Henke 2022db

Mormons Want Archeological Evidence for the Book of Mormon and They Wouldn’t Care About Mr. Lundahl’s Worthless “First Known Audience” and “Memory of Events” Arguments

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I state:

“Concerning my high standards for verifying the existence of a supernatural event or being, Lundahl (2022a) replies:

“Will you ‘lower it’ confronted with the fact that your ‘standard’ is not consistent with how we have historical knowledge?”

Of course not. Others might be willing to lower their standards for studying the past so that Mr. Lundahl can label likely fairy tales as “history”, but I won’t and neither should anyone else that studies past events. I will not lower my standards at all to comply with what he views as being “consistent” with historical knowledge, when he readily mixes angels, demons and other groundless claims with reality to explain both the past and present. Lundahl (2022a-g) is engaging in mythmaking and speculation, and not appropriate historical investigations. I am consistent in my very conservative interpretations of both human and geological history, and I see no evidence whatsoever to inject the supernatural into either of them.

Any literate individual can write and make up anything. This is exactly why Mormon apologists are so desperate to verify the Book of Mormon with archeology. They know very well that Joseph Smith Jr. or others could have made up the Book of Mormon. They recognize that they need external evidence to confirm that the Book of Mormon is history. Well, the same problem exists for Genesis and Exodus. It could have been made up by a “prophet” as I discuss in Section 5.0.”

In reply to the bolded sentences, Lundahl (2022m) makes the following comments:

“They also very well know the normal external evidence for the text, namely a memory of events it refers to in the whole community before Joseph Smith, is totally lacking. And I know, even if Henke forgets, that they have still not managed to hide this even to themselves, since they still pretend it was recovered by angelic intervention with golden plates and supernatural gifts of interpretation, rather than simply kept, like Abraham Lincoln had simplky kept the memory of what had happened "fourscore years ago and ten" back from his Ghettysburg adress.” [sic, spelling!]

For further discussions on Abraham Lincoln’s “memories” of the American Revolution in the Gettysburg Address, see Henke (2022ex).

The Mormons certainly recognize that to convince skeptics they need archeological or other external evidence to back up the claims in the Book of Mormon. I also have not “forgotten” about the flaws in Mormon “history.” Yet, the Mormons argue that for their faith and “true Christianity”, their history is complete, reliable and not lacking at all when compared with what Christians have. They have no need for Mr. Lundahl’s ineffective “first known audience” and “memory of events” arguments. The Mormons think that they have something far better. They actually boast about how the origin of the Book of Mormon is far superior to the copy of copy of copy… easily corrupted transmission of the Bible over thousands of years. In Henke (2022bL), I further explain the Mormon’s views:

“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 the original]

References:

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