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?
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
It’s a shame Joseph Smith never met Jodi Arias.
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 gibberish that is the Book of Mormon cannot be salvaged by its grammatical errors. It’s all baloney.
Mark Twain
Ya know...one of bait & switch things that Lds missionaries engage in is to ask contacts to "pray about the Book of Mormon."
ALL: If you ever have an Lds missionary ask you to do that, ask them, "Which one?"
They will look at you in a confused manner, thinking there's only one.
But you see, the Book of Mormon has so much majestic King James Bible plagiarism in it, that if they were truly "up front" -- they'd show you the 1830 version so that you can see the "upstate New York-like" grammar-horrific UNmajestic version Smith put together prior to Lds leaders making THOUSANDS of changes.
You see reading the ORIGINAL Book of Mormon...
...with the majestic KJV excerpts --
--contrasted vs. Smith's Un-majestic portion of the BoM
-- would all be a dead giveaway that this wasn't the "genuine article."
But, hey, what do you expect when Mormon missionaries aren't exactly "out front" with many of their doctrines? (They promote pretty much ONLY the Book of Mormon)
Of course, the Book of Mormon has ZILCHO content/teachings about all the "later" developments of Joseph Smith...such as...
* God is a lower-level god who god assigned the "god job" for the Kolob-Earth district
* He was a man who earned his way to godhood; therefore, you can, too
* Temples are for baptizing dead people -- which Mormons hear from time-to-time in those temples (necro-immersing & necromancy)
* Any kind of "pre-existence"
* 3 degrees of glory -- with ONLY temple married Mormons having the opportunity to live eternally with Heavenly Father...(all others get a lower "glory"...as if Heaven could be Heaven minus Heavenly Father!!!)
* Hell isn't eternal -- damnation just means "damned up"
* Marriage & families are for eternity [imagine the Book of Mormon missing out on that one]
* Sealings & endowments & temple recommends & temple ritual language
* A mom-god or 2 or 3 or a harem of them
Anyway, no wonder there's "misunderstandings" of what Mormonism is! Here they do a bait-and-switch, asking people to pray about stuff that doesn't even record many of their primary teachings!!!
It's all downright deceptive.
Royal Skousen should push for THE original Book of Mormon to be handed out for "prayer purposes" by Lds missionaries...(Yeah, that'd go over like a green jello brick)
When attempting to “understand” the Book of Mormon, one needs first to obtain a copy of “Secret History, a translation of Vor Tids Muhamed,” by John Ahmanson, translated by Gleason L. Archer, Moody Press, 1984, ISBN 0-0824-0277-1.
On page 95 of said volume begins a description of the true source of the Book of Mormon. One Solomon Spaulding had fallen on hard times, and had written a book in the years 1810 - 1812, in hopes of selling it to pay his debts, the title of which was “The Discovered Manuscript.”
The story was based on an idea that America’s early inhabitants were descended from the lost tribes of Israel, and gave a description of how they had traveled by land and sea to America under the leadership of Nephi and Levi.
Spaulding died and his unpublished manuscript was left in the possession of his wife who took it with her to live in Onandago county, N.Y. and had left it in a trunk with some of her late husband’s other manuscripts, and it was there that Joseph Smith acquired the text.
That is it; the origin of the Book of Mormon was a work of fiction that had never gotten published.