An interesting article on the Book of Abraham, part of the Pearl of Great Price accepted as scripture by the LDS church and ostensibly translated from the Egyptian by Joseph Smith Junior. I think this bears much more investigation, as a relatively concrete way of testing Joseph Smith Junior's authenticity.
I've been thinking a bit about Joseph Smith Junior lately. Maybe those thoughts will sometime coalesce into a full entry. Basically, the Mormons claim that even under threat of death he maintained that the Book of Mormon was authentic. This, to me, parallels the claim sometimes used to support Christianity that those who just made something up will not die for it.
However, it seems to me that we often cling to lies most strongly. Furthermore, if someone comes up with a lie and promulgates it because the believe very strongly that it will help people, I can very easily imagine them dying for it. That could have been the case with Joseph Smith Junior, but it also (any other evidence aside) could have been the case with Jesus or the Apostles. So, to me, the "people don't die for things that aren't true" argument doesn't make sense, because people will die for something they consider more important than their own lives, whether true or not.
This is just one way that LDS claims about the reliability of Joseph Smith Junior parallel orthodox Christian claims about Christ or the Apostles. The only difference is that there are many more contemporary sources about Joseph Smith Junior. Maybe if I get to a point where his reliability is a burning question, I will dig into those sources more and see what I find out.
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That's a good catch. I do find that we Christians find ourselves in that place many times: defending ourselves with the same logic we mock in our detractors. (Such as Islamic radicals or those drinking purple Kool-Aid, though, admittedly, they aren't the first-hand witnesses of the sort you are discussing.)
ReplyDeleteI think, in Joseph Smith's position (of what little I know of it), I could be willing to die for something I made up. (Particularly if I reveled in the control it gained me, or something like that. I don't mean to slander here: I'm simply trying to understand what *could* have happened *if* he was making things up.) I think it would be far more difficult to find those willing to die for something they knew I made up.
Interesting point about dying for something someone else made up.
ReplyDeleteI think there were other LDS martyrs too, although I don't know enough right now to verify that (apart from Hiram, who was with Joseph Smith Jr., but who would have had a stake in J. S. Jr.'s teaching too...).