Robert writes home #106 15 Dec 1997 essay on Evidences of the translation of the Book of Mormon
15 Dec. 1997
Dear Mother,
I hope this finds you well.
Today I went to sacrament meeting in the Chowchilla branch. AS the high counselor assigned to that unit and I try to attend twice a month so as to keep in touch and fulfill the duties of my assignment. Today, they had two new sister missionaries assigned to them to replace the elders who were transferred. The Branch Pres. asked them to introduce themselves and bear their testimonies in sacrament meeting. I talked to them afterward and asked them where they were from. One said she was from Pennsylvania. When she talked, she sounded like friend of Megan's from Penn. that she met at Ricks, who came for her wedding and then went directly to the MTC, I asked her if she knew Meg's friend...thinking she wouldn't. She said, "Yes...she is from my stake. Our families used to get together and play basketball together." I explained how I came to be acquainted through Megan and told her about her being on a mission in the Oakland area. She was really happy to hear about her.
There was an older couple, also recently assigned to the Chowchilla branch that I met for the first time today. He told me that they were from Pueblo, Colorado. So I asked him if he knew a couple who went to dental school with us in Oregon who I knew were from Pueblo. He said, "Oh yes, he is our stake patriarch." So, how's that of it being a "Small world?"
They were Elder and Sister Melonas. When I told him that my name was Miller, he told me that his name meant Miller in Greek...which seemed like an interesting coincidence to me.
Megan and Travis came over for Thanksgiving. That was fun. I'm having my seminary class help me make a Liahona for decoration of our room since we're studying the Book of Mormon. I bought a plastic "Hamster exercise ball" from Walmart. It's one of those plastic balls that the hamster gets inside of and runs spinning it around. I spray painted it bronze and made a spindle out of a coat hanger and cardboard pointer. Now we're going to decorate the outside with gold braid. I also mounted a play piece from a chess set (a bishop) on top of the spindle. It's starting to look good. Love,
Millers
PS another essay:
Given the fact that you can only know, absolutely, that the Book of Mormon is true by the witness of the Holy Ghost, and that you can't prove it by scientific process, there are some intriguing substantiating evidences. I sometimes think that I would like to talk to a group of non-members who believed that the book was a "Figment of Joseph Smith's imagination." That he was solely responsible for the information in it. There are a few things I would challenge them to explain away.
For example, how did a Vermont farm boy, living at a time when there was no radio, TV, Internet...where school was taught by itinerant teachers who often lived with families and taught in a living room, or a one room schoolhouse, if they were luck, teaching kids as they were able to attend, which was limited by lack of transportation, weather conditions, and being needed to work the family farm. Their attendance was hit or miss and I imagine that they focused on the basic three R's. I don't think they spent much time on anthropology, or world geography, or oceanography, or middle eastern literature and customs. You didn't have to have much education to be a teacher in those days. You just needed to know more than the students. So I don't think the teachers knew any of that other stuff to teach the kids.
I can imagine one of those illiterate, poor backwoods, farm boys trying to dream up a story to write about people in the Jerusalem area. How would he know anything about customs and lifestyle patterns. When you had to walk or ride a horse everywhere you went. I can't imagine him going far from home. So how would he be exposed to other cultures and customs? He would only know his culture. So how do you explain the fact that when educated experts in the field of mid-eastern cultures analyze it the more consistent it appears?
When I was a kid I used to be alittle embarrassed that it didn't have a better story line and plot and got bogged down with quoting Isaiah. I guess I thought it would have greater reader appeal if it were an exciting novel like Dickens or Zane Grey would have written. When Lehi named the river and valley that they camped at first after Laman and Lemuel and wrote those lines about...Oh that you would be like this valley, strong and immovable in the gospel. And Oh that you would be like this river forever flowing into the fountain of righteousness...I thought that sounded like a pretty square attempt at being poetic. I liked my poetry like Ogden Hash wrote: example, "Oh glorious ant illustrious. You make your work industrious...So what, Would you be calm and placid...If your stomach were full of formic acid."
It's my understanding that the experts say that the example by Lehi was a form of writing that was common in Semitic literature in that day. They wrote in couplets (couples or two thoughts or lines in a poem.) called "Quasids". It was common for the sheikhs (tribal leaders) to become poet when they traveled and compare people in their group to the physical features of the landscape. What are the odds that Joseph Smith, with his cumulative total of a third grade education, who didn't even know how to punctuate the Book of Mormon when he translated it? ...The typesetter at the printer added the punctuation...would know anything about what kind of poetry was popular in Arabia at 600 BC?
Also, how many of you, who live in this enlightened age, know whether the ocean currents in the Pacific rotate clockwise of counter clockwise?
It is reported by some people close to Joseph Smith that he said when asked about Lehi's trip, that they sailed in a SE direction from the Arabian Peninsula and landed in the area of what is now northern Chile or Southern Peru. The Ocean Currents in the Pacific hemisphere rotate counter clockwise in the southern hemisphere and clockwise in the northern hemisphere. This would make the current swing eat to west, going just south of Australia and hitting South America at about Chile or Peru. When I was Joseph's age, if I had been writing that story and you would have asked me how to get from Arabia to S. America I would have lined the shortest route across the Atlantic to Brazil, but it wouldn't have worked, because I would have been going against the currents. I don't think he knew anything about those currents. He din't have to. He wasn't writing the story he was only translating what someone who knew what had happened had written.
Which brings me to another point. A few years back, after computers had come of age, some graduate students did a project on something they called "Word Prints" There premise was that just s we have finger prints that are unique, we also speak with a unique patter of word usage that we can be identified with. They took a group of commonly used words and charted the way each individual used them and found when they fed a persons writing into the computer the computer would come up with a "word print" that would be unique for that person. Fro example, they could identify Shakespeare's writing by his word print without having his signature on it.
What do you think they found when they ran the Book of Mormon through the process?
They found several different word prints...and none of them were Joseph Smith's word print. That's because he didn't write any of it. Guys like Mormon, Moroni, Jared, etc. wrote it.
Now I know this doesn't give proof positive that the Book of Mormon is authentic, only the Holy Ghost can do that... but it sure seems to me like strong substantiation for the probability of it being true...
One other thing used to bother me. It talks about them raising grain in an area that is near the equator...I think non believers reading it would think that Joseph just din't know better and wrote the story with them raising temperate climate crops, (grain) in a tropical climate.
Actually, Peru has a unique topography and climate. Most of the ruins are located in basins in the Andes mountains at elevations of 4,000 to 14,000 ft. The elevation cools the climate to that of a temperate climate that gets frost often. Where they still raise grain and potatoes. I doubt if Joseph knew that.
I know that the Book of Mormon is authentic...not by the proofs but by the witness of the Holy Ghost.
Dear Mother,
I hope this finds you well.
Today I went to sacrament meeting in the Chowchilla branch. AS the high counselor assigned to that unit and I try to attend twice a month so as to keep in touch and fulfill the duties of my assignment. Today, they had two new sister missionaries assigned to them to replace the elders who were transferred. The Branch Pres. asked them to introduce themselves and bear their testimonies in sacrament meeting. I talked to them afterward and asked them where they were from. One said she was from Pennsylvania. When she talked, she sounded like friend of Megan's from Penn. that she met at Ricks, who came for her wedding and then went directly to the MTC, I asked her if she knew Meg's friend...thinking she wouldn't. She said, "Yes...she is from my stake. Our families used to get together and play basketball together." I explained how I came to be acquainted through Megan and told her about her being on a mission in the Oakland area. She was really happy to hear about her.
There was an older couple, also recently assigned to the Chowchilla branch that I met for the first time today. He told me that they were from Pueblo, Colorado. So I asked him if he knew a couple who went to dental school with us in Oregon who I knew were from Pueblo. He said, "Oh yes, he is our stake patriarch." So, how's that of it being a "Small world?"
They were Elder and Sister Melonas. When I told him that my name was Miller, he told me that his name meant Miller in Greek...which seemed like an interesting coincidence to me.
Megan and Travis came over for Thanksgiving. That was fun. I'm having my seminary class help me make a Liahona for decoration of our room since we're studying the Book of Mormon. I bought a plastic "Hamster exercise ball" from Walmart. It's one of those plastic balls that the hamster gets inside of and runs spinning it around. I spray painted it bronze and made a spindle out of a coat hanger and cardboard pointer. Now we're going to decorate the outside with gold braid. I also mounted a play piece from a chess set (a bishop) on top of the spindle. It's starting to look good. Love,
Millers
PS another essay:
Given the fact that you can only know, absolutely, that the Book of Mormon is true by the witness of the Holy Ghost, and that you can't prove it by scientific process, there are some intriguing substantiating evidences. I sometimes think that I would like to talk to a group of non-members who believed that the book was a "Figment of Joseph Smith's imagination." That he was solely responsible for the information in it. There are a few things I would challenge them to explain away.
For example, how did a Vermont farm boy, living at a time when there was no radio, TV, Internet...where school was taught by itinerant teachers who often lived with families and taught in a living room, or a one room schoolhouse, if they were luck, teaching kids as they were able to attend, which was limited by lack of transportation, weather conditions, and being needed to work the family farm. Their attendance was hit or miss and I imagine that they focused on the basic three R's. I don't think they spent much time on anthropology, or world geography, or oceanography, or middle eastern literature and customs. You didn't have to have much education to be a teacher in those days. You just needed to know more than the students. So I don't think the teachers knew any of that other stuff to teach the kids.
I can imagine one of those illiterate, poor backwoods, farm boys trying to dream up a story to write about people in the Jerusalem area. How would he know anything about customs and lifestyle patterns. When you had to walk or ride a horse everywhere you went. I can't imagine him going far from home. So how would he be exposed to other cultures and customs? He would only know his culture. So how do you explain the fact that when educated experts in the field of mid-eastern cultures analyze it the more consistent it appears?
When I was a kid I used to be alittle embarrassed that it didn't have a better story line and plot and got bogged down with quoting Isaiah. I guess I thought it would have greater reader appeal if it were an exciting novel like Dickens or Zane Grey would have written. When Lehi named the river and valley that they camped at first after Laman and Lemuel and wrote those lines about...Oh that you would be like this valley, strong and immovable in the gospel. And Oh that you would be like this river forever flowing into the fountain of righteousness...I thought that sounded like a pretty square attempt at being poetic. I liked my poetry like Ogden Hash wrote: example, "Oh glorious ant illustrious. You make your work industrious...So what, Would you be calm and placid...If your stomach were full of formic acid."
It's my understanding that the experts say that the example by Lehi was a form of writing that was common in Semitic literature in that day. They wrote in couplets (couples or two thoughts or lines in a poem.) called "Quasids". It was common for the sheikhs (tribal leaders) to become poet when they traveled and compare people in their group to the physical features of the landscape. What are the odds that Joseph Smith, with his cumulative total of a third grade education, who didn't even know how to punctuate the Book of Mormon when he translated it? ...The typesetter at the printer added the punctuation...would know anything about what kind of poetry was popular in Arabia at 600 BC?
Also, how many of you, who live in this enlightened age, know whether the ocean currents in the Pacific rotate clockwise of counter clockwise?
It is reported by some people close to Joseph Smith that he said when asked about Lehi's trip, that they sailed in a SE direction from the Arabian Peninsula and landed in the area of what is now northern Chile or Southern Peru. The Ocean Currents in the Pacific hemisphere rotate counter clockwise in the southern hemisphere and clockwise in the northern hemisphere. This would make the current swing eat to west, going just south of Australia and hitting South America at about Chile or Peru. When I was Joseph's age, if I had been writing that story and you would have asked me how to get from Arabia to S. America I would have lined the shortest route across the Atlantic to Brazil, but it wouldn't have worked, because I would have been going against the currents. I don't think he knew anything about those currents. He din't have to. He wasn't writing the story he was only translating what someone who knew what had happened had written.
Which brings me to another point. A few years back, after computers had come of age, some graduate students did a project on something they called "Word Prints" There premise was that just s we have finger prints that are unique, we also speak with a unique patter of word usage that we can be identified with. They took a group of commonly used words and charted the way each individual used them and found when they fed a persons writing into the computer the computer would come up with a "word print" that would be unique for that person. Fro example, they could identify Shakespeare's writing by his word print without having his signature on it.
What do you think they found when they ran the Book of Mormon through the process?
They found several different word prints...and none of them were Joseph Smith's word print. That's because he didn't write any of it. Guys like Mormon, Moroni, Jared, etc. wrote it.
Now I know this doesn't give proof positive that the Book of Mormon is authentic, only the Holy Ghost can do that... but it sure seems to me like strong substantiation for the probability of it being true...
One other thing used to bother me. It talks about them raising grain in an area that is near the equator...I think non believers reading it would think that Joseph just din't know better and wrote the story with them raising temperate climate crops, (grain) in a tropical climate.
Actually, Peru has a unique topography and climate. Most of the ruins are located in basins in the Andes mountains at elevations of 4,000 to 14,000 ft. The elevation cools the climate to that of a temperate climate that gets frost often. Where they still raise grain and potatoes. I doubt if Joseph knew that.
I know that the Book of Mormon is authentic...not by the proofs but by the witness of the Holy Ghost.
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