Is the Book of Mormon Divinely Inspired?

[MG 2.0]

Because MG finally made good and watched some of his video and posted his thoughts, I watched the first 10 minutes.

Out of the gate Jacob comes swinging with "NHM", which was also Hamblin's go-to discovery. The Bible has a book called Nahum and given the sheer number of Bible names and Bible-riffed names in the Book of Mormon, its pretty obvious it is Bible fan fic. And Jacob massively oversells it, as if anyone but Mormon apologists have agreed that NHM would have or has ever meant Nahom. More on Jacob's hilarious overselling at the end of this post.

Phillip Jenkins has an epic takedown of NHM here:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbe ... m-follies/

While I certainly can't compete with Jenkins, I apparently did my own study of Nahom back when I was thinking about Book of Mormon names.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=151744

Hamblin was right about one thing. He knew that he had to account for the chance appearance of the three letters appearing together, and so he did a bogus calculation showing it to be some ridiculous number and ceded the point later (another apologist corrected him). But he was right to take that into account. My interest in how names appear is similar to Hamblin's thoughts about what kind of names we'd expect to find. (not detailed odds)

Now back to Jacob's overselling. Jenkins hits it out of the park here:



That quotation is about verbatim Jacob's sales pitch to his Catholic friends! LOL!

I note that MG 2.0 hasn’t responded to your points Gadianton. Perhaps he missed your post.

I did see it but I didn’t find it interesting enough to respond to knowing that it already had already been addressed by minds much greater than mine. I let it pass because my time is limited and I pick and choose what to respond to. For those that aren’t aware of the response to Gadianton’s link go here:

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... perplexity

One thing I do find interesting other than Gadianton’s failure to refer to the link in the Interpreter is that his source doesn’t mention anything about the Book of Mormon narrative then moving on from Nahom directly East and ending up at Bountiful. What a lucky guess Joseph made to end up at almost an ideal location to launch a boat from and the Lehites having the means to survive in an otherwise harsh environment while building the boat.

A series of coincidences pointed out in the Interpreter article can make one question whether all of them add up to ‘Joseph did it’ or if we are reading the actual account of a family leaving Jerusalem and preparing to travel to a promised land.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

You posted a link and assigned everyone to come up with something interesting, challenging, deep, or new that Jacob Hansen had to present. Many of us tried. We returned and reported. You decided that we must not have delved deep enough, since all we found were the same, old, boring, chunks of merde things that apologists have all come to rely on, these days. Frustrated with what you saw as our failure, you decided to have a look for yourself. However, from what you posted, it's obvious that you couldn't find anything that was interesting, either.

This is a very good TL;DR summation of this thread.

I didn’t see anything that in my mind went much beyond scratching the surface.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

I can appreciate that point of view. The problem is the condensed time in which the translation occurred and the testimony of the witnesses which seem to support a short translation period in which Joseph had a seerstone in a hat with no other apparent ‘props’.

Wow. A woefully inaccurate book full of bad history, goofy theology, and unscientific ideas; a book that was largely plagiarized; one bursting with anachronisms; a 1400-year-old tome rife with 19th Century Yankee ideals; a revealed work said to have come from golden plates that were later taken away to heaven, but really read off a rock placed in a hat. None of that really made me believe.

But now that I know that this book was composed quickly? Sign me up! I believe!

I think that it it is easy to overlook the reality of the miracle of the short translation period. If you take the time to look through the Watson timeline it really does seem to be almost miraculous that Joseph could start and finish this project with all that was going on in his life in such a short amount of time.

My experience is that this is one of those anomalies that critics in the main find a way to brush off…or sidetrack…like you did.

Regards,
MG

[honorentheos]

What a lucky guess Joseph made to end up at almost an ideal location to launch a boat from and the Lehites having the means to survive in an otherwise harsh environment while building the boat.

What evidence is there that the location you claim as Bountiful could in fact support building transoceanic wooden ships?

[MG 2.0]

So long as he realises that on this board which has 'Discussions' in its name, his views will be, well, 'discussed'. Can't he deal with that?

Always have, always will.

Regards,
MG

[huckelberry]

Anti-Mo: "We've discussed this before, I've always liked this take:"

Lorem ipsum odor amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nec id molestie dictum egestas; urna ridiculus imperdiet luctus. Nunc ridiculus curae nam nunc cras taciti arcu interdum montes. Gravida senectus consectetur venenatis platea etiam aliquam. Ultricies morbi luctus posuere hendrerit, torquent suscipit augue. Facilisi conubia class per nec nulla metus natoque sed egestas. Porttitor facilisis dolor vestibulum curae accumsan.
///etc translates:he smell of the mouth itself is great, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nor did the said employee need it; urn is a ridiculous hairstyle for mourning. Now it's funny to worry about tomorrow's silent bow sometimes mountains. A heavy old age will also be followed by some street congestion. To put the hendrerit on the sufferings of the disease, he twists and takes up propaganda. The marriage class was made easy by no fear of birth but necessity. The carrier makes it easier for the customer to take care of the customer.

The smell of the product is very good, it is very good for the customer. It's time for the kids, let's live in the yard with a little rainbow. Decorate with brown and soft arrow keys until you get to it. It is time to drink chocolate at the porta ultricia than the course of the clinic. Urna turpis feugiat, ullamcorper tellus luctus etiam. It is the foundation of my undergraduate career. Imperdiet purus adipiscing from ligula even the land of God. But what if he invests in basketball and the street market?

Lacinia was not the season of the maecena; the largest layer of the arc. Every football player and soccer player can achieve goals. A lion will also be born with no bronze quiver. Not everyone likes football. We need nets but we don't live in Lacinia. A great bronze author; pellentesque sapien lacinia porttitor metua justo No mass is suitable for the sauce. The always soft and natural sauce triggers the laoreet
/////
Anti-Mo: "Now I have an excuse to not move my lazy butt to Church for two hours."

L.E Hill is providing such a clever variety of remarks I was curious about the foreign language piece. My limited education allowed me to recognize latin but not to read it well so I
asked google to translate for the treat which I share here.

[drumdude]

Lorem ipsum is a traditional placeholder text, what he posted was essentially dressed-up nonsense spam.

[honorentheos]

Wow. A woefully inaccurate book full of bad history, goofy theology, and unscientific ideas; a book that was largely plagiarized; one bursting with anachronisms; a 1400-year-old tome rife with 19th Century Yankee ideals; a revealed work said to have come from golden plates that were later taken away to heaven, but really read off a rock placed in a hat. None of that really made me believe.

But now that I know that this book was composed quickly? Sign me up! I believe!

I think that it it is easy to overlook the reality of the miracle of the short translation period. If you take the time to look through the Watson timeline it really does seem to be almost miraculous that Joseph could start and finish this project with all that was going on in his life in such a short amount of time.

My experience is that this is one of those anomalies that critics in the main find a way to brush off…or sidetrack…like you did.

Regards,
MG

I'm strongly of the opinion the argument goes the other way. Smith tried but failed to return to the lost record project after his first failed attempt resulted in the loss of the Book of Lehi. We have no idea what the quality was of that text. The project was only completed once Oliver Cowdery came and the two of them could work largely unmolested at the Whitmer's. Most claims about the Book of Mormon production confuse accounts from the creation of the Book of Lehi where the work was performed on much less friendly grounds.

If anything the fact Smith couldn't produce the work until Cowdery showed up undermines claims its production was miraculous.

[MG 2.0]

What a lucky guess Joseph made to end up at almost an ideal location to launch a boat from and the Lehites having the means to survive in an otherwise harsh environment while building the boat.

What evidence is there that the location you claim as Bountiful could in fact support building transoceanic wooden ships?

Hi honor! As you know there has been a lot of ink spilled on this particular topic. Much speculation as to how the boat was built. Having read some of this stuff years ago the idea that I found making more sense than some others was that the materials needed for shipbuilding could have been transported to the area around Bountiful through trade or other forms of commerce.

The Arabian Peninsula was located along important trade routes in ancient times, and there is evidence that people in the region engaged in long-distance trade with places like Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India.

It's possible that Nephi and his family could have acquired materials like timber, pitch, or other resources through trade with merchants or traders passing through the region. If I remember correctly the Lehite colony would have had to make periodic excursions in order to hook up with those that dealt in trading.

This is one of a number of theories. But I kind of like it.

What is amazing is that they ended up in this fertile area directly East (through a lot of terrain that was full of danger and hazards) to finally get there.

What faith that would have taken!

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

I think that it it is easy to overlook the reality of the miracle of the short translation period. If you take the time to look through the Watson timeline it really does seem to be almost miraculous that Joseph could start and finish this project with all that was going on in his life in such a short amount of time.

My experience is that this is one of those anomalies that critics in the main find a way to brush off…or sidetrack…like you did.

Regards,
MG

I'm strongly of the opinion the argument goes the other way. Smith tried but failed to return to the lost record project after his first failed attempt resulted in the loss of the Book of Lehi. We have no idea what the quality was of that text. The project was only completed once Oliver Cowdery came and the two of them could work largely unmolested at the Whitmer's. Most claims about the Book of Mormon production confuse accounts from the creation of the Book of Lehi where the work was performed on much less friendly grounds.

If anything the fact Smith couldn't produce the work until Cowdery showed up undermines claims its production was miraculous.

I’m assuming you have read Watson’s timeline I linked to earlier?

Regards,
MG