Mormon Heretic

I don’t ever think I’ve done 2 posts in one day before, but I want to address this other issue that we have been discussing in the Strangite post.  I’d like to discuss both Biblical and Book of Mormon archaeology.  Most people believe the Bible is on solid archaeological footing, but that isn’t actually true.  Many books have questionable authorship, and many places remain unidentified.  In a previous post, I discussed Questions about the Exodus: there isn’t a shred of evidence that it actually happened.  During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

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Sorry there was no post last week.  I had planned to put this one up, but this has turned out to be one of my longest posts since my Priesthood Ban post.  This post is over 6000 words (14 pages), so be forewarned.  I’ve combined three different videos, so that’s why it took so long.  I’ll color code these quotes so you know which videos these quotes come from.   The videos are Science of the Exodus, by National Geographic; Exodus Decoded, by Simcha Jacobovici; and Exodus Revealed, by Discovery Media Group.

What I found interesting was the fact that there were many similarities.  The same experts and evidence often appeared in multiple videos, yet often different conclusions were provided.  It reminds me of the debate concerning Book of Mormon evidence.

During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

For more than 1700 years, Christians have been looking for Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the 10 Commandments.  Constantine’s mother, Helena was probably the first Christian in search of Christian artifacts in the 4^th century.  Read more…

Today begins is an interesting week of Holy Days:  Palm Sunday, Passover, and Easter.  Today is Palm Sunday.  Passover begins Monday night at sunset, and of course Easter is next Sunday.  I thought I’d do a post which ties all of these related holidays (or stated better–Holy Days) together.

Palm Sunday

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Dr. Carole Fontaine of the Andover Newton Theological School said, “Archeologists often find themselves hooted and hollered out of town, when they first suggest things like, ‘I’ve found Troy, or look, we’ve found Sodom and Gomorrah.’  But history has shown that in fact, the more you dig, the more you find.  It’s amazing how accurate the Bible sometimes turns out to be.”

This quote comes from an episode of History’s Mysteries: Sodom and Gomorrah.  It was originally aired in 2000 on the History Channel.  Read more…

I finally got around to one of my requests!  Tara and I have been discussing several topics, such as the Priesthood Ban, Polygamy, and Abraham, and the story of Balaam always seems to come up.  She takes the position that Balaam is a fallen prophet, but I think he never was a prophet.  Here’s my case.  What do you think?

Balaam has to be one of the most intriguing characters in the Bible.  He is one of only 7 gentile prophets mentioned in the Bible.  The others are Beor (Balaam’s father), Job and his 4 friends.  My favorite part of the story of Balaam is the talking donkey–it is the only place where an animal speaks (unless you count the serpent in the Garden of Eden.)   Ascertaining Balaam’s character can be a bit of a challenge.  On the one hand, the story of Balaam in Numbers 22-24  says the he not only talked with God, but a destroying angel appears to prevent him from cursing Israel.  On the other hand, he is referred to as “the wicked one” in Revelations.  So which is he?

Let’s get some background and a brief synopsis of the story of Balaam.

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The 8th Article of Faith for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints states:

8 We believe the ^aBible to be the ^bword of God as far as it is translated ^ccorrectly;

This has to be one of the most oft-quoted articles of faith by members of the LDS church.  In one of my previous posts on Scripture Literalism, the comments referred to Biblical inerrancy and literalism.  Some evangelicals believe that the Bible is both inerrant and literal, and take great issue with the Mormon stance on the Bible.  They don’t believe there are any mistranslations, and that every word in the Bible was spoken by God.  Many of these people discount any contradictions in the Bible.

The Documentary Hypothesis is a theory that seems to identify at least four different authors/editors of the first five books in the Bible (also called the Torah in Judaism, or the Pentateuch.)  I think many Mormons would find great agreement with the Documentary Hypothesis, though they might not agree with every part of the theory.

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I’ve been talking about doing a post about Abraham for a long time. People often reference Abraham when talking about things like Joshua’s Unholy War, the Priesthood Ban, or polygamy. Usually the reference is to the sacrifice of Isaac.

So, this post is to serve two purposes: (1) to show some different perceptions about the sacrifice of Isaac, (as well as some other strange stories of Abraham), and (2) to introduce some new information from Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and archaeological scholars. I’ve had fun learning about it, and hope you do to. While I believe Abraham is a prophet, I find some things that Abraham did as troubling, and I’ll point them out below.

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In my wanderings across the bloggernacle, I’ve seen a few comments saying, “wouldn’t it be nice to go to church online?”

Well, for those of you who desire to join in an online Sunday School class, a friend of mine started a website a few years ago called LDS Sunday School.  He was good at updating it a few years ago, but has been having a hard time updating it.  It is a wiki, similar to a Wikipedia, so anybody can edit so long as they register at the site.

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My little boy is in kindergarten. Along with the normal Christmas decorations he has been working on, he came home with a menorah, the candle Jews use to celebrate Hanukkah. (Now that I’m finally out of school myself, I plan to post more frequently–it was a tough semester.)

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In my quest to find out things that aren’t generally well known, I came across a DVD called Mystery of the Three Kings by Questar Entertainment.  I thought it brings up some really interesting points, some which really add to the Biblical story, while some details are a little strange.  Here are some of the interesting things I took from the video.

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Many critics of the Book of Mormon claim there is no archeologyical evidence.  The Bible is assumed to be completely true.  MSNBC has a link about a PBS show about archeaology of Bible that recently appeared on Nova. 

William Dever, from the University of Arizona, is one of my favorite scholars.  Let me quote from the PBS Article: Read more…

I came across this article in Newsweek, and archaeologists may have discovered King Solomon’s mine.  This could be a major discovery, and add real evidence to the Biblical references to King Solomon.

I just finished a book called “DNA & Tradition”, by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman.  The book discusses evidence of Hebrew DNA, and talks about the science and religion of Judaism.  As part of the discussion, I learned these interesting facts.

The oldest diaspora communities are in Assyria, later conquered by Babylonia (now modern-day Iraq) and Persia (now modern day Iran). They have been there for 2000-2500 years.

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