Re: Have you been caused to remove your heart far from the Lord? [Part 2]

"Richard" wrote:

[me:]
Reported by whom? Here's what Anthon himself wrote.

http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/anthonletter.htm

IMO, Anthon is not telling the truth.

Anthon is trying to convince the world that he did not give Harris a
certficate ceritifying the characters. Because he is afraid it will make him
look a fool.

Anthon wrote two letters and they contradict in this matter. How could they
contradict? Doesn't Anthon know whether he gave a certificate or not! No, he
knows he did, but Anthon begins to see that if he does nothing in the
matter he will go down as the man who certified the characters of a book
that much in the world thinks unauthentic. That looks bad on him.

IMO, he gave the certificate allright.

I have absolutely no interest in your opinion as such.
(Nor do I see why anyone should have any interest in mine.)
On this occasion, though, you have given some reasoning
in support of that opinion, so let's look at it.

It's quite true that Anthon said in the first letter that
"he requested an opinion from me in writing, which of course
I declined giving" and in the second (7 years later) that
"he requested me to give him my opinion in writing about
the paper which he had shown to me. I did so without hesitation".

So much the worse for Anthon, but I remark that

- it's basically the only discrepancy between his
two rather detailed accounts of the affair; they
match up better than, say, any two of the gospels'
resurrection narratives.

- what's absolutely clear in both Anthon's letters
is that he did not regard the document as containing
anything authentically Egyptian, and did not certify
its authenticity or correctness.

- Harris's account is deeply implausible on its face;
there's no way a scholar in 1828 would have been able
to certify that translations from ancient Egyptian
were correct, as Harris claims Anthon initially did.
(Still less since "Reformed Egyptian" is supposedly
not the same thing as the other extant varieties of
Egyptian lettering that actually come from Egypt.)

- If Harris's account is correct, then the thing Anthon
described as a "sealed book" and said he couldn't read
*is something he never saw*, which doesn't accord with
your interpretation of Isaiah's prophecy. Of course it
accords perfectly with the "prophecy" in 2 Nephi, but
that's hardly surprising since Smith wrote it after
these events.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

Relevant Pages