So i've been sifting around this site for a wee bit as I'm going to stay with a mormon friend in California (I'm from Australia so quite a big trip). The girl is fine - laid back and liberal. But her family who I am staying with is super Mormon and I knew I would get the whole JS, mormon absolute truth yarn from her family (hence why I have been lurking around this site as part of my pre-trip research).

I have been able to discuss most topics and feel like I'm reasonably informed, however one point has taken me by surprise a bit. One of the arguments ive had a couple of family members tell me is that the language and structure of the BoM is so complex that it is obvious that it cannot have been written by a single person - supporting the idea it was written by many authors over a long time period. I didn't really have anything to say back as I haven't actually read all that much of the BoM as i usually start falling asleep after about 1/2 an hour or so.

Is there any basis to this claim? Sounds like a load of hogwash to me. Last time I read there seemed to be a lot of "and it came to pass" which wouldn't exactly call overly complex.

It has the appearance of complexity, and has some structure that seems pretty sophisticated at first. I chalk that up to JS, who had a phenomenal imagination, very good memory and already had a wide reputation as an excellent spinner of wild tales. There was also a wider time period that was employed to compose the book than the 90 or so days that they always state for the "translation" period.

If you've ever read the original 1830 version, you will see the rustic homespun stuff and poor grammar that reveals it's origin more clearly. The one we read now has been repeatedly edited and polished up by JS and friends, after he got some more book-larnin'.

By analyzing the philisophical material that was available to JS at the time, it's easy to see how much of it was derived from the writings and theories of others.

I have concluded that it was definitely a family project, not just a creation of one man. Those Upstate NY winters were long. Plenty of time to compose it and weave in some complexity.

AND you are not alone in discovering the narcotic qualities of the book. It's always been the best remedy for insomnia, and I can't see why the church hasn't capitalized by trumpeting it's medical benefits in this vein. Mark Twain said it best: "The book is chloroform in print!"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2012 09:43PM by rationalguy.

The book obviously contains material from earlier sources,
such as lengthy excerpts from the biblical books of Isaiah,
Malachi, Matthew and shorter excerpts and paraphrases from
other biblical texts. Some critics have found probable
borrowings from the Westminster Confession of Faith, the
Preface to the original King James Bible, etc.

Even LDS apologists admit that these textual parallels occur;
although they purport to provide answers as to why that is,
that supposedly defend the book's claims to authentic antiquity.

So -- we know in advance that the 19th century writer(s) of
the book had no qualms about inserting blocks of narrative,
oracles, history, doctrine, etc. from pre-existing texts.

The next question to be addressed is whether or not the
remaining portion of the book (that part not copied directly
from the Bible) shows signs of multiple authorship.

The Book of Mormon narrative is simplistic by some standards
of evaluation -- but it can be viewed as being "complex" in
the sense that it contains copied, pre-existing texts; has
some intricate flash-backs; appears to contain fabricated
quasi-Hebrew literary passages, etc.

I side with the scholars who have concluded that the book
is the product of more than one 19th century author. But
there are many experts on the book who contend that the
non-borrowed parts are the product of a single mind/voice.

Perhaps computerized analysis of the book will help us
resolve the question of multiple authorship -- or, perhaps
some new historical discovery will solve the problem.

In the meanwhile, you might say "the jury is still out."

UD

"Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth." (2 Nephi 1:14)

Sounds a lot like the line from Hamlet:

"The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns."

That's a hard one to deny. It gave me pause when I was a Mormon.

Makurosu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth." (2 Nephi 1:14)
>
> Sounds a lot like the line from Hamlet:
>
> "The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns."
>
> That's a hard one to deny. It gave me pause when I was a Mormon.

The claim that this is a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, from the famous soliloquy beginning "To be, or not to be..." does not seem to be a strong objection.

The line there is: "the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns." (Hamlet III:1)

The metaphor, however, is not unique with Shakespeare. It occurs also in the Bible: "I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death" (Job 10:21)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2012 09:56AM by RPackham.

WHO said the BOM is complex?


Its a simplistic contrived POS ! Its boring as HELL. AGONIZINGLY INSUFFERABLY BORING! that doesn't make it complex! It makes it tedious !

I think any complexity at all comes from one of the two books that it plagiarizes or from Sidney Rigdon, who could talk a good talk. I doubt much of it is the stuff of Joseph Smith, and like Lucky above, I think it's simplistic and contrived, superficial, and INSUFFERABLY BORING. And tedious. And stoopid. And boring as hell. None of it is worth quoting, and all things that are supposedly intended to warn the world of the Last Days seems to actually be warning the world of the sins of the LDS church.

cludgie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think any complexity at all comes from one of
> the two books that it plagiarizes or from Sidney
> Rigdon, who could talk a good talk. I doubt much
> of it is the stuff of Joseph Smith, and like Lucky
> above, I think it's simplistic and contrived,
> superficial, and INSUFFERABLY BORING. And tedious.
> And stoopid. And boring as hell. None of it is
> worth quoting, and all things that are supposedly
> intended to warn the world of the Last Days seems
> to actually be warning the world of the sins of
> the LDS church.


There is a technical term, in literary analysis, called
"complexity," that describes a text comprised of multiple
pre-existing texts, or the editorial conflation of an
editor working with materials from two or more writers.

If we look at complexity in technical terms, a comicbook
with a Mickey Mouse story, a Donald Duck story, and some
editing might be called a complex literary product, even
though most of what we read appears childishly simple.

Craig Criddle and fellow scholars attribute certain
sections of the Book of Mormon to Sidney Rigdon -- who,
according to Mormon historians, know nothing about the
book until many months after it was published:

mormonleaks.com

UD

For example, Lehi's Tree of Life vision is for all intents and purposes the same as one of Smith Sr.'s vision. Also, Lehi's family sounds a lot like the Smith family. Nephi is the third son, like Joseph. He has a brother Sam, etc.

>Lehi's Tree of Life vision is for all intents and
>purposes the same as one of Smith Sr.'s vision...


Or so Joe Smith, Sr.'s wife wrote, in an indirect way.

As with chickens and eggs, we might still wonder which
came first -- the text, or the purported Smith dream?

I don't know. I suppose it's possible that Lucy Mack Smith
told the truth more often than I give her credit for.

UD

I assume Lucy Mack Smith is telling a lie unless proven otherwise. One thing though -- why would she lie about a story that would tend to disprove the Book of Mormon?

I still think the Smith family is a lot like Lehi's family though. Robert D. Anderson analyzes this at length in his book "Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith: Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2012 10:43PM by Makurosu.

Lucy was quite elderly at the time she wrote that book. It is altogether possible that Alzheimer's sort of blew the lying circuits in her brain.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2012 10:52PM by me.

I mentioned something about BoM to a Mormon friend and she said people recommend it for helping a person go to sleep.

I did hear somewhere that JS likely had someone working on the book years prior based on some history and then was basically the front man. There was a book floating around with a lot of the basic structure prior from what I gather.

I imagine the brass plates as some heirloom from somewhere or other like China that made it through Europe and he pretended was ancient scripture.

I do in this context quite like the Joseph's Myth term that people use. Seems to feet rather square with the mention of the BoM.

That said, i do like the book in some ways for nostalgia, kinda like fairy tales of my ancestors.

My mother and I once were talking about Maccabees. We agreed that it was very boring, like choroform in print. But at least it is true history, and helps us understand Jesus' historical context.

Oh-- did I mention that there are many similarities with the BoM?<shakes head>

wonderer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I imagine the brass plates as some heirloom from
> somewhere or other like China that made it through
> Europe and he pretended was ancient scripture.

WTF? Do you even know what the brass plates are supposed to be? You are exposing your lack of mormon knowledge here. The brass plates are as made up as the angel moroni.

wonderer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> I imagine the brass plates as some heirloom from
> somewhere or other like China
...

You mean the copper plates?

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/CA/natr1988.htm#120088-4a5
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/IL/miscill1.htm#000035

UD

It WAS written by many people over a long time. The authors are the same authors of the Old and New Testaments. Big portions of the BoM are word for word taken from the Bible. JS was not real original, he plagerized.
And only if you consider the phrase "and it came to pass," which appears more than 2000 times would anyone consider it to be complex.
They had to make over 3000 changes to this "most perfect book on earth" according to JS just to get the grammer etc. correct. Other changes have been to the doctrine. It is a JOKE!

Throw a bunch of paint at a wall. Notice how complex the pattern it makes is. Little "fractal" edges around the splotches. Interesting patterns for the drips and the "interaction" of the various drips trails.

When I was a kid at YMCA summer camp in the forest I recall finding complex writing on the inside of the bark that came off of ponderosa pine trees. I thought it must be ancient Indian writing. Of course, it was just termite trails.

Any parent or school teacher knows that children come up with amazingly complex stories in their daily make-believe.

Lucy Mack Smith talks about Joseph giving them the "most amusing" evenings telling about the previous inhabitants of the Americas, with lots of details. The Book of Mormon could easily have been 10 years in the making. He didn't start dictating to Oliver Cowdery from nothing, he had it all worked out in his mind and had done 116 pages with Martin Harris to get his literary stride.

I once corresponded with a crackpot. He had a theory, and he was dead serious, that the story "Jack and the Beanstalk" held the secrets of existence for people. He had an elaborate symbolism worked out. The beanstalk represented the human spinal chord. The cloud at the top was the brain with all its convolutions etc. Jack, the giant, the mother, the cow, they all had a part in the symbolic story. It was VERY complex and it all held together. I would speak with this guy on the phone for long periods asking him questions and throwing curve balls at him. He had an answer for everything.

Complex doesn't mean it's not baloney. Most of the baloney out there is VERY complex. The Book of Mormon is just another example of complex baloney.

By comparison, Einstein's theory of Relativity is VERY simple. The mathematical exposition of it involves advanced geometric concepts and the simple concepts that it's built on are very counter-intuitive. But one of the things that drew physicists to it was its simplicity.

baura Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> Complex doesn't mean it's not baloney. Most of
> the baloney out there is VERY complex. The Book
> of Mormon is just another example of complex
> baloney.
...

But evidently written to influence a certain audience and
set a scheme in motion that would rope in a bunch of converts.

Whoever wrote the book knew what sort of people would be
gullible enough to believe it -- and, far, far more important,
believe that its purported finder should rule over their lives.

If it was written to fool the Indians -- that part of the
plan didn't work out very well. Maybe the writer(s) knew
little about how the Native Americans would respond to it.

UD

Uncle Dale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> If it was written to fool the Indians -- that part
> of the
> plan didn't work out very well.

Maybe that's why Joseph Smith changed the prediction that the Indians would be come "white and delightsome" when they embraced the gospel to "pure and delightsome" in the second edition of the BOM. Maybe he had preached to some Indians and converted SOME whose hue did not suddenly lighten so the "prophecy" was adjusted accordingly. Unfortunately for Smith the Apostles came out with their own "second edition" in England and this is the one that was the ancestor of the official LDS version for over 100 years.

baura Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Uncle Dale Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > If it was written to fool the Indians -- that
> part
> > of the
> > plan didn't work out very well.
>
> Maybe that's why Joseph Smith changed the
> prediction that the Indians would be come "white
> and delightsome" when they embraced the gospel to
> "pure and delightsome" in the second edition of
> the BOM. Maybe he had preached to some Indians
> and converted SOME whose hue did not suddenly
> lighten so the "prophecy" was adjusted
> accordingly. Unfortunately for Smith the Apostles
> came out with their own "second edition" in
> England and this is the one that was the ancestor
> of the official LDS version for over 100 years.


About the only "Indian" Smith seems to have converted in
the pre-Nauvoo days was William E. McClellin -- who was
1/4 Cherokee, or some such thing.

There are some vague reports of Indian conversions along
the western Missouri border, c. 1831-32, but no names show
up on the Church records.

I think that by the time the second edition came out,
Smith realized that he wasn't going to turn the "Lamanites"
white -- or at least no whiter than they already were,
when not living out partly clothed under the tanning sun.

So, he postponed the plan to sacrifice the western tribes
in a rebellion against the US Government until 1844. Too
bad for War Chief Joe that he lost the Battle of Carthage Jail.

UD

Pretty sure the white and delightsome change wasn't made until 1981.

It's complex only in that no one writes or speaks like it is written (Old English), so it's like trying to read a foreign language that you never learned. Why would God choose to have Joe Smith translate a record in 1830s America into Old English? It makes no sense, except for the fact the Joe plagiarized parts from the KJ Bible.

scarecrofromoz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's complex only in that no one writes or speaks
> like it is written (Old English), so it's like
> trying to read a foreign language that you never
> learned. Why would God choose to have Joe Smith
> translate a record in 1830s America into Old
> English? It makes no sense, except for the fact
> the Joe plagiarized parts from the KJ Bible.


In 1824 Sidney Rigdon published a sardonic, anti-clerical
text, called "The 3rd Epistle of Peter," which was written
in fake "King James" English. Or, at least the Stanford
computer experts attribute that obscure booklet to him.

It made no sense that Sidney's Pittsburgh "Church of Christ"
would issue pseudo-scripture in that sort of language, unless
it was to further satirize the religion of their times.

Maybe the original "core" of the Book of Mormon was composed
as a satire, or as a spoof upon English language scripture.

If so, Joe Smith put that satire to effective use.

UD

If joseph smith were really a prophet he would have known about
DNA. The BOM would have had a different twist to it.

Cali_mo_visitor Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> it cannot
> have been written by a single person

Yeah -- a group effort between JS, OC and SR with material stolen/adapted from several sources. Creating complexity is easy when you copy it from someone else.

I think most of the people on this board have read the BoM. We are way more informed about it than most TBMs. I wonder just how many actual TBMs have read it cover to cover? I would bet not more than 10%, mishies excepted. I am making this assumption on the number of TBMs taking sleeping pills. Utah has a high rate of insomniacs and prescription drug users. If they were reading it, they'd be asleep. I knocks me out every time, except for when it makes me laugh. And it came to pass.... what did, gas?

with the content-substance of the BoMormon so Utterly Lacking... it's a wonder anyone will take the time to analyze it for any other purpose.

just sayin'

I consider this argument to be a red herring. What bearing does it have on the book's truthfulness? Whether the book is complicated or not doesn't change the fact that it is mythical.

DNA tests prove that the church's claims about American Indians are false. The book's reference to metal working, chariots, horses, elephants, wheels, monetary systems, farming of wheat & barley, etc. all betray the book as a fraud. Or at the very least, prove that it isn't based on factual history as Smith claimed it was.

Seems that when someone raises this argument, they are usually deflecting from the obvious problems with the book.

if the BoM is so complex, so great and wonderful.

then how come the only people who read it are marments?

great literature and art transcends other cultures and eras.

the only ones espousing its virtues are marments.

everyone else thinks it's a load of crap.

The jury's not out. The jury has spoken.

(1) The Book of Mormon really isn't very complex.

(2) Far more complex stories with many more character viewpoints and styles of writing have been authored by a single person (Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, War and Peace, just to name three - not to mention almost everything by Faulkner).

(3) Personally, I do not think the BoM WAS authored by one person. Portions of Alma take a major departure theologically from much of the rest of the book and much of the rest of Mormonism in general. But that doesn't mean the BoM is what the LDS church purports it to be. In fact, the glaring theological discrepancies I mentioned suggest precisely the opposite.

Why would you get into this level of discussion with your friend's family? Getting all prepared to have an in depth argument over religion as a guest seems odd.

Why not just be gracious?