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Ancestors of Navajo Arrive by Boat around 3000-2000 BC


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42 minutes ago, PacMan said:

Post You Tube link. I’d like to take a look. 

He gave them above:

Land Southwardoldest civilization in SE Asia appears in 582 BC, the same decade the Lehites depart Jerusalem.
Land of Zarahemla: the capital city of Srah in the middle of the peninsula dates to Zarahemla time period. Srah is surrounded by subordinate coastal city-states.
Land Northward: Manoron (Moron) and Teincun (Teancum).

It would be nice if he narrated them.

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1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

My auto mechanic makes better money than I did as a school teacher.

Oh yes, that's true.  I know plumbers who make well over $100,000 per year, especially those who work for example in the oil industry "plumbing" in oil refineries etc.  It's highly specialized work.

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43 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

He gave them above:

Land Southwardoldest civilization in SE Asia appears in 582 BC, the same decade the Lehites depart Jerusalem.
Land of Zarahemla: the capital city of Srah in the middle of the peninsula dates to Zarahemla time period. Srah is surrounded by subordinate coastal city-states.
Land Northward: Manoron (Moron) and Teincun (Teancum).

It would be nice if he narrated them.

Yes thanks - I think the question and the answer crossed.

I am just trying to get the overall gist of the story- how did Joseph get the plates in Western NY on this theory?  I am a big picture guy especially since the details in all these theories tend to be a bit nuanced ;)

A variation of the two Cumorahs theories?

Edited by mfbukowski
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3 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I am just trying to get the overall gist of the story- how did Joseph get the plates in Western NY on this theory?  I am a big picture guy especially since the details in all these theories tend to be a bit nuanced ;)

A variation of the two Cumorahs theories?

No, only one Cumorah.  The hill in NY, near Manchester was not named Cumorah.  Cumorah (=Ramah) was the place of final battle, far away.  Moroni had 20 years to get to New York and bury the plates.

Now, of course, Rajah is not saying that Malaysia is the land of the BofM.  He is merely demonstrating that it fits remarkably well.  Like the Early Modern English BofM, it is a mystery.

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2 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

No, only one Cumorah.  The hill in NY, near Manchester was not named Cumorah.  Cumorah (=Ramah) was the place of final battle, far away.  Moroni had 20 years to get to New York and bury the plates.

Now, of course, Rajah is not saying that Malaysia is the land of the BofM.  He is merely demonstrating that it fits remarkably well.  Like the Early Modern English BofM, it is a mystery.

Got it thanks!

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On 6/8/2019 at 12:53 PM, strappinglad said:

When I was young , a major point against the BoM was the nonsense about boats bringing immigrants to the New World before the Vikings and the Spanish. Now there are many evidences that such was common and from many parts of the world   and from thousands of years back. Not until Thor Heyerdahl (sic ) rafted across the oceans to show it COULD be done did academia even consider the idea. 

American academia still seems to suffer from the European delusion that no one else knew how to build boats and travel across oceans before Christopher Columbus. Finds have shown that the Phoenicians were expert boat builders in the 2nd millennia BC, and built boats well capable of sailing across an ocean. Perhaps these archaeologists believe that the aborigines reached Australia 40,000 years ago in an ice age... In fact it seems the newest archaeology is showing evidence of such inhabitants in the Americas back then. The Bering strait land bridge theory for the peopling of the Americas has been shown to be terribly incomplete and inadequate with good evidence of tool-making far before the last ice age in the Americas. Archaeologists such as Dennis Stanford now believe the story of the peopling of the Americas is much more complex. I believe other "Natives" came across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. 

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56 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I am just trying to get the overall gist of the story- how did Joseph get the plates in Western NY on this theory? 

The only response I could offer is that Joseph received the plates, manuscript, translation, transmission or whatever in the same way he received them in the official versions of the story: a man calling himself Moroni/Maroni delivered them to him.

For me, the more important question is: who was Moroni/Maroni? The model I've proposed offers the only solution to this.

The short version is that Maroni was a known "rajah" of the Indies, the founder of the historical lands I've described above. In the two decades previous to the publication of the Book of Mormon, a common hypothesis was that the aborigines of the area below Lake Eerie and Lake Ontario were Malay. This theory originated with Samuel Mitchill, the scholar who was approached by Martin Harris for his opinion on the characters copied from the Golden Plates. Samuel Mitchill supposedly identified the characters from the Golden Plates and named the extinct nation in the east that they came from.

Given Mitchill's theory that the dark-skinned Malay had once battled the fair-skinned Tartars in the area a few miles east of Manchester NY, my hypothesis is that Mitchill identified the characters as being Malay. This is just the beginning of my research, but it would help explain why the Book of Mormon resembles the geography and history of the Malay Peninsula and would explain "Rajah" Maroni's appearance, as well as the appearance of the plates of Rajah Manchou 15 years later.

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56 minutes ago, Calm said:

So Moroni/Maroni was a resurrected man when he gave JS the text whatever the form?  Just want to make sure I am following you.

I don't know. There's quite a range of accounts of the treasure guardian (Moroni) taking different forms, and the question seems an impossible one to answer.

But since the term Marong/Maroni is applied to a mortal man who was a military chief and also a preternatural being in both accounts, the model works in both cases. 

"Marong is a Siamese word used in their astrological or astronomical works. It is applied to a man who can by supernatural means assume any shape he pleases. A Buddhist Priest of Siam acquaints me that it is a title bestowed on a military chief - and also signifies a person who can preternaturally change his appearance" (source)

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8 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The only response I could offer is that Joseph received the plates, manuscript, translation, transmission or whatever in the same way he received them in the official versions of the story: a man calling himself Moroni/Maroni delivered them to him.

For me, the more important question is: who was Moroni/Maroni? The model I've proposed offers the only solution to this.

The short version is that Maroni was a known "rajah" of the Indies, the founder of the historical lands I've described above. In the two decades previous to the publication of the Book of Mormon, a common hypothesis was that the aborigines of the area below Lake Eerie and Lake Ontario were Malay. This theory originated with Samuel Mitchill, the scholar who was approached by Martin Harris for his opinion on the characters copied from the Golden Plates. Samuel Mitchill supposedly identified the characters from the Golden Plates and named the extinct nation in the east that they came from.

Given Mitchill's theory that the dark-skinned Malay had once battled the fair-skinned Tartars in the area a few miles east of Manchester NY, my hypothesis is that Mitchill identified the characters as being Malay. This is just the beginning of my research, but it would help explain why the Book of Mormon resembles the geography and history of the Malay Peninsula and would explain "Rajah" Maroni's appearance, as well as the appearance of the plates of Rajah Manchou 15 years later.

So we have Moroni as Naga, and your source says:

Quote

“. . . the founder of the Kedah kingship, according to Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, has the title of Merong Mahawangsa.  This title is indeed a combination of Siamese, Sanskrit/Pali and Malay words meaning the ‘great snake/dragon dynasty/race,’ with Merong (also Maroni) signifying a great snake or dragon in Thai (Crawford 1830 II: 32; Roberts 1837: 309; Echols and Shadily 1994: 354, 612; Kaempfer 1998: 70).62 Undated Siamese sources likewise refer to Kedah having the emblem of a Merong or big snake as one of the cities under the hegemony of Ligor (i.e., modern day Thai province of Nakhon Si Thammarat/Dhammarat/Dharrmaraja, see Chand Chirayu Rajani 1974: 176-178; The Crystal Sands 1975: 84-85).”

We also have eighty-year-old Orson Saunders in the New York Herald, June 25, 1893, recalling that his uncle Benjamin Saunders of Palmyra had passed on to him the story of Joseph's acquisition of the golden plates: "The place seemed on fi[r]e," he said. Joseph found "an enormous toad . . . squatting on the" Book of Mormon plates, which suddenly expanded in size, becoming "a flaming monster with glittering eyes, until it seemed to fill the heaven." The account included demons and devils as well. Benjamin Saunders had earlier provided a similar but friendlier account to an RLDS inquiry, Sept 17, 1884 (Kelley Interview, RLDS Archives).

Treasure-hunter Willard Chase (Sally Chase's father), who was connected with the Saunders family by marriage, was the source of the transforming toad story in E. D. Howe's exposé Mormonism Unvailed (1834)

David Whitmer stated in the Aug 7, 1875, Chicago Times, page 1, col 3, that the angel (like Saunders’ "flaming monster") hurled Joseph "to the plain below," and this comports with Joseph’s mother Lucy Mack Smith’s own account of Joseph’s first visit to the hill: He “reached forth” to “take” the plates, “but was hurled back to the ground” (L. F. Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book, 347). Joseph’s scribe Oliver Cowdery earlier said that, at that moment, “a shock was produced upon his system, by an invisible power which deprived him, . . of his natural strength” (Messenger & Advocate, 2/1 [Oct 1835], 198).

At the close of the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul (not the text of the same name from Nag Hammadi), when Paul is carried to the third heaven, the angel conducting him changes in appearance and bursts into flame. This in a long text which non-Mormon Willis Barnstone has found compares quite well in general with Joseph Smith’s tripartite vision concerning the obtaining of the Book of Mormon plates. Barnstone, ed., The Other Bible (1984), 537; J. K. Elliott, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament(1993), 644, not found in the Greek, Latin, and Syriac endings – the Coptic ending comes after §51; E. A. W. Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts (1915), 574,1084.

Edited by Robert F. Smith
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4 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

The short version is that Maroni was a known "rajah" of the Indies, the founder of the historical lands I've described above. In the two decades previous to the publication of the Book of Mormon, a common hypothesis was that the aborigines of the area below Lake Eerie and Lake Ontario were Malay. This theory originated with Samuel Mitchill, the scholar who was approached by Martin Harris for his opinion on the characters copied from the Golden Plates. Samuel Mitchill supposedly identified the characters from the Golden Plates and named the extinct nation in the east that they came from.

Does reformed Maylay look anything like present-day Maylay?

Is there evidence of anything else in the area that was actually Maylay?

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21 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

It's Malay. Or Melayu in Malay. I don't know why you're adding the extra 'y'.

Sorry, pure ignorance.  :)

So you're saying that if we had reproductions of the plates anyone who reads Malay could read them.

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Sorry, pure ignorance.  :)

So you're saying that if we had reproductions of the plates anyone who reads Malay could read them.

Apologies for jumping in. I don't think Hamba Tuhan was speaking to my comment about Mitchill and australasian or malay script. There's just no way to know what was written on the plates. My comment was a reference to a more detailed study that Richard Behrens has done on Samuel Mitchill's theory of australasians peopling the southern part of the American continent. Towards the end of his essay "A Nation Now Extinct" Bennet concludes:

"Whether Mitchill endeavored then and there to translate what Harris brought to him is open to question. Certainly he studied the “characters” most carefully. His assertion that the characters thereon were “of a nation now extinct which he named” speaks directly to his own richly developed theories on the extinct Australasian race of ancient America, that “delicate race” destroyed by the Tartars ultimately somewhere in upstate New York not far from where Harris farmed near Palmyra. Is it any wonder that Harris returned to Palmyra confirmed and committed to assisting in the work of translating the Book of Mormon?" (source)

After reading several lectures delivered by Mitchill in the early 19th century, I agree with Bennet. Whatever might have been written on the plates or the transcript that Harris had, Mitchill identified the script as genuine, and identified the nation. My hypothesis is that Mitchill believed the script to be some form of australasian. I won't go into details here, but I've reached this conclusion after reading Mitchill's writings and also the writings of CS Rafinesque, who was mentored by Mitchill.

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2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

So you're saying that if we had reproductions of the plates anyone who reads Malay could read them.

Mate, this isn’t my theory! I just like accuracy.

Though now I’m intrigued to go back and look at some historical Malay scripts, of which there are several. 

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12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

So we have Moroni as Naga

Yes, I believe so. Or rather, we have the treasure guardian who was later named Maroni/Moroni as a naga or jinn.

There's a lot of research that needs to go into supporting this claim, but it does seem clear to me that the treasure diggers in Western NY were taking their ideas from oriental sources. For example, this from an 1824 publication:
60WWEKVdVT-3000x3000.png

The Malay annals of Marong are based on this theme. Marong himself was a Naga, but he was at the same time a descendant of Dhul-Qarnayn, the figure in Islamic tradition who is associated with either Alexander the Great, or Cyrus the Great.

Additionally, there was a great deal of speculation in the 1820s about the relationship between the nagas and the nachash of the Bible. 

The treasure guardian of the Golden Plates was named Maroni from Camorah. In Malay Islamic tradition, Maroni was himself a Naga from Komoriyya. Joseph couldn't have picked a better combination of names.

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10 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Mate, this isn’t my theory! I just like accuracy.

Though now I’m intrigued to go back and look at some historical Malay scripts, of which there are several. 

There's been a lot of discussion about Joseph's fascination with the treasure legends of Captain Kidd and the Comoros. What hasn't been researched is the relationship between treasure digging lore and oriental texts that were translated into English in the early 1800s. For example, the Malay Annals and the "Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain". As you probably know, these texts blend Biblical/Quaranic narratives with "oriental" mythologies. For example, in these texts we find the heroes seeking wisdom in Solomon's Temple, and Solomon giving orders to Garuda.

What baffles me is that the Hikayat Marong Mahawongsa wasn't translated into English until after the publication of the Book of Mormon. Joseph identifying the guardian of the treasure of Camorah as Maroni was remarkable.

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1 hour ago, Rajah Manchou said:

There's been a lot of discussion about Joseph's fascination with the treasure legends of Captain Kidd and the Comoros. What hasn't been researched is the relationship between treasure digging lore and oriental texts that were translated into English in the early 1800s. For example, the Malay Annals and the "Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain". As you probably know, these texts blend Biblical/Quaranic narratives with "oriental" mythologies. For example, in these texts we find the heroes seeking wisdom in Solomon's Temple, and Solomon giving orders to Garuda.

What baffles me is that the Hikayat Marong Mahawongsa wasn't translated into English until after the publication of the Book of Mormon. Joseph identifying the guardian of the treasure of Camorah as Maroni was remarkable.

The mystery is even more problematic than that:  Joseph could have known nothing of any of that simply because he was a reader of the English text, not the translator.  The English translation had to have been done a couple of centuries earlier.  Moroni didn't bother to tell Joseph any of that, allowing him to believe that he was the recipient of original, not second-hand revelation.

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I'm still trying to make the jump to New York.  I am quite certain that numerous quotations place the "inhabitants" on the American continent.  Assuming that there was a SE Asia link, how do we get the plates to North America?  I'm willing to accept that Moroni could have wandered anywhere over the course of 20 years to get to NY.

Edited by PacMan
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On 6/9/2019 at 3:26 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

You can see it nicely mapped online at http://bookofmormon.online/map/malay .

For full discussion, see Brant A. Gardner, “Testing a Methodology: A Malaysian Setting for the Book of Mormon,” InterpreterBlog, Dec 29, 2013, online at https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-testing-a-methodology-a-malaysian-setting-for-the-book-of-mormon/ .

However, Rajah likely has additional comments to make since Brant's review of the Olsen theory may not take adequate account of Rajah's views -- if at all.

The part I'm confused about with Rajah's model is I can't quite understand whether he thinks it was information about these populations that led to a fictional original source for the Book of Mormon or he thinks that's where a real Moroni came from. I often get the impression he's pushing a fictional model, particularly with comments about Joseph's distant uncle at Dartmouth. Yet at other times it sounds like he thinks it's authentic in some sense and that just the early Mormon beliefs (including Joseph's) about the origin of the Book of Mormon are wrong. That is that there were authentic plates. In this thread he seems to suggest that an actual Moroni gave them to him but I'm then really confused about the relevance of Dartmouth.

Edited by clarkgoble
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3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The part I'm confused about with Rajah's model is I can't quite understand whether he thinks it was information about these populations that led to a fictional original source for the Book of Mormon or he thinks that's where a real Moroni came from. I often get the impression he's pushing a fictional model, particularly with comments about Joseph's distant uncle at Dartmouth. Yet at other times it sounds like he thinks it's authentic in some sense and that just the early Mormon beliefs (including Joseph's) about the origin of the Book of Mormon are wrong. That is that there were authentic plates. In this thread he seems to suggest that an actual Moroni gave them to him but I'm then really confused about the relevance of Dartmouth.

On the question of history vs. fiction I don't have a default position. I lean towards it being history that was transmitted to Joseph directly. But as Robert mentions in the comment above yours, the English translation had to have been done a couple of centuries earlier. So it has become necessary to also identify a translator who would have been familiar with oriental languages and EmodE texts. Although he's not critical to this model, John Smith could have played that role. 

 

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9 hours ago, PacMan said:

I'm still trying to make the jump to New York.  I am quite certain that numerous quotations place the "inhabitants" on the American continent.  Assuming that there was a SE Asia link, how do we get the plates to North America?  I'm willing to accept that Moroni could have wandered anywhere over the course of 20 years to get to NY.

For believers, this isn't as problematic as it seems. If there was indeed a treasure guardian named Moroni delivering a golden text from ancient Cumorah/Camorah, this model offers the best explanation of how the text and treasure were transmitted.

The Book of Mormon as Terma, and Joseph Smith as Tertön

The treasure text tradition is still alive in the area in this model that was known during Moroni's lifetime as Kamarupa. It is presently inhabited by the Zoram Bnei Menashe, a group of Nagas that have been formally recognized as being from the Tribe of Menasseh and Ephraim. 

The immortal saint that long ago buried golden texts in the minds of future treasure finders resides in a mythical land called Camara.

Edited by Rajah Manchou
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7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

The part I'm confused about with Rajah's model is I can't quite understand whether he thinks it was information about these populations that led to a fictional original source for the Book of Mormon or he thinks that's where a real Moroni came from. I often get the impression he's pushing a fictional model, particularly with comments about Joseph's distant uncle at Dartmouth. Yet at other times it sounds like he thinks it's authentic in some sense and that just the early Mormon beliefs (including Joseph's) about the origin of the Book of Mormon are wrong. That is that there were authentic plates. In this thread he seems to suggest that an actual Moroni gave them to him but I'm then really confused about the relevance of Dartmouth.

The thing about the Olsen-Manchou model is that it is tied to archeological and mythological facts from SE Asia, some of which could easily have been acquired by early explorers from Holland.  That is why JarMan likes to hypothesize Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) as a key player in the entire enterprise, and why I have suggested Dr John Dee (1527-1609).  Somehow, we must account for the EModE text.  However, that may create more problems than it solves (like spooky action at a distance in quantum physics).  Which approach would you take, Clark?

Edited by Robert F. Smith
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