Henke 2022bw

Lundahl (2022L) is Again Wrong About How Mormons View the Book of Mormon, the Bible, Joseph Smith Jr. and Themselves

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I said the following:

“In his second essay, Lundahl (2022b) complains that when I rank a supernatural event as ‘highly unlikely’, I’m taking my worldview ‘as a test of historic facthood.’ Actually, I’m ranking supernatural events as highly unlikely because I see absolutely no evidence of the supernatural. I think that it’s far more probable that someone just made up the supernatural story and that enough gullible people believed it, so that it was recorded for future generations. Recently, I saw TV “prophets” frequently making demonstrably false prophecies about covid disappearing in March 2020 and false claims of miraculous healings and other miracles. In recent history, Joseph Smith Jr. made numerous well-documented false prophecies. Ancient people also made up numerous far-fetched stories about gods and goddesses that few people now believe and no one should believe. I have seen no evidence that magic existed in the past any more than it does in the present. I don’t see any evidence to believe any of these present and past miraculous stories, including Genesis 3. So, Mr. Lundahl, I challenge you to refute my worldview by giving me the evidence of the Talking Snake that I’ve been asking for. In contrast, we have plenty of artifacts and videos of WWII and even a few WWII veterans are still alive. My dad experienced that war. WWII deserves a high ranking based on the evidence, the Talking Snake does not. Theology and political and personal desires have no role in judging the validity of history.” [my emphasis]

Lundahl (2022L) then incorrectly analyzes the above bolded sentence on Mormonism in Henke (2022b):

“Is this about the book of Mormon? This would be of interest to the case. While Mormons do believe Nephites are a historically accurate book, they also do not believe it was transmitted as history in a normal way, instead they still recall it as "supernaturally recovered history" which is something else.

Or if it is about prophecies Joseph Smith was making about the future. In that case, it is very significant that they are usually not remembered by Mormons even (or, if ever recalled by someone else, explained away, very discretely, with a kind of gatekeeping attitude about it). Very far from proving anything near Henke's scepticism on history involving at least seemingly supernatural events, it basically proves the opposite.” [my emphasis]

According to Mormonism, the Nephites were a people and not a book.

As I discussed in Henke (2022bL), the Mormons actually boast that the Book of Mormon was not “transmitted as history in a normal way”, but instead they think it was written, preserved, transmitted and translated in a “divinely guided” and supernatural way that is far superior to the Bible:

“Even though the Mormons readily admit that Joseph Smith Jr. “miraculously” translated the Book of Mormon into English, they would argue that the original gold plates were an inerrant “history” finished by Moroni around the 5^th century AD. The plates were then carefully preserved in the ground from the 5^th to the 19^th century until Joseph Smith Jr. recovered them. The Mormons would further argue that the “first known audience” of the Book of Mormon were the Jews that wrote the “history” on the golden plates and not the 19^th century Americans. Joseph Smith Jr. merely found and translated this “history.” Supposedly, several eyewitnesses actually saw the original plates of the Book of Mormon that Moroni and others had written (Hinckley 1979). While Joseph Smith Jr. supposedly was able to translate the Book of Mormon into English through visions produced by magic seer stones, the Mormons would also point out that the books of the Bible also have a “miraculous order.” They would argue that the Holy Spirit “miraculously translated” Jesus’ Aramaic into perfect Greek for the original Gospels and that the writing of the Bible books often involved visions and not historical accounts, such as in Ezekiel and Revelation. Mormons would also claim that they have copies of Joseph Smith Jr.’s first English edition of the Book of Mormon. This is in contrast to the potentially corrupted copies of copies of copies … of Old and New Testament books dating centuries to perhaps even more than 1,000 years after the originals. Mormons then conclude that the chain of custody (Moroni directly to Joseph Smith Jr. and then directly to the public) and reliability of the Book of Mormon are far superior to what Christians and Jews could claim for the Bible. Although Mr. Lundahl and I recognize that the Book of Mormon is a fraudulent document and that Joseph Smith Jr.’s claims about its origin have no merit whatsoever, where’s Mr. Lundahl’s evidence that any book of the Bible is inerrant and totally trustworthy when all of the originals have been lost? Where’s Mr. Lundahl’s archeological and other evidence that Moses actually existed, wrote the Pentateuch and that our Hebrew manuscripts are exact copies of the originals when Tov (2001) and archeology books like Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) say otherwise? Because Joseph Smith Jr. and the Book of Mormon have deceived millions of people, why couldn’t the Bible?” [emphasis in original]

Nevertheless, conservative Christians claim that the Bible was not “transmitted as history in a normal way” either. Even the sections that appear “transmitted as history in a normal way” are identified as the “inerrant word of God” by conservative Christians, and by Orthodox Jews for the Old Testament. Normally, people don’t identify a history book as “divinely inspired.” There’s also a lot of baseless visions and “supernaturally recovered history” in the Bible. By accepting Hypothesis #1 on Genesis 3, Lundahl (2022d) readily admits that Moses had to have received visions from God in order to write the “history” of Genesis 1:1-2:14. There are other examples in the Old Testament where Hypothesis #1 requires that God or angels had to tell Moses about various events because supposedly no human eyewitnesses were present (e.g., Genesis 11:6-7 as Lundahl (2022L) happens to mention, but also Genesis 18:17-21 and others; also see Henke 2022ew). Under Hypothesis #1, Moses could not have relied on human-produced documents alone to write Genesis 2:15-50:26. He would have had to receive at least some communication from God or angels through visions or at least audibly. Of course, Hypotheses #3 and #4 identify Genesis as fiction and not revelation or history.

So, both the Book of Mormon and the Bible groundlessly rely on visions, words from God and other supernatural origins. Lundahl (2022L) cannot take the Bible as a whole, divorce it from its claims of magical visions and inspiration, try to pass it off as inerrant history and then claim that it’s totally unlike the Book of Mormon. Both books are heavily based on groundless magic.

Joseph Smith Jr. is well known for his false prophecies and the Book of Mormon is full of scientific and other errors (e.g., Fitzgerald 2013). I also stated the following in Henke (2022bv), which illustrates that Revelation, Ezekiel and other Bible books also contain demonstrable false prophecies that believers either ignore or improperly dismiss:

“Skeptics point out the false prophecies about Jesus’ “soon” Second Coming in Revelation 1:1-3, 3:10-11, 22:6-7, 22:10, 22:12, and 22:20 (Price 2007; 2018, pp. 214-259) and the false prophecies about Tyre and Egypt in Ezekie1 (Bowen 2021). Yet, believers continue to make up excuses or ignore these blatant failures. Sadly, too many people believe what they want to believe despite the evidence. So, they make up pitiful excuses to convince themselves and others that Kenneth Copeland and the Bible writers were not false prophets. Lundahl (2022L) fails to recognize this.”

So, both the Mormons and conservative Christians either ignore or explain away the numerous baseless “histories” and false “prophecies” in their religions.

References

Bowen, J. 2021. The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament: Volume One: Digital Hammurabi Press, Mechanicsville, Maryland, USA, 428pp.

Finkelstein, I. and N.A. Silberman. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts: The Free Press: New York, USA, 385pp.

Fitzgerald, D. 2013. The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion Book One: The Mormons, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 336 pp.

Hinckley, G.B. 1979. Truth Restored: Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 156pp.

Price, R.M. 2007. The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind: Prometheus Books: Amherst, New York, USA, 390pp.

Price, R.M. 2018. Holy Fable III: The Epistles and the Apocalypse Undistorted by Faith: Mindvendor, 259pp.

Tov, E. 2001. Textural Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 2^nd revised ed., Fortress Press: Minneapolis, MN, USA, 456pp.