Important overlooked Book of Abraham cosmology problem

[Hagoth]

I'm listening to RFM's excellent 3rd interview with David Bokovoy.

Background: regarding the astronomy in the BoA, apologists fall into three camps in saying that Abraham's astronomical descriptions are based on: 1) the ancient 3-level world view of Abe's time, 2) the geocentric model, or 3) the way things really are, as revealed by modern astronomy.

We can throw out option 3 because it is blaringly ridiculous.

Bokovoy brilliantly observed that the geocentric model that Dan Petersen et. al. subscribe to is very problematic because it is the Hellenistic worldview that came along more than a thousand years after Abraham.

The big discrepancy that everyone seems to overlook is that the entire astronomical system outlined in the Book of Abraham is all about the speed of rotation (or revolution, depending on how you interpret it) of the earth relative to other heavenly bodies. Specifically, that the earth revolves and/or rotates at a speed 1000 times greater than Kolob.

The problem is - and this is a HUGE problem - that both the ancient worldview and the Hellenistic geocentric world view require that the earth does not and CANNOT rotate. If you go back and read the philosophers and scientists all the way up to and somewhat beyond Galileo you will see that the immovability of the earth is THE biggest point of contention. In the ancient worldview the earth is flat and rotating does not even make sense, and it cannot move because it is God's immovable footstool, set in place relative to the dome of the firmament. In the Hellenistic worldview, which held for about 2000 years, if the earth rotated or moved in any way it completely destroyed Aristotelian (and Pythagorean) physics. Not gonna do it.

Actually, there is a fourth apologetic approach to this, which I subscribe to. Terryl Givens suggested that Joseph accumulated contemporary (i.e. wrong) ideas about the nature of the universe and applied his "prophetic imagination" to them. Only difference is that I would omit the word "prophetic."

Of course, the biggest underlying problem is that if God was going to go to all of the trouble to turn the Urim and Thummim into a telescope to show Abraham how the universe works, why would he he show him the incorrect version invented by men who didn't know what the hell was going on. Why not just show him the truth?

[Apologeticsislying]

Hagoth
Of course, the biggest underlying problem is that if God was going to go to all of the trouble to turn the Urim and Thummim into a telescope to show Abraham how the universe works, why would he he show him the incorrect version invented by men who didn't know what the hell was going on. Why not just show him the truth?

This has been my eternal question, of which no actual good answers have ever been given. If not to show actual reality to Abraham, then it is an exercise in trivial uselessness...

[Five]

I don't know whether to curse or thank Mormonism for this, but little things like this definitely have me taking a much harsher magnifying glass to Bible prophets. I know BoA was written by Joseph Smith but the problems you bring up about what we should expect God's relationship with prophets IS, calls attention to whether they're worthy of following at all. Like you said, did God keep information from Abraham? Was He lying to him about how the science works? So, if we're going with, "God is real, Abraham was a real prophet, and the BoA is a real book about his life" then a God who would 1. Allow His prophet to write down incorrect information, 2. Tell him incorrect information on purpose to begin with, or 3. misspeak or mistakenly tell him incorrect stuff, is not really a... "good" God.

We can't get away from the fact that this isn't just Abraham's private, secret thoughts he wrote down, so, God was like, "No, actually, that's not how it's...eh. Nevermind. Who cares? Nobody's gonna read this junk." It was written for the people of the future. A regular science book from the 1800's can get away with, "This is just what they thought at the time; now, we know better." A science book written by a God that sees the future? He better not have flat earth and earth centric universe models in there.

**Just for now, ignoring the elephant in the room that the Mormon apologetics say that the BoA wasn't even written using the papyrus. "Translation" means "spending a thousand dollars on papyrus, then without looking at it, writing down the revelations God puts directly in your head."

[blazerb]

Are there any anthropologists who might know how important astronomy would be to nomadic sheepherders like Abraham? The most important astronomical details for ancient peoples were those that showed the time of year. When agriculture gets going, it's useful to know, when that star is rising at sunset, it's time to plant the crops. Maybe there was an indication that it was time to move to the new pastures for the animals. The idea that Abraham was worried about anything more than that seems odd to me.

[Reuben]

Actually, there is a fourth apologetic approach to this, which I subscribe to. Terryl Givens suggested that Joseph accumulated contemporary (i.e. wrong) ideas about the nature of the universe and applied his "prophetic imagination" to them. Only difference is that I would omit the word "prophetic."

I wonder how much apologetic mileage you could get out of modifying totally secular explanations with adjectives like "eternal," "holy" and "prophetic."