Positively NON of the information about the textual inconsistencies between different dated versions of the first bom and varying accounts of Joseph Smith’s second vision have been refuted.
Just because you come in without any accurate or sourced and neutral material capale of even passingly refuting the thesis of my remarks, and cast your “blanket of dismissal” broadly over the whole of it does not make your wishes so.
I cited “View of the Hebrews” by the Poultney Congr. church pastor, Ethan Smith (the church Ollie Cowdery and family are known to have attended regularly) as well as 3 other known volumes of similar topic, which predate the bom, I also cited two newspapers contemporary with Smith and the accounts.
You have not challenged - let alone disproven the facts extant on the face of these (the Painesville, Ohio “Telegraph”, the “Evening and Morning Star”, and the original “Book of Commandments”) which, by their very existence cast a dark and wide shadow of doubt on Joseph Smith’s tendency to tell the truth on anything remotely resembling a regular basis - especially regarding his two visions.
Neither can you adequately explain the diverging paths of whether the “angel” was in fact initially:
1) known as Moroni
2) known as Nephi (1839’s “History” of the church, dictated by Smith, repeated in “Times and Seasons”, 1839 without correction [by Smith or anyone else] through the remainder of Smith’s life
3) not specifically named (original “revelation”, 1830 - in print as such on/before 19 April, 1831. Also found in Smith’s 1832 account, in which he reworked into a vison of Christ
Accounts are in print which inarguably demonstrate that all three variations were offered forth - by Smith and his followers, and that they were represented as truth.
So who was the apparition? Many reliable witnesses - neighbors of young Joseph in the Manchester-Palmyra area - insist the story Joseph told was of a bloody ghost, dressed as a Spaniard.
These people include neighbor Fayette Lapham, and relative Hiel Lewis, (cousin of Smith’s wife Emma) - who said he hear Joe tell a Rev. N. Lewis that a dream led to his discovery of the golden plates {Hiel Lewis, letter to James T. Cobb, “Amboy Journal”, April 30, 1879. This is reprinted in Wyl and available online for purchase at:
www.utlm.org/booklist/titles/up016_mormonportraits}
Fayette Lapham heard the same scenario from Joseph Smith Sr., but young Joe’s father additionally revealed that it was the very same bloody ghost that appeared to Joseph at the location of the plates had been the same messenger to appear in young Joseph’s dream.
So just WHO was the messenger? Moroni, Nephi, the “father and Son”?
Personally, I vote - LUCIFER/SATAN. Maybe not in a seersucker suit with cloven hooves, but...
The whole of it belongs in the “fiction is stranger than TRUTH” category. As it turned out for Joseph, you apparently CAN make up stuff like that.
Given that in 1826, young Joey was arrested in Bainbridge, New York for being a “disorderly person and an imposter” He broke the law by hiring himself out as a money-digger to one Josiah Stowell, and was consequently brought to court as a glass-looker, or “one who, by peering through a glass stone could see things not discernible to the natural eye.”
Under examination by the court, Smith admitted to having “a certain stone” that he used to find buried treasure.
Several witnesses were brought forth, and following their sworn testimony, a “Guilty” judement was pronounced.
However, owing to Smith’s age, he was allowed to make “leg bail”
This is a nice way of saying he was released and told in no uncertain terms to get out of town.
Mormons have argued against the veracity of this story for decades - some persist even now - but in 1971, evidence was uncovered by religious researchers to prove it conclusively and indisputably.
Namely, the authenticated bill for the 1826 court case, presided over by one Justice Albert Neely, which had been previously published in the form of a court transcript by the 1873 “Fraser’s Magazine”.
Prior to the unearthing of this evidence, LDS apologist Hugh Nibley stated that if those allegations made in the magazine’s transcripted account were ever proved authentic it would be “the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith”, and highly popular LDS author Frances Kirkham echoed the same opinion.
Naturally, both knew that G_d condemns divination, among many other occultic practices (known popularly today as ‘magick’)
Why is all of this important in a dialogue that ostensibly began as a back-and-forth about “Hebrew DNA”?
Because the whole DNA argument rests upon a foundation of sand. It is the fruit (or nuts) of an ill-begotten tree.
In other words, there is no relevance to whether or not you can tap-dance and shuffle fast enough to make it appear for stolen moments as if DNA either:
a)appears to lend some credence/support to some version of the bom account(s) of a pre-Babylonian captivity Jewish diaspora to the Americas,
or
b) does not conclusively DISPROVE bom contentions about a pre-Babylonian captivity Jewish diaspora to the Americas.
...Because Joseph Smith’s personal credibility, honesty, and integrity are as suspect as ANY erstwhile religious sect leader to rear his head throughout the 1800s (hey, at least Charles Taze Russell was not an illicit polygamist - he only sold “miracle wheat”).
Smith took a second wife in 1832 or 1833, a third wife in 1838 or 1839, and three more wives in 1841. Not until 12 July, 1843 did Smith (allegedly) receive a revelation commanding his first wife Emma to accept polygamy. All the while, Smith and many mormon leaders publicly DENIED polygamy.
In an 1843 issue of the “Times and Seasons” periodical, it was declared, “We are charged with advocating a plurality of wives...[T]his is as false as the many other ridiculous charges which are brought against us. No sect has a greater reverence for the laws of matrimony, or the rights of private property; and we do what others do not, practice what we preach.”
It is usually at this point that LDS faithful point to Abraham’s lying (Gen. 12:10-16), David’s adultery (2 Samuel 11), or Peter’s denial of Christ (Matthew 26:69-75).
These anecdotes, however, are just that - anecdotes. They are not key indicators of a larger pattern of lifelong conduct. They are humanly normal and momentary moral lapses...exceptions.
Joseph Smith’s entire life from his Bainbridge, NY conviction through his secretly practiced polygamy, until his timely death during an attempted jailbreak was a parade of “exceptions”, an evident pattern of behaviours which directly violated 1 John 3:6-10,
“No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of G_d appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of G_d will continue to sin because G_d’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning because he has been born of G_d. This is how we know who the children of G_d are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of G_d; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.”
Joseph Smith’s doctrine apparently includes the premise that Lucifer - the Serpent - Satan, who deceived Eve and Adam in the Garden was simply making available to them, the opportunity to exercise the “wise choice”.
Since the eating of the fruit led to Man being expelled from the Garden, and was the work of the devil - and the Son of G_d (as mentioned above) appeared to destroy the devil’s work, then Smith’s doctrine is IN OPPOSITION to the work of the Saviour, as was evidenced amply by the way Smith conducted his life.
The stain of repetitive sin (sexual immorality, lying, divination and occultic arts, his efforts to cheat merchants out of money owed to them for their goods) upon his character marks him as NOT a man born of G_d, and therefore wholly unsuitable and unworthy to be a credible prophet, nor an exemplary leader.
He had charisma, remarkable intuition, toughmindedness, a relatively handsome physical appearance, and was athletic, as well as being a fairly natural speaker.
But he was not holy, not righteous, and not a prophet. Therefore in the case of the many known and documented internal contradictions among versions of the first and second visions, it is Smith and the subsequent “refinements” and revisions of his account(s) which cannot and may not be trusted by those with any wisdom or discernment.
And since...
...LDS “prophet” David McKay (1873 - 1970) described Smith’s first ‘vision” as foundational to mormonism. Recently passed LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley said more pointedly, “Either Joseph Smith talked with the Father and the Son or he did not. If not, we are engaged in a blasphemy.”
Hinckley also articulated,”We declare without equivocation that G_d the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ appeared in person to the boy Joseph Smith...our whole strength rests in the validity of that vision. It either occurred, or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud.”
This work is a fraud, the vision(s) invalid, the doctrines are blasphemy.
I followed your links (irrelevant as they are), even though they were intended as nothing more than a “red herring” to distract attention from evidence you could not (and did not) refute, in an abortive effort to regain any ground in an argument where you consistently suffer from the axiomatic “one step forward, two steps back” problem...
they really do nothing to bolster the strength of the DNA evidence on the side of the mormon beliefs in Native Americans as Jews, nor do they offer a remedy for the shortcomings in your skills at crafting cogent or cohesive points in support of the LDS position.
I could have a vision of a broken sword, a lost ring, a forgotten Dark lord, Elves of pure light, and lay claim to the “Lord of the Rings” as ‘another testament’, created a set of companion volumes full of rules for living and repetitions of chapters from LOTR, and set my “followers” to unearthing archaeological evidence to demonstrate the existence of Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and Goblins...cite fossilized foods as proof of the fact of ‘Lembas - Elvish waybread’ and cite DNA studies from varying scholars to hold up dwarfism genes as proof that Christ came as Gandalf, or Frodo, or Aragorn - to middle earth...
But the story would remain fiction, and I would have shown myself a fraud and a huckster.
One cannot misuse science to remake a lie and a (repeatedly and substantially revised) work of flawed, plagiarized fiction into a work of original nonfiction.
That is the point.
A.A.C.
