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I just wanted to throw out there that it’s helpful to see how other people process and deal with these issues (Like BofM historicity). We don’t have to all come to a single conclusions. If it helps you stay engaged positively with the Church, and gives you a sense of reconciliation, then that works as far as I am concerned. I love seeing how other people work through this stuff. I am learning to get comfortable with having a portfolio of possibilities instead of having the one “True” answer anymore.
In fact, I sometimes consider the benefit of all the different angles being explored internally. I feel like I gain spiritual insights of all types by really pondering and considering other angles. It’s not so much about solving the problem and finding the answer once and for all. Each way of believing is a journey, a story with a purpose and destination.
Salo, I’m kind of with Valoel – pondering different angles is interesting, but ultimately I’m trying to be content in not knowing all the physical details but focus instead on spiritual worth. It is an interesting discussion, but I don’t think it directly serves the purpose of StayLDS. Ha, my first SLDS rebuke , thanks Orson 
I personally think its fine to talk about the possibilities. I don’t know if Orson meant it as a “rebuke” or not. Its possible that people can come to a conclusion that Sidney Rigdon was the major source? I don’t know. That just doesn’t seem as likely, for all the reasons you listed Salo. It’s true that Sidney Rigdon was a mature, seasoned and skilled preacher. He was definately a key figure in the early Church, and no doubt had a lot of influence in how things developed. I agree that Sidney seems most tempting to those who want to deny all credit to Joseph, not even to acknowledge Joseph as a religious genius at a minimum. That’s way too cynical for my belief. The resulting expansion and lasting duration of the LDS Church speaks volumes to the genius of Joseph Smith, if not testifying of a divine influence and inspiration. Yes, I think it is possible for some to reach the conclusion that Rigdon is the primary source of the BoM. If you read Craig Criddle’s essay (link in previous post) you will see that he has come to that conclusion. After reading RSR I thought as Bushman said “even Fawn Brodie dismissed the Rigdon/Spalding theory” but Criddle brings up some interesting evidences that Brodie would not have had access to. Can we know for sure what happened? I think it’s pretty obvious that we can’t, there just isn’t enough solid evidence to make a firm ‘conviction’ in my mind. A mountain of circumstantial evidence that Criddle suggests? Possibly, but I don’t think it makes a water tight case for primary authorship. The most plausible naturalistic explanation? On some days I might agree with that one. I could see some people even viewing Rigdon as the primary conduit for revelation when the opinion that the BoM is inspired is joined with the naturalistic view that he is the major source of its content. He could have personally felt it was inspired – greater than himself – and felt an urgent need to get it out to the world to serve God’s purposes. If he thought people would automatically assume he wrote it if the connection could be made – he may have considered putting it in the hands of a young visionary to give it the best chance for wide acceptance. This makes me think of an early revelation where Joseph is told his gift is translation, and he should not anticipate or pretend to any other gifts. Other interesting parallels come in as well, like his fear of losing his position after losing the first manuscript pages, and witnesses to the translation process thinking he was reading words. In places he could have also ‘improvised’ or used his own language. I think the evidence along this line of thought (considering IF) is that when Rigdon first read the book he was so disappointed with the final product that he threw it across the room in disgust. (This event did happen, but he spoke of blasphemy or some other reason for his reaction.) This theory would also explain all the reasons why Joseph didn’t act like the author of a fictional work, knowing the story and characters forward and backward.
Anyway, waaay too much speculation in my mind (I just can’t help it sometimes). The point – again – is that I don’t think the HOW it was brought about is as important as WHAT it is. If I can find a divine message in its pages I will cherish that.
salo hit on some points that resonate with me. i think the book offers a window into joseph smith’s personal beliefs, and in many ways is a critic of the bible and of 19th century Christianity. this viewpoint has shifted the meaning of the book a great deal for me, while i respect the belief of most in the church that it is in fact a historical record of ancient people. dan vogel hits on a lot of these points in his book, the making of a prophet that i thought were pretty interesting.
I’m not sure what to think of the Book of Mormon, and the fulcrum of my weighing is mainly moral and spiritual. The beheading of Laban is sugar-coated barbarism. The teaching of Jacob on riches (“you will seek them”) is spiritual homicide. Mormon’s admiration of the often boorish Captain Moroni is frankly befuddling.
But there are good parts too: The Alma the Elder stories, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, Lehi’s Dream, and Enos to name only a few.
In the absence of the black/white all-or-nothing LDS view, the Book of Mormon could be a great sacred text like the Bhagavad Gita or The Bible. But if I’m forced to believe it’s the most (spiritually) correct of any book on earth, I run the other way. And so lately I sadly prefer to read something else. Sorta makes it uncomfortable to StayLDS.
I’m bumping up this thread for mrtoad and anyone who wants to read one of the oldest threads in our archives about the Book of Mormon. thanks ray. Quote:“I view it as a revealed account of actual people – a (loose) “translation” of an actual record that might or might not have been recorded on the plates Joseph used as the catalyst for the translation. I don’t care one whit if the plates he used actually were an accurate historical record, just as I don’t care one whit if the Book of Abraham is an actual translation of the writing that inspired it. I believe he believed it (that it wasn’t a fraud), and I am convinced that it is inspired.
(My mind wanders all the time when I am reading things, and some of my greatest and most inspired insights come almost as fully developed paragraphs that have little or nothing to do with the text I am reading. If that is true for me, I can understand and accept it happening in a more voluminous way for Joseph, whether or not the record he translated was on the plates that served as his prop or on other plates thousands of miles away and buried deep in the earth. I just don’t care, because I love the book itself so much.)
I also think it is and has been incredibly misunderstood. Ironically, I think one of the absolute strongest arguments for its validity is that it was so misunderstood by the early Church – and even by Joseph himself. If it had been a deliberate fraud, a typical author would have understood it better than Joseph did – wouldn’t have made cultural assumptions that simply didn’t fit the actual book. (For example, K Rowling and Stephanie Myers know exactly what they were creating and can talk in minute detail about their books. George Lucas is the same way with Star Wars.) There are lots of instances, however, where Joseph (and others of his day) made all kinds of assumptions about the record that simply aren’t justified by a careful parsing of the record itself. The book is abso-freakin-lutely complicated and intricate and astoundingly complex – and Joseph seemed to be almost oblivious to that fact. That, imo, is amazing – and a testimony that it didn’t originate from within his own mind.
Okay, now this is a very well-stated version of the problem that I face with the Book of Mormon and JS more specifically. It really is hard to imagine how, even when he put his head in a hat, he could possibly have come up wholly out of his imagination with such a complex book, for all of the reasons you have given. But it is there where the argument gets turned around, or has gotten turned around, by people like BH Roberts, one of the greatest defenders of the book until his death in 1933. In his rather private papers (since published) he ultimately wrote a pretty damning argument against the Book of Mormon’s authenticity, and, more specifically and importantly for this discussion, provided reason to understand the book, not as complex, but rather as a wonder tale, a fanciful story created from a fairly unsophisticated mind (by which I think he meant not classically educated, especially as education began to change in the period after Smith’s death, such as with archeology, linguistics, etc., such that Smith simply did not understand that what he was writing would not hold up to history even as it kind of made sense at the time he wrote it). And others made similar claims. The famous jab by Mark Twain about it can be fairly brushed aside but it does offer evidence that many others who read it in its first several decades did not find it all that astounding as to not be a work of fiction. I don’t think there is really a question here just an observation. And I would be curious what others think. I know we have been down this road before but it does seem to me that the vitality of staylds.com is that there are always new people coming in and to simply tell them that we have discussed this before and you can access the archives is to miss the point of the listserv.
No matter how you slice it, the existence of the Book of Mormon and the Mormon religious movement is evidence that Joseph Smith was a religious genius, a mystical savant. You can take away all the claims to the super natural, and there is still always that. Dictating a whole book line by line with your face in a hat? Worst case scenario there, he’s a creative genius. The book might not rival the best of classic literature, but it’s no small feat. He also managed to synthesize resolutions to many of the burning theological questions of his day. It required someone that audacious and that socially unhindered.
amen brian. What I find fascinating is the spead and unity of the message coming out from the hat versus the later effort of translating the Book of Abraham.
The book of mormon – 500 pages – was revealed in a matter of months, yet it appears from the record that the few pages of the book of abraham were labored over excessively — Joseph creates an Egyptian alphabet, then goes over in notes what each letter means — nothing of the direct and immediate dictation of the book to a scribe.
several comments have reflected on the idea that whatever god, or the gospel or the BofM really is, it could only ever be an approximation of the whole, because our finite language and mortal weaknesses and limited ability simply cannot grasp it clearly and wholly. hence all the anachronisms or possible JS creations and on and on. someone in another thread had asked the question of why christ (if he is the only begotten) had no writings. at least none we know of. everything is second or third or fourth hand.
maybe this is why. perhaps even christ, as the only begotten, even though without blemish, was limited by mortal body and mortal languages and knew his own hand could not write perfectly enough the perfection that is the “real”, whole truth. so he didn’t.
can you imagine? if we did have actual hard copies of documents of writings in the hand of christ?? i mean, we think the standard works are over-judged–those were through the hands of men. christ’s own writings would get meticulously and relentlessly shredded. even his hand writing would be judged for quality. it’d be insane.
on the other hand, we may not have anything in his own hand because he wasn’t real, or not who we think… tomato / tomahto.
Monkey wrote:I have no life changing experiences related to the Book of Mormon. I have read it through a few times with my husband and family. I do not have a testimony of it at all. What I do recall of the Book of Mormon are things that I do not like nor agree with. I do not like war and cutting off bodyparts. Too many questions to relate to it as THE TRUTH, right now. I am not prepared to seek confirmation once more of it’s truthfulness. I never have received confirmation and have spent years and years seeking. I have concluded that for me I will love and be loved and let the magic happen if and when it does.
Bear in mind that you may be coming from a western viewpoint here. Western wars tend to be fought at arms’ length now.
Other cultures appear to have a different view of the matter, especially those with a warrior tradition –
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=8&num=1&id=179 Quote:The Maori read the Book of Mormon differently than I did. I was anxious to find proof texts and was busy harmonizing its teachings with what I understood to be correct doctrinal teaching back in Utah. The Ma ori, in contrast, saw it as a tragic story of families in conflict and subtribes and tribes quarreling with each other and bent on revenge for personal insults and factional quarrels. They looked more at the larger patterns of events and less at what might be construed from particular verses. They saw stories of ambitious rivals to traditional authority trying to carve out positions of power and territory for themselves. They perceived how ambition led to quarrels within families and between extended families and tribes. They understood the atonement as an exchange of gifts between our Heavenly Father and his children, somewhat in the way their own relationships were marked by reciprocal acts of hospitality as manifestations of love.
SamBee wrote:Monkey wrote:I have no life changing experiences related to the Book of Mormon. I have read it through a few times with my husband and family. I do not have a testimony of it at all. What I do recall of the Book of Mormon are things that I do not like nor agree with. I do not like war and cutting off bodyparts. Too many questions to relate to it as THE TRUTH, right now. I am not prepared to seek confirmation once more of it’s truthfulness. I never have received confirmation and have spent years and years seeking. I have concluded that for me I will love and be loved and let the magic happen if and when it does.
Bear in mind that you may be coming from a western viewpoint here. Western wars tend to be fought at arms’ length now.
Other cultures appear to have a different view of the matter, especially those with a warrior tradition –
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=8&num=1&id=179 Quote:The Maori read the Book of Mormon differently than I did. I was anxious to find proof texts and was busy harmonizing its teachings with what I understood to be correct doctrinal teaching back in Utah. The Ma ori, in contrast, saw it as a tragic story of families in conflict and subtribes and tribes quarreling with each other and bent on revenge for personal insults and factional quarrels. They looked more at the larger patterns of events and less at what might be construed from particular verses. They saw stories of ambitious rivals to traditional authority trying to carve out positions of power and territory for themselves. They perceived how ambition led to quarrels within families and between extended families and tribes. They understood the atonement as an exchange of gifts between our Heavenly Father and his children, somewhat in the way their own relationships were marked by reciprocal acts of hospitality as manifestations of love.
Wow, thanks for sharing this Sambee! This has given new insight into myself and that perhaps I might not be so weird or strange. I find it very interesting that the Maori are reading the BOM exactly the way I read and interpret it. Fastinating(to me). Thanks for sharing this, really!
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