Two honest questions for Bible scholars...

[Chapel-Hill-Coug]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I'm curious. Why do you think he didn't write it? I claim 100% certainty the Book of Mormon isn't what Joseph Smith said it was. Yet, I'm with Brodie in dismissing the traditional defense of the Book of Mormon citing Joseph's lack of education as lame and a little sad.

Clearly, Joseph's later life establishes him as a man possessing formidable skills, and he was no slouch with words; what I think he had among other things a great memory and an ability to intuitively organize what he retained and orally present it in original ways, sometimes extemporizing and even repeating verbatim long passages he learned (in addition to overarching ambition; what could be more ambitious than the founding of a religious movement?).

Throughout history we have unschooled bards like Homer and those in India and the Balkans still extant in modern times reciting orally transmitted epics sometimes exceeding biblical proportions, and of greater literary merit than the Book of Mormon, needless to say. These bards all the while embellish and improve what was handed down to them. In fact, I read something fascinating about this process a while ago--the more a bard becomes literate his powers of memorization and retention diminish. Note that Joseph even according to his own account always had a scribe.

I agree the Book of Mormon is a Hodge podge of nineteenth century lore. Later Joseph would show an impressive ability to synthesize in his mind and repeat a hodge podge of old discarded Christian heresies like Arianism, Palagianism, and Gnosticism. Where did he learn this stuff? Who knows? Maybe nowhere. I believe these heresies are natural reactions to traditional Christian theology that have tended to materialize on the fringes. As Harold Bloom has suggested, Mormonism belongs in that family of ascetic sects traditionally arising in the sticks including Islam, James the Just's Christianity, and Gnosticism, naturally repelled by Romanized/Hellenized Christianity.

For example, Catholicism holds that the godhead is one; it doesn't take really any education or a whole of imagination to wonder whether they are in fact separate, and to find instances in the New Testament where they appear seemingly as three personages. The Arian heresy and recurring schism occurred in late antiquity along a natural fault line. Joseph may well have been "inspired" by some itinerant preacher he heard during the Second Great Awakening, but he may also have coincidentally reacted to the traditional Christian idea of the godhead in the same way as did presbyter Arius fifteen hundred years before. Same with Palagianism--there's a natural inclination to find a different explanation than Catholicism's or Calvinism's dire take on original sin. Same with Gnostic ideas such as God being subordinate to natural laws, etc. We see a bard/magpie like quality in the way Joseph used his experience in free masonry to adapt the the temple ceremony.

I think that when Harold Bloom calls Joseph Smith a "religious genius" and a genuine prophet he is referring to this bard-like/magpie quality, coupled with brilliant charisma, creative imagination, and overarching ambition necessary to start a successful religious movement.

That's my theory anyway; Joseph was Homer to the nineteenth century American Anglo-Saxon underclass.

All good points. It is always possible. And clearly Joseph had incredibly creative storytelling abilities, given the fact that he was telling his family all about the BOM peoples well before the book was published. The only thing I can't completely swallow is JS as a conscious fraud. Perhaps he had the creative genius to pull this off, all the while thinking he was doing god's work. It is certainly possible. I don't know. I would agree however (but with about 95% certainty) that the bom wasn't what js claimed it to be.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by Chapel-Hill-Coug

All good points. It is always possible. And clearly Joseph had incredibly creative storytelling abilities, given the fact that he was telling his family all about the BOM peoples well before the book was published. The only thing I can't completely swallow is JS as a conscious fraud. Perhaps he had the creative genius to pull this off, all the while thinking he was doing god's work. It is certainly possible. I don't know. I would agree however (but with about 95% certainty) that the bom wasn't what js claimed it to be.

I assume you mean to say that BoM is not what JS and the witnesses claimed it to be.

[MikeWaters]

CHC, to take this a different direction....if you apply the same standards against the Bible, how does that jive with a belief in God and Christ?

Does this lead to folks dismissing a belief in God? Or on the other hand, if the Bible lends itself to a belief in God through these approaches, does the Book of Mormon do the same?

Where does the divine enter the equation?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Chapel-Hill-Coug

All good points. It is always possible. And clearly Joseph had incredibly creative storytelling abilities, given the fact that he was telling his family all about the BOM peoples well before the book was published. The only thing I can't completely swallow is JS as a conscious fraud. Perhaps he had the creative genius to pull this off, all the while thinking he was doing god's work. It is certainly possible. I don't know. I would agree however (but with about 95% certainty) that the bom wasn't what js claimed it to be.

I don't really need to solve whether he was a conscious fraud. My view is that issue is somewhat beside the point. I don't think he was a fraud in the same way the forgers of the Hitler diaries were in any event.

Was this guy a conscious fraud?:

http://www.amazon.com/Scarith-Scorne.../dp/0226730360

I think he came to believe his own creation. Some still do believe in it.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Chapel-Hill-Coug

All good points. It is always possible. And clearly Joseph had incredibly creative storytelling abilities, given the fact that he was telling his family all about the BOM peoples well before the book was published. The only thing I can't completely swallow is JS as a conscious fraud. Perhaps he had the creative genius to pull this off, all the while thinking he was doing god's work. It is certainly possible. I don't know. I would agree however (but with about 95% certainty) that the bom wasn't what js claimed it to be.

I don't come down on the situation where you do, but I can't find any evidence of substantial nature to substantiate Joseph Smith being a knowing fraud.

The only suitable hypotheses to me at least, JS believed he was a prophet but was wrong, or JS was a prophet, even though he made mistakes. I come down to the latter conclusion, but I can understand how reasonable persons could come to the first conclusion. That he was a knowing fraud just doesn't wash with all the evidence.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I assume you mean to say that BoM is not what JS and the witnesses claimed it to be.

Mike, I think you can cite our greatest novelist himself as support for your logic:

"Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything; but for me, when a man tells me that he has "seen the engravings which are upon the plates," and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him see them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, and even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either.

"And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen the plates too; and not only seen those plates but "hefted" them, I am convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire Whitmer family had testified."

--Mark Twain

[All-American]

If Mark Twain is unconvinced by the witnesses, I am even less convinced by his unconviction. There's no actual argument behind it, save a weary smile and a kindly shake of the head.

[tooblue]

Originally Posted by Chapel-Hill-Coug

With the books of the bible we have arguments for thinking such... what would the argument be for Nephi? As a historian I always have to ask what the evidence is. No pseudepigrapha from the Bible evince the same kind of verisimilitude that Nephi does (Nephi talks about "making these plates" for a wise purpose, etc), and that doesn't even take into account the immersive first person nature of the text. Do we see any other examples of this in the BOM? Anywhere else the editing is explicit. This is grasping at straws.

Remember, I don't think the BOM is historical. I'm just stating what the text clearly claims.

Ok, so now we get down to the nitty gritty which is to state that historians aren't even certain as to the time frame or even authorship of Isaiah -yet you have held firm that comparative dating proposes a problem?

Your entire premise for criticism is folly and further attempts to sound authoritative is meaningless. ALL history is fiction. That is why I do not consider the BOM a history book but rather scripture, hallowed, the word of GOD.

[tooblue]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

That Joseph believed in what he said is the more elegant hypothesis.

It's transcendent

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by tooblue

ALL history is fiction. That is why I do not consider the BOM a history book but rather scripture, hallowed, the word of GOD.

With this part I agree.

Scripture is the then best expression of God communicating through the device of language through an imperfect being based on then current circumstances. Seen in that light, it is much more human, and to some extent living. It is really just a snapshot in time.