Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

Where did the Book of Mormon come from?


Recommended Posts

14 minutes ago, Physics Guy said:

If I'm writing non-fiction for my contemporary audience then you're right, I'm not going to belabor points that I know they already take for granted. If I'm writing historical fiction, though, I would be smart to put speeches that I know my readers will like into the mouths of my protagonists, just as I should make sure that my historical villains represent exactly those things that my 21st-century readers most hate and fear. Both these measures may be anachronistic for the historical setting within my work of fiction, but they won't be anachronistic at all for my writing of it.

It would make no sense to argue that my novel of an ancient Roman anti-slavery activist can't have been written in the 21st century because it's full of anti-slavery speeches and everyone today already takes for granted that slavery is evil. On the contrary, from the fact that anti-slavery speeches were the device I used to make my hero sympathetic you can infer that my book was written in a time when everyone was already firmly against slavery.

Alma 30:9 is not a speech put into the mouth of a protagonist. It is a narrator’s aside to the reader. A 21st Century narrator would not give an aside to the reader to explain something about slavery that was obvious to a 21st Century audience. For example, he wouldn’t say: by the way, slavery is a barbaric institution that civilized nations no longer practice. 

Link to comment
58 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

The church and the gospel provide meaning, fulfillment, joy, and peace in other people's lives. It would be wrong, perhaps even evil, to try to take that away from people. I don't think it's a good idea to compare the church to Santa Claus, though I understand what you mean. Santa Claus is something you believe in because someone else told you, not because you've investigated and become convinced. Surely, Kevin and Mark and everyone else who believes in Mormonism have invested far more than that. One thing I will never do is question someone else's spiritual experiences, for obvious reasons. I may disagree about the preponderance of "empirical" evidence, but someone else's spirituality is well beyond my capacity to judge.

No one can take away what is well founded in reason in an individual

It's not at all like taking away Santa Claus, when that belief system is well founded philosophically.

Kuhn's ideas themselves are based in Pragmatism as a philosophy and as we know that some of his ideas were actually subject to dispute as to their source.

For me the true importance of Kuhn's work has been in the popularization of the idea that truth is found in discreet contexts or to use the Wittgensteinian term "language games".

Paradigms themselves can be seen as different language games.

The language games of science have nothing to do with teleology or the notions of purpose and functionality of life itself or its importance.  Wittgenstein and Kuhn showed that scientific contexts and religious / teleological contexts are quite separate, so mixing the historicity of the Book of Mormon with its religious importance is about as logically coherent as mixing the study of basketball rules with physics.

Yes both have similarities in that both physics and basketball have "rules" of inference but the subject matter is entirely different.

To carry that analogy further, teleology and religion is about why we should have rules at all

I just wanted to make the point is that Kuhn himself would have never mixed paradigms about religion with paradigms about history or science.  All of these are independent areas of inquiry with their own rules and purposes which are discreet contexts, and truth is always contextual.

Kuhn popularized that idea and that is what can be easily missed in discussions about Book of Mormon History.

Edited by mfbukowski
Link to comment
14 hours ago, JarMan said:

Alma 30:9 is anachronistic because it’s an explanatory bit of information. It’s an aside intended to provide some information the reader presumably doesn’t already know. From Joseph’s perspective a reader is presumed to know that people have freedom of religion. So it’s unnecessary and redundant to spell it out. Again, like the motion of the earth: it makes no sense to go out of the way to explain something that everybody already knows. 

In the context of the narrative flow of the story, the explanatory bit makes perfect narrative sense, even assuming a 19th century author. Why would readers assume that Nephites had first amendment rights?

Link to comment
4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Wondering what was happening...  not a picnic- I had a triple bypass and valve replacement 5 years ago and just know that they can do wonders nowadays- feel great and still biking but down to about 10 miles a day mostly because I don't have time for more!  All my best- just know that there IS light at the end of the tunnel! 

You might have some sternum pain for a while - that's what happens when they split you stem to stern and wire you back up- ;)  But give it time and you will be good as new if not better.  All my best- hang in there!

I’m at home now and I’m in the “let’s do exercise” phase although still hurts like hell when I need to cough. But I guess I’m recovering unusually fast considering surgery was just slightly more than a week ago.

Link to comment
53 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I’m at home now and I’m in the “let’s do exercise” phase although still hurts like hell when I need to cough. But I guess I’m recovering unusually fast considering surgery was just slightly more than a week ago.

I’m glad you are home and on the mend. 

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Gray said:

In the context of the narrative flow of the story, the explanatory bit makes perfect narrative sense, even assuming a 19th century author. Why would readers assume that Nephites had first amendment rights?

The Nephites didn't have 1st Amendment rights. This is apparent by the way Korihor is treated. In Zarahemla he was initially given a free pass. But then he goes to Jershon where he is arrested and brought to the high priest, who then exiled him from the land. Being arrested and exiled for teaching atheism is an example of not having 1st Amendment rights. A religious leader exercising secular powers is also an example of a lack of American constitutional rights. In Gideon he was once again arrested and brought, this time, before both the religious and secular leaders who delivered him to Zarahemla to face the chief judge and the high priest. Here, the prisoner Korihor was examined by Alma, the highest religious authority in the land. Nothing about this story (besides the general notion of religious freedom) sounds like 19th Century America.

Notice the assumptions the narrator makes as he tells us this story. He feels the need to explain that there is some amount of religious freedom in the land. But he doesn't feel the need to explain why a religious leader has the power to exile a prisoner or why a secular leader has any role in a purely religious matter. On all three accounts these assumptions are opposite what Joseph would have assumed about his readers. On all three accounts they are consistent with what Grotius would have assumed about his readers. This story resembles 16th and 17th Century stories that played out time and again in Europe. In Europe, though, these stories usually ended in execution. The Book of Mormon--perhaps in making an argument against executing heretics--leaves the final punishment to God and Korihor ends up dead anyway.

You mentioned earlier that it was almost as if the Nephites had some sort of constitutional protections. The Netherlands had a de facto constitution called the Union of Utrecht. From Wikipedia:

Quote

The Union of Utrecht allowed complete personal freedom of religion and was thus one of the first unlimited edicts of religious toleration.[2] An additional declaration allowed provinces and cities that wished to remain Catholic to join the Union.

As I mentioned earlier, though, this freedom of religion was short-lived and we don't start seeing widespread freedom of religion in Europe until the Enlightenment.

Link to comment
22 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Again, I would hope you're not suggesting that my response is a simple "so what." I'm sorry if it came across that way. I guess I've spent so much time in the weeds of these discussions that I'm all weeded out. That doesn't mean I am scoffing at what you find to be good evidence. Quite the contrary. I respect very much that you have weighed the evidence, as I have, and have maintained and even been strengthened in your faith. I sometimes wish I could have done likewise.

When I lived in California, I met a disaffected LDS fellow who told me his story, and gave me my copy of The Changing World of Mormonism."  After I read it, he said, "How can you know what you know, and believe what you believe?"  I tried to explain, but it turned out that just talking with me tended to give him what I now realize were PSTD flashbacks to his loss of faith.  So he pulled away because talking to me was too painful.

He said it was Becker's The Denial of Death that helped him cope.  I read that too, and survived it.  So I understand the depth and kind of pain that can be involved.

But I also have to consider in my own story.  My first LDS publication grew out of a Dialogue essay that rattled me for a few days, Hutchinson on the Creation accounts.  While pondering the issues, I saw a connection with a passage in Hamlet's Mill that for me changed everything, so I wrote and got published.  And since then, I have learned much more that changes everything even more.  For instance, with respect to Hutchinson, and his controlling assumptions of what to expect, Nibley's essay on Abraham's Creation Drama, and Barker in Temple Theology on Genesis as paralleling the erection of the tabernacle, and Ben McGuire's off hand observation that Joseph's expansions to Genesis happen to occur on seams between sources.  So I have to consider that if I had shattered and bailed at challenges like those, just how much I would have missed, and would never have even known what I was missing.  For example, the impact and implications of Barker's work, let alone Brant Gardner and Larry Porter and literally hundreds of others.  And there have been profound spiritual experiences as well.  Would I have been better off by not  having experienced those?   For me, it's been delicious and joyful along with many afflictions, ongoing expansion and enlightenment, rather than a stagnating orthodoxy.

And there has been the painfully simple insight that all arguments against true prophets in the Bible amount to people saying "It's not what I think should be," or "Not what I want it to be."  And these correspond to the temptation of Buddha by Maya in the form of Fear and Desire, and Joseph Campbell's observation that Eastern Temples are guarded by figures representing these aspects.  To enter the Real, we have to go past Fear and Desire.  And Jesus in 3 Nephi saying, we need to offer the sacrifice of a broken heart (our desires) and a contrite spirit (our thinking, our preconceptions, our orthodoxy).  Further light and knowledge always comes at the potential cost of what we think, and what we want.  To deny the sacrifice is to restrict our experience of discovering the Real.

So my own researches into Universalism and the Book of Mormon led me to different conclusions.  And I consider Alma 30 in light of Nibley's essays on Sophic and Mantic.   Much thinking that Moderns flatter themselves with by labeling it as such has a much longer history than credit it.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/book/the-ancient-state/

I don't go all the way with Mark in saying "Without that guidance in your heart, we have nothing," but with D&C 8 on mind and heart, and an ongoing proving of those contraries, working towards harmony, sometimes relying on heart to get us through unsettled thinking, and sometimes on thinking towards reconciling feelings.   And I consider a range of experiences as contributing to religious faith.  Feeling is one important thread in the rope, but not the only one.

http://oneclimbs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/model_of_experience.pdf

Because many of us do explore overlapping sets of evidence, books, and whatever, I've also been concerned about examining the differences in how we process the same information.  That's one of my uses of Kuhn, to use specific observations as a guide to what makes the difference in practice, and it's why I like the Perry Scheme so much.  It's why I love the Parable of the Sower,  regarding different harvests from the same words.  I'm also very much aware that my own paradigm of what to expect from the church as an institute, from prophets, from the scriptures is not particularly orthodox.   But I have published several things to make the case that is has better scriptural support, and also accounts for personal development and institutional development, and God's eagerness to work with people where ever they are.  See Alma 29:8 as the righteous alternative to an angel's trump, coercing human submission to God.

Best,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Link to comment
23 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I’m at home now and I’m in the “let’s do exercise” phase although still hurts like hell when I need to cough. But I guess I’m recovering unusually fast considering surgery was just slightly more than a week ago.

Oh yeah I forgot that part.

Gotta take a pillow and literally hold your chest from exploding when you cough.  Great fun!  All that holds your sternum together is literally stitches and wire- for those who have not been there.

Gosh I sympathize.  Sneezing is just as bad and then because of what you have been through you get junk in your lungs from tubes and anesthesia -- oh yeah- the good old days!

And then your chest explodes and you get to physically hold it together.   Great stuff!

Hang in there dude.  It does get better, but honestly even now 5 years later if I do a lot of upper body lifting etc I will get sternum pain.

Hang in there.  Living with pain beats the alternative or so they tell me.  ;)

 

Link to comment
5 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

 To deny the sacrifice is to restrict our experience of discovering the Real.

Just flippin brilliant and should be emblazoned across the heavens and canonized.

Gosh I love this!

Thanks.

Edited by mfbukowski
not emphatic enough. this is scripture.
Link to comment

Stanford Carmack, “Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?” Interpreter, 28 (2018): 177-232, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/is-the-book-of-mormon-a-pseudo-archaic-text/#more-12401 .

Quote

. . . the Book of Mormon was not fashioned in the image of pseudo-biblical writings, or in the image of the King James Bible, or in the image of Joseph Smith’s own language. Nevertheless, Book of Mormon language contains a wealth of archaic forms and structures. This runs counter to the received view of many commentators who have imagined it to be a flawed imitation of biblical language. A variety of substantive linguistic evidence argues that Book of Mormon grammar is deeply and broadly archaic and very different, in one case after another, from both pseudo-biblical grammar and King James style.  page 228.

 

Edited by Robert F. Smith
Link to comment
On ‎03‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 11:35 AM, Exiled said:

Ok. But the fact remains that the book of mormon is clearly anti-universalist and D&C 19 and 76 aren't. Do you think God changed his mind along the way or do you think he was misleading us for faith reasons as D&C 19 seems to be saying?

Neither sections of the Doctrine and Covenants were universalist.  A key tenet of old Universalism was that all eventually would be saved and none damned because of the infinite mercy of God.  Neither the Book of Mormon nor the Doctrine and Covenants, nor any of the latter's individual sections, teaches anything like that.  Such thinking is rather based on misreading and misunderstanding of the texts.

Link to comment

Grotius as a source of ideas for the Book of Mormon? If I recall correctly, Grotius wrote in Latin.  Joseph Smith did not know Latin.  The only bits and pieces of Latin he knew he came to as a result of contact with English usage of certain Latin phrases.  So, what must be done is to trace snippets of Grotius to contemporary texts.  And then it becomes necessary to find a convenient access to such texts.  Where Joseph Smith lived, there was nothing convenient about access to the kinds of libraries that might contain such texts.  We have to remember that journeys that today take us mere minutes or hours could take up to a month or more at a time, round trip, in Joseph Smith's day.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, MormonMason said:

Grotius as a source of ideas for the Book of Mormon? If I recall correctly, Grotius wrote in Latin.  Joseph Smith did not know Latin.  The only bits and pieces of Latin he knew he came to as a result of contact with English usage of certain Latin phrases.  So, what must be done is to trace snippets of Grotius to contemporary texts.  And then it becomes necessary to find a convenient access to such texts.  Where Joseph Smith lived, there was nothing convenient about access to the kinds of libraries that might contain such texts.  We have to remember that journeys that today take us mere minutes or hours could take up to a month or more at a time, round trip, in Joseph Smith's day.

The hypothesis is that Grotius wrote the Book of Mormon in Latin between about 1635 and 1645. Then it was translated into English in one or more translation events. It eventually made it to Joseph either in manuscript form or through the seer stone.

Link to comment
31 minutes ago, JarMan said:

The hypothesis is that Grotius wrote the Book of Mormon in Latin between about 1635 and 1645. Then it was translated into English in one or more translation events. It eventually made it to Joseph either in manuscript form or through the seer stone.

So it should be easy to identify the translation, determine availability and determine travel time at the time of Joseph Smith, and find a large enough gap in chronology and lack of witnesses to connect Joseph Smith with it all.  Not as easy a task as one might surmise.

But beware.  People saw close parallels between two quotes from 1Enoch in the Book of Helaman.  Quinn later claimed that Smith copied it from an 1828 printing of the first edition of Laurence's translation of the Book of Enoch and that it was available to him.  I checked into that and found the claims bogus.  The institution from which Quinn claimed provided access didn't have it in their possession in the time of Joseph Smith.  Even worse, the book was not readily available in America at the time.  It was so rare in Europe, where it was published, that people were of the opinion that the book had been suppressed!  It is highly unlikely Joseph Smith had access to the book.  Yes, people then claimed he got it from Masonic Enoch lore.  In fact I am very familiar with that lore.  It doesn't match the contents of the Book of Mormon at all.

Link to comment
42 minutes ago, MormonMason said:

So it should be easy to identify the translation, determine availability and determine travel time at the time of Joseph Smith, and find a large enough gap in chronology and lack of witnesses to connect Joseph Smith with it all.  Not as easy a task as one might surmise.

I don't understand what you are saying here. If Joseph read it from the seer stone there is nothing to show. You just have to believe that Joseph had that ability. If he had an actual manuscript he was reading from then you run into the same problems other naturalistic explanations run up against. Maybe those problems are insurmountable, maybe they aren't.

46 minutes ago, MormonMason said:

But beware.  People saw close parallels between two quotes from 1Enoch in the Book of Helaman.  Quinn later claimed that Smith copied it from an 1828 printing of the first edition of Laurence's translation of the Book of Enoch and that it was available to him.  I checked into that and found the claims bogus.  The institution from which Quinn claimed provided access didn't have it in their possession in the time of Joseph Smith.  Even worse, the book was not readily available in America at the time.  It was so rare in Europe, where it was published, that people were of the opinion that the book had been suppressed!  It is highly unlikely Joseph Smith had access to the book.  Yes, people then claimed he got it from Masonic Enoch lore.  In fact I am very familiar with that lore.  It doesn't match the contents of the Book of Mormon at all.

There are close parallels between virtually everything in the Book of Mormon and Grotius' writings and the events in his environment. Besides the obvious references to Joseph and his contemporaries nobody has been able to show me anything in the Book of Mormon that can't be traced to Grotius and his environment. (This reminds me, I still need to offer a reply about Nehor's universalism as it relates to the 17th Century.)  If you think there is something in the Book of Mormon that doesn't fit with 17th Century Europe I'd love to hear it. Perhaps you can give me some more details about the alleged 1Enoch in Helaman.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, MormonMason said:

But beware.  People saw close parallels between two quotes from 1Enoch in the Book of Helaman.  Quinn later claimed that Smith copied it from an 1828 printing of the first edition of Laurence's translation of the Book of Enoch and that it was available to him.  I checked into that and found the claims bogus.  The institution from which Quinn claimed provided access didn't have it in their possession in the time of Joseph Smith.  Even worse, the book was not readily available in America at the time.  It was so rare in Europe, where it was published, that people were of the opinion that the book had been suppressed!  It is highly unlikely Joseph Smith had access to the book.  Yes, people then claimed he got it from Masonic Enoch lore.  In fact I am very familiar with that lore.  It doesn't match the contents of the Book of Mormon at all.

Fragments of Enoch were supposedly available to Kircher and Grotius. Kircher published a few in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus, which also contains translations of the coptic/arabic Nephi manuscript he claimed to have found. Peiresc had heard that Grotius had also done work on the Greek version of Enoch.

There were certainly fragments of Enoch floating around in the 17th century. 

Link to comment
2 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't understand what you are saying here. If Joseph read it from the seer stone there is nothing to show. You just have to believe that Joseph had that ability. If he had an actual manuscript he was reading from then you run into the same problems other naturalistic explanations run up against. Maybe those problems are insurmountable, maybe they aren't.

There are close parallels between virtually everything in the Book of Mormon and Grotius' writings and the events in his environment. Besides the obvious references to Joseph and his contemporaries nobody has been able to show me anything in the Book of Mormon that can't be traced to Grotius and his environment. (This reminds me, I still need to offer a reply about Nehor's universalism as it relates to the 17th Century.)  If you think there is something in the Book of Mormon that doesn't fit with 17th Century Europe I'd love to hear it. Perhaps you can give me some more details about the alleged 1Enoch in Helaman.

In English? Joseph Smith had exactly zero knowledge of any other languages at the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon.

And what would be the point of using the seer stone to read Grotius while working on the Book of Mormon? The Bible I can see but Grotius?

As to specifics regarding Enoch in Helaman, my copies of 1Enoch and my notes are packed and in storage. It would be difficult to get to them at the moment.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Fragments of Enoch were supposedly available to Kircher and Grotius. Kircher published a few in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus, which also contains translations of the coptic/arabic Nephi manuscript he claimed to have found. Peiresc had heard that Grotius had also done work on the Greek version of Enoch.

There were certainly fragments of Enoch floating around in the 17th century. 

Fragments floating around Europe in the 1700s, yes.  In Joseph Smith's environment, and in English, not likely.

Link to comment
26 minutes ago, MormonMason said:

In English? Joseph Smith had exactly zero knowledge of any other languages at the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon.

And what would be the point of using the seer stone to read Grotius while working on the Book of Mormon? The Bible I can see but Grotius?

Just to re-iterate the hypothesis, Grotius (or one of his close associates) wrote the Book of Mormon. Not Joseph. Not Mormon.

The reason Joseph might have used the seer stone is that he may not have had the actual manuscript. Joseph was able to read a hidden parchment written by John the Beloved--now known as D&C 7. If he can use the seer stone to read a hidden 1,800 year old manuscript, he can use it to read a hidden 200 year old one.

30 minutes ago, MormonMason said:

Fragments floating around Europe in the 1700s, yes.  In Joseph Smith's environment, and in English, not likely.

If it turns out that the fragments floating around in Europe in the 1600's correspond to what is in Helaman then we have a good argument for a 17th Century production over a 19th Century production--that is, if there truly is a correspondence. It's also possible the claimed correspondence is weak and not really notable to begin with. You cited Quinn as source on this. Any chance this is something that can be found online?

Link to comment
5 hours ago, MormonMason said:

Fragments floating around Europe in the 1700s, yes.  In Joseph Smith's environment, and in English, not likely.

Right. Another reason I don't believe Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon.

But Enoch fragments are found earlier than the 1700s. Kircher and Grotius probably worked from Scalinger's translation of the Greek fragments from the writings of Synkellos in the 9th century.

We often say all these texts were "lost", but they weren't lost at all. The motifs found in Enoch and other texts like the History of the Rechabites lived on in many different forms from antiquity through the Middle Ages and beyond. Much of it can be found in Slavonic translations that were never lost. 

Philip Jenkins has written quite a lot on this:
The “Other” Lost Scriptures

Edited by Rajah Manchou
Link to comment
On 3/27/2018 at 4:27 PM, Nevo said:

Perhaps, but religious skepticism was not part of the landscape in the early 17th century. That was a post-Enlightenment development. Korihor is not a heathen—the only non-Christians contemplated in Grotius's The Truth of the Christian Religion—but an unbeliever. He invokes the arguments of post-Enlightenment rationalists and skeptics:

  • "No man can know of anything which is to come."
  • "These things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers."
  • "Ye cannot know of things which ye do not see."
  • "This derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so."
  • "Every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength."
  • "When a man was dead, that was the end thereof."

These ideas had currency in western New York in the 1820s. Not so much in the United Provinces in the 1620s.

In doing some further research on 17th Century atheism I've found some notable parallels to Korihor's story. The first thing to mention is the prominence of atheism in pre-elightenment Europe. This book talks about anti-atheism in England between 1580 and 1720. Apparently, atheism made a comeback in the 1500's as the works of ancient Greek philosophers such as Epicurus became know to scholars. From the aforementioned book:

Quote

What was new for sixteenth-century Englishmen living in the wake of the Reformation and the Renaissance, however, was the sense that the Christian religion needed to be defended at length against the old enemy of unbelief. Yet this enemy was now understood to be massively increasing and had taken on a bedevilling new guise: atheism. From at least the middle of the sixteenth century, apologists for the truth of the Christian religion detected and denounced the presence of atheists in England, and who were often regarded as Continental imports from Italy ("Machiavellianism") or France ("libertinism").

The book identifies several arguments made by various anti-atheistic writers. The two primary arguments are relevant to the confutation of Korihor:

Quote

As we will see at greater length in Chapter 6, the most ubiquitous argument made by religious apologists in this period was the argument from the universal consent of mankind

Quote

When the confutation of atheism in early modern England did not begin from the universal consent of mankind, very often it began from arguments based on the natural universe.

Alma employs both of these arguments in Alma 30:44:

Quote

Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.

Atheists were commonly associated with "libertines" in the 17th Century. Libertines were 17th Century swingers, for lack of a better word. We see from Alma 30:18 that Korihor lead many women and men to commit whoredoms. These two things (sexual liberty and atheism) were commonly associated since the belief was that atheists were using atheism as an excuse to be promiscuous and as a means to convince others to join them in their hedonism. In that light, Korihor's actions in verse 18 make a lot of sense.

It was also common belief during this time that atheists didn't really believe what they were teaching. They were simply trying to excuse their own evil behavior. We find in verses 52 and 53 that Korihor didn't really believe what he was teaching either. He had learned it from the devil and taught it to others because it was "pleasing unto the carnal mind"

The last thing I'll point out is the manner of Korihor's death. We learn from the book I cited that early modern religious writers depicted the atheist as "subject in death to terrible pain as a sign of God's judgment." This fits Korihor who spent the rest of his life begging door to door for food before being trampled to death. The clear implication here is that this was God's judgment for "pervert[ing] the ways of the Lord".

Edited by JarMan
Link to comment
On 3/27/2018 at 10:26 AM, Nevo said:

It's a puzzle, to be sure. D&C 76 does appear to be in tension with the soteriology of the Book of Mormon (Grant Underwood's article, "'Saved or Damned': Tracing a Persistent Protestantism in Early Mormon Thought" is very good on this). Then there is the curious fact that, in the very month that the anti-Universalist Book of Mormon is published, Joseph dictates a revelation where it is explained that the terms "endless torment" and "eternal punishment" do not actually refer to a punishment without end, but rather to God's punishment, since God is endless (D&C 19:6-12). The famous Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou employed a similar argument in his 1805 Treatise on the Atonement: "I say the word eternal is not applied to the duration of happiness, but to the nature of that life which is brought to light through the gospel; and as that life is of the nature of the unchangeable Deity, we justly believe it to be endless."

Dan Vogel tries to reconcile all this in his book, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, arguing that Joseph was a secret Universalist (per D&C 19) who "pos[ed] as a traditionalist in regard to heaven and hell." I'm not convinced. I think it's quite possible that Joseph was more influenced by Methodist preaching in the mid-1820s than by his father's alleged Universalist sympathies. Joseph reported in his 1838 history that he had felt "somewhat partial to the Methodist sect, and . . . felt some desire to be united with them" (JS—H 1:8), and Joseph’s brother William later recalled that "Joseph was one of several hopeful converts [to Methodism]."

Whatever Joseph Smith's own views, the Book of Mormon takes the orthodox line against Universalism. It teaches that an infinite atonement was required to satisfy the demands of justice in order that mercy might be extended to the penitent, while the unrepentant are exposed to the full penalty for breaking the law and must suffer endless punishment. It perpetuates the saved-damned dichotomy entrenched in Protestant thought. D&C 76 broke with that, teaching that God will save (nearly) everyone. But as Underwood's article shows, that took a long time to sink in, even for Joseph.

If you read the Book of Mormon as taking a line against Universalism, it still makes sense in the 17th Century. Two of Grotius' English contemporaries wrote Universalist books: Gerrard Winstanley with "The Mysterie of God Concerning the Whole Creation, Mankinde" (1648) and Richard Coppin with "A hint of the glorious mysterie of the divine teachings" (1649). Winstanley's book gives us a view of some of the criticisms he faced regarding his position:

Quote

Some may say, if this be true, that God will save every one, then I will live and take my pleasure in sin, and eat, drink, and be merry, and take all delights while I live, for I am Gods workmanship, and he will not lose his own work, I shall be saved.

Of course this is exactly the criticism we see in 2 Nephi 28:7:

Quote

Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us.

Winstanley goes on to defend his position by claiming that God will still punish the wicked before saving them. This position is caricatured in 2 Nephi 28:8:

Quote

And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God.

As I've mentioned a few times before, there are a lot of similarities between Joseph's world and Grotius' world so we should expect to see ideas that work for both. However, I think I can show several things in the Book of Mormon that work for Grotius, but don't work for Joseph.

Link to comment
On 3/31/2018 at 3:10 PM, JarMan said:

The hypothesis is that Grotius wrote the Book of Mormon in Latin between about 1635 and 1645.

Which Bible did Grotius use to quote the Isaiah chapters?

How does one explain the plethora of 19th Century Protestant phrases found in the Book of Mormon?

http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/19th-century-protestant-phrases-in-book-of-mormon/

On 3/31/2018 at 3:10 PM, JarMan said:

Then it was translated into English in one or more translation events. It eventually made it to Joseph either in manuscript form or through the seer stone.

Who did the translation? Weak (understatement!) on evidence for Joseph having any type of manuscript. If he used the seer stone??? his explanation "by the gift and power of God" has better explanatory power.

Glenn

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Glenn101 said:

Which Bible did Grotius use to quote the Isaiah chapters?

Grotius would have used the Latin Vulgate. The English translator would have used the KJB.

1 hour ago, Glenn101 said:

How does one explain the plethora of 19th Century Protestant phrases found in the Book of Mormon?

http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/19th-century-protestant-phrases-in-book-of-mormon/

If there are 19th Century Protestant phrases in the Book of Mormon it is because those phrases are also 17th Century phrases. From the link you provided, here are a few of the claimed 19th Century phrases:

demands of justice - google ngram viewer shows hits for this around 1650; also, Pilgrims' Progress (1678) uses the phrase

infinite atonement - ngram shows hits in the early 1600's; this was a common theme discussed by Armenians in the 1600's, however their writing was largely in Latin

secret combinations - ngram shows hits in the 1670's; others have found this phrase going back to the 1500's

I don't have time to go through all of them but I accept Carmack's work on this subject which identifies the language as Early Modern English, not 19th Century English.

1 hour ago, Glenn101 said:

Who did the translation? Weak (understatement!) on evidence for Joseph having any type of manuscript. If he used the seer stone??? his explanation "by the gift and power of God" has better explanatory power.

Glenn

 Who do you think did the translation?

I hypothesize one or more Early Modern translation events. It's possible there were later revisions, as well. I'm willing to accept whatever the linguistic evidence tells us. I think "by the gift and power of God" is broad enough to be consistent with my hypothesis.

Link to comment
On ‎03‎/‎31‎/‎2018 at 1:10 PM, JarMan said:

The hypothesis is that Grotius wrote the Book of Mormon in Latin between about 1635 and 1645. Then it was translated into English in one or more translation events. It eventually made it to Joseph either in manuscript form or through the seer stone.

I understand what the hypothesis is.  It makes little to no sense, on the other hand.  One would expect Latinisms in the English text.  I've not seen any.  Grotius did not write the Book of Mormon.  His style would have shown through in an English translation and I have seen none of that in the Book of Mormon.  And, the Isaiah portions in the Book of Mormon have only those affinities with the Latin Vulgate that come to us through the King James Version of the Bible.  Sorry but I just do not see it.

Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...