Jamie123
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Posts posted by Jamie123
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Sorry I've not responded for a while. I mainly wanted to thank everyone who took part in this, especially @zil2 for organizing the schedule. Here are a few general comments - I will no doubt think of more in the days to come:
Firstly, everyone in the Book of Mormon (with the one exception of the Jaredites, who are not part of the main narrative) is ethnically Jewish. The Gentiles are mentioned often, but no one beyond Nephi's generation would ever have met an actual Gentile. Contrast this with the New Testament, where there was a huge debate about whether followers of Christ needed to become Jews. This is a question we never think about these days, which gives some traction to the argument that the Book of Mormon was written for our current age.
Secondly, I mentioned before that the Book of Mormon has nothing like the violence of the Old Testament. Of course, I was referring to the portion of the book we had covered up to that point. When you consider the wars in which the Nephites and the Jaredites were exterminated, maybe that is not quite true. But I still think it lacks the sheer bloodyness of (particularly) the book of Joshua where God commands the Israelites to put entire cities to the sword - including children.
Thirdly (I daresay some people will want to scorch me for saying this) the Book of Ether links with the account of the Tower of Babel from Genesis. The early parts of Genesis are difficult to take literally in the light of what we now know about anthropology, geology and astronomy. (Though Ken Ham and the "Answers in Genesis" people would claim otherwise.) I have always regarded the Creation, the Fall, the Flood and the Tower of Babel as "myths" - not in the negative sense of being "untrue", but in the sense that they express genuine truths symbolically, and still being inspired by God. The Tower of Babel story is a "myth" to symbolise the way human languages have diverged - and to underline that this has happened in line with God's plan. But I don't necessarily see this as a problem. Perhaps the Jaredite nation did inherit the Babel myth from the same source as the Israelites' ancestors and take it with them to the New World. And if the Bible contains divinely inspired mythology, why not the Book of Mormon too?
I will no doubt think of more things to add in the days to come. Thanks again to everyone who contributed to this exercise. It has been immensely illuminating for me, and I hope everyone else has gained from it too.
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2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
The Holy Spirit Board by Holy Spirit Games - Christian Religious Talking Board for Seance with Planchette https://a.co/d/4CzZNGW
Complete with a free working Liahona! (Batteries not included.)
- zil2 and Carborendum
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30 minutes ago, askandanswer said:
This is the first I remember reading about cannibalism in any of the scriptures.
I can't quote chapter and verse, but isn't there something somewhere about people in beseiged cities "feeding upon the fruit of the womb"?
P.S. I found it - Deuteronomy 28:53.
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Such short chapters all of a sudden!
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On 12/25/2023 at 2:28 PM, zil2 said:
Before or after cooking it? If before, your Dad is fortunate to have a son who loves him. If after, hooray for reason!
It was before I put it in the oven - it was a very successful turkey. The main problem was I didn't put the roast veggies in soon enough so they were a bit hard, but other than that I really quite impressed myself! 😋 No food poisoning or anything!
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17 hours ago, zil2 said:
v4: @Jamie123, I've mentioned it before, but here's another example - we believe that all the prophets knew and testified of Christ.
I think most people who really thought about it would agree with that. The promise of the coming Messiah can be found throughout the Old Testament - though of course they could not have called him "Jesus Christ" because that name is Greek. Their equivalent would have been something like "Yeshua Messiah" - which is presumably what the Book of Mormon people would have called him.
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On 12/25/2023 at 3:52 PM, zil2 said:
v3: Don't the the sort of person who only brings peace to others by dying.
- mordorbund and zil2
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Merry Christmas to all!
I was just stuffing the "turkey" (actually a chicken) and my father came in and said he'd read in the paper "don't stuff your turkey" because of "contamination". Have you ever heard such rubbish? People have been stuffing their Christmas turkeys for years and years and I've never heard of any "post-Christmas turkey stuffing disease epidemic". I've stuffed our turkey every year for years and no one in my house has ever died from it.
I'd actually just finished the stuffing when my dad came in with the news, but much as I love him, I'm not going to unstuff the turkey just because some silly twonk who writes in the newspaper wants to make himself sound clever by saying "don't stuff your turkey or you'll die of malaria".
If we do die of malaria I shall stand corrected.
P.S. I have now unstuffed the chicken. My Dad was fretting.
- NeuroTypical and MrShorty
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I've been lagging behind, but I'm finally up to date again. This is all very grim stuff. Sorry if someone explained this already and I missed it ( i will go over the comments again more thoroughly tomorrow), but why is the latter part of Mormon, written by Morono, still called the "Book of Mormon" and not part of the book of Moroni?
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The Michael Bubble song made me think of this. Almost at the end of The Magic Flute when Papageno finally gets to be with his "Papagena" - his ideal woman for whom he has been searching the whole opera. He has met her already - firstly in disguise and then in her true form - at which point the priests chase her away because he is "not yet worthy of her". (He comically shouts at them "Don't interfere in my family affairs!")
I love The Magic Flute and Papageno is one of my favourite characters ever.
This is an English translation, but I like it as much as listening to the German while reading the subtitles. (I have studied German but made as little progress with it as I did with French. So if you tell me its been murdered in translation I believe you - but this is good enough for me!)
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1 hour ago, Carborendum said:
We kinda wondered if there actually was any mechanism in them to make a pop, or if we just got gypped.
I think you got gypped. A proper cracker has a kind of cardboard strip inside it, which is bonded in the middle with a very tiny explosive charge. If both people grip the cracker tight and pull it goes off with a "crack" (similar to a squib). There are cheapo crackers out there that don't have this.
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Just got back from work Christmas party. The jokes in the crackers were up to the usual standard:
What do sheep say to each other at Christmas?
Merry Christmas to ewe
What would you call a cat in the desert?
Sandy Claws
Which playwright was afraid of Christmas?
Noel Coward
Can't remember the rest. I'll let you know if more come to mind...
If you don't know what Christmas crackers are, here are some: they go bang when you pull them open and they contain jokes, paper hats and other small things (such as badly made plastic whistles, combs, thimbles, fortune-telling fish, tape measures, dice etc.)
I say it should be the law that everyone must belly-laugh at all the jokes in all the crackers (however lame) and wear the paper hats, on pain of being crowned King (or Queen) Humbug for the evening.
- NeuroTypical and zil2
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Thanks for the support guys. Apart from saying "Quirnius" instead of "Quirinius" I got through OK. 😁
- JohnsonJones, zil2 and Carborendum
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28:6 - There is a long-running tradition John never died and is still somewhere alive today. But if this is true, it's odd that John 21:23 makes it very clear that Jesus did not promise this. Maybe the JST says something different?
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On 12/14/2023 at 10:05 PM, askandanswer said:
which is composed of the two elements oxygen and silica
Silicon, not silica (which is silicon dioxide) but otherwise you are correct.
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On 12/14/2023 at 3:12 PM, zil2 said:
As far as we know, only three foreigners (and likely their servants / slaves) came, so it's not like this was common behavior - it seems pretty unique.
We don't even know that there were three of them, any more than we know that they were kings, or that their names were Melchior, Casper and Balthazar. I think the idea that there were 3 comes from the gold, frankincense and mur (can't be bothered to look up the spelling) but we don't know that all of then didn't bring all 3.
When I was in infants school I was in the Nativity play as Mur. I really wanted to be Gold, but they said no I could only be Mur.
P.S. there are so many versions of this joke:
- Carborendum and zil2
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I like Jordan Peterson. He doesn't mind standing up to the demands of political correctness. (That's something that takes a lot of courage these days!)
- NeuroTypical, zil2 and Traveler
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Post Office (again)
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Jamie123
I've been aware of this for nearly 3 years now. My first post about it was here:
Most people in the UK are only learning about it now, thanks to the fact that they made a TV drama about it. Some people are telling me they were in tears watching it.
It's caused such outrage that the government is now promising to overturn all remaining convictions en masse. (And remember the judicial branch of government are supposed to be independent of the executive branch - we have that in common with the US.) I often think the media has far too much power, but its refreshing to see that power used to champion the underdog for a change.