Indian legends and the BoM

[bjw]

This past Sunday in Fast and Testimony meeting a man bore his testimony about how he fell away from the church for several years, and then attended an Indian pow-wow, where he was at some kind of meeting sitting around a campfire. The Indians then asked to say a prayer and they closed it in the name of Christ. They then started telling a story of a legend of Jesus coming and blessing the children. After that he says he came back to the church with full activity.

I don't know if maybe he's mistaken somehow or if this is just an embellished "faith promoting" story, but are there really legends like this? What about any that can be substantiated that promote the BoM account?

[The Dude]

I don't know if maybe he's mistaken somehow or if this is just an embellished "faith promoting" story, but are there really legends like this? What about any that can be substantiated that promote the BoM account?

There is the Book of Zelph.

Until now, Zelph's memory has been kept alive through fantastic urban legends told around campfires and in early morning seminary...

We can now read Zelph's own words, written by his own hand, upon plates!!

Book of Zelph

It is a joke, of course. I wonder if the testimony given at your ward was a joke too?

[lostindc]

There are early Christian leftovers that have been found amongst Native American remenants so I assume there can be truth to these types of testimonies.

[The Dude]

There are early Christian leftovers that have been found amongst Native American remenants so I assume there can be truth to these types of testimonies.

What are you talking about?

[phaedrus ut]

I'd chalk it up to a Faith Promoting Rumor. I've heard many similar tales but would look into the details and always ended up at a dead end. It would be interesting to ask this gentleman what tribe he was sitting with, who was there, etc.

Phaedrus

[Glenn101]

History is replete with stories of Indian legends that may or may not be connected to Christ. For example, the Inca's welcomed the Spaniards under Cortez with open arms because of legends of a white bearded God who would return to them. Many LDS connect that with the appearance of Christ in the book of Mormon and his promise to return. Whether that legend really is about Christ, I do not know.

I have a friend who went on a mission among the Navajo Indians in the southwest. He recounted to me some stories that were told to him that could have Book of Mormon connections, but just aswell cold not. We are too far removedfrom them in time and have much too little knowledge of the history of the events and peoples that lived here to really draw any valid conclusions about such myths.

One of those story tellers also insisted that he could turn into a wolf at night and travel long distances. So we have to take any such legends rather skeptically.

I would hope that the man in question would have had a confirmation of the spirit which was really the driving force behind his return to activity, maybe prompted by that legend.

Glenn

[changed]

http://economics.sbs.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/loslunas.html

[Bender]

lostindc Posted Today, 07:17 AM

There are early Christian leftovers that have been found amongst Native American remenants so I assume there can be truth to these types of testimonies.

Probably not. They didn't have a written language so telling of stories is the way you hand them down. Determining whether a story or certain elements of a story predates European influence will be extremely difficult, and we then have to compensate for any bias as to whether we are interpreting a story to have christian roots in it.

[Bender]

changed,

Most apologists don't think that one is legit, but a hoax. More study of it would be nice, but who wants to spend that kind of time on something that most LDS experts think is probably a hoax

[Obiwan]

changed,

Most apologists don't think that one is legit, but a hoax. More study of it would be nice, but who wants to spend that kind of time on something that most LDS experts think is probably a hoax

Not so fast... Yes, a "couple" of LDS have looked into the issue (basically only Nibley that I can think of with any sort of looking at it, and he didn't seem to do much study into it even).

Few LDS scholars have done a thorough study of the issue. There's another website that is much more thorough and convincing, other than the one posted above, that I recommend everyone to review. It goes through the entire history views etc.

http://www.mhccorp.com/archaeology/decalog...troduction.html

In conclusion, the stone is indeed legit. Local history existing long before people messed with the stone is a key indicator of this.

Now, some other finds have been found to be frauds or possible fakes, but the Los Lunas stone seems in my mind to be one of the more legit items of antiquity. Plus, even "if" the stone is not legit, the fact is is it's not unreasonable to not be. Because people have traveled in ships for a long time, and it's not unheard of that someone who knew the 10 Commandments might have wrote them down on something on this continent.

[Bender]

Obiwan Posted Today, 02:39 PM

Not so fast... Yes, a "couple" of LDS have looked into the issue (basically only Nibley that I can think of with any sort of looking at it, and he didn't seem to do much study into it even).

Few LDS scholars have done a thorough study of the issue. There's another website that is much more thorough and convincing, other than the one posted above, that I recommend everyone to review. It goes through the entire history views etc.

http://www.mhccorp.com/archaeology/decalog...troduction.html

In conclusion, the stone is indeed legit. Local history existing long before people messed with the stone is a key indicator of this.

Now, some other finds have been found to be frauds or possible fakes, but the Los Lunas stone seems in my mind to be one of the more legit items of antiquity. Plus, even "if" the stone is not legit, the fact is is it's not unreasonable to not be. Because people have traveled in ships for a long time, and it's not unheard of that someone who knew the 10 Commandments might have wrote them down on something on this continent.

Actually there is a lot of controversy over the stone. One only needs to search the internet to find out more. The whole thing seems out of place, and I would suggest that a lot more research on it would need to be done before we can come up with any definitive conclusions on it. So far there doesn't seem to be much interest even by the church.

[Marmonboy]

What is unlikely is that some Jewish sailor walked all the way to Los Lunas from the Gulf of Mexico.

[Doctor Steuss]

What is unlikely is that some Jewish sailor walked all the way to Los Lunas from the Gulf of Mexico.

I think it's also unlikely that a Samaritan Jew had a sudden lapse (likely from heatstroke) and forgot his alphabet, and had to incorporate some post-Alexandrian Greek.

[Bender]

Marmonboy Posted Today, 03:19 PM

What is unlikely is that some Jewish sailor walked all the way to Los Lunas from the Gulf of Mexico.

Maybe but Isaac Emano gives a possibility of some christian carving it post Columbus. link

Also Wiki has some good info on it. Wiki

[cinepro]

This past Sunday in Fast and Testimony meeting a man bore his testimony about how he fell away from the church for several years, and then attended an Indian pow-wow, where he was at some kind of meeting sitting around a campfire. The Indians then asked to say a prayer and they closed it in the name of Christ. They then started telling a story of a legend of Jesus coming and blessing the children. After that he says he came back to the church with full activity.

I don't know if maybe he's mistaken somehow or if this is just an embellished "faith promoting" story, but are there really legends like this? What about any that can be substantiated that promote the BoM account?

If I were a betting man, I would bet.....no.

There might be a lot of good parrallels and evidences/arguments for the Book of Mormon in the New World, but the history of Book of Mormon evidences is strewn with untold numbers of rumors, urban legends, mistakes and lies. This has gone on since the earliest days of the Church.

The Los Lunas Stone is interesting, but as far as I remember, its version of the 10 Commandments post-dates Lehi's journey, so it is never used as a Book of Mormon evidence. But it certainly lends credence to the idea that some Samaritans were living in New Mexico hundreds of years ago. I wonder if they left any other records laying around...?

[bjw]

I'm gonna look into some of these links. I always heard the stone was a fraud but if there's a chance it could be real that would be very interesting.

I will make sure to ask this man to elaborate some more on this next week.

[cinepro]

I will make sure to ask this man to elaborate some more on this next week.

Be sure and ask him to elaborate on whether or not there were any mental "catalysts" in use at the time.

[Stargazer]

This past Sunday in Fast and Testimony meeting a man bore his testimony about how he fell away from the church for several years, and then attended an Indian pow-wow, where he was at some kind of meeting sitting around a campfire. The Indians then asked to say a prayer and they closed it in the name of Christ. They then started telling a story of a legend of Jesus coming and blessing the children. After that he says he came back to the church with full activity.

I don't know if maybe he's mistaken somehow or if this is just an embellished "faith promoting" story, but are there really legends like this? What about any that can be substantiated that promote the BoM account?

Interesting question. I don't know about the incident that you describe, but as I like to mention from time to time I am a descendant of Tome-ya-ne, the last chief of the Konkow, a Maidu tribe that lived in No. California, and he is recorded to have said to an Army lieutenant that the Konkow knew the Bible before the whites brought it to them. At least, this is what he said (as written by Lt. Augustus Tassin in an article published in 1884 "The Con-Cow Indians" in the Overland Monthly, Vol. 4:

And in the long, long years - as many as the stars above - around the campfires of the tribe at night the story was told by the old to the young; and I tell it to thee, white chief, as it came down to me

No, my brother, we did not believe that the coyote or the grizzly made us, before we heard of the great book of your people; its best lessons were already known to us.

Since the Kuksu cult stories and Maidu mythology spoke of Coyote being the Creator, here the chief seems to be saying to Tassin that those stories were not accepted literally. As far as I know, no stories among the Konkow hark back to the Book of Mormon in any way.

[Brant Gardner]

Since the Kuksu cult stories and Maidu mythology spoke of Coyote being the Creator, here the chief seems to be saying to Tassin that those stories were not accepted literally. As far as I know, no stories among the Konkow hark back to the Book of Mormon in any way.

You have highlighted the most critical issue in the reports of Christianized legends. The reports tend to come from the already-Christian reporters, not from the natives. That was what I found consistently in the Mesoamerican mythology (with the interesting bleed-back of natives reporting more Christianity after it had been force-fed to them).

I am not aware of any Native American tale that I can safely ascribe to Christianity anywhere on the hemisphere. I freely confess that I have not read all of them. However, I have seen enough of the process that I am extremely skeptical of the reports from the faithful of the "remembrances" of Christ's visit.

[HiJolly]

I am not aware of any Native American tale that I can safely ascribe to Christianity anywhere on the hemisphere.

Did this sentence come out the way you intended it?

HiJolly

[Brant Gardner]

Did this sentence come out the way you intended it?

HiJolly

Maybe qualified to pre-contact legends. I have seen some that owe a lot to post-contact Christianity. Of course, there is still the disclaimer that I haven't read/heard all of them.