Posted on 01/08/2008 4:09:13 PM PST by tantiboh
Mitt Romney is facing an unexpected challenge in Iowa from rival Mike Huckabee, who has enjoyed a groundswell of support from religious voters, particularly evangelical Christians wary of the clean-cut former Massachusetts governor because of his Mormon religion.
The common worry among evangelicals is that if Romney were to capture the White House, his presidency would give legitimacy to a religion they believe is a cult. Since the LDS church places heavy emphasis on proselytizing -- there are 53,000 LDS missionaries worldwide -- many mainstream Christians are afraid that Mormon recruiting efforts would increase and that LDS membership rolls would swell.
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THE ONLY PROBLEM with those fears is that they don't add up. Evangelicals may be surprised to learn that the growth of church membership in Massachusetts slowed substantially during Romney's tenure as governor. In fact, one could make the absurdly simplistic argument that Romney was bad for Mormonism.
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ONE WAY TO GAUGE what might happen under a President Romney would be to look at what happened during the period of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. Held in Salt Lake City, they were dubbed the "Mormon Olympics."
...
Despite all the increased attention, worldwide the Church grew only slightly, and in fact in the year leading up to the games the total number of congregations fell. Overall, from 2000 to 2004, there was a 10.9 percent increase in memberships and a 3.6 percent increase in congregations.
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The LDS church is likely to continue its current modest-but-impressive growth whether or not Romney wins the White House. Perhaps the only real worry for evangelicals is that, if elected, the former Massachusetts governor will demonstrate to Americans that Mormons don't have horns.
Carrie Sheffield, a member of the LDS Church, is a writer living in Washington, D.C.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
[...The difference between us (Mormons and Christians)
is that I’m perfectly happy to let you be...]
That is EXACTLY the difference.
Christians aren’t perfectly happy letting Mormon’s be
because we love you and want you to spend eternity
in heaven with Jesus.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him SHALL
NOT PERISH, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
~”...I have pinged you as our faith is being undermined by these Mormon usurpers...”~
Umm... where? I believe you are the aggressor in this arena of ideas. I, for one, have never, ever singled out a denomination or belief system for destruction.
If us saying that we have the truth is an undermining of your faith, then your faith is built upon soft ground indeed. I do not envy you.
redo
Maybe that is why it takes 19 year old mormon missionaries two whole years to make only four converts
~”Chances are, DV, they will ignore your efforts...”~
Oh, I will. I don’t have time to read so much unoriginal thought.
He posts all this stuff, but doesn’t understand it well enough to defend it himself. Kind of childish, really. But, kids these days are good at using Google.
~”I give you permission to put them IN ‘context’ and thereby prove that they do NOT say what I say they plainly say.”~
Most of the context is in verse 30, which you seem to ignore. We believe God commanded it. He later revoked the commandment according to His wisdom. He has not fully explained to us why.
Since God commanded it, as He did in the case of Abraham, for example, it was within the scope of His law.
Now this is an interesting twist. Paul did not condemn it as sin NOR did he extol it a righteous. What you are really trying to say is Paul would never use a false practice as a proof for the resurrection. This is a false statement.
The fact of the matter is that Baptism for he dead was practiced by the saints and was not condemned but accepted. Some Examples: Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity
Cutting to the quick, here is the summary of the argument from your reference (Tvedtnes):
The ordinance is especially attested in pseudepigraphic texts whose authorship is open to question; nevertheless, from their geographical distribution it seems that these documents were widely circulated among early Christian groups and therefore contain doctrines with which those Christians were familiar.
His argument is pretty well tore up here:
http://www.tektonics.org/mordef/baptdead.html
Between the disputed 1 Cor 15 passage and the cited 393 edict, there are two other specific references within the writings of the church leadership regarding that Tvedtnes glosses over. First, Tvedtnes mislabels the group involved as Marcionites, an early Christian group. The reality is that the Marcionites were a pagan gnostic sect that had its origins in Greek culture outside of Christianity and had as early as the mid first century began to infiltrate into various churches. Irenaeus in the AD 180s regarded Marcionites as Gnostics. Both he, Tertullian (AD 145–220) (Against Marcion) and Clement of Alexandria in Excerpt 22 of Excerpta ex Theodoto approximately AD 190s, condemned the practice as non-scriptural, a fact that Tvedtnes conviently overlooks in his paper. So we see the practice of coming in as a pagan practice and combated by the first through fourth century church.
To try to substantiate their claim, mormon apologists must rely upon Gnostics (marcionites), apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings to substantiate these alleged rites of Christianity. Most of these pseudepigraphic writings also had origins in Gnosticism or the most fringe elements of Christianity. Tvedtnes had to admit as to the unreliability of those documents whose authorship is open to question . .
Just the fact that early Christianity had access to these documents does not indicate that they were perceived as being sacred or authoritative, nor does it mean they practiced the activities described within them. History shows that from the first century on, this practice came from outside of Christianity.
Tvedtnes also relies on writings not from the New Testament or from church history, but from Jewish intertestamental literature (2 Maccabees 12:43-45) contrary to Section 91 of the Doctrine and Covenants, where it declares specifically that the apocryphal books are NOT to be accepted as scripture. Tvedtnes finds in this passage evidence of a philosophy of vicarious action for the dead. But if it is evidence of such a philosophy, then so is the scapegoat ceremony (Lev. 16) which covered the sins of Israel over the past year--including the sins of those who had died in the previous 365 days. Within the Biblical paradigm, sin requires payment, and only atonement erases sin. The question is whether baptism in New Testament times was an atoning practice, and that is a question that cannot be answered by citing this unrelated event with roots in the Old Testament sacrificial apparatus which served the nation of Israel corporately. The analogy here is not convincing.
In any event, the testimonies of the Apostle Paul and of the church fathers Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian are unanimous that this practice was not that of the standard, right-thinking, majority church but was beyond the pale of the Christianity taught by Jesus and His disciples.
LEts talk about Context here, the Jews are still very much a part of the culture…
Yes, let do talk CONTEXT here, which we will look at in greater detail below.
and there had been a long standing disagreement between the Sadducees and the Pharisees about Resurrection of the dead.
Pause right there while I clean up the coffee from my monitor. For the next major portion of DUs rebuttal, he tries to make the following points, which I will simplify for you:
1) Sadducees were members of the church of Corinth and Pauls pharisaical background brought him into conflict with them over resurrection.
2) Because Rome evicted Jews around this time, the church in Corinth was predominantly Jewish in composition at the time 1 Cor was written.
3) Because Sadducees denied the resurrection and Paul makes a comment regarding the baptism of the dead, therefore Sadducees believed in (and practiced) baptism for/of the dead.
Setting: Corinth as a church was established approximately AD 50. It was like the Los Vegas of Greece. Paul resided there for about a year. 1 Corinthians was written approximately 4-5 years later.
Founding of the Corinth Church: Acts 18:1-17 describes the founding. Paul encountered believers (both Christian and Jew) from the Rome expulsion. He first went to the local synagogue to preach the gospel, the summary he reminds the Corinthian church in 1 Cor 15:3-4. He made few Jewish converts as they violently rejected his case (Acts 18:6). The Jews that did accept Christ did so on the basis of that gospel. He next went to the God-fearers (Greeks) and population in general as was his custom. The church began to grow when this happened. When Paul writes to the church 4-5 years later, it was principally a Greek church with a Jewish minority.
Sadducees: We find the Sadducees established in the highest office of the priesthood, and possessed of the greatest powers in the Sanhedrin: and yet they did not believe in any future state, nor in any spiritual existence independent of the body. The Sadducees said that there was "no resurrection, neither Angel nor Spirit." (Act. 23:8. See Mat. 22:23-34.). They did not hold doctrines which are commonly called licentious or immoral. Furthermore, there is no evidence that they practiced or endorsed any thing resembling baptism for the dead. They believed the spirit and soul were annihilated upon death. The Sadducees said, “Souls die with the bodies” (Josephus, Antiquities 18.1.4). They were the disciples of reason without enthusiasm, — they made few proselytes, — their numbers were not great, and they were confined principally to the richer members of the nation of Israel. Given how they were rooted within the priesthood in Jerusalem, chances that they had a substantial following in Corinth at this time are very slim to none.
So lets condense DUs argument.
Sadducees rejected the resurrection.
The Sadducees as members of the Corinth church, were spreading the false resurrection rumors.
Paul makes a reference to baptism for the dead within the very broad context of arguing for the resurrection as part of an on-going argument between Pharisees and Sadducees.
Sadducees practiced baptism for the dead
I think the flawed logic jumps right out of DUs argument if one remembers back to my original premise – Paul was writing to a predominantly Greek (Hellenistic) church who’s members as a condition of membership HAD to believe in the resurrection. Thus any former Sadducees that might have been part of the membership were just that – former – and were addressed (if DUs logic progressed) in an inclusive manner. History and documentation shows that the Sadducees were concentrated in Jerusalem and that with its fall in AD70, the sect dissolved. If people needed to be expelled from a church, Paul was very straightforward about that in his letters. Therefore, the other points in DUs logic quickly fall apart, especially in the light that it would be stupid that a converted Sadducee would hold to the belief that the soul and spirit ended at death – what would a baptism accomplish for an annihilated soul??? Absolutely nothing. The illogic of DUs assertion is mind boggling.
Hellenistic (Greek) society already had difficulties with the teaching of a physical resurrection. See Acts 17 for that reaction. DU should really use a simple bible reference book some time.
Finally on this point, DU would like us to believe that the Sadducees were practicing the true Christianity and faith with their baptism for the dead. IF this was the case, DU needs to go back and read his bible more than his bom because Jesus said "How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (Matthew 16:5-12, NASB). The disciples "understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. I believe Jesus and IF they taught baptism for the dead, we should stay away from their teachings.
When I went to Jerusalem in 2000, I spent a lot of time in
Does not give you any more understanding of the life there than being in a MacDonalds make you a cheese burger :)
There have been several sects who lived there in the vicinity, one was a fairly extreme sects which practiced baptism Daily, and Baptisms for the dead daily. They were Sadducees.
You have got no clue as to who occupied Qumran do you? They were a sect called the Essenes. Essenes were really into ritual washings, but that ended when the individual died and there is no evidence of proxy baptisms. There is an abundance of evidence of their rituals, proxy baptism were not a component.
That's in interesting opinion, the facts of the matter…..
DU makes more of the deflated Sadducee argument, already addressed in the item above. DUs facts fly in the face of the TRUTH made very clear above.
Many people have a problem that can be illustrated with the stated interpretation of this scripture this problem is the same problem some have with the LDS church. They decide that Baptism for the Dead is not a true principle, and then try to make the evidence fit their preconceived conclusion. Similarly, With the LDS, every doctrine is wrong because the church is wrong therefore whatever we say, whatever evidence we show you must be contrived, a lie or misinterpreted.
Alas, you cannot put a string of logic together properly since this is your third posting attempt at it:
Baptism for the dead was not a supported principle or doctrine of the first century Christian Church
When baptism for the dead is mentioned after the first century it is associated with Gnostic cults (some of which incorporated components of Christian belief, but were not truly Christian).
These Gnostic cults were rebuked for their erroneous and false teachings and practices. The mormon church teaches same erroneous doctrine as Gnostic cults.
Mormonism teachings are therefore suspect and not to be believed.
5) Paul’s teaching is in perfect agreement with Heb 9:
How long after Death does judgment come? Immediately? 10 seconds, a week?
Immediately – see Luke 16:19-31. No waiting until the end of time. Rev 20:12 talks about the final clearing out of sheol and the casting of the condemned souls into the lake of fire.
While Brigham did indeed say that, there is not one recorded instance of a witness repudiating his testimony.
Thank you. But is their character supported by mormonism? Why should apostates be held up as infallible witnesses. If their life was that bad for mormons to accept them, how true could the belief be IF THEY REALLY HAD SEEN what Smith claimed.
Harris..
After Harris had apostatized, Smith denounced him in the Elders' Journal 1 of August, 1836 --
as so far beneath contempt that a notice of him would be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make. The church exerted some restraint on him, but now he has given loose to all kinds of abominations, lying, cheating, swindling, with all kinds of debauchery.
Such a man was Martin Harris, one of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. With such a character, who can doubt that he would scruple to sign a lie or to maintain its truthfulness up to the very hour of his death?
Yet, he (Cowdry) refused to say the visitation with the angel did not happen, and later, he rejoined the LDS.
Kinda part and parcel to the whole . At that time he arose and addressed the audience present, admitted his error and implored forgiveness, and said he was sorry and ashamed of his connection with Mormonism. confession.
. And it would further be unlikely that he would have been permitted to hold positions within that Methodist church if he had not renounced mormonism and all that it entailed, including the alleged vision. His so-called return is based solely upon mormon testimony.
He never recanted his testimony, thank you for pointing that out.
A fool to the finish – so too was Jim Jones.
A testimony is even more powerful
Funny, soooo powerful a testimony they were apostatized and left the one true mormon church to various other callings. If it was soooooo true why did they leave, why were they apostatized? Are these the kind of witnesses you would call up in a court of law.
I Said: You (again) think that prophets are infallible, God told Joseph what to say, the scribes wrote it, and the spelling, punctuation and grammar was up to them. The doctrine contained in the Book of Mormon is perfect, even if the spelling is not.
U Said: I won’t go further, your premise was destroyed in another post. It is your written church history
fine, you may retire from the field, sir. I will hold my position. .
What DU is holding on to but hiding here is the fact that mormonism teaches that the bom was translated essentially letter for letter and that the translation would not supernaturally go forward until the scribe got it correct. The initial printing errors were recorded by Smith as being minor. That means that the whole document was as god wanted it to be translated when it was finished – grammar, spelling, everything. That has and continues to be the teaching of mormonism. Smith proclaimed it the most perfect book on earth. ANY changes to it would mean that it was a work of man, not of god. DU cannot even keep his stories straight with that taught by mormonism.
All your talk of Four years of Seminary led me to assume... No matter, you get paid exactly the way I do, by God or not at all.
LOL, you were the one bragging about 4 years of seminary. You must be suffering from early senility.
~”As a born-again Christian, I believe Mormons are lost due to their salvation emphasis based on works. I readily acknowlege however, most Mormons are conservative and very moral in their beliefs. I will vote for Mitt Romney on these grounds.”~
Thanks, evangmlw. We can disagree vehemently over theology; I’m gratified, though, that there are many Christians who, along with you, do not allow that disagreement to spill over into bigotry and hatred.
So lets talk about the mechanics of peer review since dear ol DU believes anything written on the internet as fact, especially if it comes from FARMS, Jeff Lindsay or the Weekly World News. Since DU said there was an abundance of archaeological evidence FOR the bom, I stipulated that it should come from peer-reviewed sources. The rationale for peer review is that it is rare for an individual author or research team to spot every mistake or flaw in a complicated piece of work. This is not because deficiencies represent needles in a haystack, but because in a new and perhaps eclectic intellectual product, an opportunity for improvement may stand out only to someone with special expertise or experience. Therefore showing work to others increases the probability that weaknesses will be identified, and with advice and encouragement, fixed. The anonymity and independence of reviewers is intended to foster unvarnished criticism and discourage cronyism in funding and publication decisions.
Typically referees are not selected from among the authors' close colleagues, relatives, or friends. Referees are supposed to inform the editor of any conflict of interests that might arise. Journals or individual editors often invite a manuscript's authors to name people whom they consider qualified to referee their work. Authors are sometimes also invited to name natural candidates who should be disqualified, in which case they may be asked to provide justification (typically expressed in terms of conflict of interest). (extracted from wiki)
FARMS (Maxwell Institute) specifically states that The only litmus test applied to manuscripts submitted to FARMS by LDS scholars is that the manuscripts must not contradict the divine origin of the LDS Church and its scriptures. (http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=367()
So one sees right out of the gate, no evidence of contrary data can enter their reports and that by their definition the contents must support mormon doctrine irregardless of the truth. So much for intellectual integrity that peer review generates. And while FARMS boasts about its authors having been published, it neglects to say that the articles they have had published have nothing to do with mormon archaeology and related topics.
I guess it's easier to deny evidence if you refuse to look at it.
It helps if you have evidence to begin with. No, I guess it is easier when you have so many so called theories and not a physical shred of evidence, you can take your pick depending upon the time of day. So which route did they take?
1) The common belief among the LDS community is that the Jaredites crossed Asia and embarked from China. The Encyclopedia of Mormonism summarizes the most commonly cited Jaredite model, the one formulated by Dr. Hugh W. Nibley.
2) The Arabian model by George Potter where they cross along the northeastern portion of the Saudi Arabian peninsula 2000 years prior to any spice caravans (who set up the well system), through the heart of the Empty Quarter , the desolate no man’s land.
3) FARMs Lehi trail of 1998 that follows the Red Sea.
You see, with those widely divergent authoritative views from FARMs related scholars, absent physical evidence; the claim that Book of Mormon actually being what it claims
cannot be substantiated even by your archaeological authorities.
Actually, there still is a small stream now that runs year round
Others mormon apologists disagree that that is the way they went. So how is this proof of anything? And since when is a small stream a river?
U Said: 2. It would have been impossible for an old man (Lehi), women and children to travel the 175 mile journey from Jerusalem to the Red Sea in 3 days. Traveling 3 miles per hour, you would need to travel for 20 hours each day non-stop for 3 days. This would have been quite impossible.
And if they traveled at .5 miles even more impossible, LOL! You really need to read the book, and not just commentaries by anti's...
Math, simple math my friend. 1 Nephi 2:6 said it took him 3 days. 175 miles/3 mph = 58.3 hours.
Actually, if you went to the site I listed, you would find that they found trees growing there...
But is it the path that they took? Is it really the place? The only proof they offer are obscure name association that can easily mean the opposite of what they claim it means. Mormon apologist/archaeologists are very confused at this point.
Hey, bagdad bob lost his job, …
He is working for FARMS now.
So, Egyptian hyroglyphs, don't count, DNA evidence doesn't count, Languages that descend don't count, what do you want pyramids? Oh wait, they have those too...
Your hyroglyphs (sic) were Indian pictographs that were not related to Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is intellectually dishonest to make such a claim and just shows the desperation of mormon apologists to find ANYTHING.
Your DNA evidence or rather LACK THEREOF has caused a number of mormon DNA researchers to quit the mormon church. The overwhelming preponderce of the genetic evidence is that the Native Americans are of Mongoloid (Asian) lineage, not Semitic stock. Pyramids, sure the basic building structure of cultures around the world. But then only Mayan, Aztec and similar native group pyramids have been found. What!!! Nothing with Hebrew or reformed hieroglyphics or any other significant set of artifacts directly linking them to the Middle East.
Simple question – where is the hill Cumorah located at? Central America or New York.
U Said: 2. Have any BOM names in New World inscriptions been found?
Um, I pointed out that this was an unreasonable question, I did say it was "supported", I was saying it was a dumb question,
My, my unreasonable? I ask for incontrovertible proof that you claimed to have. Your references make a lot of hay over alleged bom names on various extant writings from Israel during the alleged bom period there. With all the volumes of Mayan, Aztec, North American Indian writings, etc. that are present and have been interpreted, certainly SOME bom name should be present, since these are the descendents of the Lamanites. Occam's razor says that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity", or basically the simpleist solution is probably the best one. The absence of bom names in New World inscriptions while there is an abundance of opportunities for them to appear indicates that the simplest solution is that they never were here to begin with.
The names being in the DSS is important because one of the claims made by Anti's for years is that Lehi, and Nephi couldn't possibly be the names Hebrews living in Jerusalem because they didn't follow the Common names in the Bible, now we find other records, with those very names in them, not evidence of, but it definitely destroys "evidence against" arguments that our critic's have used in the past.
You never bothered to read the article in detail. The alleged morphing of bom names based upon similar changes to Jewish names is invalid because the changes in Jewish names were the product of the Babylonian captivity – something Nephi and Lehi did not experience.
Nice try, but the scrolls cannot help but validate the Book of Mormon in some very important ways.
Well, lets see just how well they are validated 1) We were ridiculed for the idea that Scriptures would be buried for preservation.
That precious item are buried does not validate the bom. You were being properly ridiculed over the whole story behind the hiding of the plates.
2) Inclusion of books of "Scripture" not in the current Bible means we don't have all of God's word in it. (thus what we have been saying about the Bible all along is accurate.)
When Smith did his revision of the Bible he did not add any of these "lost" books. Obviously the LDS Church today does not recognize any of these scrolls (outside of the books of the Bible) as a part of the cannon. It is dishonest of Mormons to raise the issue of any of these books being "missing" books of the Bible since they do not officially accept any of them as such. None of them have been added to the LDS cannon or officially recognized. Furthermore they are not lost, they are available for review.
On the contrary, the DSS attest to the fact that the OT has been faithfully transmitted and accurately. Nothing was taken out of Isaiah or the other OT scriptures.
Case in point, the DSS contain a copy of the Book of Enoch The Book of Enoch is very specific in a description of God and destroys the Trinity if it is scripture (oops Momrons were right again...).
Enoch is dated between the second and third century BC. As such, it is a mythology that was not written by Enoch but has been identified as being written by a number of authors between the second / third century BC through the third century AD. It is not scripture either for Christians or mormons.
U Said: Notice the wording – he compares Spanish to latin, who’s development period would be similar to the time frame associated with his theory. Secondly, though listed as about a thousand common features, this is only a trace. Stubbs’ publications have not been in peer reviewed journals.
The paper I cited came from Maxwell Institute, aka FARMS. In the abstract Stubbs writes:
Abstract: The time-depth of the Romance language family (ca. 2,000 years) yields an abundance of similarities among languages descended from Latin: Spanish, French, Italian, and so forth. The time-depth of Lehi is not much greater (2,600 years), yet no similar abundance of accepted linguistic evidence for Lehi's presence in the Americas has emerged.
Therefore, another of your irrefutable proofs of bom is left floundering by the author you cite. Only a small fraction of similarities are . No work has been accomplished to see if it is more closely affiliated with any other language group. In Stubbs case, he only has a hammer and everything looks like nails. As the perplexed author notes, there should be a similar abundance of similarities. Again, your incontrovertible proof fades into meaningless speculation and incomplete scholorship. That is probably why this paper has not been published in a proper peer reviewed document.
Here is a Quote From ancient-Hebrew.org
Quite nice, visited the site earlier. Again, this site makes two mistakes in judgement.
1) It assumes that it is old. Just because it was not discovered officially before 1850’s it wasn’t really documented until 1933. That doesn’t automatically make it 3000 years old. That makes it flawed science and logic.
2) The actual script used is disputed by other Hebrew linguists. Even I can see that there are significant differences in the way Lamed, Mem, Resh, Shin, Yud and Hey are written between the Dan inscriptions and the Stone. 3) The use of Greek letters in place of Hebrew plus a significant number of other errors that a writer of Hebrew would make outlined in last post and unaddressed by this single article. 4) Although the link above talks about the stone, a deeper link reinforces the observation of the use of Greek over Hebrew (where would Nephi learn Greek?). http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/15_williamson.html
While being interesting, this stone does not serve as proof of the bom. Speculative archaeology is not true archaeology. This is the second time I have shown that there are flaws in the interpretation that have not been refuted, but these flaws serve to show that the stone is a forgery.
TheBat Creek stone unearth in Tennessee by the Smitsonians Mound survey project has been certified by the Smisonian as Hebrew (is that peer reviewed enough for you?)
Though discovered in a dig sponsored by the Smithsonian, contrary to your opinion (and the article) the Smithsonian has not certified the inscriptions as Hebrew. It is not conclusive that the stone is a Hebrew artifact, as there is equal evidence that it could be associated with Masonry or the Indians. Questions further abound about the integrity of the individual that found the item also abound. With this in mind, the Smithsonian STILL stands by its statement refuting the bom assertions.
How about the The Newark, Ohio Decalogue Stone and Keystone
Yes, well how about it? Found in the 1800’s and now that the area have been developed further – no other remarkable finds, no ruins, no grave yards, no evidence of anything else. We only have the story of an individual (amateur) who found these items on separate occasions – in spite of the numerous others who had been digging in the area. And this same guy had a fascination with the myth that Hebrews inhabited the Americas.
You attempt to impugn the Los luna inscription by posting the following:
Not attempted, I did.
So, even though Hebrew experts say this is genuine, ……
Not all Hebrew experts agreed, as I have clearly shown. Even the ones you cited on their website acknowledge that there are errors an changes in the spelling and structure that would not be found by someone with full command of the language.
If I dares to presnt such a preposterous theory with out the barest threds of support you would rightly declare me to be insane.
You have, you call it the bom.
I said there was evidence for Both sides, you said there was not and gave me a list of things to "Prove" some items on that list were ludicrous on face of it, others you are now trying to debate with me.
The debate centers on the Weekly World News fashion of your evidence. The bom makes GREAT claims about the civilization here. Millions of people, great cities, great machines of war, great materials of war, etc. Anywhere else, this would result in a plethora of archaeological sites and discoveries. What can you show me?
1. An isolated stone with a mixture of Greek and Hebrew with construction errors.
2. A single piece of stone with disputed lettering
3. A questionable discovery of interesting artifacts on different occasions by an untrained individual in an area heavily explored already and no further finds.
4. Bogus Egyptian
5. A lot of maybe and what ifs.
Insert mormon commercial by DU
Google was my source
Wow, google is now cannon of lds, imagine that.
I am not aware of Millions, nor is the Sea to Shining sea an accurate depiction, but accuracy does not seem to be your strong suit.
And the bom apparently isn’t yours.
Ether 15: 2
2 He saw that there had been slain by the sword already nearly atwo millions of his people, and he began to sorrow in his heart; yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children.
Hel. 3: 8
8 And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea awest to the sea east.
How could an entire civilization consisting of well over 2 million peoples (Ether 15:2)(and that’s just counting those killed), not including the size and great number of their enemies…be so completely wiped out as to have left no factual traces of their existence? No tools, no weapons, no writings, no architecture, no coins, no human remains, nothing? Every single one of them completely destroyed leaving no graves or evidences of their existence?
Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” When it comes to placing the Book of Mormon into an appropriate historical context in regards to artifacts, places, names & culture, LDS Apologists can only offer speculation and theories. In short, it’s not just the absence of any one given piece of evidence to support the Book of Mormon that is missing, but the combined package is also missing.
I Said: Here is a section from a web site about the ancient Americas In Search of the Roots of Ancient American Civilization http://www.webb.com/Starfire/native.html
This is proof, no this is fraud pretending to be proof.
U Said: 9. Is there proof that Native Americans are really of Semitic stock?
Still waiting for proof, pottery and hookworms are not proof. (crickets)
U Said: The following report makes it clear that the solution is fishermen from Japan or SE Asia as the hookworm originates from tropical and subtropical climates. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-311X1988000200006
Bwahahaha!, So it was a japanese guy instead of a Medeteranian guy so that the Book of Momrons is not true. LOL!
More scientifically established than your post. This matches the DNA and other race research – that the Native Americans on both continents came from asia (home of these hookworms).
Did you not read the word Smithsonian in my link? I guess that's not peer reviewed enough for you, is it. Besides, my point was that there was data on both sides and this could be argued, it is so I am right. (sucks to be you, again).
What was peer review in this case? It was the report on radio carbon dating of pottery. I’ll bet you that there was no mention of bom or related discussions in the article.
The Book of Mormon does not promise an "immediate" whitening of the indians skin. Prove that it does, post the link.
In 1981 a very important change was made in 2 Nephi 30:6. It now promises the Lamanites that they will become "a pure and delightsome people." This change is not the result of correcting a printing error, as the manuscript of the bom reads "white" and the first two printed editions use "white" not "pure." The verse was changed to "pure" in the 1840 edition, but returned to "white" in editions after that date.
Rats now which inspired version should I believe?????
proto Hebrew, that was not translatable found in america, and later when it can be read found to be the Ten commandments.
Oh, well that’s a new one, and IF you are referring to the Los Lunas stone, it is not proto-hebrew, but then don’t provide truth, your mind is made up.
with Egyptian descended language,
Repeat a lie enough, already debunked by experts as not even the same category of writing.
hookworms that had to come by Boat (people said it couldn't be done back then, but science proves that it was done by somebody) at some point you have to say.
Yes, ASIAN peoples, not Middle Eastern (Jews), such details you ignore in your quest for incontrovertible proof. You have proved nothing in your above examples other than your ignorance of the real facts and living you life in the pages of the Weekly World News.
Occam's razor says that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity", or basically the simpleist solution is probably the best one. Joseph bing a prophet is the simpleist solution to all this.
No the simplest solution is that he is a fraud, wrote the bom based upon plagerism from the Bible, other novels in circulation at the time that fictionalized Jews coming to America.
Actually, many of the structures in South america are so well done that we cannot reproduce them to this day.
Then you should have no problems showing me where the various cities of the bom are hmmmmm. Where are Zarahemla, hill Cumorah and other great cities. BTW in 1973, Michael Coe, your citation on concrete, wrote an article for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1973. After telling of the Mormon belief in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, he frankly stated: "Let me now state uncategorically that as far as I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the foregoing to be true,... nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever shown up in any New World excavation which would suggest to a dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon... is a historical document relating to the history of early migrants to our hemisphere." (pp.42, 46)
Your own sources admits that the evidence is so totally lacking to support the bom that they cannot even defend their interpretations.
John L. Sorenson, a Mormon archaeologist who was assistant professor of Anthropology and Sociology at BYU, added his comments concerning some of the popular Mormon books on archaeology and the Book of Mormon: Various individuals unconnected with these institutionalized activities have also wrestled with the archaeological problem. Few of the writings they have produced are of genuine consequence in archaeological terms. Some are clearly on the oddball fringe; others have credible qualifications. Two of the most prolific are Professor Hugh Nibley and Milton R. Hunter; however, they are not qualified to handle the archaeological materials their works often involve.... As long as Mormons generally are willing to be fooled by (and pay for) the uninformed, uncritical drivel about archaeology and the scriptures which predominates, the few L.D.S. experts are reluctant even to be identified with the topic (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1966, pp.145, 149).
Dee Green, assistant professor of Anthropology at Weber State College, has written an article for Dialogue.
first myth we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists. Titles on books full of archaeological half- truths, dilettanti on the peripheries of American archaeology calling themselves Book of Mormon archaeologists regardless of their education, and a Department of Archaeology at BYU devoted to the production of Book of Mormon archaeologists do not insure that Book of Mormon archaeology really exists. If one is to study Book of Mormon archaeology, then one must have a corpus of data with which to deal. We do not. The Book of Mormon is really there so one can have Book of Mormon studies, and archaeology is really there so one can study archaeology, but the two are not wed. At least they are not wed in reality since no Book of Mormon location is known with reference to modern topography. Biblical archaeology can be studied because we do know where Jerusalem and Jericho were and are, but we do not know where Zarahemla and Bountiful (nor any other location for that matter) were or are. It would seem then that a concentration on geography should be the first order of business, but we have already seen that twenty years of such an approach has left us empty-handed (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1969, pp.76-78).
And these are the people you want me to read about and believe – har har.
1. First, this poetic style has always been in the Bible. Whether anyone had a name for it or not is beside the point; the style was present for Joseph Smith to imitate.
2. Second, the Doctrine and Covenants has examples of the same pattern. Since Joseph Smith dictated the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, and it is not claimed that they were translations of ancient writings, obviously this pattern was part of Smith's style. The Pearl of Great Price and Joseph's diary exhibit similar patterns. 3. Since chiasmus occurs in many languages its use in the Book of Mormon does not prove either its Semitic origin or that it is a style peculiar to inspired ancient scripture. In fact, many nursery rhymes have this same type of structure (e.g. Hickory Dickory Dock). 4. Though the phenomenon is not limited to writings thought to be sacred, it was identified by the work of certain mainly Protestant scholars -- in particular Albertus Bengel (Gnomon Novi Testamenti, 1742), Thomas E. Boys (fl. ca. 1820-30), Richard Baillie Roe, Robert Lowth (Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, 1787), John Jebb of Limerick (Sacred Literature, 1820), and Dr. E. W. Bullinger (1837-1913) -- that served as the leading lamps of the explication of most types of figurative speech in the ancient literature. Chief among these figures (if commonness of occurrence is the measure) would have to be the various forms of chiasmus (sometimes referred to in the scholarly literature as antimetabole, epanodos, or simply "correspondences," "structures," or "parallelism").
Remember my postulate is that there is enough evidence on both sides to argue with, so I have already won because we are indeed "arguing" it.
No, what has actually occurred is that you have displayed the bankruptcy of mormon archaeological PROOFS. You said you had PROOF positive that the bom was archaeologically correct. You’ve only provide a palled trifling of what ifs, may be’s and hyperbole.
Funny, I have read many times that Archologists do not go by the Bible, but ignore it as inaccurate for their purposes.
I could take you to Edom, the pool of Bethsada, Jericho and hundreds of other locations identified by the Bible. Bom? Well see Dee Green’s remarks above for the rest of the story.
Joseph telling the same story a bit differently to different audiences does not bother me either.
Yep, shade the story, confuse the innocent, tell the lie and get away with it.
So you say, but we've been here before, I guess you think if you repeat a failed argument often enough, it'll suddenly succeed. Good luck with that.
Taught by your president/prophets, and the whole General authority. Denial is a river in Egypt. So, I suppose you are "Cool" with the inquisition, and the sale of indulgences? (since the catholic church cannot be wrong, they still technically believe in these once held doctrines...) (My apologies to any Catholics who read this, it was just too good an example to pass up.)
I guess mormons can be bigots and hate speakers too.
Already Debunked and refuted.
Why then does there exist the manuscript marked up by Joseph after the translation was done? Obviously the Cannonized version is the correct one word for word, not letter by letter. It's an understandable mistake for someone to make later, especially if the book is of and by man. See the changes in white to pure cited above. How about the listed changes as recent as 1981. Sorry, those ms markups excuses wore out a long time ago.
Joseph marked up the manuscript himself and corrected things that he could not "correct" while the translation was ongoing. The relics exist, and have been "peer reviewed" and authenticated in some cases by the "Smithsonian" Jewish groups study them. Desperation is a poor cologne, and you can smell it for a half a mile...
Then why haven’t you referenced them to me? What you have marched out here is nothing. Where is the Smithsonian’s statement agreeing that the bom is a guide for the study of the Americas (woops, soooooo sorry, Smithsonian still says no).
We covered this, the Book of the dead you say the Book of Abraham was indeed purchased at the same time, but it does not match the description of the scroll actually translated into the Book of Abraham.
Your own FARMs people acknowledge it is the same papyri and as was patiently pointed out, the facsimiles matched character for character.
Cartoon Banned by the Mormon Church
It's one thing to hold a certain belief but it is quite another to try to obfuscate it by saying Mormonism is simply another form of Christianity. It's not.
~”You’re not trying to claim Mormonism is Christian are you?”~
My biggest question is, how’d you get that out of “bunny slippers?”
[... The difference between us is that I’m perfectly happy to let you be...]
Your words (not mine) prove that Mormons aren’t interested in YOU
unless yoy are interested in adding credits to their corporate bottom
line through tithing go to heaven account by getting baptised.
That is correct.
I do not know the origins of the term “the God” in the verse in question.
Let me help you out with a graphic I made of the verse with an online interlinear Bible. You don't need to be a prophet to understand it:
See? Literally, "Jehovah he is Elohim."
Cordially,
Which one on the list was that mischaracterization of the lengthy passage on polygamy which you posted?... Tauntiboh seems to think his foolishness gets through without folks going back to check it out! Looka like #855 gave the full context, the context which the sexual deviant smith ignored to get his ‘many wives’. Incidentally, tauntiboo seems to think God commanded Abraham to enter into polygamy. Has he ever posted the LDS ‘proof’ for this?
I guess DU, you believe you get to do what you condemn others for. You post big, expect big posts in return and quit being a cry baby about it.
~”I am learning that it is considered a sport for mormons to spew venom and ridicule on Christians and others who do not accept the aposacy of Joseph Smith...”~
Would you please provide an example from this thread?
I do believe your preconceptions are coloring your judgment in this case.
~”Maybe that is why it takes 19 year old mormon missionaries two whole years to make only four convicts..”~
I got seven! And that was in Italy, where it’s very hard work.
It’s not unheard of for missionaries in South America to participate in the conversions of hundreds. It all depends on where the people are ready for the message.
~”Who would want to join a group who constantly beat them up and mocked them ???”~
Good question. That’s one reason I remain a staunch Mormon.
~”Christians aren’t perfectly happy letting Mormon’s be
because we love you and want you to spend eternity
in heaven with Jesus.”~
Some of you have an awfully funny way of showing it...
In your case, Jo, I do appreciate your manners. Might I suggest you try to counsel your fellow Christians to be more Christlike?
~”Jesus told me to be a Mormon, don’t you get it?”~
‘Bout sums it up, doesn’t it?
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