Many times it is asserted that there is no contemporary evidence for the First Vision having occurred. But it should not come as a surprise this is not true, as Richard Anderson published a beautiful, insightful and well documented article in BYU Studies in 1969 (9/3(1969):373-404), entitled Circumstantial Confirmation of the First Vision Through Reminiscences.
There are several things from this article and elsewhere which I will mention.
1. In The Reflector, February 1831, they report a correspondent from 1830 talks about Oliver Cowdery's preaching in Ohio which affirms "Smith had seen God frequently and personally."
2. Edward Stevenson reports he heard, around 1831, Joseph Smith preach about the First Vision.
3. Lucy Mack Smith placed the timing of the First Vision after 1819 religious revivals, but prior to the 1823 death of Alvin. She inserted Joseph Smith's narrative exactly as found in the History of the Church. This means she has the correct timing, and perfectly endorses the timing of the First Vision found within the account itself.
These are obviously all post 1830. Doesn't anyone remember something closer to 1820?
YES!
4. Pomeroy Tucker, a vicious enemy of the LDS faith, was a childhood friend of Joseph Smith and the Smiths' from 1816 when they moved to Palmyra, until he left for work in 1820, returning in 1823. In his 1867 history of Mormonism, he makes numerous statements which affirm something happens in 1820. For example, he notes Joseph Smith, as a "youth", prayed "in the wilderness" and had his first vision. He takes Orson Pratt's pamphlet on the First Vision as the guiding text, but adds several personal recollections to the text. In other words, he accidentally, as an enemy, confirms it.
5. Orsamus Turner, who was another childhood friend of Joseph Smith, left Palmyra in either 1821 or 1822. Among other things, he asserted in later writings there was no foundation to the idea that the Book of Mormon was copied from Spaulding. But more importantly for our discussion, he recalls that Joseph attended a Methodist Camp Meeting down on Vienna Road (1819), and tended to them. When combined with Tucker's statement that Joseph's "blasphemies" about God led him to withdraw from the Methodists around 1820, we have the main points of the First Vision confirmed.
Matt Brown noted that in the 1832 account of the First Vision, written by hand by Joseph Smith, Joseph notes that after God manifest his will do him, the Lord appeared. This account was in Oliver Cowdery's possession when he wrote his 1834 account of the founding of the Church. It seems obvious that the emphasis of Joseph Smith was on the restoration of the true church of God, not his personal vision. We see something akin to this in Paul's writings. Though we have three accounts of Jesus appearing to Paul, none of them are told to us by Paul. They are reported by Luke in Acts, not in Paul's letters. Paul focuses on doctrine and Church government. He obviously told his story at least twice, based on Luke's account in Acts. He surely told it more than that, as he is recognized by the Church as an Apostle. But Paul's vision is never cited as authority or any purpose except to establish that Jesus overcame death.
So when people say things like there is no contemporary reports of the the First Vision, note the newspaper account, Lucy Smith's account, Pomeroy Tucker's account, and the fact that Joseph's entire family believed him, and stayed with the Church. Let's compare: The earliest accounts of the resurrection of Jesus were written 20 or 30 years after the Resurrection, and have many contradictions. Thursday or Friday supper? Etc. Does that affect the reality of the Resurrection? No.
So the First Vision evidence is excellent. It did happen. Even Joseph's critics acknowledged it.
Enjoy.
Showing posts with label Book of Mormon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book of Mormon. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Mormons ARE Christians
"Mormons have another Jesus!" "Mormons' Jesus is not the Jesus of historical Christianity!" "Mormons are not Christian."
These are very typical slurs hurled at Mormons by anti-Mormons. They are slurs because they are not academic observations used to stimulate understanding. They are intended as insults to the closely held personal beliefs of millions of Mormons. I can actually agree with the first two statements, as they are true. But the history of Christianity is conclusive in showing Mormons are Christians.
I heard one goof-ball say "What if I say I am a Mormon, I just don't believe in Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the First Vision or the restoration of priesthood authority? That's the same as saying you are Christians."
It is if you are an idiot.
First, anti-Mormons don't get to define what a Christian is to anyone other than themselves. I seriously don't care if someone doesn't think I am a Christian. Second, I believe in the same foundational document, the Bible, as they do, but I interpret it according to my conscience, not theirs. Lastly, their definition of a Christian would exclude all of the people in the Bible, including Jesus. Academics, Jews and Mormons are unable to locate the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible. It is a conclusion based on a philosophical perspective which is not Biblical. The Catholic Encyclopedia states it is nowhere in the Old Testament, and only inferred in the New Testament.
Drilling down, the LDS Articles of Faith grant the right to believe and worship to each person individually. So we expect to be excluded from other people's beliefs. And we define what it means to be LDS. But the Bible provides no definition of what a Christian is beyond one who believes in Jesus. There is no doctrinal litmus test. Bart Ehrman has written and taught extensively on the "Lost Christianities" which were divergent beliefs from what is now considered "orthodox" Christianity. They believed in some way in Jesus. The current "orthodox" Christianity is, from a historical standpoint, the result of fortunate circumstances and some lucky breaks in history. The Arian controversy, for example, could easily have resulted in a very different theology about Jesus, with Athanasian theology considered apostate.
We believe in Jesus, as described fully in the Bible. In fact I would assert we, as Mormons, believe more closely in the Biblical Jesus than any other people, as we understand the circumstances of Christ in the eternities and the context of the Bible. No later than February 1832 the clear description of man's destiny to become like God is revealed, and soon thereafter the Book of Abraham asserts this understanding of a Council of Gods was the background of the Bible. Sure enough, we get archaeological discoveries about 100 years later that show the people of the Bible DID know this was the background of the Bible. See Mark Smith's, "The Origins of Biblical Monotheism" or visit Micheal Heiser's website, and see how a devout Evangelical scholar presents the indisputable fact of history that Israel DID believe that God was among many gods.
Even more pointedly, early Christians believed and understood the teachings of the Bible to mean men could become gods. The earliest existing defense of the Christian faith was written by Justin Martyr around 140 AD. He notes Jesus is a "second god" after the creator of all things. He also notes our faith is that we will also become gods. What it meant to become a "god" gradually evolves, until we see Athanasius try to harmonize this belief with Trinitarianism by saying it is about fellowship with God and Jesus, not our own development.
But it is realistic to argue that Mormons are Christians, because we do believe what the Bible teaches about Jesus, not the stuff added over the centuries after the authors of the Bible had died.
Second, the Bible is the common document between anti-Mormon Christians and Mormon Christians. It is not the Book of Mormon, the First Vision or any other particular LDS belief. But let's consider the Catholics vs. Evangelicals. Are they both Christian? Today we would say yes, but historically the Catholic Church did not consider Evangelicals to be Christians for hundreds of years. They literally discriminated and killed each other. Protestants then really tried to get the Bible in the hands of commoners. This was a great thing, unless you were killed for trying to do so. This has many positive things, especially about personal spirituality.
But there are some negative things. Specifically in not understanding the context or content of the Bible. Or reading the Bible with a pre-existing prejudice from extra-Biblical teachers. Today we hear most Evangelicals argue it is by faith alone through grace alone that people are saved. But that simply ignores the plain teaching of the Bible that we do contribute to our salvation. God wants to save us, according to the Bible, but we have to follow him. Calvinists go further and say God has already decided who to save, which is the logical conclusion of Evangelical doctrine, and we are unable to do anything to become saved if we are not on God's pre-existing list.
I am routinely accused of hating the Bible because I discuss issues of textual criticism with people. I love the New Testament. I love truth even more. To fail to try to understand not just what the words mean, but what the original words were, is, in my opinion, not following Jesus' admonition that we demonstrate our love by keeping his word.
Finally, as I mentioned above, the Catholics defined the Protestants as non-Christians. It did not mean anything. Walter Martin did a great job of creating hatred of the "cults". Read early Christian history. They considered themselves a cult. They were initially Jews (followers of Abraham and Moses) who kept that faith and added to it Jesus and his teachings. They were called "Christians" because their Hebrew beliefs center on the interpretation added to it by Jesus, and the belief that Jesus was the son of God. Read John 10. This was blasphemy to the "orthodox" religion of the day, and they felt justified in stoning Jesus. Or beating the Apostles. Or killing Christians. Or, calling them names like "heretics". They eventually kicked them out of the synagogues, because they were different. The Christians considered themselves the children of Abraham, either by birth or adoption. They had the Old Testament, which they considered scripture, and they added to it new revelation. They were proud to be called Christians. Men like Paul still considered themselves Jews, regardless of the name calling, as well as Christians.
And so do we.
Mormons are Christians.
These are very typical slurs hurled at Mormons by anti-Mormons. They are slurs because they are not academic observations used to stimulate understanding. They are intended as insults to the closely held personal beliefs of millions of Mormons. I can actually agree with the first two statements, as they are true. But the history of Christianity is conclusive in showing Mormons are Christians.
I heard one goof-ball say "What if I say I am a Mormon, I just don't believe in Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the First Vision or the restoration of priesthood authority? That's the same as saying you are Christians."
It is if you are an idiot.
First, anti-Mormons don't get to define what a Christian is to anyone other than themselves. I seriously don't care if someone doesn't think I am a Christian. Second, I believe in the same foundational document, the Bible, as they do, but I interpret it according to my conscience, not theirs. Lastly, their definition of a Christian would exclude all of the people in the Bible, including Jesus. Academics, Jews and Mormons are unable to locate the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible. It is a conclusion based on a philosophical perspective which is not Biblical. The Catholic Encyclopedia states it is nowhere in the Old Testament, and only inferred in the New Testament.
Drilling down, the LDS Articles of Faith grant the right to believe and worship to each person individually. So we expect to be excluded from other people's beliefs. And we define what it means to be LDS. But the Bible provides no definition of what a Christian is beyond one who believes in Jesus. There is no doctrinal litmus test. Bart Ehrman has written and taught extensively on the "Lost Christianities" which were divergent beliefs from what is now considered "orthodox" Christianity. They believed in some way in Jesus. The current "orthodox" Christianity is, from a historical standpoint, the result of fortunate circumstances and some lucky breaks in history. The Arian controversy, for example, could easily have resulted in a very different theology about Jesus, with Athanasian theology considered apostate.
We believe in Jesus, as described fully in the Bible. In fact I would assert we, as Mormons, believe more closely in the Biblical Jesus than any other people, as we understand the circumstances of Christ in the eternities and the context of the Bible. No later than February 1832 the clear description of man's destiny to become like God is revealed, and soon thereafter the Book of Abraham asserts this understanding of a Council of Gods was the background of the Bible. Sure enough, we get archaeological discoveries about 100 years later that show the people of the Bible DID know this was the background of the Bible. See Mark Smith's, "The Origins of Biblical Monotheism" or visit Micheal Heiser's website, and see how a devout Evangelical scholar presents the indisputable fact of history that Israel DID believe that God was among many gods.
Even more pointedly, early Christians believed and understood the teachings of the Bible to mean men could become gods. The earliest existing defense of the Christian faith was written by Justin Martyr around 140 AD. He notes Jesus is a "second god" after the creator of all things. He also notes our faith is that we will also become gods. What it meant to become a "god" gradually evolves, until we see Athanasius try to harmonize this belief with Trinitarianism by saying it is about fellowship with God and Jesus, not our own development.
But it is realistic to argue that Mormons are Christians, because we do believe what the Bible teaches about Jesus, not the stuff added over the centuries after the authors of the Bible had died.
Second, the Bible is the common document between anti-Mormon Christians and Mormon Christians. It is not the Book of Mormon, the First Vision or any other particular LDS belief. But let's consider the Catholics vs. Evangelicals. Are they both Christian? Today we would say yes, but historically the Catholic Church did not consider Evangelicals to be Christians for hundreds of years. They literally discriminated and killed each other. Protestants then really tried to get the Bible in the hands of commoners. This was a great thing, unless you were killed for trying to do so. This has many positive things, especially about personal spirituality.
But there are some negative things. Specifically in not understanding the context or content of the Bible. Or reading the Bible with a pre-existing prejudice from extra-Biblical teachers. Today we hear most Evangelicals argue it is by faith alone through grace alone that people are saved. But that simply ignores the plain teaching of the Bible that we do contribute to our salvation. God wants to save us, according to the Bible, but we have to follow him. Calvinists go further and say God has already decided who to save, which is the logical conclusion of Evangelical doctrine, and we are unable to do anything to become saved if we are not on God's pre-existing list.
I am routinely accused of hating the Bible because I discuss issues of textual criticism with people. I love the New Testament. I love truth even more. To fail to try to understand not just what the words mean, but what the original words were, is, in my opinion, not following Jesus' admonition that we demonstrate our love by keeping his word.
Finally, as I mentioned above, the Catholics defined the Protestants as non-Christians. It did not mean anything. Walter Martin did a great job of creating hatred of the "cults". Read early Christian history. They considered themselves a cult. They were initially Jews (followers of Abraham and Moses) who kept that faith and added to it Jesus and his teachings. They were called "Christians" because their Hebrew beliefs center on the interpretation added to it by Jesus, and the belief that Jesus was the son of God. Read John 10. This was blasphemy to the "orthodox" religion of the day, and they felt justified in stoning Jesus. Or beating the Apostles. Or killing Christians. Or, calling them names like "heretics". They eventually kicked them out of the synagogues, because they were different. The Christians considered themselves the children of Abraham, either by birth or adoption. They had the Old Testament, which they considered scripture, and they added to it new revelation. They were proud to be called Christians. Men like Paul still considered themselves Jews, regardless of the name calling, as well as Christians.
And so do we.
Mormons are Christians.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Final Shawn McCraney Post (for a while)
My last post about Shawn McCraney illustrated my view that Shawn never really intended to have me or other knowledgeable defenders of the LDS faith on his program, Heart of the Matter.
So yesterday I got a phone call from a friend who, with another friend, spoke with Shawn about his fear of dealing with Mormon scholars, and me in particular.
My friend said that when my name was brought up, his perception was Shawn became visibly angry, responded with a short curt remark about how dumb bringing me up was to do, and then said he chose to not have me on because I am not a "real" Mormon, I just have my own philosophy which I disguise as Mormonism.
"Wow", was all I could say. The absurdity of such a view about me, if the report is accurate (and I believe my friend to be care about details, so I think it is) is almost beyond words. My credentials as a believing Mormon far exceed anything Shawn can throw around about his supposed "40 years as a Mormon". Granted, I have only been a Mormon for 35 years, but those don't include any infancy/pre-teen years. And they include 33 years of very active belief, study and attendance.
Let me elaborate a bit more. I served a two year mission without being homesick a single day. I loved the work. I have been an elder's quorum president 4 times. I served over 5 years in a bishopric as an executive secretary. I served as a counselor in a stake mission presidency for two years. I have repeatedly served as a stake missionary. I am currently in a stake presidency as an assistant clerk. I am also a member of FAIR, an organization which specifically defends the LDS Church from critics by promoting research, which is easily viewed on the FAIR WIKI. In my opinion, the FAIR Wiki is simply the most outstanding religious apologetic database on the Internet, because it fearlessly addresses EVERY criticism of the LDS Church, cites the sources making the claims, and then provides research and links responding to the criticism, acknowledging when a conclusion is one of several theories (such as the location of Cumorah, for example) or a settled fact, as in the case of historical events. It is an amazing resource. And it is definitely "peer reviewed" for facts.
To think that I have taken a chameleon's skin to create my own religious view, outside mainstream LDS belief, is laughable. I am a conservative LDS defender, a believing Mormon who affirms the LDS Church as the only true Church on the face of the Earth in terms of authority and prophetic leadership.
It is my belief that Shawn is not afraid of me from an intellectual or debating standpoint. I believe he is afraid of what he becomes when he is out of control of a situation. People see that on his show constantly when someone calls in and stumps him, or makes a valid point. He gets loud, sarcastic, caustic. He tries to bully his way through the conversation. Listen to his chat with Van Hale. Set aside who was being rude to whom. Doesn't matter. Listen to the tone, responses, sarcasm.
Look back over the years to my specific interaction on air with Shawn. He consistently makes statements and promises to respond. Or like last time, he just re-affirms that he has banned me from calling in. Then he puts forward his crafted position, like this past June, where he wants to present himself to the world as the unafraid, unintimidated crusader against the false doctrines of Mormonism. He will let anyone on his show, not to debate, but to present their views and then review them with pinpoint insight and clarity. He specifically denied his own documented words by saying it is false that he would not allow people such as me to call into his program.
Well, those are my views. Shawn is a complicated person. But he is pretty easy to read, I think, as well. I believe he is a bully, and the last thing a bully wants is someone to step forward who is not able to be bullied or frightened by emotional manipulation.
So don't expect Shawn to have Dan Peterson, Michael Ash, Kerry Shirts, Van Hale or folks like me on the program. Ever. As my friend said, "Shawn hates you. You can see it in how he discusses you." For him to control his anger and sarcasm, I believe, would be impossible for him to manage. The funny thing is just about nobody watches his program. Seriously, nearly no one, relative to the potential audience, is watching. So even if he had a horrible showing, pretty much no one would know. Of course, it would be on disk forever, which may be his fear. Everyone could watch, and certainly it would make his claim of an "encyclopedic knowledge" of Mormonism would be shown for what it really is.
Anyway, I am done talking about Shawn. I never thought he would have me on his program, and it turns out I was right. Call it what you want, at least we Mormons do go talk with the folks who want to engage us about doctrine, history or whatever.
So yesterday I got a phone call from a friend who, with another friend, spoke with Shawn about his fear of dealing with Mormon scholars, and me in particular.
My friend said that when my name was brought up, his perception was Shawn became visibly angry, responded with a short curt remark about how dumb bringing me up was to do, and then said he chose to not have me on because I am not a "real" Mormon, I just have my own philosophy which I disguise as Mormonism.
"Wow", was all I could say. The absurdity of such a view about me, if the report is accurate (and I believe my friend to be care about details, so I think it is) is almost beyond words. My credentials as a believing Mormon far exceed anything Shawn can throw around about his supposed "40 years as a Mormon". Granted, I have only been a Mormon for 35 years, but those don't include any infancy/pre-teen years. And they include 33 years of very active belief, study and attendance.
Let me elaborate a bit more. I served a two year mission without being homesick a single day. I loved the work. I have been an elder's quorum president 4 times. I served over 5 years in a bishopric as an executive secretary. I served as a counselor in a stake mission presidency for two years. I have repeatedly served as a stake missionary. I am currently in a stake presidency as an assistant clerk. I am also a member of FAIR, an organization which specifically defends the LDS Church from critics by promoting research, which is easily viewed on the FAIR WIKI. In my opinion, the FAIR Wiki is simply the most outstanding religious apologetic database on the Internet, because it fearlessly addresses EVERY criticism of the LDS Church, cites the sources making the claims, and then provides research and links responding to the criticism, acknowledging when a conclusion is one of several theories (such as the location of Cumorah, for example) or a settled fact, as in the case of historical events. It is an amazing resource. And it is definitely "peer reviewed" for facts.
To think that I have taken a chameleon's skin to create my own religious view, outside mainstream LDS belief, is laughable. I am a conservative LDS defender, a believing Mormon who affirms the LDS Church as the only true Church on the face of the Earth in terms of authority and prophetic leadership.
It is my belief that Shawn is not afraid of me from an intellectual or debating standpoint. I believe he is afraid of what he becomes when he is out of control of a situation. People see that on his show constantly when someone calls in and stumps him, or makes a valid point. He gets loud, sarcastic, caustic. He tries to bully his way through the conversation. Listen to his chat with Van Hale. Set aside who was being rude to whom. Doesn't matter. Listen to the tone, responses, sarcasm.
Look back over the years to my specific interaction on air with Shawn. He consistently makes statements and promises to respond. Or like last time, he just re-affirms that he has banned me from calling in. Then he puts forward his crafted position, like this past June, where he wants to present himself to the world as the unafraid, unintimidated crusader against the false doctrines of Mormonism. He will let anyone on his show, not to debate, but to present their views and then review them with pinpoint insight and clarity. He specifically denied his own documented words by saying it is false that he would not allow people such as me to call into his program.
Well, those are my views. Shawn is a complicated person. But he is pretty easy to read, I think, as well. I believe he is a bully, and the last thing a bully wants is someone to step forward who is not able to be bullied or frightened by emotional manipulation.
So don't expect Shawn to have Dan Peterson, Michael Ash, Kerry Shirts, Van Hale or folks like me on the program. Ever. As my friend said, "Shawn hates you. You can see it in how he discusses you." For him to control his anger and sarcasm, I believe, would be impossible for him to manage. The funny thing is just about nobody watches his program. Seriously, nearly no one, relative to the potential audience, is watching. So even if he had a horrible showing, pretty much no one would know. Of course, it would be on disk forever, which may be his fear. Everyone could watch, and certainly it would make his claim of an "encyclopedic knowledge" of Mormonism would be shown for what it really is.
Anyway, I am done talking about Shawn. I never thought he would have me on his program, and it turns out I was right. Call it what you want, at least we Mormons do go talk with the folks who want to engage us about doctrine, history or whatever.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Jesus in Our Midst
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matt 18:20)
Most LDS are dumbfounded when they are accused of not being Christian. Not because of an ad campaign from Salt Lake City to be more "Christian", but simply because our lives revolve around following Christ, applying his Atonement to our lives and seeking to experience more of his Spirit in our lives.
Truly, we live "Come unto Christ."
Yesterday being Fast Sunday, I decided to make notes on what people testified about in our meetings. It was extremely edifying, even if not surprising. While there were two instances where people thanked members of the congregation for various acts of kindness they had recently received, the other eight testimonies, by individuals ranging in age from 15 to 70, were all centered on their sense of love for the Savior and the atonement. A couple mentioned their belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored the Gospel, but there was no hint that Joseph was anything more than the messenger of God, and certainly no expression of worship or thought that Joseph was god. Several times statements such as "the Spirit testifies to me that God lives, we are his children, and Jesus' atonement is real", were made. Expressions of feeling the Spirit were often repeated. The sense of gratitude by the youth for forgiveness of sins was expressed several times as well.
I write this because Jesus Christ swore that he would be in the midst of those who gathered together in his name. The Spirit bears witness that is true. Frankly, I have felt the Spirit at times in other churches. But I can say that I have never felt anything approaching the Spirit from people like Shawn McCraney, Rob Sivulka, the street preachers, Evidence Ministries, Mormon Research Ministries, or especially from Sandra Tanner. These people are just lost. Members of the LDS faith believe the Bible and the Spirit, which leads them to truth. People who make their living attacking the LDS or other faiths are by Biblical definition false teachers and filled with the bitterness of the devil, for the devil desires the contention they breed.
We are to contend for the faith. Not against other faiths. If you are looking for God, "Come, and see."
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Youtube Videos Added For Review
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Believable Book of Mormon
I believe the Book of Mormon to be true. I would even go further to say that by the power of the Holy Ghost, I have received the unmistakable testimony from God that it is true. I consider that a great blessing and a precious gift to have received such knowledge. When I was not committed to the Church, I did search for truth as an 18-19 year old, and I was exposed to the harshest criticisms of the Church and the Book of Mormon then available, including the Tanner's "Changing World of Mormonism" and Walter Martin's various works available back in 1979. I wasn't born a Mormon, and my family was completely inactive after having joined the LDS Church in 1976. So no one was forcing me or tricking me or coaching me. There was no guilt trip or sense of debt to anyone in the LDS Church. I had been a very good debater, I was a well educated student, and I seemed to do well on tests of ability to reason and think. So I came at the Book of Mormon with a simple desire to know if it was true, and a willingness to walk away if I found it not to be believable. I was raised Lutheran and attended many different Christian churches, so I wasn't "against" any faith or position. My best friend eventually went on to become a pastor of a Four Square Church in Idaho.
So I had an open mind. I still do, but that is getting ahead of things.
The first thing of huge import is the Book of Mormon has witnesses besides just Joseph Smith. And the closest of those witnesses all left the Church and in Joseph Smith's lifetime did not return. The two closest to Joseph Smith of the three, Oliver and Martin, later returned to the LDS Church. Oliver was actually present for angels visiting to confer the priesthood on two separate occasions.
I read how there was some talk that the witnesses, Oliver in particular, may have denied his witness. This was proposed by the Tanner's because a poem included a statement indicating Oliver may have done so, and the author said it did not matter. The Tanner's were being deceptive even publishing that, which I discovered, as the poem was reacting to a false report made about Oliver. This caused me then to become very careful in uncritically accepting as "facts" statements of critics. Sure a member of the Church published the poem and thought Oliver had denied his testimony. But it was false. Presenting responses to false statements without providing the context is to lie by omission.
I have learned the critics of the LDS faith do not feel any need to be balanced in presenting history of LDS doctrine. So I now always review their supporting information before I will accept something as factual. This is not based on just one incident. It is literally based on hundreds, maybe thousands of such interactions with both printed material and individuals.
So we have witnesses. What did they witness? Of the 11 people who are listed as witnesses in the front of the BOM, 10 actually held the plates and handled the individual pages (only David Whitmer did not). They saw the engravings, the color, the binding and lifted them to feel their weight. They did so in broad daylight. They did so in groups, usually. There is some controversy about whether two groups of four or all eight at once saw the plates. No real matter. Oliver and Martin were alone with Joseph when they handled the plates in the open.
Now the plates were actually quite heavy. Joseph let many people handle the plates and lift them while they were covered up. Maybe 16 or more people that I can count. The reports are the plates weighed between 30-60 pounds. That is not really much of a range if you lift a solid block of metal and then guess at the weight.
William Smith would later say the plates were a combination of copper and gold. All of the witnesses said they had the "appearance of gold". Moroni is quoted as saying they were "gold plates". All of these statements are consistent with a material used by Meso-American tribes called Tumbaga, which is a alloy of copper and gold, and depending upon that mixture, would have weighed about what the witnesses said the plates weighed. This is remarkable because Joseph Smith and the witnesses would have had no knowledge of Tumbaga, or its link to Central America.
Next, the text of the Book of Mormon is miraculous in its consistency. The work done by Royal Skousen on restoring the original text of the Book of Mormon is amazing on many levels. But what we find is a document which is not just the helter-skelter dictations of someone trying to crank out a book. It is consistent and complicated.
The text has had several in-depth studies done on "word printing". It is obvious from these studies (Hilton in 1997, Todd K. Moon, 2006, "Document Author
Classification using Generalized Discriminant Analysis")the Book of Mormon was not composed by Joseph Smith, only translated by him. This makes the case for the Book of Mormon being from Joseph Smith's mind extremely unlikely. Hilton's study also disqualified Solomon Spaulding and Oliver Cowdery. If not these folks, then who wrote it? The studies simply state there are unique author traits in the texts, so the authors are unknown. The most logical answer is they are those individuals whose names are on the books within the Book of Mormon, barring evidence of other composers.
But if there was other authors, where are there notes, books or for that matter their statements? Unlike the pictures we usually see in Sunday School of Joseph Smith behind a curtain with his finger on the plates translating, we know he actually was almost always in the open, initially wearing a breastplate and the Urim and Thummim attached to the breastplate in a sort of weird pair of glasses, then later putting his head in a hat with a seer stone. Those who commented, specifically Emma who was there, said he had no papers or books, and she would have seen them. I once challenged Dan Vogel, as an ex-LDS critic and perhaps the most scholarly critic of LDS history, to memorize 3 days work of the Isaiah passages, and then quote them back. That would be about 27 pages. Of course, you don't get to have a Bible around, since we know they did not have one present during the translation according to the witnesses present. And we will then make allowances for changes to the text at the same rate as Joseph Smith's dictation amends the Isaiah sections. Vogel declined, saying Joseph must have had a Bible. Really? You have witnesses present who say he did not, and your position is they are lying? Wouldn't Martin Harris and Oliver, both ex-communicated and humiliated at their leaving of the Church, mentioned this, even if false, to attack Joseph? I say even if false because they could have made the claim and why would they have cared, they were no longer in the Church? Because they knew there were lots of witnesses who saw how it was done. Vogel and the critics have no case that Joseph Smith actually wrote or copied the Book of Mormon from someone else' work. This evidence is very much on a par with the physical reality that there were gold plates. Because we can test the text and we have witnesses. And the witnesses obviously told other people, or else folks would not have constantly be trying to steal the non-existent plates he was translating.
The next item is the content of the text itself. As my friend Steve Smoot has pointed out on several occasions, Joseph Smith did not realize how "Hebrew" it was. He actually tried to edit out the "Hebrewisms" from later editions. However, we now know these unusual and non-English-style sentence structures are good Hebrew. And in his lifetime, Joseph Smith never claimed such a style to be present in the Book of Mormon. He doesn't say "See, there is Chiasmus and Hebrew sentence forms all over in it, proving it is Middle Eastern in its origin or influence." No. He goes the other way. Edit them out after the fact. Never comments on them. Hmm, its like he doesn't recognize they are there. Like he was just a translator or something...
Much has been made of the some "4,000 changes to the Book of Mormon". I always thought that was important. Until we looked closer. Editorially, if you count every comma, spelling and sentence structure change, Royal Skousen says there are closer to 100,000 such changes in a text of 400,000+ words. Is this a big deal? No. First, out of all of the changes, 99.5% were strictly to make the text more readable and are scatter across a dozen editions. Secondly, there are at most 50 some changes which could be considered significant in terms of doctrine for those not believing in prophetic direction. The addition of "son of..." to "God" in term describing Jesus, or the "pure" for "white" change describing the change to come to the Lamanites. How does this compare to the Bible? Well, there are at least 250,000, perhaps as many as 400,000 variations to the New Testament text in terms of spelling changes, word additions or deletions and word order changes. Since they did not include punctuation (that is added to translations, it is not in the Greek). Some of the changes are rather important. The last half of the last chapter of Mark, for example, is not considered by most textual scholars to be original to the text. 1John 5:7-8, the only text to fairly explicitly teach the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, is nearly universally rejected by scholars as a late (300 AD)addition to the text. Jesus being ministered to by an angel in the Garden of Gethsamane is not found in the earliest manuscripts, but is quoted by Justin Martyr, and found in later editions. The commentary on changes sold by United Bible Societies, which publishes the most widely accepted version of the Greek NT, lists over 3,800 changes they feel merit comment, out of which about 50 or 60 are such they admit they don't know what should be included in the text. The Book of Mormon suffers no such issue as to holes in the text.
The Old Testament does not fare much better. The main reason there are few variations in the Hebrew text of the Bible is because, (drum roll please), in the 10th Century AD the Rabbi's of the world met to decide what was the original text, and they destroyed all copies from earlier times. Fortunately we got the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, and they became widely available in the past 10-15 years. We now know there are thousands of variations in the text. Actually, tens of thousands. Some entire verses were left out. Some verses changed to hide the original belief that there were many real gods (Compare Duet 32:8-9 in the King James Bible and in the NRSV). The King James Bible followed the tradition, edited text from the 10th Century AD. We know now the Greek and Samarian versions contain variants which legitimately belonged to the original OT.
So do all these variations matter? I don't really think so if you recognize that people are involved in passing the text along, and God can restore it as he decides to make it available. You can still find God in the Bible. He just never tells us to pray to know the Bible is true. As we can now tell, for obvious reasons. He still, however, instructs us to study it.
Another example of things worth considering in the Book of Mormon are all the things which Joseph Smith "got wrong", which turned out he got correct. Examples such as Alma being a man's name. The existence of Nahom, and it being on the trade route in Arabia. Jerusalem being the location of Jesus' birth. Barley being in the New World. Cement in Central America. The kinds of "swords" used by Native Americans. A great list of these are found in a talk by Matt Roper, now on FAIR's website.
Brant Gardner's work on the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon's Meso American setting is equally compelling. There is a lot of information, and links to videos, etc, at this web page.
I think those are probably the big ones. That is, except for the witness of the Spirit. I would lie if I said there have not been issues which troubled me to some degree as I made my way through the various criticisms of the LDS Church. So it was that my Spiritual experiences, after I had studied out the issues of the Book of Mormon to the degree I was able, helped me wait to see the big picture. If the Tanners or Walter Martin repeatedly distort history because they think the bigger cause is to get people out of the Church, rather than being accountable ministers to God, then I don't have to panic when I read their latest attack. I also need to have the intellectual maturity to realize that what passes as normal or abnormal today is completely irrelevant to early LDS history or Bible or Book of Mormon history. Faith is complicated in that way, even as it is simple. I need to realize God wants me to follow him in order to obtain a witness of his work (John 8:31-32). It is only by the Holy Spirit, not by reading and studying, one can come to know Jesus is real (1Cor 12:3). For those troubled by history or science or even doctrine, I can't prove anything. But I think the case FOR the Book of Mormon and the Gospel of Jesus Christ restored in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is good enough to be worthy of exercising faith, and then not forgetting to be true to that witness.
Dan Peterson said in a talk, after evaluating the fact that Joseph Smith apparently never needed to actually see the plates to translate them, that the purpose of the plates is the proverbial thumb in the eye of critics. You cannot reasonably prove the LDS faith is false unless you can provide a plausible case against the existence and content of the plates. The plates are a historical reality. That is what the evidence says. Therefore the Church was restored. Joseph Smith was a prophet, right down to Thomas Monson today. The plates are enough to cause us to exercise a particle of faith, and come and follow. That particle, when nurtured, will grow into a full blown, saving witness. (Alma 32:26-43; Luke 8:4-18)
It is my desire this brief exposition can provide a context for those seeking evidence for why they should believe in Jesus Christ and the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So I had an open mind. I still do, but that is getting ahead of things.
The first thing of huge import is the Book of Mormon has witnesses besides just Joseph Smith. And the closest of those witnesses all left the Church and in Joseph Smith's lifetime did not return. The two closest to Joseph Smith of the three, Oliver and Martin, later returned to the LDS Church. Oliver was actually present for angels visiting to confer the priesthood on two separate occasions.
I read how there was some talk that the witnesses, Oliver in particular, may have denied his witness. This was proposed by the Tanner's because a poem included a statement indicating Oliver may have done so, and the author said it did not matter. The Tanner's were being deceptive even publishing that, which I discovered, as the poem was reacting to a false report made about Oliver. This caused me then to become very careful in uncritically accepting as "facts" statements of critics. Sure a member of the Church published the poem and thought Oliver had denied his testimony. But it was false. Presenting responses to false statements without providing the context is to lie by omission.
I have learned the critics of the LDS faith do not feel any need to be balanced in presenting history of LDS doctrine. So I now always review their supporting information before I will accept something as factual. This is not based on just one incident. It is literally based on hundreds, maybe thousands of such interactions with both printed material and individuals.
So we have witnesses. What did they witness? Of the 11 people who are listed as witnesses in the front of the BOM, 10 actually held the plates and handled the individual pages (only David Whitmer did not). They saw the engravings, the color, the binding and lifted them to feel their weight. They did so in broad daylight. They did so in groups, usually. There is some controversy about whether two groups of four or all eight at once saw the plates. No real matter. Oliver and Martin were alone with Joseph when they handled the plates in the open.
Now the plates were actually quite heavy. Joseph let many people handle the plates and lift them while they were covered up. Maybe 16 or more people that I can count. The reports are the plates weighed between 30-60 pounds. That is not really much of a range if you lift a solid block of metal and then guess at the weight.
William Smith would later say the plates were a combination of copper and gold. All of the witnesses said they had the "appearance of gold". Moroni is quoted as saying they were "gold plates". All of these statements are consistent with a material used by Meso-American tribes called Tumbaga, which is a alloy of copper and gold, and depending upon that mixture, would have weighed about what the witnesses said the plates weighed. This is remarkable because Joseph Smith and the witnesses would have had no knowledge of Tumbaga, or its link to Central America.
Next, the text of the Book of Mormon is miraculous in its consistency. The work done by Royal Skousen on restoring the original text of the Book of Mormon is amazing on many levels. But what we find is a document which is not just the helter-skelter dictations of someone trying to crank out a book. It is consistent and complicated.
The text has had several in-depth studies done on "word printing". It is obvious from these studies (Hilton in 1997, Todd K. Moon, 2006, "Document Author
Classification using Generalized Discriminant Analysis")the Book of Mormon was not composed by Joseph Smith, only translated by him. This makes the case for the Book of Mormon being from Joseph Smith's mind extremely unlikely. Hilton's study also disqualified Solomon Spaulding and Oliver Cowdery. If not these folks, then who wrote it? The studies simply state there are unique author traits in the texts, so the authors are unknown. The most logical answer is they are those individuals whose names are on the books within the Book of Mormon, barring evidence of other composers.
But if there was other authors, where are there notes, books or for that matter their statements? Unlike the pictures we usually see in Sunday School of Joseph Smith behind a curtain with his finger on the plates translating, we know he actually was almost always in the open, initially wearing a breastplate and the Urim and Thummim attached to the breastplate in a sort of weird pair of glasses, then later putting his head in a hat with a seer stone. Those who commented, specifically Emma who was there, said he had no papers or books, and she would have seen them. I once challenged Dan Vogel, as an ex-LDS critic and perhaps the most scholarly critic of LDS history, to memorize 3 days work of the Isaiah passages, and then quote them back. That would be about 27 pages. Of course, you don't get to have a Bible around, since we know they did not have one present during the translation according to the witnesses present. And we will then make allowances for changes to the text at the same rate as Joseph Smith's dictation amends the Isaiah sections. Vogel declined, saying Joseph must have had a Bible. Really? You have witnesses present who say he did not, and your position is they are lying? Wouldn't Martin Harris and Oliver, both ex-communicated and humiliated at their leaving of the Church, mentioned this, even if false, to attack Joseph? I say even if false because they could have made the claim and why would they have cared, they were no longer in the Church? Because they knew there were lots of witnesses who saw how it was done. Vogel and the critics have no case that Joseph Smith actually wrote or copied the Book of Mormon from someone else' work. This evidence is very much on a par with the physical reality that there were gold plates. Because we can test the text and we have witnesses. And the witnesses obviously told other people, or else folks would not have constantly be trying to steal the non-existent plates he was translating.
The next item is the content of the text itself. As my friend Steve Smoot has pointed out on several occasions, Joseph Smith did not realize how "Hebrew" it was. He actually tried to edit out the "Hebrewisms" from later editions. However, we now know these unusual and non-English-style sentence structures are good Hebrew. And in his lifetime, Joseph Smith never claimed such a style to be present in the Book of Mormon. He doesn't say "See, there is Chiasmus and Hebrew sentence forms all over in it, proving it is Middle Eastern in its origin or influence." No. He goes the other way. Edit them out after the fact. Never comments on them. Hmm, its like he doesn't recognize they are there. Like he was just a translator or something...
Much has been made of the some "4,000 changes to the Book of Mormon". I always thought that was important. Until we looked closer. Editorially, if you count every comma, spelling and sentence structure change, Royal Skousen says there are closer to 100,000 such changes in a text of 400,000+ words. Is this a big deal? No. First, out of all of the changes, 99.5% were strictly to make the text more readable and are scatter across a dozen editions. Secondly, there are at most 50 some changes which could be considered significant in terms of doctrine for those not believing in prophetic direction. The addition of "son of..." to "God" in term describing Jesus, or the "pure" for "white" change describing the change to come to the Lamanites. How does this compare to the Bible? Well, there are at least 250,000, perhaps as many as 400,000 variations to the New Testament text in terms of spelling changes, word additions or deletions and word order changes. Since they did not include punctuation (that is added to translations, it is not in the Greek). Some of the changes are rather important. The last half of the last chapter of Mark, for example, is not considered by most textual scholars to be original to the text. 1John 5:7-8, the only text to fairly explicitly teach the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, is nearly universally rejected by scholars as a late (300 AD)addition to the text. Jesus being ministered to by an angel in the Garden of Gethsamane is not found in the earliest manuscripts, but is quoted by Justin Martyr, and found in later editions. The commentary on changes sold by United Bible Societies, which publishes the most widely accepted version of the Greek NT, lists over 3,800 changes they feel merit comment, out of which about 50 or 60 are such they admit they don't know what should be included in the text. The Book of Mormon suffers no such issue as to holes in the text.
The Old Testament does not fare much better. The main reason there are few variations in the Hebrew text of the Bible is because, (drum roll please), in the 10th Century AD the Rabbi's of the world met to decide what was the original text, and they destroyed all copies from earlier times. Fortunately we got the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, and they became widely available in the past 10-15 years. We now know there are thousands of variations in the text. Actually, tens of thousands. Some entire verses were left out. Some verses changed to hide the original belief that there were many real gods (Compare Duet 32:8-9 in the King James Bible and in the NRSV). The King James Bible followed the tradition, edited text from the 10th Century AD. We know now the Greek and Samarian versions contain variants which legitimately belonged to the original OT.
So do all these variations matter? I don't really think so if you recognize that people are involved in passing the text along, and God can restore it as he decides to make it available. You can still find God in the Bible. He just never tells us to pray to know the Bible is true. As we can now tell, for obvious reasons. He still, however, instructs us to study it.
Another example of things worth considering in the Book of Mormon are all the things which Joseph Smith "got wrong", which turned out he got correct. Examples such as Alma being a man's name. The existence of Nahom, and it being on the trade route in Arabia. Jerusalem being the location of Jesus' birth. Barley being in the New World. Cement in Central America. The kinds of "swords" used by Native Americans. A great list of these are found in a talk by Matt Roper, now on FAIR's website.
Brant Gardner's work on the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon's Meso American setting is equally compelling. There is a lot of information, and links to videos, etc, at this web page.
I think those are probably the big ones. That is, except for the witness of the Spirit. I would lie if I said there have not been issues which troubled me to some degree as I made my way through the various criticisms of the LDS Church. So it was that my Spiritual experiences, after I had studied out the issues of the Book of Mormon to the degree I was able, helped me wait to see the big picture. If the Tanners or Walter Martin repeatedly distort history because they think the bigger cause is to get people out of the Church, rather than being accountable ministers to God, then I don't have to panic when I read their latest attack. I also need to have the intellectual maturity to realize that what passes as normal or abnormal today is completely irrelevant to early LDS history or Bible or Book of Mormon history. Faith is complicated in that way, even as it is simple. I need to realize God wants me to follow him in order to obtain a witness of his work (John 8:31-32). It is only by the Holy Spirit, not by reading and studying, one can come to know Jesus is real (1Cor 12:3). For those troubled by history or science or even doctrine, I can't prove anything. But I think the case FOR the Book of Mormon and the Gospel of Jesus Christ restored in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is good enough to be worthy of exercising faith, and then not forgetting to be true to that witness.
Dan Peterson said in a talk, after evaluating the fact that Joseph Smith apparently never needed to actually see the plates to translate them, that the purpose of the plates is the proverbial thumb in the eye of critics. You cannot reasonably prove the LDS faith is false unless you can provide a plausible case against the existence and content of the plates. The plates are a historical reality. That is what the evidence says. Therefore the Church was restored. Joseph Smith was a prophet, right down to Thomas Monson today. The plates are enough to cause us to exercise a particle of faith, and come and follow. That particle, when nurtured, will grow into a full blown, saving witness. (Alma 32:26-43; Luke 8:4-18)
It is my desire this brief exposition can provide a context for those seeking evidence for why they should believe in Jesus Christ and the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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