Years ago, a friend backed into the drivers side door of my Honda Accord. His insurance covered it, so I took it to the auto body shop associated with the local Honda dealership. They fixed the door, but when they returned it to me, they said the motor (called a regulator in automotive speak) that made the window go up and down was bad. They further told me that the problem was not associated with the accident, so was not covered by the insurance, and it would cost me $200 out of pocket to replace it.
I asked if the window was up, and if so I could live with it because I didn’t have the money to fix it. So I took the car home, and being somewhat mechanically inclined, took the inside door panel off, which was no easy task with all the wires connected to the panel.
To my surprise, when I looked at the regulator, it was simply unplugged. The connector was just flopping loose in the door. I plugged it in, and guess what? The window worked just fine, and continued to do so for another ten years!
I was hopping mad at the auto body shop, and drove down that very afternoon to confront the manager. When I spoke to him, after I explained what I had found, I said he had two choices. One, his employee that worked on my car was completely incompetent, being he could not figure out how to plug in the regulator. Or two, he was dishonest and so was the whole business, as he knew the regulator was not broken, and if I had brought it back in the shop would have simply plugged the regulator back in and charged me $200.
I again reiterated that was his only two choices, there was no other explanation. He didn’t have an answer. He didn’t even apologize. For the next 20 years I went to the next town over to their Honda dealer for my work, even buying a new car from them.
In 2000, Joseph Fielding McConkie and Craig J. Ostler published a book entitled “Revelations of the Restoration: A Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants and Other Modern Revelations” In this book they said the following:
Thus, everything we have in the Book of Mormon, according to Mr. Whitmer, was translated by placing the chocolate-colored stone in a hat into which Joseph would bury his head so as to close out the light. While doing so he could see “an oblong piece of parchment, on which the hieroglyphics would appear,” and below the ancient writing, the translation would be given in English. Joseph would then read this to Oliver Cowdery, who in turn would write it. If he did so correctly, the characters and the interpretation would disappear and be replaced by other characters with their interpretation (Cook, David Whitmer Interviews,
Revelations of the Restoration: A Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants and Other Modern Revelations (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2000), pp. 89-98]
115, 157-58).
Such an explanation is, in our judgment, simply fiction created for the purpose of demeaning Joseph Smith and to undermine the validity of the
revelations he received after translating the Book of Mormon.
Now Brother McConkie and Brother Ostler where no dummies. They were at the time of publication Professor of Ancient Scripture, BYU, and Assistant Professor of Church History and Doctrine, BYU, respectively.
We now know at this time, that the church had the seer stone, and fifteen years later in 2015 published an essay that admitted that Joseph used the seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon. They even published an article in the Ensign Magazine
In fact, historical evidence shows that in addition to the two seer stones known as “interpreters,” Joseph Smith used at least one other seer stone in translating the Book of Mormon, often placing it into a hat in order to block out light. According to Joseph’s contemporaries, he did this in order to better view the words on the stone.
Ensign, Oct 2015
How could two well educated professors not know about the seer stone in the Church’s possession? There are only two possible answers. One, that the Church purposely hid the fact of the seer stone from even a professor of Church History at BYU, and that Elder Ballard was dishonest when he said in a YSA Face to Face 2017 about church history: “We’re as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth.” and we have “never tried to hide anything from anybody”.
Answer two is that both Brother McConkie and Ostler knew about the seer stone, and how it was used, and they were dishonest, and purposely lying about the stone.
Those are the only two possible explanations I can think of. Is there another I missed?
Wheat & Tares 
Bravo ! Bravo ! Bishop Bill you laid that out perfectly.
If the general church membership could only read your article, they would learn more about the church in 5 minutes, than they have in their entire lives. However, the church does not want them to. People do want want their own kids, ward members, etc. to experience the pain of a faith journey, so we keep passing on the dishonesty from generation to generation. And if you speak up you are now the apostate. If only the institution would look out for its members more than they protect the “good name of the church” and some of its corrupt leadership.
Maybe the leaders are just unplugged.
It seems that the one thing you, McConkie, and Ostler agree on is that translating with two stones is just fine, but translating with one stone is a horribly embarrassing fact that needs to be covered up or at best “admitted” to.
I find that premise to be baffling.
I think the best approach here is to simply take Elder Ballard’s statement (“We’re as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth.” and we have “never tried to hide anything from anybody.”) with a grain of salt. A big grain.
A more accurate statement would be: “We’re as opaque as we need to be in telling and retelling the standard founding narrative. We hide anything we can that threatens the standard founding narrative.” That’s what most organizations and corporations do to protect their own interests. It’s almost naive to expect the Church to do any differently.
I think there is an an explanation that doesn’t require them to be either ignorant or dishonest.
David Whitmer’s explanation was known about for many years but since David Whitmer was not a scribe, some people had assumed that he had simply made up his perspective to explain the translation process. He even felt that only the revelations that came to Joseph using the Seer stone were valid and so he put extra emphasis on the seer stone.
Church historians have since discovered that there are additional sources of information that support David Whitmer’s description and so now the church has accepted that the seer stones were used as David Whitmer described. However, there is still some debate on the details of the translation process. As David describes, Joseph was not even involved in the process but simply dictated what he saw. We have other evidence that it was more than just a mechanical process of reading what was shown to him. Joseph declined to give a detailed description.
Though my experience with the BYU religion department was long before the publication of the McConkie & Ostler commentary and I did not know them, in my view one cannot conclude from their positions on the faculty that they “were no dummies” or that they were “well educated.” When I interacted with that faculty, some were and some were not. {I’m also unable to conclude that there was not nepotism involved in hirings in that department. Further, I’ve seen ignorant PhDs elsewhere as well; sometimes that degree says more about perseverance and the granting institution than about the degree holder’s knowledge or intelligence, ]
There is similarly no compelling reason to conclude that Elder Ballard was dishonest rather than ignorant, forgetful or misspeaking (or “unplugged”) in making his unfortunately overbroad statement. Neither he nor any other individual leader can reasonably be expected to know all that is in the Church’s possession or to be aware. But if “we” meant all historical leaders of the Church in saying “never tried to hide anything from anybody,” that is so clearly unknowable to him without direct dictation from God, that I’d be surprised if anyone could both think about it and take it as anything more than an exaggeration, whether intentional or ignorant. See, e.g. Stan Larson’s “Another Look at Joseph Smith’s First Vision” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer 2014), pp. 37-62 on the squirreling away of JS’ 1832 account.
There is really no reason to conclude from the Church’s possession of the stone or the 2015 Ensign article that all Church leaders, let alone BYU religion professors, knew about it in 2000, or how it was used, or knew about David Whitmer’s statements, or should trust disaffected David Whitmer’s report of what he seems to have heard from Oliver Cowdery who, I suppose, was not looking at the stone in the hat.
At least McConkie & Ostler had the sense to say “in our judgment” as to the weight they gave Whitmer’s report. [I would have preferred something like “We’re not sure how much credence to give Whitmer’s third-hand report.”]
I believe there are more human explanations possible than incompetence (depends on your definition of competence — whether it requires knowing everything in the Church vaults and historical records in order to be a religion professor of Church leader) or dishonesty (usually requires an intentionally false statement).
Incidentally, according to the 2015 Ensign article, since Zina Young turned over the seer stone to the Church, “subsequent Church leaders have acknowledged the Church’s ownership of the seer stone.” The footnote cites B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, 6:230–31; Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. (1954–56), 3:225; Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. (1966), 818–19. Both of those sources were widely available and widely read long before 2015. I have not checked what they say about the seer stone, but again, possession of the stone doesn’t imply anything about the reliability of Whitmer’s comments on its use.
Are they highly educated? I don’t know anything about them but your two options, that they did not have access to information or that they were lying, don’t include incompetence. Again, I don’t know anything about them specifically but my understanding is that BYU faculty in the religion department may not all be qualified from an academic standpoint to be university professors at any other university.
Also agree with Left Field. TBH their statement about the idea of using a stone to translate being “demeaning” to Joseph Smith doesn’t sound like something an academic would say, which is another reason I wonder if they are actually academically trained people.
About 10 years before his death, I was in a religion class taught by J. F. McConkie at BYU. I found him to be very knowledgeable about the scriptures, but also extremely dogmatic, and contemptuous of any viewpoint that opposed his own. He could make you feel about an inch tall if you made any kind of dissenting remark in class. Based on my experience with him, I think at least in his case (I never knew Ostler), rather than simple incompetence or dishonesty, the problem was pride. In other words, “if this seer stone thing were really true, surely I would have already known about it, or it would at least ring true to me, since my judgment is impeccable.” Something like that. Frankly, it’s not an uncommon character flaw in adademia in general, at least in my experience.
As I understand his statement, he knew about it but found the idea unpalatable, maybe even preposterous. Interesting how these things have gradually become accommodated, isn’t it?
As Simon & Garfunkel once sang “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” There is saying that we create our own realities. More accurately, we create our own subjective versions of reality. Ballard, Ostler, various McConkies, you, me, we have all done so. We reshape and refilter our stories of the First Vision and the Book of Mormon translation according to our needs at any given time. Even Joseph Smith did this in his own lifetime. An LDS hymn asks “Oh say what is truth?” Indeed.
I’m often critical of the church and its leaders, including on the topic of seer stones.
But there are way more than just two possibilities. The church has millions of members, thousands of employees, and even I large number of high level employees. How many of them knew about the seer stone, and were they some of the same folk making editorial decisions? Was hiding it a coordinated effort by the church as a whole, an isolate arm of the organization, or a few rogue individuals?
I just don’t think we are well served by placing things into either/or possibilities. I think it is better to lay out, as much as possible, the complexities of the situation, and draw conclusions from there.
I don’t think these men are incompetent or totally dishonest. I’m willing to bet they knew all about the seer stones and other controversial bits of Church history long before the essays were published, and that they are generally honest people who don’t lie, cheat or steal. But when a person’s paycheck and future retirement depend on maintaining a certain status quo and not stirring up controversy, he or she can be selectively ignorant of all kinds of uncomfortable truths. It’s more or less a willing suspension of disbelief. BYU religion faculty, as well as other CES employees, are thus placed in an untenable position–they are caught between their duty to be honest in all they say and do (as Christians and recommend-holding Church members) and loyalty to their employer’s demands (not rocking the boat, helping young people build and keep strong testimonies and avoid faith crises). Additionally, many of these faculty members supplement their income by writing books and/or giving paid speeches–both of which would cease if he or she lost credibility among mainstream Church members. Moreover, BYU religion faculty are virtually unemployable in any other institution or professional field; if they lose their jobs, they have nowhere else to go.
So, I expect a BYU religion professor to be as honest and transparent as a hostage with a gun to his head, willing to do just about anything to get out of that situation alive. Instead of blaming them, I pity them. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I almost forgot to mention:
There is a handful of “celebrity” CES teachers who have built a very profitable cult of personality around themselves. They love basking in the attention, almost being worshipped. And these are the teachers that can least afford to bring up controversy. Paul H. Dunn and Randy Bott were of this ilk, and now serve as cautionary tales. When they fell, they fell hard.
I’m going to agree with others that even if the two professors were aware the brown seer stone existed and was in church archives, it seems more likely to me that they genuinely believed Whitmer’s version to be false.
I’ve already written a post on Ballard’s statement. I think he knows firsthand that church leaders are well-intentioned, but the key is “we’re as transparent as we know how to be.” Church leaders are not historians, and there’s been a long distrust of historians who disrupt the traditional narrative. It’s a completely different paradigm. While there is much that is commendable about the growing role of academically trained historians in the Church History Department, there are still tensions and disagreements with their non-academic bosses.
I find myself slipping into the “limited choice fallacy” or the “either/or fallacy” but, as has already been mentioned, it is often the case that multiple factors tend to be play their role. So, here’s a simple idea to add to our collection:
The comments from McConkie and Ostler which pooh-poohed David Whitmer’s recollections also bear testimony that, like so many members, even BYU religion professors don’t read the Ensign. It’s my thinking that had they have read Elder Russell M. Nelson’s talk given to mission presidents eight years earlier (in the summer of 1992 and later published in the July 1993 issue of the Ensign), they wouldn’t have been so negative about Whitmer’s explanations.
Prior to quoting Whitmer in some detail regarding the translation process, Elder Nelson tells the mission presidents, “The details of this miraculous method of translation are still not fully known. Yet we do have a few precious insights. David Whitmer wrote . . .” and then he goes on to cite the account of the seer stone and the hat recorded decades by Whitmer.
Here is the link:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1993/07/a-treasured-testament?lang=eng
Bottom line: Words like “a few precious insights” coming from a member of the Twelve seem to contradict the McConkie/Ostler conclusion that Whitmer was simply “demeaning Joseph Smith.”
My understanding is that Joseph Fielding McConkie was dedicated to maintaining the legacy of his namesakes. Which made him problematic as a faculty member at BYU-P. Beliefs like “no death before the Fall,” anti-evolution, OT literatlism, etc. have no part at a major university. They are okay as personal beliefs, but certainly should not be expounded to university students. It is my firm belief that Mormon religion classes need to be moved off campus. Like Institute classes at other universities.
The problem with the writings discussed in the OP is that when ascertains are disproved they further destroy the Church’s credibility. When leaders warn against info on the Internet and other non-Church sources, only to find out it is frequently more accurate than Church published info, the warnings become meaningless.
I think it’s abundantly clear that church leaders did suppress some of the messy parts of church history. They’ve also established a pattern of dealing harshly with historians and intellectuals who released information that church leaders preferred to keep under wraps. Elder Ballard’s statement that “We’re as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth” and we have “never tried to hide anything from anybody” is as disingenuous as his statement at the 2019 New Mission Leadership Seminar regarding challenging investigators to baptism very early in the teaching process. He said, “Church leaders don’t know where these practices began, but it was never our intention to invite people to be baptized before they had learned something about the gospel, felt the Holy Ghost, and had been properly prepared to accept a lifelong commitment to follow Jesus Christ.” I know first hand that this was not true.
Side note: You know Elder Ballard was a car dealer, right?
Seems Bishop Bill is looking to rent some office space in the great and spacious building. Good luck with that.
Jack Hughes, I love the Upton Sinclair quote. That makes more sense than the limited choices I put forth in my post.
rodgerdhansen, I love the internet example. When “South Park” gives a more faithful representation of the translation process than the church, the brethren know they have a problem.
We are speculating what CJO and JFM knew and when they knew it, we don’t actually know. We can’t know now with McConkie as he is dead.if anyone is interested they can email Craig Ostler himself and find out his angle on this
https://religion.byu.edu/craig_ostler
Some serious gotcha BS here, BB.. I am unaware of that corporation whose officers are not protective of same. This is the right/wrong/reality of the human
condition.
lead·ing ques·tion
/ˌlēdiNG ˈkwesCH(ə)n/
noun
a question that prompts or encourages the desired answer.
What a very odd thing to get panties in a twist about. Is the question whether or not God is omni-channel? Must he be consigned to just the U&T to be true? Or is the question why Joseph didn’t relate every niggling detail of everything he did (as if any of us do that when we’re relating something). Or is it really just looking for something to be angry about? Very odd indeed.
I took a class from Joseph McConkie at BYU in 2004. I remember the scores of fawning students in the class treating him as if we’re the ultimate authority. Clearly has built a cult of personality around himself. But that is the problem. The Department of Ancient Scripture at BYU is a pseudo academic department. There is no such department at any other university except the BYUs. Its professors don’t publish in any real peer reviewed outlets. What they publish is only reviewed among themselves and church leaders and is not beholden to any standard except church leadership approval. Evidence doesn’t matter. Logical consistency doesn’t matter. Accuracy doesn’t matter. The professors at this pseudo department never have to answer hard questions about their research and writings. Their ideas are never seriously challenged by any other experts in similar fields.
This error mentioned in the OP was probably a result of incompetence.
I will dispute that South Park has a more accurate depiction. It’s just inaccurate in different directions.
“We’re as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth.”
Hmm sounds like an inadvertent admission that he knows they are not fully transparent, but only as truthful as “they know how to be”. The historical record shows that when it comes to “telling the truth” the church is not very transparent. So, he is simply admitting that just as they didn’t know how to tell the truth in the past, they likewise still don’t know how to tell the truth in the present. So, for once, it is an honest statement that they are simply being “as transparent as [they] ‘know how to be’ in telling the truth. 😉
It is tempting to flip this and state the OP is either dishonest or incompetent for missing the alternatives.
I agree with Jack Hughes on “The man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” And one thing we should all take away from this is that we all do this. Our minds enjoy when the world makes sense and when something disturbs that mental peace, it seems to me the mind is quite preoccupied with getting back to a settled place. So I do give a little slack as I know I am probably guilty of the same and I probably can’t see it when I do it either.
But I also really agree with rogerhansen in that the net effect is a real erosion of belief in the competency of the church leaders when they keep pushing that “you can’t find answers on Google”. That isn’t a true statement even if it is true that Google presents a bunch of data from various people with various motives. You can find all kinds of bat guano crazy stuff, but you can also find some things that are true. I wish instead they would say, “pray about what information comes to you.” That to me is defensible if you believe God answers prayers.
Seen this before – I didn’t know that the church office building was sub-letting. 😉
Another possibility – the mechanic correctly diagnosed that the problem was with the regulator without actually inspecting the regulator. Did they tell you they inspected the regulator or did you assume they had inspected the regulator? I don’t work in the auto repair industry but I suspect that mechanics don’t do extensive invasive diagnostics for an issue they haven’t been asked to fix and they don’t know if they will be asked to fix and therefore get paid to fix. When you were told that the problem was with the regulator and it would cost $200 to replace it, that was probably neither dishonest nor incompetent. It was probably a competent and honest diagnosis based on limited information. Whether they were dishonest or incompetent could have been determined had you asked them to fix it and they actually inspected the regulator and found that it was just unplugged.
Were McConkie, Ostler, and Ballard being dishonest and incompetent or were they making honest and competent statements based on limited information. Perhaps they were assumed to know more than they actually knew.
John W, attended a fireside, widely publicised, in my stake this weekend and can only agree with what you said. Even I with my very limited knowledge could see that some of this was pure conjecture dressed as academic opinion, with an audience no more informed than myself. a little shocking. Makes the incompetence argument look stronger, or maybe willful ignorance?
Since we’re talking seerstones, I have a related question. I frequently hear the top 15 refer to themselves as seers. How many of them have a stone? If we are to believe Richard Bushman on the need for seers to polish their skills, how many of the Q15 practice scrying? I see no evidence of either. Rather, the number of canonized scripture remains unchanged. In fact, we occasionally hear that revelation is when the leadership agree on something. So, the next time we hear one of the Q15 claim to be a seer, is he incompetent or dishonest.
Joseph Smith was known to be a jokester at times. Could he have said or implied this to Whitmer to get him to quit asking about the translation process? Then again, Lehi noticed that the writing on the Liahona changed from time to time, why not on a little rock as well? No one knows and I don’t care to build my testimony on hearsay. I dare say that it would be impossible for anyone to dictate a book like the BoM in total darkness (of a hat) quoting passages from Isaiah and others from sheer memory and picking up where he left off days earlier without the need to have the last read back to him as a reminder of where he left off as some have stated.
What I do know is that there is no way JS (or any other human) could’ve come up with the BoM in all its theology and complexity in 3 months without pure revelation.
My first reaction was the line in Better Off Dead when Booger says, “Lane, I’ve been going to this high school for seven years. I’m no dummy.” Like Booger, I imagine that there’s a lot of a specific type of experience repeated over and over when your academic years are spent within the Church institution. Additionally, the Arrington bio specifically mentioned (IIRC) that JFS did not want to grant access to the archives to historians, and did not want the Church historian to go to a scholar. The preference was a “loyal” Church person over an academically trained historian. While that sounds like he’s at least firmly in the “dishonest” (or maybe I’m more inclined to say opaque) camp, there could be some justification for this. The Church has a LOT of stuff in those archives, and not all of it is easy to interpret. You’ve got conflicting accounts of things, some of which are wrong (either on purpose or on accident). You’ve got just TONS of stuff to sift through, and yes, a lot of it is unfavorable and a lot of it is contradictory–this is why having a real historian look at it is so important.
A few years ago when I was an exec at Amex, we had an account we were re-bidding. My colleague was writing up the bid and said that the client contact wanted us to “open the kimono” more in the negotiation. However, the information he wanted us to present to her was 1) not required by the contract we had, 2) VERY easy to misinterpret, 3) would easily lead an untrained person without a call center background to require specific performance metrics that a client their size could not achieve without doubling our costs (and this was in fact what the client was after–ratcheting up our requirements without paying for it). I countered to him that there’s a difference between opening the kimono in front of a doctor and opening the kimono on a street corner for any passer-by to take a look. I think he got the point, but in this situation, I was the only doctor. We switched the metaphor to a client who wanted a hot fudge sundae but was only willing to pay for a single scoop of vanilla.
I think DB’s generous interpretation could also be correct. After all, you had to take the door off to know it was unplugged. Maybe they had only diagnosed that it was a regulator issue, and it’s possible that when they opened the door and saw that it was just unplugged vs. broken, they would have come back to you and said, “It’s all good. No charge.” or at least minimal labor charge. I’ve had service like that lots of times, at least at our local shop we like to use for general stuff. But, you know where I’ve NEVER had that kind of open, honest service? The DEALERSHIP. The dealership sees you as a captive audience, and you are either going to them because you have to (e.g. warranty or specialty parts that only they can get for you) or because you don’t know any better (e.g. have more money than time to find some local, trustworthy mechanic). When you walk into the dealership, you’re greeted by a huge team of salespeople in crisp shirts and shiny name tags, none of whom have any clue how to fix a car or what things cost. They are just there to talk you into upgrades and make commissions. The cashiers also don’t know anything about fixing cars. They just hand you the invoice and take payments. Does that mean dealerships are dishonest or incompetent? Maybe sometimes both, but they are also run like big sales-oriented bureaucracies, and anyone who actually knows anything is not who is talking to customers. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about that further tortured metaphor and the Church.
Emma was one of the first to go on record about the Seer Stone; saying the plates sometimes were concealed. .She also said there was nothing close by that Joseph could have referred to while translating. Some sources say that the Urim and Thummim were not returned to Joseph after losing the 116 pages.
Many writers of Book of Mormon theories begin by stating it is more important what the book teaches than how we got it. If your belief collides with other facts or theories, so what? What ever viewpoint makes you sincerely read it, more power to you.
What I am wondering is how such incompete3nt reasoning by Bishop Bill could be accepted by such mean-spirited aholes who have accepted his ridculous assertion. First, Bishop Bill asserts that they must be stupid or incompetent to not know that the church had a chocolate colored seer-stone.He quotes McConkie and Ostler who quote Whitmer about using the seer-stone in translation. Here is the error in reasoning by the so-called superior intellect bishop Bill — the Whitmer statement has absolutely nothing to do with whether the Church has a seer stone in its possession. In fact there were several seer stones. But suggesting that rejection of Whitmer’s view of translation has anything to do with whether the church later had a seer stone in its possession is such a gaping hole in reasoning that Bishop bill must be either stupid or incompetent — and the most likely answer is both while also being unobservant. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Whitmer was not directly privy to the translation process (he certainly was never a scribe). One can reject Whitmer’s assertions without ever taking a position on whether the church ever had a seer stone.
Anon for this said one said: It is tempting to flip this and state the OP is either dishonest or incompetent for missing the alternatives.
I’m going to land on the incompetent side. I could only think of two answers with my limited knowledge of the people involved. That is why I asked in the OP “Is there others I missed?” With all the comments, I now see there could be other answers for the church. I don’t believe for a second that the car dealer was NOT trying to rip me off! 🙂
To repair a dint on the door panel like shown, the repairer would have removed the inner door trim to push out the outer panel from the inside. Whether he forgot to plug in the window regulator, or did it intentionally, fits the options of incompetence, or fraud. Most likely the second. Hopefully you have now found a local mechanic, and avoid dealers. For that matter avoid buying a new car, as it depreciates 30+% the minute you drive it.
Dan Kerrigan,
” I dare say that it would be impossible for anyone to dictate a book like the BoM in total darkness (of a hat) quoting passages from Isaiah and others from sheer memory and picking up where he left off days earlier without the need to have the last read back to him as a reminder of where he left off as some have stated.”
You can’t prove a negative with a positive. Joseph Smith had been constructing a narrative in his mind for years before he actually dictated it to a scribe. He had an impressive memory and extraordinary imagination. He regularly read and thought about the KJV stories, especially Isaiah and probably memorized the passages of Isaiah and other parts and took them to heart. KJV passages were readily on the tip of Joseph Smith’s tongue. So much so that he easily interwove hundreds of verbatim KJV passages with the narrative of the Book of Mormon. Probably millions of Muslims have memorized the Quran in its entirety. It is not unthinkable for a people to memorize long passages of the KJV. JS’s family sensed he was special from a young age (why else would they all follow him) and likely allowed him time away from farm and house duties to focus on the Bible, religion, and on the occult.
What I said above seems much, much more plausible than the idea of a group of ancient Americans actually seeing Jesus Christ and developing a Christian community that left zero traces of their religious, as well as their material, culture behind.
To tie this into the OP, I suspect that the leaders are reluctant to step into correct apologists who say things that are faith-promoting but are demonstrably not true. Their strategy is to say not much more than the same old repetitions about the Book of Mormon and let the apologists, many of whom they financially support indirectly with secure job positions, fight the skeptics in the trenches. If an apologist argument is shown not to be able to pass muster (such as chiasmus, probably one of the biggest jokes of a historicity defense), they then say, “well, that’s their opinion and they don’t represent the leadership.” The apologists are the perfect shield for the leaders, with a plausible deniability mechanism built right into the system. They say something that challenges the leaders, they’re exed (of course, by a completely independent stake president taking the initiative without any winks or nods from higher-ups). They say something faith-promoting proved wrong, then the leadership isn’t obligated to own it. If they supply a defense narrative that seems to work, the leaders use it in conference (totally not the tail wagging the dog).
John W: “What I said above seems much, much more plausible than the idea of a group of ancient Americans actually seeing Jesus Christ and developing a Christian community that left zero traces of their religious, as well as their material, culture behind.” I’ll make a slight quibble here. So much of mesoamerica is unexcavated, and the BOM populations as described in the book died out / were unrecognizable by 400 AD. Modern day countries that include mesoamerican sites often don’t have the resources and funding to do these digs. We were in Belize at a site that you had to take a boat up a river for an hour to access, and reading up on the site, only 1% of it has been excavated so far. There were 3 large temples unearthed there, but so much more under the jungle floor that hadn’t been touched yet. The city of Troy was believed to be mythology until it was discovered in the late 1800s. It was hard to find because for millenia cities were built on top of the ruins of old cities.
But I will fully agree with you that your theory of JS writing the story from his ideas is a plausible one. Not finding easily identified BOM cities is not particularly compelling to me. The BOM referring to non-existent horses, elephants and cattle as a more compelling argument than missing cities. Zoramites riding tapirs to war sounds silly rather than threatening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon
Thanks, Angela, but just for fun:
Dorothy: Do – do you suppose we’ll meet any wild animals?
Tin Man: We might.
…
Dorothy: Oh! Elephants, cureloms and cumoms. Oh my!
But seriously, I haven’t yet found any BoM reference to riding “horses”. Maybe whatever was translated horse (often in connection with chariot) was a beast of burden also capable of pulling a cart. Maybe a little less silly, but I prefer Angela’s silly image of riding tapirs to war.
It would appear that the Spanish introducing the horse to the Americas is a myth, “they always had the horse”
see this recent PH.D. thesis
https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/7592
CS: I love the theory, and it sounds plausible that a western-centric academic approach erased the history of the horse in the Americas among native people (who claim that it was always so), but the link you provided is just to the thesis for a 2017 University of Alaska research project; it doesn’t have the results of the research. Was the project successful in demonstrating that the horse was part of native culture after the ice age and before the Spanish conquest? What evidence did they find? It’s promising that native cultures believe they had the horse, but it’s not a foregone conclusion as so many native cultures didn’t have any written records for millenia. I would assume that without a native written record, finding horse remains that are carbon dated to the right period would be evidence as would cave paintings or other artwork depicting horses during the right time period.
@ Angela C-Does it not download for you? It is 246 pages. In one part they talk about finds in Yucatan caves but in one instance “remains were not dated” but horse teeth, were late dated and “could not have come from any spanish animal” (153). There is mention of a near complete horse skeleton found in Carlsbad, CA in 2005, which was unshod and dates to 1625-1709. Tthe Spanish first built a mission in 1769 there, so it was prior to the Spanish coming, (154) and they always shod their horses, so the question is where did this horse come from? it couldn’t have appeared out of nowhere. Yeah, it’s downloadable, lots of good stuff!
Angela C, you’re right, there is still a lot to uncover in the history of the Americas. That said, however, doesn’t seem to support the case for a historical Book of Mormon. Absence of evidence may not be evidence of absence, but it most certainly doesn’t imply evidence of existence. As for Troy, it isn’t terribly surprising that an ancient city spoken of by Homer in the 7th century BCE, which predated him by a few centuries, actually turned out to exist. He was an ancient Greek author who probably informed his writing on the a number of oral traditions in Greek culture. By contrast, Joseph Smith did not inform himself, or claim to inform himself, of ancient American history through the oral histories of Native Americans.
What I take issue with is the folks, particularly the apologists, who maintain that a case for a historical Book of Mormon can be made on grounds of modern reason. What is this evidence? In response, I keep hearing this assertion that the evidence is that Joseph Smith couldn’t have possibly written it, because it was just too impressive. That’s not evidence of historicity. Evidence would come in the form of archaeological discoveries in the Americas that show in more detail a picture that corroborates what is described in the Book of Mormon.
CS, thanks for the recommendation. I was unacquainted with this dissertation. Even if we could establish that ancient Native American cultures lived with horses (I would be very interested to see this person’s research be put to greater test among other experts of Mesoamerican history), there is still a long ways to go to corroborate the claims of the Book of Mormon and is still full of all kinds of anachronisms.
@John W. I don’t have anything to do with any of that so guess we’ll see what happens! things are always changing and it’s good to update our knowledge base
These past few weeks, my wife and I have been watching the PBS/Nova series on “The Planets”: the most recent of which being focused on Saturn. We’ve watched each episode with awe and wonder – at the immensity, the complexity and the surprises which are in store: as we (as a species) continue to venture out and explore our Solar System and beyond.
As I was contemplating the overwhelming nature of this – I thought to myself: what does this great Heavenly Creator – this God of all things, our Heavenly Father…. need with Golden Plates, Seer Stones in Hat’s, Masonic Symbolism, a small group of Chosen People – vs. all of his other children, “Barges sealed liked unto plates”, sealed Sacred Secrets, mercurial Angels who come and go….to only a chosen few..and on and on. I don’t believe God needs these things…only the constructs of men require these things.
I don’t think our Heavenly Father needs any of it: in order to garner our worship, our gratitude and our commitment to goodness vs. evil.
Lefthandloafer – I am there with you. Most of my somewhat limited time on TV is watching things like “The Planets” and to a lesser extent nature shows. I am filled with awe unlike anywhere else. Growing up I was consistently told that going to the temple would be a spiritual pinnacle of my life. I found that no matter how hard I tried or how consistently I attended, it felt like an adult version of clubs some kids made when they were young with “secrets”. I am not trying to disrespect others that feel a connection in the temple. But gazing at the milky way after pulling off the highway in a remote area has left me in tears much more than anything at church.
CS, the Spanish were in the West, if not California, well before 1769, and an unshod horse that broke free of the Spanish could have made its way to SoCal. You might find this American Heritage article about the horse and native tribes interesting. It’s not academic, but it certainly sounds like the Native Americans looked on the horse with wonder when first seeing them.
https://www.americanheritage.com/how-indian-got-horse#1
We’ll have to agree to disagree, I don’t see some native Americans looking with awe at the horse as evidence as them representing all native Americans everywhere as never seeing a horse before