Evangelical Book of Mormon study

Jon suggested in the comments that I discuss some of the things in the Book of Mormon which I like, so here it is.
Passages I Like
2 Nephi 1:14-24 ~ “But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.” That’s just beautiful.
2 Nephi 4:15b-35 ~ The “Psalm of Nephi.” I like this, especially v. 20, “My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep.”
2 Nephi 7:8 ~ “And the Lord is near, and he justifieth me. Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is mine adversary? Let him come near me, and I will smite him with the strength of my mouth.” This passage makes me feel better about being snarky to people on the Internet. SMITE YOU WIT’ MY MOUTH, SUCKAS!
2 Nephi 9:38 ~ “And, in fine, wo unto all those who die in their sins; for they shall return to God, and behold his face, and remain in their sins.” This dovetails nicely with my thoughts on why there is a hell.
Alma 22 ~ I love the story of Aaron and King Lamoni here, especially v. 18, “O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee, and that I may be raised from the dead, and be saved at the last day. And now when the king had said these words, he was struck as if he were dead.” The stuff with the king being struck as if he were dead is very Pentecostal.
Alma 30 ~ I think the story of Korihor is by far my favorite story in the Book of Mormon. I love a good villain, and I’m amazed by how much similarity there is between the things Korihor says then (which come from 1830 at the latest) and the things good ol’, run-of-the-mill atheists say in our day and age, even the ones that troll the Internet posting funny pictures on forums and blogs about how dumb religion is and how they’re oh-so-enlightened. Sorry guys, Joseph Smith had your number 180 years ago.
There’s plenty of other things that I like, but that’s enough for one post.
Other Thoughts
Fun fact about me: I’m an agnostic on the origin of the Book of Mormon. I don’t have the slightest inkling of belief that these people actually existed, but I’m also not completely satisfied with thinking Joseph Smith, Jr. simply made it up on his own. I’m also not a big fan of “It’s fiction and Satan inspired it.” I just don’t know, and since I don’t have all of the details about what sources Joseph Smith had access to and what he knew at the time he wrote it, I don’t feel horribly compelled to come to any conclusions.
My copy of the Book of Mormon is marked. Very marked. I’ve highlighted everything and I mean everything that I liked, I’ve boxed around the verses that I really, really like with silver glitter pen, I’ve scribbled notes in the margins that I needed to ace my BoM classes at BYU, and of course I have notes making fun of lawyers because making fun of lawyers never gets old. I have examples of chiasmus noted and parsed. Passages which I see as problematic for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon are starred. I also have things noted like this:
Alma 24:19 ~ “And thus we see that, when these Lamanites were brought to believe and to know the truth, they were firm, and would suffer even unto death rather than commit sin; and thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace.”
That seems like the kind of mistake that someone would make if they were writing on metal and could not erase or cross out what they wrote. “I buried my weapons of peace—whoops, um, I mean, my weapons of war for peace.” It’s a strange thing to have in the BoM though if Joseph Smith simply wrote it all himself, although alternatively, his scribe may have made a similar mistake and thought the “weapons of war, for peace” correction worked fine.
Stuff like that I do take note of, for whatever it’s worth.
If you’re Mormon, please don’t read this and start getting excited and thinking that it sounds like I’m ready for baptism. Just because I haven’t said anything critical about the Book of Mormon here doesn’t mean I have nothing critical to say, and there’s still a pile of things in Mormonism which I reject even if I like the Book of Mormon as fiction.

Comments

Evangelical Book of Mormon study — 18 Comments

  1. Ahh, but the fact that you were able to touch it without suffering instant frostbite shows that you are a Mormon. Unless, of course, you were wearing gloves. Or if you mind-controlled a Mormon and made him turn the pages for you.
    We actually just read, as a family, Alma 24 tonight. I’ve wondered about that “weapons of peace” phrase too. Tonight, I wondered whether “weapons of peace” was an original phrase—as in, “We have to have so many weapons so our enemies will be reluctant to attack; thus, they are weapons of peace (a la nuclear weapons).” So Mormon used the phrase “weapons of peace,” and then Joseph added the clarifying phrase during the translation process. I just don’t see why one couldn’t etch out something written in metal, and there were so many other edits of the Joseph Smith BoM text that I would think this would have been fixed if it were scribal error.
    Oh, as for how I take this post: I take it as you finding good in others.
  2. Ether 12:27 -
    “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”
    Always one of my favorites.
  3. Brian ~ Or if you mind-controlled a Mormon and made him turn the pages for you.
    You know, in World of Warcraft I usually did play a priest…
    Seth ~ I had that one highlighted and boxed.
  5. BJM said:
    I don’t have the slightest inkling of belief that these people actually existed, but I’m also not completely satisfied with thinking Joseph Smith, Jr. simply made it up on his own.
    To look at this book objectively is interesting. Intellectually, the more I study the book and the life of Joseph Smith, the more convinced I am that there’s not a good naturalistic explanation of its origins. I think many Mormons overstate the case that Joseph Smith was uneducated; it’s clear to me when reading his writings and sermons that he had a very high IQ and an uncanny ability to synthesize ideas. But the testimony of various witnesses, including Emma, suggest to me that (irrespective of its content) it can’t be a complete fabrication. The possibility of him just sitting down and making this up, and persuading people like Martin Harris to invest their entire livelihood in the endeavor, just doesn’t fit in with historical facts. It’s just too incredible of a story.
    On the other hand, the book’s ability to address primarily those theological issues that were big deals in early 19th-century America is uncanny at the least if it’s purely a ancient document. And there are too many echoes of Pauline language, especially in Moroni, to think that that the Pauline epistles and the Book of Mormon were written completely independently.
    The same goes, even more so, for content such as the Sermon on the Mount.
    And back to the other hand, its use of chiasmus and various Hebraisms is fascinating at the least. If Joseph Smith made this all up, he got an awful lot of things right. And the narrative is quite complex. As far as we know, the manuscripts turned into the printer was basically a first draft; any novelist would have made considerable revamps to make everything fit together as well as it does.
    Unfortunately, Joseph Smith didn’t tell us a lot about the translation process. There are some historical indications that, at least at times, the translation was supernaturally dictated word-by-word to him. On the other hand, there historical indications that this wasn’t a traditional translation at all — the plates sometimes weren’t even in front of him as he dictated the text to Oliver Cowdery.
    Do where does that leave me? I do believe that there was an ancient text that Joseph Smith obtained through supernatural means. But I also believe that Smith himself played a major role in the translation process, so that in its totality the Book of Mormon is both ancient and the product of 19th century America. At its core, I believe, it’s historical (although I can’t prove it), but it also comes to us through the filter of an inspired 19-century American.
    In any case, I believe its true value isn’t as a historical text but in its ability to draw us to a better understanding of and appreciation for our savior. The passages already mentioned above are among my favorites. Here’s another one:
    And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things. And whatsoever thing is good is just and true; wherefore, nothing that is good denieth the Christ, but acknowledgeth that he is. And ye may know that he is, by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore I would exhort you that ye deny not the power of God; for he worketh by power, according to the faith of the children of men, the same today and tomorrow, and forever.
    (Moroni 10:5-7)
  6. Well, and who says it has to be all or nothing?
    Even if Zarahemla never existed, why would that disqualify the book from being inspired by God? I don’t like this all-or-nothing fundamentalist thinking that you sometimes get with respect to religious thought in America.
    Lots of cultures in the past have consider raving lunatics to be “God-touched.” In some tribal cultures, the local madman was even made shaman and asked to perform civic functions. Why is it so impossible that Joseph, with all his eccentricities, could not have been a man of God either?
    It seems to me that what is really on trial today is not the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, but rather Christian fundamentalism, and American hyper-rationalism.
  7. Ah, Eric, you’re dropping that missionary quote from Moroni on me. Icwutudidthar… well, okay, v. 4 is the missionary verse. Anyways, I do appreciate your perspective on the BoM being both an ancient document and a document that was somewhat re-written by JS to fit the times.
    Seth, if it isn’t significant that Zarahemla existed, why is it significant that Nephi, Jacob and Lehi existed? Why is it significant that Christ actually came to the Americas at all? Where does one draw the line?
    I’m not saying that it has to be all or nothing, but in principle it’s quite the slippery slope, and it’s one of the reasons I stick with biblical inerrancy myself. I don’t like taking it upon myself to be the one to decide which parts of the Bible are true and significant and which parts never happened.
  8. I don’t take it upon myself either. At least I try not to. Historicity is my default stance. But that doesn’t mean I’m not open to things being a bit weirder than I ever thought they could be.
  10. 2 Ne 7 is very comparable to Isaiah 50. Uncanny, isn’t it? ;-)
    My viewpoint is that the Book of Mormon is historical, insomuch as the people depicted there existed. Lehi, Nephi, etc. Zarahemla was a real place. Alternate explanations (including the silly Spaulding dodge) do not fit. Thus, I’m inclined (secularly) to take the book at the Church’s word. I’m just as inclined, for similar reasons, to suppose Moses and Gideon really existed.
    The Book of Mormon itself, though, is a poor document for doing history as scholars do it. Its internal claims are that it’s an abridgment of other records and the text makes the claim that the histories are elsewhere.
    However, I’m not married to the ideas about the Book of Mormon’s setting which many Mormons are over the moon about. If it took place in central America, then fine, but I count at least three or four other narrow necks of land on the American continent that you can walk across in a day, and the seas don’t have to be the Pacific and Atlantic oceans for the story to have a valid setting.
    I expect it to be weirder than people think today. I tried pointing some of these ideas out to another Mormon friend of mine, though, and didn’t get very far.
    People can believe what they want, of course, but none of that changes the book’s efficacy for me, as a religious guide. Frankly, the language in Jacob and Alma strikes me as positively Evangelical… ;-)
  11. Ah, I didn’t realize 2 Nephi 7 was one of the Isaiah chapters. I’ve barely spent any serious time studying a KJV, so it sounds very different to me than the NIV/ESV Bibles I use for personal study.
    I’d make more comments, but I’m gonna go take a nap with my daughter. BBL.
  12. Bridget,
    I’d just like to add a little bit to your critique of Alma 24:19.
    There are several other instances just like this one in the Book of Mormon:
    Alma 45:13
    Mosiah 7:8
    Alma 50:32
    Hel 3:33
    3 Nephi 16:4
    Alma 1:15
    Alma 53:3
    Also, note that Jacob (Jacob 4:1) points out how difficult it is to write on the metal plates. I think it would make less sense to try to “scribble” out or erase the error than to simply append the correct text. Crossing out a line or scribbling it out could also make it more confusing for a translator trying to understand what the “cross-out” meant.
    Certainly not a terribly strong piece of evidence in support of the BoM coming from divine origins, but very interesting nonetheless.
  13. Jack, you said “I’m an agnostic on the origin of the Book of Mormon.”
    Does this mean you hold out the possibility that it was inspired by God?
  16. The way I see it, these are the options available regarding the BOM:
    1)–It’s everything Joseph and the church says it is–an historical account written on gold plates, translated by the power of God.
    2)–It’s something other than what Joseph and the church says it is–but still inspired of God and binding as scripture.
    3)–It’s inspired in the sense that Joseph had some level of connection to God when he wrote/crafted it, but it is not scripture.
    4)–It’s neutral, a kind of ho-hum fictional work and a product of its culture. Has some good stuff, some crappy stuff. Keep what you like and toss the rest.
    5)–It’s an incredible piece of writing from a brilliant madman. You can’t really explain it, but hey, you can’t explain Shakespeare either.
    6)–It’s inspired by hell. *dun dun dun*
    So would you say that your belief of its origins falls into one of these categories? Or are you saying that there’s not enough data to say for sure?
  17. Katie ~ I would say 1 and 2 are definitely off the table for me. 3-5 are possibilities—3 because I do think it’s possible that Joseph Smith started out with some kind of connection to God and then fell away. I’m willing to believe in 6 in the sense that it’s possible Smith had ill intentions when he wrote it and planned for it to resemble mainstream Christian teaching as a bait-and-switch. I’m not willing to believe Satan literally possessed Smith and made him write it or anything stupid like that.
    Agnostic in this context means “a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.” I don’t believe I can discern the origins of the BoM, but that doesn’t mean I can’t cross possibilities off the list.
  18. That passage from Alma 22 “Oh God, … and if there is a God…” is a pretty good “agnostic’s prayer.”
    And an evangelical would definitately call Lamoni’s and Lamoni’s father’s experience with the Holy Spirit “gettin’ saved.”
    Ayup, Lamoni and his dad done got saved. (That’s suthin Ahia talk.)
Categories:

Related Post:



0 коментарі:

Post a Comment

ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity