Perhaps you’ve noticed a trend in previous blogs: a certain impatience with people with a high EdQ/low EQ (that’s a physics equation for Clueless Arrogant PhD’s), and a fascination with what a 25-yr-old living 180 years ago could tell us about modern cosmology and the world we live in.
Hugh Nibley published a book in the 1960's called “Since Cumorah” - about things that Joseph Smith couldn’t possibly have known about, that nevertheless appear in the Book of Mormon and have seen verification since that time in formal scholarship. These include things like Chiasmus, and the name of “Sam” - a name ridiculed in the 19th Century, but which the Nag Hammadi documents found in the 20th Century in the Nile Valley have shown to have been common among the traders of 600 BC. The BofM is full of semitic cultural artifacts, including those unusual phrase constructions. I tried to get Dr. Nibley to autograph my personal copy, and he remonstrated that the book was embarrassing to him - that by the time it was actually published, there were many new and more exciting things that he wished he could have included. He still autographed the book, however.
I have some personal experience that I could add to the huge and still-growing Since Cumorah List. I have personally traveled along 60% of the Lehite Trail in the Arabian Peninsula, and I helped prepare for and then monitor the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens. If you thought previous blogs were too long, then articles about these topics would be humongous.
In the next few days, I will be providing some very abbreviated outlines of some of these. As an aside, I would note that Joseph Smith dictated the content of the Book of Mormon in about 60 days. At the time he had approximately 3.5 years of formal elementary school education.
It’s remarkable to me what you can do with a 3rd Grade Education.
No comments:
Post a Comment