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 | Monday, Aug 24, 2009, at 07:51 AM Book Of Mormon Coinage Posted By Holy the Ghost BOOK OF MORMON - SECTION 3 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Apologists have relatively recently started claiming that the Nephite coinage set forth in Alma chapter 11 does not refer to coins at all, but a system of weights and measures.
http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms/Coins ...even though the passages appear to refer to coins, the chapter heading claims they refer to coins, and everybody who has ever read it thinks they refer to coins. (I suppose that the apologists POV is that we should never take the BoM at face value, but wait to interpret it based on real knowledge from real sources of information like archeology...?) But I digress...my point... Jesus: Matthew 5:26 (from the Sermon on the Mount): Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost *farthing*. Jesus: 3 Nephi 12:26 (BoM version of the Sermon on the Mount): Verily, verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence until thou hast paid the uttermost *senine*. A "Senine" is part of that system mentioned in Alma 11 (3, 5, & 7) So when Jesus repeats his sermon on the Mount for the BoM people, he replaces the Roman coin (translated as farthing) with what? A Senine. Even Jesus thinks that Alma 11 is about Nephite coinage. I say Kerry Shirts is on shaky ground here. |
| | Wednesday, Aug 26, 2009, at 07:45 AM Book Of Mormon "Translation" In 85 Days Required A "Translation" And Writing Rate Of 4.25 Seconds Per Character Posted By CdnXMo BOOK OF MORMON - SECTION 3 -Guid- | ↑ |
| The 'seer'-stone-and-hat BoM 'translation' process used by JS, according to the quote in Mormon Apostle Russell Nelson's article in the July 1993 Ensign, "A Treasured Testament", would have needed to have happened in a manner such as the following:
1. With Joseph Smith's 'seer' stone in his hat, the "something resembling parchment" (from the quote in Nelson's article) 'magically' appears, displaying the 'ancient' character and the corresponding letter in English. Did JS' 'peep' stone display 'ancient' punctuation and its English equivalent? The quote in Nelson's article doesn't say. 2. With his hat pulled tightly around his face so no ambient light enters, JS sees the 'magical' character and letter and calls out the latter to his scribe. 3. The scribe hears JS' muffled voice and repeats what he (or she) hears to ensure that the letter about to be written down is in fact the letter JS sees. For example, "b", "d", "p" and other '-ee' letters called out from inside JS' hat would have sounded similiar. 4. JS says "Yes", gives a thumbs-up, or indicates in some other way that what the scribe has said is in fact the letter he sees on the "something resembling parchment." 5. Once the English character has been written down, the next character and letter 'magically' appears. Presumably, 'God' is monitoring the progress of 'translation' and makes the next character and letter appear. There are 1,150,219 characters in the BoM. At a 'translation' rate of 5 seconds per character, and factoring in breaks for JS to remove his hat from his face to let trapped air escape and for his scribe to have a little rest, it would have taken JS nearly 10 months (at eight hours per day) to 'translate' the BoM. However, Nelson told Latter-day Saints in Gen. Conf. in October 1999: "Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon at the rate of about 10 pages per day, completing the task in about 85 days!" (see "A Testimony of the Book of Mormon" in the Nov./99 Ensign; the talk/article is online at www.lds.org). Even if JS kept his face in his hat for 16 hours per day (no breaks and no Sundays off!), he would not have been able to 'translate' the BoM using the 'seer' stone in 85 days at the rate of 5 seconds per character. To complete the BoM 'translation' in less than three months, the 'translation' rate would have needed to be 4.25 seconds per character/letter (again, no breaks and no Sundays off!). Breathing in one's exhaled carbon dioxide for 16 hours per day for 85 days would have resulted in hypercapnia, "a condition where there is too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood." Symptoms of early hypercapnia "include flushed skin, full pulse, extrasystoles, muscle twitches, hand flaps, reduced neural activity, and possibly a raised blood pressure." "[M]ild hypercapnia might include headache, confusion and lethargy." "Hypercapnia can induce increased cardiac output, an elevation in arterial blood pressure, and a propensity toward arrhythmias." "In severe hypercapnia...symptomatology progresses to disorientation, panic, hyperventilation, convulsions, unconsciousness, and eventually death." (ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia). Nelson indicated in "A Treasured Testament" (and other articles and talks) that JS 'translated' the gold plates using the Urim and Thummin. He quoted the church's official version of JS' history, as follows: "Also, that there were two stones in silver bows—and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim—deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones were what constituted ‘seers’ in ancient or former times; and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book." (JS—H 1:34–35.) One of the many aspects of Mormonism that makes no sense is why the gold plates and Urim and Thummin were even needed since Joseph's 'peep' stone and hat did the trick as far as 'translating' the BoM was concerned. Another BIG problem: Joseph Smith taught that the BoM was "the most correct of any book on Earth," a Mormon 'truth' that has been repeated over and over by LDS leaders since his day. Nelson called the 'seer'-stone-in-JS'-hat 'translation' technique a "miraculous method of translation." He included this oft-repeated (in the LDS Church) quote in his July 1993 Ensign article: "Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man." Given these 'truths', why has the "most correct" BoM, the volume of scripture that was 'miraculously' "translated by the gift and power of God", been so extensively altered by the LDS Church? There have been approximately 4,000 spelling, grammatical and other literary changes to the BoM (ref. http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/3913intro.htm). Clearly, Joseph Smith's 'seer' stone that emitted "something resembling parchment" and the Urim and Thummin displayed erroneous characters/letters. The 'translation' instruments prepared by 'God', that perfect, all-knowing and omnipotent being, according to LDS doctrine, were in fact faulty. Or maybe it was simply a case of Joseph Smith writing a work of fiction and identifying himself as its author, which is exactly what was shown on the title page of the 1830 edition of the BoM (ref. http://www.inephi.com/1.htm). |
| | Wednesday, Aug 26, 2009, at 08:15 AM Questions About The Brass Plates Of Laban Posted By Richard Packham BOOK OF MORMON - SECTION 3 -Guid- | ↑ |
| The Brass Plates are not spoken of much by Mormons, but they cause considerable problems.
Here is a summary of what we know about them: Laban had the "record of the Jews" and a genealogy of Lehi's (and Laban's) forefathers 1 Ne 5:16, 1 Ne 3:3 The record was on plates made of brass 1 Ne 3:3 Laban kept the plates at his house 1 Ne 3:4 Laban was keeper of the records because he was a descendant of Joseph 1 Ne 5:16 Plates contain "the language of our fathers" 1 Ne 3:19 Written in Egyptian Mosiah 1:4 Plates contain all the words of the prophets down to Lehi's time 1 Ne 3:20, 1 Ne 5:13 And the law 1 Ne 4:16, the "five books of Moses" down to reign of Zedekiah, and prophecies of Jeremiah 1 Ne 5:11-13 Plus otherwise unknown prophets (Zenos, Zenock, Neum, Ezias, Joseph) 1 Ne 19:10, 2 Ne 4:2 People cannot know the Law without having it written 1 Ne 4:15 Plates should "go forth unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people who were of his [Lehi's?] seed" 1 Ne 5:18, Alma 37:3-5 Plates should "never perish" or be "dimmed any more by time." 1 Ne 5:18-19 Plates are like the Bible, but more than the Bible 1 Ne 13:20-23 Summary of prophecies on plates 1 Ne 19:10-22 Questions: Why would such important records be kept in a private home? Was there only one copy, and only on brass? If the brass plates were the only copy, then by taking them Lehi would deprive the Jews of the record. If there were other copies, why didn't Lehi try to obtain one of those, instead of killing a man? Why would Laman expect Laban to simply hand over these records? 1 Ne 3:11-13 Why would Nephi think Laban could be bribed? 1 Ne 3:21-26 Why would a wealthy man like Laban go out at night drinking without escort? 1 Ne 4:7-10 Why would Laban be armed, with sword and armor, to go drinking with the "elders"? 1 Ne 4:19, 22 Why would Laban's clothing not be bloody after being beheaded? 1 Ne 4:19 Why would not the discovery of the naked body of an important man such as Laban stir up a search for his killer? And for the missing plates and servant? Why did Nephi only summarize Zenos and Zenock, but chose to copy long passages of Isaiah word for word? Didn't he know that Isaiah's words would be well-preserved in the Bible, but Zenos and Zenock would not? 1 Ne 19:23-24 Why would those records be written in Egyptian, if they were official records of the Jews, and not in Hebrew? Was Egyptian the "language of our fathers"? 1 Ne 3:19 Where are the plates now? How have the sacred teachings of the plates gone forth "unto all nations"? 1 Ne 5:18, Alma 37:3-5 |
| | Thursday, Sep 3, 2009, at 11:38 AM Dogger Dog's Thoughts On Reformed Egyptian Posted By Dogger Dog BOOK OF MORMON - SECTION 3 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Last week, I made some comments on some of the threads here regarding RE that were appreciated. However, those comments were interspersed throughout several threads, viz. “Isaiah Anachronisms,” and a thread on RE proper. Some of the things I said were appreciated and some of you expressed some interest in having it all in one spot (thanks mechwerks for pointing it out to me). So I decided to write down some of my thoughts on RE and hope they help.
For starters, a diachronic examination of the evolution of written languages yields the notion that many, if not all, languages began as a derivative of art. The art forms which intended to tell stories and relay messages developed into more mainstream pictures through time. From a form of art, written language generally tended to condense itself and become ‘pictographic,’ which means that the “artist” or scribe condensed his stream of thought into separate words (logograms) or phrases, represented in small pictures. From there, still more condensing of ideas and logograms occurred by the dismissal of ornate elements of a picture (e.g., just draw the outline of a bird if the logogram you’re writing is “bird” – no need to draw its feet, feathers, etc.) until you have conformity, or something which a number of people could learn and recognize. This means that once a standard was reached with which pictograms or logograms could be recognized, this became the written language. The list of pros and cons for a pictographic language lean quite heavily on the “cons” side. The largest obstacle was taking the time to learn the vocabulary, and secondly how that vocabulary is arranged to convey the message correctly (this is called syntax). Most people require knowing thousands of words in order to be fluent in a language, so you can imagine the amount of effort required to learn a pictographic language. Generally speaking, most of what was written in pictographic languages was not concerned with mundane communication, but rather focused on cultic, economic, historical, or political concerns. From there, people still recognized that more streamlining needed to be done. Enter syllabic languages. The foremost example is the Akkadian language, which is Semitic, but written in cuneiform. Google cuneiform, and you’ll see that it doesn’t do much to solve the problem of complexity. It is messy to look at. However, instead of memorizing thousands of pictograms to tell a tale, one now has to learn maybe a several hundred syllabic signs in order to write. I know some Assyriologists personally, and with intense study, it generally requires about a decade of concerted effort to pass their exams; and these people are very, very intelligent. So with greater ease of writing things down, we enter an age of the writing of epics. The Babylonians were among the first to start doing this. They wrote down a lot of stuff because writing was easier. Still, it wasn’t as simple as the next phase. Enter alphabets. Nobody is sure where alphabets were born, but whoever thought of them is a genius. The idea here is to reduce a word to its smallest parts of speech, or phoneme, and represent it with a simple stroke. Now you just teach people the two dozen or so signs to represent phonemes, and perhaps some combinations of signs to attain diphthongs and the like, and voila, you can teach someone to read and write in just a few short weeks. Instead of memorizing thousands of words, one need only memorize about 50 signs or elements. This is when literacy boomed in the ancient world. Numerous Hebrew abecedaries have been found in ancient Syria-Palestine, showing that people were practicing alphabetic writing. The oldest Hebrew abecedary comes from Tel Zeitah/Zayit and shows a couple of mistakes that would have been common to someone who was learning the alphabet. Bottom line: written languages started as art, then went pictographic, then syllabic, then alphabetic. It’s a natural evolution in thought. RE was supposedly derived from the paleo-Hebrew script and some form of Egyptian, probably Middle Egyptian or Hieratic, but probably not Demotic, as Demotic was in its embryotic stage of development in Nephi’s time. Hebrew, as you may know, is an alphabetic language, and JS describes the Egyptian that he supposedly knew as pictographic. He says that they created an Egypto-Semitic hybrid language in order to “save space” on the golden plates (Mormon 9:32-33). The idea that an Egypto-Semitic hybrid saves space is bewildering in its own right, as the paleo-Hebrew script is probably the more truncated of the two; it contains no vowels, is limited in its number of sibilants, and is based on the tripartite root system (or “binyanim"), which means that most verbs in their present “tense” (or “case”) mostly occur as only three letters in length. But for the sake of argument, let’s let that slide. First off, Nephi had to be well-versed in the two languages in order to create the hybrid. I will let him slide on Hebrew, as I believe by 700 BC that it is perfectly fine for him to have learned it with some level of expertise. Egyptian, however, presents problems. For one, finding an expert in Egyptian script in his area would have been difficult, not only for geographic limitations, but also because pictographic script in Egypt was on the decline. Languages were one (among many) reasons that countries drew their borders where they did, and the Hebrews had a national pride in their language. I would venture to say that he would have needed to go to great lengths to secure a mentor (or three) for teaching him the pictograms necessary to be able to comfortably weave the two languages together, otherwise he would have leaned more heavily on the alphabetic Hebrew when creating the plates. (The “Caractors” document does not show a strong affinity toward either). He would have either had to take a long vacation on the Nile Delta (and made friends with or paid people in high places who were busy writing what the priests wanted), or have found a detractor in Jerusalem who was willing to teach him. Is it possible? Yes, but grossly improbable. But for the sake of argument, we’ll let that slide too. The next problem arises from mental retention of all the signs he was taught. He would have to have made a lexicon of some kind, a veritable “Rosetta Stone” if you will, which enables him to look up a Hebrew word in the right hand column (they read right to left), with its associating Egyptian translation next to it so that he could refer to it when he forgot something, and so he could pass down what he learned to the next guy. Moreover, he would probably want to be able to use the lexicon going the other direction – Egyptian to Hebrew – so he would have had to make another lexicon doing just that (notice how modern printed versions of “language dictionaries” contain translations from language A to B, then B to A). So in essence, he would have needed TWO additional books at his side in order to even begin the process of creating RE. But for the sake of argument, we’ll let that slide. Next is the problem of the hybrid language itself. Giving Nephi the benefit of the doubt, let’s say he finds a way to successfully blend the two languages into an Egypto-Semitic hybrid. This language supposedly shortens the length of the written Hebrew (the BofM states in Mormon 9:32-33 that they didn’t write in pure Hebrew to save space, which is odd because as an alphabetic script, paleo-Hebrew is quite concise). But because of the evolution of languages, he’s stuck because now he’s got essentially a THIRD language to master – Reformed Egyptian. It’s pictographic in its nature, as JS describes it, despite incorporating enough Hebrew into it to render it “untranslatable” to anyone but him. To fix this problem, Nephi would have to make yet two more lexicons for RE – with Hebrew or Egyptian (probably Hebrew, being his spoken language) down the right column and RE down the left. So now we’re up to FOUR additional books – a Hebrew to Egyptian lexicon, an Egyptian to Hebrew lexicon (these two exist in order to teach/learn regular Egyptian), a Hebrew to RE lexicon, and a RE to Hebrew lexicon. Throw in the golden plates themselves, and now Nephi has FIVE books to worry about. Granted, the next person to whom he gave the plates would probably not need the Hebrew-Egyptian/Egyptian-Hebrew lexicons and go straight to the Hebrew-RE/RE-Hebrew lexicons, but I would suspect that Nephi would probably have needed all four, being the first one to create this so-called hybrid. Next, I would submit that learning a pictogram for a word would be difficult without seeing it in context. So he would have to make a concordance which allows the subsequent plate-engravers to look up all instances of a RE word to see how it is used in context. But I’ll let the concordance thing slide for now, as we have enough lexicons for us to be able to learn the languages and look up words. So there’s potentially SIX additional books outside of the plates themselves. So Nephi has now solved the word problem. But what to do about grammar and syntax? How are the pictograms of RE arranged so that it makes sense? This is important because in some languages, the subject of a sentence precedes the verb (like English), but sometimes it does not (Imperial Aramaic). Moreover, the placement of pronouns can be crucial (like English, which is pronoun-dependent), or not (like modern Spanish or ancient Greek, in which the conjugation of the verb is distinct enough to render the pronoun optional). Also, modifiers like adverbs and adjectives need their rules too (some come before the noun they modify [e.g., “golden plates”], some after like in the genitive case [e.g., “plates of gold”]). Enter Nephi’s need of a guide or grammar book to accompany the plates, showing all the rules, shortcuts, truncations, etc. that one would expect in a typical grammar. So now that’s SIX supplementary volumes Nephi has to create in order to pass down RE, not including the golden plates themselves (SEVEN ifhe had to make a concordance). Are we saving space yet? In review, learning RE is no easy task. It requires making a slough of reference books, as noted above, as well as encountering the right personnel to teach Nephi the Egyptian language in order to get the ball rolling, as well as ensuring his offspring understood it too. Moreover, I question whether moving backward up the literary ladder from a simple alphabetic script to a complex pictographic hybrid saves anybody any time, effort, and space. Of course, the simplest solution to all this is to grab a couple of stones, bless them in god’s name, and appear 1400 years later to the new guy and tell him to view those rocks inside of a hat... |
| | Friday, Sep 18, 2009, at 07:58 AM Jaredite Barges Posted By Parberry BOOK OF MORMON - SECTION 3 -Guid- | ↑ |
| The following is a challenge extended to any true believer in the Book of Mormon. This is based on the account in the Book of Ether concerning the Jaredite voyage in the barges to the “Promised Land”. The following is intended to recreate the experience as closely as possible.
1. You will be required to build a barge that roughly the length of a tree. For our purposes we will limit this vessel to 60 feet. Wood is the only material allowed. 2. No windows or other openings are allowed in the barge other than one hole in the top and one in the bottom that must be completely air and watertight. Additionally it must be assured that no light can enter the barge from outside with the two access holes blocked. 3. You must build the barge on a gantry that will allow the barge to be rolled through a full 360 degrees to simulate the barges’ ability to roll over in the water. Thus the direction in the Book of Mormon for a hole in the top and the bottom. 4. You must take enough food and water for 344 days in the barge. 5. You must include live animals and collections of seeds in the barge. 6. Your team must include a minimum of three men and three women in your crew. 7. No reading materials are allowed other than one copy of the Old Testament. 8. At any time during your 344 days of being sealed inside the barge an assistant may come along and roll your barge through 180 or 360 degrees. Ether 2 16 And the Lord said: Go to work and build, after the manner of barges which ye have hitherto built. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did go to work, and also his brethren, and built barges after the manner which they had built, according to the instructions of the Lord. And they were small, and they were light upon the water, even like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water. 17 And they were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish. 18 And it came to pass that the brother of Jared cried unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, I have performed the work which thou hast commanded me, and I have made the barges according as thou hast directed me. 19 And behold, O Lord, in them there is no light; whither shall we steer? And also we shall perish, for in them we cannot breathe, save it is the air which is in them; therefore we shall perish. 20 And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: Behold, thou shalt make a hole in the top, and also in the bottom; and when thou shalt suffer for air thou shalt unstop the hole and receive air. And if it be so that the water come in upon thee, behold, ye shall stop the hole, that ye may not perish in the flood. 22 And he cried again unto the Lord saying: O Lord, behold I have done even as thou hast commanded me; and I have prepared the vessels for my people, and behold there is no light in them. Behold, O Lord, wilt thou suffer that we shall cross this great water in darkness? 23 And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire. Ether 3 1 And it came to pass that the brother of Jared, (now the number of the vessels which had been prepared was eight) went forth unto the mount, which they called the mount Shelem, because of its exceeding height, and did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass; and he did carry them in his hands upon the top of the mount, and cried again unto the Lord, saying: Ether 6 4 And it came to pass that when they had prepared all manner of food, that thereby they might subsist upon the water, and also food for their flocks and herds, and whatsoever beast or animal or fowl that they should carry with them—and it came to pass that when they had done all these things they got aboard of their vessels or barges, and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God. 5 And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind. 6 And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind. 7 And it came to pass that when they were buried in the deep there was no water that could hurt them, their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the bark of Noah; therefore when they were encompassed about by many waters they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again upon the top of the waters. 8 And it came to pass that the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind. 9 And they did sing praises unto the Lord; yea, the brother of Jared did sing praises unto the Lord, and he did thank and praise the Lord all the day long; and when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord. 10 And thus they were driven forth; and no monster of the sea could break them, neither whale that could mar them; and they did have light continually, whether it was above the water or under the water. 11 And thus they were driven forth, three hundred and forty and four days upon the water. See this thorough analysis of the problems with these vessels at http://packham.n4m.org/ships.htm "Jaredite Ship-building Technology" by Dr. Kent Ponder |
| | Tuesday, Jul 13, 2010, at 07:57 AM A Little Bit Of Mormon Math Posted By raymartin BOOK OF MORMON - SECTION 3 -Guid- | ↑ |
| According to information I have received on the matter, Joseph Smith said the gold plates were about six by eight inches in width and length, about six inches in height and about the thickness of ordinary tin. While there is no way that I can be certain as to the thickness of the tin, I believe the tin that Smith referred to was about twenty three thousandths of an inch thick. Therefore, assuming two thousandths of an inch air space between the plates the stack would contain 240 plates, two thirds of which were “sealed,” leaving 80 plates of reformed Egyptian available for viewing and translation.
The current Book of Mormon contains about 521.25 pages of written text at about average 575 (eyeball count) words per page or nearly 299,719 words, taken, supposedly, from the 80 gold plates or about 3,746 words from each. For me, one thing that makes this especially difficult is the fact that, according to record, there were no gold plates on the table in front of Joseph as he looked into his hat at a rock and quoted a mixture of words, in the vernacular of the King James Bible and his own imagination, to his writers. He was said to have the ability to leave off “translating” for a while and pick up exactly where he left off. This he might have been able to do. But the fact that he could not keep his transition of records from one record keeper to the next, in mathematical harmony with his story, is there for anyone who is willing to run the calculations to see. My 1987 research paper, Chronology of the Book of Mormon Records: An In-depth Look, (published in 2008) wherein I charted the life spans of the record keepers, exposed this to me in a way that I could not ignore and broke my faith in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith completely. For I reasoned that if he had been following a story written in reformed Egyptian, or any other language, he would have had the translatable figures before him and these “mistakes of man” would not be there. There is no question, in my mind, that Joseph Smith was a remarkable man. It is obvious that he had committed the entire King James Version of the bible to memory and was able to incorporate this information (mostly in the KJV vernacular) into his stories at will. This, in and of itself, set him apart from his peers and gave him the appearance of someone receiving information spiritually. And even he might have thought this also. For, as I read his Book of Ether (which I believe was his first effort at writing) it is apparent that he was building upon stories from his memory, but without interjection of education or adult common sense. The fact that this book wound up in the completed Book of Mormon I attribute to the probability that he felt so good about its story that it just had to be included in order to further prove his ability to write “scripture.” How this book has withstood the process of human reasoning for almost two centuries is a mystery to me. For nothing in the book withstands even the least elementary examination for fact. This is especially true when the story about the eight barges is unfolded. “Fools mock but they shall mourn” was the response I received from my bishop when I pointed out that this voyage of three hundred and forty-four days, about 230 degrees of the earth’s circumference, and near 15,000 miles, could not have been a straight line trip from beginning to end because of the land masses lying between the starting and ending points, as well as many other difficulties. And when I pointed this out and asked how the eight barges arrived at their destination together, he referred me to the miracles that are listed in the Bible and noted that the answer to that question is probably in the “sealed portion” of the Book of Mormon (where most of the unanswerable or grossly unreasonable questions seem to be.) In any event, the Book of Ether, which is less than thirty two full pages long and mentions Deity of some sort about 198 times (including Satan twice) is the least convincing “history”about any religious people I have ever seen. Nothing about the book rings true. In one place we have a man (Shiz) whose head is missing (chopped off in battle, Ether 15:30-31) rising up on his hands to get a breath before dying. This story (Ether) is so ludicrous that as I tried to research it I found that I could not pick up a thread of reality to tie my research to. So I just gave up trying to make sense of it. Along with the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham I believe the church would do well to “deep six” the Book of Ether. But, then, my advice would be to deep six the whole Joseph Smith story and start over. But I’m afraid it’s just too profitable, as is, to ever do this. 1.Outskirts Press, Inc. Now available at online book stores worldwide. 2.See Ether, especially chapter six verses 1-12 |