Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_CaliforniaKid]

Just thought I'd pop in to say that this thread now has 116 pages. Let's hope the new moderators don't accidentally lose them.

[_MCB]

Especially since so much of it is off-topic stuff about the witnesses.

[_Roger]

Hi Chris:

Just thought I'd pop in to say that this thread now has 116 pages. Let's hope the new moderators don't accidentally lose them.

If so I have no doubt Glenn will claim that evil men who wish to alter his and Dan Vogel's words were behind it all, at which point he will produce a rewrite of all 116 pages in which (this time!) their arguments appear to make sense. ; )

[_Roger]

Resistance is futile.

There can only be one representative of the dark side in this discussion and I've already staked that claim. : )

It is not a problem for the Smith Alone, naturalistic theory. Joseph couldn't remember what he had written the first time and made everything up out of whole cloth.

Oh but it is a problem, Glenn. Just because Joseph can't remember exactly what he wrote the first time (despite the fact that Dan thinks he'd been reciting it over and over in his mind ever since the nightly 1823 family fireside chats) doesn't mean his non-contextual word print should dramatically change as well as his conscious use of certain phrases like wherefore/therefore and a double that.

(Nor for the Smith with divine inspiration. We already know that story.)

The Smith divine theory interprets the 116 page data in the worst manner of all three competing theories. I have been through that before, possibly even on this thread, but for Smith to claim that he could not reproduce the lost pages because evil men want to alter the words on a handwritten manuscript is beyond ridiculous. In the first place, evil men who were intent on destroying the work would not alter it. They would keep it as is because they would understand that Joseph could not duplicate it.

In the second place, the Mormon god knows hundreds of years in advance that this is going to happen and has his prophets plan and write accordingly, but then he is apparently as ignorant as Joseph about who exactly these "evil men" actually are and where they've hidden the manuscript! The whole excuse is so juvenile as to be ludicrous on it's face.

And yet, if that ms already had alterations on it, then that juvenile excuse becomes the ONLY (barely) plausible explanation. How is Joseph going to explain it when a manuscript shows up AFTER Book of Mormon publication that has all kinds of cross outs all over it that contradict what actually ended up in the Book of Mormon? That's a real problem that gets solved by introducing evil men into the scenario who want to destroy the work by altering it. Joseph can then simply claim that the alterations (he knew were there to begin with) were done by these evil men instead of by himself or Harris or Cowdery--this is exactly the way Smith operated. He was able to take what looked like a loss, and turn it into a positive--although in this case, since no manuscript ever showed up, it comes across as an incredibly juvenile excuse.

You are testifying for your witnesses and trying to tell us what they must have meant, rather than what they actually said.

No. You are taking what they actually said and reading much more into it. You are distorting what they actually said.

The Book of Mormon was supposed to have been so like the mythical second manuscript that it stood out from beginning to end.
When you read statements such as "I have no manner of doubt that the historical part of it, is the same that I read and heard read, more than 20 years ago", and "I have recently examined the Book of Mormon, and find in it the writings of Solomon Spalding, from beginning to end", and "I will observe, that the names of, and most of the historical part of the Book of Mormon, were as familiar to me before I read it", and "I saw the Book of Mormon where I find much of the history and the names verbatim", and "This was the last I heard of Spalding or his book, until the Book of Mormon came into the neighborhood. When I heard the historical part of it related, I at once said it was the writings of old Solomon Spalding", the normal expectations would be a very close resemblance, not just a few phrases and names.

We've been through this before and you're just as wrong now as you were then. I can't help it if you still want to read too much into their statements. None of their statements imply word for word verbatim cover to cover. Period. They all insist that the religious material was not in the original. Period.

Four of your Conneaut witnesses have already fallen on the lost tribes sword.
Now, if you read the Book of Mormon carefully, you will see that most of it is an abridgement by Mormon of the records on the large plates of Nephi. The first 116 pages that were lost were the beginning of that abridgement. There is no logical reason to infer that he wrote the first 116 pages in the first person and every reason to believe that he wrote the Book of Lehi the same way he wrote Mosiah et al, in the third person. To insist that Mormon wrote the first 116 pages in the first person, then suddenly switched to the third person when he hit Mosiah is completely ad hoc. There is no evidence to support such a contention.

This is simply nonsense. I don't think Mormon wrote any of it.

None of the Conneaut witnesses would have been exposed to the first part of the Book of Mormon as a first person narrative in Solomon's mythical manuscript. That makes the statement of Artemas Cunningham problematic because he would not have seen the phrase "I Nephi" .

The statement of Artemus Cunningham, a first-hand witness, does not stand or fall on your conjecture about a manuscript you have never seen.

The rest of your post is simply an attempt to raise the goalposts so high as to be impossible to meet your unwarranted demands. It would be like asking you to show me the plates and then you might have something. On second thought, that request is actually much more reasonable than yours.

All the best.

[_Dan Vogel]

Especially since so much of it is off-topic stuff about the witnesses.

Witnesses to Joseph Smith’s method of translation and the lack of evidence for his use of a MS is off topic?

[_MCB]

Especially since so much of it is off-topic stuff about the witnesses.

Witnesses to Joseph Smith’s method of translation and the lack of evidence for his use of a MS is off topic?

The discussion of the witnesses and the discussion of studies of the text are two separate but related issues. All a matter of semantics.

[_GlennThigpen]

The statement of Artemus Cunningham, a first-hand witness, does not stand or fall on your conjecture about a manuscript you have never seen.

The rest of your post is simply an attempt to raise the goalposts so high as to be impossible to meet your unwarranted demands. It would be like asking you to show me the plates and then you might have something. On second thought, that request is actually much more reasonable than yours.

All the best.

Roger, there is more evidence that the 116 pages were in the third person than there is for Sidny Rigdon ever saw any Spalding manuscript, mush less copied it and massaged it into the Book of Mormon.

Glenn

[_GlennThigpen]

Hi Chris:

Just thought I'd pop in to say that this thread now has 116 pages. Let's hope the new moderators don't accidentally lose them.

If so I have no doubt Glenn will claim that evil men who wish to alter his and Dan Vogel's words were behind it all, at which point he will produce a rewrite of all 116 pages in which (this time!) their arguments appear to make sense. ; )

I would start to doubt my own sanity if my arguments started to make sense to you.

Glenn

[_Dan Vogel]

Glenn,

Roger, there is more evidence that the 116 pages were in the third person than there is for Sidny Rigdon ever saw any Spalding manuscript, mush less copied it and massaged it into the Book of Mormon.

More accurately, the 166 pages were probably primarily in third person until Mormon quoted something, like he did in Mosiah-4 Nephi. However, these instances would be minor, especially references to “I, Nephi.”

[_Roger]

Roger, there is more evidence that the 116 pages were in the third person than there is for Sidny Rigdon ever saw any Spalding manuscript, mush less copied it and massaged it into the Book of Mormon.

So where is it? So far all I've seen is conjecture on your part.