Akhenaten
16th March 2008, 12:33 PM
I was just about to derail the Mormon/Native American DNA thread, I think, so I hope I'm not being even more annoying by starting this thread just to make a simple observation. Nevertheless, here 'tis.
The tales spun by Joseph Smith and those which appear in his book(s) are, to say the least, extraordinary. But let's just say for the sake of the argument that everything Joe said was true, and that his Lamanites really were ancient Israelites who somehow made it to America. The Mormons are still stuck with the fact that the history of the ancient Israelites, as told in the Bible, is made up from whole cloth itself.
I think what brought this to mind was the discussion in the other thread of the "Reformed Egyptian" that Moroni's plates were supposed to have been inscribed with, and I can only see this as perpetuating the myth of the Israelites escaping their enslavement under the evil Pharaoh, paddling off to safety, etcetera, and taking the language of Egypt with them.
This might have been a natural thing for someone like Smith to have believed, but for goodness' sake it seems like flogging a really dead horse to be still trying to claim that the fiction of the BOM is true when the older work in which it claims origins for its characters is itself a fabrication.
Hmm. Reading back through this I see I'm going to be shredded on a few (as yet) uncited claims I may be making. I'll just get my Google-fu ready. :duck:
Cheers,
Akhenaten (who strangely doesn't remember anything about a global flood either)
The tales spun by Joseph Smith and those which appear in his book(s) are, to say the least, extraordinary. But let's just say for the sake of the argument that everything Joe said was true, and that his Lamanites really were ancient Israelites who somehow made it to America. The Mormons are still stuck with the fact that the history of the ancient Israelites, as told in the Bible, is made up from whole cloth itself.
I think what brought this to mind was the discussion in the other thread of the "Reformed Egyptian" that Moroni's plates were supposed to have been inscribed with, and I can only see this as perpetuating the myth of the Israelites escaping their enslavement under the evil Pharaoh, paddling off to safety, etcetera, and taking the language of Egypt with them.
This might have been a natural thing for someone like Smith to have believed, but for goodness' sake it seems like flogging a really dead horse to be still trying to claim that the fiction of the BOM is true when the older work in which it claims origins for its characters is itself a fabrication.
Hmm. Reading back through this I see I'm going to be shredded on a few (as yet) uncited claims I may be making. I'll just get my Google-fu ready. :duck:
Cheers,
Akhenaten (who strangely doesn't remember anything about a global flood either)