tmh@ihldt.UUCP (08/12/83)
Most of the "historical" reference in the Book of Mormon can be Archeologically shown today to be false. The rise of civilization in the Americas is not abrupt, but a smooth transition taking many thousands of years. What Joseph Smith did was to take some of wild theories of his day (much like the ones of UFOs today), fill in any gaps and write a book on which to base his religion. At the time the Book of Mormon was written there had been virtually no serious Archeological work done in the world (Scheilmann digs Hisarlik in the 1890s), much less in North America. The only sites that were known were the spectacular ones so it did look as though civilization had started abruptly. Since pyramids are so tied to Egypt people tend to overlook the fact that virtually every early civilization builds some kind of them. In Messopotamia they are called ziggurats, the early Chinese civilization built them, in the Americas there are the Mayan, Toltec and Aztec (to name a few examples) and (this is sort of a marginal example) near St. Louis at Chaokia mounds is the largest man made dirt mounds in the world and it is shaped like a pyramid. Several other of the premises on which the book is based can also be easily refuted. Such as the idea that the ten lost tribes of Isreal were wandering around in North America. It is fairly obvious that they are in fact absorbed by the Babylonian culture. I have been told that this is very obviously what happen when read in Hebrew. There is one other which really shows that the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith. That is that black people are the decendents of Cain. Give me a break, how much more Victorian can you get? I don't think that the shady origins of the Mormons in any way reflects on the current church. They have had 150 years to mature and are now in every sense of the word a religion. While the Book of Mormon if written today would be ignored, we have L. Ron Hubbard writting a SF novel and having it turn into the Church of Scientology. The Bible also has historical books which need to be rejected in light of the findings of modern science i.e. Genesis, but these stories can still be useful if seen as parables of the way God works(?) and so probably should sit the Book of Mormon. Tom Harris ihnp4!ihldt!tmh