I sure appreciate your research. This was so good that I am going to send it to my TBM brother who is an attorney. He has hung his hat on the witnesses as proof of the Book of Mormon ‘s existence. This might break his witness shelf. Thanks foe shining light and truth on the so called “Light and Truth” letter. Great work!
I've heard RFM and Bill Reel talk about how unusual it would be for someone to be "under the shed." I'm a rancher who has several structures that would be called sheds. It isn't unusual for someone to say "under the shed." Sheds can have no sides, like a hay shed, so we say something like, "park that tractor under the hay shed." Even with sheds that have 3 or 4 sides, it wouldn't be unusual to say, "we put those heifers under the shed." So maybe the angel was under the shed in the form of a toad, but at least in my neck of the woods it would be more unusual to say the angel was "under the bed" than "under the shed."
That would definitely make sense as an expression, particularly in connection with open-sided "sheds" (i.e. a roof that only provides a form of shelter from rain and snow falling from above). IIRC, someone who had studied this account from Mormon history had researched the nature of the "shed" reference and had determined that it would have been an enclosed shed (with walls and a door) having no space between the ground and the floor. I can't vouch for whether that's accurate or not. Either way, we're still left with a nutty story about a teleporting angel hiding out in or under a shed. I sometimes wonder if Mormonism started out as an "Onion" like spoof by Joseph Smith...but turned into a "serious" religion when he found out (presaging the truism attributed to P.T. Barnum many years later) that a certain kind of person is indeed born every minute.
As a teenager, I read "The Devil in Massachusetts" which gave psychological reasons why a few girls in Salem, Massachusetts were "afflicted" by witches. At the time, when everyone believed in witchcraft, it was logical to assume that witches were the cause of the girls' affliction, and thus, people were executed on the basis of witnesses. Recently, a reporter was attacked in a town near mine just because he was a television reporter. The man who attacked him said he was a Marine who was protecting our country from people like the reporter. Mass hysteria rules. If people believe in nonsense, they'll kill for it. Presumably, I will die of cancer before April or May 2025 although I may still be limping along in hospice then. Looking forward to more programs if I'm around.
28:19 Facinating points. All three witnesses were excommunicated or forced out for accusations made about JSs behaviors. No apologist addresses these claims.
Trying to follow this episode was difficult. You both were forging ahead so fast you lost me half way. When RFM kept mispronouncing Tyndale’s name I gave up trying.
Another important episode, glad the co-counsels are tackling the Light on Truth apologetic, er Austin's Got Leading & Disingenous Questions without doing the Work, letter. I understand why RFM was making the case in the 1st section that if believers accept the 3 witness claims, then their follow-up statements after being ex'd or leaving (barring any evidence of lying) should be also accepted. I get the logic but not the conclusion. I am guessing many of us trust the latter statements of the 3 over the former so the reverse is not accurate. But it should follow the same logic. Humans regularly lie, mislead, go along with the crowd, or are inconsistent in different circumstances. I think Kolby's addition that different evidence has different standards of evaluation & value is more on point. Starting with past priors - like Jo Smith's history of magic, juggling, telling tall tales and cheating people, and if I remember correctly him drafting the witness statement for the 3 to sign onto, gives strong reasons to discount their plates witness while accepting their later disillusioned and independent statements. But hey, I am just a rando NeverMo on the internet not a lawyer or an ExMo ;)
Actually, I would say that the post-excommunication statements of the "witnesses" have more credibility for the simple fact that they made those statements independently and in their own words (albeit influenced by reputational concerns that may have limited them from being to honest and departing too far from the narrative supported by their previous joint statement). In contrast to their post-excom statements, the official "testimonies" (one for the 3 and one for the 8) that the church uses (and prints in the Book of Mormon) as evidence for the Book of Mormon were dictated by Joseph Smith to Oliver Cowdery as joint statements for the witnesses to jointly accept. The only role the witnesses had in that process was to allow their names to be affixed to Joseph Smith's description of what they supposedly "witnessed". It would be like a defendant in a case dictating to his defense attorney a joint witness statement for certain key witnesses (all relatives of the defendant and/or participants in the scheme that the defendant is on trial for) expected to testify on his behalf...and then getting the key witnesses to agree to affix their names to the joint statement prepared for them by the defendant. The value of such "evidence" in court for the defendant's claims would obviously be zero or as close to zero as anything can get, being instead simply evidence of orchestration, collusion and coaching between the defendant and the witnesses . (What I got from RFM's point was that people who believe the faith-promoting original "testimonies" but reject the later testimonies need to explain why they accept the former and not the latter in a way that makes logical sense. And the conclusion is that they would have no explanation other than wanting to believe the former and not wanting to believe the latter.)
Fantastic exchange! Way to bring the ghost committee back to the main topic of BoM ancient textuality: find outlandish meaning in something meaningless may end up discovering the other things you thought were meaningful is also just a coincidence!
Kolby's review and mini case study of the Josiah Stowel & 1826 Jo Smith Jr trial was terrific. The story of various people's efforts to track down the old records & verify the evidence is a case study in itself! I happen to be re-reading David Persuitte's Joseph Smith & the Origins of the Book of Mormon 2nd ed (2000). It is the first book I read on Mormonism & the BoM after many years as a NeverMo in Utah, not long after its release. I was stunned at how totally nuts & epic Joseph Smith's life was, and shocked that in this day & age anyone believed his gold bible. Little did I understand indoctrination & high control religions at the time. Anyway, I read Chapter 4: The 1826 "Trial" before listening to this episode. The transcript of J Stowel's testimony is fascinating - he claims Joseph never deceived him yet never found anything of value - well but the feather! (an obvious plant). I wonder if Simpson Stowel, a fellow money digger who connected Josiah to Smith, was in on the con & cut of Josiah's glass looker pay to Joseph. One quick note - Persuitte comments that the case was most likely an "examination" i.e. a preliminary hearing in today's legal world. That explains some of the procedural discrepancies apologists cite + the "leg bail." It was a pre-trial hearing. That said, Judge Neely found Smith Guilty - meaning enough evidence to bring to trial. Thought the lawyers would like that clarification, I know it was not a focus of the episode & most details were correct as I read them. BTW highly recommend Persuitte's book. Now that I have done a deep dive into Mormonism it is so much clearer to me.
Another banger episode. Probably going to cost me my relationships with family and partner, but hey, how can you deny these facts and evidences unless your living "under a shed", I mean rock. 😂.
I'd just like to point out that Mary Whitmer's account about brother Nephi as Co oberating the 3 times that Nephi gets mentioned in the Times and Seasons I think it is, as not a mistake about the angel Moroni, but that the narrative that the Angel was in fact known as Nephi in the early 1830's period of the church before the angel's name was canonized as Moroni.
The Ghost Committee theory makes a lot of sense. For one thing, a very reliable source has disclosed to me that the ghost of Pepé Le Pew is the one who insisted on the use of the word "adieu". The ghost of Edward Teach wanted the relevant Reformed Egyptian expression to be translated as "Now be gone with you". But Pepé Le Pew made such a big stink about his preference that Edward yielded and resigned from the committee.
We also have to remember how young Joseph was when he began his journey of faith in addition to the era, which embraced folk magic and magical world thinking and understood very little about science. Even in when I was in high school in the early 1980s, a group of Born Again kids held a mini-revival which bestowed all participants with the Gift of Speaking In Tongues. I was told it sounded like gibberish to me because I was not given the Gift of Interpretation. My best friend believed the Tongue he had been given was Latin, but I was hanging out with my friends in Latin class during my lunch break, so… I knew it definitely wasn’t Latin. Especially if you are young, impressionable and believe in miracles and magic, you can falsely believe a lot of stuff. And feel that you had all manner of supernatural experiences. After War of the Worlds and the moon landing - alien abductions became a phenomenon.
AI will possibly play an excellent role in the future, with helping us discover more anomolies and anochronisms with Book of Mormon research. This ghost committee is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. The deep desire to believe drives people to complete rediculousness.
Early Modern English--- Catholic Doxology in English. also Shakespeare. Angel under the shed. Under the shed just means inside of a shed building. Because a shed just sheds water, it is not a building with raised wooden floor. Also- notice how Witness accounts with angels are not consistent as to the ontological or morphology. The same angel Moroni is represented as a different kind of angel from one account to another. Mormons today say that angels, humans and gods are of the same genetic species at different levels of development-- not shape-shifters.
I realize Skousen and Carmack’s research doesn’t provide any real support for BoM historicity. But, my understanding from McClellan is that the English in the KJV was outdated when it was published. It borrowed heavily from Tyndale’s translations. I’m not a historian, but it seems quite possible Smith had access to Tyndale either directly or through the sermons and teachings of ministers.
I'm struggling to understand why God would want book of mormon to be translated with any EmodE in it when it's being translated in 19th century for people of that age?!!!?!
The takeaway lesson for me from many of these witness accounts (including those concerning the slippery treasure) is that we should never, never, never underestimate or dismiss the power and gift of....frontier booze.
@@randyjordan5521 I wouldn't be surprised if Mary Whitmer had been sampling some when she had her experience with Nephi/Moroni. And a jug of cider along was probably an essential item to take along on any serious treasure digging expedition. It just stands to reason that the boys would need to imbibe some spirits to fortify their spirits in anticipation of dealing with the treasure-guarding spirits. ;o)
I have to believe Colby was not calling RFM Shurly, Colby was referring to RFMs possible 5th or even 10th eternal wife only if RFM and surely return to the cult.
Probably. I don't know whether it would have been a majority who saw them as kooks. But the better educated and intellectual class of people in America looked at the magical-world-view people as being deluded, backwards and foolish for their beliefs in magic and the silly things they did based thereon. If you read what Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1729 (almost 100 years before Joseph Smith became a "treasure finder") about the magical views of people who engaged in treasure digging, it's easy to see that he was talking about people doing exactly what Joseph Smith, Sr., Joseph Smith, Jr. and their neighbors were doing and how their delusions made them poor by diverting them from productive activities. (You can read Franklin's thoughts on the matter of "poor deluded money-hunters" in Benjamin Franklin, The Busy-Body, No. 8, March 27, 1729. Available online at the "Founders Archives" site.)
Benjamin Franklin wrote a piece in 1729 about delusional money hunters who believe in magic and how foolish they were. I wouldn't know what the percentages would have been with regard to how Americans viewed such things. But Franklin's take indicates that among the educated classes the things that JS and friends were doing with seer stones and money digging activities, etc. looked like backwards, ignorant nonsense.
@@TEAM__POSEID0N Franklin's article is titled "The Busy-Body, No. 8, 27 March 1729", and is on the internet. It's fascinating that Franklin "debunked" the money-digging craze a full century before Joseph Smith practiced it. The only money made from Smith's venture was the $14 a month Josiah Stowell paid him. A modern-day equivalent of this phenomenon would be people who still pay money to fortune-tellers/psychics in hopes of being told something productive to their lives.
Didn’t nephi show old mother whitmer his monkey in the box? That was the funniest episode ever this year where you went over that story RFM. I’ve never seen you laugh so hard before. 😂
Kolby, in curious how Fanny Alger is your grandmother? I thought she left the Mormons and married someone else and lived her life in Indiana. Did her posterity join Mormonism later on?
You’re correct about Fanny essentially having nothing to do with Mormonism later on. I believe my Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather on that side converted after he survived the attack on Pearl Harbor.
@@KolbyReddish Kolby, you're an excellent presenter and a credit to the entire Alger clan. :-) I would love to know if Fanny ever said anything more about her fling with Joseph, but it's doubtful. It appears that she was ashamed to have been duped by a powerful man while she was a teenager, and was too embarrassed to talk about it later in life. I do know that she got married to a non-Mormon shortly after she left Kirtland. It's possible that she never even mentioned it to her husband. I also don't know anything about Martha Brotherton after she exposed Joseph's polygamous proposition to her in 1842. I know that her sister Elizabeth plural married Parley P. Pratt, but I haven't learned what happened to Martha.
@@KolbyReddish Yeah, that's what the history books say. Too bad that some people who were involved in major historical events didn't realize it at the time. Fanny was just a naive teen girl who felt lucky to get some attention from the Lard's prophet. I'm just glad that people like William Law and Ebenezer Robinson were willing to tell what they knew about Joseph Smith late in their lives.
@@KolbyReddish wow. I bet that’s an interesting story. That seems wild that her posterity ended up in the church. Maybe she led your great grandparents to the truth from the other side. 😊
Here’s a question for Austin that may be neither here or there but why all the stories trying to prove there were golden plates when JS didn’t even use them? He used the rock in the hat. Didn’t even need the plates. Obviously he didn’t have them nor did he translate anything with his seer stone. All nonsense. 😂
How does the "power of suggestion* explain Eucharistic transformations and incorruptible saints? Healings at Lourdes and people who witnessed the miracle of the sun that weren't there like people driving? The tilma of Juan Diego the shroud of turin? Seems like 'power of suggestion" isn't a very compelling explanation
@@BryceCarmony You have to establish such things with something more than an assertion that "they all exist". For example, what's the actual body of objective evidence that serves as proof of something like an "incorruptible saint" or a "Eucharistic transformation" (while using a reasonable definition of each)? I know this is not the place for a treatise and those are miracles from a different faith tradition than the Mormon faith tradition that is the subject here. But I suspect that the assertion may not hold up very well when subjected to rigorous examination and scrutiny from people who have no confirmation bias. I mean there are "healings" at tent revivals too, that many people will adamantly insist and testify "really happened". A few years back there was a guy who testified that he was taken up through 11 levels of reality to the highest level and was told about things that would happen in the near future, including the transformation of the earth (a living being reportedly known as 'Gaia' or 'Sophia' in higher realms) into a higher-vibration living place on which worthy humans would be simultaneously also transformed into immortal beings. His only problem was that he predicted an exact date in 2013...and it didn't happen. For some reason, his following dwindled precipitously after that. But he asserted that everything he experienced and was saying was all true and really happened.
![The Case of the Boy Who Killed His Little Sister [RFM 380]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OtmeOnas9jE/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Case of the Boy Who Killed His Little Sister [RFM 380]](/img/tr.png)
![Archaeology Proves the Book of Mormon? [RFM 376]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7KKd8aUMm4Q/mqdefault.jpg)
!["The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon" The Light and Truth Letter Chapter 2 [RFM 374]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YdoNpRKGMRQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I hope this series doesn't fall by the wayside. It's been very informative. Please do continue in January.
“you start asking questions, next thing you know you’re marrying your neighbors wife.” 🤣
Thanks!
I sure appreciate your research. This was so good that I am going to send it to my TBM brother who is an attorney. He has hung his hat on the witnesses as proof of the Book of Mormon ‘s existence. This might break his witness shelf. Thanks foe shining light and truth on the so called “Light and Truth” letter. Great work!
I've heard RFM and Bill Reel talk about how unusual it would be for someone to be "under the shed." I'm a rancher who has several structures that would be called sheds. It isn't unusual for someone to say "under the shed." Sheds can have no sides, like a hay shed, so we say something like, "park that tractor under the hay shed." Even with sheds that have 3 or 4 sides, it wouldn't be unusual to say, "we put those heifers under the shed." So maybe the angel was under the shed in the form of a toad, but at least in my neck of the woods it would be more unusual to say the angel was "under the bed" than "under the shed."
That would definitely make sense as an expression, particularly in connection with open-sided "sheds" (i.e. a roof that only provides a form of shelter from rain and snow falling from above). IIRC, someone who had studied this account from Mormon history had researched the nature of the "shed" reference and had determined that it would have been an enclosed shed (with walls and a door) having no space between the ground and the floor. I can't vouch for whether that's accurate or not. Either way, we're still left with a nutty story about a teleporting angel hiding out in or under a shed. I sometimes wonder if Mormonism started out as an "Onion" like spoof by Joseph Smith...but turned into a "serious" religion when he found out (presaging the truism attributed to P.T. Barnum many years later) that a certain kind of person is indeed born every minute.
I was under the impression that we have the shed 🤷🏼♂️
I've had raccoons, possums, groundhogs, and skunks under my shed, but no angels---yet.
Maybe a salamander or two.
These podcasts are top notch. I would be interested in somebody doing a podcast on William Law. Merry Christmas one and all.
That’s a topic I’ve wanted to dig into-potentially as a short biography of sorts.
As a teenager, I read "The Devil in Massachusetts" which gave psychological reasons why a few girls in Salem, Massachusetts were "afflicted" by witches. At the time, when everyone believed in witchcraft, it was logical to assume that witches were the cause of the girls' affliction, and thus, people were executed on the basis of witnesses. Recently, a reporter was attacked in a town near mine just because he was a television reporter. The man who attacked him said he was a Marine who was protecting our country from people like the reporter. Mass hysteria rules. If people believe in nonsense, they'll kill for it. Presumably, I will die of cancer before April or May 2025 although I may still be limping along in hospice then. Looking forward to more programs if I'm around.
I hope you're able to enjoy whatever time you have - we are indeed surrounded by crazy delusions... ❤
Stephen Murphy is awesome.
Being an apologist means never having to pay off on a bet.
28:19 Facinating points. All three witnesses were excommunicated or forced out for accusations made about JSs behaviors. No apologist addresses these claims.
Love hanging out with you guys! But I have no more papers to grade. I’ll have to fold laundry.
Moved and listening while unpacking. Anybody need boxes and bubble wrap; gently used?
I’m glade the light on truth letter was written this has been such a great comprehensive walk through. I hope you guys can finish it. Thanks
“You evicorate him so thoroughly” 😂
Thanks and Merry Christmas!
Trying to follow this episode was difficult. You both were forging ahead so fast you lost me half way. When RFM kept mispronouncing Tyndale’s name I gave up trying.
Another important episode, glad the co-counsels are tackling the Light on Truth apologetic, er Austin's Got Leading & Disingenous Questions without doing the Work, letter.
I understand why RFM was making the case in the 1st section that if believers accept the 3 witness claims, then their follow-up statements after being ex'd or leaving (barring any evidence of lying) should be also accepted. I get the logic but not the conclusion. I am guessing many of us trust the latter statements of the 3 over the former so the reverse is not accurate. But it should follow the same logic. Humans regularly lie, mislead, go along with the crowd, or are inconsistent in different circumstances. I think Kolby's addition that different evidence has different standards of evaluation & value is more on point. Starting with past priors - like Jo Smith's history of magic, juggling, telling tall tales and cheating people, and if I remember correctly him drafting the witness statement for the 3 to sign onto, gives strong reasons to discount their plates witness while accepting their later disillusioned and independent statements. But hey, I am just a rando NeverMo on the internet not a lawyer or an ExMo ;)
Actually, I would say that the post-excommunication statements of the "witnesses" have more credibility for the simple fact that they made those statements independently and in their own words (albeit influenced by reputational concerns that may have limited them from being to honest and departing too far from the narrative supported by their previous joint statement). In contrast to their post-excom statements, the official "testimonies" (one for the 3 and one for the 8) that the church uses (and prints in the Book of Mormon) as evidence for the Book of Mormon were dictated by Joseph Smith to Oliver Cowdery as joint statements for the witnesses to jointly accept. The only role the witnesses had in that process was to allow their names to be affixed to Joseph Smith's description of what they supposedly "witnessed". It would be like a defendant in a case dictating to his defense attorney a joint witness statement for certain key witnesses (all relatives of the defendant and/or participants in the scheme that the defendant is on trial for) expected to testify on his behalf...and then getting the key witnesses to agree to affix their names to the joint statement prepared for them by the defendant. The value of such "evidence" in court for the defendant's claims would obviously be zero or as close to zero as anything can get, being instead simply evidence of orchestration, collusion and coaching between the defendant and the witnesses . (What I got from RFM's point was that people who believe the faith-promoting original "testimonies" but reject the later testimonies need to explain why they accept the former and not the latter in a way that makes logical sense. And the conclusion is that they would have no explanation other than wanting to believe the former and not wanting to believe the latter.)
Fantastic exchange! Way to bring the ghost committee back to the main topic of BoM ancient textuality: find outlandish meaning in something meaningless may end up discovering the other things you thought were meaningful is also just a coincidence!
That ghost committee section was such a riot 😂
Kolby's review and mini case study of the Josiah Stowel & 1826 Jo Smith Jr trial was terrific. The story of various people's efforts to track down the old records & verify the evidence is a case study in itself!
I happen to be re-reading David Persuitte's Joseph Smith & the Origins of the Book of Mormon 2nd ed (2000). It is the first book I read on Mormonism & the BoM after many years as a NeverMo in Utah, not long after its release. I was stunned at how totally nuts & epic Joseph Smith's life was, and shocked that in this day & age anyone believed his gold bible. Little did I understand indoctrination & high control religions at the time.
Anyway, I read Chapter 4: The 1826 "Trial" before listening to this episode. The transcript of J Stowel's testimony is fascinating - he claims Joseph never deceived him yet never found anything of value - well but the feather! (an obvious plant). I wonder if Simpson Stowel, a fellow money digger who connected Josiah to Smith, was in on the con & cut of Josiah's glass looker pay to Joseph.
One quick note - Persuitte comments that the case was most likely an "examination" i.e. a preliminary hearing in today's legal world. That explains some of the procedural discrepancies apologists cite + the "leg bail." It was a pre-trial hearing. That said, Judge Neely found Smith Guilty - meaning enough evidence to bring to trial.
Thought the lawyers would like that clarification, I know it was not a focus of the episode & most details were correct as I read them. BTW highly recommend Persuitte's book. Now that I have done a deep dive into Mormonism it is so much clearer to me.
Another banger episode. Probably going to cost me my relationships with family and partner, but hey, how can you deny these facts and evidences unless your living "under a shed", I mean rock. 😂.
I'd just like to point out that Mary Whitmer's account about brother Nephi as Co oberating the 3 times that Nephi gets mentioned in the Times and Seasons I think it is, as not a mistake about the angel Moroni, but that the narrative that the Angel was in fact known as Nephi in the early 1830's period of the church before the angel's name was canonized as Moroni.
Totally love your deep dives into bizarre Mormon history👏
Phenomenal 👏 👏 👏
GREAT episode. THANK YOU both ...... and Merry Christmas from Denmark ❤
Interesting as always. Thanks for the ideas.
Excellent work, guys!
Great episode!
The more honest Mormon apologists usually get shitcanned
The Ghost Committee theory makes a lot of sense. For one thing, a very reliable source has disclosed to me that the ghost of Pepé Le Pew is the one who insisted on the use of the word "adieu". The ghost of Edward Teach wanted the relevant Reformed Egyptian expression to be translated as "Now be gone with you". But Pepé Le Pew made such a big stink about his preference that Edward yielded and resigned from the committee.
😂 haha! Way to stick to your guns, Pepe! We all know he never gives up on something or someone he cares about.
We also have to remember how young Joseph was when he began his journey of faith in addition to the era, which embraced folk magic and magical world thinking and understood very little about science.
Even in when I was in high school in the early 1980s, a group of Born Again kids held a mini-revival which bestowed all participants with the Gift of Speaking In Tongues.
I was told it sounded like gibberish to me because I was not given the Gift of Interpretation.
My best friend believed the Tongue he had been given was Latin, but I was hanging out with my friends in Latin class during my lunch break, so…
I knew it definitely wasn’t Latin.
Especially if you are young, impressionable and believe in miracles and magic, you can falsely believe a lot of stuff.
And feel that you had all manner of supernatural experiences.
After War of the Worlds and the moon landing - alien abductions became a phenomenon.
More, please ❤
The ghost committee in heaven is peak Mormonism. 😂 💀 👻
Hello from Pahrump, Nevada
I’m from Caliente, NV!
Didn't James Strang have witnesses?
I like this argument of Early Modern English argument vs19th century common huckleberry language.
Genuine frontier gibberish.
AI will possibly play an excellent role in the future, with helping us discover more anomolies and anochronisms with Book of Mormon research. This ghost committee is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. The deep desire to believe drives people to complete rediculousness.
I need a Marvin Gaye....❤
Beetlejuice inspired the ghost committee idea.
Early Modern English--- Catholic Doxology in English. also Shakespeare. Angel under the shed. Under the shed just means inside of a shed building. Because a shed just sheds water, it is not a building with raised wooden floor. Also- notice how Witness accounts with angels are not consistent as to the ontological or morphology. The same angel Moroni is represented as a different kind of angel from one account to another. Mormons today say that angels, humans and gods are of the same genetic species at different levels of development-- not shape-shifters.
Pronunciation correction: Fatima in Portugal is fa-ta-ma, not fa-tee-ma
I realize Skousen and Carmack’s research doesn’t provide any real support for BoM historicity. But, my understanding from McClellan is that the English in the KJV was outdated when it was published. It borrowed heavily from Tyndale’s translations.
I’m not a historian, but it seems quite possible Smith had access to Tyndale either directly or through the sermons and teachings of ministers.
I'm struggling to understand why God would want book of mormon to be translated with any EmodE in it when it's being translated in 19th century for people of that age?!!!?!
Haha, RFM, you do remember you promised 6hr on Friday?! ❤
The takeaway lesson for me from many of these witness accounts (including those concerning the slippery treasure) is that we should never, never, never underestimate or dismiss the power and gift of....frontier booze.
Joseph Smith's family made their own beer or cider.
@@randyjordan5521 I wouldn't be surprised if Mary Whitmer had been sampling some when she had her experience with Nephi/Moroni. And a jug of cider along was probably an essential item to take along on any serious treasure digging expedition. It just stands to reason that the boys would need to imbibe some spirits to fortify their spirits in anticipation of dealing with the treasure-guarding spirits. ;o)
@@randyjordan5521 I imagine it was an essential item for treasure-finding expeditions. Mary Whitmer probably did a lot of sampling too. ;o)
Why do Ward Radio's video thumbnails always look like snapshots of laughing people from the Great & Spacious Building?
I have to believe Colby was not calling RFM Shurly, Colby was referring to RFMs possible 5th or even 10th eternal wife only if RFM and surely return to the cult.
I wonder if the people who believed in what we now call magic word view, were see by a majority of Americans as having extremist ideas?
Probably. I don't know whether it would have been a majority who saw them as kooks. But the better educated and intellectual class of people in America looked at the magical-world-view people as being deluded, backwards and foolish for their beliefs in magic and the silly things they did based thereon. If you read what Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1729 (almost 100 years before Joseph Smith became a "treasure finder") about the magical views of people who engaged in treasure digging, it's easy to see that he was talking about people doing exactly what Joseph Smith, Sr., Joseph Smith, Jr. and their neighbors were doing and how their delusions made them poor by diverting them from productive activities. (You can read Franklin's thoughts on the matter of "poor deluded money-hunters" in Benjamin Franklin, The Busy-Body, No. 8, March 27, 1729. Available online at the "Founders Archives" site.)
Well, when you think about it, all religious belief is based in a magical world view.
Benjamin Franklin wrote a piece in 1729 about delusional money hunters who believe in magic and how foolish they were. I wouldn't know what the percentages would have been with regard to how Americans viewed such things. But Franklin's take indicates that among the educated classes the things that JS and friends were doing with seer stones and money digging activities, etc. looked like backwards, ignorant nonsense.
@@TEAM__POSEID0N Franklin's article is titled "The Busy-Body, No. 8, 27 March 1729", and is on the internet.
It's fascinating that Franklin "debunked" the money-digging craze a full century before Joseph Smith practiced it. The only money made from Smith's venture was the $14 a month Josiah Stowell paid him.
A modern-day equivalent of this phenomenon would be people who still pay money to fortune-tellers/psychics in hopes of being told something productive to their lives.
Didn’t nephi show old mother whitmer his monkey in the box? That was the funniest episode ever this year where you went over that story RFM. I’ve never seen you laugh so hard before. 😂
So do you velieve that we live in isolation and there are not other dimensions that we can connect with or touch from tume to time?
Surprise Spring break show?!?!?...
Kolby, in curious how Fanny Alger is your grandmother? I thought she left the Mormons and married someone else and lived her life in Indiana. Did her posterity join Mormonism later on?
You’re correct about Fanny essentially having nothing to do with Mormonism later on. I believe my Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather on that side converted after he survived the attack on Pearl Harbor.
@@KolbyReddish Kolby, you're an excellent presenter and a credit to the entire Alger clan. :-)
I would love to know if Fanny ever said anything more about her fling with Joseph, but it's doubtful. It appears that she was ashamed to have been duped by a powerful man while she was a teenager, and was too embarrassed to talk about it later in life. I do know that she got married to a non-Mormon shortly after she left Kirtland. It's possible that she never even mentioned it to her husband.
I also don't know anything about Martha Brotherton after she exposed Joseph's polygamous proposition to her in 1842. I know that her sister Elizabeth plural married Parley P. Pratt, but I haven't learned what happened to Martha.
@ my understanding is that Fanny would essentially say she never wanted to talk about it after she left the Smith household.
@@KolbyReddish Yeah, that's what the history books say. Too bad that some people who were involved in major historical events didn't realize it at the time. Fanny was just a naive teen girl who felt lucky to get some attention from the Lard's prophet.
I'm just glad that people like William Law and Ebenezer Robinson were willing to tell what they knew about Joseph Smith late in their lives.
@@KolbyReddish wow. I bet that’s an interesting story. That seems wild that her posterity ended up in the church. Maybe she led your great grandparents to the truth from the other side. 😊
Here’s a question for Austin that may be neither here or there but why all the stories trying to prove there were golden plates when JS didn’t even use them? He used the rock in the hat. Didn’t even need the plates. Obviously he didn’t have them nor did he translate anything with his seer stone. All nonsense. 😂
I don’t think “mean” was a synonym for “cruel” until the Edwardian era. The original meaning of “mean” was cheap/frugal/ungenerous.
Strange also found plates and had witnesses.
I thought RFM's joke about Tikla's name was totally uncalled for.
💯 😂
It was piss poor.
Found the razor
Open open open
How does the "power of suggestion* explain Eucharistic transformations and incorruptible saints? Healings at Lourdes and people who witnessed the miracle of the sun that weren't there like people driving? The tilma of Juan Diego the shroud of turin?
Seems like 'power of suggestion" isn't a very compelling explanation
Were we talking about those things? Not in the slightest. You’d have to be establish those things actually exist first too.
@KolbyReddish they all exist
@@BryceCarmony You have to establish such things with something more than an assertion that "they all exist". For example, what's the actual body of objective evidence that serves as proof of something like an "incorruptible saint" or a "Eucharistic transformation" (while using a reasonable definition of each)? I know this is not the place for a treatise and those are miracles from a different faith tradition than the Mormon faith tradition that is the subject here. But I suspect that the assertion may not hold up very well when subjected to rigorous examination and scrutiny from people who have no confirmation bias. I mean there are "healings" at tent revivals too, that many people will adamantly insist and testify "really happened". A few years back there was a guy who testified that he was taken up through 11 levels of reality to the highest level and was told about things that would happen in the near future, including the transformation of the earth (a living being reportedly known as 'Gaia' or 'Sophia' in higher realms) into a higher-vibration living place on which worthy humans would be simultaneously also transformed into immortal beings. His only problem was that he predicted an exact date in 2013...and it didn't happen. For some reason, his following dwindled precipitously after that. But he asserted that everything he experienced and was saying was all true and really happened.
The fact that only Catholics believe most of that nonsense should be your guide to their veracity.
The shroud of Turin is an obvious fake.