If plates then God

[MG 2.0]

Here you go, Marcus. Hope this helps.

"a unified, coherent, history-like narrative of nearly 270,000 words and almost 200 named characters interacting with one another in complicated plot lines"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: The Origins of the Text,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 749.

“that covers a thousand years of history”
Source: Nevo

and includes "a diverse array of genres (history, sermons, prophecy, scriptural exegesis, poetry, allegory, letters, etc.), multiple levels of narration (with later narrators editing and commenting on previous accounts), and literary techniques such as flashbacks, embedded documents, and parallel narratives,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as Ancient History,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 807.

while also keeping track of "genealogical relationships, the sources of various plates and records, and successions of rulers,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as Ancient History,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 807.

and exhibiting intertextuality and internal allusions and playing with temporality,
Source: On intertextuality and internal allusions, see Grant Hardy, “General Essays: The Book of Mormon as Literature,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 798. On playing with temporality, see Elizabeth Fenton, “Nephites and Israelites: The Book of Mormon and the Hebraic Indian Theory,” in Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon, ed. Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 298-320.

and addressing not only the question of Indian origins and the state of contemporary Christianity, but also "God's covenants with Israel, the nature of salvation, prophecy, scripture, faith, eschatology, human agency, and divine justice and mercy,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: The Origins of the Text,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 750.

while also presenting, in sermons and stories, "a coherent spiritual vision that draws from biblical precedents, resolves ambiguities, and both explains and applies doctrines in ways that were intelligible to nineteenth-century readers,"
Source: Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Book of Mormon Theology,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 766.

that would also resonate with millions of future readers around the world,
Source: See Grant Hardy, “General Essays: Reading the Book of Mormon as Fiction,” in The Annotated Book of Mormon, ed. Grant Hardy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 811.

and that future historians would hail as "one of the greatest documents in American cultural history"
Source: Gordon S. Wood, “Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,” New York History 61, no. 4 (1980): 380-81.

and "among the great achievements of American literature"
Source: Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 314.

Wow. You really did just cobble together a bunch of disparate things. And you "hope it helps"? I thought at least from Morley's comment that you were quoting a cohesive statement, but you have just shoveled together a bunch of stuff. I enjoy Grant Hardy's work, but, no, this mishmash of stuff is not convincing.

Thanks for the links, but you need to go back to the beginning and try again to respond to PG's comment in a coherent way.

Par for the course Marcus.

Regards,
MG

[Kishkumen]

I admit that I find the “Book of Mormon is a great achievement” argument baffling. The faithful position is that it was written by multiple authors over many hundreds of year, right? And then it was assembled together as the gold plates, which Smith translated in sixty-odd days? So is the idea that it’s a “great achievement” because multiple authors chipped in over time to write it? Like, it’s a really solid collection? Of course not, and hence my bafflement. The “it’s impressive” argument only makes sense if the Mormon narrative is false and Smith himself is the author.

Well, yeah! But I think that false should be replaced by mythological. It was an impressive achievement for young Smith to produce this mythological narrative.

[Chap]

The thing is, MG, you were asked to put yourself in the shoes of a random ordinary person who is not a Mormon, and give your reaction on being told that:

(a) A quite small group of people arrived in America, and spent a few years there living relatively simple lives, then left. We have archaeological remains from their settlement that tells us quite a lot about their lives. We can be sure they were there, and what kind of people they were.

(d) Some people say that in America there was once an empire that was as successful and sophisticated as any on earth. It rivaled contemporary empires in China, India, Persia, and Rome. They built roads and temples, smelted iron and worked steel, they grew vast cities and developed a complicated society. They fought wars that involved millions of people on each side. But there are no archaeological remains to prove that such an empire ever existed.

Don't you agree that the average Joe would say that in the light of (a), (b) seems pretty implausible?

Sure. What thinking person wouldn’t?

Thanks for this direct answer to the question of what an average reasonable modern person might say when confronted with the claim that a huge and culturally complex Nephite empire once flourished in the Americas, but has left no convincing archaeological evidence of it ever having existed.

As I’ve said and talked about a whole bunch of times now on this thread and elsewhere I see certain issues as being peripheral to others.

The primary questions for me are:

1. Is there a God?
2. If so, does God have a plan/purpose for humanity?
3. Is He able to reveal that plan/purpose?
4. Is that plan (or parts of that plan) readily accessible and if so should I not find myself in congruency with that plan?

All else is secondary and/or peripheral. But once I’ve determined that these ‘primaries’ seem solid then I can move on to secondary/peripheral issues/questions. I also accept the fact that I live in a world of ambiguity and that I see through a glass darkly.

Regards,
MG

Yup. You are a Mormon, and those are the possible reactions of a thinking 21st century Mormon to being confronted with the sheer implausibility of the historical claims made in the Book of Mormon about what happened in pre-modern America.

But for the early 19th century Americans to whom Joseph Smith addressed himself, at a time when archaeology in general and the archaeology of the Americas in particular, was much less developed, the reasons for scepticism about the historicity of the Book of Mormon narrative were considerably weaker. And as a result, the adherents of the CoJCoLDS were able to retain their belief without the elaborate mental stratagems (dare I call them 'gymnastics'?) that you find necessary.

I do wonder how the missionaries succeed in converting anybody with some historical training nowadays.

[Dr. Shades]

What I object to is the expectation that people literally believe in obviously mythological narratives.

Hold on. . . didn't you advocate, at length, that societies benefit from believing in myths?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I admit that I find the “Book of Mormon is a great achievement” argument baffling. The faithful position is that it was written by multiple authors over many hundreds of year, right? And then it was assembled together as the gold plates, which Smith translated in sixty-odd days? So is the idea that it’s a “great achievement” because multiple authors chipped in over time to write it? Like, it’s a really solid collection? Of course not, and hence my bafflement. The “it’s impressive” argument only makes sense if the Mormon narrative is false and Smith himself is the author.

I think the SFM yokels just believe in the whole meta narrative as being impressive and miraculous,

They are, of course, woefully incorrect on all accounts and doggedly determined to stay like unto a SFM yokel. For example, this story:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/s/3KMbIuEw2X

tl;dc - the SFM yokel doesn’t believe real, actually real documentation of Joseph Smith’ wives.

That is what a SFM yokel does. Whether about politics or religion, you can talk to a SFM yokel until you’re blue in the face, and the next day they’ll pretend like nothing happened, AND their loss is ignored! Onto the next idiocy, says the SFM yokel.

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

"a unified, coherent, history-like narrative ... 270,000 words ... 200 named characters ... complicated plot lines ... thousand years of history"

If you ramble on for a few weeks, you will generate a long story and the plot will be complicated in the sense that a lot happens. Having a lot of characters spread over a long time, and trying to sound like a history, makes it easier, because you can get away with just listing one damn thing after another without having to sustain the coherent plot of a novel.

"diverse array of genres ... multiple levels of narration ... flashbacks, embedded documents, and parallel narratives"

More things that make a rambling story easier to whip up, not harder.

I sometimes wonder whether Mormons actually read the Book of Mormon. What I suspect is that they read it in a way they would never read any other book, through thick "Sacred Scripture!" lenses that make them judge everything in special ways. It's almost as though Smith passed on those special spectacles of his, because all these things that Mormon apologists keep trotting out, as if they were impressive features in a story that would have been so hard for Smith to produce, are precisely the giveaway signs of a hurriedly invented, rambling yarn. They are absolutely not at all things that Smith couldn't have done. They are precisely the kinds of things that Smith would have done, if he had set out to rattle off some Bible fan fiction.

"genealogical relationships ... sources ... successions of rulers"

The notes would fit on a page.

"intertextuality and internal allusions and playing with temporality"

A determined apologist can read these things into the phone book. The Book of Mormon is not Finnegan's Wake. It has about as much intertextuality and all that as one would expect to be able to discover in any rambling, amateur yarn of its length and style, if you really wanted to find it. It definitely does not have so much of this stuff, nor is any of it so good, that it could only have been put in carefully by a brilliant author.

"... Indian origins ... contemporary Christianity ... covenants with Israel ... spiritual vision ... intelligible to nineteenth-century readers ..."

These things the Book of Mormon really does have, yes. Smith was among the fifty percent or so of people in his place and time who were really interested in all those things and had been hearing about them all their lives. Certainly he knew that the rest of that fifty percent would be a good market for this kind of stuff.

"resonate with millions ... American literature"

Scientology, Christian Science, Theosophy, and a whole lot of New Age nonsense have all resonated with millions, too. They were all made up by lucky and talented people. Lucky and talented people can totally do things like that. It doesn't happen each month, but it happens. Popular impact at that level is nothing that someone like Joseph Smith couldn't have done, with some luck.

[Physics Guy]

I admit that I find the “Book of Mormon is a great achievement” argument baffling. The faithful position is that it was written by multiple authors over many hundreds of year, right? ... The “it’s impressive” argument only makes sense if the Mormon narrative is false and Smith himself is the author.

It is impressive that Smith constructed the Book of Mormon, yes. It is absolutely not in the slightest so impressive that he must have had lots of divine aid, but it was impressive for a human achievement. He was a talented individual and he got on a roll.

It's a great point, though, that the Book of Mormon shouldn't be impressive as a work of literature, if it is what it purports to be.

It's supposed to be a loose collection of different texts composed by authors who several times excuse themselves for writing badly in an awkward medium. Most of the things they write are supposed to be historical, meaning that they record what happened regardless of how interesting it was or how much sense it made. A lot of other content is religiously didactic, and thus supposed to be valuable for its spiritually sound content regardless of how awkwardly it's expressed.

If the Book of Mormon really were exactly what it purported to be, it would still be precisely the kind of text that would have been easy for a 19th century yokel to produce by himself: a hodgepodge of religious rambling, nothing like a great novel. So making out that the Book of Mormon would have been too hard for Smith to produce, just as a text, is a self-undermining argument. The Book of Mormon isn't even pretending to be anything that would have been too hard for Smith.

[Kishkumen]

Hold on. . . didn't you advocate, at length, that societies benefit from believing in myths?

LOL! Nice language catch there, Dr. Shades. I was referring to the demand that they believe the myths are actual historical events in the mundane sense. I don't care much for the use of "literally" as a kind of emphatic adverb.

[Morley]

Nevo.

As I said earlier, I appreciate that you listed you references for your partial quotes. Most were from Mormon apologists I was familiar with, so I sort of shrugged them off. I was struck, however by the quotation you provided by Daniel Walker Howe, who won the Pulitzer for the book you reference, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. I didn't remember him being so enthusiastic about the literary merits of the book, so I checked my copy. This is what you claimed Howe wrote:

and "among the great achievements of American literature"
Source: Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 314.

And below is the entire paragraph from his book. I've bolded the sentence you pulled your phrase from.

True or not, the Book of Mormon is a powerful epic written on a grand scale with a host of characters, a narrative of human struggle and conflict, of divine intervention, heroic good and atrocious evil, of prophecy, morality, and law. Its narrative structure is complex. The idiom is that of the King James Version, which most Americans assumed to be appropriate for a divine revelation. Although it contains elements that suggest the environment of New York in the 1820s (for example, episodes paralleling the Masonic/Antimasonic controversy), the dominant themes are biblical, prophetic, and patriarchal, not democratic or optimistic. It tells a tragic story, of a people who, though possessed of the true faith, fail in the end. Yet it does not convey a message of despair; God’s will cannot ultimately be frustrated. The Book of Mormon should rank among the great achievements of American literature, but it has never been accorded the status it deserves, since Mormons deny Joseph Smith’s authorship, and non-Mormons, dismissing the work as a fraud, have been more likely to ridicule than read it.

The inference you draw from the text and what Howe was actually saying aren't the same thing. I'm not sure this was quite honest.

[tagriffy]

Marcus and I raised red flags on Hales' essay, which notably you didn't really address. Further research research would probably only uncover more cheating on Hales' part. So the alleged unlikelihood of Smith's authorship doesn't rise to the level of verified fact.

Meanwhile, there is still the elephant that is not in the room: the is not one bit of credible physical evidence the Book of Mormon peoples ever existed. Without that, the weight of probability falls on the side of Joseph's authorship, no matter how unlikely you think he could have done it.

I would not expect that there would be incontrovertible evidence.

Regards,
MG

Neither would I, but I would expect Hales to do his job properly.