Thursday, October 22, 2015

1 Nephi 1 - A perfect beginning!

Any of you know what a colophon is? A few. How many of you who do know what it is, know how many there are in the Bible? Crickets… I’ll help: there’s maybe one, Leviticus 26:46. Don’t spas… I didn’t know either but thanks to Mr. Google, I came up with that answer.

Now, go back to 1827. Do you think Oliver Cowdery knew what one was? How about Sidney Rigdon? Solomon Spaulding? Again… crickets. It goes without explaining there’s no way Joseph Smith knew. Remember, he’s the guy who asked, “Hey, Emma. Did you know there’s a wall around Jerusalem?” while translating the Book of Mormon.

Then, given his utter ignorance of such things, how did he write a perfect, classically Egyptian colophon and put it in the correct place for one to start the Book of Mormon? A lucky guess? Dumb luck? I think not. Archeological proof of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon’s antiquity starts with a bang in 1 Nephi 1:1… a perfect colophon. And what do we hear from critics in rebuttal to this? Crickets.

So for those who don’t know, a colophon is used to prove the author’s authority to say what he’s written. It was de rigueur for anyone trained as an Egyptian scribe. Oh, and as an aside, “goodly” in 1828 didn’t mean righteous as we often think today, it meant wealthy. Lehi was loaded and he spent it well teaching his sons, as we will see in Nephi’s superb craftsmanship as an author.

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