|
Just a few thoughts......
If, the Book of Mormon was completed by about AD 400, how can it
contain so many quotations from the version of the Bible first
published in AD 1611 ? Without much difficulty one can find
nineteen chapters of the Authorised Version of Isaiah. Isaiah 2
to 14 are contained almost word for word in 2 Nephi 12 to 24,
Isaiah 48 and 49 in 1 Nephi 20 and 21, Isaiah 50 and 51 in 2
Nephi 7 and 8, Isaiah 53 in Mosiah 14, and Isaiah 54 in 3 Nephi
22. Malachi also features prominently, chapters 3 and 4 being
included in 3 Nephi 24 to 25. Christ's Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew 5 to 7, is found in 3 Nephi 12 to 14. Moreover, a
careful examination of 3 Nephi 12 to 14 shows not only that
Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount in America in AD 34 but
that it then contained the established inaccuracies of the
Authorized Version.
God bless,
Paul V
|
|
Apparently we're off to a flying start!
Since I didn't make it clear enough in my base note, and since
the norm is to be able to reply right on the spot, I guess it is
too much to hope for that everyone will be aware of how I wanted
this topic handled, especially as it grows.
I *do* want anyone who wishes, to be able to make entries in this
note, but I guess I will have to act as mini-moderator, by
setting the note to NOWRITE and asking people to send me their
entries, which I will promptly add myself. That way replies will
find their way to note 81 instead of 80, and hopefully, all
interested parties will have a chance to have their say. I want
to strike a compromise between a one-author topic and a free-form,
possibly confusing, topic. Let's try it, anyway.
This is now the arrangement:
The note is set to NOWRITE
Any entries from others besides myself, mail them to me.
Replies go in 81.*
Replies to replies also go in 81.*
I hope that makes it workable and fairly simple.
Ed
|
| What Paul has clearly pointed out is not that the Book of Mormon
contains similar passages to the Bible, but that it contains passages
that are word-for-word identical with passages from the 1611 Authorized
Version of the Bible (King James). The question then, is, how does a
book, claiming to be written in 421 A.D., manage to contain verbatim
passages from a book written 1200 years later, in another part of the
world, by other men, in another language? If, as you say, the author(s)
of the BoM had the ancient scriptures with them, and that accounts for
the passages in question, how then do you explain them showing up not
only in KJV English, but with identical wording as well?
Mormons contend that Joseph Smith translated the plates by "the gift and
power of God", presumably a method superior to scholarly translation,
and the clear assertion is made that the Bible is somewhat inferior
since it must be "translated correctly"in order to be accepted as the
word of God (8th Article of Faith). If that is so, what is the origin of
these passages? Either God gave them to Joseph Smith through the Urim
and Thummim word-for-word as they are found in the 1611 KJV Bible (which
means they must have been translated perfectly by the scholars in 1611 -
contrary to the 8th Article of Faith), or they were in fact "borrowed"
by Joseph Smith to lend some sort of substance and credibility to
something he wrote on his own, a sort of pseudo-scripture. There doesn't
seem to be any middle ground. In any other context this would be called
plagiarism (just ask Joe Biden).
Paul has raised a serious issue here, one which cannot be dealt with
lightly.
Ed
|
|
In 3 Nephi chapter 12 we find what appears to be the text of the Sermon
on the Mount from Matthew chapter 5. In the passage where Christ speaks
against anger, we read "And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca,
shall be in danger of the council". The texts from both the Book of
Mormon and Matthew are identical, even to the word "Raca", which is the
Greek rendering of an Aramaic word which is a term of utter vilification,
such as "good-for-nothing-empty-headed-idiot".
The problem is that in the 1611 King James Version, the translators
decided to leave the word just as it appears in the source document,
yet somehow this identical word appears in the passage from the Book
of Mormon. The question that begs to be answered is this: How does an
Aramaic colloquialism find its way into the English translation of a book
that was written in a lost Egyptian dialect, by an author who did not
speak Aramaic?
The only logical explanation seems to be that it was in fact copied from
the King James Bible, word-for-word, and not a translation at all.
|
|
Allen has expressed a certain bias against the reliability of the some
of the sources used by Leza in compiling her report, on the assumption
that if these sources are ex-Mormons, their objectivity is highly
suspect. He, and I'm sure others, might be interested in hearing from a
non-Mormon (past or present) source on the subject of the Book of Mormon.
The following is from the book, Is Mormonism Christian? by Gordon Fraser,
Moody Press, 1977:
"We emphasize the fact that the Mormons in our present day are still
committed to the historical and geographical material in The Book of
Mormon. It is taught as serious history in their schools, in their Sunday
schools, and to their young missionaries.
"Mormon apologists assure us that the Book of Mormon gives the only
reliable history of what happened on the American continents from the
time of the Tower of Babel until the beginning of the fifth century of
the Christian era. The whole story is told in detail, as sober history;
therefore, Mormons cannot complain if we examine the credibility of the
details in the light of what we now know about the inhabitants of the New
World.
"if, for instance, the statements of history, geography, natural history,
ethnology, and anthropology in the Book of Mormon almost invariably prove
to be untrue, it is safe to assume that completely illogical statements
in the rest of the book will follow the same pattern.
"A sample of an impossible situation, in which time and place are
definitely stated, is given in the second chapter of the Book of Mormon.
The time is 600 BC, the place, Jerusalem and the borders of the Red Sea.
To avoid capture by the Babylonians, Lehi, a patriarch, took his family
away from Jerusalem, in spite of the specific command of the Lord to the
contrary.
(1 Nephi 2:4-9)
And it came to pass that he departed into the wilderness. And he left his
house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and
his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family,
and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness.
And he came down by the borders near the shore of the Red Sea...(with his
family, etc)
And it came to pass that when he had travelled three days in the
wilderness, he pitched his tent in a valley by the side of a river of
water.
And he built an alter of stones... (etc)
And it came to pass that he called the name of the river, Laman, and it
emptied into the Red Sea; and the valley was in the borders near the
mouth thereof.
And when my father saw that the waters of the river emptied into the
fountain of the Red Sea, he spake unto Laman...
(abridged)
"In this story are a number of clearly stated details that can be used as
checkpoints. 1) they left Jerusalem during Nebuchadnezzar's seige. 2)
they travelled on foot. If they had donkeys to carry their luggage, they
still would have had to walk beside the donkeys. 3) They travelled three
days in the wilderness. 4) They came to a valley through which flowed a
river. 5) the river ran into the Red Sea. 6) According to 1 Nephi 16:12-13
they were travelling in a 'south-southeast direction'.
1. According to the details of the seige of Jerusalem, everyone who broke
out to flee was overtaken and killed by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar. The
escape of Lehi and his family, therefore, was highly improbable.
2. On foot or by ox cart, under good conditions, people travel at about
three miles per hour. Even the more sophisticated wagon trains of the
American migrations west were seldom faster than this three-mile-per-hour
speed.
3. On that basis, three day's journey would have brought the pilgrims
about seventy-five miles south-southeast of Jerusalem, to the southern
tip of the Dead Sea, not the Red Sea. It would have taken them about
seven days of favorable travelling to reach the closest tip of the Red
Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba. If the three days' journey was taken after they
reached the Red Sea, they would still have been on the coast of the Gulf
of Aqaba in the Midian Desert.
4. There are no rivers in this part of the world.
5. No rivers run into the Red Sea anywhere along the fifteen-hundred-mile
length of its western coast.
"The story continues turgidly, with the party of pilgrims traversing the
Arabian Peninsula for seven years, passing through the Rub-al-Khali
Desert to the shores of the Persian Gulf. There they reached a 'fruitful
land,' which they named Bountiful because of its much fruit and honey.
"Next, Nephi is instructed to construct a ship for passage to the
promised land. But he was at a point which is probably as far from a
source of shipbuilding timber as any spot on earth. Nephi was commanded
by the Lord to come up into a mountain to obtain instructions for
building a ship, but there are no mountains within several hundred miles
of 'Bountiful' on the Persian Gulf. The ship was built, and in spite of
mutinies, after many days arrived safe and sound on the coast of America.
The west coast is usually accepted my Mormons. No detail is given about
their transit across the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, their passage
of the archipelagos of Southeast Asia, or their crossing of the Pacific
Ocean. Simply 'after many days'they reached the promised land.
"Seventeen chapters of the Book of Mormon bring the pilgrims to the
promised land. They are so full of improbabilities, impossibilities, and
illogical situations that we should not expect the writers of the book to
improve the quality of their story when they come to a world area of
which, in Joseph Smith's time, very little was known.
"Now that the facts are known of the cultures, races, languages,
geography and religions of the ancient Americans, we can objectively
evaluate the story of the Book of Mormon, as it purports to give its
version."
From chapter 16 of the book, "Is Mormonism Christian" by Gordon Fraser.
|
| I have had this around for a while, wondering where the most appropriate
place to put it might be. The recent note on "Study, Faith and the Book
of Mormon" by Rich Kotter has now made this more relevant. I have chosen
to enter it here, because this is where it seems most relevant, and I do
not wish to spoil the thrust of Rich's note by placing it there.
To put this note in an even better perspective, one may wish to scan the
topic on Joseph Smith and the occult, which raises the question of his
involvement in occult practices.
The following is exerpted from the book, "Mormonism", by Jan Shipps, a
historian Alan Leigh has said is one of his favorites. I mention this
because of the many negative comments regarding the allegedly "anti-Mormon
bias" of the sources quoted by Leza and others.
"Prior to his having reported the vision in which he learned about the
existence of [the gold plates], Joseph had found a "seerstone," a smooth
stone "the size but not the shape of a hen's egg" whose magical
properties reputedly made possible the location of lost objects and
metals beneath the surface of the earth. His possession of this occult
article, which he found while helping his brother Alvin dig a well...
allowed the Smith family to take up what was known in those days as
"money digging"" (Mormonism, Jan Shipps, p 10) She goes on to document
that the stone was believed, by Mormon contemporaries of Smith and
Brigham Young, to have been employed in the discovery of the plates (p.11)
"If such evidence does not establish a direct connection between the
prophet's having possessed a seerstone and his having gained possession
of a treasure whose secret had to be unlocked with "stones that were what
constituted 'seers' in ancient or former times," chronology establishes
an implicit connection. Joseph's 1820 vision was followed in 1822 by his
finding a seerstone. IN 1823 he reported to his mother and father that he
had learned of the existence of a cache of gold plates, but that he was
unable to gain possession of them until 1827. He was, nevertheless,
permitted (or required) to make annual visits in September 1824, 1825,
and 1826 to see the plates in the place where they were buried and to
talk with the angel Moroni. During those same four years, the Joseph
Smiths, father and son, were very much engaged in the hunting of treasure,
and in one instance in 1826, their failure to find any led to a trial
in Bainbridge, New York, in which the younger of the two was charged
with being a disorderly person, a "glass looker," and/or an imposter.
Then, in September 1827, Joseph Smith, Jr., said that he gained possession
of the gold plates and the Urim and Thummim, an instrument that apparently
functioned in the manner of the seerstone, revealing a long-lost story to
the young prophet." (p. 11)
Note the mention of the seer stone as an "occult" article. This certainly
seems in keeping with the apparent occultic fetish for various stones,
crystal balls, crystals, etc, and the idea that some sort of mystical
power can be contained within them.
Also interesting is the mention that Joseph Smith came into possession of
the plates, and the means to translate them, in September of 1827. This
certainly seems to make the "miracle of translation" a great deal less
remarkable, considering that he apparently had these things for 21 months
before the Book of Mormon finally came out on June 30, 1829.
This text addresses issues raised in several topics: Translation of the
Book of Mormon, J.S. and the Occult, his early treasure hunting enterprises,
and his court trials. Alos keep in mind that the source is one of the
most highly regarded (by the LDS) non-Mormon historians, Jan Shipps.
Ed
|