The dearth of women in the Book of Mormon

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Talishi
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The dearth of women in the Book of Mormon

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Post by Talishi »

Science fiction author Orson Scott Card (himself a Mormon) says:

“…women are virtually absent from the Book of Mormon. When they do manage to show up, they are rarely named. There are only three women who are actually of the culture of the Book of Mormon who are given names. One is Sariah, the mother of Nephi. Another is a harlot named Isabel, and the third is a servant woman named Abish. None of the queens who show up in the story are mentioned by name. None of these writers ever mentions his own wife, and when women do show up in a specific role they’re still almost never named. Nephi did not even bother to mention the name of the woman who saved his life by pleading for him in the desert.�


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Does the almost complete omission of half the human race in the Book of Mormon suggest that it is not representative of history but is rather the scribblings of a fellow who didn't know very much about women at all?
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Post #2

Post by Haven »

I don't think this makes the BoM any different from the Bible, Quran, or any other ancient holy book. All Abrahamic religious texts are male-dominated; the BoM is in no sense unique in that regard. It shows a patriarchal bias from the authors of the texts, but it doesn't demonstrate them to be fiction.
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Post #3

Post by Talishi »

Hayven wrote: I don't think this makes the BoM any different from the Bible, Quran, or any other ancient holy book. All Abrahamic religious texts are male-dominated; the BoM is in no sense unique in that regard. It shows a patriarchal bias from the authors of the texts, but it doesn't demonstrate them to be fiction.
I would argue that the patriarchal bias in the text is the evidence it is fiction for the same reason (as we are discussing in another thread) the fact that Jesus affirmed the superstition that demons caused human pathology falsifies his alleged deity. The bible says God's thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways. If a book that is alleged to be the word of God explains menses as a curse, then it's genre is not divine instruction but patriarchal fiction.
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Re: The dearth of women in the Book of Mormon

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Post by help3434 »

[Replying to post 1 by Talishi]

The fact that there is no archaeological evidence that the civilizations in the Book of Mormon ever even existed suggests that it is not representative of history. Once you get past the early chapters of Genesis at least the Bible is about a culture that actually existed.

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Re: The dearth of women in the Book of Mormon

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Post by Talishi »

help3434 wrote: [Replying to post 1 by Talishi]

The fact that there is no archaeological evidence that the civilizations in the Book of Mormon ever even existed suggests that it is not representative of history. Once you get past the early chapters of Genesis at least the Bible is about a culture that actually existed.
We're having a hard time finding evidence the Israelites migrated from Egypt to Canaan. It looks like they were just garden variety Canaanites, centered in the hill country near Jerusalem. I don't think the Bible and history really start to meet until somewhere around Hezekiah. But the entire Book of Mormon seems to be frozen in the Bible equivalent of the "Judges" period.
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