The Jews rejected Christ and still do because He was not the conquering king they expected. How could the “suffering servant” who did not evidence He was the conquering king be the Christ. You and I agree that the “suffering servant” isn’t inconsistent with an all powerful God, but for some reason you believe the absence of apostolic authority requiring a restoration is only explainable if “God is weak.” I disagree.
I do not know what you are referring to here, but I am sure it relies upon me being a Mormon and a scoundrel. You will need to clarify what you mean.
I am not here to tear down Catholicism regardless of what you believe. I offer criticisms of Catholicism when they seem to fairly directly parallel the criticism offered by Catholics against my faith. I try to explain what I see as positives for my faith. Occasionally I respond to criticism of my faith.
And what sort of non-Mormon anthropologists would believe that the BOM is true in any form?
Joseph Smith, the person we have to believe restored the Church of Jesus Christ, was wrong about the Book of Mormon just like he was wrong about the Book of Abraham. “Smith lied” is a fact that unravels Mormonism.
The only Catholic Church I know exists in 2014. It is a historical fact IMO that Christ lived and selected apostles. It is IMO a historical fact that these apostles selected local leaders who didn’t act like they were apostles and in the beginning (especially in Rome) governed as a group. The Catholic Church can trace its leadership back to these local leaders. Eno and Sullivan can offer a theory for how these local leaders became Popes and monoepiscopal Bishops, claiming God was involved in a very human appearing thing. LDS can offer a theory for how these local leaders were never intended to be what Eno and Sullivan claim they became and thus this was not a divinely guided transition.
I do not believe claiming that Smith sometimes was correct when he spoke about BOM geography and sometimes was wrong is “throwing Smith under the bus,” but if that makes you happy, perhaps you can agree with my statement above about the BOM being an ancient Mesoamerican book.
Perhaps I will end my posting today with this.
"TOmNosser:
What you do is make accusations and then run. So to summarize: You got nothing. Leading the reader to assume one thing when it turns out something different is true seems to be a habit of the Mormon writing style.
When I say unique, I mean they have never been Christian beliefs. A Mormon ‘response’ does not equal a valid argument. So actually, there are no good reasons for the unique teachings of Joseph Smith as a restoration of Christianity, but again you lead the reader to assume one thing when the opposite is true.
You are not comparing the same thing. See Post #493. Yes, there are non-Mormon anthropologists who believe it is true in some form. That form is that it is a 19th century American work of fiction. Joseph Smith claimed it was a work of historical fact, that puts it in the realm of empirical science, where is fails in that regard.
Michael Coe who knows many of them claim that most are non-believers.
Science says Book of Mormon is a work of fiction. Joseph Smith claimed it was a historical fact according to Mormon scripture. Joseph Smith was wrong. This is a problem for anyone who believes the Book of Mormon proves Joseph Smith was a prophet.
I think you agree with my historical fact.
The Mormon theory is a religious belief not supported by history.
Your beliefs are only that, because they are not supported by historical fact.
I have no hopes either way. If the BoM is true, I would accept that, though not necessarily any particular church which claimed to believe in it. If the BoM is false, so it’s false. Whichever it is, I would argue for that. I do not deny some of the teachings in the BoM are true and harmonious, from a Catholic perspective as well as my personally held beliefs. Unfortunately, the Monsonites reject that clear teaching. The BoM teaches there is one God, and only one God, and no other. LDS say that is not true, that there are multiple gods. On this point, I believe the Book of Mormon. The BoM also teaches things that are simply not true. Nahom by itself neither supports nor contradicts the BoM. The site that Mormon apologists use to confirm the existence of Nahom as recounted in the BoM, however, does not support the BoM. You need to read the details of the reports much more carefully.
You are begging the question. Yes, Mesoamerican archaeology had writing of many sorts. Thomas Monson should have no problem opening up Hill Cumorah to extract all the tables-full of records there, and deliver them to archaeologists and linguists for decipherment. The point is not what we now have in Mesoamerica! The point is what the BoM says was in Mesoamerica. That could not all have disintegrated from environmental factors. The Book of Mormon claims the Nephites had produced “many books and many records of every kind.” We must expect some of them to have survived. Even just one single one. I mean, of course, one that can be verified by maybe an archaeologist or anthropologist, someone with experience in dating and translating. How do we have the records from ancient Greece and ancienter Sumer? We have original inscriptions, plus transcriptions of transcriptions of transcriptions of the originals. If records of all kinds had really been kept by the Nephites, then even if the Lamanites succeeded in destroying all the religious records, they would have preserved (held, kept, transcribed, copied, etc.) vital records on medicine, on military affairs, on geography, on seasons, on their heavy ship-building industry and commercial shipping of lumber. In fact, there are a lot in the way of Mesoamerican calendrics. None of it matches up very well with Hebrew or Egyptian calendar systems.
You are forced to speculate in that manner in order to hold on to an untenable belief.
First let me say, the existence of names is not in itself archaeological evidence. Similar, even identical names found in different ethnic groups is not evidence that those groups are closely related. “Lee” is an obvious example. So is “Alma,” as a matter of fact: Latin, Mormon English, Hebrew, Hungarian. Sorry, no Egyptian. Whether it’s used as a boy’s name or a girl’s name, doesn’t matter to me. Many names are used for both boys and girls. Names like “Lee” and “Kim” appear in different cultures (Chinese/English, Welsh/Korean), with no connection between the names.
I am not willing to make that assumption.
NHM is not a city. It is not a place. It is the name of a tribe. If there were a Lehi, there is as yet nothing connecting him to this tribe.
He would not have needed a map. He would only have needed a Bible: 1 Chronicles 4:19 (Naham), Nehemiah 7:7 (Nehum), and Nahum 1:1 (Nahum) could have been on his mind when he came up with the very similar sounding “Nahom.” No map necessary. No book on phonetics.
Don’t get too excited. Lehi never named any place “NHM”.
With due respect, the travelogue is not very helpful or persuasive. “Nahom” is a made-up place. Given the details of Europe, we might believe “Zenda” (“The Prisoner of Zenda”), Grand Fenwich (“The Mouse that Roared”), Poictesme (“The Biography of Manuel”), and Zembla (“Pale Fire”) were real places. Plus, their spellings are not ambiguous.
!!!??? I am very sorry for you, because “Nahom” has absolutely nothing going for it. I have examined the evidence presented by the Maxwell Institute and the relevant links. But why quibble about what exists in the Old World. There is one name found in the Old World that you believe connects to the Book of Mormon, and no names in the New World that do so. Yet the book is about the New World, and the New World does have names. There are connections, but they all lead not to Mesoamerica, but to New England and Canada: Angola, Lehigh, Morin (notice the vowel shift), Hellam, Oneida, etc.
I get it! I get it! I stand corrected. I misunderstood your reference to Jerusalem, Nahom, Bountiful to include the entire sweep of the Book of Mormon, not just before they set sail or oar for the Promised Land. I won’t make that mistake again; I’ll ask first.
Summarize.
A link will not do. You will need to justify this assertion. What are the differences between Tambora and the alleged Book of Mormon accounts. What are the details of volcanoes, described in the Book of Mormon, that Joseph Smith did not know about.
“the right place” - so you have located some Book of Mormon locations precisely? Please identify them, by their Book of Mormon name and by their current name. “the right time” - likewise, when?
Without concrete, definite evidence of some kind, connecting the two, I do not find it difficult to define. I call it coincidence, except that many of the coincidences do not coincide very well at all. Like “Nahom.”
Christ is triumphant. He no longer suffers and did not leave us as orphans to suffer in darkness. He lives as does His Church, which is His Body. Do you really think Christ lives while His Body, the Church, did not and does not?
Hello Stephen and TexanKnight,
coherent? Like Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Dispossessed,” Robert E. Howard’s “Conan the Barbarian,” or in terms of religious-historical subjects, Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Ballough’s “Oahspe”? How could anyone suggest Tolkien’s and LeGuin’s geographies are incoherent? And if a geography is coherent, why couldn’t the person first acquainted with it, speak to it, as Tolkien, LeGuin, and Howard certainly did? And how does a writer’s failure to “speak to” what he is writing serve as evidence that what he is writing is true?
“Far more detailed”? Who do you think you are kidding? There is not even mention of a volcano! Joseph Smith could write “horse” and “barley” and “cement” (none of which actually existed as described by the Book of Mormon), but he couldn’t write “volcano”!? “Far more detailed” than what Joseph Smith would have discovered “had he read extensively about Tambora”!? Forgive me for repeating myself but here is something Joseph might have read or heard read, from a Boston newspaper published the year after Tambora erupted, shrouding the globe with sun-blocking dust:
I am not saying that Joseph actually read or heard this, but this is evidence that your contention that was premature. And I admit that it took a while for people to connect that inclement weather with Tambora. However, the British Governor of Java, Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, described the event as he experienced it, in his two volume “History of Java.” I have not searched for the whereabouts of this History in New England. It may not have been available to Joseph. But the book existed, and the details in it could have been conveyed by word of mouth, or in newspapers I have not found. At any rate, the point is, details were available, in print or by word of mouth, whether or not Joseph benefited from their availability (a separate question), contrary to your assertion that they were not even available. Do you see how your absolute trust in the Book of Mormon has led you to say something that is not true. If you were not so desperate to defend the book, you would be able to look objectively at critiques, analyze them, do outside study if necessary, and come back with a more valid response.
And from Sir Raffles’ “History of Java”:
(Having read this, I am more persuaded that Joseph Smith may indeed have been describing this volcano, or an even larger one. Although there are elements in his story that echo wonders from the book of Revelations.)
)
You’ve brought up the story of Jonah a few times here, which has me wondering what this biblical story has to do with archeological evidences for the BOM! Or why you would have us wondering whether God lied, or Jonah was a false Prophet!
There is a beautiful truth here that you are apparently missing, because you are so compelled to try and vindicate Joseph Smith. This, to me, is perhaps one of the saddest parts of this whole thread.
But when Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon he did have himself listed as Author. Joseph Smith did not believe in a “limited geography.” He clearly taught that the people in the Book of Mormon inhabited the entirety of the Americas. Because this has been proven to be untrue, later Mormon apologists invented the limited geography idea. Smith must be rolling over in his grave to see what they have done. Later Mormon prophets have extended the Book of Mormon people not just to all of North and South America but even to “the isles of the sea.” Can’t they see the obvious?
Why “brilliant”? I have read stories by elementary school children, high schoolers, even high school drop outs, in which they describe imaginary places with geographies as complex as the Book of Mormon’s seems to be, and do it consistently and without the vagueness of the Book of Mormon. “Brilliance” is not necessary.