As a lazy person, addicted to brevity (except in bed...I had to add that cuz, you know, ... Gladys) it matters not a whit to me HOW or WHY the BofM is not what JoJu and the mormon church claim it to be.
I KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in my mind, it is probably not the product of Nephite technology working hand-in-hand with agents of the lord.
If I die and the next thing I see is St. Peter waving a finger at me and 'tsk-tsking' me, I'll grovel and try to blame it all on you guys!
It's intriguing, but I'm no longer interested in BoM origins. I'm not sure why Lars thinks that knowing the Kirchner angle would trigger a faith crisis. It could, but most TBMs can compartmentalize anything.
The only thing I found that was interesting was that BYU started buying works by Kircher in the late 60s and hid them in its Special Collections. Somebody must have been concerned that Kircher’s references to Mormon and Nephi in his works could be incriminating. Sounds like a Hugh Nibley inspired buying spree.
I'm convinced that BYU's Special Collections section is where truthful or embarassing information goes to die. I think that all of the pioneer journals that were robbed from families ended up there.
I went into that area of the library once when I attended BYU. It's walled off and you have to show ID and sign in. It gave me the creeps even then.
At first I thought it was because the documents were valuable. Now I know it is also because the documents have guarded truth and they want to know who is looking at it.
With the magic rock in the hat NO explanation about Tight or Loose "translation" makes sense at all.
All questions are answered with "Joe read the words, the scribe wrote and repeated them. NO new words were shown on the magic rock until those already written were correct.
There is no room for interpretation at all.
It is as correct as God, The spook and Joey's fertile mind can make it - that and a few thousand 'corrections".
The LDS Church is an evil institution with its pay to play temples robbing the poor. If a manuscript written by Sidney Rigdon which was clearly the origin of the Book of Mormon showed up I would be ecstatic. That would be a smoking gun which would clearly expose the fraud. I do not expect that to happen, but if other bits and pieces show up which might finally free a few more from the Mormon Corporation I am all for it. While many of us might say we don’t need any more proof, most of us were at a point in the past where one more piece of information finally broke us. 20 years ago a lot of that information was being regularly exposed on this site. I lurk a little bit still and don’t find that as much here anymore. I can tell you when I left the LDS Church this place was a big contributor.