The Book of Mormon... have you read it?

[lax16]

Problem, that.

If, as you seem to agree with me, ‘write’ equals ‘authorship,’ then ‘authorship’ refers also to the oral versions. For instance, we all are aware that Homer ( or rather, the group of authors that may or may not be grouped together as being Homer…the originators of the poems, anyway…) wrote the Illiad and the Odyssey. Those poems have been around since the 8th century BC, and THAT IS WHEN THEY WERE CONSIDERED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN, even though the poems never saw ink and parchment (or papyrus, whatever) until the 3rd Century BC. Nobody really knows, or CARES, who first put the poems into readable form; the author is Homer, and the works were authored nearly five hundred years before they were actually written.

As I have been constantly told regarding Sacred Tradition in CAtholicism, (and this is ironic, given my argument THERE! ) it is ‘oral tradition’ that counts. How many people have told me that the written accounts of that oral tradition do not matter except to tell us what that oral tradition actually is? In fact, oral tradition doesn’t begin with the written account. In a very real sense, it ENDS there. The work involved was not created upon writing it down; it was simply frozen there. the actual authorship, the creation, happened in the oral stage.

So perhaps the definition needs to be clarified here. when WE (Mormons, that is,) speak of ‘writing’ or ‘authorship,’ we speak of the actual creation of the text…or rather, the creation of what will eventually BE the text. The work itself, whether it is written down immediately or not.

As you are aware from you own Sacred, oral tradition, the process of creation doesn’t begin with the pen. So when we say that the bible took thousands of years to write…well, it took thousands of years to create; to author; to form the stories and the lessons.

Diana - I don’t understand this.

If something takes **about **two thousand years, you think it is correct to say thousands of years? Very misleading. If someone was teaching a class or a person about the history of the Bible, that comment would be very misleading.

It is an exaggeration. Let’s not get off topic as if I am saying that Catholics don’t recognize oral tradition. The research presented was strictly addressing the issue of the comment “thousands of years.”

 

[lax16]

Hi Diana - Can you please cite your source for this? According to this ranking from US News and World Report BYU is not in the Top 10:
grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-biological-sciences-programs/ecology

thanks!

 

[lax16]

by the way, just to remark upon your continued claim that Mormons are all strict creationists, I need to remind you that we are not. SOME are, but the church itself has no official stand on the matter one way or the other, and the vast majority of us run the gamut between strict creationism and a belief in full blown natural (if divinely guided) evolution. Since BYU has one of the nation’s best evolutionary biology departments in the nation, (Edited)

This was the post I was referring to. It somehow deleted.

 

[lax16]

Diana - I don’t understand this.

If something takes **about **two thousand years, you think it is correct to say thousands of years? Very misleading. If someone was teaching a class or a person about the history of the Bible, that comment would be very misleading.

It is an exaggeration. Let’s not get off topic as if I am saying that Catholics don’t recognize oral tradition. The research presented was strictly addressing the issue of the comment “thousands of years.”

I need to adjust my post a bit (it was way too early for me to be posting)

I have presented research not to support my argument but to answer the question:
“How long did it take to write the bible?”
Nothing I read (and believe me it was volumes!) or presented shows the bible being written over thousands of years. If we want to discuss the amount of time the bible covers, it still comes up to about 1800 years if we use Abraham as a starting point.

If you have information to the contrary, please provide it.

Was there anything to show the Bible being written over thousands of years??? I am officially confused Diana, but please let me know how you have come to another conclusion.

 

[evanfaust]

And as for the French word "adieu", just because it is in the dictionary at the time, does'nt mean that it was commonly used. Unless there is a source document that says the French word "adieu" became commonly used, like a special dictionary of commonly used words, then people can be skeptical.

"There is a common misunderstanding among some critics of the Book of Mormon that the word adieu is not an English word. This is not true. The problem stems from the fact that adieu is both an English word and a French word, and most English speakers are more familiar with its use in a French context.

Adieu is a perfectly good English word that has appeared in English dictionaries, English literature, and in common English usage from long before Joseph Smith to the present. Adieu entered the English language in the 14th century. It entered from Middle French, not modern French, and it has been part of English for approximately 800 years. Adieu has been part of the English language longer than the word banquet, which is also a word in modern French, but banquet entered the English language only in the 15th century. Adieu is no less English than commence, nation, psychology, Bible, vision, or any other word that can be traced back to Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, or any other language.

The presence of adieu is no more a challenge to the historicity and authenticity of the Book of Mormon than the 36 uses of banquet in the NIV is a challenge to the historicity and authenticity of the Bible."

en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms/%22Adieu%22

 

[lax16]

"There is a common misunderstanding among some critics of the Book of Mormon that the word adieu is not an English word. This is not true. The problem stems from the fact that adieu is both an English word and a French word, and most English speakers are more familiar with its use in a French context.

Adieu is a perfectly good English word that has appeared in English dictionaries, English literature, and in common English usage from long before Joseph Smith to the present. Adieu entered the English language in the 14th century. It entered from Middle French, not modern French, and it has been part of English for approximately 800 years. Adieu has been part of the English language longer than the word banquet, which is also a word in modern French, but banquet entered the English language only in the 15th century. Adieu is no less English than commence, nation, psychology, Bible, vision, or any other word that can be traced back to Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, or any other language.

The presence of adieu is no more a challenge to the historicity and authenticity of the Book of Mormon than the 36 uses of banquet in the NIV is a challenge to the historicity and authenticity of the Bible."

en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms/%22Adieu%22

evanfaust - Okay. But was God speaking a French word to JS and he copied it down?
Or was JS translating a different word God said to “adieu?”

I know I am repeating myself with this question:
What language did God speak to Joseph Smith?

 

[dianaiad]

Diana - I don’t understand this.

If something takes **about **two thousand years, you think it is correct to say thousands of years? Very misleading. If someone was teaching a class or a person about the history of the Bible, that comment would be very misleading.

It is an exaggeration. Let’s not get off topic as if I am saying that Catholics don’t recognize oral tradition. The research presented was strictly addressing the issue of the comment “thousands of years.”

lax, now you are quibbling about the meaning of ‘a few,’ in order to avoid admitting that you were incorrect about this issue. The fact is, most scholars believe that the history of the bible, in terms of written AND ORAL authorship, reaches back more than three thousand years before Christ.

In terms of English number usage, “A thousand years” would be understood easily. If you are talking about two thousand years, the term “a couple of thousand…” would be more appropriate than ‘thousands,’ though since two is a plural, 'thousands" is just barely, if annoyingly to the ear, legal.

Using 'thousands" when dealing with three or more thousand years, though, is perfectly acceptable, as would be “a few thousand.”

You are now, I’m afraid, parsing in order to avoid admitting defeat. The FACT is, the bible was not written over a century, or two, or even a thousand, years. It was written over three to four thousand years, both in oral and written form. You won’t find a single biblical scholar that would disagree with that one, but you would get a bunch of raised eyebrows at the notion that it was written in any lesser period of time.

 

[dianaiad]

evanfaust - Okay. But was God speaking a French word to JS and he copied it down?
Or was JS translating a different word God said to “adieu?”

I know I am repeating myself with this question:
What language did God speak to Joseph Smith?

What difference does that make? In no report of any conversation that Joseph had with God did he mention the word ‘adieu.’

…though come to think of it, it would probably have been more like 'a Moi".

 

[dianaiad]

lax16:
Hi Diana - Can you please cite your source for this? According to this ranking from US News and World Report BYU is not in the Top 10:
grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-biological-sciences-programs/ecology

thanks!

lax, I did not claim that BYU had one of the top ten graduate programs in evolutionary biology. You are moving the goalposts. Try that site again, and you will see that it is a tier 1 university (which translates to ANYBODY as 'one of the top universities) ranking 71 in the nation over all. Considering that there are considerably over 4000 colleges and universities in this fair nation, that’s pretty darned 'top."

It is noted to be one of the best ‘feeder schools’ TO the top ten, however…a BS in science from BYU is a whole lot more likely to get you into graduate school at one of those top ten schools than from almost any other university there is.

 

[dianaiad]

This was the post I was referring to. It somehow deleted.

Yes. It was deleted for a reason.

 

[AtticusFinch]

"There is a common misunderstanding among some critics of the Book of Mormon that the word adieu is not an English word. This is not true. The problem stems from the fact that adieu is both an English word and a French word, and most English speakers are more familiar with its use in a French context.

Adieu is a perfectly good English word that has appeared in English dictionaries, English literature, and in common English usage from long before Joseph Smith to the present. Adieu entered the English language in the 14th century. It entered from Middle French, not modern French, and it has been part of English for approximately 800 years. Adieu has been part of the English language longer than the word banquet, which is also a word in modern French, but banquet entered the English language only in the 15th century. Adieu is no less English than commence, nation, psychology, Bible, vision, or any other word that can be traced back to Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, or any other language.

The presence of adieu is no more a challenge to the historicity and authenticity of the Book of Mormon than the 36 uses of banquet in the NIV is a challenge to the historicity and authenticity of the Bible."

en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms/%22Adieu%22

The article you post is simply poor apologetics.

If you assume that Joseph was translating from Reformed Egyptian, then one wonders why Joseph would have picked the french word in that particular place and not used it throughout the Book of Mormon. In addition, the fact that the word was in an English Dictionary for a long time means very little. The question is whether Joseph, with his limited education, and in a poor family, would have used that word in common conversation. I submit the answer is no.

If you assume God was telling Joseph what to translate, one must wonder, that while God apparently spoke to Joseph in King James English (I am rolling my eyes), God must have slipped here and spoken French. Not likely.

The word adeiu in the Book of Mormon supports the theory that Oliver, a learned man, helped Joseph copy the book of Mormon from various sources, including the KJV of the Bible, and Oliver, a learned man, slipped and used the word accidentally.

What is surprising is that Mormons did not take the word out. (Edited)

 

[bluelake]

I took you off of ignore for this post, and for any answer you might make to it. (Edited) I would like to ask you…are you of the opinion that the OT was written by one person just before Christ came along? Who do you think wrote it?

As well, just how old do you think the earth actually is, and how many years are reflected in the OT?

I am truly bemused here…I feel like I’m walking into a whole new world of 'say, what?" as if my understanding of Catholic thought is entirely off in this area. I have been assuming that Catholics believed as we do about this topic; that the Pentateuch, Proverbs, the books of Job, Isaiah and Malachi as well as the Song of Songs and all the other books in the OT were written by different people over many hundreds and thousands (at least three thousand, if not more) of years, and these works were protected and handed down through the generations to Christ.

Am I wrong? If so, what IS the belief regarding the authorship of the OT? You have me intensely curious.

by the way, just to remark upon your continued claim that Mormons are all strict creationists, I need to remind you that we are not. SOME are, but the church itself has no official stand on the matter one way or the other, and the vast majority of us run the gamut between strict creationism and a belief in full blown natural (if divinely guided) evolution. Since BYU has one of the nation’s best evolutionary biology departments in the nation, (Edited)

The Holy Bible, the word of God. have you read this?
The New Testament ends with a warning. "Do not add or take away from the Word of God.
Rev.22:18-19 Joseph Smith ignored this warning.
To learn about creation see Gen.1.
Unsaved people cannot understand the Bible. Some are spiiritual blind. God looks on the heart of man. Pray about this.

bluelake

 

[bluelake]

What difference does that make? In no report of any conversation that Joseph had with God did he mention the word ‘adieu.’

…though come to think of it, it would probably have been more like 'a Moi"./QUOT

See 2Cor.4:3-4

blue

 

[Caprica]

The Holy Bible, the word of God. have you read this?
The New Testament ends with a warning. "Do not add or take away from the Word of God.
Rev.22:18-19 Joseph Smith ignored this warning.
To learn about creation see Gen.1.
Unsaved people cannot understand the Bible. Some are spiiritual blind. God looks on the heart of man. Pray about this.

bluelake

Actually, the verse states to not add to or take away from “this book”. “This book” refers to the Book of Revelation, not the Bible. The Bible as a collective work did not exist when the apostle John wrote that verse, therefore it could not possibly refer to the Bible. Similar condemnations are also found in Deuteronomy. The Book of Mormon is not added to the Book of Revelation, therefore there is no issue here.

 

[shelby2014]

Actually, the verse states to not add to or take away from “this book”. “This book” refers to the Book of Revelation, not the Bible. The Bible as a collective work did not exist when the apostle John wrote that verse, therefore it could not possibly refer to the Bible. Similar condemnations are also found in Deuteronomy. The Book of Mormon is not added to the Book of Revelation, therefore there is no issue here.

I actually agree with our Mormon friends about the quote referring to Revelation and not the Bible because it makes the most logical sense. However, where we disagree is that I do believe the Bible is effectively “closed.” Why? Because when it was formed by the Catholic church, they defined the canon. There were many other “gospels” floating around, many related to heresies and gnosticism. How was a new Christian supposed to know the truth? Because it was inspired and revealed to the Catholic church which books were legitimate.

If we didn’t have this, than any writing by anyone after that point could have been considered Scripture and holy, and there have been thousands since then. So what makes the Book of Mormon any different than any religious work since the Bible was created?

 

[dianaiad]

The Holy Bible, the word of God. have you read this?
The New Testament ends with a warning. "Do not add or take away from the Word of God.
Rev.22:18-19 Joseph Smith ignored this warning.
To learn about creation see Gen.1.
Unsaved people cannot understand the Bible. Some are spiiritual blind. God looks on the heart of man. Pray about this.

bluelake

Actually, bluelake, the New Testament doesn’t end with this. The Book of Revelation does. There is a difference.

 

[dianaiad]

I actually agree with our Mormon friends about the quote referring to Revelation and not the Bible because it makes the most logical sense. However, where we disagree is that I do believe the Bible is effectively “closed.” Why? Because when it was formed by the Catholic church, they defined the canon. There were many other “gospels” floating around, many related to heresies and gnosticism. How was a new Christian supposed to know the truth? Because it was inspired and revealed to the Catholic church which books were legitimate.

If we didn’t have this, than any writing by anyone after that point could have been considered Scripture and holy, and there have been thousands since then. So what makes the Book of Mormon any different than any religious work since the Bible was created?

This post begs a few questions…the first of which is: since the Catholic church didn’t have the bible compiled for a couple/three centuries after Christ, how could those early Christians you speak of look to the difined canon of the church?

 

[shelby2014]

They assembled the canon, that was the point.

 

[lax16]

lax, now you are quibbling about the meaning of ‘a few,’ in order to avoid admitting that you were incorrect about this issue. The fact is, most scholars believe that the history of the bible, in terms of written AND ORAL authorship, reaches back more than three thousand years before Christ.

In terms of English number usage, “A thousand years” would be understood easily. If you are talking about two thousand years, the term “a couple of thousand…” would be more appropriate than ‘thousands,’ though since two is a plural, 'thousands" is just barely, if annoyingly to the ear, legal.

Using 'thousands" when dealing with three or more thousand years, though, is perfectly acceptable, as would be “a few thousand.”

You are now, I’m afraid, parsing in order to avoid admitting defeat. The FACT is, the bible was not written over a century, or two, or even a thousand, years. It was written over three to four thousand years, both in oral and written form. You won’t find a single biblical scholar that would disagree with that one, but you would get a bunch of raised eyebrows at the notion that it was written in any lesser period of time.

Diana - wow.

Please show where any research on the subject shows more than 1800 years or more specifically, 3000 years. I have provided some, you have provided nothing but your opinion.

I have asked you to provide research to prove your point.

I am not doing anything to avoid admitting defeat - I am open to what you have or anyone else has to say. There is no way I am going to claim to be a Hebrew Bible scholar.

Please provide the biblical scholars that claim the bible was written over 3-4 thousand years. The biblical scholar I quoted stated a thousand years. My opinion after reading up on it is 1800 years if one accounts for oral history starting with Abraham.

Diana, I could care less about raised eyebrows. I am submitting the research of experts. Raise your eyebrows at them.

 

[lax16]

What difference does that make? In no report of any conversation that Joseph had with God did he mention the word ‘adieu.’

…though come to think of it, it would probably have been more like 'a Moi".

Are you answering for everyone else for some reason?

If so, I don’t understand what you are saying and you did not answer my questions.

What language did use God when speaking to Joseph Smith?

If the word adieu is in the Book of Mormon as I have read it is, did God say it or did JS translate what God said into it? You are saying that there is not report of any conversation that Joseph had with God did he mention the word “adieu.” Then where did it come from?