LDS and ancient record...

[Jerusha]

The BoM is very irregular in quality of writing. The Jockers study says that this chapter resembels other works of Joseph Smith:

I Nephi 17 1830 edition:
And it came to pass that we did pitch our tents by the seashore; and notwithstanding we
had suffered many afflictions, and much difficulty, yea, even so much that we cannot
write them all, we were exceedingly rejoiced when we came to the seashore; and we
called the place Bountiful, because of its much fruit.
And it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had been in the land of Bountiful for the space of
many days, the voice of the Lord came unto me, saying: Arise, and get thee into the
mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto
the Lord.
And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a ship,
after the manner which I shall shew thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters.
And I saith, Lord, whither shall I go, that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools
to construct the ship, after the manner which thou hast shewn unto me? And it came to
pass that the Lord told me whither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools.
And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make bellowses wherewith to blow the fire, of the
skins of beasts; and after that I had made bellowses, that I might have wherewith to blow
the fire, I did smite two stones together, that I might make fire, for the Lord had not
hitherto suffered that we should make much fire, as we journied in the wilderness; for he
saith, I will make that thy food shall become sweet, that ye cook it not; and I will also be
your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall
keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye
shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led.
Yea, and the Lord said also, that after ye have arrived to the promised land, ye shall know
that I, the Lord, am God; and that I, the Lord, did deliver you from destruction; yea, that I
did bring you out of the land of Jerusalem; wherefore, I, Nephi, did strive to keep the
commandments of the Lord, and I did exhort my brethren to faithfulness and diligence.

I can come back with poorly written portions for every well-written one you can present. Parker.

 

[ParkerD]

The BoM is very irregular in quality of writing. The Jockers study says that this chapter resembels other works of Joseph Smith:

I can come back with poorly written portions for every well-written one you can present. Parker.

Hi, Jerusha,

I don’t think that passage is either poorly written or hard to understand, nor that it presents “irregular quality of writing.”

I really think anyone such as Jockers who purports to examine the Book of Mormon as to its authenticity, would need to first have a very studied and knowledgeable background in Hebrew writing. It would also help if they become familiar with stream-of-consciousness writing, so that when they see what they think is a “run-on” sentence or a sentence with a lot of tangential ideas and concepts, then they may at least have a background that will help them understand the genre they are examining.

Have a nice day.

 

[TexanKnight]

Hi, Jerusha,

I don’t think that passage is either poorly written or hard to understand, nor that it presents “irregular quality of writing.”

I really think anyone such as Jockers who purports to examine the Book of Mormon as to its authenticity, would need to first have a very studied and knowledgeable background in Hebrew writing. It would also help if they become familiar with stream-of-consciousness writing, so that when they see what they think is a “run-on” sentence or a sentence with a lot of tangential ideas and concepts, then they may at least have a background that will help them understand the genre they are examining.

Have a nice day.

The funny thing is, had Jockers agreed with Parker, Parker would never have said, “I really think anyone such as Jockers who purports to examine the Book of Mormon as to its authenticity, would need to first have a very studied and knowledgeable background in Hebrew writing.”

But since the Jockers Study shows the book of mormon to be a fraud, he wants to put HIS qualifications on the study…

 

[Jerusha]

But since the Jockers Study shows the book of mormon to be a fraud, he wants to put HIS qualifications on the study…

At this point in my research, I wish Jockers *et al *had included Ethan Smith’s writings in the study. He was a good writer, well-informed, and we have a solid connection between him and the Joseph Smith Sr. family, through Oliver Cowdery.

This book books.google.com/books?id=kTEAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=ethan+smith+key+prophecies&source=bl&ots=DvnGeoAXTL&sig=xgObcgYJI-X1zDTWB0cUvv38TL4&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false contains the same kind of virulent anti-Catholicism as found in the Book of Mormon, and of course, his fantasies of deporting Native Americans to Palestine, found in View of the Hebrews, matches well with the Book of Mormon. I think that this is at the core of BH Roberts’ findings.

I need to do some more work on the passage which Parker highlighted.

 

[KathleenGee]

I think the books to us do not make sense because they are very open to interpretation…the present president and Quorum can interpret them to fit the needs of contemporary times…

 

[ParkerD]

The funny thing is, had Jockers agreed with Parker, Parker would never have said, “I really think anyone such as Jockers who purports to examine the Book of Mormon as to its authenticity, would need to first have a very studied and knowledgeable background in Hebrew writing.”

But since the Jockers Study shows the book of mormon to be a fraud, he wants to put HIS qualifications on the study…

TexanKnight,

I have read the online synopsis of that particular study, and about its authors–one of whom was an English professor, and one having a background in computer/statistical analysis.

They didn’t address Hebrew writing at all, based on the synopsis of the study. They started with their conclusions already drawn, and worked backwards. No serious scholar examining such a work would do that in order to evaluate its authenticity.

One of them also had a technique of statistical analysis that is his major specialty for the classes he teaches, in a unique approach to studying world literature. Thus he has a built-in bias to get students into his class.

 

[Jerusha]

I think the books to us do not make sense because they are very open to interpretation…the present president and Quorum can interpret them to fit the needs of contemporary times…

Exactly. I am explaining the roots and origin of the LDS faith, which has many dissimilarities to its origins, but yet also has some commonalities.

The LDS people have financial, cultural, and corporate reasons for keeping their religion going, despite its bogus beginnings as a way to make North America a haven exclusively for people of Anglo-Saxon and Northern European heritage.

 

[Telstar]

And it came to pass that ParkerD posted a whole chapter that thumbs its nose at Catholics, on the CAF. Go figure.

BTW… there are 13 occurrences of “And it came to pass” in that 33 verse chapter of Nephi. Is it really any wonder that so many people :banghead: when they try to read the BoM?

 

[sallybutler]

And it came to pass that ParkerD posted a whole chapter that thumbs its nose at Catholics, on the CAF. Go figure.

BTW… there are 13 occurrences of “And it came to pass” in that 33 verse chapter of Nephi. Is it really any wonder that so many people :banghead: when they try to read the BoM?

Thank you for counting them. If I had written something like this in school, I would have gotten a very low grade for adding repetitive filler phrases just to make the word count (not that any of us ever did that). I also would have made my own children edit/rewrite it before turning it in.

While I hope this means something very important to Parker, I also hope it is not his best example of the good writing in his LDS-specific scriptures.

 

[ParkerD]

Thank you for counting them. If I had written something like this in school, I would have gotten a very low grade for adding repetitive filler phrases just to make the word count (not that any of us ever did that). I also would have made my own children edit/rewrite it before turning it in.

While I hope this means something very important to Parker, I also hope it is not his best example of the good writing in his LDS-specific scriptures.

Sally,

Here is the first word of Luke 2 (KJV) in Hebrew and its translation into four words in English:

Egeneto
1 Ἐγένετο
1 it came to pass

I have never felt like this kind of speech pattern or writing pattern is hard to understand, nor do I think an English teacher, if they have a background at all in a foreign language with foreign idioms, would think it hard to understand that an idiom can be different in the foreign language than an English speaker would say if they were just having a conversation in English.

Have a good day.

 

[Lefty0908]

The BoM is very irregular in quality of writing. The Jockers study says that this chapter resembels other works of Joseph Smith:

I can come back with poorly written portions for every well-written one you can present. Parker.

Oooh, the Jockers study! Unanswerable. Unassailable. We lie prostrate before the rigor of its science and sound methodolgy. No, wait. That must be the other, as yet undiscovered Jockers study (kind of like the other, as yet undiscovered Spaulding manuscript). The known Jockers study, much like the known Spaulding manuscript, turns out to be not so terrifying after all.

maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=23&num=1&id=821

 

[Jerusha]

The very frequency of “it came to pass” in the Book of Mormon is much higher than in the Bible. This is an indicator of an imitation of Biblical style. If the frequency were similar, we might have an indicator of legitimacy.

Lefty, your sarcasm is noted. Refusal to look at something from the point of view of other persons is characteristic of the LDS mind-set. I prefer skepticism and an open mind, myself.

I prefer a search for other sources beyond the much-contested Spalding theory, myself. Too much focus on the Spalding theory blinds people to a broader view. (Subtle pun here)

 

[zaffiroborant]

Number of times “it came to pass” is used in the BOM 1,207
Number of verses in the BOM 6,588
"It came to pass is used in 19.7 percent of the verses in the BOM

Number of times “it came to pass” is used in the Bible 452.
Number of verses in the Bible (KJV) 6,588.
“It came to pass” is used in 1.45 percent of the verses in the Bible.

No wonder it’s considered a marvel if a phrase is used only once through out the BOM.

 

[ParkerD]

Number of times “it came to pass” is used in the BOM 1,207
Number of verses in the BOM 6,588
"It came to pass is used in 19.7 percent of the verses in the BOM

Number of times “it came to pass” is used in the Bible 452.
Number of verses in the Bible (KJV) 6,588.
“It came to pass” is used in 1.45 percent of the verses in the Bible.

No wonder it’s considered a marvel if a phrase is used only once through out the BOM.

Zaffiroborant,

I think if you take 452 and divide it by 6,588 with a calculator, that you will come up with a different percentage than 1.45 percent.

A comparison that would be more applicable would not count the verses in Leviticus, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or Job as part of the comparison, since those are not a comparable kind of text.

 

[duneman]

From what I’ve read, not even the supposed ‘witnesses’ actually saw the plates with their own eyes. They supposedly weren’t allowed to look at them directly (I guess they might have gone blind if they did) but only ‘saw’ them in some kind of ‘vision’, and that was the extent of their ‘sworn testimony’ that they were real.

In case anyone’s interested… I have a famous NY bridge for sale.

i ain’t saying notin, ill get in trouble …

 

[duneman]

i ain’t saying notin… ill get in trouble…

 

[Jerusha]

think if you take 452 and divide it by 6,588 with a calculator, that you will come up with a different percentage than 1.45 percent.

His figures are accurate. He made an error in typing the post. You still have a problem with narrative vs. theological content. Comparing BoM with Bible, you have a problem with differing ratios in that. This probably makes the difference even more obvious.

 

[JHow]

…I think if you take 452 and divide it by 6,588 with a calculator, that you will come up with a different percentage than 1.45 percent.

I don’t get the 19.7 % figure to work either. Something is not right about the numerators and denominators here.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Zaffiroborant,

I think if you take 452 and divide it by 6,588 with a calculator, that you will come up with a different percentage than 1.45 percent.

A comparison that would be more applicable would not count the verses in Leviticus, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or Job as part of the comparison, since those are not a comparable kind of text.

Oops my mistake there are 31,102 verses in the Bible. And “it came to pass” is used 1297 times in the the BOM.

Bible

uses 452
verses 31,102

BOM

uses 1297
verses 6,588

 

[Lefty0908]

Actually, it was a clarification. Not possessing, but certainly admiring your ability to read minds and ascertain that the phrase “not approved by the lds church” means something entirely different than that, I instead thought it best to try and eliminate any misunderstanding on the part of Catholics who may assume that Mormons have something equivalent to an imprimatur.

But I’m sure that if you want to focus on and point out the intellectually unchallenging aspects of an insipid version of the BOM for which the target audience is children, you’ll have plenty of supporters here.

Certainly the RCC produces no versions of scripture for children and pre-teens, so there’s no double standard underlying your comments. Or is there?

catholiccompany.com/childrens-c475/