I'm sure they think nothing of the through-line of the BoM and the give-away that JS put in there about it being a book that was supposed to be found at a later date. It's all part of the miraculous nature of the book, that one group of people kept a specific record and it was buried with a "note", saying "Hey, someday someone will find this and yadda yadda yadda...".

The bible was put together from a whole lot of ancient writings and many other texts were left out as either obvious "inspired fakes" or things that were way out in left field or contrary, but the BoM is not good fiction, it is suspiciously packaged for the reading audience. What's even worse, the BoM has a continuous narrative--but two thirds are still sealed!! That's a complete history of WWII from 1939 to 1945, but only 1/3 of the material is used.

Oh hell, my proofreading sucks: "...but EVEN THOUGH the BoM is not good fiction..." and "That's LIKE a complete history..."

It's much easier to make yourself the fulfillment of prophesy when you write the prophesy yourself.

But there's nothing that says a holy book must be written and assembled a particular way.

How about, "...written and assembled a peculiar way."?

Perhaps I should've said "come into existence" or "follow a certain pattern."

olderelder Wrote:
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> It's much easier to make yourself the fulfillment
> of prophesy when you write the prophesy yourself.
>
> But there's nothing that says a holy book must be
> written and assembled a particular way.

The dead giveaway is the fact that so many details of the
prophecies are so specific and correct. REAL ancient
prophecies are not like that. The Book of Daniel stands out
from the rest of the Bible as an example of a book in which the
prophecies are specific and correct. However it was written
after the things had happened just like the BOM.

So the BOM get's Jesus's name right (something nobody in the OT
could do) right down to both his first AND LAST name: Jesus
Christ. (evidently the author of the BOM didn't know that
"Christ" is the Greek version of what in Hebrew is "messiah."
That's why the term "Christ" is not used in the OT and the term
"messiah" is not used in the NT.)

Not only does it get Jesus's name right but also the name of
his mother! This one amazes me because this would be of
absolutely no use whatsoever to the ancient peoples on the
Americas.

My favorite is the prophecy about Joseph Smith. They got his
name right and that he'd be named after his father. This one
reminds me of an ancient Egyptian document called "The Prophecy
of Neferty." It was written at the beginning of the 12th
dynasty but pretends to be something from about 500 years
earlier. In it the ancient prophet, Neferty, prophecies that
the guy who took over as king at the start of the 12th dynasty
would be king, down to his name and his parents' names.

Then there's the stuff with Columbus and the Revolutionary war,
and then it becomes all vague and conditional, "if they are
righteous then . . . but if they are not righteous . . . " Of
course nothing at all about the Civil War.

All this tremendously specific, detailed prophecies about stuff
that Joseph Smith already knew. It's almost as if . . .

You'd be surprised how many times that the Old Testament appears in the New.

Moses was the great messiah of the Jews, or at least Version 2.0 (let's take Abraham as #1).

* Moses was "King" of the Jews.
* Moses was threatened with death as a baby and had to be hidden from the "king".
* Moses' mother was called Mary (Miriam is the same name).
* Moses brought a new law.
* Moses died before reaching the promised land.

Joseph:
* Was thought to have been killed, but came back.
* Had to flee to Egypt like Baby Jesus.
* Shares his name with Jesus' adoptive father and the man who paid for Jesus' tomb.

Jesus (Joshua - it's the same name).
* led the Jews into the promised land.
* caused a huge earthquake destroying a building (as did Jesus on the cross and the temple curtain was split).

Let's not forget also:

Moses, Joshua (Jesus), Joseph and Abraham all spent time in the desert wandering like Jesus. While they were there, they or their people were tempted. All of these - apart from Abraham had some Egyptian connection. Moses fed his followers bread, Jesus drove the golden calf (metaphorically speaking) out of the temple.

The BoM is many things, but a novel in the proper sense is not one of them.

Pulp fiction?

babyloncansuckit Wrote:
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> Pulp fiction?

Fiction yes, pulp fiction, no (not cowrcial enough). Besides, pulp fiction can be pretty snappy sometimes. Most pulp fiction is trash, but it's easy to read trash.

“Zed is dead. And I got the brass plates, and my father’s watch, er, liahona.”

* Commercial

...throughout the entire book. Obviously, the original character Nephi had to die because there was no reason at the beginning to make him immortal. But every hero in the book (or at least most of them) comes across as just another iteration of Nephi with a different name. Joseph and his collaborators weren't very good at creating complex characters.

Joseph was probably projecting the sort of man he wished he were onto his characters.

Bible fan fiction like the Koran. It's human nature.

I always wondered. If I had limited space why waste it with half the stories and all the copied Isaiah. Why not include the missing scriptures?

Imagine including prophets and writings no one has and the in the twenty first century someobe finds them in Palestine and they match the book of mormon!

edition, which was not broken down into numbered verses.

Somewhere along the way, without any particular explanation or "revelatory" basis AFAIK, some group inside the church leadership felt free to extensively edit the thing to the point that the overall look and feel of it is entirely different from the product that Joseph Smith originally delivered, supposedly "by the power of God."

The original edition was identified on its first page as being "By Joseph Smith, Junior, Author and Proprietor."

He later attempted to sell the copyright in Canada, indicating that he really did consider himself to be the author and proprietor. If you simply delete all uses of the phrase "and it came to pass" from the book, you can reduce its total length by about 30 pages. It's hard to understand how any adult would take it seriously as a genuine translation of an ancient record of real prophets who lived in the Americas between 600BC and 400AD.

https://www.xristian.org/ft/mormbomtext.pdf