Posted by:
RPackham
(
)
Date: January 11, 2012 07:00PM
I'm glad to see the Book of Mormon at the top of the list!
I would think that the "Poems of Ossian" would rate a ranking up toward the top.
Orson Scott Card tries to use that hoax (a genuine hoax) to distinguish something NOT a hoax (the Book of Mormon) in his article at
http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.htmlIn the 18th century, James McPherson produced what he claimed was the poetry of an ancient Celtic poet, Ossian. Much of literary Europe was fascinated and impressed with the discovery and translation. McPherson became famous, as did Ossian's poems, and the poems had some influence on other poets of the day.
Card is trying to show how McPherson's hoax is different from the Book of Mormon. He gives as differences:
- the poems were what McPherson's contemporaries assumed ancient poetry would be, not what ancient poetry was really like;
- it was an age in which people were excited about finding ancient manuscripts, especially having to do with the British Isles;
- the hoax was soon discovered because it was "deeply wrong" [inaccurate];
- McPherson never provided the originals of the poems;
- even after the discovery of the hoax, McPherson was respected, not hounded to death;
- only those in a very ignorant time (unlike our intelligent society today) were deceived by it.
I see those same items as ways in which the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith are actually very similar to Ossian and McPherson:
- the Book of Mormon portrays what Americans of the 1820s thought about the origins of the Indians (as Israelites), and what Ancient America was like (see Ethan Smith's 1820s book View of the Hebrews and its sources as typical of American thinking of the time). The actual study of ancient American civilizations was in its infancy, and most Americans simply assumed that ancient America also had cattle, horses, wheat, metal swords, coins, chariots, etc.
- the 1820s in America also was a time of intense interest in finding evidence of earlier Americans;
- the hoax was soon discovered: Howe's Mormonism Unvailed appeared four years after the Book of Mormon; Alexander Campbell pointed out in 1831 how amazing it was that the Book of Mormon dealt with precisely those religious problems which had been so much discussed in the 1820s; within eight years many early converts came to realize that Smith and his book were a hoax, and apostatized (the mass apostasies of 1837-38 in Kirtland were based in part on Martin Harris' admissions about his "testimony" of the Book of Mormon); the flood of written material exposing the Book of Mormon has hardly slowed in 170 years, and still continues, based partly on the inescapable evidence that the Book of Mormon is "deeply wrong" about the history of ancient America and the origin of the American Indians;
- Smith never provided the "originals" (the plates) for examination by experts, or even anyone besides his intimate friends and family;
- even after being exposed, Smith continued to be prominent and respected by many;
- only those who are ignorant of the facts are still deceived by the Book of Mormon. It is quite obvious that the overwhelming majority of people who have examined the Book of Mormon have recognized it as false. Only a very small number of those to whom the missionaries present its story end up as members of the Mormon church.