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| | #REDIRECT [[Question: Is it possible that Joseph Smith simply added the Book of Ether to the Book of Mormon as an "afterthought" in order to explain the variety of animals in the New World?]] |
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| ==Criticism==
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| *Critics charge the the story of the Jaredites, as described in the Book of Ether, was added by Joseph Smith as an "afterthought" in order to account for the variety of animals present in the New World at the time of arrival of Lehi's group.
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| ===Source(s) of the criticism===
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| *{{AntiBook:Brodie:No Man Knows|pages=70–71}}
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| **{{AntiBook:Southerton:Losing|pages=30}} (Sources: not attributed, but most likely Brodie)
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| ==Response==
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| ===Background===
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| Critics suggest that the Book of Ether was simply an "afterthought" added by Joseph Smith to the Book of Mormon in order to explain the presence of a wide variety of animals in the New World at the time of the arrival of Lehi's party. The verses used by critics to support this assertion are Ether 2:1-3:
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| :1 And it came to pass that Jared and his brother, and their families, and also the friends of Jared and his brother and their families, went down into the valley which was northward, (and the name of the valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter) with their flocks which they had gathered together, male and female, of every kind.
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| :2 And they did also lay snares and catch fowls of the air; and they did also prepare a vessel, in which they did carry with them the fish of the waters.
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| :3 And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind. ({{s||Ether|2|1-3}})
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| Critic Fawn Brodie postulated in her biography of Joseph Smith, [[No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith|''No Man Knows My History'']], that "[t]his little detail regarding cargo, flung casually into the story, partly settled the question of how animals had come to America, a problem men had puzzled over for three centuries."{{ref|brodie.71}}
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| Hugh Nibley offered his opinion on Brodie's assertion:
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| :Again, the barges of the Jaredites "contained everything which the settlers might need on the new continent," like any Chinese junk, Viking ship, or the Mayflower itself; in fact, ships have a way of carrying with them whatever the personnel will need. Brodie, however, knows that the whole thing is a dishonest adaptation of Noah's ark. {{ref|nibley1}}
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| The verses in Ether are sufficiently vague that it is really not possible to pin down exactly which animals the Jaredites brought with them to the New World.
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| ==Conclusion==
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| {{nw}}
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| ==Endnotes==
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| #{{note|nibley1}} {{Nibley11|start=3|end=52 }}
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| ==Further reading==
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| ===FAIR wiki articles===
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| ===FAIR web site===
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| *FAIR Topical Guide:
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| ===External links===
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| ===Printed material===
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