I have a very good friend who is finally starting to think critically about the church. Their biggest doubts are with the Book of Mormon. I'd like to be well-versed in Book of Mormon problems, since my first doubts all surrounded the First Vision. Everyone has their own tipping point. But, if asked by this friend, I'd like to know more about the problems specifically with the Book of Mormon. Convince me, please. Merely saying "it's stupid" is a given. :) Thanks!!

My biggest ah-ha moment with my BoM was when I finally noticed that Helaman, chapters 1 - 14 (31 pages) were repeated. After reading Helaman chapter 14, instead of the next chapter being 15, 1 - 14 were reprinted. I had a defective book.

Every time I read that darn book I was overcome with intense boredom and it seemed that I was reading the same verses over and over.

Turns out I was reading the same verses over and over, lol. It took about 10 years of trying to read through that boring book to finally notice the misprint. Even without the misprint the entire book seemed like a repeat of verses all sounding similar which is why it took me so long to find the error.

I don't know if this is convincing enough for you, but for me I think that such an important book shouldn't be such a bore to read. Reading it was tortuous when I was TBM. And I loved to read.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2019 02:13PM by Soft Machine.

Mine was in reading the CES letter and noticing that JS had written 'inspired versions' of certain new testament verses, correcting the either corrupted or lost information. Yet those same verses appear in the BOM and are identical to the new testament version, not the JS inspired version. If the BOM is the word of god and perfect, wouldn't it have the inspired version?

Nice! Your observation is a dagger to the heart of the BOM

The CES Letter covers some of the major problems. I've joked that Lord of the Rings constructs a more detailed, accurate and believable mythical world than the BoM, even though it has talking trees.

The Jews had a 7 day week, strict dietary rules, counted in decimal, a phonetic alphabet, a Semitic language, a lunar calendar. Native American civilizations had none of that.

The BoM mentions animals and plants that didn't exist in the Americas at the time. It did not mention plants and animals that did exist in the Americas.

DNA mismatch.

The number of problems is so large it is hard knowing where to start.

I think for me, the idea of someone's head being chopped off and then the body walking around chicken style is a step too far. No amount of archeology, textual analysis or linguistics is going to resolve that for me. It's like a bad eighties horror flick.

The beheadee's name is Shiz if you care to look him up.

https://bookofmormonresearch.org/shiz-gasping-for-breath

According to Vietnam War vets, that’s exactly what happens. A head gets blown off and the body keeps running.

Unless the Reformed Egyptian for "And it came to pass" was a tiny dot, the supposed duty of writing on gold plates and lugging them around becomes a total farce.

"And it came to Pass" - occurs in the English translation of the Book of Mormon 1,381 times. It is found in all books except Moroni. Sometimes the phrase is recorded 'Now it came to Pass' or 'For Behold it came to pass' or 'But Behold, it came to pass'. or 'and it shall come to pass.'
-- https://www.google.com/search?q=And+it+came+to+pass+%2B+book+of+mormon&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS815US815&oq=And+it+came+to+pass+%2B+book+of+mormon&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2.7878j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Los mormones like to point out, grinning, that 'and it came to pass' and its variants occur over 800 times in the Old Testament. There are roughly 993 pages in the Old Testament. So almost one page...

The BMof (Bowel Movement of Joe & the gang) has 588 pages. I'm talking about the original publication. This link takes you to page 588, which is really page 594 of the first printing, but only 588 pages are the actual BMof. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/book-of-mormon-1830/594 You can page through the first edition at your leisure.

With 588 pages, "And it came to pass" has to appear a smidge over twice a page.

Now get this, from LDS(dot)org:

"There are, however, some very good reasons behind the usage of the phrase—reasons that further attest the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. The English translation of the Hebrew word wayehi (often used to connect two ideas or events), “and it came to pass,” appears some 727 times in the King James Version of the Old Testament. The expression is rarely found in Hebrew poetic, literary, or prophetic writings."
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/search?lang=eng&query=How%20many%20times%20is%20%22And%20it%20came%20to%20pass%22%20in%20the%20book%20of%20mormon?&facet=all

Note the last sentence, please!

Now read this: "...the older English translators (such as those working on the King James and earlier versions) did not know this. Hebrew grammar was understood, but not well understood, until last century. The result: the awkwardness (in the older versions, at any rate) of starting countless sentences with the word 'and.' Lack of stylistic sensitivity. Or is it 'biblical style'?

"If we combine wuh with yehi (it was, became, existed, or happened) we get wayehi (wa-yuh-HEE), a common sentence starter in Hebrew. Literally, it means 'and it was,' or, in the parlance of the older English translators, "and it came to pass." Though this may sound exalted, literary, and distinguished, it is not warranted by the Hebrew. Good Hebrew understands wayehi.

"The misunderstanding led to the KJV being peppered with "and it came to pass," as the phrase appears over 800 times in the Old Testament! A better rendering: 'And it came about' (NAS). Even better: "When" (other versions). Better yet (often): Leave it untranslated! Wayehi is a standard word in storytelling. The context should dictate whether it is translated, and if so, how."
https://www.douglasjacoby.com/linguistic-insight-wuh-vav-and/

Did you get that?

1) Wayehi was incorrectly translated by the King James translators.
2) Wayehi "...is rarely found in Hebrew poetic, literary, or prophetic writings."
3) Nephi spoke Hebrew and for sure the decapitation plates collected from Laban were in Hebrew. I feel confident about this assertion... go ahead, prove me wrong! So the whole writing in Reformed Egyptian thing is wack, but that's another story...
4) Joseph Smith, divinely inspired and reading ghawd's messages on his monitor/seer stone, made the same mistake the King James translators did. And he made it 1,381 times. Or rather, ghawd made it...

One student of this drama opines that 'And it came to pass' makes up 2.5% of the BMof.

So I'm thinking the BMof might not really be what it claims to be!!

My understanding is that "it came to pass" translates more than one Hebrew phrase. I may be wrong on that.

However, like you say it could be rationalized by the idea that Reformed Egyptian used a single symbol, much like we use &, %, ©, $, = etc. Read within the context of the BOM, it is effectively a conjuction, rather than just a phrase.

For me it's the intense biblical literalism the BoM requires. Very fundamentalist.

Literal Creation
Literal Adam and Eve
Literal Fall
Literal global flood
literal tower of Babel
Literal Moses
Literal Exodus
Modern judaism among the pagan hebrew. The whole Lehi premise requires a modern kind of Judaism and monotheism that didnt exist then.
The Brass plates are highly unlikely in that the first book(s) (Deuteronomy) of the OT were just coming into existence at this time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2019 09:45PM by dogblogger.

I grew up being told that the Lamanites were the ancestors of the Native Americans. And then later they became 'among the ancestors'. With the advent of DNA testing we now seem to be waiting for one of those ancestors to turn up somewhere.
I also grew up being told that the Americas, especially Central America, were full of archeological evidence of the BOM. The more we learn about the archeology, it not only doesn't support the BOM, it tells us about cultures completely different than anything in that book.
Then there's those precious gold plates. Hidden in the woods while Joseph Smith peered at a rock in a hat to 'translate' them.

An aha moment was finding out that the Book of Mormon prophets excelled at languages. That’s amazing that French apparently was a known language to them as in, “Brethern, Adieu”!

Yes! That one was a laughable one.

Actually, of all the objections to the BoM, the appearance of the word "adieu" is far and away the lamest objection.

For starters, adieu is considered an English word of French origin. We all know what it means. That should tell you something.

Even if it was a solely French word, its appearance in a translation tells us nothing about what word was in the original translated text. All it tells us for sure is that the translator knew a foreign word that she thought was an appropriate substitute for the original word in the text.

There are plenty of problems with the BoM. Massive problems. The word "adieu" is not one of the problems.

Agree with that.

On my mission we were ordered to study and ponder the scriptures. I started a notebook with questions about the book of mormon and each page was devoted to explanations from church leaders and others about problems I found with the Book of Mormon while studying. If I remember correctly I had about 70 pages of these questions and unsatisfactory answers. Unfortunately I became a little bit famous among the other missionaries for conducting this study. It was not deemed faith promoting.

One of the first things that hit me when studying the Book of Mormon was due to studying the Book of Mormon and Bible in my mission language and comparing it to the English and Lutheran bibles. It became painfully apparent to me that the writers of the book of mormon were either consciously quoting the Kings James bible or trying to mimic English used in the early 1600 bibless, a language that would not exist until about 2200 years after the time of Nephi or 1200 years after the time of Nephi, and there was so much word for word quoting of the King James Bible that it seemed Jospeh or his collaborators were absolutely lazy and totally unaware of how easy it is to catch plagiarism. Getting a hold of a photo reproduction of the first edition of the Book of Mormon was even less faith promoting. It was really a poorly written and edited mess, using large amounts of colloquial American frontier English, which had been edited out of the modern published B of M.

This page will pretty much tell you everything you need to know:

http://www.mormonthink.com/book-of-mormon-problems.ht*m

(remove the asterisk near the end; had to put it in to get around a bewildering "banned word" message)

Kudos to your dad. You must be very proud of his personal integrity and honesty to go wherever the facts lead, no matter the cost, at age 80. Good for him!

Learning that some of the chapters of Isaiah plagiarized into the BofM were unequivocally written after the time Lehi supposedly left Jerusalem. There is so much more obvious BS in BofM, but that alone is huge.

Check out the Fair Mormon apologetic explanation for this. It is comical, as you would expect. Unfortunately, it is also, long, boring, mind numbing and insults your intelligence, but it is a great example of how their arguments can lead people out of the church when they see how weak their explanations are.

In 2012 I discovered MormonThink.com. I was fascinated with the section on the BoM called "Early American Influences." See: http://www.mormonthink.com/influences.htm

Having read the BoM several times I was already familiar with the strange language which I thought was unique to the BoM. Isn't it interesting how TSCC repeatedly admonishes church members to constantly read the BoM? Well, I did. So when I read Tom Donofrio's analysis and saw the same language in books published before the BoM by contemporaries of Joseph Smith I was shocked.

I showed this analysis to my 80+ year old father who was also shocked. He was the ward scripture and doctrinal authority. When dad read the word "Adieu" and had already seen so much else the Donofrio's analysis had showed, my father threw up his arms at the computer screen and said, "That's it! The BoM is fiction. It's not what it claims to be!"

From that moment on my father read and read everything I showed him from MormonThink. For days and days we both read. After 90 days of intense reading my father quit TSCC for good and regretted his life of having been deceived by the Mormon Church. He wished he had never gone on a 2-1/2 year foreign mission, believed in the temple and indoctrinated all his kids in TSCC. He regretted a posterity of nearly 90+ who were all brainwashed in Mormonism. He regretted all the money he spent in tithing and offerings and wished he had all that money in the bank. My dad knew he had NOT been told the truth about church history by church leaders, conference talks and lesson manuals. At one point he put up his arms and said, "I hate this church."

My dad and I read and re-read the official lesson given in the "Gospel Principles" manual on HONESTY. That manual was used for all investigators and new baptized members. See: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-31-honesty?lang=eng

Lesson 31, "Honesty" states:

..."Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying. The Lord gave this commandment to the children of Israel: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). Jesus also taught this when He was on earth (see Matthew 19:18). There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by SILENCE, OR BY TELLING ONLY PART OF THE TRUTH. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.

"The Lord is not pleased with such dishonesty, and we will have to account for our lies. Satan would have us believe it is all right to lie. He says, “Yea, lie a little; … there is no harm in this” (2 Nephi 28:8). Satan encourages us to justify our lies to ourselves. Honest people will recognize Satan’s temptations and will speak the whole truth, even if it seems to be to their disadvantage." (emphasis added)

Dad and I would rehash these two paragraphs many times. We KNEW that that Mormon Church followed the exact strategy that is specified as being dishonest. There is nothing that could cause my dad to think otherwise. We both KNEW that it IS TO THE MORMON CHURCH's ADVANTAGE not to tell THE TRUTH!

Also see:

http://wordtree.org/thelatewar/

"A Comparison of The Book of Mormon and The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain"

This is eye opening after you have read Tom Donofrio's analysis at MormonThink.

Pre-Christian Christians.

I've had a time with that word. Mormons often don't refer to themselves as such.

But in The Book of Mormon it is such an important concept. So growing up I didn't understand why I wasn't supposed to be over filled with the zeal of a Christian proclaiming from mountaintops the truth of the lord?

The reality of The Book of Mormon and the reality I lived as a Mormon were so disparate.

I loved reading The Book of Mormon as a child. I read it a lot. I wanted to be like Captain Moroni, Samuel The Lamanite, The other guys Nephi and Lehi and Alma and his merry band of missionaries.

But they were mostly Pre-Christian Christians. As I aged it occurred to me that God didn't need worship of a savior before one was born. What would the point have been? It didn't seem logical. God would have been totally fine getting all the worship just telling his people that he would provide for them and if it were a savior he would provide that. No need to pre-worship a savior before a savior were born.

It was like time travel. And Jesus HAD to do what he did - no wiggle room at all because God said so.

That whole skin of blackness, dark and loathsome ugliness. They changed white and delightsome to pure and delightsome, but the story’s racism permeates its core.

While attending BYU, I took a GreeK and Roman Mythology class as one of my electives. One day I was reading a greek story, written centuries ago. It started out with a visitation from the gods.

In that moment, I looked up and thought....why should I not believe this account of godly visitation, yet believe if it is in the bible or BOM? They're ALL mythology and NONE are to be taken literally.

My shelf was now fully collapsed. It was like a weight lifted and I knew it was time to leave the church for good.....and I did.

Mine was the fact in the first few verses the "hero" lops a guy's head off in a gruesome murder.

That kind of thing does not give confidence.

The biggest thing for me was considering the DNA of Native Americans as compared to people from Israel.

I was watching the National Geographic documentary "Journey of Man" realizing these researchers didn't have a beef with Mormonism--probably never heard much about it. But their findings challenged Mormon beliefs, but also the traditional beliefs of others.

May I propose Shiz breathing after his decapitation?

Soft Machine Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> May I propose Shiz breathing after his
> decapitation.

Of course, BYU Studies would clear the whole thing up.

The extensor muscles of the arms and legs contract, and this reflex action could cause Shiz to raise up on his hands. Of course, Shiz would not have remained long in this position, and he would have bled to death rapidly through the severed arteries that go to the head.” (“Neuropathology and the Scriptures,” BYU
Studies 33/2 [Spring 1993], 324).

The fictional decapitation in the BoM was done something like that which used a device invented by a French physician called Joseph Ignace Guillotin who believed it to be a more dignified, speedy and humane way to perform executions.

The result was alway instant oblivion, no breathing allowed.

The chicken reflex of Shiz is Scheisse. A-ha.

The fact that there is no physical evidence (archaeological) of a single thing contained in the book. Also, that there is no tribal mythology that is even remotely connected to it. There are also no linguistic similarities between Native American languages and those of the Middle East.

Those things did it in for me, and that was before DNA.

Completely agree. These facts did it for me.

PLUS....the book is soooooooooo damn boring. Over and over and over there are wars and rumors of wars and then.....over and over and over there are people who cause wars and rumors of wars and,,,,,,yep, then it all starts....

all over again. Yikes. A Nursery Rhyme has more to offer....over and over again.

My biggest ah-ha moment was reading a book about smallpox in the American colonies. Native Americans had never been exposed to smallpox before and were highly susceptible. It quickly decimated their population.

The book talked about Europeans finding abandoned Native American villages, and their encounters with the natives who survived. The survivors had lost everything - family, friends, cultures, economies, and had nothing. Europeans saw the sophisticated, empty cities and compared them to the suffering Native Americans they saw. They concluded that the base, wicked natives they saw had overcome and destroyed the intelligent, sophisticated natives that built the cities.

This was a book that had absolutely nothing to do with Mormonism. But it very accurately described the themes of the Book of Mormon. I quickly realized that the BoM was not a divine book. Whoever wrote it was just echoing 18th and early 19th century attitudes and prejudices about Native Americans.

"They concluded that the base, wicked natives they saw had overcome and destroyed the intelligent, sophisticated natives that built the cities."

So interesting. The Book of Mormon is like a time capsule for 19th Century Americana Folk beliefs.

The whole Book of Mormon is a fraud, starting with the first 2 words in 1 Nephi chapter 1, verse 1. “I, Nephi”. The only true thing about the Book of Mormon is what Mark Twain said about it: “Chloroform in print”.

Here's one ah-ha moment I had. It's when Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood. Taking advantage of the situation, Coriantumr took his sword and “smote off the head of Shiz.” But that isn’t the end. Verse 31 reports that “after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died.”

So I am thinking, chopped off his head in Game of Thrones fashion no less, the gentleman was able to actually raise his hands, really? and then struggle for breath? Really? Hmmn, and then he died? Well my goodness. It was then I felt that Horney Joe Smith was making this up, and had obviously flunked out of Human Anatomy and Physiology at Palmyra U, and basically an idiot. At the time, I thought to myself, what the shiz am I reading here? Not only am I NOT feeling the spirit as promised, but this seems like pure unadulterated bull shit. Seriously, that's what I was thinking as a true blue Mormon boy.

That was an ah-ha moment. Then I googled Cumorah and found that it is an Island off the west coast of Africa and the capital is Moroni? That was more of a WTF moment, perhaps a step above the ah-ah moment that I had with shiz.

Don’t laugh. Some of the GAs have been functioning for years without a brain.

For me, the biggest problem with the B of M is that is has NOTHING to do with Mormonism. The most correct book on earth doesn't include Mormon doctrine. Mormons consider it to be the cornerstone of the religion, but you can read it from cover to cover and still not know what you're supposed to believe...temple work, tithing, missionary work, word of wisdom, etc., that all comes later.

Even if you think the B of M is scripture, you don't have to be mainstream LDS to find a church that considers it to be scripture too.

Yeah, this is probably the same for what I posted. The disconnect between the book of truth and the facts of it not playing out.

I’m willing to entertain the improbable, but I draw the line at the impossible. That’s where the BoM went south for me. Steel-making Nephites? Wooden transatlantic submarines? Logistically impossible narratives? The Laban decapitation? Jerusalem to the Red Sea in three days?

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” - Sherlock Holmes



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2019 09:39AM by babyloncansuckit.

The obsession in the BOM with secret combinations always made me wonder at a young age, what they actually were. Then I went through the temple in 1981 and discovered there, what a secret combination is. When you swear a secret oath and seal it with a promise that you would suffer your life to be taken rather than to reveal the secret, that is a secret combination. Joseph Smith was obsessed with Secret Combinations and he used them to manipulate people. He wasn't even smart enough to figure them out for himself. He stole the concepts from the Masons. There was no book of mormon translation. Joseph Smith made it all up.

Many have mentioned the Shiz story, but actually there are several stories in the annals of warfare where a guy's head would be blown clean off, Dirty Harry style, but the electrical connections kept the body functioning (even running) for a few seconds before collapsing. I'm sure JS saw plenty of chickens get their heads lopped off and run around.

I just realized another ah-ha BoM moment for me: people will believe all kinds of weird crap.

They are all HA HA moments.

In Arza Evans' book, "The Keystone of Mormonism," he notes that Nephi claimed the Nephites strictly kept the Law of Moses, except there is no single word in the BofM of them keeping any of the laws or holidays specified in the Law of Moses.

as a kid, 12 or 13 years old, I just couldn't believe that God turned Jew into the Native Americans.

this was back in the 1980s. lots of BoMs in circulation back then boldly stated in the introduction that the Lamatines were the primary ancestors of the American Indians.

even with primitive or non-existent DNA testing back then it was pretty well accepted by scholars and scientists of every stripe that the primary ancestors of the Native Americans were Asians who crossed the Bering Strait.

I always had my nose in a book or magazine. Still do. National Geographic etc could explain why Native Americans originated in Asia -- there were similarities in physical characteristics (such as teeth shape) found among Siberians and Native Americans but not found in other groups. there were similarities in hunting techniques. there were similarities in language. and so forth.

In a way I sort of wanted the BoM to be true. but based on a combination of the scientific data and the horrible way LDS leadership responded to my doubts, I had basically checked out of the church by 14 or 15.

They day my non-member Dad read it and his only response concerning it was, "Violent little book, isn't it?"

The weight of the plates ,if they were really solid gold. I was suspicious that no one , except his cronies saw them, then they “ disappeared “ when Moroni took them. The BOM seemed so simply written and went through changes, so much for being divinely written and the most correct book on Earth.

Ether chapter 6 verse 11
If the fierce wind were only 10 mph. blowing 24 hrs a day then they would travel 240 miles day. 240 times 344 days equals 82,560 miles or nearly 2 and 1/2 time around the earth at the equator!
Maybe this is one of the places where the "most perfect book on earth" is imperfect!