Viable Nephite colonies

[notHagoth7]

At this point, those who are not yet familiar with Nephites in Europe can feel free to review this edition of that book. You may recognize some of the chapters as those linked to earlier in the thread.

If I recall, some of the chapters in that edition are still a bit rough around the edges, so please be patient.

There are a number of things presented there that haven't been addressed in this thread.

(While some of the things discussed in this thread aren't in that edition.)

It's a lot of content - so you might be best served at this juncture by thumbing through to the chapter or two that happens to jump out for you.

To let all that settle, I'll probably hold off on presenting additional evidence for awhile - other than responding to specific posts.

[Jeff_Ricks]

Are you satisfied w/the first and second halves of the Tironian response?

Is it reasonable? Grounded? Substantive?

(Arc - how about you? Is this thread responding to your Tironian concern with sufficient speed and substance?)

Jeff - how about you? Is this of help at all for you?

I've taken the first part of this week off work so I'd have my Thanksgiving holiday, my weekend and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to focus on a screenplay I'm writing. That's where my attention is directed at this time. What I'm getting at is, because my attention is necessarily elsewhere I've been skimming this thread, waiting until the entire hypothesis is laid out. At the rate this is going I'm guessing that will happen about the time I'll have to set aside my screenplay and go back to work, at which time I'll be more willing to put some of my personal time into reading it more thoroughly. I will say, though, that so far it's looking like an hypothesis that's supported by possibilities and maybes, but nothing that I would call convincing, IF building a case that supports Joseph Smith's claims regarding the Book of Mormon origins is your goal. If your goal is simply to do as you suggested earlier and provide a groundwork of possible connections that could provide something to cling to for those who have a need to believe, then I won't be taking the time to go through it in depth. I'm waiting to see which it is. I think you can understand why.

[LeSellers]

We all know that there is no such as thing as certification in Reformed Egyptian,...

Why do people insist on capitalizing "reformed Egyptian"?

It is not a language, it was not capitalized in the Book of Mormon and is not a proper noun.

Lehi

[Arc]

Why do people insist on capitalizing "reformed Egyptian"?

It is not a language, it was not capitalized in the Book of Mormon and is not a proper noun.

Good point. I agree.

I don't have a good reason for capitalizing when I did except for when "reformed" was the first word in a sentence.

So, just to be sure that we all understand what reformed Egyptian really was, according its proponents; what was it?

If it was not a language, was it simply a character set for representing a language in written form?

If so, what was the language it was being used to represent?

If it was being used in the ancient Americas, why do we not see any evidence whatsoever in the archeological record for such use?

If the Anthon Transcript is really reformed Egyptian, then why is it comprised of a mixture of Gaelic, Tironian note and Ogham code characters, in a combination that was not developed until the 8th century AD, approximately 2 centuries after the writing on the gold plates was supposedly completed and they were buried?

Just asking.

[LeSellers]

just to be sure that we all understand what reformed Egyptian really was, according its proponents; what was it?

If it was not a language, was it simply a character set for representing a language in written form?

This is the answer.

Just as we transliterate, say, Russian or Chinese into English/Roman Characters, the Nephites wrote Hebrew in Egyptian characters. However, these characters were not "pure" Egyptian

[Arc]

This is the answer.

<Snip>

Lehi

You do recall that the Spanish destroyed every written record (codices especially) they found, do you not?

Where did you get the idea that the Spaniards "destroyed every written record, especially codices"? This is simply not true. Is this what you really believe?

There are a number of Mayan codices in museums around the world. They have been designated by the cities in which they are now found. These include the Dresden Codex, the Paris Codex, the Madrid Codex and the more recently discovered Grolier Codex. These are composed using the same glyphs that characterize Mayan writings in stone carvings, and on other media. Adequate sources of glyph materials exist to provide a reasonably detailed history of early and classical Mayan periods.

Taken in total, there are tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of representations of Mayan glyphs from ancient Mesoamerica. The number of representations of reformed Egyptian that have been found from ancient Mesoamerica (as set forth in the Anthon Transcript) is exactly zero.

Just as we transliterate, say, Russian or Chinese into English/Roman Characters, the Nephites wrote Hebrew in Egyptian characters. However, these characters were not "pure" Egyptian

[Gary@rics]

Why do people insist on capitalizing "reformed Egyptian"?

It is not a language, it was not capitalized in the Book of Mormon and is not a proper noun.

Lehi

I wasn't insisting: I was just wrong. I do that sometimes.

[Gary@rics]

Arc, I was also puzzled by the claim that the Spaniards destroyed everything. The Popol Vu is a Mayan creation myth, one that I have actually read! There are many extant writings of the Maya (and, I believe, the Aztecs and even the earlier Olmecs). So we have a pretty good sampling of their writing systems.

NotHagoth7, I tried a couple of your links. The one to your book worked, but the one to previous explanations only brought me back here! I would rather not go chasing after assigned reading. It feels sort of like I

[notHagoth7]

Taken in total, there are tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of representations of Mayan glyphs from ancient Mesoamerica. The number of representations of reformed Egyptian that have been found...(as set forth in the Anthon Transcript) is exactly zero.

Hmmm. And the fact that Tironian is an ancient writing system that happened to surface in Europe in 54 BC somehow gets swept to the side without comment?

Even though it is in precise chronological alignment with Hagoth's exodus?

You don't think that undermines Stout's narrative in the least?

If this is the case, the why is it that the Anthon Transcript cannot be transliterated to Hebrew?

If it's Tironian, we could be one step closer. Remains to be seen.

Whatever means you have been using to learn about this subject matter to date seems to have left you long on folklore and speculation and short on facts.

Folklore?

Precisely what aspect of the argument in this thread is folklore? Or speculation?

Cicero's documented letters?

His brother's documented role in the conquest of Gaul?

The extensive enslavement that happened during that conquest?

Tiro's sudden appearance in 54 BC?

The documented spread of Tironian throughout Europe?

The fact that the Skjoldingar Dynasty must have an originating patriarch?

Shield's prominent place in the regnal and family history lists of such European kings?

The evidence in the Germanic languages of a non-IndoEuropean, seafaring intrusion?

Did Joseph just happen to get lucky on every one of those data points?

If we're going to be frank about speculation, the epicenter of speculation in this thread is your original assertion that some of the characters in the Anthon Manuscript (and the Detroit Manuscript) are Tironian. Let's both be honest. That's an unproven assertion.

Are there similarities between Tironian and some of the characters in the Anthon Manuscript? Sure. But as Charity and I have pointed out here, there are bound to be similarities between a Tironian character set so vast that it numbers in the thousands when comparing them to a mere handful of cursive-looking characters (regardless of whether such a handful is drawn from the Anthon Manuscript or from some other source). The very heart of your argument is based on subjective similarities - for a Detroit Manuscript that doesn't even exist for us to compare character sets with. So seriously, which argument is dealing in speculation, and which argument is grounded in more objective, verifiable source material?

To ratchet things up, the case for Nephite colonies in Europe is not even contingent on Tironian being in the Anthon Manuscript.

Your argument is. Completely.

So which of the two arguments is more tenuous?

And for final clarity, even if some of the Anthon characters are Tironian, well...Tiro just happens to be wearing our jersey.

(Holler if you'd like to see the polaroid.)

I'm not insisting that you agree with anything I've documented (or asserted) about Europe.

I am simply refuting your assertion that the European argument is somehow the one that's "long on folklore and speculation and short on facts."

[Anijen]

I have trouble finding similarities with Tironian and the Anthon Transcript.

they look closer to hieratic to me.

[Anijen]

Tironian looks more like Gaelic script than hieratic.

[notHagoth7]

Arc, I was also puzzled by the claim that the Spaniards destroyed everything.

Gary,

As I recall, he actually said something more along the lines of "they destroyed everything they could find."

So he didn't overstate. Arc apparently missed the last part of his statement, misquoted him, and thereby happened to turn his statement into something other than what he had said.

NotHagoth7, I tried a couple of your links. The one to your book worked, but the one to previous explanations only brought me back here!

Apologies for the glitch - I'll go back and see if I can find/resolve that.

I would rather not go chasing after assigned reading. It feels sort of like I

[notHagoth7]

[cont'd reply to Gary]

The problem: Joseph Smith produced characters, purportedly from the Book of Mormon, that bear little resemblance to any known Egyptian form of writing, from which they were derived.

I think demotic is a reasonable candidate for the characters they eventually reshaped/re-formed:

a 17th century European origin for the characters does not support the official account of how we obtained the Book of Mormon.

? But there isn't an argument that claims a 17th-century European origin for such characters.

Instead, it was supposedly a 17th-century manuscript. (The characters used in the manuscript derive from a much earlier era.)

And, other than Tironian, I have yet to see a side-by-side comparison of other scripts supposedly used in the Detroit Manuscript that compares favorably to Anthonian. Am I alone in this?

NotHagoth7 began this inquiry because of the pattern he saw in the history, legends, and linguistics of Europe. Can we at least agree that it is prescient to embark on this without even being aware of Stout's 2001 challenge?

Two things:

1) My brother was the one who first suggested a Nephite migration to Europe - during a discussion about 2 Nephi 3. That was perhaps seven years ago. My subsequent additional research/writing to explore that premise is just an outgrowth of his comment.

2) And I think most of us find that when we look back on our life, there were key decisions in schooling, career, and other areas which the Lord clearly had a hand in. (About two decades ago, I was knee deep into earning an Accounting degree when I knew very distinctly that I needed to shift majors. In this case, it took a long time to begin finding out why.)

There

[Arc]

Tironian looks more like Gaelic script than hieratic.

Anijen,

It has already been established that the Anthon Transcript is comprised of a combination of Insular miniscule Gaelic script, Tironian notes Latin shorthand and Ogham code characters. (See here.)

We are now considering notHagoth7's proposal as to how such characters could also be the "reformed Egyptian" that Joseph Smith claims was the script used to write the Book of Mormon text on the gold plates.

This discussion stems from an earlier thread where we see a one-to-one comparison between Tironian note characters and many of the characters in the Anthon Transcript. The remaining characters in the Anthon Transcript are Gaelic in Insular miniscule or Ogham code as described above.

[Anijen]

Anijen,

It has already been established that the Anthon Transcript is comprised of a combination of Insular miniscule Gaelic script, Tironian notes Latin shorthand and Ogham code characters.

Established by who? Your source is Uncle Dale, his penchant for extraordinary speculation is widely known. I think matching a few characters from over 5000 to choose from is not establishing. Its a long shot and people are trying to work into some is at most a tempest in a teapot. I could look at the same thing and find matches with about any written script I wanted to.

You push away arguments saying it is already established is laughable. Just my two cents I could be hugely wrong.

[Arc]

Established by who? Your source is Uncle Dale, his penchant for extraordinary speculation is widely known. I think matching a few characters from over 5000 to choose from is not establishing. Its a long shot and people are trying to work into some is at most a tempest in a teapot. I could look at the same thing and find matches with about any written script I wanted to.

You push away arguments saying it is already established is laughable. Just my two cents I could be hugely wrong.

Anijen,

Did you even read the sources provided? Right, I didn

[Anijen]

Did you even read the sources provided? Right, I didn

[notHagoth7]

Moving forward, since Arc has a distinct interest in the seafaring aspect of this, and whether we're talking barges or something closer to what Arc might enjoy, let's take a look at a potential counterpart to Hagoth's "exceedingly large ship", in which they did "sail" northward.

Again, according to Alma 63, that ship made two journeys:

1) one in the 37th year of the reign of the judges.

2) and a final one the following year. (Whether it sailed alone or in a small supportive convey/armada with some of the "other" ships Hagoth is mentioned as having built earlier that year, the text doesn't specify.)

But when did Hagoth's first and second migrations occur?

The sign of Christ's birth arrived 55 years later, in the 92nd year of the reign of the judges. (3 Nephi 1)

Christ was born and was visited by wise men during Herod's reign. Most chronologies place Herod's death in 4 BC, based on the eclipse recorded by Josephus. If accurate, (and I have considerable reason to believe it is), Christ would have been born no later than 4 BC. Based on the verbiage in the wise-men visit, it may have been a year or three earlier. So I estimate Hagoth's first migration to have been roughly 60 BC, and the second (perhaps larger) one to have been around 59 BC.

Here's where it gets interesting. In his conquests that began a year later in 58 BC, Caesar encountered a seafaring people on the Atlantic seaboard of northwestern Europe. In 56 BC, they refused to meet Roman demands - and war ensued. Each time Caesar tried to capture one of their forts, a rescue ship would come sailing in, gather up all the people, and sail away to another stronghold with a parting wave. (And perhaps with a thumb of the nose.) You can perhaps imagine how it made something of a Monty-Pythonesque laughingstock of Roman attempts to capture them.

So Caesar decided to build and borrow ships to assemble a small fleet, and sent his men out into the Atlantic to try to cut off that route of escape for the seafaring people he was trying to subject to his slavery/levying/taxation. And in that conflict, he provides a VERY detailed description of the ships his men engaged in battle.

The sailing ships he encountered "were built and rigged in a different manner from ours. They were made with much flatter bottoms, to help them to ride shallow water caused by shoals or ebb-tides. Exceptionally high bows and sterns fitted them for use in heavy seas and violent gales, and the hulls were made entirely of oak, to enable them to stand any amount of shocks and rough usage. The cross-timbers, which consisted of beams a foot wide, were fastened with iron bolts as thick as a man

[notHagoth7]

The seafaring Shield arriving in the first century BC.

The concepts needed to describe him and his ship coming from a non-IndoEuropean, seafaring culture.

Exceedingly large sailing technology in 56 BC.

Tiro emerging in 54 BC.

[notHagoth7]

If I were to do this, would you then admit that the Book of Mormon is a fraud?

You forget the terms of engagement on that one.

1) You'd have to demonstrate that such resemblances were more than coincidence and

2) You'd have to demonstrate that such correlations MUST be mono-directional in time. (That those characters couldn't have reached Europe through a Nephite diaspora.)

Of course not, because you only see what you want to see, no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented.

At the end of the day, when you run out of dodges, then you claim that you know what you know by faith and the power of spiritual witness. Well that kind of

[Arc]

Sorry I could have read it from another poster and attributed it to you. What was your source again?

Well I would imagine when you have an almost unlimited set of characters it wouldn't be too difficult.

I was converted to church at a young age, apostatized from the church because of anti-mormon accusations and made up coincidences (such as these) after along road of struggle, study, turmoil and much prayer I was rebaptized, so I have taken that road already and now have an indomitable belief in the Book of Mormon.

Thank you for that secular advice, however like I said I tested that knowledge and I have no problem with a "spiritual witness," although it appears you do. To each his own.

Nice.

I don't feel my own believes are unfounded but thanks for suggesting what or what not my own beliefs are.

I disagree. There is evidence but your the one who seems to biased to checking it out. I already have, for and against.

Probably because the BoM prophets did not write on the plates in Mayan.

I think it was you who said there were tons of records in pottery, codexs and stela. I agree about tons of stela (pun) however can you show me were there are more than four codex's?

Fair response. Better than I expected.

Since you did not bother to look up the sources I provided above (all you really needed to do was scroll up and click on the links), here is another that offers a high level look at the issue we are dealing with here.

This article in the The New Scientist describes a paper to be published in PNAS wherein the neurological mechanisms of belief in unfounded claims and superstitions are described and discussed. This information might come in handy when debating with secularists.

I did not say that there were tons of anything in Mesoamerica, so you must have me confused with someone else again. The glyphs appearing in the Mayan codices and on stone carvings throughout Mesoamerica, and especially the Yucatan, are sufficient in number and in their variety to give us a fairly complete history of the Mayan civilization. This written information is combined with other archeological information to build a fairly complete and self consistent picture.

Let me offer you two hypotheses, and ask which you would judge to be the strongest and most credible.

H1- Ancient Mesoamerican language, history, culture and religion are best described by thousands of academic works generated by archeologists, linguists geneticists, ethnologists, historians and paleontologists from research carried out in the field over that last century using physical evidence from onsite exploration and excavations, as well as from genetic and ethnological studies of present indigenous populations.

H2. Ancient Mesoamerican language, history, culture and religion are best described by the writing of an uneducated young treasure hunter in New York State, who claimed to have generated this description by translating an unknown language carved on gold plates provided by an angel in the early 19th century, said gold plates being subsequently taken back into heaven by said angel, and therefore currently unavailable for verification of these claims.

You can see the problem here, I trust.

[Arc]

You forget the terms of engagement on that one.

1) You'd have to demonstrate that such resemblances were more than coincidence and

2) You'd have to demonstrate that such correlations MUST be mono-directional in time. (That those characters couldn't have reached Europe through a Nephite diaspora.)

It's an awesome tune. Keep on signing it.

As I said early on, feel free to set the miraculous on the shelf for a bit. So we can reason.

But what of Nephites? What of your claim that they never existed?

Your very assertion of Tironian, if accurate, attests to the viability of their existence.

? Some of the very words you have used here in this thread derive from a non-IndoEuropean seafaring infusion into northern Europe.

Your own words are credible physical evidence.

Believe that if you wish.

In the meantime, Nephite colonies (your forefathers), and their records, and the records written about them, testify otherwise.

You're saying that the Detroit Manuscript has miraculously been discovered, so we can confirm Tironian one way or the other?

We're not questioning evidence. We're questioning certain people's extrapolation of the evidence (in the lack thereof).

That's the scientific method. To look at all relevant evidence before reaching a conclusion.

Isn't that the most ethical way to proceed with such issues?

Doesn't matter. Hmmm.

Stout's argument is that such things matter a great deal.

Are you now jettisoning Stout's argument?

Stout's argument is from a position on strength and I see it as the best hypothesis thus far presented. However, the claim of fraud with regard to the Book of Mormon does not depend on the Anthon Transcript being exactly what he says it is (although I do believe that to be the case).

No matter what language or the script comprised the Anthon Transcript, if it is not found or referenced in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, there is no reason whatsoever to believe it was used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. There is as much physical evidence to support the claim that 17th century French was in fact the language used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica as there is for Joseph Smith's reformed Egyptian.

[cdowis]

H2. Ancient Mesoamerican language, history, culture and religion are best described by the writing of an uneducated young treasure hunter in New York State, who claimed to have generated this description by translating an unknown language carved on gold plates provided by an angel in the early 19th century, said gold plates being subsequently taken back into heaven by said angel, and therefore currently unavailable for verification of these claims.

You can see the problem here, I trust.

Yes, I see the problem. You have absolutely no clue what is contained in the text of the BOM.

The BOM does not contain a detailed cultural description of mesoamerica, or even of the Nephites and Lamanites. In fact, we don't even know what language they spoke. Mormon made it clear that it was not Hebrew, even through they were familiar with it, just as we have a knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin.

We have hints of religious beliefs, but the majority of the Nephites/Lamanites were not Christian -- that much we do know, but we don't know their religious practices except for a reference to a tower used in religious services, and specialized buildings. We know that they had a formal religious organization with priests.

We know that they had a calendar, they had a written language, and extensively wrote on books (codex). We know that human sacrifice was practiced. We know that the Lamanites had a hierarchy of kings. We do know that there were extensive warefare.

We could be excavating an authentic Nephite city, but there is nothing in the BOM which would give us any method for identifying it as such, especially after the war of extermination.

These details were found in the other Nephite records (no longer extant), and the BOM only contained a religious record of these people, with the purpose, not to satisfy your curiousity of the culture of these people, but to bring people to Christ. It does not pretend to completely describe Nephite culture, much less the culture of mesoamerica.

I trust that you now see the problem -- your deep and profound ignorance of the Book of Mormon. You need to read the BOM itself, rather than the cartoon version.

[notHagoth7]

No matter what language or the script comprised the Anthon Transcript, if it is not found or referenced in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, there is no reason whatsoever to believe it was used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

Arc,

That's a blatant straw man.

I'm not insisting they came from Mesoamerica. Why are you?

The premise of Nephite colonies in Europe does not depend upon it.

What's your basis for insisting upon Mesoamerica?

And you're also the one claiming that Nephite shorthand was common among the Nephites. (The text itself makes no such claim.)

What's your basis for that claim?

If use of that script was instead quite rare, and was only known among those preserving the Nephite plates, as I've suggested earlier based on statements in the Nephite record itself, and if it was used specifically for use in preserving space on the plates, as the text itself claims, extensive evidence of its use outside of their plates would be, well, unexpected.

If accurate, the only evidence we might expect for such a script to emerge, barring the discovery of Nephite plates, would be for one of the rare Nephite scribes to have been absorbed into a civilization which had a new, broader application for his skillset. Enter: Tiro.

So your argument is based on:

1) Mesoamerica and

2) Nephite shorthand being widespread or commonplace among Nephite settlements.

Problem. The text doesn't claim either of those points. So why, pray tell, are you arguing for them to somehow be true?

Especially when the text speaks against the latter.

The European colonists spoke the right language mix, had the right kind of seafaring technology, claimed to have come from the west across the ocean, arrived at precisely the right time, had the same cultural strengths as the Nephites, the name Nefi was utilized among them, the region they occupied bears evidence of Semitic/Egyptian language and culture, and so on, and so on....

There is as much physical evidence to support the claim that 17th century French was in fact the language used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica as there is for Joseph Smith's reformed Egyptian.

Actually, just for fun, although I'm not a Mesoamerican advocate (or an advocate [yet] for any single American site), I presented evidence in one of the elephant/maccaw threads for a possible correlation between 11th century French and 11th century Mesoamerican. Whether it's a valid correlation, and whether it has ANY implications into Nephite issues is a separate matter entirely.

[notHagoth7]

Stout's argument is from a position on strength and I see it as the best hypothesis thus far presented.

I will agree that it is the best hypothesis for fraud that I have encountered.

In context, however, the claim of strength is, well, relative. Can it light a candle to the weight of European testimony?

1) Stout's entire case is based on extensive supposition

2) It is based on a Detroit Manuscript that we don't even have for comparison

3) And his argument isn't equipped to engage the European testimony - let alone refute it.

Nephite jujutsu.

(Methinks Shield can take Stout with one arm tied behind his back.)

However, the claim of fraud with regard to the Book of Mormon does not depend on the Anthon Transcript being exactly what he says it is

So you are willing to jettison Stout. Interesting.

Here's a hypothesis:

Any claim of fraud, if it claims to be logical, cannot ethically ignore the European evidence.

Do you agree or disagree?