Best evidence that Joseph Smith was just making it all up

[Hagoth]

3 Nephi 26: 6 And now there cannot be written in this book even a hundredth part of the things which Jesus did truly teach unto the people; 7 But behold the plates of Nephi do contain the more part of the things which he taught the people.

The first half of the BoM is looking forward to Jesus' impressive message to the Nephites, and the second half is looking back at it. Jesus went to a whole lot of effort to get this message to us via the BoM scribes. And he had to kill untold thousands of people at his arrival to punctuate to punctuate its importance. So, if the scribes could only record a hundredth part of this more-important-than-anything message, why did they only include the 1 percent that everyone who read the translated plates just happened to already have in the New Testament and none of the other 99 percent?

And why did the plates not have room for the most important message possible, but they had plenty of room for:

1- Endless chapters of Isaiah in KJV language that everyone reading he BoM already had, word-for-word, in the Bible?
2- Endless chapters of highly detailed war stories
3- An extremely detailed account of the Nephite coinage system
4- 116 pages that God knew were going to be lost, so he added extra pages to replace them.

If you left all of those unnecessary things out you could probably fit half of Jesus' message. If you left any of them out you could at least make a damn fine summary.

But Joseph's wording performs a masterful little piece of magic by making it all sound so amazing and wondrous that the scribes didn't even attempt to write it down.

There is much lameness here.

[jfro18]

Yep - and that they had time to write down the Sermon on the Mount into the BoM as the Sermon at the Temple with the most superficial and obvious changes...

[Hagoth]

I have always considered the hyper-crappy BoA papyrus translations the best evidence, but this is what keeps rising to the surface lately for me.

Any other favorites?

[alas]

To me, it has always been the lack of women. Real life has women. Stories made up by a dude may not have. Unless your main character is off by himself in the Alaskan wilderness, panning for gold, with nothing but his pack mule and trusty dog, there are women. And even then, first thing he looks for when he brings his nuggets in, is the local house of ill repute, where he buys himself one. Real life has names for sisters and names of wives. As sexist as the early Bible is, Abraham had at least one daughter and she was named. Even among the over 500 wives of David, he had at least one named. The Bible even has full books that are all about women. And Nephi mentions the birth of his younger brothers, but never even mentions that he even got married, and only mentions later that he has a wife and children. BoM has so few women that it is just not believable. Except maybe to a guy?

The other thing that has always been proof to me that Joseph made it all up is the resemblance between Nephi and Joseph.

Those two things jarred me in 9 grade seminary when I first struggled to read it all.

[moksha]

It's funny how the artifacts that were once fundamental to the founding of a religion are never preserved. But the stories of artifacts somehow last forever.
-- Gemli

[deacon blues]

The bible literalism in the Book of Mormon shows that whoever wrote it was misguided.
The BOM does have some sublime passages, and I can't blame believers for wanting to believe it's true.
I just think they should be willing to accept other possibilities.
Moroni's promise comes from a magical world view in my opinion.

[alas]

Moroni's promise comes from a magical world view in my opinion.

And not to argue, just a different perspective, having majored in psychology, I think it comes from Joseph’s innate understanding of human behavior. I think it comes from the idea that if you really want to believe something, you will convince yourself it is true. It is one of the cognitive biases that I learned about in under grad. But, you can see it operate in real life, and by then Joseph had probably seen his parents bend reality to believe that he was super special. So, knowing that it worked to pray really hard about what you really really want to believe, that you will get this warm fuzzy feeling that you are after all correct.

[2bizE]

A number of years ago, I spent an evening driving around in New York City. It happened to be the day of a Jewish holiday. Orthodox Jewish fathers and sons were walking everywhere. To this day, Jewish tradition is still preserved and embedded in culture.
The people of the BoM were Jewish. They supposedly came from Jewish Jerusalem. They would have been up to their necks in Jewish culture and tradition, yet there is none of this in the BoM.

[dogbite]

Most of what we consider Jewish culture arose after the return to Jerusalem, 2nd temple Judaism. It didn't really exist at the time of Lehi. Monotheism, synagogues, most of the recognized scripture....

[Linked]

That's a great insight Hagoth. Mormon (Joseph) claiming that "there is way more of Jesus' teachings but you just have to trust me" is doing the same work as "I had an experience too sacred to share" in a testimony.

Provide a canvas for the audience to fill with awe and miracles and doctrine and real revelation in their minds.

[deacon blues]

Polygamy.

[jfro18]

That's a great insight Hagoth. Mormon (Joseph) claiming that "there is way more of Jesus' teachings but you just have to trust me" is doing the same work as "I had an experience too sacred to share" in a testimony.

And that's a great insight as well Linked.

There are a few "best evidences" to me but this is a great point that Joseph Smith said there was so much more that happened and yet only gives us what was available in the KJV. Just nonsensical.

[mcconkieslazyeye]

For me it's the Godzilla Jesus of 3rd Nephi

https://freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2997170/posts

Like, why would Jesus massacre a million people?

This is where The Late War and View of the Hebrews comes in, he was basically writing a Friends episode, but using a Seinfeld script as the framework, but left in the running jokes...(like Joey, why did you double dip your chip? ... and Ross are you wearing a manssiere? (BRO!) )

The Late War has a destructive part just like 3rd Nephi from the BOM

http://wordtree.org/thelatewar/

[Hagoth]

For me it's the Godzilla Jesus of 3rd Nephi

https://freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2997170/posts

Like, why would Jesus massacre a million people?

This is where The Late War and View of the Hebrews comes in, he was basically writing a Friends episode, but using a Seinfeld script as the framework, but left in the running jokes...(like Joey, why did you double dip your chip? ... and Ross are you wearing a manssiere? (BRO!) )

The Late War has a destructive part just like 3rd Nephi from the BOM

http://wordtree.org/thelatewar/

Welcome to NOM, mcconkieslazyeye!

Yeah, that's a good one. I hadn't seen the comparison to that portion of the Late War. Truly zany. It's just so weird that Jesus dies begging the father to forgive the people who nailed him to the cross and the next he's taking vengeance on continent of men, women and children who weren't even there for the nailing.

The intense darkness that descended just before Jesus' arrival was also something that Joseph borrowed from local memory:
https://www.wired.com/2008/05/may-19-17 ... u=1&ybf1=1
A similar event was reported in a Vermont publication and is said to have persisted for three days in 1819 (the link I found was broken. Still looking). Joseph Smith would have had personal knowledge of this.

[moksha]

With a penchant for Elizabethan English, you would think God would sound more like Shakespeare than a 19th Century New York State lad trying to imitate Biblical language.

[Hagoth]

With a penchant for Elizabethan English, you would think God would sound more like Shakespeare than a 19th Century New York State lad trying to imitate Biblical language.

Or like a 19th century NY state lad just delivering a clear message, rather than trying to hammer legitimacy into it with medieval European English. Maybe a few Mesoamerican-isms, rather than Hebraisms.