What have been your best testimony ever about God?

[Dario_M]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

At home your mind may find thoughts of what you should be doing that day or may be trying to make plans while at church there is nothing but the spirit that you need to attend to.

Yeah exactly this indeed. In church i feel the holy ghost way stronger then when i'm at home. Plus my boyfriend is 24/7 at home as well and that's also a distraction for me. He is not religious at all, so he doesn't understand anything about these matters. If he will notice me that i'm praying he will make jokes about it. And that just distracts me you know. So i rather wanna pray in church. And if the weather permits i think i'm going to start praying in the woods. But right now it rains a lot here on the moment so i need to wait for beter weather and beter moments to pray. 

Edited October 18, 2024 by Dario_M

[aw.smoot]

I'll add my two cents here. At the end of the day, it's the Spirit. However, if anyone needed to balance their faith with Reason, here's what I can offer:

Over the years, I've become very familiar with the claims made against the Book of Mormon and many of them can be very convincing. But all of these have ultimately fallen short for me in fully explaining away the Book of Mormon and I'd like to explain just a few reasons why that is.

Here are 4 Things I've learned from Biblical Scholarship, and their implications for the Book of Mormon:

Note: The scholarship I'll be sharing here reflects the leading view among scholars in secular academia as it pertains to ancient Israel and the Bible. I'll provide relevant sources below.

1) 6th Century Jerusalem

Contrary to the narrative presented to us in the traditional Biblical account, the leading view among scholars and historians today is that "the great city of Jerusalem" was actually relatively small at the beginning of the 8th century CE. Perhaps only containing ~1,000 residents. Then, suddenly around the year 720 BCE its population exploded by 15x within a single generation. Additionally, hundreds of settlements popped up seemingly out of nowhere throughout the land surrounding the capital city of Judah. The Southern Kingdom of Judah, which had previously contained a total of maybe 20,000-30,000 inhabitants, now had upwards to 120,000 citizens within its borders. What happened that caused that astounding growth in Judah's borders? Scholars today are in widespread agreement that although entirely omitted from the Biblical narrative, shortly after the Assyrian conquest of Israel in the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE, thousands upon thousands of Israelites refugees from the North poured into the borders of Judah and settled in and around the land of Jerusalem. That is to say that a large portion of residents in Jerusalem in the 7th & 6th century BCE were the descendants of the Northern Israelite refugees, including those from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. These groups eventually adopted the tribal identity of Judah, forsaking their previous tribal markers.
 

2) Viewing the Bible exclusively as a Judahite Record

Today, the leading scholarship pertaining to the authorship of the Hebrew Bible paints a very different picture than what has been traditionally believed. Rather than being written by these legendary Israelite figures that pre-date Israel's monarchy by centuries such as Moses or Joshua, the leading view among scholars today is that the earliest books of the Bible and the historical core of its narrative began its composition in the seventh century BCE within the borders of Jerusalem and was exclusively written and edited by Judahite authors. That is to say that the Bible was and always has been a "Judahite record".

3) Israelite Lineage History

Today, leading scholars offer a much more interesting view of Israel's past than what is presented in the Biblical narrative. First, Israel almost certainly did not begin from a single family of 12 sons. This is a theological narrative that unifies what was a large an expansive group of various tribes. These Israelite tribes were almost certainly not related by blood, but rather were joined by a political, ideological, or religious covenant established at some point in their history. Additionally, the number of tribes (as well as the names of these tribes) appears to have changed over time until it took its final form within the Judahite narrative as "the 12 Tribes of Israel", which represented an Israelite ideal rather than the reality. And while there may have existed actual (or traditional) genealogical lines within these tribes that date back to these legendary patriarchal figures by which these tribes were named (such as Zubulun, Issachar, and Joseph), membership to these tribes was likely also included political or regional association rather than exclusively a lineage history. That is to say that members of the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim almost certainly did not exclusively share the same ancestry, as many groups were likely adopted into these tribes over the centuries.
 

4) The "Lost 10 Tribes" Myth

Today, scholars overwhelmingly view that the "Lost 10 Tribes" narrative as a Jewish myth. Invented by the author of 2 Kings 17, the passage vastly exaggerates the severity of their exile after the Assyrian Conquest. Far from carrying away the entirety of Israel, the historical record strongly suggests that upon Assyrian's victory over the Israelite capital, the empire had a general practice of transplanting 10-20% of the conquered population into Assyrian lands, largely drawing from the class of intellectuals and elites (ie the "main top" of these groups) and replaced them with Assyrian implants to maintain stability. After Assyria's victory over Israel, there were likely thousands of Israelites remaining in Israel's capital city. But as previously mentioned, it appears that the most of this Israelite remnant fled south and integrated into the Kingdom of Judah. All this to say that there is no massive Israelite group wandering somewhere in the desert or hiding in the isles of the sea or camping out at the North Pole. In reality, the elite class of Israel was carried into Assyria around 720 BCE and these groups eventually became indistinguishable from other populations within the empire and they eventually lost their Israelite identity. And for those that remained, most appear to have migrated south and integrated with the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Eventually, as the Judahite narrative began to take shape in the 7th century BCE, they sought to re-write Israel's history by depicting a unified history of Israel, one that omitted this massive northern Israelite migration and exaggerated the Assyrian exile of Israel in order to bolster Judah's prominence among the house of Israel.

___

These 4 pillars in Biblical scholarship are why I can't unsee the problem of viewing the Book of Mormon as merely the creation of a 23-YO farm boy with limited education steeped in a 19th century Protestant environment. There are too many details that demand an explanation if we are to make that claim.

Why is it that the Bible presents a narrative claiming that the Lord "removed [Israel] out of his sight: [and] there was none left but the tribe of Judah only" after the Assyrian conquest, but the Book of Mormon places whole groups from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh residing in Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE? In this case, the Biblical scholarship sides with the Book of Mormon.

Why is it that for over two millennia both Jewish and Christian faiths have strongly held to the tradition that major portions of the Hebrew Bible were authored by the likes of Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Jonah, Ezra and others (all non-Judahite authors), yet the Book of Mormon repeatedly and explicitly refers to this record as the "writings of Judah"? In this case, again, scholars side with the Book of Mormon.
 

Why is it that the Book of Mormon presents a more nuanced picture of Israelite tribal heritage? Nephi writes, "And it came to pass that my father, Lehi, found upon the plates a genealogy of his fathers; wherefore he knew that he was a descendant of Joseph … who was sold into Egypt, and was preserved by the hand of the Lord.” (1 Ne. 5:14) It presents Lehi as being vindicated in his discovering the genealogy of his fathers, which for whatever reason he did not possess himself and seems to affirm that he truly was a descendant of this legendary patriarch of Israelite history. Yet for whatever reason Nephi makes no such claim for their traveling companion, Ishmael. If Lehi was of the tribe of Manasseh and Ishmael of the tribe of Ephraim, would this not have been the natural assumption for both of these men? Why include this detail at all? Why is the lineage history of Israel in Book of Mormon more complicated than what's presented in the traditional Biblical narrative?
 

And this is no small detail, either. Joseph's contemporaries mocked and ridiculed this very claim, stating: “We have now to notice the ridiculous statement that Lehi did not know ‘the genealogy of his fathers’ till he had the plates from Laban. If Lehi and his children did not know they were descendants of Joseph, ... why it is just as impossible as for a man who is walking every day to be ignorant that he has the use of his legs.” [A Few Plain Words about Mormonism (Bristol: Steam Press, 1852), 6–7.] However, the prevailing view among scholars today would again side with the Book of Mormon's account over the traditional narrative.
 

And finally, why does no author in the Book of Mormon seem to hold no notion of the "Lost 10 Tribes" myth? In fact, Lehi's very existence and residence in Jerusalem appears to undermine the very premise of this prevalent Jewish/Christian tradition. This was a pervasive tradition in Joseph's day, and was even the foundation for purported source texts such as Ethan Smith's "View of the Hebrews", yet this narrative is completely absent from (if not outright challenged by) Joseph's text. The closest we get is a repeated reference of the "lost tribes of Israel" which "the Father hath led away out of Jerusalem." This is an entirely different tradition unique to the Book of Mormon and fundamentally undermines the "10 Lost Tribes" tradition. This is most clearly represented in Jacob 5, in which the Assyrian Conquest of Israel is likened the an olive tree that has its "main branches" plucked out by the Lord and burned. Later, the Lord gathers three groups of "young and tender branches" and plants them elsewhere in the vineyard, with the suggestion that Lehi's group represents one of these latter branches and the other two represent these "Lost Tribes" being referred to.
 

Again, if this text is merely a farm boy's KJV fan fiction, why undermine these fundamental details in the traditional biblical narrative? And why do they find support in the prevailing view among scholars today?

And let's be clear, the aspects I'm pointing to here are not throw-away details sitting in the peripheral of the book's narrative, such as the brief mention of "barley" in the Americas. Rather, each and every point I've presented here is crucial to the book's central narrative. The "who", "what", "when", "where" and "why" of the entire narrative. To remove any of these four aspects from the text would fundamentally change the theological implications of the entire record. To put it simply, the dominant critical narrative pertaining to the nature and origin of the Book of Mormon simply does not work for me because it does not sufficiently reconcile with this new understanding of ancient Israel based on the current scholarly consensus in Biblical studies.
 

While others' engagement with modern scholarship has challenged their testimony of the Book of Mormon and other Restoration scripture, the same has ultimately strengthened and informed mine. What we have here is simply not the product of some kid pulling "And it came to pass" stories out of a hat. There is far too much complexity, advanced narratology, and profound theological depth within this text for this to merely be what critics claim it to be.
 

Even if we were to set all of this aside, we are faced with this question: Why is it that in so many cases the Bible goes one way and the Book of Mormon takes a hard turn in the other direction? And why is it that nearly 200 years later, so many of these details are now supported by this leading view in Biblical scholarship? Now this does not give us license to simply ignore the significant evidence at hand that challenges a traditional view pertaining to the nature and origin of the Book of Mormon, but at the very least it challenges every other naturalistic explanation that has been put forth to date in an attempt to explain away this curious text.
 

In contrast to what critics have concluded, I think that non-Latter-day Saint Christians will struggle in grappling with the implications of current Biblical scholarship. The history of our Christian heritage is just more complicated than has been traditionally understood. But for Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, the Book of Mormon offers real reason to believe that there is something of substance here. Something that requires serious treatment and further study to fully understand. Something much more than secular explanations have yet been able to offer. And that is why I have come to truly admire and appreciate the Book of Mormon.
 

Sources:

- Wright, Jacob L.. Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

- Finkelstein, Israel, and Silberman, Neil Asher. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts. Free Press, 2002.

[Dario_M]

5 minutes ago, aw.smoot said:

I'll add my two cents here. At the end of the day, it's the Spirit. However, if anyone needed to balance their faith with Reason, here's what I can offer:

Over the years, I've become very familiar with the claims made against the Book of Mormon and many of them can be very convincing. But all of these have ultimately fallen short for me in fully explaining away the Book of Mormon and I'd like to explain just a few reasons why that is.

Here are 4 Things I've learned from Biblical Scholarship, and their implications for the Book of Mormon:

Note: The scholarship I'll be sharing here reflects the leading view among scholars in secular academia as it pertains to ancient Israel and the Bible. I'll provide relevant sources below.

1) 6th Century Jerusalem

Contrary to the narrative presented to us in the traditional Biblical account, the leading view among scholars and historians today is that "the great city of Jerusalem" was actually relatively small at the beginning of the 8th century CE. Perhaps only containing ~1,000 residents. Then, suddenly around the year 720 BCE its population exploded by 15x within a single generation. Additionally, hundreds of settlements popped up seemingly out of nowhere throughout the land surrounding the capital city of Judah. The Southern Kingdom of Judah, which had previously contained a total of maybe 20,000-30,000 inhabitants, now had upwards to 120,000 citizens within its borders. What happened that caused that astounding growth in Judah's borders? Scholars today are in widespread agreement that although entirely omitted from the Biblical narrative, shortly after the Assyrian conquest of Israel in the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE, thousands upon thousands of Israelites refugees from the North poured into the borders of Judah and settled in and around the land of Jerusalem. That is to say that a large portion of residents in Jerusalem in the 7th & 6th century BCE were the descendants of the Northern Israelite refugees, including those from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. These groups eventually adopted the tribal identity of Judah, forsaking their previous tribal markers.
 

2) Viewing the Bible exclusively as a Judahite Record

Today, the leading scholarship pertaining to the authorship of the Hebrew Bible paints a very different picture than what has been traditionally believed. Rather than being written by these legendary Israelite figures that pre-date Israel's monarchy by centuries such as Moses or Joshua, the leading view among scholars today is that the earliest books of the Bible and the historical core of its narrative began its composition in the seventh century BCE within the borders of Jerusalem and was exclusively written and edited by Judahite authors. That is to say that the Bible was and always has been a "Judahite record".

3) Israelite Lineage History

Today, leading scholars offer a much more interesting view of Israel's past than what is presented in the Biblical narrative. First, Israel almost certainly did not begin from a single family of 12 sons. This is a theological narrative that unifies what was a large an expansive group of various tribes. These Israelite tribes were almost certainly not related by blood, but rather were joined by a political, ideological, or religious covenant established at some point in their history. Additionally, the number of tribes (as well as the names of these tribes) appears to have changed over time until it took its final form within the Judahite narrative as "the 12 Tribes of Israel", which represented an Israelite ideal rather than the reality. And while there may have existed actual (or traditional) genealogical lines within these tribes that date back to these legendary patriarchal figures by which these tribes were named (such as Zubulun, Issachar, and Joseph), membership to these tribes was likely also included political or regional association rather than exclusively a lineage history. That is to say that members of the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim almost certainly did not exclusively share the same ancestry, as many groups were likely adopted into these tribes over the centuries.
 

4) The "Lost 10 Tribes" Myth

Today, scholars overwhelmingly view that the "Lost 10 Tribes" narrative as a Jewish myth. Invented by the author of 2 Kings 17, the passage vastly exaggerates the severity of their exile after the Assyrian Conquest. Far from carrying away the entirety of Israel, the historical record strongly suggests that upon Assyrian's victory over the Israelite capital, the empire had a general practice of transplanting 10-20% of the conquered population into Assyrian lands, largely drawing from the class of intellectuals and elites (ie the "main top" of these groups) and replaced them with Assyrian implants to maintain stability. After Assyria's victory over Israel, there were likely thousands of Israelites remaining in Israel's capital city. But as previously mentioned, it appears that the most of this Israelite remnant fled south and integrated into the Kingdom of Judah. All this to say that there is no massive Israelite group wandering somewhere in the desert or hiding in the isles of the sea or camping out at the North Pole. In reality, the elite class of Israel was carried into Assyria around 720 BCE and these groups eventually became indistinguishable from other populations within the empire and they eventually lost their Israelite identity. And for those that remained, most appear to have migrated south and integrated with the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Eventually, as the Judahite narrative began to take shape in the 7th century BCE, they sought to re-write Israel's history by depicting a unified history of Israel, one that omitted this massive northern Israelite migration and exaggerated the Assyrian exile of Israel in order to bolster Judah's prominence among the house of Israel.

___

These 4 pillars in Biblical scholarship are why I can't unsee the problem of viewing the Book of Mormon as merely the creation of a 23-YO farm boy with limited education steeped in a 19th century Protestant environment. There are too many details that demand an explanation if we are to make that claim.

Why is it that the Bible presents a narrative claiming that the Lord "removed [Israel] out of his sight: [and] there was none left but the tribe of Judah only" after the Assyrian conquest, but the Book of Mormon places whole groups from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh residing in Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE? In this case, the Biblical scholarship sides with the Book of Mormon.

Why is it that for over two millennia both Jewish and Christian faiths have strongly held to the tradition that major portions of the Hebrew Bible were authored by the likes of Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Jonah, Ezra and others (all non-Judahite authors), yet the Book of Mormon repeatedly and explicitly refers to this record as the "writings of Judah"? In this case, again, scholars side with the Book of Mormon.
 

Why is it that the Book of Mormon presents a more nuanced picture of Israelite tribal heritage? Nephi writes, "And it came to pass that my father, Lehi, found upon the plates a genealogy of his fathers; wherefore he knew that he was a descendant of Joseph … who was sold into Egypt, and was preserved by the hand of the Lord.” (1 Ne. 5:14) It presents Lehi as being vindicated in his discovering the genealogy of his fathers, which for whatever reason he did not possess himself and seems to affirm that he truly was a descendant of this legendary patriarch of Israelite history. Yet for whatever reason Nephi makes no such claim for their traveling companion, Ishmael. If Lehi was of the tribe of Manasseh and Ishmael of the tribe of Ephraim, would this not have been the natural assumption for both of these men? Why include this detail at all? Why is the lineage history of Israel in Book of Mormon more complicated than what's presented in the traditional Biblical narrative?
 

And this is no small detail, either. Joseph's contemporaries mocked and ridiculed this very claim, stating: “We have now to notice the ridiculous statement that Lehi did not know ‘the genealogy of his fathers’ till he had the plates from Laban. If Lehi and his children did not know they were descendants of Joseph, ... why it is just as impossible as for a man who is walking every day to be ignorant that he has the use of his legs.” [A Few Plain Words about Mormonism (Bristol: Steam Press, 1852), 6–7.] However, the prevailing view among scholars today would again side with the Book of Mormon's account over the traditional narrative.
 

And finally, why does no author in the Book of Mormon seem to hold no notion of the "Lost 10 Tribes" myth? In fact, Lehi's very existence and residence in Jerusalem appears to undermine the very premise of this prevalent Jewish/Christian tradition. This was a pervasive tradition in Joseph's day, and was even the foundation for purported source texts such as Ethan Smith's "View of the Hebrews", yet this narrative is completely absent from (if not outright challenged by) Joseph's text. The closest we get is a repeated reference of the "lost tribes of Israel" which "the Father hath led away out of Jerusalem." This is an entirely different tradition unique to the Book of Mormon and fundamentally undermines the "10 Lost Tribes" tradition. This is most clearly represented in Jacob 5, in which the Assyrian Conquest of Israel is likened the an olive tree that has its "main branches" plucked out by the Lord and burned. Later, the Lord gathers three groups of "young and tender branches" and plants them elsewhere in the vineyard, with the suggestion that Lehi's group represents one of these latter branches and the other two represent these "Lost Tribes" being referred to.
 

Again, if this text is merely a farm boy's KJV fan fiction, why undermine these fundamental details in the traditional biblical narrative? And why do they find support in the prevailing view among scholars today?

And let's be clear, the aspects I'm pointing to here are not throw-away details sitting in the peripheral of the book's narrative, such as the brief mention of "barley" in the Americas. Rather, each and every point I've presented here is crucial to the book's central narrative. The "who", "what", "when", "where" and "why" of the entire narrative. To remove any of these four aspects from the text would fundamentally change the theological implications of the entire record. To put it simply, the dominant critical narrative pertaining to the nature and origin of the Book of Mormon simply does not work for me because it does not sufficiently reconcile with this new understanding of ancient Israel based on the current scholarly consensus in Biblical studies.
 

While others' engagement with modern scholarship has challenged their testimony of the Book of Mormon and other Restoration scripture, the same has ultimately strengthened and informed mine. What we have here is simply not the product of some kid pulling "And it came to pass" stories out of a hat. There is far too much complexity, advanced narratology, and profound theological depth within this text for this to merely be what critics claim it to be.
 

Even if we were to set all of this aside, we are faced with this question: Why is it that in so many cases the Bible goes one way and the Book of Mormon takes a hard turn in the other direction? And why is it that nearly 200 years later, so many of these details are now supported by this leading view in Biblical scholarship? Now this does not give us license to simply ignore the significant evidence at hand that challenges a traditional view pertaining to the nature and origin of the Book of Mormon, but at the very least it challenges every other naturalistic explanation that has been put forth to date in an attempt to explain away this curious text.
 

In contrast to what critics have concluded, I think that non-Latter-day Saint Christians will struggle in grappling with the implications of current Biblical scholarship. The history of our Christian heritage is just more complicated than has been traditionally understood. But for Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, the Book of Mormon offers real reason to believe that there is something of substance here. Something that requires serious treatment and further study to fully understand. Something much more than secular explanations have yet been able to offer. And that is why I have come to truly admire and appreciate the Book of Mormon.
 

Sources:

- Wright, Jacob L.. Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

- Finkelstein, Israel, and Silberman, Neil Asher. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts. Free Press, 2002.

Thank you for your testimony. 

[manol]

 

On 10/17/2024 at 2:03 AM, Dario_M said:

What have been your best testimony ever about God?

In my opinion, my best testimony ever about God is not something that is in the past.

My best testimony ever about God is that I can connect with God right here and right now, in this present moment, by turning my attention (my word-based thoughts) to doing so, and by tuning my spirit (my wordless thoughts) in to the energy of communion with God.

Religions tend to emphasize the importance of actions. Okay, but note that our actions arise from our thoughts. Of course we can use our willpower to force our actions to be different from our thoughts (in other words, different from what we truly desire), but this approach produces enormous strain over time. On the other hand ,“my yoke is easy and my burden is light” describes a state of mind wherein we have mastered our thoughts and brought them into alignment with Christ. Our minds can be our ally instead of our enemy!

“Love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength” is about a state of mind. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is about a state of mind..  And “the Pure Love of Christ” is this state of mind.

Imo it is not necessary to go out and perform this or that action in order to qualify for communion with God. Imo and ime, God is just a thought or two away.

Edited October 19, 2024 by manol

[Dario_M]

3 hours ago, manol said:

 

In my opinion, my best testimony ever about God is not something that is in the past.

 

It depents. If you wanna write in the past you do that. If you don't want to write in the past then that's alright either. Some of the people in my topic who have allready written their testimony's have done that in the past.  

3 hours ago, manol said:

My best testimony ever about God is that I can connect with God right here and right now, in this present moment, by turning my attention (my word-based thoughts) to doing so, and by tuning my spirit (my wordless thoughts) in to the energy of communion with God.

 

Okay... that's interesting. 

3 hours ago, manol said:

Religions tend to emphasize the importance of actions. Okay, but note that our actions arise from our thoughts. Of course we can use our willpower to force our actions to be different from our thoughts (in other words, different from what we truly desire), but this approach produces enormous strain over time. On the other hand ,“my yoke is easy and my burden is light” describes a state of mind wherein we have mastered our thoughts and brought them into alignment with Christ. Our minds can be our ally instead of our enemy!

“Love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength” is about a state of mind. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is about a state of mind..  And “the Pure Love of Christ” is this state of mind.

Imo it is not necessary to go out and perform this or that action in order to qualify for communion with God. Imo and ime, God is just a thought or two away.

Thank you for your testimony. 

Edited October 19, 2024 by Dario_M