If I could ask them one question . . . Come Follow Me, Lesson 7

[annotatedbom]

Come Follow Me, lesson 7, Feb. 10-16, 2 Ne 6-10
Annotated BoM starting at 2 Nephi 6

If I wanted to encourage thought and try to understand devout believers better, I might ask:
"Why would an angel reveal a Greek title as a name for the Messiah to someone from Jerusalem in the Americas in about 550 BCE?"

Click here to see Things to consider for this lesson and to see the questions I might ask for previous Come Follow Me Lessons this year.

Enjoy!
A-Bom

[Palerider]

TBM excuse:

The angel actually revealed the name as Yeshua Messiah in Hebrew to the Nephite prophet who wrote it down in reformed Egyptian on the plates. It was then "translated" through Joseph Smith as "Jesus Christ" so that all the English speakers of our day would know who Jacob was talking about.

[annotatedbom]

TBM excuse:

The angel actually revealed the name as Yeshua Messiah in Hebrew to the Nephite prophet who wrote it down in reformed Egyptian on the plates. It was then "translated" through Joseph Smith as "Jesus Christ" so that all the English speakers of our day would know who Jacob was talking about.

It seems odd, right? But I think something like that would have been enough to shut down any concern I might have had as a devout Mormon about this revelation of a Greek word to Nephi in this context. Do you think that’s how most devout Mormons would roll with PaleRider’s TBM excuse?

[Reuben]

TBM excuse:

The angel actually revealed the name as Yeshua Messiah in Hebrew to the Nephite prophet who wrote it down in reformed Egyptian on the plates. It was then "translated" through Joseph Smith as "Jesus Christ" so that all the English speakers of our day would know who Jacob was talking about.

It seems odd, right? But I think something like that would have been enough to shut down any concern I might have had as a devout Mormon about this revelation of a Greek word to Nephi in this context. Do you think that’s how most devout Mormons would roll with PaleRider’s TBM excuse?

That's how I used to explain it. The thing is, it's not a bad explanation: it accounts for the anachronism and accords with what normal human translators do.

The thing I find most incongruous about this part of the BoM is how much information Nephi gets out of his revelations (grand visions of future history) vs. the amount a believer learns to expect (yes/no if they're lucky). And yet they're supposed to ask God as if he would show them everything, and regard their ambiguous good feelings as if he actually had. The difference between what they're set up to expect and what they discover they can actually expect is huuuge.

Here's what I'd like to try with a believer that think he's receiving bits (0/1) encoded as warm feelings.

1. Ask God for an answer to an important question in words, encoded as a bit stream. Null-terminated UTF-8 or ASCII would be fine. The believer doesn't have to know what that means - it's enough that God and I do.

2. Ask God if there's another bit ready. If not, stop and ask Reuben to decode the stream.

3. Otherwise, ask God for the next bit. Get a feeling. Wrestle in the Spirit. Write down 0 or 1. Go back to 2.

I'll bet we could even get God to stream Celestialflix to us, or use the believer as a VPN to access God's intranet.

I guess this is my question: Why did Nephi and Joseph Smith get so much bandwidth while we apparently get less than 1 bit/hour? Are we, like, really hammering God's servers or something?

[Angel]

Come Follow Me, lesson 7, Feb. 10-16, 2 Ne 6-10
Annotated BoM starting at 2 Nephi 6

If I wanted to encourage thought and try to understand devout believers better, I might ask:
"Why would an angel reveal a Greek title as a name for the Messiah to someone from Jerusalem in the Americas in about 550 BCE?"

Click here to see Things to consider for this lesson and to see the questions I might ask for previous Come Follow Me Lessons this year.

Enjoy!
A-Bom

If it was possible - to mix everyone together - Greek, Jew, gentile Americans, Chinese, Latino, African.... if it was a melting pot, a real "god loves and speaks to everyone in all languages" melting pot, that would be a beautiful thing.

[Palerider]

That's how I used to explain it. The thing is, it's not a bad explanation: it accounts for the anachronism and accords with what normal human translators do.

Yep.

This excuse works right up until we run into the loan-shifting concept. So why did BoM writers write down the name of a particular animal in Reformed Egyptian and then Joseph correctly translated the name as "horse" or "elephant" so that all of us english speakers would know what they were talking about???

I mean if the writer was talking about a tapir instead of a horse, why didn't the word "tapir" appear on the stone instead of "horse"????

Sorry you boys over at Fairmormon. You can't have it both ways.

Come on....cough it up! There were no horses in the Americas until the Spanish arrived. Admit it.

And that's not to mention "cureloms and cumoms". Why didn't the stone reveal the English name for two such useful animals???

Edited for spelling.

[moksha]

And that's not to mention "cureloms and cumoms". Why didn't the stone reveal the English name for two such useful animals???

Perhaps these animals were considered sacred and therefore secret, or perhaps their skins by that later date had been darkened by a curse and therefore were not worthy of having their names translated into English. BTW, FAIRMormon is free to include these two ideas in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism with proper attribution.

[Hagoth]

If it was possible - to mix everyone together - Greek, Jew, gentile Americans, Chinese, Latino, African.... if it was a melting pot, a real "god loves and speaks to everyone in all languages" melting pot, that would be a beautiful thing.

Just look at the names of the people Jesus picked for his American apostles (well, actually disciples because the band was still kicking it in Jerusalem): Nephi, his brother Timothy and his son Jonas, Mathoni, Mathonihah, Kumen, Kumenonhi, Jeremiah, Shemnon, Jonas, Zedekiah and Isaiah.

It's a mishmash of Greek, Hebrew, Nephite, and Jaridite names (and probably some Phonecians by way of Jaredites). Just in Nephi's little family you've got a Nephite name, a Greek name, and a Hebrew name. I'm going to guess that Nephi's wife was named something like Inga or Hilda.

[Hagoth]

And that's not to mention "cureloms and cumoms". Why didn't the stone reveal the English name for two such useful animals???

Well, you wouldn't need faith to believe in the book if it just came right out and called them heffalumps and woozles.

[Reuben]

And that's not to mention "cureloms and cumoms". Why didn't the stone reveal the English name for two such useful animals???

Well, you wouldn't need faith to believe in the book if it just came right out and called them heffalumps and woozles.

I'm totally stealing that when we get to the cureloms and cumoms.

[moksha]

I'm going to guess that Nephi's wife was named something like Inga or Hilda.

Ingrid Elizabeth Hickenlooper. Her mother's maiden name was Jensen.