A dear friend of mine has been listening to my rants about the Mo's and asking questions here and there. A question she posed over the past weekend was how could Joseph Smith have written such a complex book as the Book of Mormon. I told her the Harry Potter series was far more complex than the BoM. And truly, it is! Let's take a look-see (we won't even need a peep stone!):
Total pages in the Book of Mormon: 531
Total pages in the Harry Potter series: 4,175
Number of characters (people), including very minor instances in the BoM: 140
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harry_Potter_characters
Number of characters (people), including very minor instances in the HP series: >700 (I lost count, but you can go see by clicking the link below)
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harry_Potter_characters )
Not to mention the hundreds of spells J.K. Rowling kept track of, along with events, descriptions of places, etc.
So, could the Book of Mormon been completely made up by Joseph Smith? Please.
I love Mark Twain's analysis. He said:
ReplyDeleteThe book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."
http://www.truthandgrace.com/twainbom.htm
Haha! I loves me some Mark Twain!
ReplyDeleteHas your friend tried reading the BoM? I think it's funny how so many members fall back on this "it's true because a farm boy couldn't possibly have made up something so complex." But if you actually try reading the thing (with an open mind) you'll see that's precisely who would write such a story. It reads like poorly composed book for adolescent boys -- war, lust, and daring-do. Harry Potter, on the other hand, was written by a genius.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention Shakespeare's plays, Tolkien's books (the guy invented languages for crying out loud!), C.S. Lewis' Narnia series ... as if writing a big book with little education can only be a miracle?? Give me a break!
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