Recently, I recalled a friendly political office discussion from some years ago in which one of my more conservative leaning colleagues used the phrase "follow the Constitution." I wasn't sure what they meant by that at first, but gradually it became clear that what they were really referring to was not the actual text of the document, but the mental concept of the document as a divine gift from heaven a'la Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.


Both "The Book Of Mormon" and the King James version of the Bible have been transformed from texts to sacred divine objects by Mormons and Evangelicals. Bits and pieces of the texts are formed into an idealized mental version to fit a desired narrative. The physical books have been transformed into sacred talismans and divine fetish objects imbued with supernatural powers.

That's a good observation. When I was in college studying art, we were taught that it's the same for observed objects. There is what is there, and then there is what your mind *thinks* is there. The entire point of art training is to break down your mental conceptions of people or objects so that you can accurately represent what is there.

You remind me how often I proofread and miss the mistakes because I see what I thought I wrote no matter how badly spelled or elided. Seeing what you want to see rather than what is. What an obstacle that can be. Practically a plague right now in this country. Well, not practically. It is.

Great way to put it. Those books have become a whole lot more than the sum of their parts. Dangerously so.


BoM as talisman. Reminds me of that joke where a missionary was shot at and the BoM he was carrying saved his life because the bullet couldn't get through Second Nephi---either.

>>--either.

It was nice to wake up to a chuckle this morning.

My experience is that few evangelicas use the King James. I have eperience teaching SS classes for more than 30 years in two different churches. Rarely does anyone use a KJV. New International Version is the most used in my experience. What evangelicals do share more often with Mormons is the concept of the United States somehow being God's special nation. (the nations are as a drop in the bucket...) Being an Englishman, ask me how I feel about that some time.

That’s gotta be annoying.

After all, William Blake spoke of Jerusalem in England—and he was far more a prophet than Joseph Smith.

Poetic language in a great "anthem" but make no mistake England/UK isn't either.

Yes, I am aware of that.

Kentish Wrote:
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> Poetic language in a great "anthem" but make no
> mistake England/UK isn't either.

It was about building Jerusalem in England. There is a long established tradition in the West Country that Jesus landed there with Joseph of Arimathea and that is probably where William Blake got the idea from.

> It was about building Jerusalem in England. There
> is a long established tradition in the West
> Country that Jesus landed there with Joseph of
> Arimathea and that is probably where William Blake
> got the idea from.

Uh, no. He got the idea from the scriptures suggesting God lives in the individual's heart and hence that Jerusalem can and should be built anywhere in the world.

It's like throwing poetry before the prosaic.

kentish Wrote:
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> My experience is that few evangelicas use the King
> James. I have eperience teaching SS classes for
> more than 30 years in two different churches.
> Rarely does anyone use a KJV. New International
> Version is the most used in my experience.

Hmmm...you may be right. I might be mixing up American Evangelicals with other christian fundamentalists -- but many Evangelicals are also Baptist, that's probably where I'm getting this from.


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Only_movement

The King James Only movement (also known as King James Onlyism) asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is superior to all other translations of the Bible. Adherents of the King James Only movement, mostly members of Conservative Anabaptist, traditionalist Anglo-Catholics, Conservative Holiness Methodist and some Baptist churches, believe that the KJV needs no further improvements because it is the greatest English translation of the Bible which was ever published, and they also believe that all other English translations of the Bible which were published after the KJV was published are corrupt.

These assertions are generally based upon a preference for the Byzantine text-type or the Textus Receptus and they are also based upon a distrust of the Alexandrian text-type or the critical texts of Nestle-Aland, and Westcott-Hort, on which the majority of twentieth- and twenty-first-century translations of the Bible are based. Sometimes these beliefs are also based on the view that the King James translation itself was inspired by God.


These classifications are not mutually exclusive, nor are they a comprehensive summary describing those who prefer the KJV. Douglas Wilson, for instance, argues that the KJV (or, in his preferred terminology, the Authorized Version) is superior because of its manuscript tradition, its translational philosophy (with updates to the language being regularly necessary), and its ecclesiastical authority, having been created by the church and authorized for use in the church.[6]

Although not expressly "King James Only", The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recommends the Latter-day Saint edition of the King James Version of the Bible.[7]

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2024 07:10PM by anybody.

I know Wikipedia is true.

Growing up I was taught that the only good translation to use was the KJV.

If out later that a huge amount of Southern Baptist pay lip service to using the KJV, but actually the NIV was also extremely popular. My own Pastor at times would whip out the American Standard as his bible preference.

Later I started using the Holman as well as the KJV, but the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) has now all but replaced the Holman by those who used it.

It seems to me that the most popular ones I've seen in use is the KJV, the NKJV, the ASV, the NIV, and the CSB.

The ones that are given the most authority in general in the Southern Baptist Churches I've attend have been the KJV and the CSB recently, though I notice that sometimes this is only lip service and the pastor is actually using some other version personally (such as the ASV or NIV).