Which BOM origination theory do you believe? (15th attempt)

[scottie]

But then you have the gold plates. How deluded do you have to be to honestly believe you saw an angel that took you to a hill to dig up gold plates, believe you actually have gold plates, and haul them around for months when none of it ever existed outside a fantasy world?? I just can't accept that as an option.

If there are no gold plates, he's a fraud, be it a pious fraud or other.

How firm was the gold plates story at the time? Was it more of a back-dated story? In other words, was Joseph telling Martin and Emma and Oliver that he was lugging them around during the translation process? (That seems much less clear to me after learning about the head in the hat/plates not even present). OR, were the plates a story that grew legs after the BOM was first published in order to explain its origin (much like the FV story being taught years after the church was organized)?

[Jarid in Cedar]

But then you have the gold plates. How deluded do you have to be to honestly believe you saw an angel that took you to a hill to dig up gold plates, believe you actually have gold plates, and haul them around for months when none of it ever existed outside a fantasy world?? I just can't accept that as an option.

If there are no gold plates, he's a fraud, be it a pious fraud or other.

I think that it was a tall tale that some people started to believe, and the more he told it, the more he believed it had happened. It could start as a simple lie to impress/awe some people that became entrenched in his mind as an actual event. Psychology has several models showing that this does happen, including something as simple as bipolar disorder. People who have this condition are subject to intense delusions of grandeur that they fully believe as reality. Add in someone who is charismatic enough to convince people that you are really what your delusion entails, then you can see this happen.

I guess that I do not see JS starting all of this with the intent to deceive. I look at it as a tall tale that morphed into something bigger.

[jay santos]

This is where TBMs propose the false dichotomy:

Either Joseph was a fraud and a liar and a terrible and insane person OR he was a Prophet of God.

Clearly the truth is more complicated than that, and to me at least seems like it is somewhere in between.

Agree there's middle ground--which is pious fraud. I just disagree there's a non-faithful/literal, viable option for him as honest or non-fraudelent. I do believe there's a dichotomy prophet of God or fraud, I just say there's a lot of varieties of fraud.

[Jarid in Cedar]

In other words, he was a crazy person.

No. I would use delusional, not crazy. There are perfectly sane people who will hold on to a fixed delusion that is not grounded in reality. This is how Glen Beck has reached such great heights.

[Jarid in Cedar]

Agree there's middle ground--which is pious fraud. I just disagree there's a non-faithful/literal, viable option for him as honest or non-fraudelent. I do believe there's a dichotomy prophet of God or fraud, I just say there's a lot of varieties of fraud.

I think I would use a word different than fraud. I view fraud as a purposeful attempt to deceive. I think that JS actions are more innocent than that. Delusion may be too strong, but it fits how I see it much better.

[jay santos]

How firm was the gold plates story at the time? Was it more of a back-dated story? In other words, was Joseph telling Martin and Emma and Oliver that he was lugging them around during the translation process? (That seems much less clear to me after learning about the head in the hat/plates not even present). OR, were the plates a story that grew legs after the BOM was first published in order to explain its origin (much like the FV story being taught years after the church was organized)?

The plates were referenced by many people all through that time period. They were the center of the drama for a long period of time.

[jay santos]

I think I would use a word different than fraud. I view fraud as a purposeful attempt to deceive. I think that JS actions are more innocent than that. Delusion may be too strong, but it fits how I see it much better.

I think we're probably describing the same thing.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pious_fraud"]Pious fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

[CardiacCoug]

Agree there's middle ground--which is pious fraud. I just disagree there's a non-faithful/literal, viable option for him as honest or non-fraudelent. I do believe there's a dichotomy prophet of God or fraud, I just say there's a lot of varieties of fraud.

Agreed.

And Joseph may have been guilty of different types of fraud. Perhaps the Book of Mormon was something he authentically believed was being revealed (albeit without real plates?) but could polygamy have been something that was more cynically fraudulent just based on his libido and ego? Just throwing that out there, that's not really something I have thought about much.

[scottie]

The plates were referenced by many people all through that time period. They were the center of the drama for a long period of time.

But was that before or after the BOM was published? I'm not expecting an answer to that really, mainly wondering how much it's been validated. Did Bushman get into the gold plates much in RSR?

[jay santos]

But was that before or after the BOM was published? I'm not expecting an answer to that really, mainly wondering how much it's been validated. Did Bushman get into the gold plates much in RSR?

It's an interesting idea, but from what I understand there are plenty of documented source statements and narratives that place the gold plates in the center of everything. Bushman definitely covered gold plates extensively.

[scottie]

It's an interesting idea, but from what I understand there are plenty of documented source statements and narratives that place the gold plates in the center of everything. Bushman definitely covered gold plates extensively.

Yep. Rather than thumbing through my copy I Googled:

The Concealed Object
There is no denying that Smith did have in his possession something that resembled what could be plates of some sort. However, whatever it was he had was kept from view, usually covered up with a cloth or placed in a box. Mormon historian Richard L. Bushman speaks of Smith’s father-in-law, Isaac Hale, who said, “I was allowed to feel the weight of the box and they gave me to understand, that the plates was then in the box – into which I was not allowed to look” (Joseph Smith – Rough Stone Rolling, p.63).

Bushman also notes that during the brief time Martin Harris was Smith’s scribe, a curtain was hung between Joseph and Martin “to prevent Harris from seeing the plates” (Rough Stone Rolling, p.66).

Hill records that William Smith said his father “never saw the plates except under a frock” (“Brodie Revisited,” Dialogue, Vol.7, No.4, p.84). William said, “In consequence of his vision, and his having the golden plates and refusing to show them, a great persecution arose against the whole family, and he was compelled to remove into Pennsylvania with the plates. He went on to say that his brother translated the plates using the “Urim and Thummim” placed in a hat, the plates were “lying nearby covered up” (A New Witness for Christ in America 2:416,417). This concurs with the description given by his sister-in-law Emma Smith.

Writes Bushman, “Emma said she sat at the same table with Joseph, writing as he dictated, with nothing between them, and the plates wrapped in a linen cloth on the table. When Cowdery took up the job of scribe, he and Joseph translated in the same room where Emma was working. Joseph looked into the seer stone, and the plates lay covered on the table” (Rough Stone Rolling, p.71).

Emma said she “felt the plates as they lay on a table” wrapped in a linen tablecloth. She said the plates were pliable like thick paper and that they “would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb” (Rough Stone Rolling, p.70). If that is true, then it is certain that the plates were not made of gold since soft metal pages made of gold would not make such a sound.

http://mrm.org/eleven-witnesses

[jay santos]

Who think Scottie knew this the whole time, but used it as an excuse to post these quotes? Scottie's the most skillful apostate on this board.

[scottie]

Who think Scottie knew this the whole time, but used it as an excuse to post these quotes? Scottie's the most skillful apostate on this board.

[SeattleUte]

Just a historical tidbit, not making any qualitative claims about it:

The church archives contain some of the original handwritten manuscripts of the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, a good portion of it was damaged by water when it was kept in the foundation of the Nauvoo temple. The manuscript was placed face up in the foundation so the front parts of the manuscript are the most legible.

Emma and Martin Harris were Joseph's first scribes until Oliver came along. Interestingly, the manuscript switches into Oliver's handwriting in what would today be mid-verse (no chapters/verses existed in the original BOM) somewhere in 1st Nephi.

NOTE: I have never personally seen the manuscripts, just relating from memory what my dad, who has seen the manuscripts, told me.

The errant "NOTE" at the end of BFM's post speaks volumes. Absolutely classic. This type of thing over and over one piled upon the other has resulted in the edifice of LDS Book of Mormon origin lore.

This archetypical "NOTE" comes after BFM tells us that most of the evidence was ("unfortunately") destroyed. (The same was true for the BOA scrolls, but fire was the destroying element, until woops they were found in the Met.)

[SeattleUte]

You've brought this up before. Tell me truly, though. If it did turn out that there was a signed statement, would that change how you felt?

If pigs could fly it might change my view of pigs, but it wouldn't happen on the object known as planet earth, I'm quite sure.

I point out absense of an original signed document because it's an easy succinct example of a lack of substantiation that pervades the entire LDS canon. We don't need to address stuff like there being so many Whitmers (as Mark Twain noted). To ask for an original signed document expressing the alleged witness' eyewitness testimony is a threshold question anyone empricaly testing Mormonism's claims would ask, and not surprisingly there isn't one.

They put the testimonials at the front of the Book of Mormon with names at the bottom. There are all the trappings of a sworn affidavit. So cough up the damn original signed document! It's not a lot to ask. It's the natural thing to ask. Not surprisingly, there isn't one, and it fits what logic tells us to expect partly because there never is a source document in this context. Like when they supposedly found Jesus' bronther James' coffin; that it would wind up a hoax could be predicted with certainty. Also, common sense tells us that angels are an ages old fantasy and not something that really happens.

The one time what ought to have been or apparent substantiation of the LDS canon has reared its head--the Book of Abraham scrolls--we get what objective observesrs would regard as a smoking gun conclusively exposing JS a liar. No, it isn't the Book of Mormon, but it's not a leap to assume that if he lied about the Book of Abraham's source he lied about the Book of Mormon's source.

But back to first principles. The ancient world of revelation and scriptures wrought by the finger of God was not itself actually the magic world view Joseph used as his model. Science has common sense earthbound explanations for all of it. So the model that functions as the premise for the faithful member's evaluation of the Book of Mormon is itself not what it presents itself as being. Really, what Joseph was all about was nostalgia for that view, in the face of the Enlightenment, modernism, etc. He and Mary Shelly and Richard Wager really belong in a like category.

Nevertheless, these symbols printed by humans on paper continue to give rise to and shape whole civilizations. Why that is so is the tantalyzing mystery for me, not whether Moses really wrote the Pentateuch or the Book of Mormon really came from a gold book shown to Joseph Smith by Moroni.