{"id":3777,"date":"2016-04-13T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T14:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3777"},"modified":"2016-04-18T23:39:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T05:39:47","slug":"ces-reply-view-of-the-hebrews-the-thrilling-conclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-view-of-the-hebrews-the-thrilling-conclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: View of the Hebrews &#8211; The Thrilling Conclusion!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is an excerpt from &#8220;A Reply from a Former CES Employee.&#8221; The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CESReply.pdf\" target=\"_self\" class=\"emd_dl_red_darker\" download>Download CES Reply<\/a><\/div>    <style>            \r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker {\r\n        -moz-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        -webkit-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #f24537), color-stop(1, #c62d1f) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #f24537 5%, #c62d1f 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#f24537', endColorstr='#c62d1f');\r\n        background-color:#f24537;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topleft:0px;\r\n        border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topright:0px;\r\n        border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomright:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomleft:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        text-indent:0;\r\n        border:1px solid #d02718;\r\n        display:inline-block;\r\n        color:#ffffff !important;\r\n        font-family:Georgia;\r\n        font-size:15px;\r\n        font-weight:bold;\r\n        font-style:normal;\r\n        height:41px;\r\n        line-height:41px;\r\n        width:200px;\r\n        text-decoration:none;\r\n        text-align:center;\r\n        text-shadow:1px 1px 0px #810e05;\r\n    }\r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker:hover {\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #c62d1f), color-stop(1, #f24537) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #c62d1f 5%, #f24537 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#c62d1f', endColorstr='#f24537');\r\n        background-color:#c62d1f;\r\n    }.emd_dl_red_darker:active {\r\n        position:relative;\r\n        top:1px;\r\n    }<\/style>\n<p>This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells&#8217; &#8220;Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony.&#8221;\u00a0<span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy&#8217;s words are in green, the color of life,<\/span>\u00a0while mine are in black, the color of darkness.<\/p>\n<p>________<\/p>\n<p>This would be a good time to offer a view on <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i> from my favorite unofficial apologist, Hugh Nibley, once again in fiery red:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">&#8220;If someone will show me how to draw a circle,&#8221; cries the youthful Joseph Smith, &#8220;I will make you a fine Swiss watch!&#8221; So Joachim or Anselm or Ethan Smith or Rabelais or somebody takes a stick and draws a circle in the sand, and forthwith the adroit and wily Joseph turns out a beautiful running mechanism that tells perfect time! This is not an exaggeration. The Book of Mormon in structure and design is every bit as complicated, involved, and ingenious as the works of a Swiss watch, and withal just as smoothly running. . . . The writer of that book brought together thousands of ideas and events and knit them together in a most marvelous unity. Yet the critics like to think they have explained the Book of Mormon completely if they can just discover where Joseph Smith <i>might<\/i> have got <i>one<\/i> of his ideas or expressions!&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>(Right on, Hugh. Testify, brother!)<\/p>\n<p>As a personal addendum, I offer my own experience.<\/p>\n<p>I have written an \u2013 as of now \u2013 unpublished young adult novel titled \u201cGods, Monsters, and Jeff Downey,\u201d which incorporates elements of Greek mythology and places them in a modern setting which directly corresponds to the area in Calabasas, California, where I went to high school. If you read Greek mythology, you will easily recognize where I\u2019ve found many of my ideas, and if you\u2019re even remotely familiar with the geography of where I grew up, every locale in the book will produce an instant flash of recognition.<\/p>\n<p>No such flashes of recognition take place in reading <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i> in comparison to the Book of Mormon. Ethan Smith looks at ancient America and, while both books share some commonalities with regard to acknowledgment of widely accepted historical facts, <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i> reaches vastly different conclusions than anything found in the B of M text, which makes no sense at all if this was one of Joseph\u2019s primary sources of inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>But just for the sake of argument, I want to hypothetically concede your point and imagine that Joseph did sit down with <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i> as he was preparing to fabricate an ancient American record. Even if this were the case, the act of imagination necessary to produce the Book of Mormon with <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i> as a source would be just as arduous a task as writing the whole thing from scratch. There are plenty of people who are familiar with both Greek mythology and Calabasas geography, yet that familiarity does not qualify them to write a young adult novel about them. And if any of them were able enough writers to try their hand at writing a book incorporating both those elements, there is an almost-zero percent chance that what they would produce would bear anything but the most cursory resemblance to \u201cGods, Monsters, and Jeff Downey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sure, you could expect to see Zeus and Prometheus and Mulholland Drive in both books, as such elements are common knowledge of people familiar with Greece and\/or Calabasas, but the events, characters, and language would be entirely different. And the differences would be even greater if someone with that knowledge were writing an essay about Greek mythology as taught at Calabasas High School as opposed to a young adult fantasy novel. <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i> and the Book of Mormon are two vastly different kinds of books, and the similarities between the two, beyond a recognition of commonly accepted biblical and ancient American history, simply aren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Reverend Ethan Smith was the author of View of the Hebrews. Ethan Smith was a pastor in Poultney, Vermont when he wrote and published the book. Oliver Cowdery \u2013 also a Poultney, Vermont resident \u2013 was a member of Ethan\u2019s congregation during this time and before he went to New York to join his cousin (third cousins) Joseph Smith. As you know, Oliver Cowdery played an instrumental role in bringing forth the Book of Mormon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So you\u2019ve proven that Joseph could have seen <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i> prior to the production of the Book of Mormon. This merits a shrug of the shoulders and nothing else. Since the Book of Mormon text itself bears only the most cursory resemblance\u00a0to <i>View of the Hebrews<\/i>, it doesn\u2019t matter at all whether or not Joseph or Oliver had seen it before 1830. Certainly Joseph was at least passingly familiar with the text later in life, as he cites it as evidence for the Book of Mormon\u2019s authenticity \u2013 again, an odd thing for a supposed plagiarist of that material to do. Nobody in Joseph\u2019s lifetime thought the two texts were similar enough to merit any accusation of plagiarism, and nobody who spends even an hour with either text can plausibly claim that one was derived from the other.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">LDS General Authority and scholar Elder B.H. Roberts privately researched the link between the Book of Mormon, the View of the Hebrews, Joseph\u2019s father having the same dream in 1811 as Lehi\u2019s dream, etc. that were available to Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris and others before the publication of the Book of Mormon. Elder Roberts\u2019 private research was meant only for the eyes of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve and was never intended to be available to the public. Roberts\u2019 work was later published in 1985 as Studies of the Book of Mormon. At the conclusion of his research, Elder B.H. Roberts came to the following conclusion:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/13\/ces-reply-view-of-the-hebrews-the-thrilling-conclusion\/bh\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3778\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3778\" src=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/BH.png\" alt=\"BH\" width=\"1054\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>No, he didn\u2019t come to that conclusion. In a letter to his fellow church leaders with reference to the book, Roberts said, \u201cLet me say once and for all, so as to avoid what might otherwise call for repeated explanation, that what is herein set forth <i>does not represent any conclusions of mine<\/i>.\u201d [Emphasis added.] The entire book, including the quote you provide, is written in the voice of a straw man critic he created, and these aren\u2019t arguments he, himself, agreed with in real life.<\/p>\n<p>Elder Roberts was a firm believer in the historicity and divine nature of the Book of Mormon throughout his life, and he prepared this comparison as a \u201cdevil\u2019s advocate\u201d sort of brief on the best arguments that critics of the Book of Mormon would be able to muster. And, overall, they\u2019re pretty flimsy.<\/p>\n<p>To cite him without offering that context is to defame a good and faithful man and attribute opinions to him that were often diametrically opposed to what he actually believed.<\/p>\n<p><em>Tomorrow: The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<em>Thisis an excerpt from \"A Reply from a Former CES Employee.\" The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em>This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells' \"Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony.\"\u00a0<span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy's words are in green, the color of life,<\/span>\u00a0while mine are in black, the color of darkness.________This  ... <a title=\"CES Reply: View of the Hebrews &#8211; The Thrilling Conclusion!\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-view-of-the-hebrews-the-thrilling-conclusion\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about CES Reply: View of the Hebrews &#8211; The Thrilling Conclusion!\">Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3777"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3805,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions\/3805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}