How accurate is the Old Testament?

[Snigmorder]

10 minutes ago, Vort said:

Neither. In my opinion, we group prophetic words into the two giant bins "PROPHECY (INFALLIBLE)" and "OPINION (FALLIBLE)". I think there is a third bin: "COMMONPLACE (IRRELEVANT)".

By a "commonplace", I mean something like "common knowledge", something everyone knows. That is, something everyone "knows", so widely accepted that few people would ever even think of questioning it. The sun is overhead at noon. Water is wet. What goes up eventually comes down. You'd be a fool to question such things.

I think such commonplaces are (what else?) common in prophetic teachings. I believe these are not and never were meant as statements of prophecy or even of fact; rather, they are a way of communicating an idea using language everyone understands. So we say "the sun rises", and only the most tiresome pedant would bother to point out that the sun isn't actually going anywhere, but it's the Earth turning on its axis that gives the illusion of solar motion. So someone wrote an introduction to Section 20 using flowery language to talk about the year 1820 as "one thousand eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh," with no intent of suggesting that Dionysius Exiguus was actually correct in his early calculation of Jesus' birth year. So Joseph Smith words a revelatory teaching about "the seven thousand years of the Earth's temporal existence" with no desire to establish the age of the planet or fix the year of the Fall of Adam.

When Lehi speaks of the Fall and related ideas, like there was no death, the point he's actually teaching isn't about death. it's about life, about how we have been given the gift of life and must embrace it. He is illustrating his point using commonplaces that were in place in his family, and largely still are in place in our culture today. I expect that Lehi very literally believed what he was saying on the topic, but I doubt his intent was to establish the commonplace as ultimate TRVTH. He was simply using the facts of creation as he understood them to illustrate his underlying point. Whether the particular commonplace he used is actually a literal fact is as irrelevant as whether the sun actually rises in the morning. (It does.)

I like that way of putting it. It's basically what I was thinking except, like, in words man. I know certain apostles would find the idea foolish, however.

15 minutes ago, Vort said:

and only the most tiresome pedant would bother to point out that the sun isn't actually going anywhere

The Earth, Sun and all the planets are orbiting around the center of mass of the solar system.

[Grunt]

5 hours ago, Snigmorder said:

I'm millennial and I am reversed to that study. I find it refreshing reading the book of Mormon due to the fact that it's a transmitted text from the original record. It is an account of an ancient people and I take it as history.

Perhaps the millennials in the study are embarrassed by seer stones and Kolob and have adopted a kind of "BOM as Joe's treatise" so they don't embarrass themselves in front of their college friends.

As for the Bible, see OP

Seer stones are a hurdle for me.  I haven't reached anything about "Kolob" yet, though.

[Snigmorder]

4 hours ago, Grunt said:

Seer stones are a hurdle for me.  I haven't reached anything about "Kolob" yet, though.

Kolob's just a planet/star mentioned in the book of Abraham.

Also, now that you mention the seer stone,  I'm reminded of an account from David Witmer involving the seer stone: 

"He [Joseph Smith] was a religious and straightforward man. He had to be; for he was illiterate and he could do nothing of himself. He had to trust in God. He could not translate unless he was humble and possessed the right feelings towards everyone. To illustrate so you can see. One morning when he was getting ready to continue the translation, something went wrong about the house and he was put out about it. Something that Emma, his wife, had done. Oliver and I went up stairs and Joseph came up soon after to continue the translation, but he could not do anything. He could not translate a single syllable. He went down stairs, out into the orchard, and made supplication to the Lord; was gone about an hour--came back to the house, asked Emma's forgiveness and then came up stairs where we were and then the translation went on all right. He could do nothing save he was humble and faithful." 

"At times when Brother Joseph would attempt to translate he would look into the hat in which the stone was placed, he found he was spiritually blind and could not translate. He told us that his mind dwelt too much on earthly things, and various causes would make him incapable of proceeding with the translation. When in this condition he would go out and pray, and when he became sufficiently humble before God, he could then proceed with the translation. Now we see how very strict the Lord is, and how he requires the heart of man to be just right in his sight before he can receive revelation from him."

http://www.moroni10.com/mormon_history/joseph-apology-emma-translation.html

 

There's another account, but I won't include the text here, where Martin Harris swaps out Joseph Smith's seer stone with a stone he had found that looked identical to Joseph's. Here's the link to the account: http://www.moroni10.com/mormon_history/harris-swaps-seer-stone.html

Edited July 28, 2017 by Snigmorder

[Grunt]

I'll read those later.  Thanks!

 

Alma is long, but interesting.  

Edited July 28, 2017 by Grunt

[Sunday21]

@Grunt