Lgt And The Lamanites Of Ammon'S Mission

[robuchan]

Freedom:

You need to take into consideration that the alternative to your view of the BOM is that it was produced in the 1800's by an author who had a fundamental/literal view of the Bible, including the ages and population patterns that exist in Genesis.

[Freedom]

I don't understand your questions.

This, I think, proves my point.

[Freedom]

How old do you think Lehi lived to? Nephi? You're making a lot of unnecessary assumptions.

Lets say you go to a funeral and nobody knows how old the person was when she died. One person says she was 150, another 80. Which one is making unnecessary assumptions?

[Freedom]

Freedom:

You need to take into consideration that the alternative to your view of the BOM is that it was produced in the 1800's by an author who had a fundamental/literal view of the Bible, including the ages and population patterns that exist in Genesis.

This is an altogether different argument and not at all related to the discussion at hand.

[robuchan]

Freedom: I guess we're done.

[Brant Gardner]

for point #1, it's important that the record be considered a true, historical record.

I am guessing that you have no idea that you have just made a nonsense statement. "True" for whom? I assure you that all myths are true for those who tell them, and are considered to be history.

If you mean modern history (such has been practiced in the last 50 years), then you automatically exclude anything written prior to that time.

Myth which has historical elements is not acceptable.

If you make up the rules, you can assure the outcome. This seems to be the board equivalent of Calvin Ball (a serious Calvin & Hobbes fan, I am).

for point #3, my assumption is that a BOM prophet would not intentionally deceive his audience on the existence of Others.

Wow. Not mentioning something that was irrelevant to their message is now deceptive? Seriously?

Calvin Ball again.

If the only precedents you have in the ancient literature are of this variety, then I say they're not similar enough to use as precedents.

Well, there we have it. You say so. I should have accepted that reason a long time ago. Apparently there is no other.

[CASteinman]

We don't know when it took place. Anytime between 50 years and 180 years after arriving. I'm using 150 years. But 120 years would also give similar results.

A more realistic time is 100 years or less. This puts a very aggressive upper limit on the population of 1500 (4% annual growth) and a more realistic upper limit of about 200 (2% annual growth).

The number of people is irrelevant, but if you are going to make a rational argument you should use realistic numbers.

[mathilde]

I am guessing that you have no idea that you have just made a nonsense statement. "True" for whom? I assure you that all myths are true for those who tell them, and are considered to be history.

If you mean modern history (such has been practiced in the last 50 years), then you automatically exclude anything written prior to that time.

If you make up the rules, you can assure the outcome. This seems to be the board equivalent of Calvin Ball (a serious Calvin & Hobbes fan, I am).

Wow. Not mentioning something that was irrelevant to their message is now deceptive? Seriously?

Calvin Ball again.

"All myths are true for those who tell them, and are considered to be history"? I must be misunderstanding something in that statement because I can't begin to see how this is accurate.

How is the existence of Others irrelevant? How can we study a sacred text like this -- given to a modern people through the help of the Lord and angels, where the prophets within it state that the people brought to this land were brought to it by the hand of the Lord and are his people -- and just decide that there HAD to be Others but that their existence was irrelevant to the message of the book? Why?

There were no "Others". Whatever other people were on the land were brought there by the hand of the Lord. How can we read 2 Nephi 1 limiting that to a small geographic area? This land being a promised land for Lehi's seed and for "all those who should be led out of other countries". (verse 5) "There shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord." (verse 6) Verse 7 is about the land being a land of liberty if they serve the Lord. How many times have we read that in Sunday School and applied that to the US? Am I the only one? And verse 8, "it is wisdom that this land is kept from the knowledge of other nations".

Yes, I can see that the limited geography theory solves some problems. But it doesn't solve them all. Because if there were Others, they all mattered. They are all part of the promise, whether they were righteous or wicked, aren't they part of the story? The people that were here -- before or during or after -- were brought by the Lord, and that idea, a people who were led to this land by the Lord, is far from being irrelevant to the text. So yes, if there was time and relevance enough to hammer out text about grains, animals and all the other details in the Book of Mormon, then yes, I think it is not such a stretch to say that if there truly were so many Others as some of you are arguing, it is a reasonable thing to react to a reading of the text in that light with quite a lot of new questions.

[robuchan]

A more realistic time is 100 years or less. This puts a very aggressive upper limit on the population of 1500 (4% annual growth) and a more realistic upper limit of about 200 (2% annual growth).

The number of people is irrelevant, but if you are going to make a rational argument you should use realistic numbers.

Sariah's the only mother we have at least partial detail on child birth rate. She had at least 8 children over a period of 30 years. Use that as an assumption, and what does that do to your 4%? Why are you people concerned about "realistic" annual growth rates when we're talking about a religious book of scripture explaining the populating of a new land?

[CASteinman]

Sariah's the only mother we have at least partial detail on child birth rate. She had at least 8 children over a period of 30 years. Use that as an assumption, and what does that do to your 4%? Why are you people concerned about "realistic" annual growth rates when we're talking about a religious book of scripture explaining the populating of a new land?

A woman needs to produce 12 children who survive over 25 years for the growth rate to be 4% as I recall. It is about the limit and is not normal although it is not absolutely unprecedented for at least short periods of time in a nation's history.

I would consider long term sustained growth at that rate to be miraculous.

Edited June 12, 2012 by CASteinman

[robuchan]

I am guessing that you have no idea that you have just made a nonsense statement. "True" for whom? I assure you that all myths are true for those who tell them, and are considered to be history.

If you mean modern history (such has been practiced in the last 50 years), then you automatically exclude anything written prior to that time.

If you make up the rules, you can assure the outcome. This seems to be the board equivalent of Calvin Ball (a serious Calvin & Hobbes fan, I am).

Wow. Not mentioning something that was irrelevant to their message is now deceptive? Seriously?

Calvin Ball again.

Well, there we have it. You say so. I should have accepted that reason a long time ago. Apparently there is no other.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. You seem to be really mad that an uneducated non-scholar like me is challenging you on this subject.

You seem to be admitting that a) the facts of the case in this piece of literature you're comparing to the BOM are not taken as rock solid accurate portrayal of actual historical events and that b) the people who created and perpetuated this myth had incentive to deceive their audience about the preexisting populations and thus their omission had motivation.

Is this right?

If so, this has nothing to do with ancient perspective vs presentism. It has to do with people manipulating their audience. This is a human issue, not an ancient vs historical one, and an issue anyone understands no matter how much they are or are not trained in ancient documents.

This is a far cry from where we started when you said there were precedents for the BOM to ignore the existence.of Others You originally implied there was no motivation or reason other than it was not relevant to BOM and authors of other ancient literature.

[Hamba Tuhan]

Question for you: how likely would it be for an "Other" to become converted to the Law of Moses doctrine that Sherem was preaching? And I know I'm opening the door for Kevin Christensen to write 10 long paragraphs on how if I could read this through an ancient perspective I could see that it's very logical.

Not just logical but demonstrably common, and not just in an 'ancient' setting.

My own research, which deals with the very early modern period, has focussed on the incidence of religious change in contact zones established by outsiders. In the region I've worked with, aggressive adoption of the faith and practices of the newly arrived was so striking that numerous later commentators have written of some kind of early 'missionising' as though it were a fact because, to them, logically it had to be. But it wasn't. I can demonstrate not only that no mission or preaching occurred...unless one wants to count what happened once early adopters in the contact zones began independently spreading the new faith. In this way, the outsiders eventually started bumping into locals who had adopted their religious identity even though there'd been no direct earlier contact between the two groups.

[robuchan]

Not just logical but demonstrably common, and not just in an 'ancient' setting.

My own research, which deals with the very early modern period, has focussed on the incidence of religious change in contact zones established by outsiders. In the region I've worked with, aggressive adoption of the faith and practices of the newly arrived was so striking that numerous later commentators have written of some kind of early 'missionising' as though it were a fact because, to them, logically it had to be. But it wasn't. I can demonstrate not only that no mission or preaching occurred...unless one wants to count what happened once early adopters in the contact zones began independently spreading the new faith. In this way, the outsiders eventually started bumping into locals who had adopted their religious identity even though there'd been no direct earlier contact between the two groups.

We're not talking about conversion. Though speaking of conversion, that would make a great BOM story wouldn't it?

We're talking about a conversion and then an apostasy reverting back to a religion Sherem never knew. Practiced by those Nephi left back in Jerusalem.

I agree it's not impossible, and it's not an issue I'll fight to death over.. It just seems really unnatural.

[Brant Gardner]

"All myths are true for those who tell them, and are considered to be history"? I must be misunderstanding something in that statement because I can't begin to see how this is accurate.

Let me see if I can put it in perspective. Let's say you are a Hindu and read Genesis. Genesis would be the Jewish origin myth. Is it true? Well, Jews believe it is, and Christians after them.

For the Maya, they had their own story of creation. For them it was also very true, enough so that it informed their art and religion for about a thousand years. A myth is usually someone else's truth that we don't recognize. If it were our own, it would be called scripture.

Was there an Adam and Eve? If you are Christian or Jewish (depending upon the flavor of either, of course) that is history. If you are Hindu, it isn't.

How is the existence of Others irrelevant?

If you are asking if it is possible to get spiritual truth from the Book of Mormon whether there were others in the land or not, the answer is yes. Definitely. However, if the question is whether or not understanding that there were others and what relationship they might have had with the Nephites can enrich our understanding of the Book of Mormon, then the answer is also yes. If we know the culture and the setting, there are a lot of things to be learned. We can enrich our study of the Bible if we know the culture in which the people lived. It helps understand passages in the New Testament (like the passage of having an "eye single to the Glory of God").

How can we study a sacred text like this -- given to a modern people through the help of the Lord and angels, where the prophets within it state that the people brought to this land were brought to it by the hand of the Lord and are his people -- and just decide that there HAD to be Others but that their existence was irrelevant to the message of the book? Why?

There are several questions there. Let's start with why. To understand better, that's why. To enrich our understanding of the people, to know what was behind their actions. It is the same way that knowing the political situation in Jesus' times tells us that Jesus really meant something very different with the striking on the cheek saying than we have come to understand. The actual reason is much stronger, much more assertive. We can learn the same thing about the Book of Mormon when we know where it took place. We can understand the actions surrounding Ammon at the Waters of Sebus, which otherwise don't make a lot of sense.

There were no "Others". Whatever other people were on the land were brought there by the hand of the Lord.

We find: "And behold, it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations; for behold, many nations would overrun the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance." (2 Nephi 1:

Many people have read that assuming that it means that Lehi came to an empty land. That wasn't true, of course. The Book of Mormon tells us that there were remnants of Jaredites around for 400 years after lehi arrived. Therefore, when that statement was given, there were already people there.

What could it mean? Just as the Promised Land of Israel was a very specific (and limited) place, so too was the land that Nephi came to. Only by anachronously reading "land" in a modern sense would we think it was very large. Think of times when people lived and died withing a two to three days radius of where they were born. Lands were much smaller, and bounded by rivers and hills, not vast oceans.

"There shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord." (verse 6)

Of course, the conditional that comes in verse 9 is the most important part.That is where the promise is given, and it is upon righteousness. So protection for any outsiders lasted only through righteousness. The Nephites invoked that promise as support for being able to beat back Lamanite attacks, but eventually that failed.

Nephites fled their land of first inheritance because another nation (a Lamanite nation) ran them out. The went to Zarahemla. Eventually they were displaced from there to Bountiful, and eventually even farther north. Eventually, they lost all protection. If God's promise was correct, wasn't it another nation that did all of that displacing? That was the message from Lehi. All other peoples are called Lamanites, regardless of where they came from (similar to the Hebrew goyim - see Jacob 1:14).

Yes, I can see that the limited geography theory solves some problems.

Except that it isn't about solving problems. It is about carefully reading the text and discovering what it has to tell us rather than what we read into it.

Because if there were Others, they all mattered.

No argument there.

They are all part of the promise, whether they were righteous or wicked, aren't they part of the story?

Yep. Jacob 1:14.

The people that were here -- before or during or after -- were brought by the Lord,

Let's say that we find a companion text to the Book of Mormon that mentions the Lord bringing some Moabites. Then the Book of Mormon didn't mention them. If God brought them for his own purposes, would it be a requirement that they be included in the Book of Mormon? The text never says that God only brought the Jaredites, people of Mulek, or people of Lehi. Why limit God so?

So yes, if there was time and relevance enough to hammer out text about grains, animals and all the other details in the Book of Mormon, then yes, I think it is not such a stretch to say that if there truly were so many Others as some of you are arguing, it is a reasonable thing to react to a reading of the text in that light with quite a lot of new questions.

Not really. It has nothing to do with the way we read the text. It really has to do with how Nephi wrote it. If you believe that he lived in 600 B.C. and wrote a document that Joseph Smith translated, then Nephi wrote that document with his human mind and understanding, under inspiration. We should understand what Nephi meant, not what we suppose he must have meant because we see the world differently than he did.

[Brant Gardner]

Not just logical but demonstrably common, and not just in an 'ancient' setting.

My own research, which deals with the very early modern period, has focussed on the incidence of religious change in contact zones established by outsiders. In the region I've worked with, aggressive adoption of the faith and practices of the newly arrived was so striking that numerous later commentators have written of some kind of early 'missionising' as though it were a fact because, to them, logically it had to be. But it wasn't. I can demonstrate not only that no mission or preaching occurred...unless one wants to count what happened once early adopters in the contact zones began independently spreading the new faith. In this way, the outsiders eventually started bumping into locals who had adopted their religious identity even though there'd been no direct earlier contact between the two groups.

Cool. That touches directly on things I have been interested in. Send me a message to let me know how to find your work. I would love to read it.

Thanks.

[ERayR]

Not just logical but demonstrably common, and not just in an 'ancient' setting.

My own research, which deals with the very early modern period, has focussed on the incidence of religious change in contact zones established by outsiders. In the region I've worked with, aggressive adoption of the faith and practices of the newly arrived was so striking that numerous later commentators have written of some kind of early 'missionising' as though it were a fact because, to them, logically it had to be. But it wasn't. I can demonstrate not only that no mission or preaching occurred...unless one wants to count what happened once early adopters in the contact zones began independently spreading the new faith. In this way, the outsiders eventually started bumping into locals who had adopted their religious identity even though there'd been no direct earlier contact between the two groups.

I too would like to know where I could get access to this.

Thanks

[mathilde]

Brant Gardner, thank you for the response. I do appreciate that.

[Anijen]

Brant Gardner, thank you for the response. I do appreciate that.

I have always appreciated his responses. Brant has always been very polite even when I initially disagreed with him.

The best posters IMO for Book of Mormon geography are Brant Gardner, Keven Christensen, Lawrence Poulson, Robert F. Smith, and Mark Wright (Hasbaz). IMO the best poster who I disagree with on basically one thing but I agree with him on many others is Bob Crocket. Those posters will always give good credible information. When I see any post by those guys, I always read them.

[mrmandias]

Not just logical but demonstrably common, and not just in an 'ancient' setting.

My own research, which deals with the very early modern period, has focussed on the incidence of religious change in contact zones established by outsiders. In the region I've worked with, aggressive adoption of the faith and practices of the newly arrived was so striking that numerous later commentators have written of some kind of early 'missionising' as though it were a fact because, to them, logically it had to be. But it wasn't. I can demonstrate not only that no mission or preaching occurred...unless one wants to count what happened once early adopters in the contact zones began independently spreading the new faith. In this way, the outsiders eventually started bumping into locals who had adopted their religious identity even though there'd been no direct earlier contact between the two groups.

The best example I can think of were the Taiping.

[Hamba Tuhan]

Cool. That touches directly on things I have been interested in. Send me a message to let me know how to find your work. I would love to read it.

I too would like to know where I could get access to this.

My PhD research has not yet been published, though both of my thesis examiners strongly encouraged publication, so hopefully that's a situation which will change at some point in future.

Edited June 14, 2012 by Hamba Tuhan

[Hamba Tuhan]

We're not talking about conversion. Though speaking of conversion, that would make a great BOM story wouldn't it?

One a bit hard to retell if, for example--and drawing on my PhD research--Sherem's 'conversion' occurred entirely outside of Nephite purview. Sherem could easily have appropriated a religious identity from those who'd had more contact with the Nephites, or he could have been influenced by the approach Laman and Lemuel's descendants were taking to their faith. Margaret Barker has argued very persuasively that the religious climate in Jerusalem around 600 BC was a contest between competing approaches to 'Judaism'. It's clear from the BofM text that Lehi and Nephi came down firmly on the Messianic/continuing revelation side of that debate. What about Laman and Lemuel? The sons of Ishmael?

We're talking about a conversion and then an apostasy reverting back to a religion Sherem never knew. Practiced by those Nephi left back in Jerusalem.

And who exactly wanted to stay back in Jerusalem when Lehi fled and were then living in the land of Lehi?

Edited June 14, 2012 by Hamba Tuhan

[Aliwe]

Many people have read that assuming that it means that Lehi came to an empty land. That wasn't true, of course. The Book of Mormon tells us that there were remnants of Jaredites around for 400 years after lehi arrived.

Problem: Ether 15:12 says, "And it came to pass that they did gather together all the people upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save it was Ether."

Then later, "And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood."

Then Coriantumr prevailed after some one-on-one action with Shiz, and lived with the Zarahemlans for a space. But that was it for a remnant of Jaredites. One guy. If you marry into the Zarahemlite clan, your kiddies are Zarahemlites, not Jaredites.

[Anijen]

Problem: Ether 15:12 says, "And it came to pass that they did gather together all the people upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save it was Ether."

Then later, "And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood."

Then Coriantumr prevailed after some one-on-one action with Shiz, and lived with the Zarahemlans for a space. But that was it for a remnant of Jaredites. One guy. If you marry into the Zarahemlite clan, your kiddies are Zarahemlites, not Jaredites.

"all the people upon all the face of the land" does not mean the entire hemisphere, nor the entire continent, nor the entire country, nor... well you get the point.

The part that says; "all the people upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain" could be persuasive enough to say that Ether meant all the people in this great battle. We know by the numbers it was large. However this does in no way imply it was every human on the continent.

"all the people upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain" reads to me all the people in that huge battle ground (face of the land). If you notice the face of the land is identified as the a place were some people had not been slain.

Just placing in context and not cherry picking.

Jeff

[Aliwe]

The part that says; "all the people upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain" could be persuasive enough to say that Ether meant all the people in this great battle. We know by the numbers it was large. However this does in no way imply it was every human on the continent.

If I were to jump ship and become a Mormon, I would probably come down on the side of those who believe the Book of Mormon only includes lands in upstate New York, and Ontario, with the two "seas" a couple of Great Lakes, and the "narrow neck of land" that place where you find Niagara Falls and such. Because I find the correlation between existing or historical place names and certain place names called out in the BoM to be far too coincidental. So to me the land was NOT empty when Lehi colonized it. Then again, I'm interested in following out the logical consequences of the text without regard to my personal views on the matter.

[Brant Gardner]

Then Coriantumr prevailed after some one-on-one action with Shiz, and lived with the Zarahemlans for a space. But that was it for a remnant of Jaredites. One guy. If you marry into the Zarahemlite clan, your kiddies are Zarahemlites, not Jaredites.

I'm not sure why you assumed this to be sequential. King Zarahemla wasn't Mulek. He was a descendant. Working out the relative chronology puts the end of the Jaredites around 200 B.C. The descendants of Lehi (and Mulek) had been around for about 400 years by then.