It’s interesting to see how easily we accept prophetic fallibility in the past but leave no space for it with the current prophet. Also, this discussion prompted me to wonder if God speaks to us according to our own understanding because it’s us putting words in his mouth.
Please explain how can the Jaredites migrate from a non historical event to the Americas? Also, how do you reconcile your theory that the flood is how the ancient people interpreted history with the book of Moses and Abraham, both cemented the flood and gave the same account by way of a “modern” translator.
We don't know what the Jaredites thought themselves, what we have is Joseph Smith's translation, of Moroni's abridgement, of Mosiah's translation, of Ether abridgement of Jaredite records. There doesn't need to be an historical Tower or global flood, there just needs to be a Nephite tradition that Mosiah or Moroni can conflated with Jaredite history.
I like the myth of the Abzu. It's more than interesting to me that Book of Mormon people and writers believed in legends about their origins that aren't factual. It's joyous. God didn't require a society to advance to a post-Enlightenment standard of scientific understanding in order to give them salvific revelation. Jesus referenced the prophet Jonah, which is fiction. Jesus also mentioned the story of Job in talking to Joseph Smith. The Book of Job is also fiction, but if Joseph Smith didn't know that, what did it matter? And more to the point, so what if God wants to quote fiction to teach us principles? Or create it: Jesus' parables, for example. I find it tedious when people try to say that God's communications to human beings always have to be all facts. I feel sorry for people who believe in a God who has no sense of myth. Cramped little tunnel-visioned miserable minds.
Superb series.. very straight forward and relaxed discussion shows how to truly respond to the nay-sayers..
It’s interesting to see how easily we accept prophetic fallibility in the past but leave no space for it with the current prophet.
Also, this discussion prompted me to wonder if God speaks to us according to our own understanding because it’s us putting words in his mouth.
Please explain how can the Jaredites migrate from a non historical event to the Americas?
Also, how do you reconcile your theory that the flood is how the ancient people interpreted history with the book of Moses and Abraham, both cemented the flood and gave the same account by way of a “modern” translator.
We don't know what the Jaredites thought themselves, what we have is Joseph Smith's translation, of Moroni's abridgement, of Mosiah's translation, of Ether abridgement of Jaredite records. There doesn't need to be an historical Tower or global flood, there just needs to be a Nephite tradition that Mosiah or Moroni can conflated with Jaredite history.
I like the myth of the Abzu.
It's more than interesting to me that Book of Mormon people and writers believed in legends about their origins that aren't factual. It's joyous. God didn't require a society to advance to a post-Enlightenment standard of scientific understanding in order to give them salvific revelation.
Jesus referenced the prophet Jonah, which is fiction. Jesus also mentioned the story of Job in talking to Joseph Smith. The Book of Job is also fiction, but if Joseph Smith didn't know that, what did it matter? And more to the point, so what if God wants to quote fiction to teach us principles? Or create it: Jesus' parables, for example.
I find it tedious when people try to say that God's communications to human beings always have to be all facts. I feel sorry for people who believe in a God who has no sense of myth. Cramped little tunnel-visioned miserable minds.