Posted on 02/24/2013 5:01:01 PM PST by Colofornian
...the original text of the Book of Mormon contains expressions which seem inappropriate or improper in some of their uses. For example, in the original text a good many occurrences of the phrase "and it came to pass" are found in inappropriate contexts. In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith removed at least 47 of these apparently extraneous uses of this well-worked phrase. In most cases, there were two or more examples of "it came to pass" in close proximity; in some cases, nothing new had "come to pass."
(Excerpt) Read more at maxwellinstitute.byu.edu ...
Per this Mopologist cite (http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Evidences/And_it_came_to_pass), Joseph Smith uses the phrase "it came to pass" 1,404 times. I assume since Royal Skousen says Smith removed 47 of them in the 1837 edition, that the original 1830 edition then had 1,451 "it came to pass" references.
* Why so many?
* Why “it came to pass” when even Lds “scholars” concede that “nothing” new had come to pass?
* I mean per the Book of Mormon character, “Jacob” – IF what he said was so – that "I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates" (Jacob 4:1) … then why would these Book of Mormon etchers take to time to etch “it came to pass” over 1,450 times?
* And why other seemingly meaningless endless repetition of words like “exceeding” and “exceedingly” and “behold” and even some phrases which (laughingly) combine several of these...like "Therefore, behold, it came to pass..." (Ether 9:1)
* If what the characters “Jacob” and “Mormon” wrote were true...that 'twas difficult to engrave letters on gold plates (see above Jacob 4:1)...and ”if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew” (Mormon 9:33)...thereby supposedly forcing them to write in a language of their enemies...a language, actually, nobody has heard of (“Reformed Egyptian”)... then how come we have verses like 4 Nephi 1:6, where the writer takes 57 words to simply say 59 years passed??? "And thus did the thirty and eighth year pass away, and also the thirty and ninth, and forty and first, and the forty and second, yea, even until forty and nine years had passed away, also the fifty and first, and the fifty and second; yea, and even until fifty and nine years had passed away." (4 Nephi 1:6)
Suggested answers to these questions?
Well...
... Smith had to try to break up this meaningless verse with a few story-telling pauses...
...ya know, the kind of pauses YOU as a story-teller need when you're 'yarnin' a good one for the kids (or for some, grandkids)...
-- I mean, that's all those 130 "it came to passes" in 32 pages of the book of Ether were...
--just phrases tossed in to break up meaningless narratives and bad-quality fairy tales (like Ether 14)
And it's not like Joseph Smith didn't have plenty of “dress rehearsals” for putting together this book.
I mean, what do you think Joseph actually did prior to writing all this down? Why, he told various versions of it in story/tale form! How do we know this? (Always listen to the moms of 17 yo -- like Lucy Mack Smith describing her boy about the age of 17)...and if he could tell tales like the following at age 17, stop with the "uneducated" nonsense...giving dictation is just like tale-telling:
"During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of the continent, their dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life among them. On the twenty-second of September, 1824, Joseph again visited the place where he found the plates the year previous; and supporting at this time that the only thing required, in order to possess them until the time for their translation, was to be able to keep the commandments of God...he fully expected to carry them home with him.” (Lucy Mack Smith, edited by Preston Nibley, History of Joseph Smith, p. 83, Bookcraft, Salt Lake City, 1958)
Well, thank you, Mormon publisher Bookcraft, Preston Nibley, and Joseph Smith's Mom!!! And did you note the chronology there on page 83? What Mormons (like Preston Nibley) may have missed in this account is that Lucy Mack Smith was saying Joseph gave these storied details before he ever even "interpreted" these gold plates. A lot of it was already there -- in his active, imaginitive mind!
"Intriguingly, too, Skousen (a specialist, be it remembered, in linguistics and the English language) contends that the language of the Book of Mormon isn’t Joseph Smith’s early 19th-century dialect, but English of the 1500s and 1600s.
Why would a book of mostly "B.C." gold plates be so filled with 17th century verbiage when people in the 19th century (for the most part) didn't use that as part of their daily vernacular?
Well, see and join the discussion on that matter at the link in this post.
Note on headline: Not enough FR posting “character” space for entire headline...Only the word “The” — at the start of the headline — was deleted to match the characters allowed.
Isn’t the original language of the Book of Mormon Kolobian?
Klingon.
In rendering down the history of various individuals named in an early pre-Civil War Baptist church ledger, my sister in law was beside herself trying to figure out why the church clerk thought we should know something about THAT!
One day I realized she was reading it as SODOMIST
According to Colleen Ralson, in her 1988 booklet, "Color Me Confused," p. 49 (Watchman Fellowship)--
--as she commented upon the original verbiage of 3 Nephi 21:2-7 --
-- WHICH was written as just one sentence in the original 1830 version:
'Father' is used 8 times,
'Gentile' 5 times,
'shall come forth' 4 times,
'that' and 'which' 20 times,
and 'me,' 'I' and 'my' over 11 times.
This Mormon Jesus is a lot more expressive in his statements than the Jesus of the Bible, who averaged only 19 words per sentence.
Got that right...
That Book of Mormon definitely was ANOTHER jesus...ANOTHER entity in disguise!!!
Or, Joseph Smith was an absolutely horrific "gold plate translator." (Hey, what do you expect, tho, from a guy who had his head stuck in a hat while dictating the Book of Mormon?)
(For more research on Joseph's "peepstone" and hat "translation," see links below!)
| Problem # | Links | MRM.tv; John Ankerberg links; Mormonisminvestigated (UK) youtube linkage, etc. |
| 1. Smith's peepstone usage in Book of Mormon 'translation' | Lying for the Lord [Not the typical version / Well worth the read] (see #15 from this article) + Translation of the Book of Mormon + Book of Mormon translation + A Seer Stone and a Hat - "Translating" the Book of Mormon | Top 10 Mormon Problems (see #3) |
Therefore, it came to pass that they lived happily ever after.:)
Here’s Mark Twains opinion.
http://www.mrm.org/topics/documents-speeches/mark-twains-review-book-mormon
(Well, that's actually SOMETHING to consider...if you're the type to believe in the Internet gossip mill, that is)
What do I mean?
(1) Joseph Smith claimed the language was "Reformed Egyptian" -- which nobody has heard of before
(2) ALL kinds of "internet rumors" suggest that aliens visiting earth on their spacecraft helped the Egyptians to build the pyramids...and hence there are pyramid structures in other places on the earth besides Egypt...
(3) Mormons claim they were ALL "spirit-born" on a planet near the star Kolob. (And then they were transferred here to planet earth to possess bodies)
(4) The famous Kecksburg, PA UFO incident in 1967 had numerous witnesses who saw a downed craft (some say it was the Russian "Kosmos" craft) that was acorn-shaped/Liberty-Bell shaped and that on the border surrounding the lower portion were strange "hieroglyphics"
So...given ALL of the above...
I s'pose the conjecture that planetarians from yonder Kolob heights visited Egypt and left the "Reformed Egyptian" language, which would actually then have been "PRE-formed" Egyptian etymology-wise, and maybe these same Mormon Kolobian Heights aliens were downed in Kecksburg.
(Ya didn't know all these Mormons 'round you are aliens who readily admit being so, did ya?)
Klingon maybe?
Some alien race, anyway...How else would Brigham have had the "inside track" on such info as "moon men":
Lds "prophet" Brigham Young: Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? ...when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain.
Source: Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13, p. 271...1870 -- so keep in mind, Young had already been leading the Lds church for about 25 years or so when he made this comment.
BTW, where did Brigham Young get his "source" re: the habitation of the moon?
Oliver B. Huntington: Nearly all the great discoveries of men in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a prophet. As far back as 1837, I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we do--that they live generally near the age of 1000 years. He described the men as averaging nearly six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style. In my Patriarchal blessing, given by the father of Joseph the Prophet in Kirtland, 1837, I was told that I should preach the gospel before I was 21 years of age; that I should preach the gospel to the inhabitants upon the islands of the sea, and--to the inhabitants of the moon, even the planet you can not behold with your eyes. The first two promises have been fulfilled, and the latter may be verified. From the verification of the two promises we may reasonably expect the third to be fulfilled also. (Source: Young Woman's Journal, Vol. 3, pp. 263-264, 1892)
It’s a shame Joseph Smith never met Jodi Arias.
Reformed Kolobian of the Upper Nile is what I was led to believe.
You will find such shining lights as Sir William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus and many other astronomical things, teaching in published material that not only was the moon and all the other planets inhabited, but so was the sun.
William Herschel is so famous as to have space probes named after him.
He was not alone in his ideas.
So, it appears, they copied what some leading scientists of the day, and earlier, had been saying in order to appear “brilliant” and then as science progressed they now look silly.
Colofornian
I knew you couldn’t avoid an LDS distortion and smear today!
How empty must your life be? ...to spend such a large part of it trying to discourage Christians with whom you do not agree.
FYI: Checkout the Bat Creek Hebrew inscription. Discovered in 1890 by the Smithsonian Inst. and recently dated to 100 AD.
A hebrew inscription on a rock in the American Continent from 100 AD? ..... Sounds a lot like the Book of Mormon to me.
The difference is that one Wm Herschel did NOT claim...
...to be THE ONE God's direct-line spokesperson on planet earth...
...and therefore did NOT claim to be in God's special "confidence" on moon men...
...unlike Brigham Young and Joey Smith.
The only tall impressive structure that can be built with stone age technology is a pyramid!
The gibberish that is the Book of Mormon cannot be salvaged by its grammatical errors. It’s all baloney.
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