What books did Joseph Smith have access to?

[t2t2]

OK -

Bat Creek Stone.

I think you're out of touch on this one. The Smithsonian has dated the bracelets found to the 18th or 19th century ("Recent tests by our Conservation Laboratory on the brass bracelets found in the same grave definitely established that they are 18-19th century trade goods and do not have the chemical composition of brass of the Roman or early Semitic periods." (Statement by the Smithsonian Institution, November 24, 1971) ).

Plus, the inscription was copied from an illustration that appeared in a widely available book titled General History, Cyclopedia, and Dictionary of Freemasonry, published in 1870 (nineteen years before the finding of the stone). The stone is a fraud.

The term "Land of Jerusalem" is used in the BoM to describe where Jesus is born. 

Joseph Smith had the perfect example before him - New York. It's a city. It's a state. The land of New york makes sense. So does the Land of Jerusalem. That the critics were wrong says nothing to me. This one seems natural for any language.

Your thoughts?

[Laban the Younger]

Let's say I take the position that Joseph Smith was a fraud and that he made up the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price.

Now according to church critics, Joseph Smith fabricated all of these works after carefully studying, cover-to-cover, all of the following:

- The King James version of the Bible

- Ethan Smith's "Views of the Hebrews"

[Magyar]

Okay, I think I understand the futility of this game. I show names that appear in the Book of Mormon and show that they match actual names in ancient Egyptian, a language unreadable in Joseph Smith's day.

I am challenged to find non-Mormon sources for these names. I do, as in Herodotus, etc.

I also show archaeological research of Hebrew names not found in the Bible, such as Alma. No comment is made on that.

I am told that anybody could add a few letters to a name and make it sound authentic.

I and others then explain that suffixes and prefixes must follow actual linguistic patterns, not be simple nonsense. This is ignored.

Critics then demand that the Book of Mormon show Maya names, a red herring.

They also find some vague resemblances of these genuine Egyptian names to Biblical names and believe they have explained it all away.

"Oh ye stiffnecked and unbelieving, how long shall I suffer you..."

[Laban the Younger]

Okay, I think I understand the futility of this game. I show names that appear in the Book of Mormon and show that they match actual names in ancient Egyptian, a language unreadable in Joseph Smith's day.

I am challenged to find non-Mormon sources for these names. I do, as in Herodotus, etc.

I also show archaeological research of Hebrew names not found in the Bible, such as Alma. No comment is made on that.

I am told that anybody could add a few letters to a name and make it sound authentic.

I and others then explain that suffixes and prefixes must follow actual linguistic patterns, not be simple nonsense. This is ignored.

Critics then demand that the Book of Mormon show Maya names, a red herring.

They also find some vague resemblances of these genuine Egyptian names to Biblical names and believe they have explained it all away.

"Oh ye stiffnecked and unbelieving, how long shall I suffer you..."

Joseph had a Bible with the Apocrypha, so it is understandable that he would have Biblican sounding names if he wrote the BofM. Maybe he even had a few solid hits of names from no known source. That's great news. But why would the mesoamerican name issue be a red herring?

[Magyar]

Because the Book never claims to be about the Maya people, but rather about several groups of Mideastern folk who came to a new land, bringing their language and culture with them.

Some assume they encountered the Maya, the Olmecs, whatever. It matters not one way or the other. The Magyar invaders, after a thousand years in Europe, have been hardly touched by their Slavic neighbors, linguistically.

It comes down to this: Does the Book of Mormon contain specific names which are attested in non-Biblical Mideastern sources unknown to the 19th Century world of scholarship?

Yes, it does.

I have shown this, not with one name, not with two, but with at least three. I could show more, but would it matter? Joseph will continue to be called a lucky guesser, a scrambler of available Biblical syllables.

But if a Borneo tribesman starts quoting Milton verbatim to me, I will assume that he somehow has managed to read or at least hear Milton read at some point in his life, not that he spontaneously generated the words out of his own language in a weird fluke of the time/space continuum.

[t2t2]

I show names that appear in the Book of Mormon and show that they match actual names in ancient Egyptian, a language unreadable in Joseph Smith's day.

Korihor does NOT match and actual name. Asa does but it's found almost exactly as is in the Bible (at least as close as Korihor and Horihor). I'm amazed that you think this is evidence for the BoM.

They also find some vague resemblances of these genuine Egyptian names to Biblical names and believe they have explained it all away.

Are you kidding me? You don't think the names I showed you are more than enough to come up with what he did?

Let's say the Lord of the Rings is a true history. And let's say I use it as a guide to write a false history of other people who live on the other side of Middle Earth (I hope you're familiar enough with the books to follow this).

Would it be amazing to find that a few names I made up using pieces of names from the books turned out to be real names I knew nothing of? Say I invent a new name. Arawen. Later some researches determine that's a real name that I could not have known about using the books as a guide. But, says another, it's merely a combination of Aragorn and Arwen. No, no! shouts the believer - it's proof that Tommy was a prophet!

Who knows? Only I would know. Those on each side will be amazed that the other cannot see how plain the truth is. The point is that this kind of thing as "evidence" appeals only to one already convinced. Anyone else can see how easily it could have come about.

[Magyar]

So do it. But why stop with proper names?

Write your 500-plus page book. Fill it with specific cultural details of a time and people long gone, with details only vaguely hinted at in the Bible. Invite your neighbors to ransack your house and chase you around during your writing periods.

Add details, many details, which archaeologists and anthropologists will validate long after you have written it. Put words in it like "sheum," for a crop, which turns out be genuine Akkadian for a type of grain.

Keep the threads of your history untangled through the whole process.

It should be so easy. The world must be full of these sort of books, easily done by someone with enough determination and an open Bible at hand.

The millions of deluded Mormons will be thankful for your service to them.

[t2t2]

Can't be done today. I've read too many books. Seen too many things. Critics would rightfully protest that I could have read the name somewhere.

The problem is that it's not a bullseye, as you said, if instead of a center ring and various less accurate rings around you have center rings all over the place in which to claim a "hit".

It would be one thing to say "Joseph got a whole lot of Hebrew words right." That's one language in which to try and land a hit. Instead Mormons have allowed themselves to be impressed it a word falls into any one of the many languages across the whole expanse of that area. Here's a word....let's see if it's close to a word one of these 20 languages. HEY! It is! It's a miracle!

Akkadian, eh? Good thing Lehi and company spoke so many languages...else you would have to search only within Hebrew. I doubt there are many proper names or words that cannot find a close match within at least one of so many tounges.

[Zeitgeist]

I think one hit in a million isn't great odds. When you fire a buck-shot shotgun at a barn you are bound to hit something. People tend to neglect the things he got wrong. They sometimes are more significant than many things right.

Zeitgeist

[ave maria]

I also show archaeological research of Hebrew names not found in the Bible, such as Alma. No comment is made on that.

Alma's perhaps not the best example.

"Alma" was a proper name that existed in Joseph Smith's time, either as a family name or a first name.

http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/a...amily-crest.htm

http://www.irelandseye.com/irish/tradition...first/alma.shtm

It was also a geographical name that was already in use by Joseph Smith's time, as was the Latin phrase "alma mater."

It's also a name that appears in Edmund Spenser's famous epic poem, "The Faerie Queene," which dates from the late sixteenth century.

[Zeitgeist]

I think it silly that people would wager their lives on the name Alma. Is this the level of evidence people are willing to accept that the church is true? For some it is. I find it unsatisfactory. Deductive reasoning should not ignore inductive. Ignore it at your peril.

Zeitgeist

[Calm]

Is this the level of evidence people are willing to accept that the church is true?

I agree. That is why I find it remarkable when people start listing their problems with the church in part are due to things like "adieu" in the bom.

[juliann]

I think it silly that people would wager their lives on the name Alma. Is this the level of evidence people are willing to accept that the church is true? For some it is. I find it unsatisfactory. Deductive reasoning should not ignore inductive. Ignore it at your peril.

Do you find it a problem when people "stake their lives" on these same things to reject the church? The difference is that you cannot come up with one Mormon who stakes much of anything on names or other minutia. Unfortunately, you will find many who do that leave the church.

[juliann]

It's also a name that appears in Edmund Spenser's famous epic poem, "The Faerie Queene," which dates from the late sixteenth century.

OK...so JS had family crests and The Faerie Queene in his barn with all those other books. (Did Spenser claim Alma was a Hebrew name? Wow.)

Keep building those bookshelves!

[charity]

Zeitgeist: I think you will find that more people "risk their lives" on a word by leaving the Church, than "risk their lives" by joining it or staying with it on the proof of a word. Joining and staying with the Church is a matter of testimony. But I don't really think that a word here or there, causes people to leave the Church. I think it is fair to say that people who were truly converted at one time, by their own words, and who leave the Church later, did so because they lost the spirit * and then began to look for the reason why the Church was not true. Leaving the Church started a long time before they quit attending meetings.

*please note I did not say that they started sinning. I was accused of meaning that, although I did not say it, on another thread.

[Laban the Younger]

So do it. But why stop with proper names?

Write your 500-plus page book. Fill it with specific cultural details of a time and people long gone, with details only vaguely hinted at in the Bible. Invite your neighbors to ransack your house and chase you around during your writing periods.

Add details, many details, which archaeologists and anthropologists will validate long after you have written it. Put words in it like "sheum," for a crop, which turns out be genuine Akkadian for a type of grain.

Keep the threads of your history untangled through the whole process.

It should be so easy. The world must be full of these sort of books, easily done by someone with enough determination and an open Bible at hand.

The millions of deluded Mormons will be thankful for your service to them.

I haven't seen anyone here claim they could do it, but that doesn't mean nobody could. There is a place where you can find tons of books, over 500 pages thick, written by ordinary people who were able to do it. It's called a library.

Nibley's Book of Mormon challenge reminds me of a rebuttal to a similar challenge regarding the Koran. Islamic philosopher Abu Bakr al-Razi argued against the Nibley type challenge. He lived around 854-925 AD.

"You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: "Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one." Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter... By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: "Produce something like it?!" (From Doubt: A History, Jennifer Michael Hecht, pg 229)

[t2t2]

Keep building those bookshelves!

Joseph Smith Sr. was a teacher for a while, right? Wouldn't you suppose a teacher might have a decent book collection?

[Bertram]

Testimony is a wonderful thing!

Indeed reading all these posts, including ALL those many so negative ones, has added to that assured confidence.

My latest E-Mail from of all things "beliefnet" included a wonderful link to the Hill Cumorah Pageant, with photographs and Music.

Try it at:

http://www.beliefnet.com/gallery/cumorah/cumorahgallery.html

ENJOY

[Magyar]

Thank you, Bertram.

You have calmed my frustration, a little. It appears impossible to explain to some people the difference between a book that eschews the recounting of history (Quran, D&C, etc) and thus cannot be approached with scientific tools; a book that dwells entirely in the realm of the fantastic (LOR, etc.); and a book that purports to be as genuine and sober a history of a branch of humanity as, say, H.G Well's Outline of History.

Critics spend tons of time on this board attacking the LDS Church but refuse to take up the apparently very simple task of writing another Book of Mormon, complete with linguistic, cultural and archaeological details which could not have been known to the "translator" of the original work.

Those details can be checked in the real world. You can say that Aha (who happens to have been a primal Pharoah of Egypt) was a lucky guess by Joseph, a strange name that he just cooked up or morphed out of Asa in the Bible. You can say he turned the feminine Latin Alma into a man's name just because he was ignorant, and that it is mere coincidence that Alma now turns up in a scientifically verifiable Hebrew mileu.

But how long can one continue to "kick against the pricks?"

[Magyar]

I am a writer by trade. If I worked at it hard enough, maybe I could fake some D&C style revelations or a nice, poetic Quran extolling the worship of the One God and his prophet. No one could touch me on that.

But I seriously doubt I could come up with a huge book containing dozens and dozens of details about a people I had never met, details that would be verified as factual long after I had completed my book, even though they flew in the face of the accepted science of the time in which I wrote it.

[Hemidakota]

Let's say I take the position that Joseph Smith was a fraud and that he made up the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price.

Now according to church critics, Joseph Smith fabricated all of these works after carefully studying, cover-to-cover, all of the following:

- The King James version of the Bible

- Ethan Smith's "Views of the Hebrews"

- Solomon Spaulding manuscript

- The Apocrypha

- The works of Flavius Josephus

- The complete works of Shakespeare

Am I missing any? Now of course there's no direct evidence that Joseph Smith had possesion of every single one of these books, as well as others he would need to fabricate the BoM, D&C and PofGP, prior to 1830, but since only those defending Joseph Smith need to present direct evidence, that's beside the point.

Now remember, when the Book of Mormon was first published and distributed, Jospeh Smith was only 24 years old, and had not had the opportunity to attend college or study in either Europe or the Middle East. In fact, he barely had a fourth grade education. (Of course, now church critics are trying to say that's a myth)

So how did he do it? How did Joseph Smith gather all these books together, studying them throughly and carefully, and use them to create the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price? And how did he do this while at the same time convincing his wife, his immediate family, and many others such as Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Orson Pratt, Parley P. Pratt, David Whitmer, Newel K. Whitney, and Willard Richards, just to name a few, that his work was of divine origin?

I will add to your statement on education level

[t2t2]

Critics spend tons of time on this board attacking the LDS Church but refuse to take up the apparently very simple task of writing another Book of Mormon, complete with linguistic, cultural and archaeological details which could not have been known to the "translator" of the original work.

I know why. Because no one here cares enough to put that kind of effort into this. I'm bored enough at work to spend some time here. But when I go home? I play with my puppies. I work on my music and my business I'm starting. I work on the book I'm slowly writing. I spend time with the wife in the pool - go out with friends. I'm in a soccer league. I have a life!

I have enough interest in these debates, sure....but not in working full time on a book that will be immediately dismissed by Mormon apologists. This is a rediculous premise and you know it. I explained this earlier - it's impossible today. We have the internet and libraries, etc. IF I did spend the time and energy necessary and wrote a book set in ancient Tibet, and through some good guesses came up with a bunch of correct names - none of you would believe that I didn't look this stuff up in advance. Rightfully so.

So why don't you ever respond directly to my posts? You ask a question, let me answer...and then later come back, having completely ignored everything I said and post like you did above. It cracks me up.

I showed you names in the Bible that were almost exact matches to Asa. Horihor is NOT Korihor and the Bible is full of Kor and Hor based names. Please tell me how you think that Joseph did something extrodinary when all that he came up with are near twin dupes to that which he had before him?

It would be one thing if he called someone "blblbabuburawisik" and loe and behold - THAT is a real name AND it is nothing like Biblical names. Otherwise?

[Magyar]

I understand. Joseph is supposed to have invented names not using any of the syllables or letters present in the Bible. Then words in this new alphabet must be found by scientists or archaeologists, thus validating Joseph.

I think I have addressed your responses/questions. You have been presented with the miracle of the Book of Mormon but you reject that and demand the impossible.

Sure, Aha in the Book of Mormon could have been based on Asa in the Bible, not an ancient pharoah. Sure, Alma could have been derived from the Latin. But the evidence is now available, which wasn't in the days of JS, for validation of the Book of Mormon's premise, that these terms, right down to the spelling, are also found in the Near-Eastern setting.

As for Horihor being Korihor, it's close enough for me. Reject it if you will.

[t2t2]

But the evidence is now available, which wasn't in the days of JS, for validation of the Book of Mormon's premise, that these terms, right down to the spelling, are also found in the Near-Eastern setting.

I think Mormons, like you, are making too much into what is possible. That much of the BoM is possible does not mean it is evidence that it happened. If you can find a name that he made up and it matches something in one of the 20 or so languages you look in - we have now found a possibility. Fine. I won't debate that much of the criticism early critics leveled at the book was inaccurate. They say "it's wrong because X was not possible". Once it is shown to be possible then Mormons claim "proof"!. No - it's not. It's only proof that a critic was wrong, not that the book is right.

You just don't seem to realize what a big target you're painting in which Joseph can hit the mark. Let's suppose that Lehi and Nephi did indeed speak several languages. Let's say, since daddy was a trader, that they spoke Hebrew, Egyptian and Aramaic. That fair enough? Let's then suppose that Nephi, as the keeper of the records, taught some bits of Egyptian to his son(s) so that they could write on the plates. So a tiny bit very well could have been passed along to some select few. Aramaic? Nah... anyone who has ever learned a language knows how impossible it is to keep up without others to practice it with. Even when I was in Korea we Americans spoke to each other in English. I'd love to teach my kids Korean - but it simply won't happen. They would have no one else to pratice with.

So it's common sense to think that after the first generation all but 1 or 2, maybe, would be speaking ONLY Hebrew. So where does Korihor come from? Paanchi? You think Nephi and his brothers taught Egyptian mythology to their kids? That Isrealites would do this??? How does this name make its way all the way until it comes out in Korihor?

[cinepro]

For those who believe there are names in the Book of Mormon that are derivative of Egyptian names, I have a question.

What is the theorized method of transmission from Egypt to the Promised Land, hundreds of years later?

Did Sariah bring along her book of "10,000 Egyptian Pagan Baby Names"?

And why would pre-Christian, Old Testament-believing, mosaic-law abiding people seek to preserve and inject Egyptian culture into this New World? And not just for the first few generations, but for hundreds and hundreds of years?

When the Nephites and Lamanites assimilated with the indigenous people, why didn't the indigenous peoples widely adopt the names of these new people (to the point that we would find them in some sort of archaeological or anthropological record) since they were widely adopting their religion, or why didn't the Nephites or Lamanites adopt the names of their new friends and converts after hundreds of years, to the point where we would find names from ancient Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon later in the narrative?