Henke 2022dk

Sincere Beliefs don’t Equate to History

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

A lot of Lundahl (2022m) consists of quoting email exchanges that he and I had back in February 17-18, 2022. This is fine, although in some cases, Lundahl (2022m) neglects to mention relevant updates and references that I later gave on the topics in Henke (2022b).

In an email to Mr. Lundahl on February 17, 7:29 PM US Eastern Time, I wrote:

“There are partial copies of Genesis in the Dead Sea scrolls, but the bottom line is that we don't know who wrote Genesis 3 or when. It's very possible that the writer sincerely thought that Genesis 3 was an inspiration from God about events that occurred thousands of years ago from the author's time. However, that does not make it history any more than the ramblings of Joseph Smith about supposed events that occurred in the Americas thousands of years ago before him or the delusions or lies of Kat Kerr about "Christmas Town" in Heaven. It does not take very long for a charismatic con-man to form a religion and get millions to believe fiction and half-truths - Mohammad or Joseph Smith. Any blood relationships of Mormons to 18th and 19th century novelists doesn't matter at all. The point is that there are millions of people believing that fiction was actually ancient history.” [my emphasis]

In his reply to my bolded statement, Mr. Lundahl provides the following email response on February 18, 2022 at 7:37 PM US Eastern Time, which is quoted by Lundahl (2022m):

“Kevin R. Henke: ‘It's very possible that the writer sincerely thought that Genesis 3 was an inspiration from God about events that occurred thousands of years ago from the author's time.’

Not the least. What he sincerely thought about Genesis 3 is what he sincerely thought about Genesis 50 : that it was part of a history handed down to him. That's the kind of fake you don't make with con-men. Sure "past history" is a thing they can and do fake, as freemasons and Joseph Smith prove. But no Mormon grows up thinking II Nephi was a chronicle Joseph Smith came across at the local library. The "information bottleneck" shows. Namely, by his belief that this "history" was first lost and then recovered by an angelic being showing Joseph Smith some golden plates with a funny writing on them.

What has traditionally been ascribed to "revelation" was the Six Days account, which is tradionally ascribed to Moses receiving it on Mount Sinai. The rest is history. As history, not revealed by vision or audition from heaven.”

Here, Mr. Lundahl is again making a series of blatant and unsubstantiated claims. We don’t know who wrote Genesis and there’s no evidence that the Israelites had any sound basis for believing in Moses and the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001). Mr. Lundahl assumes that Genesis 3 was effectively handed down from Adam to Moses and into a Bible, where it has been perfectly preserved to this day. Again, this is Hypothesis #1 of Henke (2022a) and Henke (2022b). There’s not a shred of evidence to back up Mr. Lundahl’s ruling Hypothesis #1 or that Adam or Moses ever existed.

“Information bottlenecks” are irrelevant to the Mormons. They also wouldn’t believe what the Jews, Catholics and Protestants might say about “earliest known audiences” and “historic collective memories.” Mr. Lundahl’s various excuses for the Bible would be worthless and ineffectual to them. Mormons believe that their leaders and only their leaders are the current living prophets of God. They think that Moroni wrote a divinely inspired history on gold plates. These plates were supposedly just as inspired by God as the original autographs of Genesis through Revelation, except that the Book of Mormon was never corrupted and miscopied by Jewish scribes and the Church. The existence of these plates was supposedly witnessed by a number of individuals, that is: Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Martin Harris, Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer, Jr., John Whitmer, Hiram Page, Joseph Smith, Sr, Hyrum Smith and Samuel H. Smith. With the help of the “Holy Ghost” and “visionary stones”, Mormons claim that “prophet” John Smith Jr. perfectly translated the plates into the Book of Mormon just as the visions and words of Jesus were perfectly recorded by the apostle John in the original Greek autograph of Revelation. The first edition of the Book of Mormon still survives. Mormons would consider the chain of custody of the Book of Mormon to be superior to the copies of copies of copies… of Bible books that have been open to manipulation since the time of their compositions to at least the Dead Sea Scrolls and the oldest scraps of the New Testament from the 2^nd century AD. Yes, the whole Mormon story about golden plates “with a funny writing on them” sounds stupid, but so does Genesis 3 to a lot of people that really think about what it’s saying.

I also discussed the issues of Mormon history and the “information bottleneck” in Henke (2022b), which Lundahl (2022m) chose to ignore. Instead, he preferred to quote one of my older emails. Here is what I wrote in Henke (2022b) and it’s also relevant to the baseless claims in Lundahl (2022m):

“Lundahl (2022c) refers to an “information bottleneck” in Mormonism. Once more, he uses phrases and terms without any references or clearly explaining what he means. I can only guess what he’s trying to say. He seems to be saying that there’s a supposed gap over time between when Moroni supposedly died in the 5^th century AD and Joseph Smith Jr. supposedly found his plates and published the Book of Mormon in the 19^th century. Well, according to Hypothesis #4, there’s also a fictional time gap of thousands of years between when an ancient Israelite made-up Genesis 3 and when Genesis 3 supposedly happened.

Once more Lundahl (2022c) uses the circular reasoning fallacy by citing Moses as if it’s been demonstrated that he actually existed and that Genesis is history. As discussed in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) and other archeological references, there’s no evidence to support the claims in the Pentateuch that Moses existed or that the Exodus ever occurred. Lundahl (2022c) claims that there was no pretense that Moses “was perceived as an information bottleneck for Genesis histories … in his own time.” How can Mr. Lundahl talk about Genesis being “histories” and Moses being in his own time, when we have absolutely no evidence outside of the far-fetched claims in the Bible that Moses and Genesis 3 ever existed in time?” [emphasis in the original]

Lundahl (2022m) continues:

“And again, when I say "history" I don't mean it is immediately proven accurate, I mean the potential sources for non-factual statements are fewer than with fiction presented as fiction.” [my emphasis]

As I have stated multiple times and emphasized in Henke (2022ad), history does not deal with “proof” or proving anything. History is based on probabilities.

In the above quotation, Mr. Lundahl’s definition of “history” is seriously flawed and low quality. I don’t think that it would be a good idea for Mr. Lundahl to declare a supposed history book to indeed be “historical” just because it contains “only” 90% falsehoods, while a similar-sized novel admits to containing 100% fiction, or that a supposed history is 51% accurate and 49% blatant fiction. As I discussed in Henke (2022dg), Washington Irving started the false claim in his 1828 book: A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus that Columbus demonstrated to ignorant European clergy and other elites that the Earth was round. Again, I’ve not read Irving’s book and it might contain a lot of factual information about Christopher Columbus. Indeed, the potential sources for non-factual statements in the Irving book might be fewer than with fiction presented as fiction in a similar-sized novel. Yet, considering this egregious error about the 15^th century clergy believing in a flat-Earth and the damage that it has done, I would not consider Irving’s book to be a trustworthy “History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.” Similarly, a Russian television newscast about Ukraine might contain more minutes of fact than fiction, but the propaganda and lies in the minority of the program may do a lot of damage. Mr. Lundahl needs to consider the quality of his sources and not just the quantity.

Now, I fully recognize that no history book is without error. That’s exactly why I don’t give blanket approvals to any history book. I want individual claims in historical documents confirmed with external evidence. If a large number of claims in a document are confirmed, however, I might be willing to conclude that the remaining unverified claims are as high as plausible on my probability spectrum for historical events (Henke 2022b). Nevertheless, when Mr. Lundahl refers to Genesis 3 or other accounts from the Bible, is he also willing to admit that there might actually be non-factual statements in them?

References:

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.

Irving, W. 1828. A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus: John Murray, London, UK.