some documents please

[qman]

Greets all.

I'm looking for Book of Mormon manuscript evidence.

Can you point me to specific webpages, books, etc that have copies of the source document(s) that the Book of Mormon was taken from that I can download, photocopy, read and translate to verify the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and the adequacy of its translation?

I'm no Joseph S, but this is all I'm interested in. If you can't help me, I'll try elsewhere.

Thanx

[Trout]

Greets all.

I'm looking for Book of Mormon manuscript evidence.

Can you point me to specific webpages, books, etc that have copies of the source document(s) that the Book of Mormon was taken from that I can download, photocopy, read and translate to verify the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and the adequacy of its translation?

I'm no Joseph S, but this is all I'm interested in. If you can't help me, I'll try elsewhere.

Thanx

Greetings qman :hi:

I'm a little confused about your request, are you looking for an online 1830 BOM, or are you looking for photocopies of the gold plates?

1830 BOM can be found here (www.utlm.org)

[John Powell]

JOHN MORMON:
While you're at it, Qman, why don't you ask to see the ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS of the Bible to make sure they've been faithfully copied.

If you want to go even further back, why don't you ask God for His notes to make sure that the prophets really wrote down what He had inspired them to write down.

Or, you could bypass this hopeless endeavor and ask God whether what we have in the Bible and the Book of Mormon is His word and have faith in what He inspires you to believe.

John Powell

[qman]

If the Book of Mormon was only taken from gold plates, please refer me to copies, photocopties, etc of these plates. If any other document, tablet, etc was used, I’d like to see that as well. It can be copies of copies of copies, that's fine. Not interested in translations, only in manuscript evidence/source material.

Much appreciated.

[John Powell]

If the Book of Mormon was only taken from gold plates, please refer me to copies, photocopties, etc of these plates. If any other document, tablet, etc was used, I’d like to see that as well. It can be copies of copies of copies, that's fine. Not interested in translations, only in manuscript evidence/source material.

Much appreciated.


JOHN MORMON (my former believing self):
I can't help you there, Qman. The angel took them. You may have to wait until you die to see them.

I'm like you, though, I would like to see the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the angels protecting them, and Noah's Ark, and the two tablets of Moses, and the manna, and the "writing on the wall" of Belshazzar, and the true cross and the holy grail, and a lot of other things mentioned in the scriptures.

Wouldn't you?

However, do you really need to see them before you'll believe the Bible is true?

If no, then do you really need to see the golden plates to believe the Book of Mormon is true?

John Powell
A former believer in Mormonism.
Now an athe-ist or strong atheist

[qman]

Can any Later Day Saints provide me with references via my request?

I’m a student of ancient languages, literature, history, and archaeology. In my spare time I enjoy collecting copies of tablets, manuscripts, pottery fragments etc and translating them from their respective languages, be it Egyptian, Hittite, Chaldean, Hebrew, Aztec, etc etc etc. It’s the love of learning, the challenge of solving the mystery of the translation, the thrill of seeing things most people didn’t know exist that I enjoy. I am not interested in believing or not believing anything.

[John Powell]

QMAN:
Can any Later Day Saints provide me with references via my request?


POWELL:
I seriously doubt it.

QMAN:
I’m a student of ancient languages, literature, history, and archaeology. In my spare time I enjoy collecting copies of tablets, manuscripts, pottery fragments etc and translating them from their respective languages, be it Egyptian, Hittite, Chaldean, Hebrew, Aztec, etc etc etc. It’s the love of learning, the challenge of solving the mystery of the translation, the thrill of seeing things most people didn’t know exist that I enjoy.


POWELL:
Your facade is transparent to me, Qman. It appears to me that you fully realize no one is going to supply the golden plates or even facsimiles of it to you, but you make it sound like you don't realize this, that you're a naive student of history and language who will be surprised to find this out.

Your purpose appears to be to make the point that Mormons don't have the golden plates. You could make that point without the deceptive tactics. I suggest you reconsider making your points in a more honest way in the future.

QMAN:
I am not interested in believing or not believing anything.


POWELL:
You either did not write what you really mean, Qman, or you are ignorant of what the words mean, or a liar, or a very strange person.

Do you believe anything, Qman?

Are you interested in believing anything?

John Powell

[qman]

One of my core axioms: “Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.” This is a necessary belief when it comes to the study of ancient cultures, languages, history, and texts—of any scientific pursuit. Evidence comes to light every day to challenge what we think we know. And despite the fact that I find it hard to believe so many thousands of people could be deceived into believing in a book purely conjured up from nothing, I apply a priori this necessary axiom to Mormonism regardless.



My purpose in coming to this forum was to seek insight from Mormons who’d I’d expect would want to give me the information I seek, not ex-Mormons who are already biased against it. I am tired of searching through endless webpages written to advance one or another’s religious and/or political perspectives and agendas. I don’t care about any of that. I just want to see the manuscript evidences for the Book of Mormon so I can spend the countless hours of my spare time enjoying their translation as I have countless other projects in the past including the work I helped do on the Babylonian Creation Epic, Enuma Elish. (for a great website with copies of the Akkadian tablets, their translations, the Akkadian/Sumerian language, etc, go to: http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian)



I hope I made my point in a more honest way for you and the real Mormons out there who can and want to help me. I hope the appearance I have given with this addendum concerning my purposes and thoughts will not lend readers to make assumptions about my aims based on purely speculative reading. I do not care to prove whether or not my aims are genuine or whether or not the LDS claims or genuine, I only request source documents for my own pleasure in translating, deciphering, and shedding light for myself on this book that has become beloved of so many people in the world and caught my interest as a literary work only recently.



Thank you readers for your time and patience. If all I continue to get are more attempts to draw me into religious or political worldviews and agendas instead of leads on my question, I will go elsewhere and give no more response on this forum.



To recap: I seek the source documents or manuscript evidence that was used in the compiling and translation of the Book of Mormon for my personal study. If you can help me, please reply to this thread. I am not interested in any other correspondance.

[Leroy]

qman,

They have a copy of the golden plates in the Visitor Center of the Salt Lake Temple Grounds.

Leroy

[Leroy]

They also have a rendering of the “boat unto a dish” that made the Atlantic crossing.

[John Powell]

POWELL:
I answered your questions, Qman. You did NOT answer mine.

Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you're just more unusual than I thought. Apparently, you're not particularly interested in the philosophical questions of truth, but rather the archeaology of religious artifacts and the literary value of religious scriptures.

Since you claim to be a student, implying that you're a seeker of knowledge, let me give you some. You're supporting a flawed maxim. Lack of evidence IS evidence of lack. The better maxim is: "Lack of evidence is not PROOF of lack."

John Powell

[qman]

Thanks, I'll follow the lead on the copy at the vistor's center.

What is the "boat unto a dish" thing? Is that some ancient vessel with inscriptions, hieroglyphics, pictoral characters or something that ties into the book of mormon's compilation somehow?

Found a thing on the sources of the book at: http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bom_early_problems/bomplatessourceinfo.htm

Is this generally accepted to be true? Is there any copies of any of these things left?

Also, found two things, something called Kinderbook plates? and something about book of Abraham papri. Are these part of the Book of Mormon or something else?

Any more leads?

John, you say you've answered my question...then am I correct in thinking your answer is "the angel took them". Please elaborate, I am very ignorant about Mormonism, its beliefs, history, so forth. Would a believing Mormon disagree with you saying an angel took them?

[John Powell]

QMAN:
Thanks, I'll follow the lead on the copy at the vistor's center.


POWELL:
It was given in jestful helpfulness, Qman. There are examples of artist's conceptions, but there are no authentic replicas. Perhaps you knew that.

QMAN:
What is the "boat unto a dish" thing? Is that some ancient vessel with inscriptions, hieroglyphics, pictoral characters or something that ties into the book of mormon's compilation somehow?


POWELL:
Also given in jestful helpfulness. It would be like someone making a Noah's Ark replica.

QMAN:
[I] Found a thing on the sources of the book at:
http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bom_early_problems/bomplatessourceinfo.htm

Is this generally accepted to be true? Is [sic] there any copies of any of these things left?


POWELL:
The Tanners are reliable in what they post as historical fact. It's their conclusions that Mormons disagree with.

There are no copies of the original plates.

There do appear to be notes used by Joseph Smith in his "translation" of the Book of Abraham, however.

For someone who CLAIMS to have the scholarly background you do, Qman, you make fairly youthful mistakes in your writing.

QMAN:
Also, found two things, something called Kinderbook plates? and something about book of Abraham papri. Are these part of the Book of Mormon or something else?


POWELL:
They are different.

The Kinderhook plates apparently were a fraud specifically fabricated to expose Joseph Smith. They were offered to him to translate which he promptly began doing. However, the creators later claimed they were frauds and material studies apparently support the view that they are modern plates.

I suspect Mormon apologists will either claim Joseph didn't really translate them (since he didn't finish) or that the plates are authentic, but merely CLAIMED to be frauds.

The Abraham papyri appear to be authentic Egyptian relics, but with nothing to do with Abraham. Nevertheless, Joseph had the church buy them and then "translated" them to create the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. Apparently, he figured that since no one knew Egyptian, no one could prove him wrong. Gaps in the original facsimiles appear to have been creatively completed with material elsewhere in the ancient writings or by the imagination of an artist. Theses materials were thought to have been lost in the Chicaco fire, but they resurfaced and were presented to the LDS church.

This may be the kind of thing you claim to be interested in, Qman, because you can look at the original Egyptian and Joseph's translation and compare it with modern Egyptian translations.

QMAN:
Any more leads?


POWELL:
The Tanner's site at utlm is a good place to work from. If you find ANYTHING of a factual nature that is a mistake please let me know so I can point it out to them.

QMAN:
John, you say you've answered my question...then am I correct in thinking your answer is "the angel took them". Please elaborate, I am very ignorant about Mormonism, its beliefs, history, so forth. Would a believing Mormon disagree with you saying an angel took them?


POWELL:
Yes, that's my "JOHN MORMON" answer, "the angel took them."

My answer is in accordance with what I used to believe. If a believing Mormon disagreed with me then I would gladly show him his error.

http://scriptures.lds.org/bm/jsphsmth

JOSEPH SMITH:
But by the wisdom of God, they remained safe in my hands, until I had accomplished by them what was required at my hand. When, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I delivered them up to him; and he has them in his charge until this day, being the second day of May, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight.”


POWELL:
Perhaps you will answer a question or two rather than merely ask them, Qman.

What are your positions on the existence of God and the truthfulness of the Bible?

John Powell

[qman]

Well, as I said before, I’m not interested in any other discourse in this forum…whether it be if there is truth in the Bible or the Book of Mormon or whether a god or gods exist or not. I wasn’t even interested in saying that. But I should have expected others here to seek more from me being that it is a theology forum. I suppose some of the reasons I did not encounter the obstacles I’ve found here and elsewhere when it came to Marduk, for example, in Enuma Elish is because nobody had beliefs invested in Marduk and the documents related to him as opposed to here. I am clearly in another world here in this search. You all are interested in god (whatever name you call or curse him/it/she), I am interested in ancient documents and translation. So I understand if any of you have misunderstood me or I you. I leave you all and wish you well in your pursuits. As for me, I’ve found it rather aggravating trying to find documents and such on the Book of Mormon and as my interests are being caught by new findings related to completely different subject matters, I may drop this pursuit soon and move on to others. Thank you for bearing with me those of you who doubted everything about me and those who did not.

[Bill the Cat]

John, I heard that there were a very few copies of the characters Joseph claimed to translate in the original manuscript copy (not the printer's copy) Have you heard of that?

[John Powell]

John, I heard that there were a very few copies of the characters Joseph claimed to translate in the original manuscript copy (not the printer's copy) Have you heard of that?

POWELL:
There were curious characters published with one of the editions of the Book of Mormon whose cover was colored gold (I guess they decided that was too corny to continue). I presumed they were copies of the characters from the Book of Mormon, but I never looked into it. Perhaps they were merely an artist's conception.

The materials with the Joseph Smith papyri have copied characters, but that's no big deal per se since the originals are also there to compare with. What is a bigger deal is that, apparently, gaps in the original Egyptian facsimiles were filled in with characters from the papyri in incorrect ways. Who would know since Egyptian was a mystery language?

John Powell