Hey guys! So as I've said many times before, the Book of Mormon is often
described as the keystone of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
If you remove that keystone, the rest of our truth claims come
tumbling down, thus the Book of Mormon has been the target of antagonists for
almost 200 years now. In this series we've addressed many of
those critical arguments but one thing is for sure:
If Joseph was a fraud, if he just made the Book of Mormon up,
in many instances, he was an extremely lucky guesser.
And in this video, we're going to look at just a few examples of that. To be clear,
these things do not prove that the Book of Mormon is true.
These are just some thought-provoking details that are fun to look at. Let's begin.
You might have heard this one before but
at the beginning of the Book of Mormon, a prophet named Lehi
travels with his family to a place near the Red Sea called Nehom
where they bury the recently deceased Ishmael. Researchers have since
discovered, shockingly, an ancient burial site
right where it should be, called in hebrew, NHM.
Remember, vowels aren't written as letters in Hebrew. Even the most detailed
maps of Joseph's state did not include this location.
"I call it luck." "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck."
On a related note, just a little later in the story, Lehi's group arrives at a
place on the coast of the Arabian Peninsula
that they called Bountiful. The scriptures make several claims about
this place. There was fruit and honey, they had
access to a shoreline, but also a prominent mountain as well as cliffs.
There was wood for shipbuilding as well as metal ore for tools
and it was nearly eastward of Nahom. Keep in mind the Book of Mormon claims that
this place exists on the Arabian Peninsula. It's a gutsy
claim and miraculously once again there's at least
one candidate that checks all the boxes. Another lucky guess.
"It's incredible." One thing people made fun of for a long time was the fact that
the name Alma appears in the Book of Mormon as a
boy's name. Even as recently as 2016, Pastor Gabriel
Hughes wrote, "Alma, for whom the Book of Alma is named,
is a Hebrew name which means 'betrothed virgin.' It would not have been the name
of a man." He was obviously unaware of the
barkokova papyrus found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1960s which reads in
part, "...both of Ein Gedi and Tehinah son of
Simeon and Alma son of Judah." According to
biblereproductions.com, one of the men mentioned in this historical record is
Alma, son of Judah. This certainly provides evidence that
the name Alma was used as a male name and not exclusively female as it was
earlier assumed. Once again, Joseph catches an extremely
lucky break. The Book of Mormon talks about a group of Lamanite converts
called the Anti-nephi Lehi's who repent of their sins and bury their weapons of
war. In Alma 27-22, the Nephites say, "This land
Jershon is the land which we will give unto our brethren for an
inheritance." The Nephites arrange their armies to protect them in Jerusalem and
then two verses later, we read again, "This we will do unto our brethren that
they may inherit the land Jershon." A few verses later, the converts took
possession of the land Jershon. According to researchers at Book of
Mormon Central, "the name Jershon and the attending detail that it was a
land of "inheritance" for the Anti-Nephi Lehies is a fairly
obvious hebrew pun." The Hebrew verb, however you pronounce
that, means to take possession of or to inherit.
Quite literally then, Alma 27 depicts the Anti-Nephi Lehi's
inheriting or taking possession of the place of possession or inheritance.
"That's pretty cool, I guess." Of course, the kicker is that Joseph Smith didn't start
studying Hebrew until well after this was recorded and he never even brings
this detail up, suggesting he was never aware of it.
That's a pretty lucky guess for someone just making names up.
"You're the luckiest guy no!" "Luck ain't got nothing to do with it."
The list goes on and i've done a couple other episodes that bring up some other
fun things but you get the point. Again, these things don't prove anything,
maybe Joseph had an Arabian Bedouin neighbor who was like, "Let me tell you
about this place called Nahom." But as things start to pile up and you start
to think about the odds, it leads to some important questions. If
Joseph was a fraud, did he just get lucky or did this
uneducated farm boy have outside help? If so, who? And how?
Or maybe he's not as ignorant as we thought, maybe he's actually an extremely
well-read religious evil genius. But again, where is he getting some of
this information from and after all this super meticulous secret research,
why doesn't he ever point this stuff out as evidence for his prophetic nature?
Or could it be that there's something else going on here like maybe he was
just telling the truth? "What you have to ask
yourself is what kind of person are you are you? Are you the kind that sees signs and
sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get
lucky?" I'll let you and God figure that one out.
Check out the links in the description for more on this subject and have a
great day.