Criticism of Mormonism/Online documents/A Letter to an Apostle/The Letter

Response to "A Letter to an Apostle: The Letter"



A FAIR Analysis of: A Letter to an Apostle, a work by author: Paul A. Douglas
 		Criticism of Mormonism/Online documents/A Letter to an Apostle/Research Document

Response to claims made in "A Letter to an Apostle: The Letter"


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Response to claim: "The dearth of any archaeological, anthropological or linguistic evidence of the Book of Mormon chronicles"

Response to claim: "Would we not find some evidence of the battles in which supposedly more than 2 million soldiers died at the Hill Cumorah – bones, swords, armor, even hair"

Response to claim: "Is it not disconcerting that virtually every non-Mormon archaeologist, anthropologist or linguist and even some funded by the Mormon Church declare that there is no evidence to support the Book of Mormon narrative?"

Response to claim: "Thomas Stuart Ferguson...had to admit that, 'you can't set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere - because it is fictional"

Response to claim: "how can we account for the numerous anachronisms in the Book of Mormon – chariots, horses, goats, wheels, elephants, steel, wheat, etc.?"

Response to claim: "Why do all recent DNA studies conclusively and without exception indicate that Native Americans are of Siberian/Asiatic and not of Hebrew origin?"

Response to claim: "the Church quietly made yet another change to the Book of Mormon, in 2006 shortly after the irrefutable DNA results were first published by the scientific community"

Response to claim: "2 Nephi 2:22 asserts as does Alma 12:23 24 that there was no death of any kind upon the earth before the “Fall of Adam,” which the D&C indicates was about 6,000 years ago"

==Response to claim: "How do you explain the large volume of material in the Book of Mormon lifted directly from the Bible, and the presence of numerous errors found in the Book of Mormon unique to the 1769 King James edition of the Bible" ==Response to claim: "how is it that some verbatim sections of the New Testament appear in the Book of Mormon at a date reported to be some eighty years before the birth of the Savior?" ==Response to claim: "Joseph’s money digging and his arrest, trial and almost certain conviction for being a “glass looker,” imposter and disorderly person by a justice of the peace in Bainbridge, New York, in 1826"

Response to claim: Joseph Smith's "arrest on similar charges in 1830 and in 1837 for plotting the murder of Garrison Newell, and eight times in 1838, seven for banking fraud, once for treason"

Response to claim: "How can we reconcile Joseph Smith’s numerous false prophecies, with the test of a true prophet as found in Deuteronomy 18?"

Response to claim: Joseph Smith's prophecy that "the US government would be, 'utterly overthrown and wasted'"

Response to claim: Joseph Smith's prophecy that "a temple would be built in Missouri within Smith’s generation"

Response to claim: Joseph Smith's prophecy that "all nations would be involved in the American Civil War"

Response to claim: Joseph Smith's prophecy that "he would find treasure in Salem, Massachusetts"

Response to claim: "when the Book of Commandments was rewritten as the D&C after apostles apostatized, etc., many revelations were modified and failed prophecies removed"

Response to claim: "Joseph Smith’s various and differing first vision accounts"

Response to claim: "no one – including Joseph Smith’s family members or the Saints – had ever heard about the First Vision for twelve to twenty-two years after he had said it occurred"

Response to claim: "in the first 'History of the Church,' written by Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith in 1834, why was there no mention of" the First Vision

Response to claim: "why would Joseph Smith have written a Trinitarian view of the Godhead in the first edition of the Book of Mormon?"

Response to claim: "There is abundant evidence that Joseph’s position on the Godhead changed from the 1829 – 1834 Trinitarian rendition, to the two God version after 1835"

Response to claim: "the Book of Mormon claims to be the story of religious Jews, yet there is scant or no mention of Jewish customs or laws"

Response to claim: Joseph Smith "used a rock; he found while digging a well" to translate the Book of Mormon

Response to claim: Joseph Smith used "the same stone" to translate the Book of Mormon that "he employed in his treasure hunting career"

Response to claim: "What then was the point of the golden plates and the Urim and Thummim being preserved for 1,500 years, if never to be used in translation?"

Response to claim: "why does the Church continue to print bogus pictures and hang misleading paintings in Church buildings showing Joseph running his fingers over “Reformed Egyptian” characters on gold plates?"

Response to claim: "Why did Joseph Smith’s polygamy pre-date any revelation sanctioning it?"

Response to claim: "FairMormon’s attempt to make it sound like young girls barely past puberty marrying middle aged men was quite common place is deceitful"

Response to claim: "Joseph Smith may have been a pedophile"

Response to claim: "Mormon apologists...focus now on the lack of direct evidence that he actually have sex with them. What evidence are they looking for?"

Response to claim: "Emma was unaware of most her husband’s marriages, and she certainly did not consent to most of them as required by D&C 132"

Response to claim: "three weeks after his secret wedding to Sarah Ann Whitney age 17, she received a letter from Joseph instructing her to come to this house that night"=

Response to claim: "Joseph’s use of coercive stratagems to get women, often young girls, to enter plural marriages with him, including the promise of eternal life in the Celestial Kingdom for her and her family"

Response to claim: Joseph Smith's "arrogant and boastful behavior, trumping the Savior himself"

Response to claim: "Why was the restoration of the priesthood not reported by Joseph and Oliver Cowdrey until years later and then earlier revelations changed to match that account?"

Response to claim: "Joseph and Emma's disturbing attempts...to partner swap with William and Jane Law"

Response to claim: "Joseph’s ordering the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor for unmasking his polygamy"

Response to claim: "the many similarities between the Book of Mormon and The View of the Hebrews"

Response to claim: "the many similarities between the Book of Mormon and ..The Golden Pot"

Response to claim: "the many similarities between the Book of Mormon and...The First Book of Napoleon"

Response to claim: "The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain; used in New York state schools which Joseph Smith likely was exposed to, that reads very much like and has staggering parallels and similarities to, the Book of Mormon"

Response to claim: "when Joseph Smith wrote the JST of the Bible, he also went back and corrected Christ’s Sermon on the Mount passage in the Book of Mormon"

Response to claim: "Joseph’s gross mistranslation of the Egyptian papyri that formed the basis of the Book of Abraham"

Response to claim: "The embarrassing Kinderhook Plates episode wherein primary sources show that Joseph “translated” forged items with meaningless symbols"

Response to claim: "Why did Joseph Smith misidentify a simple Greek Psalter, as an Egyptian document?"

Response to claim: "Was it pure coincidence that Freemasonry symbols, signs and tokens were incorporated into the temple ceremonies shortly after Joseph becomes a Mason?"

Response to claim: "The Church speaks of the “Fullness of the Gospel” in the Book of Mormon, but many essential elements are not contained therein"

Response to claim: "Why was it necessary to make thousands of changes to the Book of Mormon, 'the most correct book in the world?'"

Response to claim: "Can it not be argued that changes made to core doctrines of the Church such as outlawing polygamy and Blacks in the priesthood, were in direct response to American political pressure?"

Response to claim: "several witnesses to the Book of Mormon confessed that they did not see the plates with their natural eyes, but with 'visions of the mind'"

Response to claim: Martin Harris "tells us that because they had not seen a physical object, only a vision of them, some balked but were eventually persuaded by Smith to sign the document he had prepared"

Response to claim: "Why does the Book of Mormon mention the ordinance of baptism before the time of Christ, and before, of course, the practice was known?"

Response to claim: "Why does the Book of Mormon mention the ...use of the word Bible, crucifixion, and synagogue?"

Response to claim: "Why does the Book of Mormon incorrectly state that Jesus was born in Jerusalem?"

The author(s) of A Letter to an Apostle make(s) the following claim:

Why does the Book of Mormon incorrectly state that Jesus was born in Jerusalem?

FAIR's Response

Fact checking results: The author has stated erroneous information or misinterpreted their sources

The Book of Mormon does not claim that "Jesus was born in Jerusalem". It claims that Jesus was born "at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers." It is referring to the land of Jerusalem.


Question: Why does the Book of Mormon say that Jesus would be born "at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers" when the Bible states that he was born in Bethlehem?

The town of Bethlehem is in the "land of Jerusalem" since it is only five miles away

Some have noted that Alma 7:10 says that Jesus would be born "at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers." Yet, every schoolchild knows that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They claim that this is a mistake, and evidence that Joseph Smith forged the Book of Mormon.

The town of Bethlehem is in the "land of Jerusalem." In fact, Bethlehem is only 5 miles south of Jerusalem: definitely "in the land," especially from the perspective of Alma, a continent away. Even locals considered Hebron, twenty five miles from Bethlehem, to be in the "land of Jerusalem." This is, in reality, another literary evidence for the Book of Mormon. While a forger would likely overlook this detail and include Bethlehem as the commonly-understood birthplace of Jesus, the ancient authors of the Book of Mormon use an authentic term to describe the Savior's birthplace—thereby providing another point of authenticity for the Book of Mormon.

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A picture of Bethlehem taken from Jerusalem in 2006. The photo was taken from Kibbutz Ramat Rachel. Bethlehem is located in Palestinian territory about five miles away from Jerusalem.

This is an old criticism that has been dealt with at least as far back as 1842

This is an old criticism that has been dealt with at least as far back as 1842.[1] but continues to pop up now and again.

BYU professor Daniel C. Peterson pointed out the absurdity of this argument:

To suggest that Joseph Smith knew the precise location of Jesus' baptism by John ("in Bethabara, beyond Jordan" (1 Ne. 10:9) but hadn't a clue about the famous town of Christ's birth is so improbable as to be ludicrous. Do the skeptics seriously mean to suggest that the Book of Mormon's Bible-drenched author (or authors) missed one of the most obvious facts about the most popular story in the Bible — something known to every child and Christmas caroler? Do they intend to say that a clever fraud who could write a book displaying so wide an array of subtly authentic Near Eastern and biblical cultural and literary traits as the Book of Mormon does was nonetheless so stupid as to claim, before a Bible-reading public, that Jesus was born in the city of Jerusalem? As one anti-Mormon author has pointed out, "Every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows Christ was born in Bethlehem." [Langfield, 53.] Exactly! It is virtually certain, therefore, that Alma 7:10 was foreign to Joseph Smith's preconceptions. "The land of Jerusalem" is not the sort of thing the Prophet would likely have invented, precisely for the same reason it bothers uninformed critics of the Book of Mormon.[2]

This is consistent with the usage of the ancient Middle East

It is important to note what Alma's words were. He did not claim Jesus would be born in the city of Jerusalem, but "at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers."

Thus, the Book of Mormon makes a distinction here between a city and the land associated with a city. It does this elsewhere as well:

This is consistent with the usage of the ancient Middle East. El Amarna letter #290 reports that "a town of the land of Jerusalem, Bit-Lahmi [Bethlehem] by name, a town belonging to the king, has gone over to the side of the people of Keilah."[3] (One over-confident 19th century critic blithely assured his readers that "There is no such land. No part of Palestine bears the name of Jerusalem, except the city itself."[4] While this was perhaps true in the 19th century, it was not true anciently. A supposed "howler" turns into evidence for the text's antiquity.

Thus, the Book of Mormon gets it exactly right — the town of Bethlehem is in the "land of Jerusalem." In fact, Bethlehem is only 5 miles south of Jerusalem: definitely "in the land," especially from the perspective of Alma, a continent away. Even locals considered Hebron, twenty five miles from Bethlehem, to be in the "land of Jerusalem."

The use of the term "land of Jerusalem" is authentic ancient usage

Hugh Nibley noted in 1957:

while the Book of Mormon refers to the city of Jerusalem plainly and unmistakably over sixty times, it refers over forty times to another and entirely different geographical entity which is always designated as "the land of Jerusalem." In the New World also every major Book of Mormon city is surrounded by a land of the same name.

The land of Jerusalem is not the city of Jerusalem. Lehi "dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days" (1 Nephi 1꞉4), yet his sons had to "go down to the land of our father's inheritance" to pick up their property (1 Nephi 3꞉16,22). The apparent anomaly is readily explained by the Amarna Letters, in which we read that "a city of the land of Jerusalem, Bet-Ninib, has been captured."17 It was the rule in Palestine and Syria from ancient times, as the same letters show, for a large area around a city and all the inhabitants of that area to bear the name of the city.18 It is taken for granted that if Nephi lived at Jerusalem he would know about the surrounding country: "I, of myself, have dwelt at Jerusalem, wherefore I know concerning the regions round about" (2 Nephi 25꞉6; italics added). But this was quite unknown at the time the Book of Mormon was written—the Amarna Letters were discovered in 1887. One of the favorite points of attack on the Book of Mormon has been the statement in Alma 7꞉10 that the Savior would be born "at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers" (italics added). Here Jerusalem is not the city "in the land of our forefathers"; it is the land. Christ was born in a village some six miles from the city of Jerusalem; it was not in the city, but it was in what we now know the ancients themselves designated as "the land of Jerusalem." Such a neat test of authenticity is not often found in ancient documents.[5]


Response to claim: "How do we overcome the problem of large populations and armies arising in such a short period?"

  1. ↑ See John Hardy, Hypocrisy Exposed (Boston: Albert Morgan, 1842), 3-12 off-site Full title. See later responses in John E. Page, "To a Disciple," Morning Chronicle (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) (1 July 1842). off-site, John E. Page, “Mormonism Concluded: To ‘A Disciple.’” Morning Chronicle (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) (20 July 1842). off-site, and George Reynolds, "Objections to the Book of Mormon," Millennial Star 44/16 (17 April 1882): 244–47.
  2. ↑ Daniel C. Peterson, "Is the Book of Mormon True? Notes on the Debate," in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, edited by Noel B. Reynolds, (Provo, Utah : Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), Chapter 6. ISBN 093489325X ISBN 0934893187 ISBN 0884944697. off-site GL direct link
  3. ↑ James B. Pritchard, editor, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3d ed. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969), 489, translation by W. F. Albright and George E. Mendenhall; cited by D. Kelly Ogden, "Why Does the Book of Mormon Say That Jesus Would Be Born at Jerusalem? (I Have a Question)," Ensign (August 1984): 51.
  4. ↑ Origen Bachelor, Mormonism Exposed Internally and Externally (New York: Privately Published, 1838), 13. off-site
  5. ↑ Hugh W. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 3rd edition, (Vol. 6 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley), edited by John W. Welch, (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company; Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988), Chapter 8, references silently removed—consult original for citations, (italics in original).
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