MG 2.0 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 15, 2023 2:42 am
... the Book of Mormon was a one shot deal. One trick pony. A flash in the pan. We have Joseph the farmboy producing a work that has gone on to becoming a recognized book of scripture that has impacted and changed the lives of millions of people and brought them to Christ.
It’s literally one of a kind. Unless you’re going to say The Course In Miracles falls in the same category. Or Dianetics. If so, we may be at an impasse.
I don't understand what point you're making with these phrases, "one trick pony" and "flash in the pan".
For one thing I think you may be misusing "flash in the pan". It's a metaphor from flintlock muskets. Sometimes the small priming charge in the little pan on the side of the musket goes off with a flash and a puff, but the main charge inside the barrel fails to ignite, so the weapon doesn't actually fire. As a metaphor it means something that starts promisingly but never gets going properly.
My best guess is that you're trying to say that if Smith could easily pull off the Book of Mormon then why didn't he write any sequels to it? I'm not happy with this guess as to what you mean, though, because it doesn't make sense. Smith did write sequels, but at a slower rate because he was busy being a sect leader, and then he was murdered. And yes, I'd say that a whole lot of books by sect leaders like Helena Blavatsky, Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White, and L. Ron Hubbard are obvious peers to the Book of Mormon. They were different in style because King James Bible remakes weren't as marketable in their times as other genres, but they did the same resonating-with-millions jobs.
I'm still rewriting that novel, and making steady progress but very slow. It's a hobby, not a shot at literary fame. But why exactly is it so different from the Book of Mormon? You cite a Reader's Guide to the Book of Mormon, but why? If it's only that you read so many enthusiastic paragraphs in the Guide that you came away with a feeling that that Book of Mormon sure is wonderful, then I'm afraid that feeling is absolutely worthless as an argument. If instead you found even one compelling argument in that Guide, showing that the Book of Mormon was really beyond the power of anyone like Smith, then why not repeat that argument here for us?
Read the section with the heading: Composition Methodology
Again, if that book about the composition of the Book of Mormon made even one compelling point, why not repeat that point here yourself? Merely citing a long book, without a word about what it contains, looks as though you yourself got no actual arguments out of the book, but only a feeling of confidence based on reading positive statements over and over. And if you couldn't find any good arguments in that book that seemed strong and memorable even to you as a committed Mormon, then that's not a good sign for the weight of argument found in that book.
Whatever that book says, anyway, I'm skeptical about any arguments about exactly how the Book of Mormon got produced—who was with Smith, whether he had notes, how long it took. First of all, the Book of Mormon really does not read like something that needed detailed preparation to dictate. It has a few names and relationships to keep straight, but it's exactly the kind of rambling and repetitive text that you can produce off the cuff. It even has those few dead giveaway self-corrections—by someone supposedly engraving on metal!—where it unsays something it just said and provides a new version.
Secondly, though, Smith wasn't under surveillance, either during the alleged composition time or over the previous ten years of his life. There is no actual way of telling whether he wrote up a thick draft over years before going through a show of dictating the Book of Mormon, or whether he carefully rehearsed each day's performance the night before. Descriptions of the dictation process which seem to rule out consulting notes are based either on incidents which could easily have been staged, or on testimony by people who could easily have been confederates.
Sure, there's no positive evidence that Smith rehearsed or used notes. There wouldn't be, would there? How much evidence trail are private rehearsals or secret notes going to leave, when no more than a little bit of rehearsal was needed? Heck, you can rehearse a recitation mentally while lying awake in bed without moving or speaking. It would have been easy enough to produce the Book of Mormon with a lot more support than the official story admits—so easy that I don't see how any accounts of the production details can be considered evidence that Smith couldn't have written the Book.
That would be like claiming that I must have gotten onto the roof of my house by magically levitating, because there's no evidence that I used a rope or a ladder or climbed out a window or got boosted by friends. The mere possibility of many mundane ways of getting onto the roof, even if we can't confirm any of them, means that my being on the roof is zero evidence for my being able to levitate.
I was a teenager before it was cool.
