Rather, The Book of Mormon is a remarkably assured and comprehensive prolepsis. Its anachronism is unembarrassedly integral. After all, the book’s point of departure is Lehi’s visionary apprehension of the imminent Babylonian captivity, which is revealed to him in the pages of a book that is given to him by twelve angelic figures who, we…

The book Joseph dictated abounds with examples of his poor grammar and Yankee dialect as well as his penchant for digression, redundancy, and wordiness. Rarely are his characters’ inner moral conflicts reflected. Most often we encounter flat, uncomplicated, two-dimensional heros and villains. Generally the plots are simple and frequently improbable. However, the point was notto…

Anachronisms regarding the Book of Mormon’s use of biblical material prompted Mormon scholars to reject the nineteenth-century notion that Joseph Smith produced from the plates a “literal” translation. Instead they have advanced the idea that the concepts flowed through Joseph’s mind and that he was left to express those concepts in the best language that…

D. Michael Quinn, who was excommunicated as part of the “September Six” for writing about Joseph Smith’s magical world view, wrote the following in his book Early Mormonism and the Magic World View: “The official version of early Mormon history is often incomplete in its presentation of material facts and evaluation of evidence; therefore it…

Article Some First Preliminary Studies of Manichaeism The first significant study on Manichaeism as a religion appeared in 1578. It was a work by Cyriacus Spangenberg entitled: Historia Manichaeorum: de furiosae et pestiferae huius Sectae origine. The author’s perspective is clear from the title: History of the Manichaeans, on the origin of this mad and…

Studies of Manichaeism are still somewhat limited and our sources are few. What we do know about it often comes from its opponents, especially the former Manichaean Augustine of Hippo, who would convert to Christianity. Recently, we have found a number of Manichaean texts in a variety of languages, commonly in Syriac, but sometimes in…

His environment was mainly Jewish-Christian with some Gnostic features. His community was presumably Ebionite. He had visionary experiences.He left his religion and decided to “preach the true message of Jesus in a new gospel”.To start with a study of Manichaeism we must examine the life of the founder of Manichaeism, Mani. Mani was born, acording…

The sources that say that Mani claimed to be the “Seal of the Prophets” (khātam an-nabīyyīn) are all Islamic ones. Surviving Manichean literature contains no such reference. To wit:The Persian polymath al-Bīrūnī claims in the Kitāb al-Āthār al-Bāqiyah, a work from 1000 AD, that: [In the Gospel of Mani] Mani says that he is the…

Article Zoroastrianism, also called Mazdaism or the worship of Ahura Mazda, “Wise Lord”, is attributed to a prophet and devotional poet named Zarathushtra who probably preached in Central Asia during the second millennium BCE. Zarathushtra’s doctrines as laid out in his Gathas, “Religious Songs”, were assimilated by an Iranian priesthood, the magi, who spread the…

Was Zoroastrianism monotheistic? “The Pantheon [in Zoroastrianism] was never abolished, and Zoroastrianism remained, at least in some sense, a polytheistic religion throughout its history.” “The dualist attitude was not abandoned or questioned until after the Arab conquest.”