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This is a response I made over at the other discussion board concerning the JST:

The JST was not really a "translation" of the Bible. It was not a "inspired" verson at all. It was a copy (plagiarism) of Adam Clarke’s famous Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments. Which was a popular Bible commentary that was readily available to Joseph Smith during the 1820's and 1830's.

This information was brought to light by BYU researchers. It pretty much kills the notion that Joseph Smith added further light and knowledge to the New Testament. Here is a quote from the BYU article:

Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible has attracted significant attention in recent decades, drawing the interest of a wide variety of academics and those who affirm its nearly canonical status in the LDS scriptural canon. More recently, in conducting new research into the origins of Smith’s Bible translation, we uncovered evidence that Smith and his associates used a readily available Bible commentary while compiling a new Bible translation, or more properly a revision of the King James Bible. The commentary, Adam Clarke’s famous Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, was a mainstay for Methodist theologians and biblical scholars alike, and was one of the most widely available commentaries in the mid-1820s and 1830s in America.

http://jur.byu.edu/?p=21296

This seems to me as the strike three (Book of Abraham, Kinderhook plates) and now JST. I guess if you count the Book of Mormon, it is strike four.

Maybe I have been on the outside too long. But I don't understand how Supposedly educated people can continue to believe this charlatan (Joseph Smith).

Please help me understand this.

Because of the simple principle:

It is much easier to get someone to believe something, than to later convince them that their beliefs are erronous. In the latter case, a host of mental biases are working in favor of continued belief.

sunstoned wrote:Maybe I have been on the outside too long. But I don't understand how Supposedly educated people can continue to believe this charlatan (Joseph Smith).

Please help me understand this.

Great question. After wasting a great deal of my life in this dead end religion it would be great if I could at least point out the more obvious errors to prevent others from making the same mistake. The last time I was on this board one poster even went so far as to use the general tendency of the human race to believe in a god as evidence that there actually is a god. Yeah and the fact that moths will fly into a candle flame must be proof that it is somehow good for them. Here's a link with what I think to be the correct explanation.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/ken ... roots.html

Thanks for the link Spotlight. It is an interesting article.

That is a terrific article in the link! Thanks for referencing that. It explains a lot!

Thanks for the feedback. Good to know it was useful to someone else besides myself.

I love how they try to blame it all on Rigdon. Here is their footnote and this, really is freaking unbelievable:

The suggestion that Rigdon held sway over Smith intellectually has been noted by others. David Whitmer would eventually accuse Rigdon of introducing errors into church doctrine.

So, one has to ask, where was God in all this??? Rigdon was Smith's Svengali? Anything to take the blame off of Smith, right? But this doesn't address why there are the same kinds of changes in the Book of Mormon text... Which they do note (#3).

Matthew Clark, overview of Genesis,

According to an old tradition, not only Genesis (also called the first book of Moses),

Joseph Smith, Pearl of Great Price,

Selections from the Book of Moses... https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/moses/1?lang=eng

So what the Church claims are...

An extract from the translation of the Bible as revealed to Joseph Smith the Prophet, June 1830–February 1831.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/moses?lang=eng

...and...

An extract from the translation of the Bible as revealed to Joseph Smith the Prophet in 1831

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/js-m/1?lang=eng

...are actually two, now-proven-by-BYU, concrete examples of Joseph plagiarising someone else’s work and passing it off as revelation. That’s simply staggering. Elder Pearson’s going to need a bigger black box.

“Elder Cook, why does the Church pass off plageriasm as revelation?”
“Erm, well, you see...there’s this big black box....”

Of course, now this is known, the Church will be amending those paragraph headings immediately and explaining to the members why they’ve been changed. Because that would be the honest thing to do...

spotlight wrote: After wasting a great deal of my life in this dead end religion it would be great if I could at least point out the more obvious errors to prevent others from making the same mistake.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/ken ... roots.html

An interesting article.

I think many points are valid observations. And that gives me hope. Especially as one can observe new trends in parenting.

The writer observes:
”Typically, the caregiving parent begins laying the groundwork for the child's eventual religiosity shortly after birth during what Faber calls the "basic biological situation." Over and over, literally thousands of times per year, the needful infant cries out for and immediately receives nourishment, warmth, comfort, and care from the apparently omnipotent parent, usually the mother. The infant's crying, or supplication, in response to "crises" constitutes "proto-prayer." The omnibenevolent and all-powerful mother, of course, becomes the child's "proto-deity."

Today’s parents are creating new paradigms of caregiviing. They are, no longer, at their offspring’s beck and call. Modern parents have a new ranking of priorities. First comes their cellphone. Only when their child can distract the parents attention away from the smart phone, whether the parent is playing a game or seeking a new Pokemon Go site or texting someone on the internet, can a child hope for any parental attention.

This offers multiple opportunities of hope for the future generations ideas about an all-caring diety. Today’s small will grow up believing in an uncaring diety. Instead of falling for religions false assurities of a caring parent in the sky, willing and able to respond to our slightest whim, they will assume a distracted God. No longer will they plead to find lost keys, heal cancers or pay bills, but will have experienced uncaring at a whole new level, and therefore assume that prayers, pleading or payments will bring no results.

God will be a distracted, non-attentive, reluctant ghost in the clouds.