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Faith and Reason 21: The Axial Period

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

The Book of Mormon opens with Lehi prophesying to the unrighteous people at Jerusalem in about 600 BC. Modern research has since demonstrated that the sixth century BC was a time of unusual change and excitement. Some scholars have referred to the general era as an “Axial Period” in world history because it was a pivotal point around which history turns. Some of history’s greatest changes were taking place among the people and Lehi and his followers were right in the center of it. This was unknown, of course, in Joseph Smith’s own day.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

Faith and Reason 20: “Without a Cause”

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

When Christ visited the Book of Mormon people in the ancient New World he gave a discourse that is nearly identical to the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. Critics claim that Joseph Smith simply plagiarized the New Testament sermon, however there are differences between what we find in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. For example, in Matthew 5:22 Christ said: “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”. In 3 Nephi 12:22 Christ said: “But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment”. The astute reader will notice that in 3 Nephi the words “without a cause” are absent. When we examine the earliest Greek copies of the New Testament –documents that were discovered after Joseph Smith had died –we find that the phrase “without a cause” is also generally absent. As Professor John Welch notes, the verse in 3 Nephi discourages all anger whereas the verse in Matthew permits justifiable anger. Some non-LDS scholars believe that “without a cause” was added to Matthew 5:22 during the translation process, while the Book of Mormon more accurately reflects the likely original intention of the passage. The fact that Joseph Smith got it right, when no scholars in his world would have been aware of the later Greek insertion shouldn’t be amazing –but it is.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

Disconnect between Doctrine and Practice of Equality

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McBaine_Women_1024x1024[The following is an excerpt from Neylan McBaine’s new book Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact. It is reposted here with permission of the author and Greg Kofford Books.] 

In my August 2012 FairMormon conference talk, one of the most challenging points that I made is that I feel we do ourselves a disservice as Mormons—when communicating both to external audiences and internal audiences—when we continually assert that men and women are “equal” in our Church. While this may have made some listeners and readers squirm, almost all of the personal responses I received on this point expressed relief. It seems that while we feel confident in our doctrinal belief that men and women have the same worth in the sight of God, we feel uncomfortable doing the cognitive leaps required to claim that men and women are equal in our practice.

The questions seem to be: If we believe in equality, do we have an obligation to practice equality? And if we practice equality, what does that look like? These questions arise in our cultural consciousness because they are the same questions that American society has been wrestling with since the day we declared independence from Great Britain. It was literally “self-evident” to the founders of our country that all people are created equal. How that belief in equality actually translated into a practice of equality was a discussion that shaped the very foundation of our country: for our founders, practicing equality initially demanded that white settlers in America should have the same taxation and representation as their brothers in England. And from the first moments of the country’s founding, debate also raged over whether the equality the new Americans had fought to achieve extended to people of all races. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Americans asked themselves questions similar to those we had at our founding: What does equality look like? How do we practice it? What terms do we draw as a society to determine what opportunities, resources, and experiences are equal? How do our institutions support those terms? [Read more…] about Disconnect between Doctrine and Practice of Equality

Faith and Reason 19: Deseret and Bees

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind – Ether 2:3 in the Book of Mormon

In the Book of Mormon we find that the Jaredite word deseret means “honeybee”. Years ago, Dr. Hugh Nibley observed that the word deseret “or something very close to it, enjoyed a position of ritual prominence” among the early Egyptians and they associated the word with a symbol of the bee. He explained, “We know that the bee sign was not always written down, but in its place the picture of the Red Crown… If we do not know the original name of the bee, we do know the name of this Red Crown –the name it bore when it was substituted for the bee. The name was dsrt (the vowels are not known, but we can be sure they were all short”).

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

Interpreting the Abraham Facsimiles

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Abraham

By Kerry Muhlestein

Many people often ask about how Joseph Smith’s explanations of the Facsimiles compares to those of Egyptologists. This is a question worth asking. As with all things regarding history, symbolism, and interpretations, those who want a simple answer will find themselves unsatisfied with an accurate answer. Sadly, many times people opt for simple answers in order to avoid the messy, complicated situations of which history is made. Here we will not delve into all the complexities, but we will at least consider enough factors to answer the question accurately.

First, we must be clear that we do not know for sure that Joseph Smith authored the explanations of the facsimiles that were printed in the Times and Seasons, (on the acquisition of the papyri and publication of the Book of Abraham, see column 2,) which eventually became part of the Pearl of Great Price. While we do not know if Joseph Smith is the original author of these interpretations, we know he participated in preparing the published interpretations and gave editorial approval to them.

To continue reading this article, please visit the Meridian Magazine website.

Faith and Reason 18: Names in The Book of Mormon

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From the Book: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

Critics typically contend that Joseph Smith either invented the names in the Book of Mormon or borrowed them from his surroundings. The first name mentioned in the Nephite record is Nephi. We find this name in the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha are part of the Catholic collection of scriptures, but are not included in the Protestant scriptures such as the King James Version Bible. Whether Joseph has access to the Apocrypha in 1829 is unknown.

Sariah was Lehi’s faithful wife who endured so much tribulation during their journey through the Arabian Peninsula. Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick, who holds a PhD in Archaeology and Semitic Languages, believes that a likely Hebrew spelling of Sariah would be s’ryh and would be pronounced something like Sar-yah. The name s’ryh has been found on ancient Aramaic papyri in Egypt, dating to the time of Lehi, which was not discovered until the twentieth century. Although the language of the document is Aramaic, the name, it has been shown, is Hebrew. Non-Mormon scholars have translated this part of the papyri as “Sariah daughter of Hoshea son of Harman”.

Many critics have laughed at the Book of Mormon for using “Alma” as a masculine personal name. In the United States, Alma is typically a female name of Latin origin. Alma-mater, for example, means “nourishing mother” and was used during medieval times to refer to the Virgin Mary. In the late twentieth century, however, it was found that some ancient Near Eastern documents –such as letters from Bar Kokhba and clay tablets from Ebla –contained the male name “Alma”.

With the exception of Alma, the few times that the critics have mentioned Book of Mormon names has been to ridicule them as strange and obviously created by Joseph Smith. One critic wrote: “It required something of a genius, it must be confessed, to manufacture some of the names of the Book of Mormon… names that at least have a certain syllabic jingle, if they have no meaning”. As light is shed on all areas of Book of Mormon studies, however, we gain new support for the names found in the Nephite scripture.

Many Book of Mormon names, we find, have Near Eastern parallels, several of which are Egyptian. Dr. Hugh Nibley wrote: “It should be noted that archaeology has fully demonstrated that the Israelites, then as now, had not the slightest aversion to giving their children non-Jewish names, even when those names smacked of a pagan background. Recently discovered ancient manuscripts who that many Jews in the days of Lehi names their children after Egyptian hero kings of the past.

For a time, Mormon scholars were confused as to why the Book of Mormon does not include a single name containing the element of Baal, which is so common in the Old Testament. The recent discovery of the Elephantine papyrus from Egypt shows that Israelites eliminated all names with Baal elements during Lehi’s day. Of the over four hundred names among the Elephantine manuscripts, not one is compounded of Baal.

“It is no small feat,” writes Nibley, “simply to have picked a lot of strange and original names out of the air. But what shall we say of the man who was able to pick the right ones?”.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt. He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

Truth, Subjectivity, and History

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scripture-study-243080-galleryWritten by Stephen Trayner

I was recently drawn into a fascinating discussion of truth and history. I have always loved history. In part, my love of history led to my study of political science and a career in law. A recent online post I read started with an invitation to learn the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have read posts of others questioning, “How can a person can be active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in view of the history of the Church and the different beliefs held and practiced by the Church?”

I have spent the majority of my life investigating, researching, sorting through, and evaluating “facts.” John Adams stated, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” I too have found facts, including historical facts, to be stubborn things. It has been my professional experience that witnesses to events sometimes misperceive, mis-recall, and even misstate facts for a variety of reasons. I have seen witnesses testify under oath inconsistently with one another, both claiming to have seen and recalled an event. Likewise, I have had witnesses, who after the passage of time, recall events memorialized in photographs and contemporary documents in a manner inconsistent with that unquestioned photographic and documentary proof.

The philosopher Voltaire assailed history as being “a pack of lies we play upon the dead.” While Voltaire’s view may be extreme, it is clear that an element of subjectivity is inherent in investigating and retelling history. Subjectivity may also play a role in our study of history, despite the reader/investigator’s best intentions and desires. The student of history may unconsciously allow the present to influence his or her knowledge or interpretation of past historical events. (An interesting article on the problem of bias in the study of history can be found online.)

Knowing the inherent limitations in the recording (and studying) of the history, including the true and unbiased context in which past events may have occurred, religious scholarship and discipleship often require consideration of and sifting through potentially contravening and contradictory evidence. To find eternal truths, especially historical religious truths, the seeker or disciple must turn to the Author of truth, knowing that He will give knowledge to all men liberally in response to the proper exercise of faith and study.

The seeker of eternal truths soon understands that His ways are not necessarily our ways, nor our thoughts, His thoughts. At times, we may struggle to understand how a loving God could send floods to cover the earth, plagues to afflict the disobedient, direct His chosen leaders to take multiple wives, or order the death of evil men. At times, we may struggle to understand how the use of spittle could restore the sight of one who was blind (Mark 8:22–25), how Jordan’s waters could heal the leper (2 Kings 5), or how the mere touch of the hem of His garment could heal the infirm (Matthew 9:20–22). We may even struggle to understand the importance of His teaching to Thomas, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Faith is often born as we ”learn to walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness; then the light will appear and show the way before you” (source). He encourages us to “dispute not” in part because we often do not receive a witness of the truth until after the trial of our faith (Ether 12:6). Having spent a lifetime in search of religious truth based upon facts and the Spirit, I think it is fair to say that the Church and faithful third parties have provided well researched and scholarly responses to each of the matters currently in discussion and debate. History is not to be feared. History can and does build faith.

The Church in recent months has addressed a number of doctrinal and historical issues raised in recent years concerning variety of topics largely by those openly opposed to the Church. The Church’s responses are found in its “Gospel Topics” website. While detractors may choose to assert that such statements are evidence of a “cover up,” others may rightfully assert that such official statements are merely the result of a need to address clear and unequivocal falsehoods which have been raised and disseminated against the Church on a broad scale due to the influence of the Internet.

Some may ask, “Why would God allow such claims to be so prevalent in our day? Why would God allow His work to be opposed by such vocal and persistent voices of dissent and doubt?” I think there are reasons for this. As darkness approaches and as dissenting voices ring out, we must turn to Him for understanding and truth. Ultimately a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ comes down to one’s testimony and conversion born of the Holy Ghost. The Savior’s ministry was notable for open and fierce opposition to Him personally as well as His teachings. The Lord’s people and His servants have always been the object of false persecution and claims. His ways were not the ways of the people of His day. His teachings were not well accepted by the masses. Some even questioned his history. Many asked, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him” (Mark 6:3).

Such opposing forces led directly to His crucifixion and the persecution of His early church, its teachings, its leaders, and its members. The world soon fell into a great apostasy and spiritual darkness. The world rejected the Light of the world. I testify that the ensuing darkness was not dispelled until the spring of 1820 when He answered a young boy’s prayer and the work of the restoration of His truths, priesthood authority, and Church commenced anew. That boy, Joseph Smith, became God’s prophet. Even after the restoration of His gospel in these modern days, similar forces continue to oppose God’s truths, Church, and people.

Faith is a personal matter between God and each and every one of His children. I choose to believe. I have felt His spirit bear witness to my soul of the truthfulness of my beliefs. I know His Son lives and is my Redeemer. His truths set me free each day. I pray for those who stumble in darkness, those whose faith and light may be weak, and those whose faith once bright has faltered. I pray for those who choose not to believe. They are my brothers and sisters.
I bear my witness that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God’s kingdom here on earth and is led by a living prophet. Christ stands at the head of His Church today. His invitation to all to come unto Him has not and will not change.

I close with the words of one of His modern day Apostles, which I know to be true. Elder Russell M. Nelson said, “Even more amazing than modern technology is our opportunity to access information directly from heaven, without hardware, software, or monthly service fees. It is one of the most marvelous gifts the Lord has offered to mortals. It is His generous invitation to ‘ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.'”

This timeless offer of personal revelation is extended to all of His children. It almost sounds too good to be true. But it is true!

Faith and Reason 17: “Reformed Egyptian”

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From the book:  Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

Near the beginning of the Book of Mormon, Nephi tells his readers that the record was written in “the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2) Critics have asserted for years that there is no such thing as reformed Egyptian, and even if there were, devout Israelites such as Lehi would not have written scripture in a pagan Egyptian script but would have only used Hebrew.

Nearly fifty years ago, Hugh Nibley showed that the Egyptian culture played an influential role in seventy century BC Palestine –primarily in the area of culture and language. Modern studies verify that Nibley was right. Recently rediscovered writings from approximately Lehi’s day tell us that Jews and other foreigners were all instructed in the language of Egypt. We now know of other Hebrew and Aramaic texts –such as Papyrus Amherst 63 –that were written in Egyptian characters.

Also discovered a decade ago, were ancient potsherds from Lehi’s vicinity and time, that contained a script composed of a modified form of Egyptian hieroglyphics. This script was used almost exclusively by Israel and not any of the neighboring communities. Some Near Eastern scholars now believe that scribes and students in Lehi’s day were trained in both Hebrew and Egyptian writing systems.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt. He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

 

How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Abraham

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photo1

By Kerry Muhlestein

For most people, the idea of translating is fairly straightforward. Conventionally, when someone translates, he reads a document in one language he understands and renders it into another language he understands. The difficulty in assessing the Book of Abraham is that while Joseph Smith says he translated the Book of Abraham from papyrus, he never uses that word in the conventional way. It will be helpful to first look at the other ways Joseph Smith used the word “translate.”

Joseph Smith’s first translation project was the Book of Mormon. It was written in a language he clearly did not know. He never claimed to understand the language it was written in. Instead, he said he was given the ability to translate by the gift and power of God. We don’t know a lot about the Book of Mormon translation process. We know that the Prophet used the seer stones we call the Urim and Thummim, as well as another seer stone he often used. While we cannot nail down the exact details, it seems he often was not looking at the gold plates at all during much of this process. What we can be sure of is that Joseph Smith provided us with a translation of a language he did not know, frequently without referring to the physical text he had. His translation came from God.

To read this article in its entirety, please visit the Meridian Magazine website.

Faith and Reason 16: “It Came to Pass,” Part One

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From the Book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

The Book of Mormon’s frequent use of the phrase “and it came to pass” has been the target of much ridicule. Mark Twain claimed this was Smith’s “pet phrase” and had Smith left it out, the Book of Mormon “would have been only a pamphlet”. Another critic asserted that the Book of Mormon, “is cursed with the clumsy, repetitious phrase ‘and it came to pass’ that appears hundreds of times in the book, on almost every page”. Neith Mark Twain nor Joseph Smith would have known in the nineteenth century just how important this phrase was to Book of Mormon authors.

The original manuscript of the Book of Mormon had no punctuation. Likewise, manuscripts prior to the tenth century typically had no punctuation. In both ancient Eqyptian and Hebrew, indicator phrases such as “it came to pass”, “and now”, “and thus”, were grammatically necessary to denote new thoughts or paragraphs. Since the Book of Mormon claims to be written in a modified Hebrew language and “reformed” or modified Egyptian characters it would be strange if it didn’t contain such phrases.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt. He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.