Friday, June 7, 2019
Play Reviewer?
Front Row Reviewers is having a hard time finding reviewers for SLC works. Maybe I could get them going in Moscow or Tucson or ?
Friday, February 8, 2019
A Little Too Much In A Class Of Its Own? Musings on the Book of Mormon
Prophetic, literary and historic writing tends to come out of a setting that produced other writings like it. From a certain people, tribe, culture, or time period known for making that sort of thing. Is one thing that makes us wonder about the Book of Mormon that it doesn't seem to arise out of any known historical context? Its general editor Mormon seems completely unlike any other writer or prophet from his period, 400 years after Christ, and so does his book seem unlike any other book. Well, God does things people can't, I believe. Where does that leave us?
Maybe Beowulf can save the B of M from this 'one-of-a-kind' problem. It's an epic that seems one of a kind about a guy who slays Grendel the Dragon, PLUS the dragon's mother--take that! It is an epic from maybe 700 AD in England. Yet when I went reading about Beowulf, I wasn't two minutes in when I found Encyclopedia Brittanica online saying its "[style and theme belong] to a heroic tradition grounded in Germanic religion and mythology." Is the B of M grounded in any tradition [with features X, Y and Z] . . ." It's nice not to be alone in the world. Let's sniff around this.
Joseph Smith got the plates from which the B of M text came from a cache in the Hill Cumorah, upstate New York, near Lake Ontario and Rochester. Let's do a broad swath by drawing a loop around Cumorah 1000 miles big. It will cut through Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ontario--east half of North America. Did that region produce any other books like the Book of Mormon, either before or after Columbus? The short answer is, well, no.
Before 1492 I don't think it produced any books, period, not until Moroni cranked things into gear and got Joseph a-writing or dictating. Not many plates of ore discovered with carvings on them about how the ancient Jews settled the Americas, or with anything else. After 1492 this region actually did produce a book more like Brother Joseph's than most. More on that later, depending on my level of ambition. Now it's just that Brigham Henry Roberts, LDS leader and scholar, went into detail to compare View of the Hebrews with B of M.
If the Native Americans, within this 1000-mile circle around upstate NY, who created the B of M created any other written things, I don't know of them, except for carvings and paintings on rocks.
We know the principle: God's ways are not man's ways. Assuming a Supreme Being (I do), then that Divine Power could make a book like the Book of Mormon as a one-time thing.
But my God or Divine Field or Divine Source or Savior virtually always works through human agents, and what they do usually fits into patterns. One of these is that cultures that produce one example of a type of writing tend to--almost always do--produce other such examples as well. Style is similar; content is likely to be similar; language, method used to record or preserve the writing are some of the ways we can see the writings are related.
Is there any evidence that Mormon's compilation is part of any tradition? Because if it is, there should be other things like it. If it's not part of a traceable tradition, it's likely not what it claims to be.
The Mayans produced some writings that can probably be called books, with the most impressive one called the Popol Vuh, kind of about the creation story and who the local kings were. In the book Maya, (Abrams Publishers, NY, 1985, p. 26-27) Charles Gallenkamp writes: The "Maya developed a hieroglyphic script . . . the only true written language ever invented in ancient America (unlike the rebus, or picture writing, used elsewhere in Pre-Columbian Mexico). . . .The glyphs are unrelated to any European or Oriental linguistic roots."
Assuming he's correct, it seems safe to say Mayan writing bears no relationship to Book of Mormon writing. The B of M text claims its original was what it calls "reformed Egyptian," but that's not what the Mayans used, or the Lakota Sioux, or anybody else we can find.
I wrote this because I've heard the B of M praised and critiqued, but I've not heard anyone say, "Wait, if you have these 500 pages of inspirational writings (and I find lots of inspiration in it, lots), where is the literary tradition it came from?" It's like the B of M might be like the Emperor's new clothes--kind of naked--not clothed in a literary tradition--right in front of us and nobody pointed it out in so many words.
And don't say, "It is its own literary tradition with many writers and many centuries of work." That's not the point. The point is: how can we have a work without any others like it? Where is its family?
I think this is somehow a more basic issue than its being a fake new Bible, or its being from originals we can't study, or how it talks a certain way that seems to want to sound like scripture.
One thing that might be just as fundamental a problem is that long sections of Isaiah in II Nephi in the B of M appear to be very, very close to the King James Version's Isaiah. KJV was made in 1621, I think, about 2000 years after Nephi. Assuming Nephi relied on an ancient text in a mideastern language, it is impossible to translate that and produce an English translation extremely close to King James. I haven't made a detailed comparison, but I know Isaiah in Nephi reads a whole lot like Isaiah in the Old Testament. It should say much of the same thing, but in unique phrasing and structure.
If there's a B of Mormon from ancient America, by now shouldn't archaeologists have found or a prophet delivered a "Book of Loman" or a "Book of Mona" or "Book of Himni" that overlaps a whole lot with the Book of Mormon, so it could turn out to have a family, not be so one of a kind? The B of M even says there is more stuff like it but we don't have it because the "Lord's own due time" for us to have it hasn't come. So the B of M itself claims a family but we have no evidence of it, nearly 200 years later.
This is kind of like saying: In 1978 God changed his mind about black people, though not about women, who still can't carry the priesthood power to act in God's name. It just seems odd--unlikely.
Here's another oddity: about 2000 years before Christ, God taught people to build and cross the ocean in submarines--8 submarines. Miraculous. Does it seem probable? Well, no. Yet Latter-day Saints tell each other this story with straight, believing faces.
I listened to them for a long time and took it at face value, including when I studied literature and humanities at Brigham Young. One day the literary thinker in me asked, "If an ancient people produced this work, they certainly produced other similar things. The B of M as a collection dates from the 5th century. We've have 15 more centuries to find relatives of this impressive work. Why are they missing in action?"
I'd love to have an answer making rational literary sense!
Maybe Beowulf can save the B of M from this 'one-of-a-kind' problem. It's an epic that seems one of a kind about a guy who slays Grendel the Dragon, PLUS the dragon's mother--take that! It is an epic from maybe 700 AD in England. Yet when I went reading about Beowulf, I wasn't two minutes in when I found Encyclopedia Brittanica online saying its "[style and theme belong] to a heroic tradition grounded in Germanic religion and mythology." Is the B of M grounded in any tradition [with features X, Y and Z] . . ." It's nice not to be alone in the world. Let's sniff around this.
Joseph Smith got the plates from which the B of M text came from a cache in the Hill Cumorah, upstate New York, near Lake Ontario and Rochester. Let's do a broad swath by drawing a loop around Cumorah 1000 miles big. It will cut through Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ontario--east half of North America. Did that region produce any other books like the Book of Mormon, either before or after Columbus? The short answer is, well, no.
Before 1492 I don't think it produced any books, period, not until Moroni cranked things into gear and got Joseph a-writing or dictating. Not many plates of ore discovered with carvings on them about how the ancient Jews settled the Americas, or with anything else. After 1492 this region actually did produce a book more like Brother Joseph's than most. More on that later, depending on my level of ambition. Now it's just that Brigham Henry Roberts, LDS leader and scholar, went into detail to compare View of the Hebrews with B of M.
If the Native Americans, within this 1000-mile circle around upstate NY, who created the B of M created any other written things, I don't know of them, except for carvings and paintings on rocks.
We know the principle: God's ways are not man's ways. Assuming a Supreme Being (I do), then that Divine Power could make a book like the Book of Mormon as a one-time thing.
But my God or Divine Field or Divine Source or Savior virtually always works through human agents, and what they do usually fits into patterns. One of these is that cultures that produce one example of a type of writing tend to--almost always do--produce other such examples as well. Style is similar; content is likely to be similar; language, method used to record or preserve the writing are some of the ways we can see the writings are related.
Is there any evidence that Mormon's compilation is part of any tradition? Because if it is, there should be other things like it. If it's not part of a traceable tradition, it's likely not what it claims to be.
The Mayans produced some writings that can probably be called books, with the most impressive one called the Popol Vuh, kind of about the creation story and who the local kings were. In the book Maya, (Abrams Publishers, NY, 1985, p. 26-27) Charles Gallenkamp writes: The "Maya developed a hieroglyphic script . . . the only true written language ever invented in ancient America (unlike the rebus, or picture writing, used elsewhere in Pre-Columbian Mexico). . . .The glyphs are unrelated to any European or Oriental linguistic roots."
Assuming he's correct, it seems safe to say Mayan writing bears no relationship to Book of Mormon writing. The B of M text claims its original was what it calls "reformed Egyptian," but that's not what the Mayans used, or the Lakota Sioux, or anybody else we can find.
I wrote this because I've heard the B of M praised and critiqued, but I've not heard anyone say, "Wait, if you have these 500 pages of inspirational writings (and I find lots of inspiration in it, lots), where is the literary tradition it came from?" It's like the B of M might be like the Emperor's new clothes--kind of naked--not clothed in a literary tradition--right in front of us and nobody pointed it out in so many words.
And don't say, "It is its own literary tradition with many writers and many centuries of work." That's not the point. The point is: how can we have a work without any others like it? Where is its family?
I think this is somehow a more basic issue than its being a fake new Bible, or its being from originals we can't study, or how it talks a certain way that seems to want to sound like scripture.
One thing that might be just as fundamental a problem is that long sections of Isaiah in II Nephi in the B of M appear to be very, very close to the King James Version's Isaiah. KJV was made in 1621, I think, about 2000 years after Nephi. Assuming Nephi relied on an ancient text in a mideastern language, it is impossible to translate that and produce an English translation extremely close to King James. I haven't made a detailed comparison, but I know Isaiah in Nephi reads a whole lot like Isaiah in the Old Testament. It should say much of the same thing, but in unique phrasing and structure.
If there's a B of Mormon from ancient America, by now shouldn't archaeologists have found or a prophet delivered a "Book of Loman" or a "Book of Mona" or "Book of Himni" that overlaps a whole lot with the Book of Mormon, so it could turn out to have a family, not be so one of a kind? The B of M even says there is more stuff like it but we don't have it because the "Lord's own due time" for us to have it hasn't come. So the B of M itself claims a family but we have no evidence of it, nearly 200 years later.
This is kind of like saying: In 1978 God changed his mind about black people, though not about women, who still can't carry the priesthood power to act in God's name. It just seems odd--unlikely.
Here's another oddity: about 2000 years before Christ, God taught people to build and cross the ocean in submarines--8 submarines. Miraculous. Does it seem probable? Well, no. Yet Latter-day Saints tell each other this story with straight, believing faces.
I listened to them for a long time and took it at face value, including when I studied literature and humanities at Brigham Young. One day the literary thinker in me asked, "If an ancient people produced this work, they certainly produced other similar things. The B of M as a collection dates from the 5th century. We've have 15 more centuries to find relatives of this impressive work. Why are they missing in action?"
I'd love to have an answer making rational literary sense!
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