Book of Mormon and honey bees

[Eliza10]

I have read that site and if you notice something interesting about these women : After rejecting JS at first and then after prayer, they received a powerful witness as to the truthfulness of the principle…

Tell me if I am misunderstanding you: it looks like you are saying here that that Smiths 34 wives, even though their gut feeling was to not like polygamy, later came to understand the truthfulness of the principle that their husband fornicating with many women was a good idea (even if they themselves were also married to another man who didn’t realize that Smith spirtually marrying thier wife included his having sex with them).

We Catholics know the immorality of that, and a doctor could tell you the diseases that kind of lifestyle would expose them all to, as God did not design bodies or our souls for that.

Also, there are many plausible explanations why these woman accept polygmay once they are in it. One is, it takes strength and character to admit you have made a mistake. Also its easier to accept the status quo. And change is hard. And you have probably heard of the Stockhom Syndrome. Also, we know women have a hard time leaving husbands who beat them up. So women accepting a demoralizing way of living, as in polygamy, is not unheard of.

Emma was no fan of polygamy. But after Joseph was murdered she remarried. When her second husband asked her about the book of mormon, she bore her testimony that it was true. She never denied her husband’s divine calling. How to understand it all? I can’t…

I don’t think that’s mysterious to understand at all. There are any number of plausible explanations. Having more facts about Emma would reveal an answer. But being the widow of the star of the religion and the community you belong to, the are certainly big benefits in going along with your community’s thinking that your dead husband and your children’s father was some kind of saint. Also, being taken off the farm to live as the wife of such a manipulator who would threaten her with messages from God meant to scare her, and having 33 extra woman in your marriage of two to contend with, would leave anyone with confused thinking.

But she did deny polygamy and hence the RLDS church claimed that Brigham Young started the principle. They were wrong.

Right on that. Oh, yes, a Mormon friend of mine beleives it was Brigham Young who started polygamy. Because that what she is taught. I bet her learning is not an isolated case.

 

[why_me]

Right on that. Oh, yes, a Mormon friend of mine beleives it was Brigham Young who started polygamy. Because that what she is taught. I bet her learning is not an isolated case.

Ignorance is bliss everywhere. As you pointed out the JS polygamy is in the D & C.

I do have to agree to some extent that the lds church needs to explain the JS polygamy more. I do believe that since polygamy is not practiced anymore, the common understanding would be not to cover it in religious manuals since it is not essential for salvation. I think that it is a mistake however not to do so.

 

[why_me]

I don’t think that’s mysterious to understand at all. There are any number of plausible explanations. Having more facts about Emma would reveal an answer. But being the widow of the star of the religion and the community you belong to, the are certainly big benefits in going along with your community’s thinking that your dead husband and your children’s father was some kind of saint. Also, being taken off the farm to live as the wife of such a manipulator who would threaten her with messages from God meant to scare her, and having 33 extra woman in your marriage of two to contend with, would leave anyone with confused thinking.

Emma lied to her son, Joseph Smith the third, about his father not being a polygamist. Joseph needed to go to Utah and discover that yes, his father was a polygamist.

Emma accepted her husbands prophethood but she had a difficult time with polygamy. No one is perfect. The women involved in JS polygamy all had an interesting history and yet, most if not all, had good words to say about JS. After he was murdered many went on their own way, marrying and having children. Did JS have sex with these women? Hard to say. But nothing would exclude it. I think that Richard Bushman gives a pretty balanced picture of the practice, if you are interested. At least I have found his explanation interesting. It can be found in Rough Stone Rolling.

Emma was with him to the very end and expressed complete belief in the book of mormon long after JS’s death. However, she did not like the Joseph of the Nauvoo years but clung to his memory during the early years of the lds church when the lds church was traditional in christian teachings.

Emma did not follow Brigham Young west. She stayed and eventually ended up in Nauvoo where she spent the remainder of her life. Nauvoo, being a famous mormon city during JS’s later life.

 

[ApostateRLDS]

**Emma lied to her son, Joseph Smith the third, about his father not being a polygamist. **

Do you have any proof that she was deliberately lying to JSIII? This sounds more like Brigham Young talking.

Wow. I can’t get over someone that openly defends one of the biggest con-men and frauds in American History calling the man’s widow a liar. Is it just me, or is that a wee bit hypocritical?

 

[Paul_G]

You are studying an incorrect and corrupt version of it.

LDS do value the teaching found within the Bible and proclaim it as of one of our standard scriptural works. That does not mean we accept all the doctrinal interpretations of others concerning it.

You replied: That’s good to hear; that’s the point. When you know that the mormons use a Bible that has additions and changes from The Bible.

and you were letting him believe that mormons have made no changes to it.

ok got you, the “him” meaning RS. Despite your charge that “mormons” have made changes. You will not find, what I believe is more of an inspired reading than a translation of Joseph Smith of the Bible, in any LDS bible text, but only as footnotes. So you are grasping at straws to show LDS have changed the words of the Bible handed down to us as we have them today in the King James Version. Perhaps instead of trying to point out where LDS may have changed scripture, perhaps you could show us through your own understanding and Catholic scholarship that there was no such tampering with either the scriptural text or interpretation in the 2nd century. I believe that is the issue here.

Brand of faith? There would be no Bible, you wouldn’t be having this discussion, Joseph Smith would have had nothing to modify were it not for this so-called “brand of faith”. Catholicism is not a brand, it is how Christ’s teachings have survived for so many centuries. And that survival relies very much on the Bible, as the Catholic church put together. It IS Christianity.

If you noticed I did not attribute blame, this type of thing is done in every culture to keep its beliefs unchanged or influenced by others. There are different sects (brands) of historical Christian churches the - My understanding is that the Roman church was, and is not the only one.

What reasons?

The difference between the two: early scriptures were changed or interpreted differently than their original intent in such a way that the original is lost to history; The destruction of the press in Nauvoo was to prevent a harmful prematurely introduced and distorted version of Church teaching. Were either actions acceptable to us in hindsight, I believe the answer is no.

Paul

 

[mrgloop]

The fact remains, Egyptians were the first to practive beekeeping. Their practices spread throughout the Mideast and Mediterranean. Whether people supposedly migrated from the Mideast in 2000BC or 600BC, logically, any bees and beekeeping practices that came with them would be of Mideastern origins and traditions. And the bee would be the same bee. Neither of which is true.

One cannot assume that if current present-day Mayan Melipona beekeeping practices are “not of Mideastern origins and traditions,” then Mayans are not decendants from the Old World. This assumption negates the concept of innovation among the Mayan culture. If the Mayan people could build such a grand civilization, could they not have also improved or changed the beekeeping practice?

Furthermore, if one studies the ancient beekeeping practices of the Egyptians or of the Old World, surely there are similarities.

One similarity is how both cultures store their hives in horizontal rows
“Cylindrical hives like the ones in the picture on the left from the tomb of Pabasa, dated to the 7th century BCE, were made of clay and stacked horizontally on top of each other in rows”
reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/beekeeping.htm

Compare this photo
reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/pics/hives.jpg

with this photo
thehoneygatherers.com/images3.1/stock/Anglais/20Bee-Mexico-Melipona/Bee-Mexico-Melipona31.jpg

Read more about Melipona Beekeeping, here
thehoneygatherers.com/html/photolibrary20.html

The assumption that because the Melipona Bee does not exist presently in the old world does not imply it could not have originated from the old world. There are elements of extinction in both cultures, and also elements of bees adapting to new environments which adjust behavior, etc.

Prior to reading this post, I conducted some interesting research on this matter. To read more about the possible link between the Melipona Bee and the Jaredite people as mentioned in the Book of Mormon, view the link below.
nativebees.com/melipona.html

 

[RebeccaJ]

One cannot assume that if current present-day Mayan Melipona beekeeping practices are “not of Mideastern origins and traditions,” then Mayans are not decendants from the Old World. This assumption negates the concept of innovation among the Mayan culture. If the Mayan people could build such a grand civilization, could they not have also improved or changed the beekeeping practice?

The usual leaps and bounds of mormon apologetics. Most would not call gathering in the forest an innovation.

Just because something was practiced in Egypt is not an indication for it being practiced anywhere else.

Your interpretation of the two photos that you compare lack context. Historical, anthropological, or any kind at all. Other than, “I’m mormon and I look for evidence where there is none”.

 

[zach_dunn]

One cannot assume that if current present-day Mayan Melipona beekeeping practices are “not of Mideastern origins and traditions,” then Mayans are not decendants from the Old World. This assumption negates the concept of innovation among the Mayan culture. If the Mayan people could build such a grand civilization, could they not have also improved or changed the beekeeping practice?

Furthermore, if one studies the ancient beekeeping practices of the Egyptians or of the Old World, surely there are similarities.

One similarity is how both cultures store their hives in horizontal rows
“Cylindrical hives like the ones in the picture on the left from the tomb of Pabasa, dated to the 7th century BCE, were made of clay and stacked horizontally on top of each other in rows”
reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/beekeeping.htm

Compare this photo
reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/pics/hives.jpg

with this photo
thehoneygatherers.com/images3.1/stock/Anglais/20Bee-Mexico-Melipona/Bee-Mexico-Melipona31.jpg

Read more about Melipona Beekeeping, here
thehoneygatherers.com/html/photolibrary20.html

The assumption that because the Melipona Bee does not exist presently in the old world does not imply it could not have originated from the old world. There are elements of extinction in both cultures, and also elements of bees adapting to new environments which adjust behavior, etc.

Prior to reading this post, I conducted some interesting research on this matter. To read more about the possible link between the Melipona Bee and the Jaredite people as mentioned in the Book of Mormon, view the link below.
nativebees.com/melipona.html

I think the first thing wrong with your conclusion here is that you are comparing ancient Egyptian bee-keeping with modern South American (Latin American?) bee-keeping, of course the modern South Americans (Latin Americans?) would adopt newer and better ways of keeping bees that were introduced to them around the sixteenth century, the main point to make here is that ancient Mayan bee-keeping methods (i.e., bee-keeping methods used from 2000 BC to 400 some AD) do not match up with what the Jaredites and Nephites would have brought to the Mayans from the Old World.

 

[ParkerD]

I think the first thing wrong with your conclusion here is that you are comparing ancient Egyptian bee-keeping with modern South American (Latin American?) bee-keeping, of course the modern South Americans (Latin Americans?) would adopt newer and better ways of keeping bees that were introduced to them around the sixteenth century, the main point to make here is that ancient Mayan bee-keeping methods (i.e., bee-keeping methods used from 2000 BC to 400 some AD) do not match up with what the Jaredites and Nephites would have brought to the Mayans from the Old World.

You do realize that the Book of Mormon does not say that either the Jaredites or the Nephites brought bees with them to the New World. The Jaredites had bees with them in the Old World during their journey there. That’s all it says about the subject.

 

[zach_dunn]

You do realize that the Book of Mormon does not say that either the Jaredites or the Nephites brought bees with them to the New World. The Jaredites had bees with them in the Old World during their journey there. That’s all it says about the subject.

If that is what Mormons really believe, why do LDS apologists like Jeff Lindsay or zerinus go to such great lengths to prove the ancient Americans had bees? Granted, Lindsay does say that the bees are only spoken of only in the Old World, but he must think that they did in fact bring bees to the New World for he tries to prove that the Mayans had them . . .

 

[ParkerD]

If that is what Mormons really believe, why do LDS apologists like Jeff Lindsay or zerinus go to such great lengths to prove the ancient Americans had bees? Granted, Lindsay does say that the bees are only spoken of only in the Old World, but he must think that they did in fact bring bees to the New World for he tries to prove that the Mayans had them . . .

Zach Dunn,
If anyone wants to do that, of course they can do that. There is no “doctrinal issue” about it. It is a tiny point about which I have not the slightest concern. I was merely pointing out that the text has bees as part of the travel in the Old World, and an assumption yea or nay about the Jaredites bringing bees to the New World is not taken from the text–it is an assumption only. It makes just as much sense to me that they didn’t bring them.

 

[zach_dunn]

Zach Dunn,
If anyone wants to do that, of course they can do that. There is no “doctrinal issue” about it. It is a tiny point about which I have not the slightest concern. I was merely pointing out that the text has bees as part of the travel in the Old World, and an assumption yea or nay about the Jaredites bringing bees to the New World is not taken from the text–it is an assumption only. It makes just as much sense to me that they didn’t bring them.

How could it possibly make sense for them not to bring every resource they had with them? That’s what ancient migration was all about, moving and entire people and their culture to a new land . . . and yes, bee keeping would be a part of their culture.