It is time to abandon the muddiness of the Bible for the clarity of pandeism....
Pandeism has four specific relationships with the Judeo-Christian Bible.... Firstly, it encompasses and thereby supercedes the Bible as a spiritual explanation for the properties of the Universe; Secondly, it approves and justifies those passages of the Bible that are compatible with the principles of pandeism; Thirdly, it explains and accounts for all witnessed phenomena recounted in the Bible; Fourthly it disproves and disqualifies those elements of the Bible that rely on accounts which do not accord with the logic of pandeism....
Cool subject! I have the same interest. I also have the related interest, in those who claim the ten lost tribes were American. (Mikveh Yisrael et al.)
And what about Mendelshonn's use of America and specifically the Mayans (?) of Peru, as he refers to them, to explain a posuk?
Man, this dude never heard of the Pangaea theory or the bearing-straight...probably didn't know about that stuff back then..
Jewish fantasy author Avram Davidson, in his wonderful book "The Enquiries of Dr. Eszterhazy," has a chapter in which the learned Dr. E. cleverly rids his European country of a Satan-worshipping sect by persuading them to emigrate to America, quoting them a biblical verse -- I think it was Isaiah 18:1, "a land shadowed with wings" -- and convincing them that it referred to the American continents.
Apparently such a "perush" actually existed. On Google I found that the "land shadowed with wings" was identified with America by Ethan Smith in his "View of the Hebrews" (1823), a book that some consider to be the source of Joseph Smith's ideas in the Book of Mormon.
Aryeh Kaplan's The Living Torah is invaluable for its footnotes on this chapter (and elsewhere.)
"a book that some consider to be the source of Joseph Smith's ideas in the Book of Mormon."
Kofer.
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