By far the best channel on evidences for the authenticity of our church. Most channels either look away from the evidence or look away from the possible hard questions, but you succeed in bring the truth to the surface.
For me, the most remarkable thing Joseph Smith ever did, from a naturalistic standpoint, is found in the level of literary refinement. The awkward wording scattered throughout the 1830 Book of Mormon may create the illusion that the text is not highly refined. Yet, multiple observations demonstrate that Smith’s first oral draft met virtually all of the goals of content editing, redrafting, and revising: • Intertwining 77 storylines with impressive continuity. • Mentioning 147 geographical locations over 670 times with only two mistakes. • Referencing 207 individuals 3,780 times, apparently misappropriating one or two names but maintaining strict character identification accuracy. • Portraying two genealogies extended beyond twenty generations flawlessly. • Inserting hundreds of timestamps that comply precisely with textual chronological requirements. • Including over 63 religious discussions where Book of Mormon speakers expound dozens of Christian religious teachings with remarkable coherence and notable nuance. • Interweaving hundreds of heading outlines, editorial promises, and internal prophecies that are precisely fulfilled later in the narrative. While this list could be further expanded, these observations support that the first oral draft left Joseph Smith’s lips with a high level of literary accuracy and periodic eloquence.
A useful video for Warren Jeffs followers struggling with their Testimonies over the authenticity of the book of mormon. I think today's Brighamite Salt Lake HQ Mormons conveniently want to forget there are over a hundred different Mormon Latter Day saint organisations/churches/cults (depending on your view of them) all with their own respective Prophets, Apostles and Testimonies and Holy Ghost guidance that trace their line-authority back to founder Joseph Smith. Not sure how the RLDS (now Community of Christ) view the book of mormon these days.
Disclaimer- i recorded this episode before my interview with William Davis- it just took a bit to edit. So theres a point about complexity and memory and the geography and Jaredite Kings. I still think this is a complex feature and requires a great memory, but dont think this is beyond human ability as Davis demonstrated. But i've kept it in there anyway.
Yeah, it's just one of the many things that had to be performed perfectly. I don't think Joseph sat there hiding from Emma memorizing his ideas for Ether.
I disagree with you. Even if Joseph had some hidden “headings” for laying down heads, there is no way that he did this day after day for 2-3 months worth of work without a major slip of a witness seeing a resource or manuscript or making a major blunder while dictating with his head in a hat. I do not believe the dictation of the Book of Mormon was humanly possible given witness testimony of how it happened, even with resources unless God was involved in the dictation moments just before the pen hit the paper.
That sure seems far from a clear revelation and factual information. Is Jesus just as confused and unsure as you are? Why doesn’t he just tell us all so that we’re not left wondering as we are? Why is it that after, what, close to 200 years later, we still have to scratch our heads about these questions and speculate? What a mess.
@@Kaydubbbb The fact that opposes your view is that there is no evidence that the people described in the BOM lived anywhere in the Americas. If those people never existed, then Joseph produced the fictional book somehow.
@@randyjordan5521 Christ taught us how to know if His words were true. It’s not by archaeology or physical proof. John 7:17. You can also know if the translation of the Book of Mormon is from Christ in the same way. There is a ton of evidence here that should make one read and study for themselves instead of dismissing the Book of Mormon. I can tell it is from Christ because it brings me closer to Him when I spend time reading it, in the same way that the Bible brings me closer to Christ.
Great episode! Bountiful and the finding of Nahum’s grave were huge evidences for me. That helped me to want to continue reading, praying, and gaining a testimony that it was true and ultimately baptized.
The "Nahum" find is not evidence at all. Nahum is an ancient Hebrew name. There was a prophet Nahum and a Book of Nahum in the Old Testament. So, finding a stone with that name carved on it in the Middle East is not remarkable. In fact, if that item truly was evidence that the "Book of Mormon people" traveled through that area, then there should be 1000 more such stone carvings found in the Americas, where the"Book of Mormon people" allegedly lived for 1000 years and grew into populations of hundreds of thousands. We should be able to find stone etchings with major Book of Mormon characters' and kings' names on them, and written in their native language of Hebrew. Because no such items have been found in the Americas, then the "Nahum" carving in the Middle East is nothing more than coincidental.
Randy, why don't you just admit that no evidence would ever be acceptable to you? Nahom and areas matching Bountiful are bulls eyes...that Joseph could not have known.
If you want a good way to judge the evidence, consider that in the 194 years since the BOM was published, not a single non-Mormon scholar has agreed that it is an authentic history of people who lived in ancient America.
@@randyjordan5521 Yeah, cuz people tend to find proof of things and then not proceed to believe them, right? Why would someone with knowledge of the truth of the BoM remain a non-Mormon? Why would their credibility as a non-Mormon be affected by them becoming a Mormon based on objective information? How does objective information become Mormon information? What is the difference?
@@randyjordan5521 that one really cracks me up. There are many scholars who have come to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is authentic. Once they do, they are wise enough to not be non-Mormons any more!! Had to chuckle there.
@@Kaydubbbb That's an extremely unintelligent statement. If the BOM is literally true, it should be true for Mormon and non-Mormon scholars alike. No Mormon scholars conclude that the BOM is authentic because of actual evidence; they do so solely because of their religious faith That is why no non-Mormon scholars accept the BOM; it's because it's strictly a religious prospect, not a real-world issue. If the BOM is authentic, and those hundreds of thousands of Semitic/Hebrew people occupied the Americas from 600 BC to 400 AD, then those people would be duly noted in our scholarly textbooks, papers, articles, documentaries, etc. The Lehites, Nephites, Lamanites, etc. would be documented and taught about just as are the Mayans, Aztecs, Iroquois, Sioux, Cherokee, or any other large Pre-Columbian Amerind tribe. The fact that the "Book of Mormon people" are only mentioned in apologetic works by religious believers, and not in any peer-reviewed, secular, scholarly productions, means that the BOM is a matter of religious belief, not scientific fact.
Excellent video! Thanks for the compilation of such evidence. Another one that most critics will avoid like the plague. Safer to stay in an echo chamber where people will tell you what you want to hear.
Nice compilation Murph. So many evidences. Like Pres Holland said, if you walk away from the truths of the Book of Mormon you’ve go to crawl … to get away.
@@wendyfoster5579 what about those books is laughable??? First Book of Napoleon is written exactly like the BoM and was available to Joe Smith. View of the Hebrews is the same story Jews land in America and split into 2 groups like the BoM also written before the BoM and available to Joe Smith.
@@monyetgoblog7038None of that is true. There is no relationship to any book you mention. The Book of Mormon was not borrowed from a book, it was translated from plates given to him and the process of translation took less than two months. It was not made up. Obviously you are biased and never read it, otherwise you would be converted by the Spirit.
I love the intro and I enjoy your channel. Thank you so much for everything you do. I've been to Ireland 4 times but never to Nor'n Iron, unfortunately, but I love your island in any case.
8:49 Very much looking forward to seeing proponents of the naturalistic theory for the Book of Mormon directly respond to all of Murph’s questions presented here 👀
Excellent summary, Murph! I'm glad you put all these 10 points in favor of the Book of Mormon's authenticity into one reasonably short video. I enjoyed watching this, and I remember watching the various video clips you shared in their original video sources, so I can see that I've watched many of the same videos you have. I saw young Kwaku in one of the videos at timestamp 51:45 :) - He and the Ward Radio folks are also awesome :) - It's also refreshing to hear arguments in favor of the Mesoamerican model all summarized like this. I guess I've been watching too many Heartlander model videos lately and they are getting quite tiresome to me. I feel like I've listened to their arguments enough now to know their positions quite well, yet still greatly favor the Mesoamerican models. For me it boils down chiefly to being one who believes that both science and faith are crucial vs. some folks who are inclined to embrace one while rejecting the other, or else distorting one to make it conform to the other.
It seems to me that events described in the Book of Mormon do not describe the entirety of what was happening on the larger regional scale. For example in Mormon 1:6, Mormon was carried by his father, also named Mormon into the land southward. Who carries 11 year old kids on their backs? Could Mormon not have been easily carried in a boat from the heartland area?
First Book of Napoleon and View of the Hebrews prove it is a lie. Also by their works you'll know them. #1 in paid phub subscriptions and anti-depressant prescriptions tells me everything I need to know about LDS.
" It's also refreshing to hear arguments in favor of the Mesoamerican model all summarized like this. I guess I've been watching too many Heartlander model videos lately and they are getting quite tiresome to me." If the BOM is authentic, the question of where its events occurred should have been settled shortly after it was published. The very fact that two different camps of BOM believers speculate the location of its events thousands of miles away from each other obviously means that there is no evidence in either location to support the story.
This is one of your best pieces and great video to share. Thank you for your sacrifice and effort, you are making a positive influence for the gospel of Jesus Christ!
Loved this video. I too find undeniable certain literary evidences within the text. That said, Joseph’s fingerprints are all over the BOM, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the nature of revelation/translation, however you want to put it. Also, even if you take the BOM’s perfect truthfulness at face value, the domino logic used to promote prophetic infallibility or at least blind obedience to prophets is fallacious.
This whole conversation could be solved once and for all if President Nelson held a press conference announcing that the Angel Moroni has delivered the gold plates back to earth for all of the scientific community to examine. My question to the faithful LDS members would be, Would you be excited for this event or would you let out a collective “Oh No!”
I think it might have been Dawkins who said that even if he met God, he would assume it was a hallucination, so therefore, it would be impossible for him to believe.
The thing is that if we needed to see the plates to believe then we would want to see Moses' stone plates to believe or to see the tombs of the Apostles of Christ to believe….. This is about faith….
@@Irvingdector Exactly my point. Why do LDS people have this obsession to seek out “proof” of the Book of Mormon when it’s simply about faith. Believers will believe no matter what physical proof exists (or doesn’t exist) so why go through the time and effort to “prove” it.
That would be interesting, but wouldn’t solve anything because we all know that the Mormon church is an extremely wealthy corporation and can very easily afford to make gold plates with some Hodgepodge of the characters that Joseph Smith scribbled or even claim that those weren’t the real things on the plate and then there were some other type of characters. Decide to make those plates they were still running into problems because all the witnesses described the plates using very different dimensions.
@@lemjwp1756 First Book of Napoleon you need not make it past the first verse to see where the writing style came from. Written before the BoM and available to Joe Smith. View of the Hebrews same written before the BoM and available to Joe Smith. About Jews who land in America and split into 2 opposing groups. Total lack of archeological evidence on the hill Comora where you had an apparent epic battle with no artifacts. Joe Smith was a convicted fraudster.
From outside of any religion it is bizarre that watching apologist videos - everyone is convinced their religion to be true. If there was a god who was all powerful, all knowing etc who wanted us to know he existed and worship him ( another bizarre thing that an all powerful being would want us to do ) - probably the worst way of doing so would be through a book that is obviously made up by Joseph Smith who did have knowledge of things around him and was clearly good at story telling and getting people to believe him ( in those days it was probably easy as most peoples bandwidth was simply to survive each day ) no historical, no geographical - ancient Jews not really known for their sea faring exploits travelling 1000’s of miles in riderless “boats” that landed at exactly the same point in the Americas etc etc. If it is true then god only wants 0.001% of the words population to know and make Mormon missionaries jobs probably the hardest job in the world. If Tolkien had put in a religious element to Lord Of the Rings there would almost certainly be a cult that followed and worshiped Bilbo Baggins and Gandolf. Don’t want to pisd on anyone’s chips but just go watch any other religious apologetics channel and you’ll see what I mean … oh yours is really the one true religion 🤯🤯
Tolkien made Lord of the Rings in 7 years. Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon in 65 days, and then it went to print after draft 1. Our church is true because you can ask God if it's true, and he'll confirm it to you. Find out for yourself.
@@clayfullmer ok so billions of people believing in all types of deity’s - all speaking to their gods who tell them theirs is true. I guess when you are indoctrinated into it or have a disposition to believe without good provable evidence ( faith isn’t a good way of finding if something is true is it). Also is the book that you just mentioned draft 1 - exactly the same verbatim as the one you read today - oh it’s not so the translation or god couldn’t get it right and it had to be changed down the ages. Go watch an Islamic, the many many many Christian denominations apologetics Chanel and you’ll have the same reaction to 99% of people who hear about the stories of your book. Meanwhile Thor is real because I saw lightening tonight. 👍🏻
Science has discovered Hebrew DNA in the tribes of Eastern North America. Haplogroup X. You can look into that if you want secular evidence. And the Hopewell Mound Builders Civilization of Eastern North America follow the Book of Mormon timeline. And the Phoenicians were from Lebanon. A stones throw from Jerusalem. And they were the greatest seafaring people in the ancient world. Modern scientists already proved a Phoenician ship from 600 BC could easily make the journey around Africa and cross the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. So secular science is finding evidence to support the Book of Mormon.
@@clayfullmer A century ago, the LDS scholar BH Roberts concluded that Joseph Smith had the talent and the pre-existing source material to be able to write the book without any divine aid. The fact that 194 years have passed since the book was published, and there is still not one iota of physical evidence found to support the story tells us that the logical deduction is that the book is a 19th century hoax. As for your comment that God will tell you if the book is true: feelings are not facts.
@@randyjordan5521 You're exactly like the person Murph was talking about near the end of this video. It's fine if you're not persuaded by apologetic claims in favor of the church, but to say there's not "one iota" of physical evidence when you're commenting on a video with lots of evidence shows you're not arguing in good faith. A more productive (dare I say it, more adult) use of your time is to argue why you don't find the evidence in this video compelling. My guess is you didn't even watch the video.
What do opponents like Dan Vogel have to say about the evidences for the Book of Mormon (Arabian Peninsula, Hebraisms, dwindling anachronisms, etc.)? Also, why isn't there more emphasis by scholars on the Messiah ben Joseph legend?
The "Mashiach ben Yosef" concept in medieval to modern Judaism is a bit fringe. We've taken a liking to it, but I think it is highly suspect. Rabbi Ephraim Palvanov is on part 3 of a series on the subject. Only in the broadest strokes does it look anything like Jesus or Joseph Smith, in the details, almost nothing lines up, most profoundly how it isn't truly mainstream among Orthodox Jews. It seems to be more of a thought experiment and mystical derivation from Talmudic commentary.
Is this the Murph's cut of the Saints Unscripted video? Haha In the words of one of my favorite biblical scholars, all right, let's see it. So, the premise of your video, for the critics at least, is that a naturalistic explanation for the Book of Mormon's origin must account for these 10 things, right? I am going to orient my comments, then, in fitting these 10 points you raise into my favored model. In other words, if the Spaulding-Rigdon theory better explains a piece of evidence, I will refrain from using that explanation because I do not favor that model. Also, I'll probably do a response video in a month or so. Evidence 1 - I find that Brian Hales answered this one quite well. Automatic writing, or trance dictating, concords extremely well with the witness descriptions of the Book of Mormon's production. I think a combination of automatic writing techniques and the laying down of heads accounts well for the manner of production. In terms of the time frame, I've made this point many times on your videos, but I'll reiterate here for completeness, while the pace is aggressive, it is far from being outside the realm of human ability. In other words, no miracle needed for the pace. And for the development of the account, while Joseph produced the text in a short amount of time, the development process was years-long and included a draft of sorts in the form of the lost 116 pages. While I can't and won't appeal to the contents of those pages for giving insight into the production of the final text, the mere act of their production and revision gave Joseph time and opportunity to revector and further develop the text and its narrative, if needed. Finally, it is important to note that every mention of eyewitnesses that there was no other manuscript present in the BoM production is directed at shooting down the Spaulding-Rigdon theories. Though not strictly necessary, I do find it most probable that a Bible was present during the religious work of producing the Book of Mormon. Evidence 2 - The text has over 200 named characters, sure. But how is that a sign of complexity? We can't even get Zeniff named in both accounts he appears in. Most named characters disappear entirely once their tiny role is done, including 80's pop band Aha. There are named characters who serve their narrative function without a name, get named, and then vanish. The same issue with the 150 geographic locations. Multiple migrations and distinct cultures are not inherently markers of complexity. These can be wafer thin. As an example, apart from the Great Spirit, what is the Lamanite pantheon like? How does it incorporate or reject First Temple Hebraic theology? Calling it 3 calendar systems is a stretch. There are 3 separate events that mark the first referent year, but no detail on how weeks, months, festivals, holidays, etc. are marked or changed by the new "systems". The system of weights and measures is described, used once in the same narrative, and then referred to one other time. It doesn't really play into the narrative in a meaningful way. For instance, no conflict in the text is derived from the economic trade of grain to coinage. You could substitute any monetary system in to the account of Amulek being tempted with money, and the story would be otherwise unaffected. I don't get the point about complex source texts. Are we saying that the Bible is complex, therefore the BoM is too? There is one genealogy that is laid out in the Biblical style. Otherwise, it is pretty well just references to ancestors. Not sure that that's actually complex. Lineage histories, political histories, and "authentic" legal cases may be present in the text, but are not, of themselves, indicators of complexity. Complexity would be found in how these things interplay with each other. For fear of this part of the response going too long, I'll just reiterate that these supposed markers of complexity do not actually indicate complexity. Some are even considered to be bad form in writing, such as embedded flashbacks. And it is definitionally more likely that Joseph Smith dictated the entire text naturalistically than that supernatural forces were involved. I think that Spaulding-Rigdon theories are nonsense, but even they are, definitionally, more likely than the supernatural alternatives. As for picking up where he left off, Brian Hales accounts for that well in his paper on automatic writing. That's actually the point of evidence that, for me, most strongly indicates a form of automatic writing was used in producing the text. Evidence 3 - Mark Twain's point about not being able to have more confidence if the entire Smith and Whitmer families had testified is salient here. But personally, it boils down to Hume. It is more probable that the witnesses are lying, sincerely mistaken, were hallucinating, or anything else other than actually seeing a supernatural entity. A mistake that gets made by apologists is conflating Joseph Smith with Mormonism, and while the witnesses may have had their issues with Joseph Smith, it was really only Oliver Cowdery that had that issue extend to Mormonism, though even he was eventually drawn back into the movement. If he had won his bids for political office, maybe he never would have come back. Who knows? I get that this is a big point for you, but I find it to be a bit of a nothing burger. Even as a believer, this was one of the lesser reasons why I accepted the Book of Mormon's truthfulness. I just don't see how to accept the BoM witnesses, but reject the Miracle of the Sun, for instance. Or Muhammad splitting the moon. Without a clear mechanism in place to make that distinction, I'll invoke Hume's razor and look for better evidence elsewhere. Thanks to another UA-camr, I finally put together something a couple of ideas that had never clicked for me before. Remember in D&C when Oliver wants to translate and is told that he will be able to? Then he isn't able to and there's this spin about the reasons why? A critical approach recognizes that as Joseph's narrative being able to change when things don't go as he said they would. What would stop him from developing a similar narrative if he could not get three witnesses together? I do suspect that he knew full well who the three would be when he dictated the applicable sections of the BoM, with the 8 emerging as a later development (they get hinted at in the latter dictated section discussing the witnesses, but not in the former). I also see a pattern with Joseph throughout his life and ministry of making prophecies and then shifting the blame or recontextualizating when those prophecies don't come to pass. Why would this one be any different? Evidence 4 - Yeah, no. This isn't gonna work. The theology is way wrong. The idea of Lehi, Laban, and potentially Ishmael, all being wealthy refugees is historically unlikely. Some of the points I do agree with. Some of them are stretches that fit the data around the BoM claims, rather than allowing the BoM to speak for itself. For instance, the BoM does not acknowledge Asherah or her worship. The association of a fruit-bearing tree with a feminine figure is not such a wild innovation that it would require an awareness of Asherah worship. And then there are the "so what?" points, like Lehi as a fleeing prophet. Anyway, there is a surface level fit of Lehi in the context that has some interesting parallels to extra-biblical data, but there are issues as well that insufficiently accounted for by the faithful narrative, such as Lehi holding theological ideas that would not appear until after the Exile or Hellenistic intermixing with Jewish theology. Maybe take a critical look at Margaret Barker's work. I know that her scholarship is... controversial among Biblical scholars. Evidence 5 - I've done a whole hour+ long video on this topic. Basically, what it boils down to is that that text of the BoM is so vague that the sites that apologists claim as sites on the Lehite exodus boil down to being post hoc assertions. You can't use the BoM to arrive at NHM, but once you find NHM, and it doesn't contradict the BoM narrative, you can say that NHM is Nahom. However, even in that best case, the Marib altar does not call the place NHM. The altar refers to a person, the donor of the altar, as being of the NHM people. That area happens to be in the region commonly associated with the NHM people, though those borders have fluctuated historically. Okay, Joseph knew that Jerusalem was a walled city. Our one source for the idea that he didn't know that is Emma, and that source is fraught with issues of Emma bending the story to fit a narrative she wanted (or of JS3 bending her narrative to fit his own designs). But with Joseph's familiarity with Isaiah in mind, the dude would have known that Jerusalem had walls. Just like he could compose a letter. Also, the 8 year time-frame for the journey does not comport with this travel description. However, it does seem to concord well with Bible maps from the time that featured the Arabian Peninsula that made it stubbier and wider than it is in reality. Note, I'm not saying that he got all the apologetic data from maps in his time, but I am saying that what the text says itself could be explained by maps from his time. To answer your questions, the range of responses goes from it doesn't to it's so vague that you could shove just about any anything you want into that narrative. There are people who have the BoM taking place in Ethiopia or Malaysia, and they have interesting models to do it too.
Evidence 6 - Dr. Paulsen-Reed, in her doctoral dissertation on the Apocalypse of Abraham, described the methods scholars used to identify the text that only survived in Slavic manuscripts as Hebraic in origin. This relied on a historical provenance and key signs of Semitic authorship. In her paper, Dr. Paulsen-Reed notes that Hebraisms, such as chiasms, repeated use of the wa particle, and other features that we see in the Book of Mormon are present in the Apocalypse of Abraham and have been pointed to as evidence of its Semitic origin. She also calls that the "weakest evidence" for the Hebraic origin of the text, noting that those features could not readily be distinguished from "biblicizing Greek". There are other, more interesting features that really drill home the Apocalypse of Abraham's Semitic origin. The Book of Mormon lacks those features. Instead, the Book of Mormon is left with Hebraisms that are indistinguishable from "biblicizing English". And not to be too crass, but just compare the BoM Hebraisms to those found in the Book of Armaments. There are parallelisms and far too many "ands". There are probably even simple chiasms, though I've not analyzed it so closely. If/and conditionals are interesting, and a mistaken representation of how to translate the text. The particle that denotes "then" in the conditional in Hebrew can be translated as "and" in other contexts. A very similar feature appears in Japanese. Translating it that way into English would be bad form. A better explanation is that Joseph, in dictating those conditionals, either got lost in them and said "and" instead of then, believed that the "and" sounded more biblical as he was in the process of "dictating", or failed to enunciate his "then" clearly enough for Oliver/David, who wrote "and" instead of "then". Any of those explanations are more likely than the additional assumptions that would be required to make a divinely inspired translation of reformed American Egyptian of a Hebrew sermon preserve the "if/and" structure that isn't linguistically coherent in the first place. And Jershon. Good ol Jershon. There is nothing in the text that uniquely or explicitly links Jershon with inheritance. In fact, it is just as much, if not more associated with defense or protection, with the land of Nephi being the land most commonly associated with inheritance. A happy coincidence for apologists that Jershon resembles what could be a Hebrew word for land of inheritance, but, beyond that, completely unsupported by the text. "And it came to pass" constitutes 2% of the Book of Mormon text. When Brian Hales asks "where do the words come from?", a full 2% of the work is done just by pointing out that this one phrase is in the KJV. Who says that these Hebraic features appear in too much quantity to be there by mere chance? Where is that study? Who conducted the peer review? Apologists make statements like this a lot, but I'm not impressed with them as they are made without reference to actual data/analysis. Evidence 7 - Going back to the named characters issue for a moment, it is interesting that Amaleki does not name Mulek. That name appears in Helaman instead. Why aren't the named characters, in both instances where they're relevant, named? To me, that's a point against complexity. However, let's get back to Mulek himself. Note how many "could be" and "might have been" type statements appear. This is a conclusion begging for evidence, not a conclusion derived from the evidence. The biblical, archeological, historical, and genetic data all contraindicate a "Mulekite" migration to the New World. All that evidence to suggest that Zedekiah's son "Michael", who is explicitly executed by the Babylonians before Zedekiah is blinded, is the "Mike" of the Book of Mormon. I'm not sure what I need to explain away here... Evidence 8 - A great point about how we have no idea about what words would be behind a supposed English translation of the Book of Mormon. Without the source text, and especially lacking in a cultural provenance for the text, appeals to the what would have been contained in a supposed source text are critically useless for the faithful and the critic alike. The ancient names issue strikes me as parallelomania, where, as long as the consonants can be found in that sequence in some Semitic language somewhere at sometime, then it is valid as a source for the BoM name. Going back to the Apocalypse of Abraham, there is an idol god's name that works to create humor and meaningfully enhance the narrative if understood from a Semitic source. The Book of Mormon names lack that attribute. Even at the most generous, let's say that Nahom is a riff on NHM and that it means something about mourning or comfort. What does the narrative gain with that idea? What new insights can be gleaned from it? With any other name, Ishmael was still buried and the daughters still grieved. The narrative isn't enhanced by such wordplay. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the idol god is destroyed by fire and possesses the name "son of fire", for which Abraham laughingly mocks the idol god. The whole reason for Abraham's mockery is lost without the insight of the Hebrew name. I've seen no such parallel in the Book of Mormon. Evidence 9 - The primary point against this line of evidence is the lack of provenance that would actually out the Book of Mormon peoples in this or any other specific region. This isn't evidence for the Book of Mormon. This is a conclusion looking for evidence. But let me point to a specific issue. You point out that the Olmecs had a mixing of two languages around 500 BCE (300 years too early for the BoM account, but we'll see that aside). If we are able to recognize that, then it must be because of preserved writings (as no 6th century BCE speakers of the Olmec languages are alive to demonstrate). Were the writings of either of these two source languages Hebrew or Egyptian? If not, then this is not a piece of evidence I, as a critic, need to account for, as it appears to have nothing to do with the claims made by the Book of Mormon. It should be noted that Mosiah I, in his colonization of the Mulekite lands, forced the Mulekites to learn his language. The Book of Mormon does not describe a blending of languages, but the subjugation of one language and culture into another dominant language and culture. And then we jump from the Olmec as evidence to the Maya for costly apparel (which I'm having a hard time imagining that you don't recognize how thin this point is). I don't find the swords/weaponry point particularly salient, especially with the anachronisms in the text related to that. The fortifications are easily explained with reference to the Mound Builder myth and the actual mounds in North America. The seasonality of warfare also lines up well with the wars fought in Joseph's own milieu. Winter campaigns were infrequent and dangerous, even in the colonies. The technology that would enable winter campaigns is a feature of modern warfare that would not appear until after Joseph's death. Lower kings and vassalages appear as narrative features in the Bible and other stories. This is not some extraordinary convergence, but just kind of a thing that people do sometimes in structure complex societies. The building with cement is in Helaman 3, and it's not associated with the Gadiantons. The robbers hide away in the mountains. The war that eventually leads to the annihilation of Nephites begins in Zarahemla, near Sidon. I'm not seeing a match to the war you've described at all. Evidence 10 - I had a lengthy back and forth with Grover in the comments on the original video. Basically, the volcanic eruption does not align with the order of events that the text describes. The text does not describe the health consequences that would come from breathing in that much ash for that many days. The text is explicit in saying that dry would could not produce a fire that could penetrate the darkness. That doesn't seem to align with a volcanic eruption either. The duration of that thick darkness is also a problem for the idea that it was a volcanic eruption. As with several other pieces of evidence, this looks like a conclusion begging for evidence rather than actual evidence of the events described in the Book of Mormon. I think I've accounted for all 10 of these points, and my model that Joseph Smith is the sole/primary author of the Book of Mormon appears to have weathered the storm. But maybe you disagree, and I've grossly missed something really worthwhile.
Can you elaborate more on your theory of how Joseph translated the text? I’ve been looking for the best theory about how Joseph pulled it off. Is it that you think he thought it through in detail beforehand and then was able to dictate it because it’s really not that complex? For transparency, I believe the Book of Mormon and I’m just trying to determine how much weight I can place specifically on the miracle of the translation process.
@@adamb7230 I know you didn't intend on slipping the idea into your question, but I don't believe he "translated" the text. I use the word "dictated" because that lines up well with most faithful and critical models. Again, I don't think you were being "tricksy" or anything with using the word "translation", but a clarification seemed in order. Okay, to the meat of your question. This will still be a summary, but hopefully it will give you a good sense of my model. I don't think that Joseph Smith had the Book of Mormon memorized or anything like that. However, I do believe that he had most major story elements figured out before the work of dictation began. In about 1823, Joseph had an experience that led him to the idea of producing a biblical-style work detailing the origins of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, as well as answering the religious, ritual, and theological questions that were a source of strife in his own family. This was quite probably reinforced by family narratives about a family prophecy of a Smith descendant who would do some great work in aiding true Christianity. Over the next four years, Joseph prepared to do the work of writing the story that would become the Book of Mormon, but, for whatever reason, that work did not begin until 1827-8. When Joseph had Martin Harris as a partner in producing the text, he began to orally dictate the text that would become the 116 lost pages. When he got into the first couple chapters of Mosiah, he agreed to let Martin Harris show the pre-Mosiah material to his wife, Lucy. The pages were "lost", and Joseph experienced anxiety over how to reproduce the lost manuscript and to retain Martin Harris' support in the work. Whatever was contained in the lost 116 pages, or however they were produced, is a matter lost to time with the pages themselves. I will not speculate on their contents. It is apparent that this event had a significant impact on Joseph, as references to it appear in multiple places in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. In late 1828-9, Joseph was introduced to Oliver Cowdery and the pair worked together in the Whitmer home to produce the text of the Book of Mormon. Textual and metatextual evidence suggests that Joseph Smith dictated the text through a combination of laying of heads and automatic or trance writing. The heads do appear in the text itself, which is evidence for that method, while information such as the stone in the hat and the "picking up where he left off without breaks" is consistent with automatic/trance writing. The work with Oliver started with Mosiah, worked through the large plates to Mormon, through the Jaredite plates to Moroni, and then back again to the small plates. At around the time Joseph was doing this work with Oliver, he received the revelation in D&C 10, which gave him his solution to the lost 116 pages. With Moroni complete, Joseph and Oliver went back to the beginning with the "wise purpose" of the small plates. Of note, "wisdom" is frequently evoked in D&C 10, and both Nephi and Mormon refer to the small plates as a "wise purpose". Once the dictation of the small plates and Words of Mormon is completed, the manuscript is done, ready for copying and publication. As for the ideas, the Book of Mormon has a significant literary dependency on the KJV. It is apparent that the author was very familiar with the KJV, which is consistent with the profile of Joseph in his own history. In particular, the author of the Book of Mormon had to be familiar with the writings of Paul, the Gospels, Isaiah, and Genesis, with at least passing familiarity with Jeremiah, Kings, Ezekiel, the other non-Pauline NT authors, and the minor prophets. Also, the author would have been familiar with 19th century American Protestantism. Joseph familiarity with the same is attested in the D&C, other extant writings/dictations/sermons, and Joseph's own history. 2% of the text is just "and it came to pass" and its variants. Another sizable percentage is just direct KJV quotes of Isaiah. To start the work, Joseph would most likely have had, at minimum, the following story beats worked out before beginning the work with Martin. A prophet named Lehi leaves Jerusalem just before the Exile and arrives in the New World. He is the father of the previous inhabitants (in Joseph's thinking) of the American continent. His descendants form two distinct nations. The visitation of Christ to the American peoples. Their destruction. Other plot beats may have seen varying levels of development before the work started. I have my doubts that Captain Moroni was a twinkle in Joseph's eye before the dictation of Alma began, for example. But the idea of a great religiously motivated war was likely in the back of his mind, though I'll admit that the specifics there are just speculation that neither meaningfully add to nor detract from the overall model. As long as Joseph had the basic story beats formulated, he could begin the work. The loss of the 116 pages was a problem, but it was also an opportunity. Joseph had gained some practice in dictating the text, and that would have been useful for the rest of the work. He also had some time between the loss of the pages and the commencement of the work in earnest with Oliver to consider his lessons learned. The extent of how Joseph used this opportunity is up to speculation, but it cannot be ignored that he had the time and opportunity to reflect on what he had done previously. So, the tl;dr is Joseph dictated the text with a combination of laying of heads and automatic/trance writing with at least a story framework in mind at the start of the process. He relied on the KJV and 19th century American Protestantism as sources for the themes, theology, and narrative, and he incorporated other ideas from his milieu into the text. The work, especially once Oliver was involved, was completed at an aggressive, albeit altogether humanly possible, pace. I like and appreciate the Book of Mormon, but its complexity is not outside Joseph's intelligence or skill. Hope that helps!
Thank you for at least responding to the content in this video rather than tossing out tired, unrelated comments like most of those on this thread that are skeptical of Mormonism.
@@jeremyjensen7144 I don't think that any individual skeptic is obligated to explain why they aren't convinced of a claim. However, I do agree that skeptics often use that as a crutch in their discourse with those making the claim, and I would like to see more cases laid out on why each line of evidence isn't convincing, because clearly there are people who find it compelling. I've also found that laying out reasons can foster a dialogue that ends up leading me down new paths of discovery. I've spent more time on Jershon, if/and conditionals, and the Apocalypse of Abraham than I ever would have if I had not engaged meaningfully with believers and apologists.
Not a fan of the Mesoamerican evidences of the Book of Mormon because honestly, the heartland model is a whole lot more convincing to me. And even if it wasn't, there isn't sufficient Mesoamerican evidence to convince everybody that's where it was, so all a detractor has to do is point at any of the equally-convincing and competing theories.
If the BOM is authentic, the question of where its events occurred should have been settled shortly after it was published. The very fact that two different camps of BOM believers speculate the location of its events thousands of miles away from each other obviously means that there is no evidence in either location to support the story.
@@randyjordan5521 Hardly. If you eliminate all the place names and just use directions and landscape details you're not gonna place the Old Testament accurately either.
@@deathbykungfu LOL. More than half of all ancient sites mentioned in the Bible have been positively identified. That was accomplished by various means, including written records found in the locations. We cannot do the same for "Book of Mormon" cities or locales, because no such identifying evidence has ever been discovered. To illustrate the BOM's authenticity problem: scholars had speculated for many decades that Vikings had made it to the American mainland because of writings in 1000-year-old Viking sagas. Then in the 1960s, a possible Viking settlement was discovered in Newfoundland. Artifacts found at the site confirmed it to be a Viking settlement. The settlement may have been built by one shipload or people, or a small number of ships. The people might have remained in the settlement for just one year or a few years. But the investigation determined it to be an 11th-century Viking village. The BOM claims that its people occupied the Americas for 1000 years, grew into populations of hundreds of thousands, spoke and wrote in Hebrew, followed the Israelite religion and later Christianity, trained and used horses and elephants, used wheeled vehicles such as chariots, and forged metal tools and weapons. So if those people actually existed somewhere in the Americas, the evidence to prove that should be THOUSANDS of times greater than there is to document that one tiny, short-lived Viking settlement in Newfoundland.
@@randyjordan5521 Take a look at the hopewell civilization. They built thousands cities and mounds throughout North America during Book Of Mormon times.
Anachronisms have worked in our favour. Of the approximately 220 anachronism identified against the Book of Mormon, 197 have later proved to be correct. That is nearly 200 times where the Book of Mormon made a claim against the wisdom of the day, and was proved to be correct, refuting expert claims. For the remaining, it's important to understand that a lack of evidence is not an evidence of lack. At one stage each of the anachronisms were considered an evidence of lack, only to be overturned later. I expect the remaining 10% will be proved true, just like the already proven 90%.
"Anachronisms have worked in our favour." Uhmm... No. I suspect that you are thinking of that large list of "anachronisms" prepared by John Clark in 2005 and subsequently updated by Matt Roper in 2019, which purports to compare lists of "anachronisms" relating to the Book of Mormon around 1842 and then showing how many, in 2019, have turned out to not be "anachronisms". It's totally bogus. For the most part the listed items are things that were never really claimed to be "anachronisms". As is typical, the apologists who made the lists first played around with the definition of "anachronism" then created a list of things that have never been considered arguments against the BoM. One definition of "anachronism" created by the list makers is not even close to being a generally accepted definition (i.e. "things that people beginning in Joseph Smith’s day, even before the Book of Mormon was published were pointing out about the Book of Mormon that they thought were ridiculous, wrong, or absurd"). It just gets worse from there as very few items listed were ever relied upon by ANY significant critic or number of critics as "anachronisms" or anything else with regard to disproving the Book of Mormon. Things like "metals" and "hiding up records" and "civilization" and "large cities" and "pre-Columbian writings" and "metal plates" (the KJV Bible itself refers to gold plates) and "wild beasts" are included in the list (along with many even more ridiculous examples) of so-called "anachronisms" that have now been "proven" to not be "anachronisms" according to the bizarre definition they use and. The list is nothing but a prop being used for a scam, in the hope that nobody will actually look at it. "Spears" is an item included on the list. It's perhaps the most primitive form of weapon ever developed. Do you seriously think that any serious critics of the Book of Mormon were claiming that "spears" could not have existed in ancient America and therefore the Book of Mormon can't be true? Incidentally, virtually every single real anachronism that real critics have taken seriously over the years...remains "unconfirmed" on the list. The work-around for the apologists has been to pad the list with nonsense that they claim has now been confirmed as "real". I'm surprised they didn't put "dirt" on the list of "anachronisms" that they have confirmed are not anachronisms. Who knows? It could be on the list, given the nature of other things on the list. Maybe I should check again.
Excellent overall summary. However, please note the following in the spirit of constructive criticism: 1 - You know from your own research that the method of translation is a highly controversial topic. The two primary eyewitnesses, Joseph and Oliver, were quite emphatic that the Book of Mormon was translated with the interpreters which came with the plates and made no mention of using the treasure digging scrying stone. The accounts about him using the scrying stone are late and very problematic when analyzed as historical evidence. David Snell includes some good points later in the video you excerpted which deserve separate treatment, but using this video, particularly the first part, as the beginning of your own video is not a good idea, as it means you start your own video with inaccurate and controversial information. 9 and 10 - Arguments from Mesoamerican geography should not be on such lists. The other items on your list are broadly accepted among Book of Mormon supporters, but geography is, as you know, highly controverted, to the point that the Church has put out an official statement saying that we don't know the geography. That alone should be reason enough to leave Mesomaerican geography off the list. Further, all Mesomaerican models assume a crossing from Arabia across the mid-Pacific, which is completely implausible given that that is against all prevailing winds and currents. Until this defect is addressed, all Mesomaerican geography arguments are complete FAILS, regardless of how many strained and forced parallelisms their advocates invent. If you want 10 on your list, I would suggest replacing the Mesoamerican arguments (and David Snell's misleading and inaccurate video on the method of translation) with (1) the literary sophistication of the Book of Mormon (see the work of Grant Hardy and Val Larsen) which is far more profound and sophisticated than just another item under complexity and (2) the accuracy of the war chapters. An early but excellent analysis of this latter point was by Hugh Nibley (who was an intelligence officer operating behind German lines in WW2) in his classic book "Since Cumorah." (Which I would note is the original and often unacknowledged source of many of the arguments on your list.)
" The accounts about him using the scrying stone are late and very problematic when analyzed as historical evidence." That is false. This was published in the Cincinnati Advertiser of June 2, 1830: "A fellow by the name of Joseph Smith, who resides in the upper part of Susquehanna county, has been, for the last two years we are told, employed in dedicating as he says, by inspiration, a new bible. He pretended that he had been entrusted by God with a golden bible which had been always hidden from the world. Smith would put his face into a hat in which he had a white stone, and pretend to read from it, while his coadjutor transcribed." This was published in the Palmyra Reflector of February 28, 1831: "It is well known that Joe Smith never pretended to have any comunion with angels, until a long period after the pretended finding of his book, and that the juggling [folk-magic] of himself or father went no further than the pretended faculty of seeing wonders in a 'peep stone,' and the occasional interview with the spirit, supposed to have the custody of hidden treasures: and it is also equally well-known that a vagabond fortune-teller by the name of Walters, who then resided in the town of Sodus, and was once committed to the jail of this county for juggling, was the constant companion and bosom friend of these money-digging impostors." Also, Joseph's father in law, Isaac Hale, swore this in an affidavit in 1833: "I first became acquainted with JOSEPH SMITH, Jr. in November, 1825.2 He was at that time in the employ of a set of men who were called "money-diggers;" and his occupation was that of seeing, or pretending to see by means of a stone placed in his hat, and his hat closed over his face.... "I went to the house where Joseph Smith Jr., lived, and where he and Harris were engaged in their translation of the Book...The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret, was the same as when he looked for the money-diggers, with the stone in his hat, and his hat over his face, while the Book of Plates were at the same time hid in the woods!" The LDS church published this in its Gospel Topics Essay "Book of Mormon Translation": "The other instrument, which Joseph Smith discovered in the ground years before he retrieved the gold plates, was a small oval stone, or “seer stone.” As a young man during the 1820s, Joseph Smith, like others in his day, used a seer stone to look for lost objects and buried treasure. As Joseph grew to understand his prophetic calling, he learned that he could use this stone for the higher purpose of translating scripture."
Are you telling us that theGod who created the earth cannot blow the wind from any direction He likes for any time that He likes? Why the emphasis on implausibility because of trade winds?
@@randyjordan5521The only thing these anti-Mormon accounts prove is that there were third-hand rumors about Joseph using the scrying stone. Isaac Hale's dubious effort to distance himself from the by then disreputable Mormons is based on these rumors, as he couldn't have seen the actual translation from the plates and interpreters as all faithful sources (including the scrying stone account from Emma) at least agree that Joseph used the plates and interpreters while working on the lost pages. Even the poorly researched and misleading Gospel Topics essay does not cite these sources. More importantly, like all scrying stone advocates (including the Gospel Topics essay), you ignore the most credible sources of all - Joseph and Oliver's repeated contemporaneous written account that the translation came from the plates using the interpreters supplied by the Lord for that purpose (see JH-S 1:35 and the footnote to verse 71).
@@KaydubbbbSure, the Lord could have completely changed the Earth's entire climate to reverse massive oceanic patterns. However, the Book of Mormon does not report such a miracle. It simply says that the Lehites were "driven before the wind" (1 Nephi 18:8) The whole point of Murph's post is to show many ways in which the Book of Mormon is plausible as an ancient record based on external evidences. It contradicts this effort by Murph and many other faithful scholars to rely on a miracle which is not supported by either scripture or science.
@@Kaydubbbb Your attempt to support the BOM story actually hurts it. To explain: the book states that it took the Jaredites 344 days to cross from the Middle East to the Americas, even though God provided a "mighty wind" to push their boats across the ocean. That 344 day thing is nonsensical. Columbus's first voyage only took three weeks, without any divine aid. So that story is obviously fiction written by a 19th century person who was totally clueless about how much time such a voyage should have taken. It's also nonsensical to believe that those people could have spent 344 days crossing the ocean in small crafts while carrying enough food and water to feed themselves and their animals. Such improbable stories are what BH Roberts called "wonder tales" and "the product of a juvenile mind." That story is just one of many in the BOM which show that the book is a 19th century work of fiction.
Joe also apparently translated the kinderhook plates which are now an admitted fraud. Book of Abraham was totally made up. He had a copy of the book of the dead that he doodled on. A common Egyptian funeral text.
"1816, also known as the 'Year Without Summer,' 'Poverty Year,' and 'Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death. ' The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 triggered a change in the global climate." The biographies of Joseph Smith's life all mention this phenomenon affecting the area where the Smith family lived, and you are suggesting he had no idea about the effects of volcanic eruptions?
Isn't it more accurate to say that the process in which the BoM was written down was a process of inspired dictation instead of a translation? For some reason using the word "translation" to describe the process bothers me. Only because the documentation doesn't describe Joseph Smith looking at the actual ancient writings on the Gold Plates and figuring out how this writing system translates into English. Even if the plates existed, Joseph dictated the BoM by the power of God without the Gold Plates, thus inspired dictation would be the most accurate description for the process.
There are much easier ways to con people than write a complex religious text and later be murdered for it. The standard of truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.
" There are much easier ways to con people than write a complex religious text and later be murdered for it." He tried treasure digging scam with his rock and hat and it didn't go to well for him and even ended up in court or similar. He wasn't murdered for a book of truth, he was gunned down in Mafia style shoot out (which he lost only having a six shooter himself) by everyone he threatened over the years with his wrath of God nonsense, took other mens wives and such. Try yourself asking for other mens wives, do a bank scam that ruins people, lie and cheat everyone, attack and destroy a media printing company, pledge a masonic death oath of secrecy and then steal their ceremony for your own, and see what happens? All this unhallowed hand rhetoric! hahaha The work is stumbling in case you haven't noticed.
@@truthbebold4009 would the devil have a man create a work that increases faith in Jesus Christ, and supports the bible as the word of God? Matthew 7:16-20 in summary by their fruits ye shall know them. The Book of Mormon has brought millions of people to know Christ and clarifies the nature of God and doctrines lost in ages past. LDS families are more statistically successful and their children know the scriptures better than their Christian counterparts.
@@ameyers67 "would the devil have a man create a work that increases faith in Jesus Christ, " Jim Jones suicide cult increased faith in Christ. David Koresh did the same. Smith's contribution led to lots of sex abuse against women disguised as Holy practices and a bank scam thrown in. " The Book of Mormon has brought millions of people to know Christ and clarifies the nature of God and doctrines lost in ages past. " It does not contain the nature of God (LDS version man with flesh and bone) Smith made that up in D&C years later. The book of mormon contains a type of trinitarian style views consistent with his day. "LDS families are more statistically successful and their children know the scriptures better than their Christian counterparts." Successfull at what? Mormons do not know scriptures very well. They only know the smith stuff and are generally biblically illiterate, except for a few verses they use to promote Smith's theology.
@@ameyers67 the devil most definitely would create supposed additional scripture that introduces new anti biblical concepts like the fall being considered a necessary and positive event.
The problem with personal experience confirming the Book of Mormon in some aspect is that the believer then turns around and extrapolates. He thinks that because on thing seems true, the entire work must therefore be true. This is a fallacy.
Unfortunately, the approach postulated in this video just isn't correct. We determine the existence of civilizations by evidence, not by prayer, or religious faith. The question is: Was there a massive (multiple, multiple millions of people), centuries-spanning, pre-European conquest, pseudo-Jewish / Christian type civilization, with the attendant physical trappings as described in the text (horses, steel, etc., etc.), somewhere upon the ancient Western Hemisphere? Is there any evidence in the Western Hemisphere to lead us to even to begin to consider such a conclusion? Is there anything yet discovered in the Western Hemisphere, that has been correctly handled, scientifically, that would lead a person to conclude that such a civilization existed? The answer, so far, is no, to all of that. There is not a single piece of evidence (including the 10 listed above) yet curated, that would lend itself to such a conclusion. And this doesn't address the problems with the story itself. For example, there was no Tower of Babel as described Biblically. There simply was not. Yet, there had to have been, for the Jaredite narrative to hold true. Likewise the idea of a Global Flood, essential to the veracity of the Jaredite narrative, never happened. Yet, the Book of Mormon demands such things. In conclusion, if you'd like me to address each of the 10 points you've listed, I'd be glad to do so.
@@rodneyjamesmcguireWrong. As Alma stated to Korihor, everything denotes there is a God. That evidence and the testimony of the Book of Mormon is evidence of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and God and would hold up in any court of law. Try again. You are biased, lack faith and are a Korihor.
A few points 1 The plural of evidence is evidence, not evidences. 2 Faith is just a nice word for credulity. There is no position that cannot be held based on faith. 3 Smith had years to work on his story not two months. His mother even said he would tell them stories about the ancient inhabitants of the land. 4 the Book of Mormon is not a literary masterpiece it is very repetitive and poorly written. The list of named people would be impressive if they weren’t mentioned once and then never again. The geography is vague ( why it is debated on where it is). 5 the witnesses are not credible people and they disputed what actually happened. Martin Harris said he never actually saw the plates and no one else did either. That is as far into the video as I got and feel no need to go on. The story of the jaredites is enough to debunk the Book of Mormon on its own, the Tower of Babel is a myth not an actual historical event.
Thank you for the show. But honestly if you want to talk about evidences if the Book of Mormon, you should avoid referencing any stone in the hat or meso American rhetoric based solely on testimony of apostates and anti Mormons. Stick to what Joseph repeatedly taught: He translated the Biok of Mormon from the plates by the gift and power of God by means of the Nephite interpreters, the Urim and Thumim and the lands of the Book of Mormon ended with the Hill Cumorah in NY with the plains of the Nephites stretching west from there with the land if Lehi to the south...when you base your evidence on fallacy it falls apart under attack. Period.
Sorry but gotta be the spelling police here: Pluralizing evidence, saying "evidences", is not necessary for allot of what you're referring to. Just giving you a head's up since this seems to be a pet peeve for many historians, researchers, etc. whom I've had the pleasure of speaking with.
One would be very hard pressed to find a university or credentialed historian, archeologist, anthropologist, linguist, or DNA scientist not on BYU's payroll that would give the slightest credence to the position that the BofM is a factual historical narrative. A vast civilization that existed more-or-less contemporaneously with the Roman Empire for which not as much as a shard of pottery has been produced as evidence. Hill Cumorah? Clean, so much so that the Church has dropped the silly pageant it produced there. In fact the Church itself won't commit within two entire continents, over a third of the earth's landmass, where it all happened. Oh, but there is chiasmus, and NHM discovered on the Arabian Peninsula which has to be Nahom, the three witnesses whose claim to have seen gold plates in full consciousness which is highly arguable, I can go on. I have scoured the internet for any instance of a BofM apologist presenting their research defending the historicity of the BofM to a forum of academic peers. There are plenty of entries of the likes of Dan Peterson, the two BYU Egyptologists Gee and Muhlstein, and that most esteemed (in Mormon eyes) Neil Maxwell presenting their evidences to friendly and receptive mormon audiences, but none to academic peers. I think it is obvious there is a reason for this, they would be crushed, and they know it. Now, how about the Book of Abraham? LDS arguments for this is more suitable for late night comedy than any serious discussion.
This is a classic example of the "appeal to authority" fallacy. It's true that those who deny the Book of Mormon think it's false and those who embrace the book of Mormon think it's true regardless of whether or not someone is a scholar. That's not particularly shocking. It's important to evaluate the evidence for yourself and to understand the why.
@@loudogg73 The problem with your defense is that LDS "authorities" (scholars) cannot list any evidences which prove the BOM story to be true either. If the people as described in the BOM really existed, with their population figures, culture, and technology, then their existence should have been proven shortly after the book was published. To illustrate: archaelogists began discovering and uncovering the great Mayan cities shortly after the BOM was published. John Lloyd Stephens published his "Incident of Travel in Chiapas" in 1842, with detailed illustrations of many ancient Mayan ruins. Since then, we have learned more and more about the ancient Mayans. So if a Hebrew-descended culture numbering in the hundreds of thousands had also existed somewhere in the Americas at the same time, we should have been able to find their ruins in similar numbers as the Mayan ruins. Particularly considering that the BOM states that its people built great cities which stretched from sea to sea.
@@randyjordan5521 There is actually a ton of evidence for the historical BOM. Like a ridiculous amount. It's true that, once Lehi's family arrives in the Americas, we lose track of them geographically. That doesn't mean the civilization didn't exist. That said, American archeological explorations have been very limited in general. We are still discovering huge finds here when the efforts are actually made. Just recently, for example, LIDAR technology was used to uncover a vast civilization around modern day Ecuador. I believe that happened just last year. My point is that we need to look beyond the limited reach of archeology and look at the whole picture. When we do that, we can see extremely strong patterns supporting the historical BOM. (Like what has been discussed in this video and more).
@@loudogg73 Hi. I invite you to do a thought experiment. The evidence for the Book of Mormon is no different than if you were to take any book and try to match it to the real world. You would find some parallels but nothing specific to the civilization. Try it with To Kill a Mockingbird. Compare it with Wakanda. Wakandans worship the ancient Egyptian God Bast and their pantheon, the Orisha, comes from the Yoruba word for Deity. Their country is found in Sub Saharan Africa by Lake Victoria. The only difference is the Book of Mormon has 200 years of apologists trying to make connections and they still cant find the location, people, animals, tools, religion, or language anywhere in the Americas because it doesnt really exist. Just look at the "evidence" presented here in this video.
@@kuriju88 I get what you are trying to say but that's just not accurate. Despite the very limited amount of archeological and anthropological research done on ancient American civilizations, significant evidence aligns with what is discussed in the BOM. Whether that be DNA evidence, geological timelines, old world archeology, or whatever else.
Any one real verifiable anachronism would prove the Book of Mormon was non-historical. Is the word "compass" anachronistic? Is the "name" "Jesus Christ" anachronistic?
Please. At least pic something juicy. You can make the same critic to one hundred thousand words from an ancient language to a modern language. I suggest watching president Monsons account on his miraculous visit to the bedside of Crystal Methvin on her death bed. Check under the heading Faith of a Child. The words Crist spoke to his mind were not in Greek or Hebrew, but exactly as in the King James Bible. Forbid not the little children to come into me, for such is the kingdom of God". Just try checking talks by Thomas S Monson. It is so spiritual you may be converted.
Was that my point? Try what I suggest. The link proves the Book of Mormon is true. The fact that Christ speaks to us in our own language shows that the word compass in the Book of Mormon is not anachronistic.
With all the clockwork perfection in the universe, I believe there must be a God. I also believe that he’s gone through great extent to prove to us that the book of Mormon is undeniably false. And if this is true, to all the TBM‘s out there, what if when you get to the pearly gates, he says “I never knew you! “
Sounds like a very lousy father. Imagine a father with children who were earnestly trying to get back to him only to have father say to them" “I never knew you! “
Oh good hell. I was actually expecting some evidences. Not more apologetic BS that have each been thogoughly debunked. Might as well have claimed "I felt the spirit" as your evidence.
The Book of Mormon teaches that faith is required, so obtaining smoking gun verifiable scientifically agreed-upon evidence isn't going to happen, at least for now. Maybe sometime in the future.
No amount of scientific evidence will ever convince someone against their will. Science is rarely black & white, there is almost always room for interpretation, regardless of the subject in question.
Science will never be able to convince someone of anything against their will. You could show many people a smoking cannon, and if they don't want to believe it, they will deny its existence and find ways to explain it away. Science is almost never black & white. There is almost always plenty of room for interpretation when it comes to any type of scientific conclusion. If you don't understand this fact then you truly don't understand science itself.
No amount of scientific evidence will ever convince anyone of something that they don't want to believe. Science is almost never black & white and there is almost always room left for interpretation. This applies to every aspect of science. You could show someone a smoking cannon of evidence, and they would still find some way to deny it or discredit it, if they don't want to believe it. If the mounds and mounds of current evidence supporting the veracity of the Book of Mormon isn't enough to convince you now, no new finding in the future will ever be enough to convince you later. They could literally find a "Nephi was here" or "City of Zarahemla" inscription in North America, and you would find some way to discredit it. Just like citics discredit a tombstone that says "Ishmael" on it, in the exact location the Book of Mormon says it should be, during the exact same time period the Book of Mormon says it should be there. ua-cam.com/video/A_g3tRBoxg4/v-deo.htmlsi=KzIC2W4dwL9ndY_w
A century ago, the LDS scholar BH Roberts concluded that Joseph Smith had the talent and the pre-existing source material to be able to write the book without any divine aid. The fact that 194 years have passed since the book was published, and there is still not one iota of physical evidence found to support the story tells us that the logical deduction is that the book is a 19th century hoax.
Totally not true. You can easily find the First Book of Napoleon online. You need not make it past the first verse to see the similarities. View of the Hebrews was about a family leaving Jerusalem, took ships to America then split into rival groups. Both books predate the BoM and show exactly where the writing style and ideas were lifted from.
The Mormon scholar BH Roberts did an intense study of the Book of Mormon a century ago, and he concluded that Joseph Smith had the talents and the pre-existing source materail to draw from to be able to write the book on his own.
I have NEVER heard an active member say they don’t believe it . Disgruntled ex members say lots of things in EVERY religion. Many “former “ Christians don’t believe in the Bible . Is what it is .
@@tomasina10 Do you believe that Jesus and Heavenly Father are the same being? if not, you don't believe the BOM. Do you believe that men are punished because of Adam's fall? if not, you don't believe the BOM. The point is, the BOM was supposed to be the most correct book on earth, yet modern day "revelation" shows you do not believe the BOM in the slightest. there are more examples than the two I gave, but I figures two would be enough to prove my point.
@@sertinduhm6378I'd be curious to hear some the other complaints you have about the Book of Mormon. If I may, I think that I can briefly respond to your two points. First, the Bible and the Book of Mormon make references to the unity of members of the Godhead. It's easy to interpret these as 100% literal, which is what most Christian denominations believe. We don't believe it to mean that God the Father and Jesus Christ are literally the same people. But they are one in many ways, to the point where Jesus talks about His will being the same as the Father's. It's more complicated than that, but that is a simple belief that I have been taught since primary, so the verses you are likely referencing never confused me. Second, we do indeed suffer because of the transgressions of Adam and Eve. We are separated from the presence of God. We are no longer nger entitled to the inheritance of the Garden of Eden, since our forefather that once had it in his possession to share lost it. Much like my children would suffer because of bad choices I make, and would lose the opportunity to inherit blessings from me if I lose them through sin or transgression. Ultimately, we are taught that our final destination will be determined by our own choices, and not because of those around us. No one gets dragged into heaven unwillingly, and the one that judges us worthy or not to enter God's presence will evaluate us based on our own choices and actions. This is taught pretty clearly in the Book of Mormon as well. It's also more complicated than what I explained, but I wanted to be brief. If you were to take certain verses, and interpret them in a vacuum, your interpretations of the Book of Mormon could make sense. However, I don't think that is how they were intended to be understood, seeing as how we also believe in modern revelation and the succession of prophets, as did the writers of the Book of Mormon. I would love to hear more of your interpretations, though! I don't think your reasoning is bad, just a bit narrow in it's focus and scope. But, I could also be wrong. I'm mortal and flawed, too. Thanks for the comments!
@@michaelanderson6484 There is a huge counter argument to the "one in purpose" argument, which is shown in the BOM, and that is Mosiah 15. Abinadi declares that Jesus and Heavenly Father are the same being, not one in purpose, but the same being. He even explains how this is the case. Next, continuing revelation should not mean continuing contradiction. You can't serve two masters after all. One of your articles of faith directly contradicts the BOM. So how can we say which is true? No, prophets dont work as they get things wrong all the time. For more issues. I will give you one more for now, as I assume the Abinadi response will trigger some thoughts. Where was Jesus born? If you said Bethlehem, you don't believe the BOM.
I have been inactive in the church for 15 years and still believe in Joseph Smith and the BoM. I am reading it again right now. We are not punished for Adam and Eve’s transgression but we are punished with them, we live in a fallen state that was inherited from them. Jesus, according to the BoM, born at Jerusalem not in; look up at in a dictionary. It was also known, not just in the BoM, for the Israel at the time to be called the Land of Jerusalem. I see where Mosiah could be confusing to one outside of the church and therefore not understanding the title attributed to Heavenly Father and to Jesus in his various roles. This is similar to Gen 1:1 where in the Hebrew is says the gods created the heavens and the earth, or in Gen 1:26 and 3:22 where man is to be like one of Us. There are many scriptures that clarify the relationship and titles but I will leave it at two versus from D&C that clear this up a bit. D&C 93: 3 And that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one- 4 The Father because he gave me of his fulness, and the Son because I was in the world and made flesh my tabernacle, and dwelt among the sons of men. I would suggest taking at least a year or two and sit down with some good commentaries and truly study the BoM to gain a correct understanding of these and other passages.
Haplogroup X in the native tribes of Eastern North America. And the Hopewell Mound Builders Civilization of Eastern North America matching the Book of Mormon timeline. That is evidence.
@@stephenjensen5358 X split and is found present in the Americas thousands of years before the timeline of the Book of Mormon. It is not evidence in favor of the book but the opposite.
The Church is true. The Book of Mormon is true. The Lord hasn’t revealed everything about all there is to know, because he wants us to be more like Nephi than Korihor, that is, to exercise faith in God
@kuriju88 I'm pretty sure I read the scientific paper you're referencing. That was speculation, attempting to explain why it didn't connect to the Asian land bridge. They claimed X went dormant then re-emerged later in Eastern North America. There is no scientific evidence that this dormant thing ever happens. And this dormant BS is how they attempted to push the timing back by thousands of years. So the details you're attempting to use as a foil, were speculative conclusions not based on direct evidence. But nice try.
By far the best channel on evidences for the authenticity of our church. Most channels either look away from the evidence or look away from the possible hard questions, but you succeed in bring the truth to the surface.
Thank you I really appreciate that
For me, the most remarkable thing Joseph Smith ever did, from a naturalistic standpoint, is found in the level of literary refinement. The awkward wording scattered throughout the 1830 Book of Mormon may create the illusion that the text is not highly refined. Yet, multiple observations demonstrate that Smith’s first oral draft met virtually all of the goals of content editing, redrafting, and revising:
• Intertwining 77 storylines with impressive continuity.
• Mentioning 147 geographical locations over 670 times with only two mistakes.
• Referencing 207 individuals 3,780 times, apparently misappropriating one or two names but maintaining strict character identification accuracy.
• Portraying two genealogies extended beyond twenty generations flawlessly.
• Inserting hundreds of timestamps that comply precisely with textual chronological requirements.
• Including over 63 religious discussions where Book of Mormon speakers expound dozens of Christian religious teachings with remarkable coherence and notable nuance.
• Interweaving hundreds of heading outlines, editorial promises, and internal prophecies that are precisely fulfilled later in the narrative.
While this list could be further expanded, these observations support that the first oral draft left Joseph Smith’s lips with a high level of literary accuracy and periodic eloquence.
Yes he is often confused with Ernest Hemingway 😅
A useful video for Warren Jeffs followers struggling with their Testimonies over the authenticity of the book of mormon. I think today's Brighamite Salt Lake HQ Mormons conveniently want to forget there are over a hundred different Mormon Latter Day saint organisations/churches/cults (depending on your view of them) all with their own respective Prophets, Apostles and Testimonies and Holy Ghost guidance that trace their line-authority back to founder Joseph Smith.
Not sure how the RLDS (now Community of Christ) view the book of mormon these days.
Disclaimer- i recorded this episode before my interview with William Davis- it just took a bit to edit. So theres a point about complexity and memory and the geography and Jaredite Kings. I still think this is a complex feature and requires a great memory, but dont think this is beyond human ability as Davis demonstrated. But i've kept it in there anyway.
Yeah, it's just one of the many things that had to be performed perfectly. I don't think Joseph sat there hiding from Emma memorizing his ideas for Ether.
I disagree with you. Even if Joseph had some hidden “headings” for laying down heads, there is no way that he did this day after day for 2-3 months worth of work without a major slip of a witness seeing a resource or manuscript or making a major blunder while dictating with his head in a hat. I do not believe the dictation of the Book of Mormon was humanly possible given witness testimony of how it happened, even with resources unless God was involved in the dictation moments just before the pen hit the paper.
That sure seems far from a clear revelation and factual information. Is Jesus just as confused and unsure as you are? Why doesn’t he just tell us all so that we’re not left wondering as we are? Why is it that after, what, close to 200 years later, we still have to scratch our heads about these questions and speculate? What a mess.
@@Kaydubbbb The fact that opposes your view is that there is no evidence that the people described in the BOM lived anywhere in the Americas. If those people never existed, then Joseph produced the fictional book somehow.
@@randyjordan5521 Christ taught us how to know if His words were true. It’s not by archaeology or physical proof. John 7:17. You can also know if the translation of the Book of Mormon is from Christ in the same way. There is a ton of evidence here that should make one read and study for themselves instead of dismissing the Book of Mormon. I can tell it is from Christ because it brings me closer to Him when I spend time reading it, in the same way that the Bible brings me closer to Christ.
Great episode! Bountiful and the finding of Nahum’s grave were huge evidences for me. That helped me to want to continue reading, praying, and gaining a testimony that it was true and ultimately baptized.
Cool, the spirit is the biggest evidence. I love the Book of Mormon.
That's awesome
The "Nahum" find is not evidence at all. Nahum is an ancient Hebrew name. There was a prophet Nahum and a Book of Nahum in the Old Testament. So, finding a stone with that name carved on it in the Middle East is not remarkable. In fact, if that item truly was evidence that the "Book of Mormon people" traveled through that area, then there should be 1000 more such stone carvings found in the Americas, where the"Book of Mormon people" allegedly lived for 1000 years and grew into populations of hundreds of thousands. We should be able to find stone etchings with major Book of Mormon characters' and kings' names on them, and written in their native language of Hebrew.
Because no such items have been found in the Americas, then the "Nahum" carving in the Middle East is nothing more than coincidental.
@@randyjordan5521 There is no evidence because it is inspired fiction. Joseph was a pious fraud. And sexual deviant.
Randy, why don't you just admit that no evidence would ever be acceptable to you? Nahom and areas matching Bountiful are bulls eyes...that Joseph could not have known.
I think there's good evidence against and good evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon. It seems like everything is led to our faith.
I'm with ya there
If you want a good way to judge the evidence, consider that in the 194 years since the BOM was published, not a single non-Mormon scholar has agreed that it is an authentic history of people who lived in ancient America.
@@randyjordan5521 Yeah, cuz people tend to find proof of things and then not proceed to believe them, right? Why would someone with knowledge of the truth of the BoM remain a non-Mormon? Why would their credibility as a non-Mormon be affected by them becoming a Mormon based on objective information? How does objective information become Mormon information? What is the difference?
@@randyjordan5521 that one really cracks me up. There are many scholars who have come to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is authentic. Once they do, they are wise enough to not be non-Mormons any more!! Had to chuckle there.
@@Kaydubbbb
That's an extremely unintelligent statement. If the BOM is literally true, it should be true for Mormon and non-Mormon scholars alike. No Mormon scholars conclude that the BOM is authentic because of actual evidence; they do so solely because of their religious faith That is why no non-Mormon scholars accept the BOM; it's because it's strictly a religious prospect, not a real-world issue.
If the BOM is authentic, and those hundreds of thousands of Semitic/Hebrew people occupied the Americas from 600 BC to 400 AD, then those people would be duly noted in our scholarly textbooks, papers, articles, documentaries, etc. The Lehites, Nephites, Lamanites, etc. would be documented and taught about just as are the Mayans, Aztecs, Iroquois, Sioux, Cherokee, or any other large Pre-Columbian Amerind tribe.
The fact that the "Book of Mormon people" are only mentioned in apologetic works by religious believers, and not in any peer-reviewed, secular, scholarly productions, means that the BOM is a matter of religious belief, not scientific fact.
Excellent video! Thanks for the compilation of such evidence. Another one that most critics will avoid like the plague. Safer to stay in an echo chamber where people will tell you what you want to hear.
Glad you enjoyed it
Nice compilation Murph. So many evidences. Like Pres Holland said, if you walk away from the truths of the Book of Mormon you’ve go to crawl … to get away.
Thank you!
First Book of Napoleon and View of the Hebrews
@@monyetgoblog7038 that is laughable.
@@wendyfoster5579 what about those books is laughable??? First Book of Napoleon is written exactly like the BoM and was available to Joe Smith. View of the Hebrews is the same story Jews land in America and split into 2 groups like the BoM also written before the BoM and available to Joe Smith.
@@monyetgoblog7038None of that is true. There is no relationship to any book you mention. The Book of Mormon was not borrowed from a book, it was translated from plates given to him and the process of translation took less than two months. It was not made up. Obviously you are biased and never read it, otherwise you would be converted by the Spirit.
Thanks Murphy, this was a great video!
Thank you!
I love the intro and I enjoy your channel. Thank you so much for everything you do. I've been to Ireland 4 times but never to Nor'n Iron, unfortunately, but I love your island in any case.
Thanks so much
Thanks!
Thank you!
Excellent summary, you've worked hard on studying all these topics
Thank you!
8:49 Very much looking forward to seeing proponents of the naturalistic theory for the Book of Mormon directly respond to all of Murph’s questions presented here 👀
Me too
@@mormonismwiththemurph Start addressing my rebuttals then.
@@sdfotodude what rebuttals?
@@jeremyjensen7144 Point 1 and point 2
I left a comment on this video responding to all 10 lines of evidence. Would love to hear your thoughts!
Excellent summary, Murph! I'm glad you put all these 10 points in favor of the Book of Mormon's authenticity into one reasonably short video. I enjoyed watching this, and I remember watching the various video clips you shared in their original video sources, so I can see that I've watched many of the same videos you have. I saw young Kwaku in one of the videos at timestamp 51:45 :) - He and the Ward Radio folks are also awesome :) - It's also refreshing to hear arguments in favor of the Mesoamerican model all summarized like this. I guess I've been watching too many Heartlander model videos lately and they are getting quite tiresome to me. I feel like I've listened to their arguments enough now to know their positions quite well, yet still greatly favor the Mesoamerican models. For me it boils down chiefly to being one who believes that both science and faith are crucial vs. some folks who are inclined to embrace one while rejecting the other, or else distorting one to make it conform to the other.
Thanks Phil, I'm on the same wave length as you!
It seems to me that events described in the Book of Mormon do not describe the entirety of what was happening on the larger regional scale. For example in Mormon 1:6, Mormon was carried by his father, also named Mormon into the land southward. Who carries 11 year old kids on their backs? Could Mormon not have been easily carried in a boat from the heartland area?
First Book of Napoleon and View of the Hebrews prove it is a lie. Also by their works you'll know them. #1 in paid phub subscriptions and anti-depressant prescriptions tells me everything I need to know about LDS.
" It's also refreshing to hear arguments in favor of the Mesoamerican model all summarized like this. I guess I've been watching too many Heartlander model videos lately and they are getting quite tiresome to me."
If the BOM is authentic, the question of where its events occurred should have been settled shortly after it was published. The very fact that two different camps of BOM believers speculate the location of its events thousands of miles away from each other obviously means that there is no evidence in either location to support the story.
@@randyjordan5521 first book of Napoleon and View of the Hebrews
This is one of your best pieces and great video to share. Thank you for your sacrifice and effort, you are making a positive influence for the gospel of Jesus Christ!
Thank you
I think that you should do a part two of this with Don Bradly
I really want to do an episode with Don
Incredibly well done!
Thank you
Thank you Murphy!
Welcome!
Loved this video. I too find undeniable certain literary evidences within the text. That said, Joseph’s fingerprints are all over the BOM, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the nature of revelation/translation, however you want to put it.
Also, even if you take the BOM’s perfect truthfulness at face value, the domino logic used to promote prophetic infallibility or at least blind obedience to prophets is fallacious.
This whole conversation could be solved once and for all if President Nelson held a press conference announcing that the Angel Moroni has delivered the gold plates back to earth for all of the scientific community to examine. My question to the faithful LDS members would be, Would you be excited for this event or would you let out a collective “Oh No!”
I think it might have been Dawkins who said that even if he met God, he would assume it was a hallucination, so therefore, it would be impossible for him to believe.
The thing is that if we needed to see the plates to believe then we would want to see Moses' stone plates to believe or to see the tombs of the Apostles of Christ to believe….. This is about faith….
@@Irvingdector Exactly my point. Why do LDS people have this obsession to seek out “proof” of the Book of Mormon when it’s simply about faith. Believers will believe no matter what physical proof exists (or doesn’t exist) so why go through the time and effort to “prove” it.
Are you a christian?
That would be interesting, but wouldn’t solve anything because we all know that the Mormon church is an extremely wealthy corporation and can very easily afford to make gold plates with some Hodgepodge of the characters that Joseph Smith scribbled or even claim that those weren’t the real things on the plate and then there were some other type of characters. Decide to make those plates they were still running into problems because all the witnesses described the plates using very different dimensions.
Excellent video! Well done!
Thank you!
The Maxwell quote is exactly what I concluded. The scales of secular evidence will never tip on the side of proof. I was a BoM skeptic for 30 years.
First Book of Napoleon and View of the Hebrews and you'll see where Joe Smith plagiarized from.
It was fully plagiarized
What a ridiculous notion. Not even critical scholars believe it was plagiarized.
@@lemjwp1756 First Book of Napoleon you need not make it past the first verse to see where the writing style came from. Written before the BoM and available to Joe Smith. View of the Hebrews same written before the BoM and available to Joe Smith. About Jews who land in America and split into 2 opposing groups.
Total lack of archeological evidence on the hill Comora where you had an apparent epic battle with no artifacts.
Joe Smith was a convicted fraudster.
Many scholars have called it a fraud. 2 books in particular were available and in the same writing style with exact same plot.
Who needs evidence when you're lead by the spirit and don't have to think.
From outside of any religion it is bizarre that watching apologist videos - everyone is convinced their religion to be true. If there was a god who was all powerful, all knowing etc who wanted us to know he existed and worship him ( another bizarre thing that an all powerful being would want us to do ) - probably the worst way of doing so would be through a book that is obviously made up by Joseph Smith who did have knowledge of things around him and was clearly good at story telling and getting people to believe him ( in those days it was probably easy as most peoples bandwidth was simply to survive each day ) no historical, no geographical - ancient Jews not really known for their sea faring exploits travelling 1000’s of miles in riderless “boats” that landed at exactly the same point in the Americas etc etc. If it is true then god only wants 0.001% of the words population to know and make Mormon missionaries jobs probably the hardest job in the world. If Tolkien had put in a religious element to Lord Of the Rings there would almost certainly be a cult that followed and worshiped Bilbo Baggins and Gandolf. Don’t want to pisd on anyone’s chips but just go watch any other religious apologetics channel and you’ll see what I mean … oh yours is really the one true religion 🤯🤯
Tolkien made Lord of the Rings in 7 years. Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon in 65 days, and then it went to print after draft 1.
Our church is true because you can ask God if it's true, and he'll confirm it to you. Find out for yourself.
@@clayfullmer ok so billions of people believing in all types of deity’s - all speaking to their gods who tell them theirs is true. I guess when you are indoctrinated into it or have a disposition to believe without good provable evidence ( faith isn’t a good way of finding if something is true is it). Also is the book that you just mentioned draft 1 - exactly the same verbatim as the one you read today - oh it’s not so the translation or god couldn’t get it right and it had to be changed down the ages. Go watch an Islamic, the many many many Christian denominations apologetics Chanel and you’ll have the same reaction to 99% of people who hear about the stories of your book. Meanwhile Thor is real because I saw lightening tonight. 👍🏻
Science has discovered Hebrew DNA in the tribes of Eastern North America. Haplogroup X. You can look into that if you want secular evidence. And the Hopewell Mound Builders Civilization of Eastern North America follow the Book of Mormon timeline. And the Phoenicians were from Lebanon. A stones throw from Jerusalem. And they were the greatest seafaring people in the ancient world. Modern scientists already proved a Phoenician ship from 600 BC could easily make the journey around Africa and cross the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.
So secular science is finding evidence to support the Book of Mormon.
@@clayfullmer A century ago, the LDS scholar BH Roberts concluded that Joseph Smith had the talent and the pre-existing source material to be able to write the book without any divine aid. The fact that 194 years have passed since the book was published, and there is still not one iota of physical evidence found to support the story tells us that the logical deduction is that the book is a 19th century hoax.
As for your comment that God will tell you if the book is true: feelings are not facts.
@@randyjordan5521 You're exactly like the person Murph was talking about near the end of this video. It's fine if you're not persuaded by apologetic claims in favor of the church, but to say there's not "one iota" of physical evidence when you're commenting on a video with lots of evidence shows you're not arguing in good faith. A more productive (dare I say it, more adult) use of your time is to argue why you don't find the evidence in this video compelling. My guess is you didn't even watch the video.
What do opponents like Dan Vogel have to say about the evidences for the Book of Mormon (Arabian Peninsula, Hebraisms, dwindling anachronisms, etc.)? Also, why isn't there more emphasis by scholars on the Messiah ben Joseph legend?
First Book of Napoleon and View of the Hebrews should explain everything
@@monyetgoblog7038Both are lies, so your statement is false.
@@donaldjones9830 both were written before the BoM and widely available at the time of BoM writing.
The "Mashiach ben Yosef" concept in medieval to modern Judaism is a bit fringe. We've taken a liking to it, but I think it is highly suspect. Rabbi Ephraim Palvanov is on part 3 of a series on the subject. Only in the broadest strokes does it look anything like Jesus or Joseph Smith, in the details, almost nothing lines up, most profoundly how it isn't truly mainstream among Orthodox Jews. It seems to be more of a thought experiment and mystical derivation from Talmudic commentary.
Is this the Murph's cut of the Saints Unscripted video? Haha
In the words of one of my favorite biblical scholars, all right, let's see it.
So, the premise of your video, for the critics at least, is that a naturalistic explanation for the Book of Mormon's origin must account for these 10 things, right? I am going to orient my comments, then, in fitting these 10 points you raise into my favored model. In other words, if the Spaulding-Rigdon theory better explains a piece of evidence, I will refrain from using that explanation because I do not favor that model. Also, I'll probably do a response video in a month or so.
Evidence 1 - I find that Brian Hales answered this one quite well. Automatic writing, or trance dictating, concords extremely well with the witness descriptions of the Book of Mormon's production. I think a combination of automatic writing techniques and the laying down of heads accounts well for the manner of production. In terms of the time frame, I've made this point many times on your videos, but I'll reiterate here for completeness, while the pace is aggressive, it is far from being outside the realm of human ability. In other words, no miracle needed for the pace. And for the development of the account, while Joseph produced the text in a short amount of time, the development process was years-long and included a draft of sorts in the form of the lost 116 pages. While I can't and won't appeal to the contents of those pages for giving insight into the production of the final text, the mere act of their production and revision gave Joseph time and opportunity to revector and further develop the text and its narrative, if needed. Finally, it is important to note that every mention of eyewitnesses that there was no other manuscript present in the BoM production is directed at shooting down the Spaulding-Rigdon theories. Though not strictly necessary, I do find it most probable that a Bible was present during the religious work of producing the Book of Mormon.
Evidence 2 - The text has over 200 named characters, sure. But how is that a sign of complexity? We can't even get Zeniff named in both accounts he appears in. Most named characters disappear entirely once their tiny role is done, including 80's pop band Aha. There are named characters who serve their narrative function without a name, get named, and then vanish. The same issue with the 150 geographic locations. Multiple migrations and distinct cultures are not inherently markers of complexity. These can be wafer thin. As an example, apart from the Great Spirit, what is the Lamanite pantheon like? How does it incorporate or reject First Temple Hebraic theology? Calling it 3 calendar systems is a stretch. There are 3 separate events that mark the first referent year, but no detail on how weeks, months, festivals, holidays, etc. are marked or changed by the new "systems". The system of weights and measures is described, used once in the same narrative, and then referred to one other time. It doesn't really play into the narrative in a meaningful way. For instance, no conflict in the text is derived from the economic trade of grain to coinage. You could substitute any monetary system in to the account of Amulek being tempted with money, and the story would be otherwise unaffected. I don't get the point about complex source texts. Are we saying that the Bible is complex, therefore the BoM is too? There is one genealogy that is laid out in the Biblical style. Otherwise, it is pretty well just references to ancestors. Not sure that that's actually complex. Lineage histories, political histories, and "authentic" legal cases may be present in the text, but are not, of themselves, indicators of complexity. Complexity would be found in how these things interplay with each other. For fear of this part of the response going too long, I'll just reiterate that these supposed markers of complexity do not actually indicate complexity. Some are even considered to be bad form in writing, such as embedded flashbacks. And it is definitionally more likely that Joseph Smith dictated the entire text naturalistically than that supernatural forces were involved. I think that Spaulding-Rigdon theories are nonsense, but even they are, definitionally, more likely than the supernatural alternatives. As for picking up where he left off, Brian Hales accounts for that well in his paper on automatic writing. That's actually the point of evidence that, for me, most strongly indicates a form of automatic writing was used in producing the text.
Evidence 3 - Mark Twain's point about not being able to have more confidence if the entire Smith and Whitmer families had testified is salient here. But personally, it boils down to Hume. It is more probable that the witnesses are lying, sincerely mistaken, were hallucinating, or anything else other than actually seeing a supernatural entity. A mistake that gets made by apologists is conflating Joseph Smith with Mormonism, and while the witnesses may have had their issues with Joseph Smith, it was really only Oliver Cowdery that had that issue extend to Mormonism, though even he was eventually drawn back into the movement. If he had won his bids for political office, maybe he never would have come back. Who knows? I get that this is a big point for you, but I find it to be a bit of a nothing burger. Even as a believer, this was one of the lesser reasons why I accepted the Book of Mormon's truthfulness. I just don't see how to accept the BoM witnesses, but reject the Miracle of the Sun, for instance. Or Muhammad splitting the moon. Without a clear mechanism in place to make that distinction, I'll invoke Hume's razor and look for better evidence elsewhere.
Thanks to another UA-camr, I finally put together something a couple of ideas that had never clicked for me before. Remember in D&C when Oliver wants to translate and is told that he will be able to? Then he isn't able to and there's this spin about the reasons why? A critical approach recognizes that as Joseph's narrative being able to change when things don't go as he said they would. What would stop him from developing a similar narrative if he could not get three witnesses together? I do suspect that he knew full well who the three would be when he dictated the applicable sections of the BoM, with the 8 emerging as a later development (they get hinted at in the latter dictated section discussing the witnesses, but not in the former). I also see a pattern with Joseph throughout his life and ministry of making prophecies and then shifting the blame or recontextualizating when those prophecies don't come to pass. Why would this one be any different?
Evidence 4 - Yeah, no. This isn't gonna work. The theology is way wrong. The idea of Lehi, Laban, and potentially Ishmael, all being wealthy refugees is historically unlikely. Some of the points I do agree with. Some of them are stretches that fit the data around the BoM claims, rather than allowing the BoM to speak for itself. For instance, the BoM does not acknowledge Asherah or her worship. The association of a fruit-bearing tree with a feminine figure is not such a wild innovation that it would require an awareness of Asherah worship. And then there are the "so what?" points, like Lehi as a fleeing prophet. Anyway, there is a surface level fit of Lehi in the context that has some interesting parallels to extra-biblical data, but there are issues as well that insufficiently accounted for by the faithful narrative, such as Lehi holding theological ideas that would not appear until after the Exile or Hellenistic intermixing with Jewish theology. Maybe take a critical look at Margaret Barker's work. I know that her scholarship is... controversial among Biblical scholars.
Evidence 5 - I've done a whole hour+ long video on this topic. Basically, what it boils down to is that that text of the BoM is so vague that the sites that apologists claim as sites on the Lehite exodus boil down to being post hoc assertions. You can't use the BoM to arrive at NHM, but once you find NHM, and it doesn't contradict the BoM narrative, you can say that NHM is Nahom. However, even in that best case, the Marib altar does not call the place NHM. The altar refers to a person, the donor of the altar, as being of the NHM people. That area happens to be in the region commonly associated with the NHM people, though those borders have fluctuated historically.
Okay, Joseph knew that Jerusalem was a walled city. Our one source for the idea that he didn't know that is Emma, and that source is fraught with issues of Emma bending the story to fit a narrative she wanted (or of JS3 bending her narrative to fit his own designs). But with Joseph's familiarity with Isaiah in mind, the dude would have known that Jerusalem had walls. Just like he could compose a letter.
Also, the 8 year time-frame for the journey does not comport with this travel description. However, it does seem to concord well with Bible maps from the time that featured the Arabian Peninsula that made it stubbier and wider than it is in reality. Note, I'm not saying that he got all the apologetic data from maps in his time, but I am saying that what the text says itself could be explained by maps from his time.
To answer your questions, the range of responses goes from it doesn't to it's so vague that you could shove just about any anything you want into that narrative. There are people who have the BoM taking place in Ethiopia or Malaysia, and they have interesting models to do it too.
Evidence 6 - Dr. Paulsen-Reed, in her doctoral dissertation on the Apocalypse of Abraham, described the methods scholars used to identify the text that only survived in Slavic manuscripts as Hebraic in origin. This relied on a historical provenance and key signs of Semitic authorship. In her paper, Dr. Paulsen-Reed notes that Hebraisms, such as chiasms, repeated use of the wa particle, and other features that we see in the Book of Mormon are present in the Apocalypse of Abraham and have been pointed to as evidence of its Semitic origin. She also calls that the "weakest evidence" for the Hebraic origin of the text, noting that those features could not readily be distinguished from "biblicizing Greek". There are other, more interesting features that really drill home the Apocalypse of Abraham's Semitic origin. The Book of Mormon lacks those features. Instead, the Book of Mormon is left with Hebraisms that are indistinguishable from "biblicizing English".
And not to be too crass, but just compare the BoM Hebraisms to those found in the Book of Armaments. There are parallelisms and far too many "ands". There are probably even simple chiasms, though I've not analyzed it so closely.
If/and conditionals are interesting, and a mistaken representation of how to translate the text. The particle that denotes "then" in the conditional in Hebrew can be translated as "and" in other contexts. A very similar feature appears in Japanese. Translating it that way into English would be bad form. A better explanation is that Joseph, in dictating those conditionals, either got lost in them and said "and" instead of then, believed that the "and" sounded more biblical as he was in the process of "dictating", or failed to enunciate his "then" clearly enough for Oliver/David, who wrote "and" instead of "then". Any of those explanations are more likely than the additional assumptions that would be required to make a divinely inspired translation of reformed American Egyptian of a Hebrew sermon preserve the "if/and" structure that isn't linguistically coherent in the first place.
And Jershon. Good ol Jershon. There is nothing in the text that uniquely or explicitly links Jershon with inheritance. In fact, it is just as much, if not more associated with defense or protection, with the land of Nephi being the land most commonly associated with inheritance. A happy coincidence for apologists that Jershon resembles what could be a Hebrew word for land of inheritance, but, beyond that, completely unsupported by the text.
"And it came to pass" constitutes 2% of the Book of Mormon text. When Brian Hales asks "where do the words come from?", a full 2% of the work is done just by pointing out that this one phrase is in the KJV.
Who says that these Hebraic features appear in too much quantity to be there by mere chance? Where is that study? Who conducted the peer review? Apologists make statements like this a lot, but I'm not impressed with them as they are made without reference to actual data/analysis.
Evidence 7 - Going back to the named characters issue for a moment, it is interesting that Amaleki does not name Mulek. That name appears in Helaman instead. Why aren't the named characters, in both instances where they're relevant, named? To me, that's a point against complexity. However, let's get back to Mulek himself. Note how many "could be" and "might have been" type statements appear. This is a conclusion begging for evidence, not a conclusion derived from the evidence. The biblical, archeological, historical, and genetic data all contraindicate a "Mulekite" migration to the New World.
All that evidence to suggest that Zedekiah's son "Michael", who is explicitly executed by the Babylonians before Zedekiah is blinded, is the "Mike" of the Book of Mormon. I'm not sure what I need to explain away here...
Evidence 8 - A great point about how we have no idea about what words would be behind a supposed English translation of the Book of Mormon. Without the source text, and especially lacking in a cultural provenance for the text, appeals to the what would have been contained in a supposed source text are critically useless for the faithful and the critic alike.
The ancient names issue strikes me as parallelomania, where, as long as the consonants can be found in that sequence in some Semitic language somewhere at sometime, then it is valid as a source for the BoM name. Going back to the Apocalypse of Abraham, there is an idol god's name that works to create humor and meaningfully enhance the narrative if understood from a Semitic source. The Book of Mormon names lack that attribute. Even at the most generous, let's say that Nahom is a riff on NHM and that it means something about mourning or comfort. What does the narrative gain with that idea? What new insights can be gleaned from it? With any other name, Ishmael was still buried and the daughters still grieved. The narrative isn't enhanced by such wordplay. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the idol god is destroyed by fire and possesses the name "son of fire", for which Abraham laughingly mocks the idol god. The whole reason for Abraham's mockery is lost without the insight of the Hebrew name. I've seen no such parallel in the Book of Mormon.
Evidence 9 - The primary point against this line of evidence is the lack of provenance that would actually out the Book of Mormon peoples in this or any other specific region. This isn't evidence for the Book of Mormon. This is a conclusion looking for evidence. But let me point to a specific issue. You point out that the Olmecs had a mixing of two languages around 500 BCE (300 years too early for the BoM account, but we'll see that aside). If we are able to recognize that, then it must be because of preserved writings (as no 6th century BCE speakers of the Olmec languages are alive to demonstrate). Were the writings of either of these two source languages Hebrew or Egyptian? If not, then this is not a piece of evidence I, as a critic, need to account for, as it appears to have nothing to do with the claims made by the Book of Mormon. It should be noted that Mosiah I, in his colonization of the Mulekite lands, forced the Mulekites to learn his language. The Book of Mormon does not describe a blending of languages, but the subjugation of one language and culture into another dominant language and culture.
And then we jump from the Olmec as evidence to the Maya for costly apparel (which I'm having a hard time imagining that you don't recognize how thin this point is).
I don't find the swords/weaponry point particularly salient, especially with the anachronisms in the text related to that. The fortifications are easily explained with reference to the Mound Builder myth and the actual mounds in North America. The seasonality of warfare also lines up well with the wars fought in Joseph's own milieu. Winter campaigns were infrequent and dangerous, even in the colonies. The technology that would enable winter campaigns is a feature of modern warfare that would not appear until after Joseph's death.
Lower kings and vassalages appear as narrative features in the Bible and other stories. This is not some extraordinary convergence, but just kind of a thing that people do sometimes in structure complex societies.
The building with cement is in Helaman 3, and it's not associated with the Gadiantons. The robbers hide away in the mountains. The war that eventually leads to the annihilation of Nephites begins in Zarahemla, near Sidon. I'm not seeing a match to the war you've described at all.
Evidence 10 - I had a lengthy back and forth with Grover in the comments on the original video. Basically, the volcanic eruption does not align with the order of events that the text describes. The text does not describe the health consequences that would come from breathing in that much ash for that many days. The text is explicit in saying that dry would could not produce a fire that could penetrate the darkness. That doesn't seem to align with a volcanic eruption either. The duration of that thick darkness is also a problem for the idea that it was a volcanic eruption.
As with several other pieces of evidence, this looks like a conclusion begging for evidence rather than actual evidence of the events described in the Book of Mormon.
I think I've accounted for all 10 of these points, and my model that Joseph Smith is the sole/primary author of the Book of Mormon appears to have weathered the storm. But maybe you disagree, and I've grossly missed something really worthwhile.
Can you elaborate more on your theory of how Joseph translated the text? I’ve been looking for the best theory about how Joseph pulled it off. Is it that you think he thought it through in detail beforehand and then was able to dictate it because it’s really not that complex? For transparency, I believe the Book of Mormon and I’m just trying to determine how much weight I can place specifically on the miracle of the translation process.
@@adamb7230 I know you didn't intend on slipping the idea into your question, but I don't believe he "translated" the text. I use the word "dictated" because that lines up well with most faithful and critical models. Again, I don't think you were being "tricksy" or anything with using the word "translation", but a clarification seemed in order.
Okay, to the meat of your question. This will still be a summary, but hopefully it will give you a good sense of my model. I don't think that Joseph Smith had the Book of Mormon memorized or anything like that. However, I do believe that he had most major story elements figured out before the work of dictation began.
In about 1823, Joseph had an experience that led him to the idea of producing a biblical-style work detailing the origins of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, as well as answering the religious, ritual, and theological questions that were a source of strife in his own family. This was quite probably reinforced by family narratives about a family prophecy of a Smith descendant who would do some great work in aiding true Christianity. Over the next four years, Joseph prepared to do the work of writing the story that would become the Book of Mormon, but, for whatever reason, that work did not begin until 1827-8.
When Joseph had Martin Harris as a partner in producing the text, he began to orally dictate the text that would become the 116 lost pages. When he got into the first couple chapters of Mosiah, he agreed to let Martin Harris show the pre-Mosiah material to his wife, Lucy. The pages were "lost", and Joseph experienced anxiety over how to reproduce the lost manuscript and to retain Martin Harris' support in the work.
Whatever was contained in the lost 116 pages, or however they were produced, is a matter lost to time with the pages themselves. I will not speculate on their contents. It is apparent that this event had a significant impact on Joseph, as references to it appear in multiple places in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants.
In late 1828-9, Joseph was introduced to Oliver Cowdery and the pair worked together in the Whitmer home to produce the text of the Book of Mormon. Textual and metatextual evidence suggests that Joseph Smith dictated the text through a combination of laying of heads and automatic or trance writing. The heads do appear in the text itself, which is evidence for that method, while information such as the stone in the hat and the "picking up where he left off without breaks" is consistent with automatic/trance writing. The work with Oliver started with Mosiah, worked through the large plates to Mormon, through the Jaredite plates to Moroni, and then back again to the small plates. At around the time Joseph was doing this work with Oliver, he received the revelation in D&C 10, which gave him his solution to the lost 116 pages. With Moroni complete, Joseph and Oliver went back to the beginning with the "wise purpose" of the small plates. Of note, "wisdom" is frequently evoked in D&C 10, and both Nephi and Mormon refer to the small plates as a "wise purpose". Once the dictation of the small plates and Words of Mormon is completed, the manuscript is done, ready for copying and publication.
As for the ideas, the Book of Mormon has a significant literary dependency on the KJV. It is apparent that the author was very familiar with the KJV, which is consistent with the profile of Joseph in his own history. In particular, the author of the Book of Mormon had to be familiar with the writings of Paul, the Gospels, Isaiah, and Genesis, with at least passing familiarity with Jeremiah, Kings, Ezekiel, the other non-Pauline NT authors, and the minor prophets. Also, the author would have been familiar with 19th century American Protestantism. Joseph familiarity with the same is attested in the D&C, other extant writings/dictations/sermons, and Joseph's own history. 2% of the text is just "and it came to pass" and its variants. Another sizable percentage is just direct KJV quotes of Isaiah.
To start the work, Joseph would most likely have had, at minimum, the following story beats worked out before beginning the work with Martin. A prophet named Lehi leaves Jerusalem just before the Exile and arrives in the New World. He is the father of the previous inhabitants (in Joseph's thinking) of the American continent. His descendants form two distinct nations. The visitation of Christ to the American peoples. Their destruction. Other plot beats may have seen varying levels of development before the work started. I have my doubts that Captain Moroni was a twinkle in Joseph's eye before the dictation of Alma began, for example. But the idea of a great religiously motivated war was likely in the back of his mind, though I'll admit that the specifics there are just speculation that neither meaningfully add to nor detract from the overall model. As long as Joseph had the basic story beats formulated, he could begin the work.
The loss of the 116 pages was a problem, but it was also an opportunity. Joseph had gained some practice in dictating the text, and that would have been useful for the rest of the work. He also had some time between the loss of the pages and the commencement of the work in earnest with Oliver to consider his lessons learned. The extent of how Joseph used this opportunity is up to speculation, but it cannot be ignored that he had the time and opportunity to reflect on what he had done previously.
So, the tl;dr is Joseph dictated the text with a combination of laying of heads and automatic/trance writing with at least a story framework in mind at the start of the process. He relied on the KJV and 19th century American Protestantism as sources for the themes, theology, and narrative, and he incorporated other ideas from his milieu into the text. The work, especially once Oliver was involved, was completed at an aggressive, albeit altogether humanly possible, pace. I like and appreciate the Book of Mormon, but its complexity is not outside Joseph's intelligence or skill.
Hope that helps!
Thank you for at least responding to the content in this video rather than tossing out tired, unrelated comments like most of those on this thread that are skeptical of Mormonism.
@@jeremyjensen7144 I don't think that any individual skeptic is obligated to explain why they aren't convinced of a claim. However, I do agree that skeptics often use that as a crutch in their discourse with those making the claim, and I would like to see more cases laid out on why each line of evidence isn't convincing, because clearly there are people who find it compelling.
I've also found that laying out reasons can foster a dialogue that ends up leading me down new paths of discovery. I've spent more time on Jershon, if/and conditionals, and the Apocalypse of Abraham than I ever would have if I had not engaged meaningfully with believers and apologists.
How come several of my posts have gone missing from this video? Are you removing them or is UA-cam?
Could be UA-cam, I've noticed if it contains links sometimes UA-cam deletes them.
@mormonismwiththemurph mine didn't contain any links, but I think 3 of them don't appear when you scroll through the comments.
Not a fan of the Mesoamerican evidences of the Book of Mormon because honestly, the heartland model is a whole lot more convincing to me. And even if it wasn't, there isn't sufficient Mesoamerican evidence to convince everybody that's where it was, so all a detractor has to do is point at any of the equally-convincing and competing theories.
I liked the video in general tho.
If the BOM is authentic, the question of where its events occurred should have been settled shortly after it was published. The very fact that two different camps of BOM believers speculate the location of its events thousands of miles away from each other obviously means that there is no evidence in either location to support the story.
@@randyjordan5521 Hardly. If you eliminate all the place names and just use directions and landscape details you're not gonna place the Old Testament accurately either.
@@deathbykungfu LOL. More than half of all ancient sites mentioned in the Bible have been positively identified. That was accomplished by various means, including written records found in the locations. We cannot do the same for "Book of Mormon" cities or locales, because no such identifying evidence has ever been discovered.
To illustrate the BOM's authenticity problem: scholars had speculated for many decades that Vikings had made it to the American mainland because of writings in 1000-year-old Viking sagas. Then in the 1960s, a possible Viking settlement was discovered in Newfoundland. Artifacts found at the site confirmed it to be a Viking settlement. The settlement may have been built by one shipload or people, or a small number of ships. The people might have remained in the settlement for just one year or a few years. But the investigation determined it to be an 11th-century Viking village.
The BOM claims that its people occupied the Americas for 1000 years, grew into populations of hundreds of thousands, spoke and wrote in Hebrew, followed the Israelite religion and later Christianity, trained and used horses and elephants, used wheeled vehicles such as chariots, and forged metal tools and weapons.
So if those people actually existed somewhere in the Americas, the evidence to prove that should be THOUSANDS of times greater than there is to document that one tiny, short-lived Viking settlement in Newfoundland.
@@randyjordan5521 Take a look at the hopewell civilization. They built thousands cities and mounds throughout North America during Book Of Mormon times.
Anachronisms have worked in our favour. Of the approximately 220 anachronism identified against the Book of Mormon, 197 have later proved to be correct. That is nearly 200 times where the Book of Mormon made a claim against the wisdom of the day, and was proved to be correct, refuting expert claims.
For the remaining, it's important to understand that a lack of evidence is not an evidence of lack. At one stage each of the anachronisms were considered an evidence of lack, only to be overturned later. I expect the remaining 10% will be proved true, just like the already proven 90%.
"Anachronisms have worked in our favour." Uhmm... No. I suspect that you are thinking of that large list of "anachronisms" prepared by John Clark in 2005 and subsequently updated by Matt Roper in 2019, which purports to compare lists of "anachronisms" relating to the Book of Mormon around 1842 and then showing how many, in 2019, have turned out to not be "anachronisms". It's totally bogus. For the most part the listed items are things that were never really claimed to be "anachronisms". As is typical, the apologists who made the lists first played around with the definition of "anachronism" then created a list of things that have never been considered arguments against the BoM. One definition of "anachronism" created by the list makers is not even close to being a generally accepted definition (i.e. "things that people beginning in Joseph Smith’s day, even before the Book of Mormon was published were pointing out about the Book of Mormon that they thought were ridiculous, wrong, or absurd"). It just gets worse from there as very few items listed were ever relied upon by ANY significant critic or number of critics as "anachronisms" or anything else with regard to disproving the Book of Mormon. Things like "metals" and "hiding up records" and "civilization" and "large cities" and "pre-Columbian writings" and "metal plates" (the KJV Bible itself refers to gold plates) and "wild beasts" are included in the list (along with many even more ridiculous examples) of so-called "anachronisms" that have now been "proven" to not be "anachronisms" according to the bizarre definition they use and.
The list is nothing but a prop being used for a scam, in the hope that nobody will actually look at it. "Spears" is an item included on the list. It's perhaps the most primitive form of weapon ever developed. Do you seriously think that any serious critics of the Book of Mormon were claiming that "spears" could not have existed in ancient America and therefore the Book of Mormon can't be true? Incidentally, virtually every single real anachronism that real critics have taken seriously over the years...remains "unconfirmed" on the list. The work-around for the apologists has been to pad the list with nonsense that they claim has now been confirmed as "real". I'm surprised they didn't put "dirt" on the list of "anachronisms" that they have confirmed are not anachronisms. Who knows? It could be on the list, given the nature of other things on the list. Maybe I should check again.
Still think the Heartland geographic model of the Book of Mormon has more and better evidence then the meso american model.
Excellent overall summary. However, please note the following in the spirit of constructive criticism:
1 - You know from your own research that the method of translation is a highly controversial topic. The two primary eyewitnesses, Joseph and Oliver, were quite emphatic that the Book of Mormon was translated with the interpreters which came with the plates and made no mention of using the treasure digging scrying stone. The accounts about him using the scrying stone are late and very problematic when analyzed as historical evidence. David Snell includes some good points later in the video you excerpted which deserve separate treatment, but using this video, particularly the first part, as the beginning of your own video is not a good idea, as it means you start your own video with inaccurate and controversial information.
9 and 10 - Arguments from Mesoamerican geography should not be on such lists. The other items on your list are broadly accepted among Book of Mormon supporters, but geography is, as you know, highly controverted, to the point that the Church has put out an official statement saying that we don't know the geography. That alone should be reason enough to leave Mesomaerican geography off the list. Further, all Mesomaerican models assume a crossing from Arabia across the mid-Pacific, which is completely implausible given that that is against all prevailing winds and currents. Until this defect is addressed, all Mesomaerican geography arguments are complete FAILS, regardless of how many strained and forced parallelisms their advocates invent.
If you want 10 on your list, I would suggest replacing the Mesoamerican arguments (and David Snell's misleading and inaccurate video on the method of translation) with (1) the literary sophistication of the Book of Mormon (see the work of Grant Hardy and Val Larsen) which is far more profound and sophisticated than just another item under complexity and (2) the accuracy of the war chapters. An early but excellent analysis of this latter point was by Hugh Nibley (who was an intelligence officer operating behind German lines in WW2) in his classic book "Since Cumorah." (Which I would note is the original and often unacknowledged source of many of the arguments on your list.)
" The accounts about him using the scrying stone are late and very problematic when analyzed as historical evidence."
That is false. This was published in the Cincinnati Advertiser of June 2, 1830:
"A fellow by the name of Joseph Smith, who resides in the upper part of
Susquehanna county, has been, for the last two years we are told, employed in
dedicating as he says, by inspiration, a new bible. He pretended that he had
been entrusted by God with a golden bible which had been always hidden from the
world. Smith would put his face into a hat in which he had a white stone, and
pretend to read from it, while his coadjutor transcribed."
This was published in the Palmyra Reflector of February 28, 1831:
"It is well known that Joe Smith never pretended to have any comunion with
angels, until a long period after the pretended finding of his book, and that
the juggling [folk-magic] of himself or father went no further than the
pretended faculty of seeing wonders in a 'peep stone,' and the occasional
interview with the spirit, supposed to have the custody of hidden treasures:
and it is also equally well-known that a vagabond fortune-teller by the name of
Walters, who then resided in the town of Sodus, and was once committed to the
jail of this county for juggling, was the constant companion and bosom friend
of these money-digging impostors."
Also, Joseph's father in law, Isaac Hale, swore this in an affidavit in 1833:
"I first became acquainted with JOSEPH SMITH, Jr. in November, 1825.2 He was at that
time in the employ of a set of men who were called "money-diggers;" and his occupation was that of
seeing, or pretending to see by means of a stone placed in his hat, and his hat closed over his face....
"I went to the house where Joseph Smith Jr., lived, and
where he and Harris were engaged in their translation of the Book...The manner in which he pretended to read and interpret, was the same as when he
looked for the money-diggers, with the stone in his hat, and his hat over his face, while the Book of
Plates were at the same time hid in the woods!"
The LDS church published this in its Gospel Topics Essay "Book of Mormon Translation":
"The other instrument, which Joseph Smith discovered in the ground years before he retrieved the gold plates, was a small oval stone, or “seer stone.” As a young man during the 1820s, Joseph Smith, like others in his day, used a seer stone to look for lost objects and buried treasure. As Joseph grew to understand his prophetic calling, he learned that he could use this stone for the higher purpose of translating scripture."
Are you telling us that theGod who created the earth cannot blow the wind from any direction He likes for any time that He likes? Why the emphasis on implausibility because of trade winds?
@@randyjordan5521The only thing these anti-Mormon accounts prove is that there were third-hand rumors about Joseph using the scrying stone. Isaac Hale's dubious effort to distance himself from the by then disreputable Mormons is based on these rumors, as he couldn't have seen the actual translation from the plates and interpreters as all faithful sources (including the scrying stone account from Emma) at least agree that Joseph used the plates and interpreters while working on the lost pages. Even the poorly researched and misleading Gospel Topics essay does not cite these sources.
More importantly, like all scrying stone advocates (including the Gospel Topics essay), you ignore the most credible sources of all - Joseph and Oliver's repeated contemporaneous written account that the translation came from the plates using the interpreters supplied by the Lord for that purpose (see JH-S 1:35 and the footnote to verse 71).
@@KaydubbbbSure, the Lord could have completely changed the Earth's entire climate to reverse massive oceanic patterns. However, the Book of Mormon does not report such a miracle. It simply says that the Lehites were "driven before the wind" (1 Nephi 18:8) The whole point of Murph's post is to show many ways in which the Book of Mormon is plausible as an ancient record based on external evidences. It contradicts this effort by Murph and many other faithful scholars to rely on a miracle which is not supported by either scripture or science.
@@Kaydubbbb Your attempt to support the BOM story actually hurts it. To explain: the book states that it took the Jaredites 344 days to cross from the Middle East to the Americas, even though God provided a "mighty wind" to push their boats across the ocean. That 344 day thing is nonsensical. Columbus's first voyage only took three weeks, without any divine aid. So that story is obviously fiction written by a 19th century person who was totally clueless about how much time such a voyage should have taken.
It's also nonsensical to believe that those people could have spent 344 days crossing the ocean in small crafts while carrying enough food and water to feed themselves and their animals. Such improbable stories are what BH Roberts called "wonder tales" and "the product of a juvenile mind." That story is just one of many in the BOM which show that the book is a 19th century work of fiction.
Mary Whitmer was shown the Fayette plates by brother Nephi. Her grandson thought she meant Moroni so it got changed incorrectly.
Joe also apparently translated the kinderhook plates which are now an admitted fraud. Book of Abraham was totally made up. He had a copy of the book of the dead that he doodled on. A common Egyptian funeral text.
Neophyte and More-Own-I 🤣
"1816, also known as the 'Year Without Summer,' 'Poverty Year,' and 'Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death. ' The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 triggered a change in the global climate." The biographies of Joseph Smith's life all mention this phenomenon affecting the area where the Smith family lived, and you are suggesting he had no idea about the effects of volcanic eruptions?
Isn't it more accurate to say that the process in which the BoM was written down was a process of inspired dictation instead of a translation? For some reason using the word "translation" to describe the process bothers me. Only because the documentation doesn't describe Joseph Smith looking at the actual ancient writings on the Gold Plates and figuring out how this writing system translates into English. Even if the plates existed, Joseph dictated the BoM by the power of God without the Gold Plates, thus inspired dictation would be the most accurate description for the process.
Why was it important for Joseph to dictate quickly? 🤔 Was it bc the angel was going to take the plates away quickly?
There are much easier ways to con people than write a complex religious text and later be murdered for it. The standard of truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.
" There are much easier ways to con people than write a complex religious text and later be murdered for it."
He tried treasure digging scam with his rock and hat and it didn't go to well for him and even ended up in court or similar. He wasn't murdered for a book of truth, he was gunned down in Mafia style shoot out (which he lost only having a six shooter himself) by everyone he threatened over the years with his wrath of God nonsense, took other mens wives and such.
Try yourself asking for other mens wives, do a bank scam that ruins people, lie and cheat everyone, attack and destroy a media printing company, pledge a masonic death oath of secrecy and then steal their ceremony for your own, and see what happens?
All this unhallowed hand rhetoric! hahaha The work is stumbling in case you haven't noticed.
How do you know that the devil didn't make him do it?
@@truthbebold4009 would the devil have a man create a work that increases faith in Jesus Christ, and supports the bible as the word of God? Matthew 7:16-20 in summary by their fruits ye shall know them. The Book of Mormon has brought millions of people to know Christ and clarifies the nature of God and doctrines lost in ages past. LDS families are more statistically successful and their children know the scriptures better than their Christian counterparts.
@@ameyers67 "would the devil have a man create a work that increases faith in Jesus Christ, "
Jim Jones suicide cult increased faith in Christ. David Koresh did the same.
Smith's contribution led to lots of sex abuse against women disguised as Holy practices and a bank scam thrown in.
" The Book of Mormon has brought millions of people to know Christ and clarifies the nature of God and doctrines lost in ages past. "
It does not contain the nature of God (LDS version man with flesh and bone) Smith made that up in D&C years later.
The book of mormon contains a type of trinitarian style views consistent with his day.
"LDS families are more statistically successful and their children know the scriptures better than their Christian counterparts."
Successfull at what? Mormons do not know scriptures very well. They only know the smith stuff and are generally biblically illiterate, except for a few verses they use to promote Smith's theology.
@@ameyers67 the devil most definitely would create supposed additional scripture that introduces new anti biblical concepts like the fall being considered a necessary and positive event.
The problem with personal experience confirming the Book of Mormon in some aspect is that the believer then turns around and extrapolates. He thinks that because on thing seems true, the entire work must therefore be true. This is a fallacy.
Johnson Donna Jackson Donna Taylor Laura
Surprise, its KWAKU
If it is Kwaku my mom thought your rich white girl rant was hilarious
Remember the primary song ʻBook of Mormon Stories’? Yeah, that was racist and untrue.
Unfortunately, the approach postulated in this video just isn't correct.
We determine the existence of civilizations by evidence, not by prayer, or religious faith.
The question is:
Was there a massive (multiple, multiple millions of people), centuries-spanning, pre-European conquest, pseudo-Jewish / Christian type civilization, with the attendant physical trappings as described in the text (horses, steel, etc., etc.), somewhere upon the ancient Western Hemisphere?
Is there any evidence in the Western Hemisphere to lead us to even to begin to consider such a conclusion? Is there anything yet discovered in the Western Hemisphere, that has been correctly handled, scientifically, that would lead a person to conclude that such a civilization existed?
The answer, so far, is no, to all of that. There is not a single piece of evidence (including the 10 listed above) yet curated, that would lend itself to such a conclusion.
And this doesn't address the problems with the story itself. For example, there was no Tower of Babel as described Biblically. There simply was not. Yet, there had to have been, for the Jaredite narrative to hold true. Likewise the idea of a Global Flood, essential to the veracity of the Jaredite narrative, never happened. Yet, the Book of Mormon demands such things.
In conclusion, if you'd like me to address each of the 10 points you've listed, I'd be glad to do so.
Nope that was about the most perfect mic drop ever
@@sdfotodude Thanks.
@@rodneyjamesmcguireWrong. As Alma stated to Korihor, everything denotes there is a God. That evidence and the testimony of the Book of Mormon is evidence of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and God and would hold up in any court of law.
Try again. You are biased, lack faith and are a Korihor.
@@donaldjones9830 Ad Hominem
@@rodneyjamesmcguire That comment means nothing to me. It refutes nothing.
Every non-supernatural possibility for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is MUCH more likely than any supernatural claim.
A few points
1 The plural of evidence is evidence, not evidences.
2 Faith is just a nice word for credulity. There is no position that cannot be held based on faith.
3 Smith had years to work on his story not two months. His mother even said he would tell them stories about the ancient inhabitants of the land.
4 the Book of Mormon is not a literary masterpiece it is very repetitive and poorly written. The list of named people would be impressive if they weren’t mentioned once and then never again. The geography is vague ( why it is debated on where it is).
5 the witnesses are not credible people and they disputed what actually happened. Martin Harris said he never actually saw the plates and no one else did either.
That is as far into the video as I got and feel no need to go on. The story of the jaredites is enough to debunk the Book of Mormon on its own, the Tower of Babel is a myth not an actual historical event.
In 1970 it's was translated from plates today it's a stone in a hat lie than lie now.
Thank you for the show. But honestly if you want to talk about evidences if the Book of Mormon, you should avoid referencing any stone in the hat or meso American rhetoric based solely on testimony of apostates and anti Mormons. Stick to what Joseph repeatedly taught: He translated the Biok of Mormon from the plates by the gift and power of God by means of the Nephite interpreters, the Urim and Thumim and the lands of the Book of Mormon ended with the Hill Cumorah in NY with the plains of the Nephites stretching west from there with the land if Lehi to the south...when you base your evidence on fallacy it falls apart under attack. Period.
Sorry but gotta be the spelling police here: Pluralizing evidence, saying "evidences", is not necessary for allot of what you're referring to. Just giving you a head's up since this seems to be a pet peeve for many historians, researchers, etc. whom I've had the pleasure of speaking with.
Slow down, please.
Do you mean the video speed? There's options on UA-cam to slow the speed of the video.
Thank you. Love your videos.
One would be very hard pressed to find a university or credentialed historian, archeologist, anthropologist, linguist, or DNA scientist not on BYU's payroll that would give the slightest credence to the position that the BofM is a factual historical narrative. A vast civilization that existed more-or-less contemporaneously with the Roman Empire for which not as much as a shard of pottery has been produced as evidence. Hill Cumorah? Clean, so much so that the Church has dropped the silly pageant it produced there. In fact the Church itself won't commit within two entire continents, over a third of the earth's landmass, where it all happened. Oh, but there is chiasmus, and NHM discovered on the Arabian Peninsula which has to be Nahom, the three witnesses whose claim to have seen gold plates in full consciousness which is highly arguable, I can go on. I have scoured the internet for any instance of a BofM apologist presenting their research defending the historicity of the BofM to a forum of academic peers. There are plenty of entries of the likes of Dan Peterson, the two BYU Egyptologists Gee and Muhlstein, and that most esteemed (in Mormon eyes) Neil Maxwell presenting their evidences to friendly and receptive mormon audiences, but none to academic peers. I think it is obvious there is a reason for this, they would be crushed, and they know it. Now, how about the Book of Abraham? LDS arguments for this is more suitable for late night comedy than any serious discussion.
This is a classic example of the "appeal to authority" fallacy. It's true that those who deny the Book of Mormon think it's false and those who embrace the book of Mormon think it's true regardless of whether or not someone is a scholar. That's not particularly shocking.
It's important to evaluate the evidence for yourself and to understand the why.
@@loudogg73 The problem with your defense is that LDS "authorities" (scholars) cannot list any evidences which prove the BOM story to be true either. If the people as described in the BOM really existed, with their population figures, culture, and technology, then their existence should have been proven shortly after the book was published.
To illustrate: archaelogists began discovering and uncovering the great Mayan cities shortly after the BOM was published. John Lloyd Stephens published his "Incident of Travel in Chiapas" in 1842, with detailed illustrations of many ancient Mayan ruins. Since then, we have learned more and more about the ancient Mayans.
So if a Hebrew-descended culture numbering in the hundreds of thousands had also existed somewhere in the Americas at the same time, we should have been able to find their ruins in similar numbers as the Mayan ruins. Particularly considering that the BOM states that its people built great cities which stretched from sea to sea.
@@randyjordan5521 There is actually a ton of evidence for the historical BOM. Like a ridiculous amount. It's true that, once Lehi's family arrives in the Americas, we lose track of them geographically. That doesn't mean the civilization didn't exist. That said, American archeological explorations have been very limited in general. We are still discovering huge finds here when the efforts are actually made. Just recently, for example, LIDAR technology was used to uncover a vast civilization around modern day Ecuador. I believe that happened just last year. My point is that we need to look beyond the limited reach of archeology and look at the whole picture. When we do that, we can see extremely strong patterns supporting the historical BOM. (Like what has been discussed in this video and more).
@@loudogg73 Hi. I invite you to do a thought experiment. The evidence for the Book of Mormon is no different than if you were to take any book and try to match it to the real world. You would find some parallels but nothing specific to the civilization. Try it with To Kill a Mockingbird. Compare it with Wakanda.
Wakandans worship the ancient Egyptian God Bast and their pantheon, the Orisha, comes from the Yoruba word for Deity. Their country is found in Sub Saharan Africa by Lake Victoria. The only difference is the Book of Mormon has 200 years of apologists trying to make connections and they still cant find the location, people, animals, tools, religion, or language anywhere in the Americas because it doesnt really exist. Just look at the "evidence" presented here in this video.
@@kuriju88 I get what you are trying to say but that's just not accurate. Despite the very limited amount of archeological and anthropological research done on ancient American civilizations, significant evidence aligns with what is discussed in the BOM. Whether that be DNA evidence, geological timelines, old world archeology, or whatever else.
Any one real verifiable anachronism would prove the Book of Mormon was non-historical. Is the word "compass" anachronistic? Is the "name" "Jesus Christ" anachronistic?
When you understand that the translation was not word for word nor does it claim to be... perhaps you wouldn't need to ask this.
@@kandeepayne7794Isn’t “Jesus Christ” very specific? There is no way to use THIS name without meaning Jesus Christ
Please. At least pic something juicy. You can make the same critic to one hundred thousand words from an ancient language to a modern language. I suggest watching president Monsons account on his miraculous visit to the bedside of Crystal Methvin on her death bed. Check under the heading Faith of a Child. The words Crist spoke to his mind were not in Greek or Hebrew, but exactly as in the King James Bible. Forbid not the little children to come into me, for such is the kingdom of God". Just try checking talks by Thomas S Monson. It is so spiritual you may be converted.
@@GarySaint-xm6tr Jesus spoke King James English? Wow!! The Book of Mormon IS true!!!
Was that my point? Try what I suggest. The link proves the Book of Mormon is true. The fact that Christ speaks to us in our own language shows that the word compass in the Book of Mormon is not anachronistic.
With all the clockwork perfection in the universe, I believe there must be a God. I also believe that he’s gone through great extent to prove to us that the book of Mormon is undeniably false. And if this is true, to all the TBM‘s out there, what if when you get to the pearly gates, he says “I never knew you! “
It's 100% true
You are the blind one you are kept in darkness because of your pride & hard heart
Good luck with that
Sounds like a very lousy father. Imagine a father with children who were earnestly trying to get back to him only to have father say to them" “I never knew you! “
Oh good hell. I was actually expecting some evidences. Not more apologetic BS that have each been thogoughly debunked. Might as well have claimed "I felt the spirit" as your evidence.
Where's the debunking to each of these 10 then
I just want the smoking gun of verifiable scientifically agreed-upon evidence that would convince a neutral investigator.
The Book of Mormon teaches that faith is required, so obtaining smoking gun verifiable scientifically agreed-upon evidence isn't going to happen, at least for now. Maybe sometime in the future.
@@jared5559 that is easily the most pathetic loophole I have ever heard of to base your life upon
No amount of scientific evidence will ever convince someone against their will. Science is rarely black & white, there is almost always room for interpretation, regardless of the subject in question.
Science will never be able to convince someone of anything against their will. You could show many people a smoking cannon, and if they don't want to believe it, they will deny its existence and find ways to explain it away. Science is almost never black & white. There is almost always plenty of room for interpretation when it comes to any type of scientific conclusion. If you don't understand this fact then you truly don't understand science itself.
No amount of scientific evidence will ever convince anyone of something that they don't want to believe. Science is almost never black & white and there is almost always room left for interpretation. This applies to every aspect of science. You could show someone a smoking cannon of evidence, and they would still find some way to deny it or discredit it, if they don't want to believe it. If the mounds and mounds of current evidence supporting the veracity of the Book of Mormon isn't enough to convince you now, no new finding in the future will ever be enough to convince you later. They could literally find a "Nephi was here" or "City of Zarahemla" inscription in North America, and you would find some way to discredit it. Just like citics discredit a tombstone that says "Ishmael" on it, in the exact location the Book of Mormon says it should be, during the exact same time period the Book of Mormon says it should be there.
ua-cam.com/video/A_g3tRBoxg4/v-deo.htmlsi=KzIC2W4dwL9ndY_w
Joseph could not write this book no way not even Shakespeare could read it word for word pàge by page for yourself
Critics think Joseph was a genius
A century ago, the LDS scholar BH Roberts concluded that Joseph Smith had the talent and the pre-existing source material to be able to write the book without any divine aid. The fact that 194 years have passed since the book was published, and there is still not one iota of physical evidence found to support the story tells us that the logical deduction is that the book is a 19th century hoax.
Totally not true. You can easily find the First Book of Napoleon online. You need not make it past the first verse to see the similarities. View of the Hebrews was about a family leaving Jerusalem, took ships to America then split into rival groups. Both books predate the BoM and show exactly where the writing style and ideas were lifted from.
The Mormon scholar BH Roberts did an intense study of the Book of Mormon a century ago, and he concluded that Joseph Smith had the talents and the pre-existing source materail to draw from to be able to write the book on his own.
Funny how you bring up Shakespeare who was uneducated 🤣🤣🤣🤣you're disproving yourself 😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
Is this a parody channel? It should be.
The fact that the LDS members do not actually believe the BOM is more proof against it than any evidence you have for it.
I have NEVER heard an active member say they don’t believe it . Disgruntled ex members say lots of things in EVERY religion. Many “former “ Christians don’t believe in the Bible . Is what it is .
@@tomasina10 Do you believe that Jesus and Heavenly Father are the same being? if not, you don't believe the BOM. Do you believe that men are punished because of Adam's fall? if not, you don't believe the BOM. The point is, the BOM was supposed to be the most correct book on earth, yet modern day "revelation" shows you do not believe the BOM in the slightest. there are more examples than the two I gave, but I figures two would be enough to prove my point.
@@sertinduhm6378I'd be curious to hear some the other complaints you have about the Book of Mormon. If I may, I think that I can briefly respond to your two points. First, the Bible and the Book of Mormon make references to the unity of members of the Godhead. It's easy to interpret these as 100% literal, which is what most Christian denominations believe. We don't believe it to mean that God the Father and Jesus Christ are literally the same people. But they are one in many ways, to the point where Jesus talks about His will being the same as the Father's. It's more complicated than that, but that is a simple belief that I have been taught since primary, so the verses you are likely referencing never confused me.
Second, we do indeed suffer because of the transgressions of Adam and Eve. We are separated from the presence of God. We are no longer nger entitled to the inheritance of the Garden of Eden, since our forefather that once had it in his possession to share lost it. Much like my children would suffer because of bad choices I make, and would lose the opportunity to inherit blessings from me if I lose them through sin or transgression. Ultimately, we are taught that our final destination will be determined by our own choices, and not because of those around us. No one gets dragged into heaven unwillingly, and the one that judges us worthy or not to enter God's presence will evaluate us based on our own choices and actions. This is taught pretty clearly in the Book of Mormon as well. It's also more complicated than what I explained, but I wanted to be brief.
If you were to take certain verses, and interpret them in a vacuum, your interpretations of the Book of Mormon could make sense. However, I don't think that is how they were intended to be understood, seeing as how we also believe in modern revelation and the succession of prophets, as did the writers of the Book of Mormon. I would love to hear more of your interpretations, though! I don't think your reasoning is bad, just a bit narrow in it's focus and scope. But, I could also be wrong. I'm mortal and flawed, too. Thanks for the comments!
@@michaelanderson6484 There is a huge counter argument to the "one in purpose" argument, which is shown in the BOM, and that is Mosiah 15. Abinadi declares that Jesus and Heavenly Father are the same being, not one in purpose, but the same being. He even explains how this is the case.
Next, continuing revelation should not mean continuing contradiction. You can't serve two masters after all. One of your articles of faith directly contradicts the BOM. So how can we say which is true? No, prophets dont work as they get things wrong all the time.
For more issues. I will give you one more for now, as I assume the Abinadi response will trigger some thoughts. Where was Jesus born? If you said Bethlehem, you don't believe the BOM.
I have been inactive in the church for 15 years and still believe in Joseph Smith and the BoM. I am reading it again right now.
We are not punished for Adam and Eve’s transgression but we are punished with them, we live in a fallen state that was inherited from them.
Jesus, according to the BoM, born at Jerusalem not in; look up at in a dictionary. It was also known, not just in the BoM, for the Israel at the time to be called the Land of Jerusalem.
I see where Mosiah could be confusing to one outside of the church and therefore not understanding the title attributed to Heavenly Father and to Jesus in his various roles. This is similar to Gen 1:1 where in the Hebrew is says the gods created the heavens and the earth, or in Gen 1:26 and 3:22 where man is to be like one of Us. There are many scriptures that clarify the relationship and titles but I will leave it at two versus from D&C that clear this up a bit.
D&C 93:
3 And that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one-
4 The Father because he gave me of his fulness, and the Son because I was in the world and made flesh my tabernacle, and dwelt among the sons of men.
I would suggest taking at least a year or two and sit down with some good commentaries and truly study the BoM to gain a correct understanding of these and other passages.
No evidence.
Haplogroup X in the native tribes of Eastern North America. And the Hopewell Mound Builders Civilization of Eastern North America matching the Book of Mormon timeline. That is evidence.
@@stephenjensen5358 X split and is found present in the Americas thousands of years before the timeline of the Book of Mormon. It is not evidence in favor of the book but the opposite.
The Church is true. The Book of Mormon is true. The Lord hasn’t revealed everything about all there is to know, because he wants us to be more like Nephi than Korihor, that is, to exercise faith in God
@kuriju88 I'm pretty sure I read the scientific paper you're referencing. That was speculation, attempting to explain why it didn't connect to the Asian land bridge. They claimed X went dormant then re-emerged later in Eastern North America. There is no scientific evidence that this dormant thing ever happens. And this dormant BS is how they attempted to push the timing back by thousands of years.
So the details you're attempting to use as a foil, were speculative conclusions not based on direct evidence. But nice try.
@@donaldjones9830 read First Book of Napoleon and View of the Hebrews you'll change your mind.
Thanks!
Wow thank you!
Thanks!
Thank you