"Christianity Contrasted to Mormonism" - Investigating Joseph Smith (part 2) recap

On Monday November 21^st, 2016 we met for a third time to study “Christianity Contrasted to Mormonism.” This time we finished our investigation of Joseph Smith to see if we have reason to believe he was trustworthy as a divine-revelator writing the Book of Mormon. After identifying the non-existent reliability of the Book of Mormon we then compared this to the reliability of the Bible. Finally, we spent a very short time introducing the next section of the study, comparing/contrasting the Christian and Mormon concepts of God.

You can check out the slides we reviewed and/or a video of the class here. 

Joseph Smith: Prophet or Fraud?

We continued our examination of Joseph Smith following the guidance of the Mormon president who stated that, “Mormonism, as it is called, must stand of fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen.”

This time we looked at 3 more categories of evidence surrounding Joseph Smith’s integrity.

Anachronisms: The Book of Mormon appears to have been a modern writing by Joseph Smith because a number of phrases/terms/quotes are found in the supposedly ancient writings long before they were ever invented. If it were a truly ancient writing then we wouldn’t find futuristic phrases/terms/quotes. For example we see quotes/paraphrases of NT people long before they ever said it and terms that had not yet been invented (e.g., “bible”, “Christ”, “Adieu”). This would be like finding a journal that is supposedly Abraham Lincoln’s and it has him saying, “I blogged about how out of place I was. It’s like, ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!’”. The word “blog” and Wizard of Oz movie quote weren’t around in Lincoln’s day so we’d know the supposed journal is really a modern fake.

Fundamental changes in the book over time: The Book of Mormon has been changed from the original version which was claimed by Joseph Smith to be “the most correct of any book on earth” thus showing that it was not. Despite a supposedly thorough method of transcribing the Book of Mormon (the claim that words remained on the seer stone until written correctly), there have been over 100,000 variants from early manuscripts to current version. Most variants are punctuation and spelling but some are significant: The word “white” was changed to “pure” (2 Ne 30:6) (to avoid racial issues?). “Benjamin” was changed to “Mosiah” (Mos 21:4; Eth 4:1) because Benjamin would have been dead at this point in the story. The term “Son of” was added to places they weren’t previously (1 Ne 11:18, 21, 32; 13:40) (to fit evolving theology about the trinity?). And in other places whole phrases simply were removed (3 Ne 3:23; 10:4; 16:10). For these reasons it seems like the Book of Mormon is not “the most correct of any book on earth.”

No archaeologically verifiable information: Although the Book of Mormon is intended as an actual historical record, no archaeological finds have verified any accounts despite many investigations. Therefore it appears to be a story of fiction. Here it is sufficient to quote the Smithsonian Institute’s official statement on the Book of Mormon:

“The Smithsonian Institute has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.”  

In summary, the 9 categories of evidence form a very strong cumulative case that shows Joseph Smith to be a fraud and thus the Book of Mormon to be an unreliable document. To close this topic out we watched a short video that briefly responds to the question of whether there is evidence for the Book of Mormon.

The Bible is Reliable

In contrast to the Book of Mormon, the Bible has been shown to be a very reliable ancient document. Mormons claim that parts of the Bible have been translated incorrectly (they really mean “transmitted”) but that is hardly the case as the text of the Bible is pure.

We have 5,000 to 6,000 Greek manuscripts to confirm the New Testament text. And, compared to many other ancient texts, the New Testament is much more reliable as it was written earlier and more copies of it exist (see the infographic below).

We also looked at J. Warner Wallace’s summary from his investigation into the reliability of the Gospel accounts. There he found that they were written early enough to be eyewitnesses. We can verify that we have what they originally wrote. We can confirm that their writings are accurate. And the authors had no ulterior motives to lie.

Finally we looked a bit at some archaeological support for the Bible. In contrast to the Smithsonian’s statement on the Book of Mormon see what they say about the Old Testament:

“much of the Bible, in particular the historical books of the old testament are as accurate historical documents as any that we have from antiquity and are in fact more accurate than many of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Greek histories. These Biblical records can be and are used as are other ancient documents in archaeological work. For the most part, historical events described took place and the peoples cited really existed.”

[For more on the reliability of the New Testament, check out the outline and class summaries from last year’s study of “New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?”]

Do Christians and Mormons worship the same God?

We very quickly introduced the topic of “Who is God?” The concept of God is paramount in any belief system and so two people can’t be of the same faith if they worship different gods. Most Mormons believe they worship the same God as Christians. Though we both use the word “God” we mean very different things. So finding out what we really mean by God is vital.

We introduced a tabular summary of our study on the concept of God. We will dive into this more next week as we try to understand what reason, Biblically, we as Christians have for understanding certain attributes of God all the while contrasting these attributes to those of the Mormon God.

 

We will pick up next Monday, November 28^th, 2016 same time, same place (7-8:30pm at Mt. Zion UMC education building rooms 13-15) as we continue our study of “Who is God?” Hope to see you all there!