Lars Nielsen's "How the Book of Mormon Came to Pass"

[hauslern]

Just curious Smith said the word "Mormon" meant "more good" Wesley P Walters in his Mth said it mean "frightening" based as an adjective for "mormo" means hideus face or mask. or "Mormo (Greek: Μορμώ, Mormō) was a female spirit in Greek folklore, whose name was invoked by mothers and nurses to frighten children to keep them from misbehaving" It was used to refer to the puffin birds which flew off the Atlantic seaboard "Mormon articus" "mormo glacious" There was a Mormon simia in a zoo in London in the 1800s https://wellcomecollection.org/works/mv9kvadv

[Kishkumen]

Why does either name need an explanation at all? Nephi is from Judges. Lehi is from 2 Maccabees https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/2- ... pter-1/#36

I guess this thread has me thinking, what is this book trying to explain at all? Sure, I guess more background information about the context in which the Book of Mormon was written is nice, but it's pretty well established already. You don't need to talk about 17th century Catholic Jesuit scholars to understand how someone in Joseph Smith's time would have this information.

I guess if Spalding theory people want to theorize about a missing document, go ahead. The Q Source people have doing this for decades.

This reminds me a bit like the big dust up surrounding the Late Great War. It's a nice detail, another brick in the wall. I have nothing against it, and if someone finds it interesting, good for them. But in terms of understanding the Book of Mormon composition, it's not added much to the data or debate in hindsight. I'm guessing in a few years, this book will be about the same.

What it is perceived to achieve depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to show that Joseph Smith just copied a Spalding Manuscript or used the Late War, then the payoff will be very limited. If the goal in pursuing the research is to understand the Book of Mormon in its 19th century American context, then I would say a lot has been achieved.

[Marcus]

Lol. Peterson would be lost without us!

A new self-published book advocating a novel theory for the origin of the Book of Mormon has recently appeared — the previous theories having, umm, not exactly swept the field before them. It claims to have found the sources that were used to create the text of the Book of Mormon. Alas, though, this new theory seems itself to be meeting with an unenthusiastic reception, thus far.

And the doubts and criticisms aren’t coming from believing Latter-day Saints, who don’t yet seem to be paying it any attention (if, indeed, they ever will). On the contrary: In my limited sampling, anyway, the book appears to be failing among disaffected former believers and those who hang out with them.

Some critics of the Church, of course, will accept it uncritically simply because it appears at first glance to cast doubt upon the claims of the Restoration. The more thoughtful critics in my sample, though, have been making substantive arguments against it and are clearly unimpressed with it.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... hings.html

[bolding added by me, to show that---awww! He loves us!!!]

[Marcus]

DCP:

...all of the evidences of genuine Semitic and pre-Columbian antiquity that many of us see in the Book of Mormon...

That's just embarrassing.

[Kishkumen]

Just curious Smith said the word "Mormon" meant "more good" Wesley P Walters in his Mth said it mean "frightening" based as an adjective for "mormo" means hideus face or mask. or "Mormo (Greek: Μορμώ, Mormō) was a female spirit in Greek folklore, whose name was invoked by mothers and nurses to frighten children to keep them from misbehaving" It was used to refer to the puffin birds which flew off the Atlantic seaboard "Mormon articus" "mormo glacious" There was a Mormon simia in a zoo in London in the 1800s https://wellcomecollection.org/works/mv9kvadv

I would allow Joseph Smith to apply a meaning to the name that he put in the Book of Mormon. Having someone with an oppositional motive (Walters) seek out the least attractive alternative is hardly reliable.

[Marcus]

I would allow Joseph Smith to apply a meaning to the name that he put in the Book of Mormon. Having someone with an oppositional motive (Walters) seek out the least attractive alternative is hardly reliable.

That's a perfect description of how to exercise bias against those one disagrees with, for no good reason other than one assumes they are inferior humans. Not really a rational position, unfortunately.

[Moksha]

There was a Mormon Simia in a zoo in London in the 1800s.

It has that polygamating look in its eye.

[Dr. Shades]

I imagine you read one or more books in 2023. Think of your favorite one of those. Now, think of a book you read 22 years earlier, back in 2001. When you read the more recent one, did it contaminate your memory of the one from 2001, to the point that you thought the former's principal characters had the same names, that any groups or populations had the same names, that they traveled from the same points to the same other points, and that an error in the former appeared in the latter as well? Did you also falsely remember the same distinct phraseology in the latter (if any) as being in the former, too?

If not, why not? And if you're immune from it happening to you, what makes you think the Conneaut Witnesses had less cognitive acumen than you?

You do know that this would be a pointless exercise. You can't just choose two random books read 20 years apart and ask whether you would conflate the two.

Why on earth not??

In my experience as a person who, perhaps unlike you, struggles with a flawed memory, it is only when things have some kind of significant resemblance that I conflate them.

And the significant resemblance is due to the fact that the latter was ripped off from the former.

I still doubt that you read Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? If you had, you'd remember that there are many more accounts of people familiar with Solomon Spalding and what they had to say than those affidavits from Mormonism Unvailed that I copied-and-pasted. For yet another example, when Orson Hyde and Philastus Hurlbut were preaching in Conneaut and began reading from the Book of Mormon, remember how Nehemiah King blurted out, "Old Came-to-Pass lives again!"

Now why, in your opinion, did he say that?

Uh, because it is found in the Bible. Luke 5:1. So, two authors used the phrase a lot in their works.

Then why did Nehemiah King say it was Spalding's work instead of saying that it was the Bible?

It could be that Joseph Smith read A Spalding manuscript that did the same. We do not know and cannot test whether the Book of Mormon is just a plagiarism of that manuscript. Until that manuscript is found, the one that has all of the elements these witnesses claimed, we will not know whether Joseph simply plagiarized Spalding or not. . . I am much less persuaded of the idea that Smith got ahold of Spalding and just copied his work. I do not dismiss these Spalding witnesses, but I do think there is a pretty natural explanation for their claims that does not require Smith to have plagiarized a Spalding manuscript.

Remember, it was Rigdon who plagiarized Spalding, not Joseph. Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? The Spalding Enigma made that very, VERY clear.

Are you sure you read it?

The Romance of Celes doesn't really help. If anything, it hurts the case.

That's because nobody ever claimed that The Romance of Celes was the source of the Book of Mormon.

[Kishkumen]

That's a perfect description of how to exercise bias against those one disagrees with, for no good reason other than one assumes they are inferior humans. Not really a rational position, unfortunately.

Sure it’s rational. Go to the author to ask what they intended something in their book to mean. Don’t go to someone who hates the book and is looking to run it down. Depending on what you are looking to find out, that is a perfectly rational exercise. I am talking about literary intention, not divine truth in this instance.

[Kishkumen]

Why on earth not??

I refer you back to my discussion of conflation and resemblance.

And the significant resemblance is due to the fact that the latter was ripped off from the former.

That is your assertion. It remains to be proven.

Then why did Nehemiah King say it was Spalding's work instead of saying that it was the Bible?

Because both works overuse the expression. That does not necessarily mean one is plagiarized from the other.

Remember, it was Rigdon who plagiarized Spalding, not Joseph. Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? The Spalding Enigma made that very, VERY clear.

Remember that this is part of their unproven and as of yet unprovable conspiracy theory? Oh, I do. I thought it best to leave the more ridiculous parts of this out of the discussion. The best evidence for the Spalding theory is the witnesses who read Spalding’s work. Past that, we are in conspiracy theory territory. Why try to bolster the better evidence with the significantly less valuable in this way? It doesn’t help.

Are you sure you read it?

Years ago. I still own my copy. It was a fun book. A lot more fun than Nielsen’s, in fact. But it is a conspiracy theory, not history. This is not to say that it is impossible that Spalding’s lost manuscript played some role in the genesis of the Book of Mormon. The evidence is certainly sufficient to entertain the possibility. But the manuscript is needed to ascertain the degree to which one text is dependent on the other, and it could be that the answer is “very little.”

That's because nobody ever claimed that The Romance of Celes was the source of the Book of Mormon.

Have you read Nielsen yet? If not, don’t rush to pop off about things you have no frame of reference for. I was not claiming that RoC was *the* source for the Book of Mormon either, and I did not claim that Nielsen was making that argument.