Posted by:
janeeliot
(
)
Date: August 08, 2019 12:01PM
Very true. The Bible is obviously not literal history in the contemporary sense, and contains many fantastic elements (as does our contemporary culture, I'd like to point out) but it is a VERY real book -- produced by real people, many generations over centuries polishing and eventually recording the oral history of their people -- history that included little that turns out to be rooted in fact and much that is poetry, epics, songs, and stories that gave its people a cultural identity, that vividly communicated the values and norms of their society. It is the worldview of one people -- of where we came from, what our purpose is, how to conduct our lives, and a way to imagine what cannot be described.
There is a great deal in there that is worthless to us -- the strictures in Leviticus and Exodus so hilariously sent up in the famous letter to Dr. Laura, anyone? (Google that if you haven't read it. Wonderfully funny.)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/letter-to-dr-laura/But there is some also plenty of world-class literature and an complex view of the ineffable force behind our world that is worth contemplating -- if only to intelligently reject it.
From Shakespeare to Bob Dylan to Toni Morrison the Bible has inspired writers working in English -- and in every other language it was translated into. It is simply the foundation of English literature.
Now -- on to Book of Mormon. Just no. It was written by a handful of men -- which wouldn't be so bad if THEY HAD HONESTLY SAID THEY WROTE IT. But yeah -- they made up this bad, bad story about angels and weird ocean-going rafts and a whole civilization THAT NEVER EXISTED. Again -- if they had announced they were doing fantasy -- it would have just been a really, really, REALLY bad fantasy novel. But nnnoooo. The story. And it's not a good story! It doesn't point to profound values or morals, it doesn't give us a God worth our time to dismiss!
The Hebrew really existed. The Lamanites? Just no. The Bible is a repository of language and culture that scholars and writers who do not believe in the religions attached can turn to. Book of Mormon? Supposedly written in a language that does not exist and of which there are few examples we can examine to learn from by people who didn't exist about a world that never existed.
I hope this gets to the bottom of the falsity of Book of Mormon.
Just by the way, I am an agnostic who sometimes drifts in and out of atheism. I am much more defined by what I studied, by what I love -- I am a lifelong English major -- in case anyone wonders.