By Grace, You have stated that I have been "making statements that are unverifiable and are contrary to reality". I think you need to be more careful about your accusations, for the statements above are a perfect example of what you accused me of.
Dear prove
You caught me in the transition from CARM to here when you objected to that remark, and Mike addressed it with a public reprimand, so let it suffice that I really meant nothing personal, and I will attempt to do better. My thinking at that time was that to attack the statement is not the same thing as attacking the person, and that is how it works on the CARM board. Here, that is not the case; I am learning. I was trying to disagree without being disagreeable, but you did not see it that way, so let's begin anew, OK?
There is nowhere in the History of Joseph Smith that the word Cumorah is even mentioned.
Correct, but that does not really solve anything, as you shall see if you read further.
There is no verifiable quote from Joseph Smith anywhere saying that the hill in New York is the same hill Cumorah spoken of in the Book of Mormon.
From Joseph Smith Histories 1:
51 Convenient to the village of Manchester, Ontario county, New York, stands a
hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box. This stone was thick and rounding in the middle on the upper side, and thinner towards the edges, so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edge all around was covered with earth.
52 Having removed the earth, I obtained a lever, which I got fixed under the edge of the stone, and with a little exertion raised it up. I looked in, and there indeed did I behold the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate, as stated by the messenger .The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement. In the bottom of the box were laid two stones crossways of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them.
53 I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger,...
In verse 51, the word "hill is hyperlinked to D&C 128:20, which says
And again, what do we hear? Glad tidings from Cumorah! Moroni, an angel from heaven, declaring the fulfilment of the prophets—the book to be revealed. A voice of the Lord in the wilderness of Fayette, Seneca county, declaring the three witnesses to bear record of the book! The voice of Michael on the banks of the Susquehanna, detecting the devil when he appeared as an angel of light! The voice of Peter, James, and John in the wilderness between Harmony, Susquehanna county, and Colesville, Broome county, on the Susquehanna river, declaring themselves as possessing the keys of the kingdom, and of the dispensation of the fulness of times!
Therefore while you remain technically correct, there is indeed a very strong linkage from OFFICIAL sources of the LDS church to name that hill of Smith, and the name cumorah.
More to the point, in the portion I quoted from HJS, the intention of the words, and the interaction with the messenger (Moroni) can not help anyone to believe that the hill is NOT Cumorah.
In 1990, the First Presidency stated"The Church has long maintained, as attested to by references in the writings of General Authorities, that the Hill Cumorah in western New York state is the same as referenced in the Book of Mormon.
F. Michael Watson, Secretary to the First Presidency, in a letter dated October 16, 1990
It is true that the hill believed to be the one where Joseph found the plates has been named Cumorah and goes by that name today, but there is nothing official that says it is the same Cumorah mentioned in the BofM. There are no contradictions between what the scholars at the Maxwell Institute have concluded about this and church history. You really need to check your source of this misinformation. It is not helping your credibility any.
Begging your pardon, but my credibility is not the issue here. Rather it is the many contradicting statements from different Mormon resources about the origins of the plates.
In 1966 Harold B Lee stated this:"Some say the Hill Cumorah was in southern Mexico (and someone pushed it down still farther) and not in western New York. Well, if the Lord wanted us to know where it was, or where Zarahemla was, he’d have given us latitude and longitude, don’t you think? And why bother our heads trying to discover with archaeological certainty the geographical locations of the cities of the Book of Mormon like Zarahemla?" from Harold B. Lee, “Loyalty,†address to religious educators, 8 July 1966; in
Charge to Religious Educators, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Church Educational System and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1982), 65; cited in Dennis B. Horne (ed.),
Determining Doctrine: A Reference Guide for Evaluation Doctrinal Truth (Roy, Utah: Eborn Books, 2005), 172–173
Can you imagine any Christian authority saying that about Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Golgatha, or many of the cities mentioned in the Bible?
Here is another helpful quote from Joseph Fielding Smith: "
. . . This modernist theory of necessity, in order to be consistent, must place the waters of Ripliancum and the Hill Cumorah some place within the restricted territory of Central America , not withstanding the teachings of the Church to the contrary for upwards of 100 years . . .â€
“It is difficult for a reasonable person to believe that such men as Oliver Cowdery, Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, Davis Wittmer, and others, could speak frequently of the spot where the Prophet Joseph Smith obtained the plates as the Hill Cumorah and not be corrected by the Prophet, if that were not the fact.â€
(Doctrines of Salvation, Volume 3, pp. 233-234.)
Your statement to me to check my resources is thus taken with a grain of salt, and I do not take it as an insult.
More and more non-LDS scholars, after detailed examination of its contents, are coming to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon could not possibly be a product of the 19th century, but must be what it claims, a work of antiquity.
OK, an approach to join the bandwagon. However, I do ask you provide the specifics about what you claim in these two areas:
1: "more and more" which means that the numbers are increasing. Can you demonstrate that?
1: "non-LDS scholars" Perhaps I am assuming too much, but my belief is that to earn that title, it is required to have an education above the undergraduate level. Therefore I also ask you to cite evidences of those with masters or PhDs or any doctorate-level conversions which are increasing, as you stated.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by being peer reviewed.
Peer reviewed means that one expert in the field or archeology, for instance submits an article to a professional academic journal, which is examined by others having Ph.Ds in that area. the publication of something like Lancet or the Journal of the American Medical Association means that the others in that field have accept the work and integrity of the author. Therefore peer-review is a high water mark of professional achievement, and is a world-wide standard for academic truth.
Were any of the books of the Bible peer reviewed?
The Bible does not need to be peer-reviewed because the things that are in it, are seen by so many different people, and the Bible is NOT an academic publication. More to the point, I can provide the sites of over 150 different sites that are mentioned in the Bible, and have been excavated by the world class archeologists. Nothing like that can be said about Bountiful, the land of Lehi, or Zarahemla.
Is that what you think is the standard practice of books that are revealed from heaven?
My point is NOT that peer review establishes if a book is from heaven or hell because that is the wrong focus. My point is that the things that are contained in any book which claims to be from heaven needs to have a corresponding reality in the real world. Otherwise, we are talking about Never-never Land or Middle Earth and hobbits.
Again, you are drawing conclusions from reading some very bad scholarship or something, because as you have accused me of doing, you are "making statements that are unverifiable and are contrary to reality". I do believe, however, that you are sincere and that these are honest mistakes.
Sarcasm noted.
What I attempted to do in this post is to let you be aware of the easily discovered contradictions between what you posted, and what your leaders stated. In doing that, I make no aspersions about your character, and that was what I was attempting to say when I made the comment about "sincere but honest" It is very easy to accept the statements of those whom we admire in an uncritical manner. But it is quite another thing to look at what those leaders stated-- that is why I added the footnotes (it is also needed to avoid plagiarism, but that is another matter). It is not your sincerity in believing Mormonism that I question, but it is the discrepancy between what many LDS people believe in an uncritical manner, and what your leaders have said. That is a gap that should be looked into in order to discover the truth.
