The Book of Mormon: Ancient Record or 19th Century Creation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris-WA
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Chris-WA said:
The parallels between these two stories are quite remarkable and very hard to explain away.
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Actually, the parallels are very easy to explain away. The author (Joseph Smith) was well-aquainted with the Bible and inserted the parallels into his work. There’s nothing remarkable about it.
 
Chris-WA said:
More parallels between the Bible and the BoM…

In the BoM, the Nephites had twelve disciples just like Jesus had twelve apostles in the Old World. A couple of strange parallels:
  1. The New Testament apostles include men with three duplicate sets of names: Simon Peter, Simon the Canaanite, James the son of Alphaeus, James the son of Zebedee, Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot.
The BoM twelve also has three sets of duplicate names: two named Jonas, two named Mathoni (Mathoni and Mathonihah), and two named Kumen (Kumen and Kumenonhi).
  1. Jesus’ apostles include three sets of brothers: Andrew and Simon, James and John, and Judas and James.
The BoM twelve also has two sets of brothers, and a father and son: Mathoni and Mathonihah, Nephi and Timothy, and Timothy’s son Jonas.

How about this comparison between the stories of Judith from the Bible and the decapitation of Laban in the BoM:
  1. In this story Judith/Nephi are servants of God. They encounter Holofernes/Laban who wants to destroy God’s people (Judith 7:1, 8:7; 1 Nephi 3:25). Interestingly, “Laban” is a name that appears in Judith’s narrative (8:26).
  2. Judith/Nephi leave/enter the city secretly by night. They find Holofernes/Laban upon the bed/ground, asleep and drunk with wine (Judith 13:2; 1 Nephi 4:4-5, 7).
  3. Both take Holofernes/Laban by the hair and with his own sword cut off his head (Judith 13:6-8; 1 Nephi 4:9, 18).
  4. Judith/Nephi then take some of Holofernes’/Laban’s possessions. When they rejoin their people, there is great rejoicing in their success (Judith 13:12, 14:9, 15:11; 1 Nephi 4:19, 38, 5:9).
  5. Both groups celebrate by offering burnt offerings to the Lord (Judith 16:8; 1 Nephi 5:9).
The parallels between these two stories are quite remarkable and very hard to explain away.
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How in the world are they remarkable or hard to explain? So JS riffed off the bible what’s so remarkable about that?
 
I think Chris meant that they are very hard for TMBs to explain away.

Paul
 
Just reading the “A Comparison of the Book of Mormon and the Late War Between the US and Great Britain” and " A letter to a CES Director" is enough for me to conclude there is nothing in LDS that anyone need for salvation from them. In addition to the Comparison of the BOM and Late War, Letter to a CES Director has another comparison between “View of the Hebrews” and BOM.

wordtreefoundation.github.io/thelatewar/
cesletter.com/Letter-to-a-CES-Director.pdf

The problems are insurmountable, especially in this age of quickly verified facts and intelligent tools that can scan any documents for plagiarism. I hear that universities are scanning theses and terms papers using some kind of artificial intelligence software to detect such copying.
 
What I find most interesting about the Bible and B of M comparisons is that the B of M contains the same formatting (italics) and errors as the 18th century Smith family Bible. Add to that the fact that Nephi’s quotes from the later chapters of Isaiah were written after Lehi’s family took off for the “New World.”

Sam
LDS until 1998… RC since then.
 
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