabit the islands of the Pacifick Ocean. All these considerations lead to the belief, that colonies of Australasians, or Malays, landed in North America, and penetrated across the continent, to the region lying between the Great Lakes and the Gulph of Mexico. There they resided, and constructed the fortifications, mounds, and other structures, which every person who beholds them admires. Think what a memorable spot is our Onondaga, where men of the Malay race from the southwest, and of the Tartar blood from the northwest, and of the Gothic stock from the northeast, have successively contended for supremacy and rule.”

Mithchill's lectures are full of this kind of stuff. Speaking of the artifacts found in the native mounds of Kentucky and Tennessee, Mitchill says “They are some of the most memorable of the antiquities that North America contains. The race or nation to which they belonged is extinct.”

My hypothesis has been that Australasians (also known as the Kumr/Kunlun) are the missing link in the Book of Mormon account. We don't hear much about it, but after Mitchill reviewed the characters on the Anthon Transcript, he identifies the characters as belonging to a specific (and extinct) oriental race, which he named [link]. But for some reason, nobody revealed the name of that nation. Why is that? The mystery of the Book of Mormon would no longer be a mystery, if only someone would fill in the ________. 

Edited March 24, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[JarMan]

19th Century Americans weren't the only ones talking about the Indians. In 1590 a Catholic priest named Jose de Acosta published an extensive work about the Indians called "The Natural and Moral History of the Indies" (Volume 1, Volume 2). He talks about a wide variety of issues based on his experience living there and researching the history. Some of the relevant Book of Mormon topics addressed are volcanism, earthquakes, land slides, mining, metallurgy, human sacrifice, medicinal herbs, weather, calendars, flora, fauna, beasts of burden, flocks, warfare, origin of the natives, kingship, regicide, succession, speeches given by kings, coronations, signs and wonders, nobility, soldiers, priests, idol worship, gods, burial practices, temples, afterlife, clothing, textiles, sacrifice of animals and first fruits, treatment of war captives, feasts, ceremonies, anointings, picture writing, records, forms of government, empires, catastrophic warfare and defeat, tribalism, migrations, seas, rivers, mountains, sea voyages, exploration, commerce, agriculture, tribute to kings, precious gems and stones, silk (yes, @Rajah Manchou, silk), liquor, wine, olives, and a whole host of other things. I've read several chapters equal to probably about a third of the whole thing. The list I compiled by perusing the table of contents.

[Rajah Manchou]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

19th Century Americans weren't the only ones talking about the Indians. In 1590 a Catholic priest named Jose de Acosta published an extensive work about the Indians called "The Natural and Moral History of the Indies" (Volume 1, Volume 2). He talks about a wide variety of issues based on his experience living there and researching the history. Some of the relevant Book of Mormon topics addressed are volcanism, earthquakes, land slides, mining, metallurgy, human sacrifice, medicinal herbs, weather, calendars, flora, fauna, beasts of burden, flocks, warfare, origin of the natives, kingship, regicide, succession, speeches given by kings, coronations, signs and wonders, nobility, soldiers, priests, idol worship, gods, burial practices, temples, afterlife, clothing, textiles, sacrifice of animals and first fruits, treatment of war captives, feasts, ceremonies, anointings, picture writing, records, forms of government, empires, catastrophic warfare and defeat, tribalism, migrations, seas, rivers, mountains, sea voyages, exploration, commerce, agriculture, tribute to kings, precious gems and stones, silk (yes, @Rajah Manchou, silk), liquor, wine, olives, and a whole host of other things. I've read several chapters equal to probably about a third of the whole thing. The list I compiled by perusing the table of contents.

Silk in America does make sense for your 17th century model, but I would guess silk and elephants and most of those items you listed were not the default material culture for the Ancient Americas as seen from the 1820s. Although John Ranking did speculate about Mongol armies being blown off course and landing in South America, with their silk and elephants.

You'll dig this one:

"Writing in the eighteenth century, Captain Hamilton states that the Jews "have a synagogue at Cochin, not far from the King's Palace, in which are carefully kept their Records, engraven on copper plates in Hebrew characters ; and when any of the characters decay, they are new cut, so that they can show their own History from the Reign of Nebuchadnezzar to this present time. Myn Heer Van Reeda, about the year 1695, had an Abstract of their History translated from the Hebrew into low Dutch. They declare themselves to be of the Tribe of Manasseh, a Part whereof was, by order of that haughty Conqueror Nebuchadnezzar, carried to the easternmost Province of his large Empire, which, it seems, reached as far as Cape Comerin, which journey 200,000 of them travelled in three years from their setting out of Babylon." - Castes and tribes of southern India

This Dutch guy was the first to write about the Cochin Jews and their copper plates, which by the 1810s had become brass plates in the accounts that spread through New England, triggering a wave of New Divinity, Arminian and Emmonite (Oliver Cowdery's great uncle) missionaries from Brown, Williams and Dartmouth to bring the Gospel to the natives of the Indies. Hiram's classmate, Levi Spalding (Solomon's nephew), was the first to go to the area where this Tribe of Manasseh was said to be, in Cape Comerin. Other American missionaries went further east, and in 1834 angels in white robes with golden books that appear as glowing letters on rocks started appearing to the locals.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Rajah Manchou]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

19th Century Americans weren't the only ones talking about the Indians. In 1590 a Catholic priest named Jose de Acosta published an extensive work about the Indians called "The Natural and Moral History of the Indies" (Volume 1, Volume 2).

Also need to consider that the earliest missionaries to the West Indies often considered it to be similar to the East Indies. The belief was that the Indies were connected and that the cultures were similar. It was all Boodists from Egypt spreading their magic Enochian hieroglyphs around the world. 

ETA: in checking Acosta's books, he says mulberry trees with silkworms were not found in the West Indies. They were brought there later from Spain via the East Indies, along with many of the items you listed above from the table of contents. This confirms that the earliest explorers in the West Indies were often confused about what was native and what had been brought there through the Spanish trade with the East Indies. As an example, there were Aztec and Mayan traders in Guam and the Philippines before Acosta arrived in America.

Remember the maps of Japan floating off the coast of Mexico and California being on the same longitude as Java? That was the understanding of geography Acosta would have had of the Indies. In his book, "more than a century before other Europeans learned of the Bering Strait, Acosta hypothesized that Latin America's indigenous peoples had migrated from Asia." [link]

Edited March 24, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[JarMan]

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Also need to consider that the earliest missionaries to the West Indies often considered it to be similar to the East Indies. The belief was that the Indies were connected and that the cultures were similar. It was all Boodists from Egypt spreading their magic Enochian hieroglyphs around the world. 

ETA: in checking Acosta's books, he says mulberry trees with silkworms were not found in the West Indies. They were brought there later from Spain via the East Indies, along with many of the items you listed above from the table of contents. This confirms that the earliest explorers in the West Indies were often confused about what was native and what had been brought there through the Spanish trade with the East Indies. As an example, there were Aztec and Mayan traders in Guam and the Philippines before Acosta arrived in America.

The book only mentions the mulberry trees being imported but not the silk. If you didn’t understand the dependence of silkworm on mulberry trees (as I didn’t) then the book makes it sound like the silkworms were native. And I disagree with your assessment that many of the items I listed were not native. I would be surprised if there were more than two or three besides silk. 

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Remember the maps of Japan floating off the coast of Mexico and California being on the same longitude as Java? That was the understanding of geography Acosta would have had of the Indies. In his book, "more than a century before other Europeans learned of the Bering Strait, Acosta hypothesized that Latin America's indigenous peoples had migrated from Asia." [link]

The earliest date in my proposed model is about 1635. By then Dutch mapmakers had made quite accurate maps of the East Indies, the Pacific Ocean, and the Americas. What they didn’t understand was Australia and Antarctica as those are shown lumped into one giant landmass. And they didn’t quite understand much of the far northern latitudes like the area around the Bering Sea, for example. 

On the theme of the Asian connection, Grotius did theorize that ancient Chinese came to the Americas by boat. I don’t know who he would have considered to be “Chinese” but it may have been people from a larger geographic area than what we know of as China today. 

As for Acosta’s views on the origin of the natives he talks about this extensively in Book 1 Chapters 18-25.

Edited March 24, 2018 by JarMan

[Rajah Manchou]

49 minutes ago, JarMan said:

The book only mentions the mulberry trees being imported but not the silk. If you didn’t understand the dependence of silkworm on mulberry trees (as I didn’t) then the book makes it sound like the silkworms were native.

As with the maps, it matters little what was known about the Americas before or during Acosta's time there, what matters is what Grotius would have known about the Americas. Did Grotius believe there were silkworms in America? Elephants? Horses?

"For it is certain that before the arrival of the Spaniards there were no horses in all America." - Hugo Grotius

It would seem unlikely that a man who was certain that there were no pre-Columbian horses in America would write a book that claimed there were horses in America. On the other hand, Grotius did understand that "Scythia is a country always full of horses, and almost all the Scythians are accustomed to ride on horseback." If Grotius did author the Book of Mormon as you propose, he must have intended the setting to be somewhere on the Scythian side of the Anian Strait.

50 minutes ago, JarMan said:

And I disagree with your assessment that many of the items I listed were not native. I would be surprised if there were more than two or three besides silk. 

I'd be surprised if you can find more than two or three things on that list that wouldn't have been native to everywhere in the world in 1590. (1) silk, (2) olives and (3) _______?

volcanism, earthquakes, land slides, mining, metallurgy, human sacrifice, medicinal herbs, weather, calendars, flora, fauna, beasts of burden, flocks, warfare, origin of the natives, kingship, regicide, succession, speeches given by kings, coronations, signs and wonders, nobility, soldiers, priests, idol worship, gods, burial practices, temples, afterlife, clothing, textiles, sacrifice of animals and first fruits, treatment of war captives, feasts, ceremonies, anointings, picture writing, records, forms of government, empires, catastrophic warfare and defeat, tribalism, migrations, seas, rivers, mountains, sea voyages, exploration, commerce, agriculture, tribute to kings, precious gems and stones, silk, liquor, wine, olives

[JarMan]

On 3/24/2018 at 2:22 AM, Rajah Manchou said:

As with the maps, it matters little what was known about the Americas before or during Acosta's time there, what matters is what Grotius would have known about the Americas. Did Grotius believe there were silkworms in America? Elephants? Horses?

"For it is certain that before the arrival of the Spaniards there were no horses in all America." - Hugo Grotius

It would seem unlikely that a man who was certain that there were no pre-Columbian horses in America would write a book that claimed there were horses in America. On the other hand, Grotius did understand that "Scythia is a country always full of horses, and almost all the Scythians are accustomed to ride on horseback." If Grotius did author the Book of Mormon as you propose, he must have intended the setting to be somewhere on the Scythian side of the Anian Strait.

The way I see it, the Book of Mormon isn’t intended to relate history. It’s more like a collection of inspired wisdom stories all woven together. We shouldn’t be surprised if the author takes some amount of poetic license in order to accomplish the larger purpose. After all, Shakespeare’s plays are known to have many intentional and unintentional anachronisms. I don’t think we need to insist that the author’s description of the Book of Mormon world exactly match any real world setting or that it be free of anachronism.

Having said all that, I don’t think there are horses in the Book of Mormon. At least not in the original. They are never mentioned in warfare which is where they would be most useful. I think the original Latin version mentioned a different animal (possibly using the native name for it), and the English translator rendered it “horse” since the context associated it with chariots. 

Interestingly, many of the Book of Mormon anachronisms are found in re-occurring lists. It seems like someone published a paper on this. (If anybody knows what I’m referring to, I’d appreciate a reference so I could go read it again.) Anyway, this may be an artifact of the translation process, indicate some sort of literary topos, or be some combination of the two. At any rate, a “fictional” setting, even though it may be based on a real location, essentially explains away almost all apparent anachronisms. To show a true anachronism somebody would need to show that certain information in the Book of Mormon was unavailable to my proposed author: the name of Joseph and his father, for example, in 2 Nephi 3.

On 3/24/2018 at 2:22 AM, Rajah Manchou said:

I'd be surprised if you can find more than two or three things on that list that wouldn't have been native to everywhere in the world in 1590. (1) silk, (2) olives and (3) _______?

volcanism, earthquakes, land slides, mining, metallurgy, human sacrifice, medicinal herbs, weather, calendars, flora, fauna, beasts of burden, flocks, warfare, origin of the natives, kingship, regicide, succession, speeches given by kings, coronations, signs and wonders, nobility, soldiers, priests, idol worship, gods, burial practices, temples, afterlife, clothing, textiles, sacrifice of animals and first fruits, treatment of war captives, feasts, ceremonies, anointings, picture writing, records, forms of government, empires, catastrophic warfare and defeat, tribalism, migrations, seas, rivers, mountains, sea voyages, exploration, commerce, agriculture, tribute to kings, precious gems and stones, silk, liquor, wine, olives

The reason I compiled this list was as a response to the idea that mound builder mythology had correlations to the Book of Mormon. Maybe it does—I haven’t researched this yet—but if it doesn’t have significantly more correlations to Acosta’s book (as just one example of how Indians were viewed in 17th Century Europe) then that indicates the correlations are probably not significant. This goes to the idea of placing controls on parallels. At the very least, I think my 17th Century model shows that 19th Century correlations are just not very impressive. 

Edited March 26, 2018 by JarMan

[Rajah Manchou]

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

The way I see it, the Book of Mormon isn’t intended to relate history. It’s more like a collection of inspired wisdom stories all woven together. We shouldn’t be surprised if the author takes some amount of poetic license in order to accomplish the larger purpose. After all, Shakespeare’s plays are known to have many intentional and unintentional anachronisms. I don’t think we need to insist that the author’s description of the Book of Mormon world exactly match any real world setting or that it be free of anachronism.ions are just not very impressive. 

If a fiction, I don't think 1 Nephi 13 allows us to date the text earlier than the departure of the Puritans for New England in 1620. I don't know if anybody before 1620 had the idea that 'gentiles' would escape captivity in Europe by fleeing to the wilderness in the New World.

It may be that these events as the rolled out in the Netherlands (Leiden in particular) would provide some motive for Grotius, or another Dutch author, but from what I can tell the Puritans in the Leiden group were actively anti-Arminian. But this is one thing that puzzles me about Nephi's vision.

1 Nephi 13:13: And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.

The Puritans weren't in captivity. They were free to worship and even publicly debate Calvinism vs Arminiamism in Leiden. That's hardly captivity. From what I gather, they left England and the Netherlands for economic reasons, and also to find a location where they could cultivate and preserve their spiritual identity. OTOH, Remonstrants/Arminians were imprisoned. But 1 Nephi 13 doesn't seem to be referring to them either. I don't know of any Arminians who fled to Puritan America to escape persecution. Given the extreme Calvinism in places like Salem, that would be somewhat counterproductive.

So who are these Gentiles going forth out of captivity across the waters to the New World? If they were the Calvinist Puritans, would enough be known to write them into a 17th century fiction? Would an Arminian write so glowingly of them? The wrath of God being upon the Mother Gentiles that gather against them upon the waters, their victory and subsequent prosperity, all seems anachronistic to the 1600s.

Edited March 26, 2018 by Rajah Manchou

[Nevo]

3 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

So who are these Gentiles going forth out of captivity across the waters to the New World? If they were the Calvinist Puritans, would enough be known to write them into a 17th century fiction? Would an Arminian write so glowingly of them? The wrath of God being upon the Mother Gentiles that gather against them upon the waters, their victory and subsequent prosperity, all seems anachronistic to the 1600s.

The Book of Mormon can also be read as a reaction to the 18th-century Enlightenment. Korihor voices skeptical arguments that were much more prominent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries than they were in 16th and the 17th centuries. Korihor makes sense in the age of Thomas Paine—not so much in the age of Hugo Grotius. The Book of Mormon wants to instill Christian faith and save the Bible at a time when both are under threat. Over against the Bible, the Book of Mormon traces its own provenance in painstaking detail and self-consciously furnishes affidavits attesting to its truthfulness.

Also, as I have noted many times before, the Book of Mormon contains a good deal of anti-Universalist rhetoric, which also suggests an early 19th century Sitz im Leben.

[JarMan]

16 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

If a fiction, I don't think 1 Nephi 13 allows us to date the text earlier than the departure of the Puritans for New England in 1620. I don't know if anybody before 1620 had the idea that 'gentiles' would escape captivity in Europe by fleeing to the wilderness in the New World.

It may be that these events as the rolled out in the Netherlands (Leiden in particular) would provide some motive for Grotius, or another Dutch author, but from what I can tell the Puritans in the Leiden group were actively anti-Arminian. But this is one thing that puzzles me about Nephi's vision.

1 Nephi 13:13: And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.

The Puritans weren't in captivity. They were free to worship and even publicly debate Calvinism vs Arminiamism in Leiden. That's hardly captivity. From what I gather, they left England and the Netherlands for economic reasons, and also to find a location where they could cultivate and preserve their spiritual identity. OTOH, Remonstrants/Arminians were imprisoned. But 1 Nephi 13 doesn't seem to be referring to them either. I don't know of any Arminians who fled to Puritan America to escape persecution. Given the extreme Calvinism in places like Salem, that would be somewhat counterproductive.

So who are these Gentiles going forth out of captivity across the waters to the New World? If they were the Calvinist Puritans, would enough be known to write them into a 17th century fiction? Would an Arminian write so glowingly of them? The wrath of God being upon the Mother Gentiles that gather against them upon the waters, their victory and subsequent prosperity, all seems anachronistic to the 1600s.

I don’t think we need to read 1 Nephi 13 in the traditional way. The Netherlands fought a war of independence against Spain for 80 years—the 80 Years War. So in one sense the mother country would be Spain and the people in captivity would be the Dutch. This was part of a larger Catholic/Protestant conflict that included England’s rebellion against the church under Henry VIII. This greater conflict included the famous battle against the Spanish Armada which the Dutch participated in with their English allies. Leading up to this famous battle we had the Catholic co-monarchs Mary I (Bloody Mary) and Phillip II of Spain and their severe repression of Protestants in England. So the English Protestants under the rule of these two can also be considered those who were in captivity to Spain and the Catholic Church.

This interpretation actuality works better than the traditional explanation with the rest of the chapter. Verse 5 talks about a great and abominable church that slays the saints and brings them into captivity. From Grotius’ perspective this would obviously be referring to the Catholic Church, the inquisition, and Catholic Spain’s repression of the Protestant Netherlands. From an English perspective this would refer to the Catholic Church and Phillip II and Bloody Mary’s mass execution of English Protestants. Verses 7-9 are similar to 17th Century Protestant descriptions of the Catholic Church. So what does the traditional interpretation say about these verses? Who is the great and abominable church? Which saints of God did they slay? Who did they bring into captivity?

Other things in this chapter indicate we are talking about the 16th and 17th Centuries, as well. Verse 17 implies warfare taking place on the water and on the land. Notice the water is mentioned first. The conflicts between Spain and the English/Dutch were primarily naval conflicts with the aforementioned Spanish Armada battle and also state-sponsored privateering playing a major role. But there were also significant land battles between the Spanish and the Dutch. Verses 18 and 19 mention others that were gathered together with the mother country. This could refer to the Portugese who were allied with Spain and played their part in harassing the Dutch and English during these conflicts and also to the Catholic League that aided the Spanish cause in this conflict. So those who went out of captivity to the new world would have been the Protestant English and Dutch, the mother gentiles were Spain and other Catholic countries, and the great and abominable church was the Catholics. Again, I think this explanation fits more closely with the text than the traditional model. 

Edited March 27, 2018 by JarMan

[JarMan]

7 hours ago, Nevo said:

The Book of Mormon can also be read as a reaction to the 18th-century Enlightenment. Korihor voices skeptical arguments that were much more prominent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries than they were in 16th and the 17th centuries. Korihor makes sense in the age of Thomas Paine—not so much in the age of Hugo Grotius. The Book of Mormon wants to instill Christian faith and save the Bible at a time when both are under threat. Over against the Bible, the Book of Mormon traces its own provenance in painstaking detail and self-consciously furnishes affidavits attesting to its truthfulness.

Also, as I have noted many times before, the Book of Mormon contains a good deal of anti-Universalist rhetoric, which also suggests an early 19th century Sitz im Leben.

Thanks for the challenging post. I will do some research on these topics. What do you see in the Book of Mormon as being anti-Universalist? Some have made the argument the Book of Mormon is pro-Universalist. Personally I would describe it more as Inclusivist (which, by the way, is very much 17th Century).

[Nevo]

4 hours ago, JarMan said:

What do you see in the Book of Mormon as being anti-Universalist?

Here are a few excerpts from a paper I wrote several years ago:

Quote

By the 1820s, Universalism—the view that all people would ultimately be saved in the kingdom of God—was experiencing unprecedented growth in upstate New York. According to one of the preeminent historians of the region, Universalism “developed rapidly . . . with the increased tide of hill-country New Englanders who migrated in the years following 1815,” so that by 1823, there were nearly ninety Universalist congregations in western New York alone. In 1830, the year the Book of Mormon was published, there were more Universalists in New York than in any other state. Sermons, books, pamphlets, and newspapers attacking and defending the doctrine of universal salvation proliferated. Proponents of Universalism tended to emphasize God’s love and mercy over against his desire to punish the sinner. They rejected the notion of endless punishment for the wicked, maintaining that God would eventually restore the whole human family to holiness and happiness. Defenders of the orthodox position argued that sin against an infinite being required an infinite—that is, endless—punishment, and that the demands of divine justice could only be appeased by the infinite atonement of Jesus Christ. Therefore, to deny endless punishment for the unrepentant  was to deny God’s justice and the efficacy of Christ’s atonement. . . .

That Nehor preached universal salvation is clear. This identification was equally apparent to early readers of the Book of Mormon. In what LDS historian Grant Underwood informs us is "one of the few instances where [early Mormons] explicitly link[ed] Book of Mormon individuals or ideas to the contemporary religious scene," a reference guide to the Book of Mormon published in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1835, lists as its first entry for the book of Alma, "Nehor the Universalian." E. D. Howe’s 1834 exposé, Mormonism Unvailed, similarly remarked: "the name of our ancient Universalist is called Nehor." Dan Vogel has suggested that the Nehor episode "could be seen as historicizing the attitude of some orthodox Americans that Universalism was a threat to public safety." Andrew Croswell, a Boston pastor, called Universalism a "murdering gospel" in a 1775 tract, warning that if it was allowed to spread "thousands and tens of thousands will be marder’d by it." An 1820 article in the New York Methodist Magazine expressed similar fears: "[L]et it be inculcated on all classes in society, that a man may do as he will, or commit what wickedness he pleases in this life, and that he will not be punished in the next, or what amounts to the same thing, that his punishment will be only for a limited duration, and then who can pronounce himself safe from the hand of the assassin? What security has any man, that he will not be murdered n his bed, by the villain, who believes and declares there is no future punishment?" In 1824, the Herald of Salvation, a Universalist periodical based in Watertown, New York, quoted a local minister as saying that "none have espoused the doctrine of Universalism, who have not either committed, or intend to commit, a capital offence." . . .

in Alma 39-42, Alma uses many of the arguments employed by orthodox preachers to combat Universalism in Joseph Smith’s day, even echoing their phraseology in places. In a passage that sounds as though it could just as well have been directed at Elhanan Winchester, Alma tells his son Corianton: "Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness . . . Is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature? O, my son, this is not the case; but the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish—good for that which is good; righteous for that which is righteous; just for that which is just . . . therefore, the word restoration more fully condemneth the sinner, and justifieth him not at all" (Alma 41:10-13, 15). As Grant Underwood has observed, Alma’s admonition not to "suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness" would have struck nineteenth-century readers as a "particularly pointed" reference to Universalism, "in light of the Universalist slogan about the restoration of all to 'holiness' and 'happiness.'"

Alma then shifts his attention to the heart of the matter: "And now, my son, I perceive there is somewhat more which doth worry your mind . . . concerning the justice of God in the punishment of the sinner; for ye do try to suppose that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery" (Alma 42:1). Here Alma addresses a question of crucial importance to the Universalism debate: how can God, as a loving and merciful Parent, condemn any of his children to endless misery? Alma’s response follows the traditional orthodox position. Adam and Eve became subject to death in order that "a time [might be] granted unto man to repent, yea, a probationary time,"—for if Adam had been allowed to partake of the tree of life after his transgression "he would have lived forever, according to the word of God, having no space for repentance . . . and the great plan of salvation would have been frustrated" (vv. 4-5). Being "cut off both temporally and spiritually from the presence of the Lord," Adam and Eve "became subjects to follow after their own will" (v. 7). However, because man had brought upon himself his fallen state by his own disobedience, "according to justice, the plan of redemption could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance of men in this probationary state . . . for except it were for these conditions, mercy could not take effect except it should destroy the work of justice. Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God" (vv. 12-13). "Now, the plan of mercy," Alma continues, "could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also" (v. 15).

There is much here that echoes nineteenth-century pulpit rhetoric against Universalism. The idea that this life is a state of probation figured in many anti-Universalist sermons as a corrective to Universalist claims that one might still repent after death. Cyrus Mann’s 1818 pamphlet, The Future Punishment of the Wicked Certain and Endless, asserted that "throughout the whole bible, the present is represented as our only state of probation." A sermon published in the Methodist Magazine in 1823 lays particular emphasis on this idea: "The present is a probationary state for the kingdom of heaven. The future is a state of retribution . . . none can be saved in the future state who are not prepared for the kingdom of heaven in this. . . . Every thing which we can conceive necessary to constitute a state of probation, belongs to man’s state in the world. Here life and death are set before him . . . The gospel is preached to him, and the Holy Spirit helpeth his infirmities. He is told that this state will soon end, and that his future state will be determined by the deeds done in this. These things indicate a state of probation as clearly as any thing can."

Alma’s discussion of God’s justice and mercy also closely resembles nineteenth-century orthodox treatments of the subject. In an 1822 sermon attacking Universalism, Timothy Merritt, a Methodist minister, argued that "if mankind are under the law of God, there must, in the very nature of things, be a penalty for the breach of the law . . . If we incur the penalty of the law by transgression, that penalty must be executed either on us or on our substitute. If on us, then no favor is shown us; but if on our substitute, the way is opened, and mercy may be extended to us." Christ’s suffering for us, in our stead, "[gave] exercise to that mercy and grace which otherwise would have been prevented by the unsatisfied demands of the law upon us." Thus, "the atonement was not made to render God merciful to us, but to satisfy the claims which his justice had against us as transgressors, and open the way by which he might extend mercy to us consistently with his character as Lawgiver and Judge."

The idea that God’s mercy cannot destroy his justice or he would cease to be God (Alma 42:13, 22, 25) is also echoed in orthodox writings. An article appearing in the Utica Christian Magazine in 1813, for example, argued that God’s justice is essential to his nature; therefore, "God can no more disregard his justice in his conduct toward his creatures, than he can deny his own name, or destroy his moral perfection. If God had saved sinners from threatened and deserved punishment without an atonement, he would have sacrificed his justice, and have ruined his character and government." Or as Cyrus Mann put it: "Future punishment . . . is as certain to the finally impenitent, as that God is possessed of justice, or as certain as the existence of God." Josiah Priest argued along similar lines in 1826: if God’s attributes are essential to his nature, and if God is just, "[can] a being necessarily just, suspend his justice? . . . If mercy can overcome justice, what is become of Omnipotence by which justice is supported?"

 

Edited March 27, 2018 by Nevo

[JarMan]

2 hours ago, Nevo said:

Here are a few excerpts from a paper I wrote several years ago:

 

I will get back to you on Korihor, but the Alma chapters you cite can also be seen as an exposition of the governmental theory of atonement. This has been noted by Terryl Givens and others. The governmental theory of atonement is associated with Hugo Grotius. As I pointed out earlier in the thread, 19th Century American Protestantism directly descended from 16th and 17th Century European Protestantism so it should not be surprising that  religious parallels in the Book of Mormon to one of these cultures will also often times be manifest in the other.

[Rajah Manchou]

3 hours ago, Nevo said:

a reference guide to the Book of Mormon published in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1835, lists as its first entry

Is this available online anywhere?

[Rajah Manchou]

17 hours ago, Nevo said:

Also, as I have noted many times before, the Book of Mormon contains a good deal of anti-Universalist rhetoric, which also suggests an early 19th century Sitz im Leben.

So Joseph Smith, with the support of his Universalist family, wrote an anti-universalist tract to rescue the Bible from the threat of universalist theologies like those found in Mormonism two years after the publication of the Book of Mormon. This is what Brigham Young said about D&C 76, revealed in 1832:

"When God revealed to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon that there was a place prepared for all, according to the light they had received and their rejection of evil and practice of good, it was a great trial to many, and some apostatized because God was not going to send to everlasting punishment heathens and infants, but had a place of salvation, in due time, for all, and would bless the honest and virtuous and truthful, whether they ever belonged to any church or not. It was a new doctrine to this generation, and many stumbled at it." - from Universalism and the Revelations of Joseph Smith

Its difficult for me to fathom anyone could do such a massive Universalist flip-flop two years after writing all that nuanced anti-Universalist rhetoric.

Do you believe Joseph Smith was the author of both the Book of Mormon and D&C 76? 

[hope_for_things]

5 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

So Joseph Smith, with the support of his Universalist family, wrote an anti-universalist tract to rescue the Bible from the threat of universalist theologies like those found in Mormonism two years after the publication of the Book of Mormon. This is what Brigham Young said about D&C 76, revealed in 1832:

"When God revealed to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon that there was a place prepared for all, according to the light they had received and their rejection of evil and practice of good, it was a great trial to many, and some apostatized because God was not going to send to everlasting punishment heathens and infants, but had a place of salvation, in due time, for all, and would bless the honest and virtuous and truthful, whether they ever belonged to any church or not. It was a new doctrine to this generation, and many stumbled at it." - from Universalism and the Revelations of Joseph Smith

Its difficult for me to fathom anyone could do such a massive Universalist flip-flop two years after writing all that nuanced anti-Universalist rhetoric.

Do you believe Joseph Smith was the author of both the Book of Mormon and D&C 76? 

For the same reason that we find anti Masonic sentiments in the BoM and later many Masonic ideas were brought into Mormonism.  Mormonism isn't internally coherent.  It's all over the place with respect to these concepts, and there really isn't any systematized theology.  Those are my two cents, but I suspect that Nevo will have a much more intelligent answer to your query.  :-)  

[Nevo]

9 hours ago, JarMan said:

I will get back to you on Korihor, but the Alma chapters you cite can also be seen as an exposition of the governmental theory of atonement. This has been noted by Terryl Givens and others. The governmental theory of atonement is associated with Hugo Grotius. As I pointed out earlier in the thread, 19th Century American Protestantism directly descended from 16th and 17th Century European Protestantism so it should not be surprising that  religious parallels in the Book of Mormon to one of these cultures will also often times be manifest in the other.

I don't dispute that, but in the case of Alma 39–42, you have Alma expounding the governmental theory of atonement to counter specific Universalist claims: namely, that God will eventually "restore" everyone to "happiness" and that it would be unjust of God to consign sinners to endless misery. These claims, and Alma's responses, were characteristic of the Universalism debate raging in the Burned-Over District in the 1820s—something that was not lost on contemporaries, by the way. Among the "great controversies" that Alexander Campbell sarcastically deemed the Book of Mormon to have decided was "eternal punishment."