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Ray A wrote:

Who Knows wrote:

There's still no answer to my question: How was the Book of Mormon produced?

And there may very well never be an answer...

I believe there is an answer, and that is automatic writing. Regardless of any fraud regarding the plates, I believe this explains the Book of Mormon production.

What is AUTOMATIC writing?

Is that like calling a wet dream sex?


Was he channeling?


'splain please.

The Book of Mormon was translated from the Golden plates with assistance from the Urim and Thummim and seerstone at first, then later through translation by normal means.

Gaz

Gazelam wrote:The Book of Mormon was translated from the Golden plates with assistance from the Urim and Thummim and seerstone at first, then later through translation by normal means.

Gaz

Well, no it wasn't.

1. Joseph didn't use the plates in the translation. He put a rock in a hat which he then placed over his face.
2. The translation contains innumerable anachronisms which invalidate its claims to be an ancient text.
3. The translation shows marked textual dependency on the New Testament, making it impossible for the text to predate the Christian era.

About the only thing you could say is to argue that it's inspired fiction, but that's kind of a dicey proposition in itself.

PP, I didn't see your thread, so I'll repost what I just posted on Runtu's thread. This is only a rough outline:

I won't take up anymore of Runtu's thread on this subject after this post, but I'll summarise the problem with Spalding by "stealing" a few paragraphs from Criddle's site, an advocate of the theory, by the way:

The weakest points of the Spalding-Rigdon Theory are:

(1) The Spalding manuscript that contemporary witnesses described as similar to The Book of Mormon - a document ironically named "Manuscript Found" - is missing. Its absence can be compared to the absence of a murder weapon in a murder case. In such cases, circumstantial evidence can often still secure a conviction, but it is an uphill battle.

(2) There is uncertainty about how and when Rigdon first came into contact with a member of the Smith family. But while the exact circumstances have not been established, there is evidence that contact did occur. Several scenarios are plausible. Different theories propose as Smith's initial middlemen Alvin Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Parley Pratt.

(3) Word print studies have not connected Spalding or Rigdon to The Book of Mormon. However, as I will discuss in the companion essay, these studies were not designed in a way that would enable a fair assessment of the Spalding-Rigdon Theory.

(4) Some of the testimony cited in support of the Spalding-Rigdon Theory came many years after the alleged incidents and can be questioned on the grounds of memory fallibility. These are lightly shaded dots. Other pieces of evidence can be questioned on other grounds, such as bias. Where I am aware of such issues, I will address them in this and the companion essay. The fact that some pieces of evidence have more uncertainty than others when they are analyzed in isolation does not change the evidentiary value of the more certain evidence nor does it negate the value of lightly shaded dots when they are internally consistent and numerous and when they provide clues for additional investigation.

On point 3 I don't place much credence in wordprint studies either. I'm still slowly ploughing through the book Shades, but it's tedious going, almost Nibleyesque. I put it down for a long time because I was having a hard time "connecting the dots", and many assumptions have to be made to get this theory together. But I will finish it (while reading about six other books at the same time).

My theory of automatic writing is not popular because it involves "metaphysical assumptions", ie, that there is "spirit communication". But just some thoughts. It seems to me that many aspects of the Book of Mormon incorporate Joseph Smith's personal experiences, such as Lehi's dream and his father's dream, and the Lehi family resembles Joseph Smith's in many ways. Joseph seems to be the "Nephi character". The references to Joseph of Egypt and his relationship to another Joseph, "who shall be called after the name of his father", and Joseph Smith's role in prophecy in the Book of Mormon as a latter day prophet, seem to reflect either conscious and/or subconscious motives. In other words, the Book of Mormon was a combination of external influences and Joseph's conscious/subconscious mind. You'd have to understand examples of AW. If I can put is roughly, the Book of Mormon was a combination of external influences and Joseph Smith religious imagination. It must also be remembered that according to Phillip Barlow, Joseph Smith had almost a photographic memory of the Bible, which he was reading before the FV. In fact, Joseph didn't conclude that there is no true church on the earth from what the Father and Son told him in the vision. He concluded this before he had the vision. This is all in his personal journals. Yet in his account he says that he was "told" this in his vision:

No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.

He did this (in the FV account) to give his own conclusions authority, and this is also what he did in the Book of Mormon. It was the same with the restoration of the higher priesthood, which came by "revelation" in 1831, but Peter, James and John were added to give this "revelation" more authority. There is no contemporary record, anywhere, of Peter, James and John appearing in 1829. This was later added, and which Whitmer objected to.

In very short summary, when you weigh the Spalding theory and the AW theory, Spalding leaves a lot to be desired. It may explain part of the Book of Mormon, but it does not entirely explain it.

Okay, I'll leave Runtu's thread in peace from any more of this, but might say more elsewhere.

by the way, in case anyone thinks I'm working towards a "fraud hypothesis" here, they're wrong.

Good night.

Ray A wrote:by the way, in case anyone thinks I'm working towards a "fraud hypothesis" here, they're wrong.

Good night.

Pious fraud? ;)

Who Knows wrote:

Ray A wrote:by the way, in case anyone thinks I'm working towards a "fraud hypothesis" here, they're wrong.

Good night.

Pious fraud? ;)

Is there any other kind?

Who Knows wrote:

Ray A wrote:by the way, in case anyone thinks I'm working towards a "fraud hypothesis" here, they're wrong.

Good night.

Pious fraud? ;)

It can be viewed as fraud by those who believed it literally. I don't fall into that category. I suppose if someone still believes in Santa Claus at 30 and then found out it was a myth they might be disillusioned or angry. There are currently practising Mormons who will burn the Book of Mormon if they concluded it is not history. BCSpace himself said he could not continue to be a Mormon if he discovered that. On the other hand there are millions of non-Mormons asking when will Mormons "wake up". Nearly every library I visited on my mission had the Book of Mormon in the fiction section. They will never suffer disillusionment, or think it a fraud.

This is the case of Pearl Curran, which I linked earlier. You will see some similarities between her and Joseph Smith. I'm not the first one to suggest this theory (and that's all it is), but Scott Dunn wrote an article in Sunstone in 1985, titled "Spirit Writing: Another look at the Book of Mormon", June 1985, Vol.10. Ever since I read Dunn's article I have been interested in this theory. Dunn also has a chapter in American Apocrypha, "Automaticity and the Dictation of the Book of Mormon".

I've outlined in bold some sections from the link on Curran worth noting:

In 1913, Pearl Curran was a St. Louis housewife with no interest in the occult, other than a little dabbling with a Ouija board (not uncommon at the time). She played piano, never read much and had little education. She briefly thought of becoming an actress but gave that up when she married John Curran.

They seldom read anything, outside of the daily newspaper and some of the periodicals of the day and never really had an opportunity to associate with well-educated writers or poets. They were happy though and content in their middle-class home with their close friends and acquaintances.

Pearl was fascinated with the messages that they were receiving and began devoting more and more time to the Ouija board. Eventually though, the messages began coming so fast that no one could write them down and Pearl suddenly realized that she didn’t need the board anymore. The sentences were forming in her mind at the same time they were being spelled out on the board. She began to "dictate" the replies and messages from Patience to anyone who would write them. She would first employ a secretary, but later Pearl would record the words herself, using first a pencil and then a typewriter.

For the next 25 years, Patience Worth dictated a total of about 400,000 words. Her works were vast and consisted of not only her personal messages, but creative writings as well. She passed along nearly 5,000 poems, a play, many short works and several novels that were published to critical acclaim.

Pearl would usually just sit in a brightly lit room with her notebook or typewriter and when the messages began to come to her, she would begin to write. The stories were filled with ancient languages, words and objects that had not been in use for hundreds of years and more. Things that there is no way that Pearl could have known about.
Pearl explained that as the words flowed into her head, she would feel a pressure and then scenes and images would appear to her. She would see the details of each scene. If two characters were talking along a road, she would see the roadway, the grass on either side of it and perhaps the landscape in the distance. If they spoke a foreign language, she would hear them speaking but above them, she would hear the voice of Patience as she interpreted the speech and indicated what part of the dialogue she wanted in the story. She would sometimes even see herself in the scenes, standing as an onlooker or moving between the characters. The experience was so sharp and so vivid that she became familiar with things that she could have never known about living in St. Louis. These items included lamps, jugs and cooking utensils used long ago in distant countries, types of clothing and jewelry word by people in other times and the sounds and smells of places that she had never even heard of before.

On once occasion, Pearl was shown a small yellow bird sitting on a hedge. Patience wished to include it in a poem, but Pearl had no idea what type of bird it was. Finally, Patience became frustrated and said, "He who knoweth the hedgerows knoweth the yellow-hammer." Pearl and her husband later consulted an old encyclopedia and saw that the yellow-hammer in her vision was not a type seen in America, but only in England.

In spite of the visions and odd experiences though, Pearl never went into a trance during the writing sessions, as a Spiritualist medium would have done. She understood the writing as it came and yet while calling out the words to the stenographer, she would smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and eat. She seemed always to be aware of her surroundings, no matter what else might be going on with her.

Debunkers accused Pearl of hiding her literary talent in order to exploit it in such a bizarre way and become famous. However, exhaustive studies have shown this to be highly unlikely, if not impossible. Scholars have analyzed Patience’s works and have found them to accurate in historical detail and written in such a way that only someone with an intimate knowledge of the time could have created them.

Link: http://www.prairieghosts.com/pearl.html