A friend of mine left the Mormons, some of the similarities were astounding, we often compared our upbringing. He now has gone back to them, seems happy enough, though I'm guessing his pull to go back was much the same as some ex jws.
Ever consider joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
by rawe 139 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
Cold Steel
Digderrido: A friend of mine left the Mormons, some of the similarities were astounding, we often compared our upbringing. He now has gone back to them, seems happy enough, though I'm guessing his pull to go back was much the same as some ex jws.
The big difference is that the LDS have considerable evidence to back their claims. Yes, things aren't perfect, but the Jehovah's Witnesses have absolutely no evidence whatsoever of their claimed divine calling.
Rawe: These 13 words, called a doxology, were a later addition to the Bible, hence modern translations do not include them. Some believe much of the Book of Mormon is based on unpublished manuscripts for another author, Solomon Spalding. Whatever the case might be, we would say Smith or Spalding likely did not know this portion of the Lord's prayer was not originally in the Bible.
According to the late-LDS apologist Hugh Nibley, our greatest scholar:
The most significant example of this freedom of composition is certainly the Lord's Prayer. "Originally," wrote Jeremias, "the doxology, 'For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever,' was absent," yet it is found in the oldest church order, the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." Has someone taken liberties with the sacred canon, then? No, "the absence of the doxology from the original text," Jeremias explains, "does not mean that Jesus intended his prayer to be recited without a word of praise at the end. But in the very earliest times, the doxology had no fixed form and its precise wording was left to those who prayed." Only "later on...it was felt necessary to establish the doxology in a fixed form," which explains why the prayer has different forms in Matthew 6:13and Luke 11:4. Also, the older Aramaic form of the prayer required forgive "our debts," which the Greek of Luke changes to forgive "our sins" vindicates both the inclusion of the doxology in the Lord's prayer in 3 Nephi 13:9-13 and the reading there of "debts" instead of "sins." [Source]
Also, another scholar notes:
Most manuscripts, although not the earliest ones, include at the end the triadic doxology, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." This phrase (which is an excerpt from I Chronicles 29:11-13) is a plausible conclusion for the prayer: it recognizes the preeminence of God, and our total dependence upon him; it is a reminder that he is the loving King, and we the servants; and it explains why it is to him that we pray. [Source]
I’ve read sample s of Spalding’s writings and the Book of Mormon was not written by Spalding. The Book of Mormon contains numerous Hebraisms which point its ancient middle-eastern origins. These are found in none of Spalding’s known writings, nor do they appear in some of the early books you proffered. One of the more fascinating of these is chiasmus (a mirror image type construct found in detail in biblical writings). After attending a lecture on biblical chiasmus as a missionary, John Welch, now a professor of law at BYU, began looking for it in the Book of Mormon. Although many anti-Mormons say chiasmus is little more than boring repetition, Welch and numerous Bible and Book of Mormon understand and value this literary structure for its aesthetics and its power to communicate at multiple levels simultaneously.
At the time the Book of Mormon was published, no living scholar knew about chiasmus, or knew that any book claiming ancient Hebrew origins contained examples of this literary device. It was only later in the nineteenth century that Biblical chiasmus was fully recognized and described to the scholarly world. [Source]
Welch later noted:
I had long appreciated and valued the Book of Mormon, but it was not until I began to see it speaking for itself before sophisticated audiences, especially in connection with such things as chiasmus and law in the Book of Mormon, that I began to sense the high level of respect that the book really can command. On many grounds, the Book of Mormon is intellectually respectable. The more I learn about the Book of Mormon, the more amazed I become at its precision, consistency, validity, vitality, insightfulness, and purposefulness. I believe that the flow of additional evidence nourishes and enlarges faith.
Those who seek to implicate Sidney Rigdon also tend to be ignorant of Rigdon’s background as co-founder of the Campbellite movement. Alexander Campbell was furious at Rigdon for leaving his religious movement for Smith’s, and though he scourged Smith at every opportunity in print, he never impugned Rigdon’s integrity. Rigdon’s motives for joining the saints was simply that despite Campbell’s great understanding of the scriptures, he could not honestly claim any means of divine authority. Others leaning towards Campbell at the time also joined the saints for the same reason. It thus stands to reason that Rigdon’s motives for joining Smith were honest. It doesn’t follow, then, that he would join Smith, then conspire in writing a fictitious book of scripture and pawning it off to the public.
There are simply too many things Smith, Rigdon, Spalding and anyone else at that time couldn’t have known. And regardless of how compelling the evidence, ex-Mormons and anti-Mormons will never admit one shred of it. On the other hands, we LDS readily concede there are issues with the Book of Mormon and the book of Abraham, we at least have people researching them constantly. And these are professors of ancient scripture, anthropologists, archeologists, historians, journalists...and even a professor of Islamic History who, by the way, is working with leading Muslim scholars in collecting and translating old and neglected works that have heretofore been unavailable to the entire Islamic community.
I personally think there’s extremely compelling evidence for the Book of Mormon. In 1940, the Mayans were the oldest culture in Mesoamerica, which is where most LDS scholars believe the Book of Mormon events took place. This was a problem since the Book of Mormon speaks of two ancient civilizations. That was a problem. There was a Jaredite civilization that came from the great tower when the Lord confounded the languages. They would have dated from about 2500 – 300 B.C. Why was there no evidence of them?
In 1941, archeologists in Mesoamerica announced they had found an earlier culture that were much older than the Mayans. They called them the Olmecs, and they inhabited Mesoamerica between 2500 – 300 B.C. It cost the church a fortune to pay off those archeologists to invent the Olmecs civilization and where did it get us? The fact that the Mayans dated from 600 B.C. to 380 A.D. (the same time as the Nephites in the Book of Mormon) also didn’t buy us any credibility. Up until fairly recently, people stuck the Book of Mormon in my face and wanted to know where that canyon and “river of water” were in Arabia, and where that lush Garden of Eden-like “Bountiful” was in the burning desert of the Quarter. I could only tell them I had no idea. Then, beginning in the mid-1990s, they found it all. The canyon, the river of water, Bountiful, the trail Lehi took...they even found Nahom. Did the ex-Mo or anti-Mo community give us even a nod? We should live so long! Now they’ve found horses in Mesoamerica. Again, silence from our enemies. Oh, and we’ve found the barley, the wheels, gold plates and other stuff. So while it exists, we can’t force people to read it, study it or acknowledge it. Instead, I keep reading their crap about there being no evidence.
Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon
The Authorship of the Book of Mormon
Hisses from the Dust: The Gold Plates and the Recovery of Sacred Records
The Sermon at the Temple and the Greek New Testament Manuscripts
.
-
Cold Steel
barry: The LDS invited me to their church a while ago. The missionarys told me there was a great apostacy in the early church and expected me to believe a glib statement such as this. If there was an apostacy when did it occur . Was it after Jesus left for heaven, was it after or before the complete bible was decided and the trinity doctrine was decided....
What they should have told you is that the great apostasy happened at the time the last person holding the keys of the kingdom passed from the scene and there were no more apostles. If you're looking for a specific date, no one pretends to know that. Only God. Whether you believe it or not is totally up to you. I guess it happened between the time John wrote his Apocalypse and the time all the bishops and cardinals began wearing gaudy outfits and living off the people. It also happened when revelation ceased. So perhaps it was a process.
As for being asked to pray about things you don't know, see James 1:5-8 (below). To hear anti-Mormons talk about prayer you'd think Jim Jones was going to follow things up with some Kool-Aid! Okay, if you aren't interested in Joseph Smith, or whether he was a prophet, by all means, don't pray. Don't do it and then whine about it. If you leave God alone, he'll leave you alone. It's pretty fair, isn't it?
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. -James 1:5-8
.
-
Witness My Fury
The only evidence you have is the work of the con artist and charlatan that got your cult started.
You could have saved yourself ages typing your cult drivel and just said that.
-
rawe
Hi Cold Steel,
Thanks for responding.
"I’ve read sample s of Spalding’s writings and the Book of Mormon was not written by Spalding"
I have not. This bit of the story doesn't interest me that much. I mentioned it, as per my own determination to be complete in my comments. Thus to say "Joseph Smith didn't know this bit about the Lord's Prayer", may not be the complete picture, if in fact, the original source material had been the work of Solomon Spalding, as some folks beieve. Nonetheless, it is to your credit, that you investigated this claim.
I don't have time for a detailed response right now. My prior post mentioned the paragraph where you made a number of claims about the Book of Mormon. If you wouldn't mind selecting one of the claims, perhaps the one you find most compelling, when I get the time, I'll case it down and respond. The general theme of your claims was statements in the Book of Mormon that could not be known to Joseph Smith. Naturally any future event if specified in specific detail would qualify. Any past event, if specified in specific detail, and generally not known at the time but only re-discovered in our day would qualify.
Keep in mind, I hold the same view in regards "divine origin" claims for any material, not just the Book of Mormon.
Cheers,
-Randy
ps. You quoted James who tells us we should satisfy our lack of wisdom via prayer, then having no doubts. That idea, many an Ex-JW, will tell you, trapped them for years, as they kept assuming their doubts were a bad thing. In fact, much better to respond to doubts and lack of wisdom through objective research.
-
TD
So why insert a word, which did not appear in the original text, in parentheses in the first place?
Because Ancient Greek is not English?
Seriously, we're talking about a languague with a sentence and grammatical structure very, very different than our own. Ancient Greek was very highly inflected. What that means is that word endings change depending on how they are used in a sentence.
This happens in English with verb conjugations (e.g. drink, drinks, drank, drinking, drunk) to some extent, but in Ancient Greek, it affects everything. For example, in English, we have lots of prepositions that link nouns and pronouns in time and space. In my generation, we were forced to memorize a long list of them: "About, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, by, -- yada, yada, yada...."
Ancient Greek needed much less prepositions because prepositional functions are often subsumed by the noun case (i.e The declension) So when you translate to English, you often find yourself inserting English prepositions that strictly speaking, are not in the original text, but are understood from it.
Simplest example I can think of:
ο οικος του αποστολου
A hyper-literal, "Translate with a dictionary" approach would give you:
"The house the apostle"
A correct translation would be:
"The house [of] the apostle
In English, we often indicate possession with the preposition, "Of" but that was not necessary in Greek, because that idea is subsumed by the genitive noun case. (Note the ου ending of the last two words in the sentence..)
Interpolations like this one are so basic that nobody would question them, so they aren't bracketed. But they are everywhere in any English translation. If everything were bracketed, at least a quarter of the text would be in brackets.
It was considered (At least in years gone by) to be good translation practice, not to mention common courtesy to the reader to bracket interpolations that fell into the category of 'judgement calls." This would alert the reader to check other translations to see what renderings other translators came up with.
But there are so many modern editions of the Bible that don't bracket anything anymore, that it has become fashionable for evangelical types (Especially on the internet) to criticize not just what's in the brackets but to criticize the brackets themselves, which is simply ignorant.
Brackets certainly do not automatically equal 'mistranslation.'
I'm a little disappointed that the JW's caved in on this, because some of the interpolations in the NWT are probably more a matter of doctrine and definitely should be bracketed.
-
Cold Steel
Randy: If you wouldn't mind selecting one of the claims, perhaps the one you find most compelling, when I get the time, I'll case it down and respond. The general theme of your claims was statements in the Book of Mormon that could not be known to Joseph Smith. Naturally any future event if specified in specific detail would qualify. Any past event, if specified in specific detail, and generally not known at the time but only re-discovered in our day would qualify.
Okay, that sounds reasonable. The greatest demonstrable point would be old world geography. This includes evidence for the first book of Nephi, so you don't have to read a great deal of the Book of Mormon. But first we'd have to agree that if someone were going to write a fictional account about an area of the world and a historic period in which very little was known (even amongst scholars) regarding the middle-eastern area, including the deserts of Arabia, the established trails and culture, writing directions that anyone with Nephi's account, a compass and a means of desert travel could follow, then having every detail of the entire journey check out with Ø errors -- that that would be an impossible achievement, even with the best maps of the day.
Just one more point. At the time Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, it's amazing to me that not one record on metal plates had ever been found, anywhere. Today, we have gold plates, silver plates, copper plates and others (mostly gold) from both the old world and the new world. And wrting on gold plates was a practice that just seemed to be starting at around 600 B.C.
So I'll PM you with some of the places you can begin your investigation.
.
-
Separation of Powers
A great organization made up of some intelligent people that realized the importance of marketing.
Personally, I have an issue with the magic undies, the ties to Solomon Spalding, the modern day prophet and apostolic succession, the golden tablets and Urim and Thummin that disappeared, the many wives thing, the change in basic doctrines, and the Osmonds...
SOP
-
shadow
http://mit.irr.org/book-of-mormon-archaeology-condensed
The Scientific Search for Nephite Remains
By: Luke P. Wilson Copyright © 1992 Institute for Religious Research. All rights reserved.
This is the shortened version of this articles. You can also read the full version.
Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon presents itself as an historical record of God's revelation of Himself to the human race. Both books tell of Jesus Christ and various prophets appearing to what are presented as real people living at specific times and places in human history. These historical claims have sent scholars in search of archaeological evidence for the existence of the peoples and events described in the Book of Mormon, and they make the subject of Book of Mormon archaeology relevant.
Of course there are limits to what archaeology can investigate. It is not suited to proving or disproving the supernatural claims or spiritual truths of the Book of Mormon. However, by searching for evidence of the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon, archaeology can help us evaluate the underlying historical credibility of this scriptural record. Evidence regarding the historical claims of Book of Mormon may well have a bearing on our confidence in its spiritual message.
Geographical ConsiderationsThe Book of Mormon describes the world of its inhabitants as an hourglass-shaped land mass made up of a "land southward" surrounded by water except for a "narrow neck" of land connecting it to a "land northward" (Alma 22:32). Determining the location of these lands is the necessary first step before archaeology can be employed to evaluate the Book of Mormon, as LDS scholars acknowledge.1
One might expect that determining the geographical setting of the Book of Mormon lands would be a fairly simple undertaking. Instead, the topic has become a matter of considerable controversy in which the theories of modern Mormon scholars are pitted against the traditional teaching of the LDS Church.The Traditional ViewAccording to Joseph Smith and subsequent presidents and apostles of the LDS Church, the geographical extent of Book of Mormon lands included virtually all of North and South America.2 Joseph Smith identified the coast of Chile as the place where Lehi's party arrived in the New World,3 while he located the Hill Cumorah, site of the epic Nephite-Lamanite battle to extinction, some 6000 miles north in Palmyra, New York. Thus, North and South America were understood to constitute the two bulges of the hourglass, connected by the "narrow neck" of Central America.4
Joseph Smith also taught that the American Indians were the descendants of the Lamanites. The History of the Church records an incident from June 1834 in which he identified, by divine guidance, a skeleton found in an Indian burial mound in Illinois as that of the Lamanite warrior Zelph:... the visions of the past being opened to my understanding by the Spirit of the Almighty, I discovered the person whose skeleton was before us was a white Lamanite, a large, thick-set man, and a man of God. His name was Zelph ... who was known from the Hill Cumorah, or eastern sea to the Rocky mountains.5
The LDS Church continues to teach that Native Americans are the direct descendents of Book of Mormon peoples. For example, the "Introduction" in current editions of the Book of Mormon (since 1981), describes the Lamanites as, "the principal ancestors of the American Indians."
Why LDS Scholars Object
Despite the teaching of the Church's spiritual leaders, unquestioned for a hundred years, a number of Mormon scholars have concluded that the traditional view of Book of Mormon geography is unrealistic. Their conclusions are based on a number of major problems that arise when one attempts to apply Book of Mormon descriptions of travel times and population growth to the vast territories of North and South America. For instance, while the Book of Mormon makes it clear that the rival Nephite and Lamanite civilizations were centered near the "narrow neck" of land (understood to be somewhere in Central America), it says that they agreed to meet for their epic final battle at the "Hill Cumorah" (Mormon 6:1-6). Joseph Smith and Mormon tradition locate this site several thousand miles distant in New York state. It is difficult to find a reasonable explanation for why the armies would travel this immense distance to do battle.
Another significant problem for traditional Book of Mormon geography involves the premise that the native populations of the vast North and South American continents are the descendents of two tiny groups of transoceanic Semitic immigrants (the Jaredites, who arrived in the New World between 3000 - 2000 B.C. but later battled themselves to extinction, and the Nephites and Mulekites, who arrived beginning about 600 B.C.). Archaeological evidence shows conclusively that the western hemisphere was populated at least as far back as 10,000 B.C. by east Asian peoples who migrated across the Bering Strait. It is these Mongolian peoples who are the ancestors of the American Indians, according to the Smithsonian Institution:The American Indians are physically Mongoloids and thus must have originated in eastern Asia. The differences in appearance of the various New World tribes in recent times are due to (1) the initial variability of their Asian ancestors; (2) adaptations over several millennia to varied New World environments; and (3) different degrees of interbreeding in post-Columbian times with people of European and African origins."6
There is no solid evidence for immigration via other routes involving long sea voyages (prior to the Norse arrivals from Greenland and Newfoundland about A.D. 1000), as proposed by the Book of Mormon, and if such voyages did occur, they were not significant for the origins and composition of New World populations.7
The Limited Geography TheoryIn order to remove these inherent improbabilities and protect the credibility of the Book of Mormon as authentic history, a number of LDS scholars have proposed a new approach to Book of Mormon geography called the "limited geography theory." The most influential proponent of this view is Prof. John L. Sorenson of Brigham Young University. Sorenson restricts the Book of Mormon setting to an approximately 400-mile-long section of Central America, with the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico corresponding to the "narrow neck" of the hourglass-shaped land mass described above.8
While the limited geography theory appears to resolve some of the flaws of traditional Book of Mormon geography, it creates other problems that are equally serious. It conflicts with details in the Book of Mormon, contradicts the teaching of a long line of LDS presidents and apostles, and in the end cannot produce a single piece of archaeological evidence that can be identified as Nephite or Jaredite (a fact which BYU professors such as Hugh Nibley, Bruce W. Warren, and David J. Johnson all acknowledge).9
Two Cumorahs?One area of major contradiction between the limited geography theory and the Book of Mormon concerns the identity and location of the hill Cumorah. Sorenson locates Cumorah in Central America, at a site only 90 miles from the "narrow neck". While this removes an unrealistic requirement of the traditional view, which has the two armies marching thousands of miles north to do battle at what is now Palmyra, New York, it conflicts with the Book of Mormon description of Cumorah as "an exceeding great distance" from the narrow neck into the "land northward" (Helaman 3:3,4). If the Isthmus of Tehuantepec — Sorenson's "narrow neck" of land — at 120 miles across is "narrow," how can the 90 miles from the "narrow neck" to Sorenson's Cumorah fit the Book of Mormon description of "an exceeding great distance"?10
The limited geography theory also seems to be at odds with the Book of Mormon by requiring two Cumorahs. This is necessary since it locates the final Nephite-Lamanite battle at a Cumorah in Central America, whereas Joseph Smith retrieved the Book of Mormon plates from the traditional hill Cumorah in New York State. This also leaves Moroni with the task of single-handedly transporting the hefty Book of Mormon plates (not to mention the entire Nephite library) over two thousand miles to the New York Cumorah.
Directional SkewingAnother major discrepancy of the limited geography theory is the 45 degree directional skewing that results when the geographic features of the Book of Mormon are superimposed onto the proposed Central American site. Map 2 illustrates the problem. It shows that the Book of Mormon's "land northward" and "land southward" are actually oriented along a northwest-southeast line. This places the "east sea" and "west sea" almost directly north and south of these proposed Book of Mormon lands. It is clear from the Bible that the ancient Israelites used the rising sun as the basis for directional orientation (e.g., Exodus 27:13; 38:13; Numbers 2:3; Ezekiel 8:16). Therefore, one must ask, "Would Hebrew immigrants arriving at the proposed Central American site and using the sun as their directional reference, have arrived at the severely skewed directional orientation suggested by Sorenson?"
Still another conflict is the absence of the "sea north" and the "sea south" (Helaman 3:8). In the traditional view, these descriptions correspond to the Atlantic Ocean below the tip of the South America (Cape Horn), and the Arctic Ocean north of North America, respectively. Editions of the Book of Mormon from 1888 to 1921 included a note to this effect at Helaman 3:8-9. Because of these conflicts with Mormon tradition and Book of Mormon internal evidence, the limited geography theory has been repeatedly condemned by LDS leaders, including Joseph Fielding Smith, Jr. (10th President), Harold B. Lee (11th President), and Bruce R. McConkie.11 In 1979 the Church News labeled it "harmful" and a "challenge" to the "words of the prophets concerning the place where Moroni buried the records."12
Book of Mormon geography raises a theological dilemma: on the one hand, the traditional view produces a number of improbabilities that undermine the historical credibility of the Book of Mormon; on the other hand, the limited geography approach rejects the clear pronouncements of Joseph Smith and subsequent presidents and apostles, and conflicts with Book of Mormon teaching on a number of important points.
An LDS Archaeologist's ConclusionAs was noted earlier, the Bible and the Book of Mormon are alike in presenting themselves as records of ancient history. However, whereas the authenticity of the Bible is widely accepted even by secular scholars (see article titled "Does Archaeology Support the Bible?"), no non-LDS archaeologist accepts the Book of Mormon as authentic history, and now even many LDS scholars no longer support its historicity.13 Why do archaeologist take such a dim view of the Book of Mormon?
One of the best answers to this question was offered by former Brigham Young University anthropology professor, Dr. Raymond T. Matheny at an August 25, 1984 Sunstone conference in Salt Lake City.14 After working in the area of Mesoamerican archaeology for twenty-two years, Prof. Matheny reported his conclusion that the scientific evidence simply does not support the existence of the peoples and events chronicled in the Book of Mormon, be it in Central America or anywhere else in the western hemisphere.
Dr. Matheny described the Book of Mormon as filled with anachronisms — things that are out of place historically and culturally. It introduces Old World cultural achievements into the pre-Columbian Americas, though the archaeological evidence shows no such levels of culture were attained during this period. Defenders of the historicity of the Book of Mormon are left with only scattered bits of evidence which they interpret apart from accepted scientific standards. The following are among the more significant Book of Mormon anachronisms described by Prof. Matheny:
An Iron Industry. Nephite civilization is depicted as having iron and other metal industries; we read of metal swords and breastplates, gold and silver coinage, and even machinery. However, according to Matheny, there is no evidence that any Mesoamerican civilization attained such an industry during Book of Mormon times (terminus ad quo: A.D. 421). He pointed out that an iron industry is not a simple feat involving a few people, but a complex process that requires a specialized socio-economic context and leaves virtually indestructible archaeological evidence. However, Matheny reports that:No evidence has been found in the new world for a ferrous metallurgical industry dating to pre-Columbian times. And so this is a king-size kind of problem, it seems to me, for so-called Book of Mormon archeology. The evidence is absent.15
Prof. Matheny noted that while scattered iron artifacts have been found in pre-Columbian settings, in the absence of evidence of a metallurgical industry, they must be accounted for by random means, such as meteorites. A few random, scattered artifacts are not a basis for scientific conclusions.16
Old World Agricultural Products. The Book of Mormon depicts the Nephites as producing wheat, barley, flax (linen), grapes, and olives, but none of these products existed in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. As with iron, Matheny pointed out that a complex economic and so- cial level is required to produce these products as they are portrayed in the Book of Mormon:There's a whole system of production of wheat and barley ... It's a specialized production of food. You have to know something to make flax [the source of linen], and especially in tropical climates. Grapes and olives ... all these are cultures that are highly developed and amount to systems, and so the Book of Mormon is saying that these systems existed here.17
Matheny noted that a 1983 Science magazine article describing barley found in a pre-Columbian setting is wrongly claimed as support for the Book of Mormon because the grain described was not a domesticated old world barley.18
Old World Domestic Animals. Another whole group of anachronisms involve various old world domesticated animals which the Book of Mormon describes as integral to Nephite culture. These include asses, cows, goats, sheep, horses, oxen, swine, and elephants. Here again, Matheny pointed out that these domesticated animals are each specializations that require a specific cultural level not attained in the pre-Columbian Americas:You don't just have a cow or a goat or a horse as an esoteric pet or something. There is a system of raising these things, and the picture that is painted for me as I read this, and others too, is that we have [in Book of Mormon portrayals] ... domestic animals and so forth in the New World.19
Is it valid to claim, as some defenders of the historicity of the Book of Mormon do, that these names — cow, horse, etc. — are simply being used as substitutes for native New World animals such as peccaries or tape deer? Matheny argues that this is not legitimate because the Book of Mormon descriptions occur in specific literary contexts that assume complex old world systems for the raising and use of the various domestic animals:
I mean in Alma there [18:10; 20:6,8] , you know he's using the stable there preparing the horses for King Lamoni, and also he's preparing the King's chariots because they're going to take a trip from one city to another over the royal highway. And also the horses are pastured, no less. So there are contexts within the Book of Mormon itself. These are not just substitutions, it seems to me, but the authors of the Book of Mormon there are providing the context, they're not trying to describe a tape deer or something else, it seems to me. This is a weak way to try to explain the presence of these names in the Book of Mormon.20
No Place In The New World
Matheny's overall assessment is that archaeology offers no support for the Book of Mormon as history: "I would say in evaluating the Book of Mormon that it has no place in the New World whatsoever."
Prof. Matheny is not alone in this assessment. The highly respected Mesoamerican archaeologist Michael Coe has written:The bare facts of the matter are that nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever shown up in any New World excavation which would suggest to a dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon, as claimed by Joseph Smith, is a historical document relating to the history of early immigrants to our hemisphere.21
This article began by acknowledging that archaeology cannot directly prove or disprove the spiritual claims of the Book of Mormon or the Bible. However, it can evaluate the historical claims which both books make, and that evaluation shows that while the Bible's claim to be authentic history is supported by objective evidence click for article on the Bible and archaeology, the same cannot be said for the Book of Mormon.
-
rawe
Hi Cold Steel,
"Okay, that sounds reasonable. The greatest demonstrable point would be old world geography. This includes evidence for the first book of Nephi, so you don't have to read a great deal of the Book of Mormon. But first we'd have to agree that if someone were going to write a fictional account about an area of the world and a historic period in which very little was known (even amongst scholars) regarding the middle-eastern area, including the deserts of Arabia, the established trails and culture, writing directions that anyone with Nephi's account, a compass and a means of desert travel could follow, then having every detail of the entire journey check out with Ø errors -- that that would be an impossible achievement, even with the best maps of the day."
Okay. It has been awhile, since I've read the Book of Mormon, but I'll start at 1 Nephi and make some comments as I go along. In general one the first things that strike a skeptical reader is the author of the Book of Mormon is anxious to get his character out of middle east and over to the Americas. Leaving them in the middle east wouldn't be a great idea, for a couple reasons. First, the writer would be bound to wind up creating conflicts in the account with the Bible. Second the whole purpose of the Book of Mormon is to create a story about happenings in the Americas.
1 Nephi 2:8 And it came to pass that he called the name of the river, Laman, and it emptied into the Red Sea; and the valley was in the borders near the mouth thereof.
As far as I'm aware no rivers empty in the Red Sea, either today or in the time setting for the Book fo Mormon. Please provide references to correct me on this.
If the Book of Mormon is a product of the 1830s, one of the things you would expect is characters in the Book of Mormon would know about Bible characters, but the opposite would be impossible. Indeed that is just what you find. For example...
1 Nephi 7:14 For behold, the a Spirit of the Lord b ceaseth soon to strive with them; for behold, they have c rejected the prophets, and d Jeremiah have they cast into prison. And they have sought to take away the e life of my father, insomuch that they have driven him out of the land
Mentions specific detail about Jeremiah, which of course would not be difficult. Yet, God works a miracle for Lehi here too...
1 Nephi 7:18 And it came to pass that when I had said these words, behold, the bands were loosed from off my hands and feet, and I stood before my brethren, and I spake unto them again.
Yet, the character of Lehi, although getting the attention of God in this way, doesn't seem to result in any mention in the Bible.
1 Nephi 8:8 And after I had traveled for the space of many hours in darkness, I began to pray unto the Lord that he would have a mercy on me, according to the multitude of his tender mercies.
A Hebrew charachter speaking in the first person using the word "hours" is very odd. You won't find OT characters doing that.
1 Nephi 11:13 And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem, and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth; and in the city of a Nazareth I beheld a b virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white.
A reference to "city of Nazareth" seems incorrect to me. I would need to do more research on this point to be sure. Of course, it might be possible to rescue this verse by reference to its presentation as prophesy.
I'll stop at chapter 12. If you're thinking of some specific reference, please reference to chapter and verse. So far, nearly all references, are fairly vague or easily known information from the Bible. Jerusalem, Zedekiah, Red Sea all these items are of course mentioned in the Bible and would be available to a Book of Mormon author in the 1830s.
Cheers,
-Randy
The Limited Geography Theory