In Response to Mr. Greg Trimble

(Apologies for another long post)

In a perusal of my Facebook news feed, I stumbled across a lovely article that a neighbor of my parents shared entitled “So…You Think the Book of Mormon is a Fraud”. Mr. Trimble, who authored this lovely article, uses the typical Mormon circular reasoning that states that if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith was a prophet; and if Joseph Smith was a prophet, then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the same Church that Christ established while he was on Earth. So in the Mormon mind, it all comes down to whether the BOM is true or not, and for this, they rely on warm fuzzy feelings to confirm that the Book is in fact, true.

Mr. Trimble states that he noticed that most of the people who criticize the Book of Mormon the loudest, have not actually read it. While this may be true, I don’t think a person needs to read a book fully to understand whether it’s true or not. That’s what research is for. Reading the Book of Mormon will definitely provide a more solid foundation for criticism, but it’s not necessary. So for those Mormon’s who doubt the validity of the BOM, he recommends that one reads the BOM and then ask themselves each of the following 11 questions. I will be providing my own responses to each question as I go through the list.

 1. Could an uneducated boy come up with 531 pages of ancient scripture on his own that was historically accurate and prophetic in nature?

There is one glaringly obvious issue with this question, and that revolves around the historicity of the BOM. Through archaeological research, it has been shown time and again that the inhabitants that Joe Smith claimed roamed the American continent did not exist, nor did most of the animals or even the types of food exist.

But Mormons love to ask whether an uneducated boy could come up with such a story. The answer to this is YES! Joseph was notorious for telling detailed stories from the time he was a child. From accounts given by his own mother, one learns that Joseph was not a typical child as far as his manner of speech and his influence over his elders was concerned. He also wasn’t wholly uneducated. While he didn’t receive much by way of a formal education, his father was a teacher off and on, as was his older brother Hyrum. Education was exceedingly important in the Smith household. It is logical to assume that Joseph was schooled by his father when the work load was light, like most children in this time period. Joseph was also very creative, very articulate, and well read by the time he was a teenager. You know who else didn’t receive a formal education? Abe Lincoln and Ben Franklin. They each only received about a year of formal education, and look what they went on to write and accomplish.

Mark Twain, who was not a fan of Mormonism and its book, said the following in a review he did of the religion:

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 authored labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s 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 contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern- which was about every sentence or two- he ladled in a few Scriptural phrases as “exceeding 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 only been a pamphlet.”

                        -Mark Twain, Roughing It.

For other obvious influences, check out View of the Hebrews and The Late War between the United States and Great Britain.

 2. Would it be possible for that boy to understand and include ancient Hebrew literary writing styles such as idioms and Chiasmus, some of which weren’t even discovered until long after Joseph Smith was gone?

Ugh. Chiasmus. Mormoms love to point these out as obvious reasons why the BOM is true. It’s absolute nonsense. Shakespeare, who we all know wrote long before Joseph Smith was even a twinkle in his parent’s eyes, wrote wonderful Chiasmus. Joseph Smith would have undoubtedly been familiar with his works. Also, The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain, which was published in 1816, and was used as a school text in Joseph’s time, contains many parallels to the Book of Mormon, including the use of chiasms.

 3. How could Joseph Smith have been able to know so much about the Middle East, especially the Arabian Peninsula where Lehi and his family traveled? The book includes findings in that region that no one had discovered yet.

I say again, Joseph Smith was a well read individual, with access to a multitude of books, including the Bible and View of the Hebrews. I’m also unaware as to what findings the BOM has that, at the time, had not been discovered yet. Archaeologically speaking, nothing has been verified to attribute to the authenticity of the BOM.

 4.  How could Joseph Smith come up with roughly 200 new names in the Book of Mormon and then have them turn out to be Semitic in nature?

Look up lds-mormon.com/names.shtml and www.utlm.org/onlinresources/bomnames.htm

Both of these websites have lists and indicate where most of these names originated from. Most of the names are variations of names directly from the Bible. It’s also important to note that the King James Bible that Joe Smith would have had access to had the Apocrypha and an alphabetical table of all the names in the Old and New Testament with their significations (according to the first website). The names would have Semitic origins because most of them come from the Bible. 141 out of the 300 proper names, to be exact.

 5.  If you think Joseph smith couldn’t have written this book, then where did it come from? If one says the devil put him up to it… then why would Satan want to publish another testament of Jesus Christ and a book that does nothing but promote righteousness. Jesus said that a house divided against itself would fall.

This question indicates to me that Mr. Trimble doesn’t fully understand the arguments against the Book of Mormon. For one thing, critics argue against the historicity and truthfulness of the BOM and they believe very much that this work was written by Joe himself, without the help of a divine source. 

 6.   Who were the “other sheep” that would hear Jesus’ voice in John 10:16?

 16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

This could just mean that Jesus needs to go to a new town to preach. This does not indicate that he was definitely talking about the inhabitants of the Americas. This also assumes that everything in the Bible was accurately recorded….

 7.  Why are there volumes of books written by non-LDS authors stating that Christ came and visited the America’s a couple thousand years ago just like it says in 3^rd Nephi? (See Example “He Walked the America’s”) How would Joseph Smith have known this when at the time no one even considered it?

First, how could no one have even considered it if these myths and legends were still being handed down from generation to generation between the Native Americans? Also, the book he references, He Walked the America’s, is a gathering of myths and legends revolving around Quetzalcoatl, as are the other titles I found that are similar. This book is about a strange miracle man that travels with the help of a Phoenician fleet. That’s not how the Jesus of the BOM arrives. He ascends and descends from the sky in the midst of the Nephites. The very first space traveller! He didn’t have supporters ferrying him around the world so that he could spread the gospel. He was killed for that, remember?

  8.   If we have the stick of Judah (record of the Jews or the Bible), then where is the stick of Joseph that is referenced in Ezekiel37:15-20? The Book of Mormon is the only explanation for this scripture. Lehi was a descendant of Joseph. Think Joseph Smith could have gotten that right by sheer chance?

I love this question, mostly because of what I discovered by researching the referenced scripture. The Book of Mormon is not the only explanation for this scripture. This is incredibly narrow-minded, and the majority of Christian denominations have debunked this theory as thoroughly as secularists. Check out apprising.org/2010/08/25/two-sticks-refuting-the-mormon-view-of-ezekiel-3715-17.

Mormons pounce on any reference to the name Joseph in the Bible as if it’s prophecying of Joseph Smith Jr’s birth. Mormons love to point out that Joe Jr. is not the eldest Smith son, and it is unusual that a younger son should receive his father’s name, rather than the eldest. This is compounded by 2 Nephi 3, in which Lehi refers to a prophecy that Joseph in Egypt made about a descendent from his loins. The chapter heading of 2 Nephi 3 clearly states that this prophecy is about Joseph Smith Jr. So, Lehi is a descendant of Joseph in Egypt, who then prophecies that from the fruit of his own loins, through his youngest son Joseph, there will be a great seer raised up to bring the truth, once again, to the world, who, conveniently enough, will also be named Joseph.

These verses in Ezekiel are not talking about books, as Mormons so often like to interpret. The word 'sticks' in these particular verses, literally mean ‘sticks’, as in a piece of a tree branch that has fallen off. This is evidenced by the Hebrew word “ets”, which is the word used in the original work. If the author were really referencing books or scrolls, the word “cepher” would have been used. These verses are meant to be read literally. Ezekiel took two sticks, as instructed by God, and carved Judah on one and Joseph on the other. This references the prophecy that the two houses of the Lord’s people, that had been divided for an awfully long time, would be brought together as one nation with one king again.

 9. How could there be so many witnesses of the Book of Mormon and the plates and not one of them deny their testimony even when some of them became bitter to Joseph Smith? With so many people involved…a hoax of this magnitude could never go uncovered.

By their own admission, the witnesses seemed to have only seen the angels and plates in a ‘visionary state’ in their minds. Also, all of the witnesses had close ties with Joseph and his family, a large portion of them being related to him. A few of them, especially Martin Harris, even had substantial financial stakes in the success of the Book of Mormon. If they discounted their own ‘witness’, they would lose any chance of profiting financially from the book, and those who were related to Joseph Smith would have become social pariah’s. Further, none of the witnesses remained members of the church, some joining splinter groups such as James Strang (who also claimed to have found a holy book) and the Shakers. Joseph himself called the vast majority of them liars and deceivers because they either didn’t support the whole polygamy thing or they were offended because Joe tried to steal their own wives from under their noses. Joe was a real swell guy. 

 10.   How could the Book of Mormon never contradict itself while being an extremely complex book? After all these years… someone would have found something…but no.

A book is not considered true just because it doesn’t contradict itself. That has nothing to do with the validity of the BOM. There are plenty of other books that I would consider more complex than the Book of Mormon. Books like, The Lord of the Rings. Tolkein created different languages that people can actually learn and speak! Same with Star Trek. How about War and Peace? Les Miserables? Even books like The Chosen, The Scarlett Letter, Ender’s Game, and 100 Years of Solitude are more complex than the Book of Mormon.  A complex book requires complex characters and a story arc that runs throughout the book. The Book of Mormon does not have either of these. The characters are two dimensional and the stories are repetitious. If you read about one battle, you’ve read about all of them. A quote by B.H. Roberts (an LDS historian) sums the Book and its author up quite well:

        

…There is a certain lack of perspective in the things the book relates as history that points quite clearly to an undeveloped mind as their origin. The narrative proceeds in characteristic disregard of conditions necessary to its reasonableness, as if it were a tale told by a child, with utter disregard for consistency…”

 11.   The final question that Mr. Trimble says you should ask yourself is How do I feel while I read the Book of Mormon?

Ugh…feelings again. This is a book that I have read all the way through only once. Want to know why? Because it is boring! If I really like a book, and I like a lot of books, I’ll read it again. I’ve read some books upwards of 4 times over. I’m supposed to feel a warm fuzzy feeling in my bosom that will confirm to me that this book is true? I cannot number the amount of times I prayed for real confirmation and never received a warm fuzzy feeling or an overwhelming sense of peace. I have had more warm fuzzies in relation to movies I’ve watched and other works of fiction that I’ve read. Does that make them true? The correct answer is "of course not!"

So what can we take away from this? My opinion of this man, from this particular blog post, is not high. He’s obviously not truly researched any of these questions himself. This is all based on an experience he had just before waxing down his surf board. All one needs to do if they are having doubts about the validity of the Book of Mormon is to look up sites like mormonthink.com, which is where I took a lot of the above information from. Read websites that are not church sanctioned for information that is more honest than the Church’s. Read a book that isn’t written by an LDS ‘scholar’. Check out David Fitzgerald’s The Complete  Heretics Guide to Western Religion Book One: The Mormons. It’s a great read; entertaining and informative. 

One should not base their entire world view on account of one feeling alone.