New BMC Video (Fulfilled Prophecies)

[Ryan Dahle]

For those interested, here is a new video that came out yesterday pertaining to the Book of Mormon's textual complexity (specifically about its internally fulfilled prophecies):

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/blog/evidence-of-the-book-of-mormon-internally-fulfilled-prophecies

Whether or not one thinks this strengthens Joseph Smith's claims (and I certainly do), it is certainly an interesting feature of the text that has only recently been highlighted with any degree of specificity. 

[Nevo]

On 10/5/2022 at 8:44 AM, Ryan Dahle said:

For those interested, here is a new video that came out yesterday pertaining to the Book of Mormon's textual complexity (specifically about its internally fulfilled prophecies):

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/blog/evidence-of-the-book-of-mormon-internally-fulfilled-prophecies

Whether or not one thinks this strengthens Joseph Smith's claims (and I certainly do), it is certainly an interesting feature of the text that has only recently been highlighted with any degree of specificity. 

Very interesting video.

The book's complex intertextuality is fascinating and strongly suggests that the text was not made up on the fly but was carefully constructed. One does sense an editorial hand at work. We also see this in the dozens of close verbal parallels between 1 Nephi and Ether (see Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon, 231–233). And, of course, in the sophisticated integration of passages from the Bible (see, esp., the work of Nicholas Frederick).

On the other hand, there is good evidence that "the Book of Mormon was primarily an oral production" (see Samuel Morris Brown, "Seeing the Voice of God: The Book of Mormon on Its Own Translation," in Producing Ancient Scripture, ed. Michael Hubbard MacKay et al. [University of Utah Press, 2020], 142 [142–146]). As Brown and others have noted, the numerous "verbal false starts and missteps" in the text militate against the view that Joseph Smith was working from a written source.

Joseph had access to the manuscript pages and presumably could have reviewed them (or other notes) before translation sessions, but even so, the intertextual connections are rather remarkable.

  

[Nevo]

On a side note, while I think the number of prophecies in the Book of Mormon that are fulfilled to the letter works against its claims to historicity, I will say that I remain impressed by 2 Nephi 3.

That Joseph Smith, at 22 years of age, could foresee himself as a great prophet "like unto Moses" (v. 9), a "choice seer" who would be "esteemed highly" among the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh (v. 7), who would be threatened with destruction (v. 14), and who would participate in the inauguration of the restoration of Israel (v. 13) and act as the Lord's agent for bringing people to salvation (v. 15), is astonishing to me. Astonishing for its grandiosity but also because so much of it came to pass. Sure, he had already begun dictating revelations in God's voice, but he had hardly any followers in mid-1828. And he hadn't published anything yet. He was only a legend in his own mind at that point.

Edited October 8, 2022 by Nevo