Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

Zelph Revisited and the LGT


gitxsanartist

Recommended Posts

Pending revelation, what alternative is there? And why does it matter all that much? Christianity has done just fine over the centuries without a creedal statement on the location of Emmaus and Tarshish; Mormonism is likely to flourish reasonably well without any revealed location for Jershon.

I, for one, wish the LDS prophets would make a doctrinal decree about the location of Emmaus so we can finally settle the question of where the events of the Bible took place.
Link to comment

You would think that the church, currently being governed by 15 prophets, seers and revelators, would have some inkling of where the events of the BofM might have transpired if it is indeed historically accurate as we are taught. Why should such an important topic be left to a bunch of pseudo-scholars at BYU (FARMS/FAIR). The further light and knowledge should come from through the correct channels, the first presidency and apostles just as it has in the past (read the previous postings above). If they need advisement and counseling with worldly professionals behind closed doors then so be it, but to defer these matters entirely to "opinion" and scholarly debate is pure madness.

Does it also bother you that God has not revealed where Noahâ??s ark is located? Or how long humans have been on the earth? Or where Abraham had his visions? Why would it matter? You need to explain why such information has any bearing on our salvation so that we can have a meaningful discussion around the doctrine of having to know geography. There is so much that is unknown about all events from both the bible and Book of Mormon that I donâ??t understand your obsession with this particular matter. You weaken your position, by the way, by using the term pseudoscholars. It shows that you are ignorant of who is carrying out the research and you are revealing that you are more interested in mocking what is known rather than trying to understand why we know so little.

You say it is madness, please provide specific reasons why it is. You don't seem to have a problem with the vast amount of missing evidence for the bible.

Link to comment

I, for one, wish the LDS prophets would make a doctrinal decree about the location of Emmaus so we can finally settle the question of where the events of the Bible took place.

All I can say to this is: How does it feel to want?

Their job is not to do this and it is not remotely close to a priority. Their commission is to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world, not to convince the world of its truthfullness using an imperfect and far from complete science such as Archeology.

Nor do they care to start bothering the Lord about such things. It is just not part of the program.

Link to comment

It would take a lot more than merely locating Emmaus.

http://mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=2&num=1&id=25

Hamblin's faith-promoting piece, in the guise of a critique, makes a poor connection between the Bible and the Book of Mormon with regard to archaeological knowledge. Do you know of anyone that asserts that the setting for the Bible is the result of someone's imagination and has no basis in reality to known cities, mountains, rivers, seas, and roads?

Link to comment

Hamblin's faith-promoting piece, in the guise of a critique, makes a poor connection between the Bible and the Book of Mormon with regard to archaeological knowledge. Do you know of anyone that asserts that the setting for the Bible is the result of someone's imagination and has no basis in reality to known cities, mountains, rivers, seas, and roads?

No, I don't. Do you know anybody who asserts that anybody asserts that? Is your comment relevant in any way at all to anything that I said or to anything that Professor Hamblin wrote? Do you think that people here can't distinguish straw men from reality?

Link to comment
Do you know of anyone that asserts that the setting for the Bible is the result of someone's imagination and has no basis in reality to known cities, mountains, rivers, seas, and roads?

Yes, actually.

Rivers: "Where's Eden? There is no known place with a river that comes into four heads."

Roads: "Did the Children of Israel really cross Sinai? I mean, there are no archeological traces of a mass migration ever, much less when the Bible claims it?"

City: "Uz? Where's Uz?"

City: "Ur of the Chaldees? If the Bible can't even identify one of the most pivotal locales in its story, why should we believe that this Abraham guy actually existed?"

Sea: "There was never a global flood, archeology proves it."

Mountain: "There was no man-made mountain in Babylon."

Archeological feature: "The Walls of Jericho didn't exist as it says in the Bible. Another strike."

Interestingly, few places the Bible mentions that we can find are places that have not been under more-or-less constant observation from the very times of the record. There is little doubt about Jerusalem, of course, because we have never lost it. But, for instance, Pompeii and Herculaneum were famous cities in ad 79, but by the XIII, they were wholly forgotten, and lost. Even with their latitudes and longitudes (so to speak) known, it was only by accident anyone ever found them.

The evidences for the geography of the Book of Mormon are mounting, at least in many eyes. But if we had precise information on Zerahemla, the need for faith would diminish or vanish altogether. Since the first principle of the Gospel is Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, there would be no winners in this scenario.

Lehi

Link to comment

No, I don't. Do you know anybody who asserts that anybody asserts that? Is your comment relevant in any way at all to anything that I said or to anything that Professor Hamblin wrote? Do you think that people here can't distinguish straw men from reality?

Emmaus was the straw man that you brought up, above. Tieing the lack of archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon to the fact that not all of the cities in the Bible are identified is a classic strawman arguement. If it isn't, then let's start comparing known places in the Bible to known places in the Book of Mormon. You can go first.

Link to comment

The evidences for the geography of the Book of Mormon are mounting, at least in many eyes. But if we had precise information on Zerahemla, the need for faith would diminish or vanish altogether. Since the first principle of the Gospel is Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, there would be no winners in this scenario.

Hamblin makes this same claim:

"First, acceptance of the historicity of the Book of Mormon logically necessitates acceptance of Joseph Smith's prophetic claims."

His paper talks about archaeolgy but then he changes it, above, to historicity. Finding the remnant of a Jewish synagogue in Mesoamerica (belief in a recovered archaeological artifact) won't convert people en masse to the LDS faith (acceptance of the historicity of the Book of Mormon).

The setting for the Book of Mormon; real Old World people living in the Americas who built cities and churches, is either based in historic fact or it isn't. Believing that lost Hebrew tribes traveled to the Americas, built cities, fought wars, practiced Judaism and instituted Christianity doesn't mean I have to accept Jos Smith as a prophet or the Book of Mormon as scripture. Why should we accept that only one written account of history exists in the form of the Book of Mormon? Could the Maya have documented these people on glyphs? Could artifacts of Hebrew influence ever be identified? Could city remnants corresponding to the Book of Mormon ever be uncovered? Could metals, fortifications, religious influences by a culture be discerned from recovered artifacts or glyphs?

Archaeologists in Israel don't necessarily believe Christianity or Judaism because they excavate cities listed in the Bible. Would an archaeologist, finding the remnant of a Jewish synagogue in Guatamala, decide to not share his or her find so as not to be beholden to belief in the LDS church?

Christ doesn't demand faith that the city of Emmaus existed, or faith that there was a road to that town or faith that two people on that road to that town were walking and talking about events in Jerusalem. He only demands belief in Him. Likening a belief in the setting for the Book of Mormon to a belief in Christ is sort of missing the point about belief in Christ, in my opinion.

Link to comment

With whom? With the tiny minority of the Church who know that FARMS exists? With the even tinier proportion who pay serious attention? I see no evidence for this.

I'll go along with this; however, those who don't pay attention are, by definition, irrelevant to the debate.

The fact remains that those who query the First Presidency regarding BoA issues are referred to Gee's book.

Whenever anyone went to Joseph Smith with a serious question, he inquired of the Lord and came back with a revelation.

Can you imagine him referring anyone to someone's book?

With me? Not even close.

Just admit it Dan, you are the puppetmaster behind the current church administration.

But you've been pulling so many strings lately you've gotten yourself all tangled up.

Link to comment

I'm sorry but did you know that most of those quotes are from nondoctrinal sources?

General conference addresses and official church publications are nondoctrinal sources? Got it.

The two doctrinal sources you did quote are superceeded by a double article in the 1984 Ensign by Sorensen.

Do you realize what you just said here? Declarations by apostles and prophets are freely overruled by anthropology professors.

This is excellent proof of my theory.

Link to comment

Probably something like, "Wow, that was the most self-serving cherry picking through historical sources that I have seen this summer".

Ok juliann, to keep things even, I'll give you the opportunity to go cherry picking yourself. Find me quotes from general conference or in official church publications, prior to 1970, stating that the church has never implied that the NY hill was the one with the Nephite/Jaredite battles.

To declare that the church has never held such a position is revisionism in its purest form.

Link to comment
Hamblin makes this same claim:

"First, acceptance of the historicity of the Book of Mormon logically necessitates acceptance of Joseph Smith's prophetic claims."

His paper talks about archaeolgy but then he changes it, above, to historicity. Finding the remnant of a Jewish synagogue in Mesoamerica (belief in a recovered archaeological artifact) won't convert people en masse to the LDS faith (acceptance of the historicity of the Book of Mormon).

You may be right, but the biggest single difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon is that of provenance.

The Bible, for all its probable flaws in transcription, etc., has had a trackable history, i.e., we have a fair-to-middlin' knowledge of who wrote most of it, and where it came from, certainly everything from Ezra/Nehemiah onward.

With the Book of Mormon, it is not so. There are but two options for it: either it came from a XIX writer with a very fertile imagination or it came, by means of angelic intervention, from an ancient American culture.

Since there is no reasonable means by which an XIX writer could have known many of the things included in the book and which have been discovered subsequent to its publication, each time another piece of the puzzle falls into place, the odds of the fertile imagination is less and less likely.

The setting for the Book of Mormon; real Old World people living in the Americas who built cities and churches, is either based in historic fact or it isn't.

Exactly.

Believing that lost Hebrew tribes traveled to the Americas, built cities, fought wars, practiced Judaism and instituted Christianity doesn't mean I have to accept Jos Smith as a prophet or the Book of Mormon as scripture.

No, no one can force you to accept that which you knowingly reject.

But, as you said, it is either true or it is false. There is no middle ground. If true, the whole package is true, at least to the point where the Book of Mormon was published. That package irrefutably includes Joseph's prophetic calling. But you cannot accept the historicity of the Book of Mormon without implicitly accepting the angelic ministrant who delivered the plates to the Prophet and the God-inspired translation thereof. The two are inseparably interconnected.

Why should we accept that only one written account of history exists in the form of the Book of Mormon?

Not only need we not accept the uniqueness of the Book of Mormon, the book explicitly tells us that there were many such records. Of course, the Spanish Fathers who came along and destroyed whole libraries en masse might have had something to do with why we're not seeing much along these lines. Their brethren, the Conquistadors, also ravaged the countryside in search of gold, valuing the metal far more than the unreadable contents of plates. Whole shiploads of tumbaga ware are at the bottom of the sea, and it was not in its original form: they'd melted it down and cast it into ingots. No scholars in Spain (or Portugal) ever got a glance at the form of the original artifacts, assuming they'd have cared anyway.

Could the Maya have documented these people on glyphs? Could artifacts of Hebrew influence ever be identified? Could city remnants corresponding to the Book of Mormon ever be uncovered?

Of course they could, and, in time, will be.

The more pertinent question is, however, will we recognize them for what they are, or were? How would we know this city was Zerahemla and that one Moroni?

Could metals, fortifications, religious influences by a culture be discerned from recovered artifacts or glyphs?

This question is unanswerable. There were a thousand years, and at least three major "Nephite" settlements, between Lehi's arrival in Peru and the final battle at Cumorah. Colonies do not remain "true" to their mother culture for that long, especially with little or no contact between them, as was the case with the Nephites. The Mulekites brought little Hebrew, not even the language, to the table when Mosiah found them. Christ, at His visit, did not "Judaize" the Nephites, either.

So how Hebraic the Nephites were in ad 421 is something of an unknown.

Archaeologists in Israel don't necessarily believe Christianity or Judaism because they excavate cities listed in the Bible. Would an archaeologist, finding the remnant of a Jewish synagogue in Guatamala, decide to not share his or her find so as not to be beholden to belief in the LDS church?

It would be feasible. Irrational, but feasible.

Christ doesn't demand faith that the city of Emmaus existed, or faith that there was a road to that town or faith that two people on that road to that town were walking and talking about events in Jerusalem. He only demands belief in Him. Likening a belief in the setting for the Book of Mormon to a belief in Christ is sort of missing the point about belief in Christ, in my opinion.

You are wrong. Wrong because you miss the entire question of the provenance of the Book of Mormon.

The two situations are not parallel. They are not even coplanar.

Lehi

Link to comment

Hamblin's faith-promoting piece, in the guise of a critique, makes a poor connection between the Bible and the Book of Mormon with regard to archaeological knowledge. Do you know of anyone that asserts that the setting for the Bible is the result of someone's imagination and has no basis in reality to known cities, mountains, rivers, seas, and roads?

I know lots of people who think the bible is a work of fiction. Harry Potter has known cities, rivers, seas and roads. This does not make it true. What you are missing is that we don't know any of the names of the cities in latin america. You are arguing from ignorance. We can find the cities mentioned in the bible, but few if any of the events or people mentioned can be confirmed. I just don't understand why this argument keeps bring brought up. Having a city name that can't be found means nothing. Clearly the cities had names. The book of Mormon gives them names but we cannot confirm these names from any outside source. Please explain why this is a mark against the Book of Mormon.

Link to comment

Just admit it Dan, you are the puppetmaster behind the current church administration.

But you've been pulling so many strings lately you've gotten yourself all tangled up.

Cool, you are rude and uneducated. What a great combination.

Link to comment

Ok juliann, to keep things even, I'll give you the opportunity to go cherry picking yourself. Find me quotes from general conference or in official church publications, prior to 1970, stating that the church has never implied that the NY hill was the one with the Nephite/Jaredite battles.

To declare that the church has never held such a position is revisionism in its purest form.

Like we couldn't see this coming. Suddenly more details and restrictions emerge so you can control the data. Too late.

Some say the Hill Cumorah was in southern Mexico (and someone pushed it down still farther) and not in western New York. Well, if the Lord wanted us to know where it was, or where Zarahemla was, heâ??d have given us latitude and longitude, donâ??t you think? And why bother our heads trying to discover with archaeological certainty the geographical locations of the cities of the Book of Mormon like Zarahemla?

Harold B. Lee, â??Loyalty,â? address to religious educators, 8 July 1966; in Charge to Religious Educators, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Church Educational System and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1982), 65; cited in Dennis B. Horne (ed.), Determining Doctrine: A Reference Guide for Evaluation Doctrinal Truth (Roy, Utah: Eborn Books, 2005), 172â??173.

The real question is....why are you not disclosing what exists regardless of the conclusions you want to draw from it? If you want to be designated the expert and referee then you need to be the one disclosing all statements. You have lost your credibility by withholding information.

Link to comment

You may be right, but the biggest single difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon is that of provenance.

I'm a (hopefully civil) critic of the LDS Church but I don't believe that is true. A possible thread.
The Bible, for all its probable flaws in transcription, etc., has had a trackable history, i.e., we have a fair-to-middlin' knowledge of who wrote most of it, and where it came from, certainly everything from Ezra/Nehemiah onward.

With the Book of Mormon, it is not so. There are but two options for it: either it came from a XIX writer with a very fertile imagination or it came, by means of angelic intervention, from an ancient American culture.

Since there is no reasonable means by which an XIX writer could have known many of the things included in the book and which have been discovered subsequent to its publication, each time another piece of the puzzle falls into place, the odds of the fertile imagination is less and less likely.

For the sake of argument, let's acknowledge Jos Smith's claims about the Book's origins.

But, as you said, it is either true or it is false. There is no middle ground. If true, the whole package is true, at least to the point where the Book of Mormon was published. That package irrefutably includes Joseph's prophetic calling. But you cannot accept the historicity of the Book of Mormon without implicitly accepting the angelic ministrant who delivered the plates to the Prophet and the God-inspired translation thereof. The two are inseparably interconnected.
The number of spinoffs to the first LDS Church makes me think that not everyone is signing for (or signing up for) the same package.

The historical setting for the Book of Mormon is not dependent on the Book's provenance. The cities and fortresses and cultural clashes all existed -- but existence isn't dependent on someone documenting their existence. Likewise, a belief that they existed doesn't require a belief that the history was delivered in a supernatural fashion, per Jos Smith's claim. I can believe in a River Sidon if I'm persuaded by academic (and possibly other) findings. But I'm confident that the location of that river - and other findings for that matter - would not be enough to make me join the LDS Church. Those reasons are off-topic but call it anything - call it spite. The fact is, the church would get many more people interested in the church than not, but joining would be an act of faith and not everyone would be breaking down the door. I would guess that there are some inactive LDS who believe in the historical setting of the Book of Mormon. It hasn't motivated them to be faithful to the church (I offer this as an observation - my church probably has more inactive than yours).

Not only need we not accept the uniqueness of the Book of Mormon, the book explicitly tells us that there were many such records. Of course, the Spanish Fathers who came along and destroyed whole libraries en masse might have had something to do with why we're not seeing much along these lines. Their brethren, the Conquistadors, also ravaged the countryside in search of gold, valuing the metal far more than the unreadable contents of plates. Whole shiploads of tumbaga ware are at the bottom of the sea, and it was not in its original form: they'd melted it down and cast it into ingots. No scholars in Spain (or Portugal) ever got a glance at the form of the original artifacts, assuming they'd have cared anyway.
But remnants of artifacts, correlated city locations, fortresses and other indications that the events of the Book of Mormon took place in a known locale are not beyond discovery, correct?
Of course they could, and, in time, will be.

I have my concerns about this, but that's probably another thread, too.

The more pertinent question is, however, will we recognize them for what they are, or were? How would we know this city was Zerahemla and that one Moroni?
I'm okay to leave this to the academic community to haggle over while I read their postings and subscribe to their magazines. The Book of Mormon lists quite a few cities and talks about them in relation to other cities, lands, and people movements. Some have gone so far to make maps and I see those here sometimes. I think that time stratas(?) in Mesoamerica are fairly well known, so once some city locations are tenatively identified then the dirt archaeologist can effectively focus on the task of moving dirt. What will they find to distinguish Old World and New? I guess there has to be something that isn't indigenous to the known cultures of Mesomarica. I mean, these people practiced an Old World religion, built cities, fought wars, practiced Christianity, and basically sustained themselves in various forms and groups from 2200 BC to 400 AD. Mesoamerican scholars are fairly meticulous about trying to date items that they dig up. They can find this timeframe.
This question is unanswerable. There were a thousand years, and at least three major "Nephite" settlements, between Lehi's arrival in Peru and the final battle at Cumorah. Colonies do not remain "true" to their mother culture for that long, especially with little or no contact between them, as was the case with the Nephites. The Mulekites brought little Hebrew, not even the language, to the table when Mosiah found them. Christ, at His visit, did not "Judaize" the Nephites, either.

Is there something to read that talks about Peru as Lehi's landing place?

Link to comment

Do you realize what you just said here? Declarations by apostles and prophets are freely overruled by anthropology professors.

This is excellent proof of my theory.

There is some evidence that Neal Maxwell may have asked Sorensen to write the Ensign article. The evidence is here http://content.lib.u.../dialogue,29648. I'm not sure it is conclusive, but there seems to be something to it.

Link to comment
Emmaus was the straw man that you brought up, above. Tieing the lack of archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon to the fact that not all of the cities in the Bible are identified is a classic strawman arguement. If it isn't, then let's start comparing known places in the Bible to known places in the Book of Mormon. You can go first.

Sigh.

In your invariably hostile and confrontational way (at least when you attempt interaction with me), you've completely missed the point.

So I see nothing to be gained by discussing this with you.

Is biblical geography relatively well established, while Book of Mormon geography (and even whether it actually exists) is a matter of fundamental controversy? Yes, obviously. Are their archaeological situations comparable? No. Obviously.

For reasons that are opaque to me, you seem to be trying to gin up an argument over a position that, so far as I can determine, I don't hold.

Have a great day.

The fact remains that those who query the First Presidency regarding BoA issues are referred to Gee's book.

Whenever anyone went to Joseph Smith with a serious question, he inquired of the Lord and came back with a revelation.

Always? On every subject? And the Lord always provided everything he wanted to know?

This isn't the Joseph Smith of history.

He plainly had not received a revelation on the geography of the Book of Mormon, for example.

Can you imagine him referring anyone to someone's book?

Sure!

Since he had received no revelation on the geography of the Book of Mormon, he was very much taken with Stephens and Catherwood's 1841 Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.

http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/030930joseph.html

Just admit it Dan, you are the puppetmaster behind the current church administration.

It's all true. Has anybody seen President Monson wiggle his ears? Well, I hate to break it to you, but that's not really President Monson's doing. It's mine. Via computer instructions sent to a receiving device implanted at the base of his neck. From the FARMS F

Link to comment

DCP:

There has been no "declaration" on Book of Mormon geography by any Church leader. No official position. No revelation. There have been theories, opinions, passing mentions of common assumptions, and the like, but no binding declarations. If there had been, those at BYU who rejected them would have been fired, not invited to publish their purportedly heretical notions in the Church's official magazine.

What I really do not understand is why this concept appears to be so elusive for some and yet so obvious to others.

Furthermore, a very common thread that I see is that those whom the concept escapes are, almost without exception, disbelievers in the divine origins of the restored gospel and the mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Indeed, as often as not (at least based on my experience with Mormon-related message boards) such individuals are still nominally LDS; often even attending their Sunday meetings. And yet they are closet disbelievers, or fully engaged in what is apparently an often lengthy process of extracting themselves from the church in which they no longer believe.

Link to comment

It's all true. Has anybody seen President Monson wiggle his ears? Well, I hate to break it to you, but that's not really President Monson's doing. It's mine. Via computer instructions sent to a receiving device implanted at the base of his neck. From the FARMS F

Link to comment
the biggest single difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon is that of provenance.
I don't believe that is true.

Then please note what the biggest single difference is.

On matters religious, they are essentially equivalent. In terms of time span, Tower of Babel to ad 421 (with many notes regarding Adam, Eve and their Garden) or 4,000 bc to ad 100, they are somewhat on a par. The depth of their discussions of minutiae differ significantly, but I don't see that that unseats my assertion.

The number of spinoffs to the first LDS Church makes me think that not everyone is signing for (or signing up for) the same package.

You did note my caveat about the package's being inseparable up to the point of the publication of the Book of Mormon, did you not? You are being a distraction with this question.

The historical setting for the Book of Mormon is not dependent on the Book's provenance.

Then you do not understand my/our position.

Its provenance depends on its historical setting, not the other way 'round. If it was what it claims to be, then its historical setting is not the question because if it is not what it claims to be, then there is no historical setting.

Unlike Harry Potter's London, the ancient Nephite milieux (both in the Ancient Near East and in mesoamerica) were not available to Joseph Smith for his supposed novel. He must have invented them with the sole exception of the city and land of Jerusalem (with which he was so poorly acquainted that he did not even know the Jerusalem had a city wall â?? yet the narratives in 1 Nephi and in the lost book of Lehi explicitly noted that Nephi and his brothers had to get through it to retrieve the plates).

This leads us inextricably to the conclusion that Joseph must have gotten it wrong far more often than he got it right. The odds simply do not allow for him to have fabricated whole societies and cultures that turned out to match the, for him, unknown societies and cultures only later found to exist. The same, and to a greater degree, is true of the geography he placed into his "fiction". No one in rural, western New York, c. 1827, imagined that in Arabia, known almost exclusively for its impenetrable desert, harbored not one, but several places that would qualify as "Bountiful", nor that there was a place called Nahom (in various linguistic guises), nor that there would be a Shazer, nor a River/Valley of Laman/Lemuel. Yet these all exist; they are verifiable, and they have been verified. Some anti-mormons still ridicule them, but their face-saving ignorance says a great deal more about them than it does about the Book of Mormon.

If we were to find a signpost that said "Zarahemla ahead: a day-and-a-half journey for a Nephite", it would prove beyond question that the Book of Mormon is true, not because Zerahemla would thus be proven to have existed, but that Joseph did not (nor could have) make it up, and it existed anyway.

This means that Joseph did receive the plates as he claimed, and that he was called as a prophet of God. Not the least of his claims, that of the First Vision, would also be implicitly (and irrefutably) true, as well.

No other option exists.

As to whether he remained a true prophet, or which of the several men who claimed his mantle was his God-chosen successor â?? these are questions the Book of Mormon does not, nor can it, answer. But it, sure as sunshine, means that the Catholic Church, the Lutherans (along with their homosexual clergy), the Baptists and all the other non-Restoration churches have neither the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ nor His Priesthood.

I'm okay to leave this to the academic community to haggle over while I read their postings and subscribe to their magazines.

I am not so willing to let my fate lie in the hands of scholars and scientists. It is up to me to secure my spiritual future, and no dirt archeologist is going to determine whether I see Father again.

Is there something to read that talks about Peru as Lehi's landing place?

You need to keep in mind that in the XIX, "Peru" was not the same thing we know today. It was much larger, extending to the northern border of Venezuela. When Joseph Smith spoke of Lehi's landing in Peru, it was probably in the northern extent of the old territory. But you can look it up, I'm sure.

Lehi

Link to comment

Then please note what the biggest single difference is.

On matters religious, they are essentially equivalent. In terms of time span, Tower of Babel to ad 421 (with many notes regarding Adam, Eve and their Garden) or 4,000 bc to ad 100, they are somewhat on a par. The depth of their discussions of minutiae differ significantly, but I don't see that that unseats my assertion.

As I said, above, it's off topic and I'd rather not derail this thread.
You did note my caveat about the package's being inseparable up to the point of the publication of the Book of Mormon, did you not? You are being a distraction with this question.

my bad.

Then you do not understand my/our position.

Its provenance depends on its historical setting, not the other way 'round. If it was what it claims to be, then its historical setting is not the question because if it is not what it claims to be, then there is no historical setting.

Unlike Harry Potter's London, the ancient Nephite milieux (both in the Ancient Near East and in mesoamerica) were not available to Joseph Smith for his supposed novel. He must have invented them with the sole exception of the city and land of Jerusalem (with which he was so poorly acquainted that he did not even know the Jerusalem had a city wall â?? yet the narratives in 1 Nephi and in the lost book of Lehi explicitly noted that Nephi and his brothers had to get through it to retrieve the plates).

This leads us inextricably to the conclusion that Joseph must have gotten it wrong far more often than he got it right. The odds simply do not allow for him to have fabricated whole societies and cultures that turned out to match the, for him, unknown societies and cultures only later found to exist. The same, and to a greater degree, is true of the geography he placed into his "fiction". No one in rural, western New York, c. 1827, imagined that in Arabia, known almost exclusively for its impenetrable desert, harbored not one, but several places that would qualify as "Bountiful", nor that there was a place called Nahom (in various linguistic guises), nor that there would be a Shazer, nor a River/Valley of Laman/Lemuel. Yet these all exist; they are verifiable, and they have been verified. Some anti-mormons still ridicule them, but their face-saving ignorance says a great deal more about them than it does about the Book of Mormon.

This means that Joseph did receive the plates as he claimed, and that he was called as a prophet of God. Not the least of his claims, that of the First Vision, would also be implicitly (and irrefutably) true, as well.

No other option exists.

Well, I certainly see that's the case for you. I tried to discuss this from the point of view that the Book of Mormon came about as LDS believe but I think you're more interested in trying to convince me that the Book has been verified by historical and, I suppose, archaeological findings. That's fine, but you've missed my point.

If we were to find a signpost that said "Zarahemla ahead: a day-and-a-half journey for a Nephite", it would prove beyond question that the Book of Mormon is true, not because Zerahemla would thus be proven to have existed, but that Joseph did not (nor could have) make it up, and it existed anyway.

I thought the Book of Mormon was a religious book to be believed in through faith. How can verification of a city location be a substitute for faith and thus proof that the book is true? I challenge you to prove that archaeolgical verification would make the Book of Mormon "true." I just cited a personal testimony that I wouldn't believe the Book true if you verified a city location. I don't imagine I'm the only one.

As to whether he remained a true prophet, or which of the several men who claimed his mantle was his God-chosen successor â?? these are questions the Book of Mormon does not, nor can it, answer. But it, sure as sunshine, means that the Catholic Church, the Lutherans (along with their homosexual clergy), the Baptists and all the other non-Restoration churches have neither the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ nor His Priesthood.

Yes, I'm familiar with the beliefs of the LDS Church.

I am not so willing to let my fate lie in the hands of scholars and scientists. It is up to me to secure my spiritual future, and no dirt archeologist is going to determine whether I see Father again.

You missed my point.

You need to keep in mind that in the XIX, "Peru" was not the same thing we know today. It was much larger, extending to the northern border of Venezuela. When Joseph Smith spoke of Lehi's landing in Peru, it was probably in the northern extent of the old territory. But you can look it up, I'm sure.
So, I guess the answer is no, you don't have anything that shows that Lehi landed in Peru.
Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...