Talk:Criticism of Mormon sacred texts

Rationale for this article
I don't get this page - why does it exist if all the other main articles exist? Is this not yet another POV fork for an LDS article to get criticism out of the main articles themselves? --Descartes1979 (talk) 18:00, 7 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I created this article. It was not intended as a POV fork although, in its current state, it is a content fork.  The core problem is that Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement was way too long (well over 100kb).  Now, it is arguable that this article could go away and only a very concise summary could be left in Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement.  Alternatively, we could merge Criticism of the Book of Mormon and Criticism of the Book of Abraham into this article and turn those two titles into redirects here.  I prefer this latter approach.  --Richard (talk) 20:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Couple of things:
 * You are absolutely correct that the old article should be condensed. All of its content is ripped from other articles. See my comments on this wise back on the talk page of the other article.
 * Do you not realize that there is no Criticism of the Book of Abraham? (it is a redirect) All of the criticism is in the main Book of Abraham article itself. Why rip that out and put it somewhere else, when it is better to not create a POV fork like that? A lot of effort has gone into getting that critical information in the article so that it is stable (it still needs work, but it is stable nonetheless), and it has been in that state for the last year or so. I would strongly oppose any effort to splice that information out into a POV fork. Also remember that we are also dealing with these articles as well: Joseph Smith Papyri, and Kirtland Egyptian Papers.
 * Criticism of the Book of Mormon would likely fill far more than one article. As it stands now, there are seven articles that I can think of off the top of my head that have a ton of information in them. Your new article would not only be a duplication of that information, but it would end up being too long again. (See Archaeology and the Book of Mormon, Linguistics and the Book of Mormon, Origin of the Book of Mormon, Historicity of the Book of Mormon, Genetics and the Book of Mormon, Reformed Egyptian, Book of Mormon anachronisms - there are probably more that I can't think of right now too...)
 * --Descartes1979 (talk) 08:05, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

In general, I am neutral between keeping this article and getting rid of Criticism of the Book of Mormon. I confess that I had not realized that there was no article on Criticism of the Book of Abraham. However, that suggests that Criticism of the Book of the Mormon should be merged into this one so that all the criticism of Mormon sacred texts can be found in one place. I actually think that this is an encyclopedic topic and it is better to be able to find and read about all of it in one place than to have to look for it across multiple articles. I know it seems like a POV fork but as I've said elsewhere, there is a strong precedent for "Criticism of ..." articles when it comes to religion. Despite the recommendation to keep criticism in line with the main article (e.g. Book of Mormon), I think that approach leads to the main article becoming too long and it distracts the reader from the main focus of the article.

I think your point #3 above makes another case for the existence of this article. If there are so many separate articles related to criticism of the Book of Mormon, there needs to be a summary article that ties it all together. Given what you said about there being no article titled Criticism of the Book of Abraham, I am indifferent whether we keep this article or merge most of it back into Criticism of the Book of Mormon.

My key goal was to get the bulk of it out of Criticism of the Latter Day Saints movement in order to trim that article down to a high-level summary of the material in the detailed articles. I do have some opinions about how the detailed articles can be organized but I confess that there are so many articles with overlaps between them that sorting out the whole mess is quite a daunting task.

--Richard (talk) 09:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

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Original research
Some of the footnotes in the Book of Mormon historicity section simply cited standard history & zoology works, rather than sources that apply the facts from these disciplines to any scripture. This fails to establish that anyone has ever raised these objections before, and makes Wikipedia the one arguing that these sources discredit the Book of Mormon, violating NPOV. I have removed these references and placed them below:

Paul E. Minnis & Wayne J. Elisens, ed. 2001. Biodiversity and Native America. University of Oklahoma Press. Gary Paul Nabhan. 2002. Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation. University of Arizona Press. Stacy Kowtko. 2006. Nature and the Environment in Pre-Columbian American Life. Greenwood Press. Douglas H. Ubelaker, ed. 2006. Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 3, Environment, Origins, and Population. Smithsonian Institution. Elizabeth P. Benson. 1979. Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of South America. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library. R.C. West, ed. 1964. Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 1, Natural Environment & Early Cultures. University of Texas Press. G.R. Willey, ed. 1965. Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volumes 2 & 3, Archeology of Southern Mesoamerica. University of Texas Press. Gordon Ekholm & Ignacio Bernal, ed. 1971. Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 10 & 11, Archeology of Northern Mesoamerica. University of Texas Press. "The youngest dates on North American fossil horses are about 8150 years ago, although most of the horses were gone around 10,000 years ago" (Donald R. Prothero & Robert M. Schoch. 2002.  Horns, Tusks, and Flippers:  The Evolution of Hoofed Mammals.  The Johns Hopkins University Press.  Page 215.) "During the Pleistocene both New World continents abounded in [horses] and then, some 8000 years ago, the last wild horses in the Americas became extinct..." (R.J.G. Savage & M.R. Long. 1986.  Mammal Evolution:  An Illustrated Guide.  Facts on File Publications.  Page 204.) "T[he] megafauna [of North America] then disappeared from the face of the earth between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago..." (Donald R. Prothero & Robert M. Schoch. 2002.  Horns, Tusks, and Flippers:  The Evolution of Hoofed Mammals.  The Johns Hopkins University Press.  Page 176.) "In North America three other proboscideans survived the end of the Ice Age--the tundra woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the woodland American mastodont (Mammut americanum) and the grazing mammoth (Mammuthus jeffersoni). Hunting by early man is the most likely cause of the final extinction..." (R.J.G. Savage & M.R. Long. 1986.  Mammal Evolution:  An Illustrated Guide.  Facts on File Publications.  Page 157.) "Mammut became extinct only about 10,000 years ago." (Dougal Dixon et al. 1988.  The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals.  Collier Books.  Page 244.) "M[ammuthus] primigenius survived until about 10,000 years ago." (Dixon et al. 1988, page 245) Tatiana M. Karafet, Stephen L. Zegura, and Michael F. Hammer. 2006. "Y Chromosomes," Handbook of North American Indians. Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 831-839. "Zegura et al. (2004) have presented the following scenario for the early peopling of the Americas based on Y chromosome data: a migration of a single, polymorphic Asian population across Beringia with a potential common source for both North American founding lineages (Q and C) in the Altai Mountains of southwest Siberia.  Since all their STR-based SNP lineage divergence dates between the Altai and North Asians versus Native Americans...ranged from 10,100 to 17,200 year ago, they favored a relatively late entry model." (pg. 839)
 * Cecil H. Brown. 1999.  Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages.  Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 20.  Oxford
 * "[H]orses became extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene..." (Donald K. Grayson. 2006.  "Late Pleistocene Faunal Extinctions," Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 3, Environment, Origins and Population.  Smithsonian.  Pages 208-221. quote on pg 211)
 * Asses and horses are both in the genus Equus so see the footnote concerning horses.
 * paragraph 4
 * Donald K. Grayson. 2006.  "Late Pleistocene Faunal Extinctions," Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 3, Environment, Origins and Population.  Smithsonian.  Pages 208-221.  The Pleistocene extinction of the two Proboscidea genera Mammut and Mammuthus are mentioned on pages 209 and 212-213.
 * D. Andrew Merriwether. 2006.  "Mitochondrial DNA," Handbook of North American Indians.  Smithsonian Institution Press.  Pg 817-830. "Kolman, Sambuughin, and Bermingham (1995) and Merriwether et al. (1996) used the presence of A, B, C, and D to argue for Mongolia as the location for the source population of the New World founders.  More specifically perhaps, they argued that the present-day Mongolians and present-day Native Americans are both derived from the same ancestral population in Asia, presumably in the Mongolia-Southern Siberia-Lake Baikal region.  T.G. Schurr and S.G. Sherry (2004) strongly favor a southern Siberian origin for the majority of lineages found in the New World." (pg 829)

Even some of the remaining footnotes may be taken as polemical, and in any case I'm not sure such long quotations are necessary in them, but I'm not up to fixing it just now. Lusanaherandraton (talk) 19:11, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

King James Version section
The section on the King James Version of the Bible seems out of place. Currently, it contains no actual criticism of this text. If anyone does want to add some criticism of its use in the Mormon faith, perhaps it could be adapted to fit the article, but until then I have removed it below. Lusanaherandraton (talk) 19:11, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

King James Version


The eighth Article of Faith of the church states, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly".

English-speaking church members tend to use the Authorized King James Version of the Bible (KJV) in an LDS Church-published edition. This includes LDS-oriented chapter headings, footnotes referencing books in the standard works, and select passages from the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. The church's First Presidency has stated that "[w]hile other Bible versions may be easier to read than the King James Version, in doctrinal matters latter-day revelation supports the King James Version in preference to other English translations." In Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries, the church has published similar versions. Latter-day Saints in other non-English speaking areas generally use other versions of the Bible approved by the church. Though the Bible is part of the LDS canon and members believe it to be the word of God, the church teaches that omissions and mistranslations are present in even the earliest known manuscripts. It claims that the errors in the Bible have led to incorrect interpretations of certain passages. Thus, as church founder Joseph Smith explained, the church believes the Bible to be the word of God "as far as it is translated correctly." The church teaches that "[t]he most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical passage is not by comparing different texts, but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations".

The KJV is notably more Latinate than previous English versions, especially the Geneva Bible. This results in part from the academic stylistic preferences of a number of the translators – several of whom admitted to being more comfortable writing in Latin than in English – but was also, in part, a consequence of the royal proscription against explanatory notes. Hence, where the Geneva Bible might use a common English word – and gloss its particular application in a marginal note – the Authorized Version tends rather to prefer a technical term, frequently in Anglicised Latin. Consequently, although the King had instructed the translators to use the Bishops' Bible as a base text, the New Testament in particular owes much stylistically to the Catholic Rheims New Testament, whose translators had also been concerned to find English equivalents for Latin terminology. In addition, the translators of the New Testament books habitually quote Old Testament names in the renderings familiar from the Vulgate Latin, rather than in their Hebrew forms (e.g. "Elias", "Jeremias" for "Elijah", "Jeremiah").

While the KJV remains among the most widely sold, modern critical New Testament translations differ substantially from it in a number of passages, primarily because they rely on source manuscripts not then accessible to (or not then highly regarded by) early-17th-century biblical scholarship. In the Old Testament, there are also many differences from modern translations that are based not on manuscript differences, but on a different understanding of ancient Hebrew vocabulary or grammar by the translators. For example, in modern translations it is clear that Job 28: 1–11 is referring throughout to mining operations, which is not at all apparent from the text of the KJV.

The Apocrypha
Although the Apocrypha was part of the 1611 edition of the KJV, the church does not currently use the Apocrypha as part of its canon. Smith taught that while the contemporary edition of the Apocrypha was not to be relied on for doctrine, it was potentially useful when read with a spirit of discernment.

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