FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
User:InProgress/Website reviews/KP
- REDIRECTTemplate:Test3
| A FAIR Analysis of: MormonThink A work by author: Anonymous
|
A FAIR Analysis of MormonThink page "The Kinderhook Plates"
FAIRMORMON'S VIEW OF THE CRITICS' CONCLUSIONS
The positions that this MormonThink article appears to take are the following:
FAIRMORMON'S RESPONSE AND SUPPORTING DATA
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
Since the plates have been proven to have been manufactured in the 1800s as a hoax, how could the prophet Joseph Smith have translated a portion of these plates and say that they give an account of a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh, King of Egypt?
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
[T]he church backed off on its claims that the Kinderhook Plates were real. The LDS historians quickly changed their story and stopped defending that the plates and Joseph's translation of them were true. Now the LDS apologists say it was all a hoax, and Joseph never fell for it, and someone other than Joseph must have said that the plates tell a story of a descendant of Ham.
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
Critic's Point: Even if you don't believe that Joseph was fooled by the Kinderhook Plates in 1843, the LDS Church itself was fooled for the next one hundred and thirty years. The Kimball article [Ensign, Aug. 1981, 66-74] mentioned the Church's response each time the issue of the plates came up, but it failed to recognize that each response up to 1981 was the same, that the plates were genuine.
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
Critic's response.
Why wasn't this ever the church's position before scientists proved the plates were fake? If the Kinderhook Plates were really just a hoax, then why didn't the church ever say that in the first 130 years since the KP were unearthed? It's clear from the evidence above that the Church leaders believed the KP were real and that Joseph translated a portion of them. Why did it take finding evidence that proved the KP were fake to have the church change their mind on whether or not Joseph tried to translate them? The church only seems to change their beliefs (like the limited geography theory of the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, location of Hill Cumorah, American Indians are the principle ancestors of the Lamanites, etc.) when contradictory evidence disproves their recorded history. This seems inconsistent with a church run by modern-day prophets with modern revelation.
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
Critic's response.
Who else would have been able to make these grand claims? Why would a scribe think this Indian was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven & earth? Why not a descendant of Noah or Abraham? This seems way too unusual and too specific to be made by anyone other than the Prophet Joseph Smith. Also, Joseph's scribe William Clayton, was a trusted, official scribe for the church and was noted for being a stickler for details and accuracy and not in the habit of making stuff up and attributing it to Joseph.
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
The latest apologist ploy is to say that Joseph tried to do a secular translation of the plates because one of the characters from the KP resembles a character from the Egyptian Alphabet & Grammar book by Joseph Smith. This is on FAIR’s website and was presented at FAIR's conference in 2011 by Don Bradley. The theory is interesting but not valid as there is no part of the Book of Abraham that talks about a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth. Find that phrase in the BOA.
FairMormon commentary
- Wait a minute...let's follow the logic here...
- Don Bradley demonstrated that a character found on the Kinderhook plates matched a character found in the GAEL (Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language). The explanation for the deconstructed components of that character in the GAEL corroborates the "translation" given by Joseph for the same Kinderhook character. The correlation between this character on the Kinderhook plates and a similar character in the GAEL is a fact, therefore...
- If we are to accept MormonThink's dismissal of this data because the explanations of the character in the GAEL are not found in the Book of Abraham, then logic dictates that we would have to conclude that the GAEL itself has nothing to do with the Book of Abraham!
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary
On their old website, MormonThink claims...
FairMormon commentary