How do Mormons who've actually read the BoM continue to take it seriously? Even if you read 1 Nephi, it constantly uses the prahse "and it came to pass," as well as exceedingly and all kinds of other blatant and failed attempts to make it sound like 17th century English. And why didn't JS just "translate" it into modern English? Perhaps he thought that if he made it sound like the King James Bible, it would somehow make it sound more valid. But he tried a little too hard, and the moderness (is that even a word?) still bleeds through. That said, I've heard some Mormons say that the ease of reading the BoM compared the the KJV Bible is something that testifies to its truthfullness. LOLWUT? The reason the KJV is "difficult" to us is because the English language has evolved since the 17th century, making it somewhat foreign to us and therefor more difficult to understand.

To me, the repetitive overuse of these phrases and the fact that JS tried writing (oh, sorry, I meant "translating") it in 17th century English for no apparent reason should be a red-flag.

Agreed. It never made sense to me that an inspired person, going through the time-consuming process of engraving on metal plates, would be so repetitive.

us a book with virtually no useful content written in a style so convoluted that it makes this sentence look good?

Have you ever read the original edition? It is SO much worse. It's taken thousands of corrections to get the hillbilly diction replaced.

It's online, or you can buy a reproduction of the 1830 edition for $25 or so.
http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/MEDIA/bm.htm

I started reading it, and you're right. It's terrible! I hit Ctrl + F (the search function) and typed in "and it came to pass." It said there was OVER 100 results (too many to count, I think).

Exceedingly - 87 maches
Wherefore - over 100
I don't remember other repetitive prhases, but yeah...

EDIT

I used chrome, and it gave me a total of 1166!
For Wherefore - 425!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2012 01:04AM by theirrationalshark.

http://www.lds.org/scriptures/search?lang=eng&type=verse&query=%22came+to+pass%22&testament=bofm

They should just call it the Came To Pass book.

Joseph smith (in spite of being a so called prophet) never saw the educated computer aged generation. That was way beyond his warped imagination.

If he could have seen into the future, I don't think he would have cared. What he did was working for him when he needed it.

Ever read Mark Twain's 1872 review of the BOM? He says, in part:

"The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern which was about every sentence or two he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as exceedingly sore, and it came to pass, etc., and made things satisfactory again. And it came to pass was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."

Twain couldn't have said it any better. Didn't he also say that the BOM was chloroform in print?

Whoever chiseled on the golden plates must have gotten pretty tired of the "and it came to pass" chant. "Oh crap, that again?"

ST

Nah, "And it came to pass" translates into Reformed Egyptian with a single squiggle.

When I was in college (USU), I took a Survey of English Literature class. It was in the class that I recognized that the KJV bible was translated to the English vernacular of the time it was translated. That made sense to me - translate something to a language that was familar at the time. Then, I realized that JS would have 'translated' the BoM into the early 1800s American language use (if it was real). Instead, he made it sound like the bible.

I spoke with a seminary teacher at the college about this, and asked why JS made it sound like old English. He said, "so it would sound like scripture."

That was my point, but he used it as proof of its 'truthfulness' and 'validity.'

"so it would sound like scripture."

The biggest red flag of the BoM to me (before I knew about DNA problems and such) is the fact that the entire story is a classic Divine Providence tale. During JS's time, there was a huge religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening. One of the big views was the idea of providence--that you tried to look for some sign of your favor with god. The more you appeared to be blessed, the more righteous you were assumed to be. Think about the BoM--it's one repetitive cycle. The people are righteous and god prospers them in the land; because they prosper, they become proud; god smites them; they become humble and repent; god prospers them in the land...

When you really deconstruct the BoM you see just how many ways it CANNOT be authentic scripture. And if it isn't true, then JS isn't a prophet. If he's not a prophet, the rest of it isn't true. It all just unravels.

The BoM is falsified by it's claims, not its grammar.

God did no such thing as turn any race black as a curse.

God did no such thing as send white christians to massively cull and displace the Native American.

God did no such thing as turn his face from Jews and allow the holocast because "none other nation on earth would crucify their god".

God did no such thing as single out "harlots" and "whores" for disdain.

I discuss this criticism in my article on Mormon linguistic problems at http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm#NOTVALID - I also discussed it when I spoke on linguistic problems at a recent Exmormon Foundation conference.

One of the most frequent criticisms of the language of the Book of Mormon is the frequent use of the phrase "And it came to pass..." That may well be a valid criticism of the literary style of the supposed translation, but that criticism overlooks the fact that the very same phrase occurs quite frequently in the King James translation of the Bible, over 500 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and over 70 times in the Greek New Testament. The phrase in the New Testament is a translation of the one Greek word 'egeneto' meaning "it happened." In the Old Testament it translates a word of four characters, WYHY, pronounced 'weyehi' meaning "and it happened." It is not unreasonable to assume that "Reformed Egyptian" might also have had such a single short word of four or even fewer characters.

So, the Bible says it a total of 570 times? That's nothing compared to the BoM, which says it over 1000 times (see my above post). Not to mention the BoM is much shorter than the Bible. Besides, attempting to write it in a King James like format was pointless, other than making it sound "ancient" or "legitimate." The KJV actually makes sense because the language was %100 modern back then. If the Bible were to be translated to English for the first time (for the sake of argument, of course) in the 21st century, it would use the most modern English.

Also, I wonder, why would anyone choose to write on gold plates? Wouldn't it be a lot easier to write on paper or papyrus? Plus, it would be a lot lighter.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2012 06:03PM by theirrationalshark.

theirrationalshark Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Perhaps he
> thought that if he made it sound like the King
> James Bible, it would somehow make it sound more
> valid.

Exactly. People have been conditioned to think scripture sounds a certain way. It needs to sound ancient, right?

Besides, it made it easier to lift big chunks from the Bible.

Read the Criddle pdf for more info on this as related to Spaulding.

But they droned on and on and on about "And then in the 11th year did nothing of import occur, and also in the 12th and yea, the same in the thirteenth unto the four hundredth year when it came to pass that Labeelabelum did take a pee on a bear and learn not to mock the living Lord for that bear did swipe off his manliness and..."

The Book of Mormon is one of THE most incredibly boring and repetitious creations out there. Smeyers must have been related to Josph, Spaulding and what's-his-name.