outhouse

I would argue that all day long.


Its not the same for Jesus.

The problem with Jesus is not the fiction, redactions, or mythology used.

Its cross cultural oral traditions written decades after the facts, which when added together, do give us a partial glimpse of a first century Galilean Jew.


BOM not being cross cultural, is easier to pick out the mythology, fiction and redactions. Which used the material above for its foundation.

Sheshbazzar

Do we get a glimpse of any real King Arthur because legends of Camelot, the Round Table, Sir Galahad, Lady Guinevere, and Merlin exist?

andrewcriddle

The weakest links in the claims for the book of Mormon seem to be:
a/ the claim that the plates were ancient rather than a modern fabrication.
b/ the claim that Smith's translation into English of the plates has any validity.

Andrew Criddle

sotto voce

There's something more basically wrong than those.

Atheos

Both of these are summarily brushed aside by magic. An all-powerful god was responsible for the appearance and taking-up of the plates. The same god micro-managed the translation process. These claims are no more extraordinary than the various miracle claims conservative Christian scholars often try to defend by extolling the virtues of the "authenticity" of the gospel narratives (where there really is none). At least in the case of the Mormon documents the authenticity is stronger. I feel like I'm comparing apples to apples here.

The point I'm trying to make is that the threshold of "ridiculous" set by those who want to accept this and not that is completely arbitrary and comes down to nothing more than what one wants to believe. Whether it's curing blindness with dirt and spit or translating Reformed Egyptian to English using a "Seer's Stone" it's all ridiculous.

sotto voce

Ah. So Mormons are even more insane than Christians.

andrewcriddle

I think you are possibly using the wrong comparison.

Mormons claim that the book of Mormon is a valid translation of an ancient text more or less contemporaneous with many of the events it describes. This claim is improbable.

Christians claim that the English NT is a valid translation of an ancient text more or less contemporaneous with many of the events it describes. This claim is basically true.

You are entirely correct that neither the (alleged) antiquity and contemporaneity of the book of Mormon nor the (genuine) antiquity and contemporaneity of the NT in any way guarantees the truth of what they say. But although true this is IMO a separate issue.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

Your claim is basically a fallacy. No ancient text of NT has been ever found and dated to any event described in the NT in the time of the supposed Jesus, the disciples and Paul.

Events in the Jesus stories allegedly happened 2 BCE-33 CE and the earliest writings found and dated are about 100 years later or more.

Toto

"[A]n ancient text more or less contemporaneous with many of the events it describes" can be understood as "rather less than more."

Although - it is theoretically possible that some parts of that ancient text were written within the living memory of someone who could have known about the events, which is clearly not the case with the Book of Mormon.

Cheerful Charlie

There might have been witnesses to js having something but what were they really?
On the other hand smith also had Egyptian papyrus scrolls from which he translated the Mormon book of Abraham, which can be found in the Mormon book, the Pearl Of Great Price. That book had fascimiles of the papyrus which turned out only to be a copy of the Egyptian book of the dead. Google online for the Pearl of Great Price to see that.

And notoriously, the book of Mormon made some great claims, such as immigration of Israelites in large numbers to America and claims that if true, should have been provable by archaeologists but have proven false, making to golden plates from which Smith claimed to have gotten the Book of Mormon problematical as a true revelation.

Many years ago, I sat in the Rice University library and read a pile of state university journals where Mormon professors at these colleges in heavily Mormon states, tried to argue this embaressing nonsense away. It was quite embaressing to read this crap from supposedly educated people. Apparently some of this is still going on.

All of which points to witnessing these golden plates being a hoax of Smith's part, or a great error of judgment from the "witnesses".

The bizarre response to the Book of Abraham nonsense is that Smith translated it with a superior spiritual translation differing from worldly mundane methods of translation. All of this provides a very good object lesson to the problems of supposed eyewitnesses.

If you have not yet had your fill of human religious credulity, google for Mormon archaeology. The BoM is bunk. No matter how many people claimed to see Smiths
golden plates.

Cheerful Charlie