Horses, Horses, Where are the Horses?

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Horses and elephants aren't the only animals accused of be in the Book of Mormon. There are pigs, sheep, goats, wild goats, and the ox. But for some reason, horses and elephants get the most attention. FARMS and FAIR come up with a lot of explanations. Here is an article in which a FAIR member tries to hit every anaochronism in the book one by one.

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2009_Science_and_the_Book_of_Mormon.html

This article leaves room for more questions, but that's the nature of apologetics. Richard Bushman refers to the work to defend the Book of Mormon as an uphill battle.

If only...... if only we could get Chuck Norris on our side. Then it would be a down hill battle. Nay, a down hill ride.

[handys003]

LOL. I like being an akamai okole too.

Or would that be a "a holo honua okole"?

http://www.bigisland...aiis-big-island

How they can call an animal a "canooe" is beyond me!? But hey... Horses were also called "sacred dogs" by some Western Indian tribes too.

Awesome Zak! You know the Kanahele family is in my ward and we are related. I was wondering how to help set his grandson straight as he had been leaning away. This can help. You see how the Lord responds to prayer. I had never given thought to this view. Mahalo ala nui.

[Hamba Tuhan]

My research relies primarily on 16th-century Iberian texts from Jesuits living in the islands of Southeast Asia. Just to give two examples off the top of my head, they called bananas 'figs' and crocodiles 'lizards.' In neither case did they ever indicate that they were referring to something that wasn't actually a fig or a lizard, i.e., they never said a banana was a fruit like a fig. They simply wrote 'fig' when they meant banana.

Sort of how English speakers in North America called bison 'buffalo' and pronghorn sheep 'antelope.'

[ERayR]

To answer the opening question they are all in the stew pot.

[selek]

LOL. I like being an akamai okole too.

Or would that be a "a holo honua okole"?

You two keep that up and I'm gonna get together with the others and have a UMW coded-gab fest.

Just so you'll feel left out, too.

And if THAT doesn't work, I'll grab some of the other ex-sailors and Marines and REALLY get you confused.

Ah...but the strawberries.

That's where I had them.

I kid you not.

[selek]

To answer the opening question they are all in the stew pot.

No, no, no, no, no!

You're bringing up bad memories here ERay (some of them less than a month old)!

[cinepro]

My research relies primarily on 16th-century Iberian texts from Jesuits living in the islands of Southeast Asia. Just to give two examples off the top of my head, they called bananas 'figs' and crocodiles 'lizards.' In neither case did they ever indicate that they were referring to something that wasn't actually a fig or a lizard, i.e., they never said a banana was a fruit like a fig. They simply wrote 'fig' when they meant banana.

That's a good example, but as I've pointed out before, if that usage were maintained through the generations for 500+ years, eventually the Iberian word "fig" would refer to a "banana", and the word "lizard" would mean crocodile. And if someone were translating the texts from Iberian to English, it would be erroneous to translate the word for "fig" into "fig", because the meaning would have changed.

The only way to maintain the usage over that time period would be if the original use of "fig" included a note to future translators explaining that while the word is being applied to a new, unusual yellow-skinned fruit, future translations into other languages should maintain the usage of the word referring to the brown-skinned fruit.

[Hamba Tuhan]

That's a good example, but as I've pointed out before, if that usage were maintained through the generations for 500+ years, eventually the word Iberian "fig" would refer to a "banana", and the word "lizard" would mean crocodile. And if someone were translating the texts from Iberian to English, it would be erroneous to translate the word for "fig" into "fig", because the meaning would have changed.

Not necessarily, and for a number of reasons. First, we are dealing not with a change in meaning but with a meaning which has been expanded to include other things. Specifically, Portuguese figo came to be applied to bananas in the East, but it also maintained its meaning of 'fig,' with figs as we know them continuing to be part of the European cultural memory, in no small part because they are mentioned 39 times in the Bible. This means that, when a Jesuit in the islands of Southeast Asia wrote figo, he may have been referring to bananas, or he may have been referring to the figs of the Bible account, but such distinctions would have meant little to him precisely because the two concepts had, under linguistic influence, come to be conflated in his head via the use of a single word.

Consequently, the only way to be entirely true to the original text as a translator, which I have done, is to write 'fig' wherever figo appears. Now, because I'm an academic, I also footnote these usages with explanatory notes whenever I happen to be aware of them. But, assuming the truth of the Book of Mormon narrative for a moment, it is inevitable that the cultural memory of actual horses would have been preserved, again in large part due to the presence of scriptures containing such references, at the exact same time that the word was applied to and also came to mean a completely different animal. A truly faithful translation, therefore, will need to use the single word which was engraved on the plates, regardless of how many extra meanings it may have picked up.

Second, since the presence of such 'anachronisms' is literally one of the hallmarks of all of the cross-cultural historical texts with which I've personally worked, avoiding the 'erroneous' translation, as you suggested, would not only be impossible due to the complexity of meaning I've mentioned above, but would actually make a text appear less like a genuine artefact from the past in the long run--a bit like 'translations' of Shakespeare into contemporary English. I'm reasonably certain that, if the Book of Mormon did not contain possible incidences of the loanshifting and semantic extension* which are common to texts coloured by exploration and cross-cultural encounters, by now critics would have attempted to use this as evidence that it doesn't really read like an account written by genuine migrants.

_____

*'One might indeed argue that the term 'loan-shift' is in itself imprecise, as it tends to suggest a wholesale change in semantic reference, whereas what normally happens in a loan-shift is not that a word moves from one meaning to another, but that it acquires a new range of meaning while retaining the old' (Philip Burton, 'Assessing Latin--Gothic Interaction,' in Bilingualism in Ancient Society, ed. by J.N. Adams et al. Oxford Univ. Press, 2002).

[bizabra]

No roads?

The MesoAmericans had some of the best roads on the planet when the Spanish arrived -- in fact, that helped to bring about their conquest. Big, wide roads right into the heart of their empire.

BIZ: From Wiki: Transportation

The main contribution of the Aztec rule was a system of communications between the conquered cities. In Mesoamerica, without draft animals for transport (nor, as a result, wheeled vehicles), the roads were designed for travel on foot. Usually these roads were maintained through tribute, and travelers had places to rest and eat and even latrines to use at regular intervals, roughly every 10 or 15 km. Couriers (paynani) were constantly travelling along those ways, keeping the Aztecs informed of events, and helping to monitor the integrity of the roads.

A road designed for foot travel is not "big and wide".

[Zakuska]

No, no, no, no, no!

You're bringing up bad memories here ERay (some of them less than a month old)!

In the first area of my mission my trainer had me buy some bife de cavalo and Meolos de vaca. Then we cooked them up. Only after we ate it did they tell me to look up the words in my portuguese English dictionary.

[thesometimesaint]

bizabra:

The wheel was certainly known in Mesoamerica.

http://www.precolumbianwheels.com/

Big an wide are both relative terms.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/latinamerica/topics/roads.html

[PacMan]

Horse deniers:

I've posted previously, and I'm not inclined to look up the info. But the jist is that Darwin actually wondered about the existence of the Curly (I think it was). Point being, the Curly was present and whose introduction was separately introduced, distinct from Spanis influence.

PacMan

[CV75]

What is the general theory of believers on the issue of horses in the BoM?

Where general and believers are the operative words here, the theory would be there must be some valid basis for their mention in the Book of Mormon. A general but compelling reason to know or place faith in what that valid basis might be must be presented before a believer would delve deeper into the issue.

[BCSpace]

What is the general theory of believers on the issue of horses in the BoM? If someone was honestly concerned on this issue, what is the best response from the believing community?

Scientifically, no evidence for is not evidence against.

And

A horse is a horse is a horse of course (not tapirs or dogs etc.).

[Zakuska]

A horse is a horse is a horse of course (not tapirs or dogs etc.).

Except when silly Hawaians call then "Canooes".

[cinepro]

Where general and believers are the operative words here, the theory would be there must be some valid basis for their mention in the Book of Mormon. A general but compelling reason to know or place faith in what that valid basis might be must be presented before a believer would delve deeper into the issue.

Certainly, Church-sponsored images seem to support the theory that they did, in fact, have horses. And a lifetime of exposure to such imagery would have to somehow influence the average TBM's ideas on the subject.

[BCSpace]

A horse is a horse is a horse of course (not tapirs or dogs etc.).

Except when silly Hawaians call then "Canooes".

It's simply a matter of translation. Either JS saw what he and anyone else in his neighborhood would call a horse or it came out as the English "horse". Either way, it was an equine or JS did not correctly translate by the gift and power of God or by any personal ability.

[Jeff K.]

I can only say "neigh" to the concrete evidence of horses found in the Americas pre Columbus.

[jskains]

I can only say "neigh" to the concrete evidence of horses found in the Americas pre Columbus.

You need to check that as there were pre-Columbus horses, but there is a belief they died out and were re-introduced.

JMS

[cdowis]

What??? CFR for both.

And, by the way, the absence of evidence goes MUCH deeper than simply not finding horse bones.

There is Z E R O artwork depicting horses, yet we find artwork for nearly every other kind of animal.

CFR, please on art depictions of "every other kind of animal" during the BOM time period -- preclassic period. The last mention of horses in the BOM was around 26AD, and indicated they were used for food.

Anyway, I think this is just one of the many antimormon myths that you read somewhere, so this is a formal request. This is only as DEEP as most antimormon myths.

Let's see what you got.

PS. The last time an antimormon made this silly statement I made the same CFR request, and he failed to produce. Good luck.

[cinepro]

It's simply a matter of translation. Either JS saw what he and anyone else in his neighborhood would call a horse or it came out as the English "horse". Either way, it was an equine or JS did not correctly translate by the gift and power of God or by any personal ability.

Especially when we consider that the translation process did allow for the preservation of unknown words (and all those proper nouns). Even if Nephi saw a pseudo-horse and called it the same word as "horse" in his native language, the entity doing the reformed-egyptian/ hebrew -> english translation shouldn't have maintained the use of the English word "horse" if that isn't what it was.

[Scottie]

CFR, please on art depictions of "every other kind of animal" during the BOM time period -- preclassic period. I believe this is one of the many antimormon myths, so this is a formal request. This is only as DEEP as most antimormon myths.

Let's see what you got.

How can you CFR something I never said??? You can't just add conditions to my statements and ask me to back up your new statement... weird.

However, I will concede that they did not make art depictions of "every kind of animal". Just the major ones. I would have to believe that a horse would be a major one.

[cdowis]

How can you CFR something I never said??? You can't just add conditions to my statements and ask me to back up your new statement... weird.

However, I will concede that they did not make art depictions of "every kind of animal". Just the major ones. I would have to believe that a horse would be a major one.

"There is Z E R O artwork depicting horses, yet we find artwork for nearly every other kind of animal."

I took this quote DIRECTLY from your post. Are you now denying that you posted this? We have a serious security issue here.

"just the major ones"

I accept your retraction. I could nail you down even on this statement, but don't want to embarrass you any further.

[Scottie]

"There is Z E R O artwork depicting horses, yet we find artwork for nearly every other kind of animal."

I took this quote DIRECTLY from your post. Are you now denying that you posted this? We have a serious security issue here.

LOL

Really?? That's what you posted?? You mean you didn't say

CFR, please on art depictions of "every other kind of animal" during the BOM time period -- preclassic period.

??

[cdowis]

However I reject the Mesoamerica argument. I accept the original theory of Northern America. Now there is evidence of horses from Asia (Jeredites?) and there is evidence that horses did evolve here, but there is a hole in the time period where the BoM is established.

Has anyone fully looked at Northern America and horses?

JMS

Evidence of horses in North America until 12BCE, e.g. the Berea Tar Pit.