EGYPT AND OLD TESTAMENT SYMPOSIUM
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By boblloyd91
I must confess that I'm not as informed as I should be about these issues, but I know that the Book of Abraham has been quite the hot topic lately. A comparison I've seen quite a bit lately is that people who are apologists for the book of Abraham are like flat earth conspiracy theorists, and are basically crackpots who shouldn't be trusted. The two that seem to be attacked the most are Gee and Muhlestein. I was curious why people would think this is or isn't the case, and explain to a layman like me why they feel these characterizations are accurate or not. I'm also asking this to get a better understanding of some of the main points of contention. Thanks for any responses.
You can start another thread without name calling in the title.
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By bdouglas
Two months ago someone from my extended family, Richard (not his real name), left the church.
“I believe Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon,” he said.
I spent an hour or so pushing back on this point. I brought up the complex geography of the BOM (“Fiction writers very rarely invent geography, and when they do it’s a very simple geography”); the language (“Who invents something like Reformed Egyptian? If you’re inventing a story about Jews from 600 BC you have them speaking Hebrew”); the various plates (“Someone could write a whole book on the various plates in the BOM alone, the abridgments, the abridgments of abridgments, the large plates, the small plates, what happened to these plates over the course of a thousand years”); the messiness yet internal consistency of the narrative (“Fiction is not messy, it is tidy, organized. But the BOM is untidy, messy, and there are loose ends everywhere. Why? Because it is not fiction"); etc., etc.
But it was all to no effect. Richard has never been a reader, and most of what I said––well, it just didn’t register with him.
But what I said next, did.
“The Book of Mormon was originally rendered in a language Joseph Smith didn’t know.”
“What?”
“The Book of Mormon, the original text that Joseph Smith dictated, was not written in the English of that day. It was not the King James English of the Bible, nor was it the English of Joseph’s day. It was written in Early Modern English, a language which had been out of use for 200 years by 1827. This was a language Joseph Smith did not know and could not have known.”
Long pause. I’d finally hit on something that Richard could grasp.
"The presence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon is proof that Joseph Smith did not produce the book himself," I said.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it is a different kind of proof, one that is easily grasped by someone like Richard, who is not going to respond to other proofs.
Not that Richard is suddenly going to return to the church. I doubt that he will.
But the presence of EModE in the BOM, when taken with all of the other proofs, makes it extremely unlikely, really impossible, that JS wrote the BOM.
P.S. - Tried to edit headline but can't.
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By Bernard Gui
At the end of Alma 37, Alma gives his final instructions to his faithful young son Helaman. After encouraging him always to be obedient to God’s commandments and to pray to God continually, Alma uses the Liahona as an object lesson to teach Helaman how to obtain eternal life through following the words of Christ. Using analogy, Alma compares the Liahona, the temporal compass provided by God to Lehi, with the words of Christ, the spiritual guide provided to all by God. In this remarkable passage, Alma, like all good teachers, repeats this image three times, and like a good Nephite teacher, he uses a parallelism to increase the impact.
Alma employs the alternate parallel form, one of the most common and effective forms of poetic parallelism in the Book of Mormon. It appears hundreds of times. An alternate consists of two or more lines that are repeated in parallel order. The simple alternate form is outlined ABAB. Extended alternates are outlined ABCABC, etc.
Alma uses three extended alternates in rapid sequence to instruct his son.
A For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ,
B which will point to you
C a straight course to eternal bliss,
A as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass,
B which would point unto them
C a straight course to the promised land.
The A phrase compares the ease of heeding the words of Christ with the ease of looking at the Liahona. The B phrase describes the purpose of A which is to point the course. The C phrase declares the final destination of those who follow A, salvation and arrival at the promised land.
A For just as surely as this director did bring our fathers,
B by following its course,
C to the promised land,
A shall the words of Christ,
B if we follow their course,
C carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise.
The A phrase again compares the words of Christ with the Liahona, but in reversed order. The B phrase indicates what we should do with A – follow their directions, and the C phrase gives the destination of those who do B – the promised land and a far better place, eternal life.
A for so was it with our fathers;
B for so was it prepared for them,
C that if they would look they might live;
A even so it is with us.
B The way is prepared,
C and if we will look we may live forever.
In this last alternate, Alma personalizes the analogies of the first two. The A phrase compares the Nephite fathers (Lehi and Nephi) with Alma and his son Helaman. The B phrase indicates that God prepared the ways of direction for all of them. The C phrase compares the physical salvation of the Nephite fathers by following the Liahona with the spiritual salvation promised to all of us who will look upon Christ.
Alma concludes his instructions with another impassioned fatherly plea that his son rise to the greatness of his calling.
This passage indicates deliberate logical planning on the part of Alma in giving crucial instructions to his son prior to his death. This is what Alma thought would be of most worth to his son - look to Christ. It gives us insight into the Nephite mind, especially that of a powerful and gifted leader. I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon and the beautiful intricacies that await in its pages for us to discover. (Thanks to Donald Parry for his marvelous edition of the Book of Mormon. Poetic Parallelism in the Book of Mormon: The Complete Text Reformatted. Maxwell Institute, 2007).
Your comments are welcomed.
Here is the passage in context.
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By EdGoble
https://www.academia.edu/36428246/The_Principles_of_Book_of_Abraham_and_Kirtland_Egyptian_Papers_Symbolism
Here is a new thread to try get feedback on my article. Those that wish to attack me are not welcome on this thread.
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By EdGoble
https://www.academia.edu/36428246/The_Principles_of_Book_of_Abraham_and_Kirtland_Egyptian_Papers_Symbolism
This is my rough draft paper on the Book of Abraham. Thank you.
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