can we trust the book of Mormon?

so the oldest document of the book of mormon is in english, by joseph smith? kind of casts some doubt, especially since his "inspired translation" of the bible seems to be mostly plaigarized from the kjv, with additions not found in any other manuscript. ie: he seems to have just made stuff up. i don't think the dates line up. the mormons left in 600 bc or so, just before the babylonian exhile. since isaiah wrote of the babylonian captivity, it would not be possible for the mormons to have this text. the fact that it is a separate "translation" and yet is worded exactly like the kvj cast SERIOUS doubt on the story. look at what happens when matthew quotes ot texts. then why does he have influence on earth? lucifer, at the time of the writing of isaiah, refered to the king of babylon, not the devil. joseph smith's story post-dates paradise lost, which was actually common church-reading before his pilgrimage west. wonder where he got the idea, since it's not in the christian bible. i've argued it here before: god's standards of morals are for man, not himself. god often operates outside of them. is not god ultimately responsible for evil? says who? talked to a few actually. like i said, i mostly like your faith, but not your book. says who? is not god capable of forgiving us? the "by-laws" portion. hey, at least you guys put that stuff in writing. i've known mormons that would drink occasionally. now, chassidic jews on the other hand... no, people have known for a long time that alcohol is bad for morality. hell, look at genesis 9 and 19, and what happens when noah and lot get drunk. it's not a startling revelation from god that fermented grains, grapes, or potatoes can make people do stupid things. was that the one that was shown to be standard egyptian funerary rites? i've read a fair portion of the bible, and understand that a lot of it is very far from christian dogmatic innerrancy. some books i totally disregard because i can't find them credible at all. and that's the bible, as a christian. we have older manuscripts, different translations, etc, back to about 200 bc.now, compared with the book of mormon, of which i've read a small portion, which has no original documents, no other translations, and shows multiple signs of just having been totally made up... well.. i can't put any faith in it. and that is, btw, answering the standard mormon "ask god in your heart if it's true" verse. the portion that i did read sounded contrived to mimic the kjv version of the old testament. names and places seemed to lack hebrew roots, and just generally showed little knowledge of the historical and cultural context.

i'm gonna start at the end on this one. this is absolutely true. the use of that verse is especially subject. what did paul mean? what did paul's set of scriptures look like? did he include his own writings? what did jesus consider scripture? however, you misunderstood my point. the emphasis was put on the word "inspiration" for a very specific purpose: to single it out. that debate revolved around what inspiration means, and i was saying that it only means, you know, inspiration as opposed to fundamentalist's reading of "dicatated and controlled by god in every step." i was saying that the text only says inspired, which is a much fuzzier term.it's almost and obvious statement. the bible is essentially about the relationships between man and god, so of course god is the inspiration behind everything (except maybe song of songs and esther and ruth). this point is completely valid as well, and it is probably what paul meant. he doesn't seem to caught up in the details, and on several occasions advises against even arguing them. but i was just talking about the reading of that one word in the verse.

genesis does not appear to be written by moses. whatever gave you the idea that it was? it certainly never says that it was. deuteronomy could not have been written by moses either, as it records his death.but i have another grievous timeline error. here's the embarassing quote:

quote:

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2 Nephi 24:1-2:

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1. For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.
2. And the people shall take them and bring them to their place; yea, from far unto the ends of the earth; and they shall return to their lands of promise. And the house of Israel shall possess them, and the land of the Lord shall be for servants and handmaids; and they shall take them captives unto whom they were captives; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

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nephi is of course quoting isaiah 14. but there's a problem here. isaiah isn't what i would call chronological. ignore where it's placed and when the bible says isaiah lived and look at WHAT this verse actually says. it's talking about the return from the babylonian exhile. this is a prophesy regarding the end of the exhile, followed by a taunt against the defeated king of babylon.not a huge problem with the bible -- maybe isaiah lived a long time. and later parts of the text are clearly written by two other people. but this presents a HUGE problem with the book of nephi.this text was CLEARLY written after the exhile. nephi would not have had the book of isaiah containing this passage to quote.also, it looks suspicious that it's the same wording as the kjv.let's look at a quote from isaiah that goes through an intermediate language (greek).

quote:

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Luk 3:4 As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

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quote:

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Mat 3:3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

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compared to:

quote:

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Isa 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

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notice how the wording changes? notice how the name isaiah changes? yet when nephi quotes isaiah in egyptian (coptic?) and joseph smith translates it into english, it miraculously keeps the exact same wording and spacing and verse numbers as the kjv? heck, even my jps and niv and rsv have different wordings.when a literary scholar of any worth looks at things that are exactly the same wording, they can conclude with a very high degree of certainty that either one was copied from the other, or both were copied directly from the same source (without revision such as translation). look at isaiah 38 and 2 kings 20. do you really think that isaiah wrote the same exact words concerning his life as another author did? or do you think the person who compiled isaiah's words had a copy of kings sitting around, and pasted a bit in here and there to give it some background?now go find the same passage in chronicles (2 chron 32 somewhere). different wording. but look at verse 32 -- it cites isaiah and kings as a source! so we know the author of chronicles had a copy of kings and a copy of isaiah on his shelf. chronicles is knows to copy samuel and kings in many places, often changing the wording very little. we know all of these books were original written in hebrew, from hebrew sources.so why when this quote is not exact, is another quote, translated from hebrew into a different language, and then into english, still the same wording as king james' commisioned masoretic (hebrew) translation?looks like plaigarism. if i did it, they'd expell me from school.

yes. yes it was prophesy from god.read the passage. the prophesy is that they will leave exile, and will make slaves of their taskmasters, and that the king of babylon who oppresses him will himself be oppressed.it's not worded like a prophesy abotu the exile written before the exile. it doesn't "you'll get taken away, but don't worry you'll come back!" it says "god is rejecting us NOT, but it won't last" actually, i do. roughly the same one you believe in too. i just don't think that god makes miracles specifically designed to discredit his true prophets, like this one would be. kjv-nt (greek): hsaiou (hesaias) Esaias
hebrew: יְשַׁעְיָה (yasha'yah): Isaiahnotice how the different languages render the same name different ways? notice how when matthew quotes isaiah, isaiah gets transliterated different because we're translating from greek? we'd have the same issue transliterating from egyptian (coptic?). isaiah would NOT be spelled the same way as in the kjv-ot. flawed? no, actually, it's not. that's exactly my point. isaiah is an accepted modern english rendering (although not the most accurate). but it's an accepted english rendering of the HEBREW.if nephi was written in egyptian, it would by subject to same error matthew is, and spell isaiah wrong. i'm making it up? grab a copy of the kjv bible. look at the error yourself. there it is. actually, even better. grab a book i know you have. grab joseph smith's "translation" of the bible, and quote to me how it renders the name "isaiah" in matthew 3:3. because my copy says "esaias" and not "isaiah."tell my, why does joseph smith's bible contain this permutation, but the passage in nephi is exactly the same as the hebrew translation in the kjv/smith's ot, if it went through another intermediate language, such as stated in 1 nephi 1:2? trying to make sense of your statement. how am i lying? heck, i even quoted the very edition you probably have on your bedside table.i'm all for modern translations, i'm very partial to my JPS tanakh which was translated from the masoretic text in modern english idioms within the last 50 years. it's a beautiful text, and makes the most plain english sense of any edition i've read.the joseph smith edition, however, is 99% the same as the kjv, with additions not present in any other text or manuscript. the passages in the book of mormon that quote the bible quote it in exact shakespearean english -- an anachronism for smith who lived 200 years or more later -- and it exactly duplicates the kjv text, even though the supposed source must have been much different (and indeed in an entirely different language).so uh, tell me then. who's lying? college. not colledge.if i gave the nephi passage and the kjv isaiah passage to any english teacher anywhere, and told them that two different people wrote them, in two different languages, translated independently, they'd tell me i was full of it. they'd say one copied the other, directly, in the same language.

eh, because i missed it before, and it needs discussing. there's believing and not believing, sure. now, i can't speak for purpledawn, but i am a believer myself. it's good to keep this mind when you're debating with us. and you can't just say "well, you don't believe, so i don't expect you to agree!" because i DO believe.it is not a matter of belief, it's a matter of textual inconsistency, and a HUGE anachronism.the passage which nephi so accurately quotes is isaiah 14, which is a taunt against the king of babylon, probably nebuchadnezzar. in this, it uses a lowercase title for him, "heylel," which means "brilliant one" or "bearer of light" and figuratively the planet venus (son of the morning, etc).as purpledawn pointed out, this word is used throughout the bible. it's not a proper noun at all. "lucifer" simply is not the devil, it's a mocking title of nebuchadnezzar. look at the whole passage, and ask if each line talks about a king, or a demon. i've broken it down part by part on this board before.that said, there's a connection made between this "lucifer" name and ha-satan, and the serpent in the garden of eden. this is a connection completely absent in the bible. the serpent is not punished to hell, he's punished to the ground. lucifer is nebuchadnezzar, and ha-satan... we'll he's one of the sons of god, who roams about the earth. that's what the bible SAYS.this mumbo jumbo about lucifer and the war in heaven and banishment to hell is not biblical in the slightest. the closest we get to it in ancient text is a story in enoch. but even then, it's azazel ("the scapegoat" in kjv) who is punished for teaching man to make weapons to combat the nephilim. the story of the devil as an opponent to god does not appear in it earliest form until revelation. and there it's a metaphor built on other ancient legends: the leviathan slain by el, and other stories hinted at in the bible.the incarnation of the god versus the devil story does not appear in the form found in the book of mormon (moses, i think. been a while) until milton's paradise lost. every christian and mormon today believes this story, and i suspect it has something to do with paradise lost being taught in churches for a long time.it was published, btw, about 20 years before the book of mormon. which looks even more suspicious. if it's modern revelation, it's milton's, not smith's. more plaigarism, i think.abe:christians and mormons alike, think about this honestly for a second. if the devil was banished to hell, why do we worry about his influence every sunday in church? why do bad things happen? you can't believe in this story *and* use him as an excuse for humanity. preachers can't use fear of him to control congregations if he's already been beaten.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 02-09-2005 01:49 AM

i would expect so. it's classic fictional literature, not the bible. but from my understanding, it was used in churches in new england around the time of joseph smith, and was literally the number two best seller next to the bible. if a home in the 1860's had one book, it was the bible. if it had two, the second was paradise lost.it's lost a lot of popularity since then. even though it's not directly talked about in church, i bet you've heard the story a few times. maybe you could recommend me a few then. and this is part of my point. the book of mormon puts forth the classic late 1800's christian view, NOT the 600 bc (or 1200 bc in the case of moses) jewish view. it's a huge anachronism.