I just finished watching a wonderful presentation on the Exmormon Foundation Youtube channel where Chris Johnson presents evidence for "How the Book of Mormon Destroyed Mormonism." Not only did he and his colleagues do analysis on the text of BoM, D&C, and Pearl of Great Price to determine that the writings shared overt similarities to Joseph's own handwriting, but also, he goes through and shows the work they did finding the sources from which J.S. plagiarized to write the BoM.

I love this and I am fascinated. It eases the pain of having been deceived for so long, to be able to find and compare other works that J.S. would have had access to and see what he did with them. I'm going to read The First Book of Napoleon and The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain, and I'm going to pray for the Spirit to testify to me of their truth. *eyebrow waggle*

I don't know, exactly, but that didn't prevent me from saying "adieu".

Oh, elder, you cheeky old dog.

I loved the video as well. It was really informative and the computer work to identify the plagiarisms was really interesting.

I've never bought into a lot of these theories. All you need is the Bible to explain most of the BoM - it doesn't even hide the chapters of Isaiah quoted wholesale.

The rest is easily explained by oral history - both the Smith family and their surroundings. The notion of Indians as Israelites was widespread, and doesn't even require wide reading.

Besides, if JS was as widely read as some claim, it would have improved his writing style. As such, it is clearly and heavily dependent on the KJV.

Or the book of love, for that matter?

I wonder ...?

Since you’re going down the rabbit hole, you should know you have a long road ahead. It took me 7 or 8 years to get over being so massively lied to. The most common step after Mormonism is Atheism. Atheists are nicer people than Mormons.

Mormonism is not a religion, it’s a cult. There are actually religions that aren’t parasitic authoritarian control freaks. All religions are mythological, but the mythology serves a purpose. Look up Joseph Campbell. The BoM is a classic hero’s journey. Like every other tale of its type, it rings true because at an archetypal level it is true. Even though you can prove it’s made up. With the availability of much better stories of its kind, you should be glad you don’t have to read its sleep inducing pages.

As far as God is concerned, that’s a separate subject from Mormonism. Mormon God is a special kind of prick unique to their theology. You may find a God or Goddess you can live with.

the Book of MORmON does not meet MORmON church standards for decency and avoiding violence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ktfQ8b_-rs

I think at least one of the authors is pretty obvious.

Read I think the autobiography of Joseph's mother who was a piece of work herself. (She used to charge people to see the mummies and scrolls used for Book of Abraham which is also why you know the plates aren't real as Joseph sr would have charged you to see those when he wasn't literally collecting money for giving patriarchal blessings - those horoscopes aren't free ya know.)

In any case, in her book supposedly written by her she recounts how Junior would entertain the family and guests before his time translating the plates about native american prophets and what they would like and do, etc.

Seems like he had the basic plot line down but needed to embellish the con with plagiarizing others and getting help from Oliver Cowdery and Sidney Rigdon who had some pretty crazy views himself as well as an immediate congregation to test it on. This is how the church grew from 6-10 members one day to hundreds. He needed little help from his conspirators.

The posting title is correct!!
Not who translated it rather who WROTE it.

In the last years of her life mother Smith dictated a family history.

If you still have the book you may want to look at the dreams of Joseph Smith Senior as she relates them. Then compare them to the dreams of Lehi/Nephi in first Nephi.

Yes!!! It all makes sense when reading her stories and anecdotes.

I think you are right. There is a lot of story content from View of the Hebrews that is similar to the BoM. Oliver Cowdery was in the congregation of minister Ethan Smith(the author of VotH) before he came to NY to be J.S.'s scribe. I guarantee you the two shared stories about the Native Americans being descendants of the Israelites and other such stories.

I’ll never forget the day the scales fell from my eyes. I realized my whole life was a lie. I was blown away. But today, maybe nine years later, I can look at it differently. I wasn’t living a lie, I was living a story. Just a bad story. Somebody else’s story. It was time for me to start living my own story, that’s all.

Maybe you will be the hero of your own story, like Rango. Good luck mojito.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2020 08:46PM by bradley.

Luckily many mormons have a costco membership and I recommend it because they are going to a Kirkland pack of toilet paper once they find out what religion they are actually a part of.

There has been considerable work done on this by a team led by Craig Criddle, who is an occasional poster here. They have looked at it using computer-assisted stylistic and linguistic comparisons, with some fascinating results pointing to multiple writers and sources, including those evoked in this thread.

This work is presented at their site https://mormonleaks.com/

It provides a fascinating "possible scenario", albeit unavoidably containing a lot of conjecture - but it's VERY plausible - and great fun to read for anyone interested in the history of the con that is mormonism ;-)

Tom in Paris

Dan Brown the DaVinci code!!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2020 01:04PM by thedesertrat1.