Why Dont Christians Accept the Book of Mormon as Valid? (Jesus, Earth)

[Melissa G]

Originally Posted by DeepShadow

Really? Can we start an official debate, then?

Soon as I have the time, which won't be for a few days.

Melissa G

[DeepShadow]

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

Chiastic structure is used several times in the Bible. If a person were to set out to write a book similar to the Bible, I assume they'd use the Bible as a guide.

The Bible's longest chiasmus is less than a page. The longest I know if in the Book of Mormon is the entire book of First Nephi--a megachiasmus. Most Biblical chiasm have been mutilated by translation. None of the original chiasm found in the Book of Mormon reflect these distortions. Biblical chiasmus are small poetic inserts, not usually instructional. Book of Mormon chiasmus are generally instructional, and contain colophons and other structures that are not present in Biblical chiasmus.

Using Biblical chiasmus as a guide to make Book of Mormon megachiasmus is much like using extrapolating a racecar working only from a matchbox version. It's got the overall structure in the most general sense, and it can even suggest the role of some of the parts that are nonfunctional in the smaller version. But you'd have to infer or extrapolate far more than 90% of the material to make it work.

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

What? When do you think chiasmic structure was "discovered", then? It was heavily used in Latin poetry, so I think it was known just a bit before Smith.

Megachiasmus were unknown before Smith.

But to go with your argument for a moment, if chiasmatic structure implies divine inspiration (as long as the work in question was written while "nobody at the time knew about" the chiasmatic form... which occurred some time between John Smith putting the Book of Mormon to paper and present day, apparently), then we can assume that Shakespeare (and according to Wikipedia, Seneca, Cicero and Pliny the Younger as well) was similarily inspired by the divine, and that his works are on par with the Book of Mormon, correct?

Soy already corrected you; he never said that chiasm implies divine inspiration. But great straw man fallacy.

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

And that contribute to the overall "feel" of the text.

On the contrary, the narrative flow has to be interrupted on several occasions to maintain the chiastic structure.

I don't see why it would be impossible for a person to inadvertently fall into this form just by trying to give their work the same "feel" as the Bible.

Inadvertantly--you mean unconsciously? You think that someone might unconsciously create megachiasmus because they were trying to imitate the Bible...which has no megachiasmus? Is that really what you are saying?

There have been cases of unconscious poetry, even unconscious chiasmus. The largest accidental poem on record (as per Boyd's Book of Odd Facts) is "and so no force, however great, can stretch a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line which shall be absolutely straight." It's a rhyming chiasmus, you might notice, and it's perfect in meter and rhyme. It's also pretty darn short, as far as poems or chiasmus go. If the Book of Mormon poetry was accidental, then somebody better call Guinness.

There is a precedent, however. A Christian writer named Og Mandino wrote a book called The Greatest Saleman in the World, wherein he styles ten chapters as "scrolls" written in Biblical times by an ancient sales expert. Those "scrolls" contain the rudiments of chiasmus...but it falls apart quite readily. Mandino lapses back and forth between chiasmus and parallelism and leaves the central points (the most important in ancient chiasmus) totally empty, instead putting in his own teachings in more modern prose.

Are you really saying that Joseph Smith cranked out multiple megachiasmus accidentally, perfect in form and structure? Wow. How do you think he know to leave chiasmus out of the Book of Ether? How do you think he kept it out of his revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, except when he was revealing the original text of John 1? How did he restrict the most complex megachisamus to the Small Plates of Nephi, to be consistent with his story that there were fewer translators to go through there? You really think he did all of that accidentally?

And we're not just talking about chiasmus when we talk about poetry. What about Lehi's couplet in 1 Nephi 2: 9-10, which just happens to fit all six requirements for Bedoin poetry? How did Joseph Smith know about Quellenlieder poems at a time when the leading authorities on Arabic writings said they had no poems?

But when do you say people "discovered" this structure in the Bible?

...I don't see your point. Please clarify.

[DeepShadow]

Originally Posted by Melissa G

Soon as I have the time, which won't be for a few days.

Melissa G

Excellent! Then I shall book the arena.

[SoyLeche]

Originally Posted by DeepShadow

Are you really saying that Joseph Smith cranked out multiple megachiasmus accidentally, perfect in form and structure? Wow. How do you think he know to leave chiasmus out of the Book of Ether? How do you think he kept it out of his revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, except when he was revealing the original text of John 1? How did he restrict the most complex megachisamus to the Small Plates of Nephi, to be consistent with his story that there were fewer translators to go through there? You really think he did all of that accidentally?

He would have to realize that since much of the "connecting" text between the large and small plates (Jarom, Omni, etc) was authored by people who didn't really care about what they were writing and wouldn't have bothered to add chisams to the text. According to what you said in your BoM quiz thread there aren't any, which makes sense.

Ol' Joe did a pretty thorough job, doncha think?

BTW, I mentioned that I have been shown a chiasm that pretty much spans the book of Mosiah, but I can't find the outline of it. I have it marked, but not very well. I'll keep trying to find the information I have on it.

[SoyLeche]

Originally Posted by SoyLeche

BTW, I mentioned that I have been shown a chiasm that pretty much spans the book of Mosiah, but I can't find the outline of it. I have it marked, but not very well. I'll keep trying to find the information I have on it.

Well, that was quick. Jeff Lindsay mentions it: Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon

About a third of the way down the page.

[SoyLeche]

If anyone is interested, Alma 36 is probably the easiest to see and one of the most beautiful chiasms in the BoM. The structure really emphasizes what Alma was trying to teach here.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by 9-10ths_Penguin

But when do you say people "discovered" this structure in the Bible?

Chiasms in the Bible appear to have been noted for the first time by three 19th century theologians: Robert Lowth, John Jebb and John Forbes. Of these three, only Jebb paid much attention to chiasms, at least initially, the other two focusing primarily on poetic imagery and direct parallelisms. In 1854, however, John Forbes completed an in-depth study of this ancient literary form, publishing his findings. From about this time forward, scholars began to be more widely aware of its presence in the Bible. A number of other researchers continued studying chiasmic forms in the years immediately following, and by about 1860, their true significance was finally recognized.