Is the Book of Mormon a Fraud?

[Katholikos]

rod of iron:

Nice misquote of a scripture, Apologia. Psalm 51:5 says no such thing. Rather, that verse states: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

This does not reveal anything about the baby being conceived, but rather, about the one conceiving. The mother did not conceive a sinful baby. Instead, the mother conceived in sin. This is referring to the sexual act…

The Psalms were written in ancient Hebrew. “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me” has nothing to do with sex. The sexual act between a husband and wife is in no way sinful (although it can be perverted through contraception and other sinful activities). It is God’s gift that enables a husband and wife to become co-creators with Him.

The RSV footnote says: “3-5: Confession of the psalmist that his nature has been sinful even from the moment of conception.”

Of course, that was before one Joseph Smith Jun. “corrected” the KJV to fix all the ‘mistakes’ he said were in the Bible. But, wouldn’t you know, the same mistakes in the KJV show up again in the BOM – Joseph Smith copied them. Are you reading Smith’s incorrect “corrected” version?

JMJ Jay

 

[system]

Yes, it is a fraud… Take a non-LDS class on Joseph Smith and see what kind of character he really was.

 

[rod_of_iron]

Calvin:

I’ve been dying to respond to this paragraph but I want to be charitable…

“I can resist all things except temptation.”

---

This is the silliest thing I have read in a week or more. The “great wisdom” of God is shown because the BOM would have “surely” been destroyed during the Gold Rush?!?!?

The prospectors were people not gold-eating termites. The Gold Rush inspired folks to look for gold in the ground not in the cupboards. It wasn’t as if folks went from house to house devouring gold objects!!! People had gold things before and after the Gold Rush. If the Mormon church actually had the BOM during the Gold Rush, it would be no less safe than my great-great grandmother’s silverware. Besides it is a holy book from God, wouldn’t the Mormons have protected it?!

Maybe you are thinking of the Great Leap Forward in China not the Gold Rush. During the Great Leap, Mao came up with the idea of having back-yard steel mills. All of the peasants brought anything they had with metal in it and threw it into the mills to be smelted into “steel.”

God took the BOM back to heaven to save it from the Gold Rush. That, truly, is the best thing I have heard in a while.

-C

Of course, the part about the Gold Rush is my opinion. But gold does funny things to people. If I had a book of golden pages bound together, and if you were an unscrupulous man, would you care what was written on those pages? I doubt it. Instead, you would be figuring out a way to obtain the golden book for the value of the gold itself. That is what I am saying.

Joseph Smith spoke of times when men tried to obtain the plates of gold from him. They were not trying to do so because they wanted to read what was written upon them. NO, they wanted to obtain them to see what monetary value they could get from the gold. I mentioned the Gold Rush just to show how much people craved gold and how much they wanted to strike it rich. Why rush to California if your neighbor has golden plates that you can take off his hands?

Do you honestly believe that those plates of gold would have been safe in the 1830s? Do you believe that they would be safe now? Do you believe that very many people would care what is engraved on the plates? There is too much greed in the world. For most people, gold, like money, is only good for what can be bought by it.

 

[rod_of_iron]

Reflect:

Yes, it is a fraud… Take a non-LDS class on Joseph Smith and see what kind of character he really was.

How would a non-LDS class on Joseph Smith show me what kind of character he possessed? Would the teachers of these classes have met him personally and could witness first hand about his character? If not, whose accounts of him will you believe? Only those that put him in an unflattering light? Will you believe anything you read regardless of the source?

If you really want to know about Joseph Smith, read what he actually wrote, not what someone, often an enemy, wrote about him. If I wanted to know about you, would I go to those who have never met you? Would I go to your enemies?

 

[darcee]

rod of iron:

How would a non-LDS class on Joseph Smith show me what kind of character he possessed? Would the teachers of these classes have met him personally and could witness first hand about his character? If not, whose accounts of him will you believe? Only those that put him in an unflattering light? Will you believe anything you read regardless of the source?

If you really want to know about Joseph Smith, read what he actually wrote, not what someone, often an enemy, wrote about him. If I wanted to know about you, would I go to those who have never met you? Would I go to your enemies?

You mean like the King Follet Discourse?

-D

 

[Calvin]

rod of iron:

Do you honestly believe that those plates of gold would have been safe in the 1830s? Do you believe that they would be safe now? Do you believe that very many people would care what is engraved on the plates? There is too much greed in the world. For most people, gold, like money, is only good for what can be bought by it.

You actually got me thinking on this…

The BOM was written on plates of gold. The 1830 edition was 583 pages long. Paper is about .004" thick. The plates have to be thicker than paper because gold is about 2 on the Mohs hardness scale (you can scratch it with your fingernail). If the plates were only .004" thick, they wouldn’t be able to hold letters and they would bend when you tried to turn the pages. So lets assume the plates were .5" thick. .5" about constitutes a “plate,” wouldn’t you say? It would be harder to bend and you could write on both sides.

I found a scanned copy of the 1830 BOM on the internet and I measured the pages (not the margins) and they were about 6"x7.5" I’m going to assume that the “font” of whatever language the BOM was written in was about the same size as the the english text in the 1830 edition. Since other Mormons on this website have referred to the Egyptian alphabet, I’m also going to assume that the BOM was written in an alphabet and not in characters. Accordingly the “original” would probably be about the same size as the English translation but the plates would have to be thicker (as discussed above).

That means each plate was apprroximately .013 cubic feet in volume (6" x 7.5" x .5" / 1728") and (since there were 583 pages) the entire BOM would be about 7.6 cubic feet in volume. Now gold weighs 1,200 lbs per cubic foot. According to my claculations, then, the BOM would weigh about 9,000 lbs.

Yes, I suppose someone might have wanted to steal something like that.

I was wrong. You were right. God, clearly, couldn’t have left a 9,000 lb hunk of gold laying around during the Gold Rush…

-C

P.S. How do you think Joe Smith managed to pick the thing up?

 

[rod_of_iron]

Calvin,

Who said that the plates were solid gold? Solid gold is too soft and would bend too easily. They were more likely 12 or 14 carat gold, which would mean there was another element mixed with the gold. I haven’t seen anything to prove that the plates were not a gold alloy. Of course, gold can be hammered to a width thinner than paper depending on the expertise of the one hammering the gold. That person would have to be rather skilled to not tear the gold when pounding on it.

But all that aside, let’s examine your assumptions.

You seem to suggest that each page of the Book of Mormon represents a gold plate, which would mean, according to you calculations, that there would roughly be 583 gold plates, each a half an inch thick. So, what you are suggesting is that the combined plates of gold, bound together, were 6 inches by 7.5 inches by 291.5 inches (24.29 feet). Such a book of plates could never be bound together nor could it be brought into a house, so your calculations don’t measure up.

Now, here is a picture of how the plates may have looked:

hopeofzion.com/plates.gif

From this picture, the plates look no more than 6 or 8 inches in depth. If we calculate using 8 inches of depth, the calculation would put their weigh as:

a one inch plate would be (2 X .013 cubic feet), which would equal .026 cubic feet.

Now, calculating 8 inches would be (8 X .026 cubic feet), which would equal .208 cubic feet.

If we multiply this by the weight of a cubic foot of gold, we see:

.208 cubic feet X 1200 lbs. = 249.6 lbs.

Of course, this is still quite heavy for a book, but this calculation only works if this was one solid chunk of gold.

But we know it wasn’t, because there would only be one plate, and we have been told that there were several plates.

I am not sure how much those plates of gold weighed, but they surely did not weigh 9000 pounds. I have read that they most likely weighed around 60 pounds, which would not be too much for a grown man who had worked on a farm to lift. Heck, bales of hay can weigh 120 pounds, and farm workers toss them easily into a barn.

P.S. You asked, if the plates weighed 9000 pounds, how did Joseph lift them. If you are going to be ridiculous with your calculation of the weight of the plates, I will be ridiculous with my answer. How did he lift them? Probably with his fork lift. Maybe even a small crane.

 

[Calvin]

rod of iron:

Who said that the plates were solid gold? Solid gold is too soft and would bend too easily. They were more likely 12 or 14 carat gold, which would mean there was another element mixed with the gold. I haven’t seen anything to prove that the plates were not a gold alloy.

This is a fair point. I didn’t know if Mormons claimed that the plates were 24 carat (pure) gold or allowed for the possibility of a gold-alloy. The most common metals mixed with gold are silver, copper or mercury. The specific gravity of these three elements ranges from 9-13.5 (which is about half of the SG of gold) so an alloy plate would be lighter than a pure gold plate. A 12 carat (50% pure) gold plate mixed with copper (40% SG of gold) would weigh about 30% less than a pure gold plate. So if we had copper-gold alloy plates my 9000 lb estimate should be reduced to about 6300 lbs.
rod of iron:

Of course, gold can be hammered to a width thinner than paper depending on the expertise of the one hammering the gold. That person would have to be rather skilled to not tear the gold when pounding on it.

Agreed. Gold can be hammered into a width thinner than paper (that is what they wrap space equipment in) but would you not be able to write on something like that or not destroy the pages when you turned the page.
rod of iron:

But all that aside, let’s examine your assumptions.

Yes my assumptions are a problem. Since we don’t have the original BOM, we don’t know what the “Reformed Egyptian” script looked like. So we don’t know what font size the BOM was written or if the original language used vowels, punctuation or paragraphs.

If there were no vowels, punctiuation or paragraphs the original BOM would be much shorter than the English version, maybe 65% of the size. I can also assume a smaller font so maybe we can say the original was 55% of the size of the English BOM.

So maybe there would only be 320 pages worth of text which (assuming copper alloy plates) would weigh about 3465 lbs.
rod of iron:

From this picture, the plates look no more than 6 or 8 inches in depth.

See we have a problem here. If the BOM was really that tall then the gold “plates” would be as thin as pieces of paper. As discussed above, they could not be that thin. You can’t write on gold with ink! You have to carve into it. Paper is only .004" thick. You couldn’t carve into a “plate” .004" thick on both sides. Even carving into one side of a “plate” that thin would be problematic. Also a pure gold page would bend if you turned it (and thereby rub out the letters) and an alloy page that thin would be brittle and snap apart (and thereby destroy the letters). So it is just not practical to assume the “plates” of the BOM were as thin as paper as the illustration you provided shows.

Also the word “plate” seems to demand something thicker than paper. Even if I found a rectangular piece of gold .004" thick with writing on it, standard English usage would be to call it a “page” not a “plate.” The word “plate” demands something thicker.

So I assumed .5" plates. But we can, for the sake of argument, tinker with that. Remember we need “plates” that won’t bend or break that can be carved into. So maybe they were .25".

That would bring the weight, assuming copper-gold alloy, small font, no punctuation, no vowels, and no paragraphs “down” to 1732.5 lbs.

-C

 

[pnewton]

Maybe reformed Egyptian was a language so condensed that a single pictograph could represent an entire sentence. Any reformed Egyptian linguist out there to answer this?

 

[Malachi4U]

rod of iron:

Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon??? What do you base this assumption on? The original manuscript is not written in Smith’s handwriting. A great deal of it is written in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery. You would have better luck suggesting that Cowdery wrote the Book of Mormon. Also, Joseph Smith had a very limited education when the Book of Mormon was published. Three years of formal education is not much. How could such an uneducated man write the Book of Mormon in the Hebrew syntax and style that it is written in? Shakespeare and Chaucer could not possibly have accomplished such a feat. Joseph Smith must have been the most genius person who has ever lived to write the Book of Mormon as it exists, if he did write it.

You are RIGHT! What I meant to say was that he ‘dictated’ it to others. I used the word “wrote” to mean that he (Joe) had been the one to come up with the idea of the BOM. I apologize for not using a precise word precisely. I caught the mistake just before I read your message actually and planned to correct it but you are on the ball! Good job and keep us on our toes here.

From what I have studied Joe planned on ‘dictating’ the BOM, having it published and then selling it for a profit. I guess Joe was the first Mormon in the church ‘business’ so to speak. Yes other churches are in ‘business’ too to make money so the LDS church is not alone in that regard, they are just one of the best-run businesses in the USA today. They are also the largest civilian landholder west of the Mississippi! Very big business indeed. The 12-15 ‘apostles’/board members are also some of the highest paid and wealthiest clergy in the world. I hope someday we tax churches that make any money or profit not from a donations or reimbursement to cover cost of goods. This goes for all churches too including my own.

Again, don’t let us get by with false statements. Keep our forums accurate!:yup:

Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut and I am learning from it to use words better to get across my meaning.

Malachi4U

PS, many authors today ‘dictate’ their book but they are still considered the ‘writter’ by the way. Just look on the cover of many popular biographies and you will see what I mean.

 

[rod_of_iron]

Malachi4U:

You are RIGHT! What I meant to say was that he ‘dictated’ it to others. I used the word “wrote” to mean that he (Joe) had been the one to come up with the idea of the BOM. I apologize for not using a precise word precisely. I caught the mistake just before I read your message actually and planned to correct it but you are on the ball! Good job and keep us on our toes here.

Dictate, huh? Dictate in what way? I believe that he dictated what he read on the plates of gold using the interpeters he was given at the time he was given the plates. If this is what you are referring to, I agree that he dictated the Book of Mormon.

But I believe that what you really meant was that he dictated to his scribes from his own imagination. That’s quite an imagination for him to draw from if he imagined the whole Book of Mormon and dictated it in the time period he spent on it, anywhere from 45 days to 60 days total. Could you make up on the spot and dictate a book the size of the Book of Mormon with all its intricate details in that amount of time without writing it down first? In that time period, how could he ask his scribe to read back any passage already written? There would not be enough time. As the Book of Mormon has been examined, there has been found about 14 different writing styles within its covers. These are called “wordprints”. Everyone has a specific way of writing, or speaking. Even though you may understand the meanings of a vast amount of words, you will not use them all when you speak, or write. You will use certain words rather than other words to convey the same idea. You will have your own way of placing smaller words like conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns in your sentences, that are placed differently than the people around you. The “wordprints” are almost like fingerprints.

Curiously, when examining the Book of Mormon, you will find words used in one area of the book which are not used anywhere else in the book. The syntax will be slightly different depending on where in the book you are reading. It would be utterly amazing and impossible for a person, while dictating from his imagination, to change his speaking style to such a degree on different days of his dictation that his “wordprint” would be entirely different. This man would have to become someone else each time the wordprint changes.

But if Joseph Smith is a liar, as others claim to think, how can you be so sure that he dictated anything or had any part in bringing forth the Book of Mormon at all? If he lied about finding the plates of gold, being visited by a heavenly messenger named Moroni, or having Jesus appear to him in a grove, why would you believe that he had any part in bringing forth the Book of Mormon, when the manuscripts do not show that he wrote on the manuscripts? Why would he be telling the truth here when he apparently lied everywhere else? It would seem that none of Joseph Smith’s words could be trusted at all if he is indeed found to be a liar at any time.

Malachi4U:

From what I have studied Joe planned on ‘dictating’ the BOM, having it published and then selling it for a profit. I guess Joe was the first Mormon in the church ‘business’ so to speak. Yes other churches are in ‘business’ too to make money so the LDS church is not alone in that regard, they are just one of the best-run businesses in the USA today. They are also the largest civilian landholder west of the Mississippi! Very big business indeed. The 12-15 ‘apostles’/board members are also some of the highest paid and wealthiest clergy in the world. I hope someday we tax churches that make any money or profit not from a donations or reimbursement to cover cost of goods. This goes for all churches too including my own.

Profit? Perhaps, you have not read much about Joseph Smith. He did not make any profit on the Book of Mormon. In fact, he lost money and property many times because of it. He lost his farm more than once because of that book. His life was threatened frequently because of that book. He was tarred and feathered because of that book. He was jailed a few times because of that book. And, he was murdered by a lynch mob because of that book. He died declaring that book to be true. If the book was just a fictional book coming from his imagination, how dedicated to a lie would he have to be to go through what he did, all for a lie? It is not logical. Which of the popular authors of today would suffer the persecution and would give up his or her life for a fictional book that he or she wrote? Would Stephen King, John Grisham, Anne Rice, etc., give up their life for a lie? I extremely doubt it. Yet, you would have us believe that Joseph Smith would value this alleged fictional book over his own life. For what gain? Once he was dead, what would it matter?

 

[darcee]

Who on earth said he made it up on the spot. He could have been thinking about it for YEARS. He could have had notes in his hat. His co-conspirators could have lied. Who knows. Saying he didn’t translate it from gold plates is NOT the same as claiming he made it up on the spot.

-D

 

[darcee]

Do a google search for “wordprints” this appears to be a science made up by, of all places, BYU.



-D

 

[OfTheCross]

RodofIron,

 Are you a member of the COJCOLDS or are you in one of the so-called Fundamentalist Mormon sects that claim to be the true Mormon Church.  I think this is a fair question.  BTW, I'm a convert to the Catholic Church from Evangelical Protestantism.  :thumbsup:

Peter John

 

[darcee]

rod of iron:

Profit? Perhaps, you have not read much about Joseph Smith. He did not make any profit on the Book of Mormon. In fact, he lost money and property many times because of it. He lost his farm more than once because of that book. His life was threatened frequently because of that book. He was tarred and feathered because of that book. He was jailed a few times because of that book. And, he was murdered by a lynch mob because of that book. He died declaring that book to be true. If the book was just a fictional book coming from his imagination, how dedicated to a lie would he have to be to go through what he did, all for a lie? It is not logical. Which of the popular authors of today would suffer the persecution and would give up his or her life for a fictional book that he or she wrote? Would Stephen King, John Grisham, Anne Rice, etc., give up their life for a lie? I extremely doubt it. Yet, you would have us believe that Joseph Smith would value this alleged fictional book over his own life. For what gain? Once he was dead, what would it matter?

:tsktsk:

Using this logic then David Koresh and Jim Jones were both right. They both lost everything including their lives because of the faiths they had constructed.

-D

 

[Calvin]

OfTheCross:

RodofIron,

Are you a member of the COJCOLDS or are you in one of the so-called Fundamentalist Mormon sects that claim to be the true Mormon Church. I think this is a fair question. BTW, I’m a convert to the Catholic Church from Evangelical Protestantism.

Peter John

I asked him this too but he didn’t answer.

I think he is RLDS. They believe that Joseph Smith never had multiple wives (like rod). He also referred to “that Church in Salt Lake City” and so I take it he is part of one of the break-off groups.

-C

 

[Katholikos]

When faced with a problem, the medical profession relies on the “rule out” technique.

They test. If they find no confirmation in the test, the particular condition tested for is “ruled out.” They can’t prove that the patient doesn’t have that condition, but they “rule it out” for lack of evidence that he does have it.

Consider the Book of Mormon. It has been tested for truth. There is no confirmation in the test of archaeology; archaeology rules it out. No confirmation in genetics; genetics rules it out. No confirmation in history, none in linguistics, none in metallurgy, none in animal husbandry, none in agriculture, none in…every possible field. The BOM has been ruled out – negative for truth --by every academic discipline that has examined it.

Diagnosis: Bull-oney.

Look elsewhere for the truth.

JMJ Jay

 

[AmandaPS]

Calvin:

I asked him this too but he didn’t answer.

I think he is RLDS. They believe that Joseph Smith never had multiple wives (like rod). He also referred to “that Church in Salt Lake City” and so I take it he is part of one of the break-off groups.

-C

I don’t think that RodofIron is RLDS. It doesn’t seem that he (or she) from the postings earlier, accepts the teachings of the LDS found in the Doctrines & Covenants. Since it also seems that the poster doesn’t believe that Joseph Smith was polygamous, I’m more inclined to think that he/she is Church of Christ (Temple Lot).

 

[rod_of_iron]

Calvin:

I asked him this too but he didn’t answer.

I think he is RLDS. They believe that Joseph Smith never had multiple wives (like rod). He also referred to “that Church in Salt Lake City” and so I take it he is part of one of the break-off groups.

-C

I was a member of the RLDS until 1985, when that church called women into the priesthood. I have nothing against women, but there is no scriptural support I can find for priesthood be conferred upon women. After the RLDS apostatized, I became a member of the Church of Christ, Restored, which was a group which continued on with the original beliefs and doctrines. At this point, I consider myself a Restoration Saint.

As for the so-called break-off groups, the RLDS is not a break-off of the LDS church. After Joseph Smith was murdered, several men thought that they should be the next leader of the church. Amidst the ensuing confusion of who would succeed Joseph Smith, 3 main factions, which are still in existence today, developed. The one that has become the largest is the LDS church out of Utah. The second is the RLDS church (now named the Community of Christ). The third is named the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), because they own the lot where the temple is prophesied to be built. Since the LDS church has no legitimate claim to be the successor of the original restored church, and I doubt that the Temple Lot church has any more legitimacy, the faction that followed most closely the original teachings and beliefs was the RLDS church, until it fell into apostasy.

The LDS church under Brigham Young formed in the 1850s after he had everyone who followed him re-baptized and the priesthood that followed re-ordained. These actions separated him entirely from the original church, so that it became a new church. The original authority had been nullified for those people in favor of the authority of Brigham Young, who had no legal right to succeed Smith. In 1852, a few new doctrines were officially introduced into the church, including polygamy, Adam being God, celestial marriage, etc. Polygamy (or spiritual wifery) had been practiced by a few in the church before that. John Bennett first introduced the spiritual wifery into the church. Brigham spoke of receiving a revelation while in England and then he tried to pawn it off on Joseph Smith later when Brigham had returned to the U.S. Joseph Smith had only one wife, but the polygamist priesthood members in the church placed Smith’s name on the revelations that did not see the light of day until 1852, because his name would carry more weight and he could not possibly object to the use of his name 8 years after his death.

Anyway, once the RLDS apostatized, several remnant groups formed, many consisting of priesthood who had been silenced by the RLDS because they would not go along with the new teachings of the changing RLDS church.

That’s where I stand. I am a member of a restoration group that will not follow the false teachings of the LDS church, nor will I follow the new false teaching of the former RLDS church. But I am not a break-off of the LDS church because I was never a member of Brigham’s new church.

 

[AmandaPS]

Thanks for the background information.