Of course the Game of Thrones is on everyone’s mind lately and I’m a huge fan. While watching last night’s episode it struck me that the bad guys Martin writes are so much more interesting than any of the characters in the BOM. For example, Cersei Lannister is interesting because she is ambitious, manipulative, gorgeous, ruthless, and lusts after her brother. She does love her brother and dad and was very devoted to her children, perhaps to a fault. It there a single character in the BOM (especially the bad ones) that is as interesting as her? Did the wicked King Noah love his children and his wife but was a rich conceited slob otherwise? Sure he was a lazy drunkard (BTW - what were they drinking to become drunk?) but perhaps he was a talented musician or poet? Nope. King Noah is a one-sided-boring character.

In the BOM we have some characters who stand out - like Nephi. He was always good. He was born that way. He was good growing up. He learned his trade he respected his parents and talked to God. Even when he killed Laban, he prayed about it beforehand. He only did it because he was commanded by God to slay Laban, so the “sin” of killing was on God’s shoulders not his. So Nephi is a very flat character. No inner struggle to do anything that is not keeping with God’s will. Nephi is boring. He’s the main character in the BOM (he has the most pages dedicated to him) and he is lame.

Perhaps this alone demonstrates that the whole BOM is a lousy work of fiction because real people have so much more going on than ALL GOOD or ALL BAD. Usually in the BOM when bad people turn good they just flip from the one extreme to the other.

Could you imagine a more interesting Ammon? After he had is miraculous conversion he still lusted after King Lamoni’s wife… then they slipped something in the king’s drink so he would have a super trippy experience, become converted and be OK with God’s prophet having sex with his wife. (i’m trying to keep the plot mormon-sounding) This is just a simple example of how the whole book could have been written to be more interesting if the characters were not so flat.

I’m sure Mormons would say that the one-dimensional cast of characters supports the claim that the BOM but to me it does the opposite. Real people have a lot more going on. Look at our own US presidents - they have affairs, commit crimes, and still sometimes do good things (you might have to go way back for examples of this last point). The book Joseph Smith wrote is just bad, rambling, directionless, plotless fiction.

has always been one of its major flaws. To say that the BoM characters are all cartoonish is an insult...an insult to cartoon characters.

And for anyone who reads the Book of Mormon with any kind of intellectual honesty and natural curiosity, the individual stories within the Book of Mormon are also unsatisfying and lack any kind of detail.

For example, you hear about Ammon lopping off the arms of a hundred "bad guys", but you really learn nothing about the bad guys. They're just the bad guys. Ammon is good because he's protecting the King's property. We don't know anything about the king or how he got this property. Maybe the "bad guys" were actually like Robin Hood and the King was an evil gangster who collected all of the people's livestock as tribute and taxes. They were going hungry and wanted to get their livestock back so that they could feed their families. But Ammon killed them all -- all these fathers, brothers and sons trying to get food for their families.

It could have been something like that...or not. But the story doesn't really tell you anything about the characters.

Most of the Book of Mormon stories simply and clumsily stick all the labels on the characters for you:

"The good guy was good because he obeyed god. The bad guy was bad because he did not obey god. There was a conflict between the good guy and the bad guy and the good guy won because he was faithful to god. God rewards the good and punishes the bad."

Or

"The good guys were doing well because they were good. But then they stopped being good and eventually they started having many problems and bad days because god rewards the good and punishes the bad."

Virtually everything in the Book of Mormon is a variation of those two story lines, with simple names inserted in place of "good guy" characters and "bad guy" characters.

Oh, I don't know. I thought the character development of the BOM women was outstanding.

Really.

More specifically, she was the queen (who shall remain nameless because Joseph Smith didn't bother to give her a name), who delivered what is, to me, the most memorable line in that entire book of holy scripture:

Alma 19:

---> "5 Therefore, if this is the case, I would that ye should go in and see my husband, for he has been laid upon his bed for the space of two days and two nights; and some say that he is not dead, but others say that he is dead and that he stinketh, and that he ought to be placed in the sepulchre; but as for myself, to me he doth not stink."

Her olfactory system was obviously superior to all around her, including Ammon. She was not only referred to as the "queen" but also as the "wife". Very complex character. If I'm not mistaken, she has the most lines of any woman in the Book of Mormon...and comes across to me as an elegant woman who may have had an aptitude for perfume design and development.

But she is not without competition. The Daughter of Jared gets more action as the "dancing for a decapitation" world champion, whose title remained undisputed until Salome came along a few centuries later to become the new "dancing for a decapitation" world champion. She was conniving and psychopathic. That much we know...and apparently a really good dancer. But that's all we really need to know. You can't have a legitimate book of holy scripture without a lady who dances so well that she can demand a beheading. The Daughter of Jared stepped up and did what she had to do when it really counted.

One of the greatest injustices of classical music is that Strauss wrote an opera for Salome, the derivative character, and gave short shrift to the original, as you note. It's almost like the composer was part of a conspiracy to discredit the Book of Mormon.

Strauss had access to very secret detailed and illustrated accounts of both historical dancing exhibitions. He knew that DOJ was the superior dancer, but his patron, who claimed to be a descendant of Salome, would only pay for an opera that would pay tribute to his illustrious ancestor.

At times, Strauss contemplated doing an opera for DOJ on his own time and dime, but was also deeply conflicted about the things that DOJ had done with her pigtails when she was performing the part of her routine that ultimately was credited with clinching the decapitation. On one hand, Strauss knew that there was no point in writing an opera about DOJ that did not prominently feature the pigtail choreography. But on the other hand, he knew that the world wasn't ready for anything like that.

A reasonable hypothesis.

It is also possible that Strauss thought that with the Bible, he was dealing with fiction and hence could not be accused of sacrilege. With the BOM, on the other hand, who knows how God would have responded?

…it still wouldn't be finished.