What are the best practices/guidelines in establishing Book of Mormon parellels to Old and New World cultures & geography?

[Doug the Hutt]

Every day I step in the shower and push the <reset> button on anything I decided the day before regarding my LDS faith. After all, I very well could be totally wrong based on the limited data, understanding and effort I probably made the day before. So back on the fence I go for another attempt of examining the Book of Mormon, hopefully from an angle I'd never considered, or even from the same angle with better wisdom than previously (and definitely less depression, cynicism, mania, or emotional states that affect judgment). Today, I'm interesting in understanding how to separate the good parallels from false parallels regarding the Book of Mormon and the empirical world.

Assumption:

You believe the Book of Mormon to be a legitimate translation of an ancient record of two vast civilizations whose roots lie with the House of Israel and also a chosen people who separated from those in the Old World at the event known as the Tower of Babel.

What steps do we take to validate the existence of these people speaking from the dust that could convince an objective, rational, thoughtful, decent person that they really existed?

How do we establish parallels to cultures, languages, calendars, economy, government, sports, agriculture, animal domestication, machinery, tools, food, holidays, religious rites, etc., that cannot be explained other ways such as "a broken clock is right twice a day -- a writer is bound to get some things to appear correct just by chance" or "writer X was trying to imitate the people of the Old and New Testaments, and parallel Y is being milked for more value than it really has"...or something. Thanks for your insights.

[poulsenll]

Every day I step in the shower and push the <reset> button on anything I decided the day before regarding my LDS faith. After all, I very well could be totally wrong based on the limited data, understanding and effort I probably made the day before. So back on the fence I go for another attempt of examining the Book of Mormon, hopefully from an angle I'd never considered, or even from the same angle with better wisdom than previously (and definitely less depression, cynicism, mania, or emotional states that affect judgment). Today, I'm interesting in understanding how to separate the good parallels from false parallels regarding the Book of Mormon and the empirical world.

Assumption:

You believe the Book of Mormon to be a legitimate translation of an ancient record of two vast civilizations whose roots lie with the House of Israel and also a chosen people who separated from those in the Old World at the event known as the Tower of Babel.

What steps do we take to validate the existence of these people speaking from the dust that could convince an objective, rational, thoughtful, decent person that they really existed?

How do we establish parallels to cultures, languages, calendars, economy, government, sports, agriculture, animal domestication, machinery, tools, food, holidays, religious rites, etc., that cannot be explained other ways such as "a broken clock is right twice a day -- a writer is bound to get some things to appear correct just by chance" or "writer X was trying to imitate the people of the Old and New Testaments, and parallel Y is being milked for more value than it really has"...or something. Thanks for your insights.

Speaking of the Jaredites, The BofM places the Jaredites in the time frame of the tower of Babel. Unfortunately, using the Bible to determine the exact time of the Tower's construction gives a rather ambiguous date of about 2 to 3 thousand BC. Based on the declaration by Joseph Smith that the Book of Mormon took place on the American continent, we can check the linguistic and archeological records for the Americas for cultures that fit this time frame. Doing this for North America, including Central America, we find three major cultures that existed during this time frame. These are the Maya, Olmec and Nahuatl cultures. There are indications that all three of these cultures had a presence in Mesoamerica with the Nahuatl also having a presence in southwest and central US locations.

Based on linguistic studies by Bryan Stubbs, the Nahuatl fits with the BofM's declarations about the Language of the Nephites but we have no information about the language of the Jaredites other than the names used for people, cities and geographic features. Using this information and the usage of /r/ and/l/, again we find links to Nahuatl, however, there are also links to at least one Mayan dialect spoken by the Quiche.

So take your pick, personally I favor Nahuatl.

Larry P

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Every day I step in the shower

Good...I am not sure how to answer but I had no idea a thread title could be so long??? Goof job. Oh and keep up the showers.

[Robert F. Smith]

--push the <reset> button on anything I decided the day before regarding my LDS faith.

--I very well could be totally wrong based on the limited data, understanding and effort I probably made the day before.

--another attempt of examining the Book of Mormon, hopefully from an angle I'd never considered, or even from the same angle with better wisdom than previously (and definitely less depression, cynicism, mania, or emotional states that affect judgment).

--I'm interesting in understanding how to separate the good parallels from false parallels regarding the Book of Mormon and the empirical world.

Assumption:

--believe the Book of Mormon to be a legitimate translation of an ancient record of two vast civilizations whose roots lie with the House of Israel and also a chosen people who separated from those in the Old World at the event known as the Tower of Babel.

What steps do we take to validate the existence of these people speaking from the dust that could convince an objective, rational, thoughtful, decent person that they really existed?

How do we establish parallels to cultures, languages, calendars, economy, government, sports, agriculture, animal domestication, machinery, tools, food, holidays, religious rites, etc., that cannot be explained other ways such as "a broken clock is right twice a day -- a writer is bound to get some things to appear correct just by chance" or "writer X was trying to imitate the people of the Old and New Testaments, and parallel Y is being milked for more value than it really has"...or something.

In order to address such questions adequately, one must first subject the Book of Mormon to detailed and systematic inquiry of the type which professionals have been using to address questions about the nature of the Bible for almost two centuries now. This entails intensive study of the text, including establishment of a critical text. It also entails anthropological analysis of the cultures within the book as well as any target cultures with which it might be desirable to compare. Decades can be spent on the consequent archeology, geography, and ethnography of the peoples and the locales within that comparative region. Any legitimate parallels must be systematic and complex. By gosh and by golly reasoning has no place in such comparisons.

One illustration is that, when examining the Jaredite record, a priori assumptions are out of place. A common problem is the assumption that the Jaredites separated from the Old Word at the time of the Tower of Babel. Although it is clear that the biblical Tower of Babel story is related to that in the Book of Mormon (Ether), the phrase "Tower of Babel" is not used therein. Instead we read about a Great Tower. Why? The Tower of Babel is a late term which should not appear in the Book of Mormon in any case, if it were authentic. When the Jaredite onomasticon is assembled and analyzed, it appears to be Sumero-Akkadian in influence, with an emphasis on north Mesopotamia. It is impossible to know what early ziggurat (temple tower) is involved, but I estimate the date of departure from that region and into the Valley of Nimrod to be around 3100 B.C. The nature of the barges used in the story have been discussed on this Board in detail and are a quite credible means of transport, the great circle current in the north Pacific taking those barges on a drift-voyage requiring approximately the number of days mentioned in the text. Once arrived in the New World, the Jaredite civilization appears to be coterminous with the florescence and demise of the Olmec civilization. Such a tight chonological correlation seems unlikely to be accidental. The moreso since the later Nephite civilization appears to end at the same time as abandonment of the Grijalva River valley which John Sorenson argues must have been the main Nephite-Mulekite area of habitation.

[Brant Gardner]

What steps do we take to validate the existence of these people speaking from the dust that could convince an objective, rational, thoughtful, decent person that they really existed?

This is a question that has to be asked of numerous documents all the time. The problem of discovering the "soft" information that can flesh out the bones of archaeology is pretty common. It is even more common in Mesoamerica where the documentary evidence is so much thinner and later than what we have for the Old World.

Nevertheless, ethnohistorians struggle with the issues of texts and how they relate to real peoples, particularly when the real people we are interested in long precede the texts. For example, how do texts from Mesoamerica, most of which post date the Conquest, relate to the people whose cities are being uncovered archaeologically? How much, if any, of their culture fits?

The questions are answered by making sure that the arguments are controlled as tightly as possible. The farther the people from the text, or from our understanding, the more the arguments must be supported by similar arguments from the same time and place. That is, single parallels might be suggestive, but they cannot be used as evidence until they are interconnected with other parallels. Even then, the parallels must be controlled tightly for time and place. A parallel from a thousand years before and one from a thousand years later are again perhaps suggestive, but don't rise to the level of interconnecting evidence.

In the case of the Jaredites, there are interesting and important arguments, but they ultimately depend on the arguments for the Nephites. The reason is that there is so little textual information on the Jaredites, and the Olmec have virtually no textual evidence. There is simply a difficulty of data in making very strong correlations. The data for the Nephite era is better, and the textual data give us more to work with.

That said, once the Nephite argument is made, then similar arguments for the Jaredites rise to a higher level of confidence because they fit into the larger pattern.

[J Green]

Every day I step in the shower and push the <reset> button on anything I decided the day before regarding my LDS faith. After all, I very well could be totally wrong based on the limited data, understanding and effort I probably made the day before. So back on the fence I go for another attempt of examining the Book of Mormon, hopefully from an angle I'd never considered, or even from the same angle with better wisdom than previously (and definitely less depression, cynicism, mania, or emotional states that affect judgment).

Doug,

If I understand what you're saying, this seems like an overly long and hard process. Many things about the BoM intrigue me, including the actual mechanics of translation, KJV excerpts and language, Deutero-Isaiah, etc. These interest me not only because I love the BoM but because I have a degree in translation and have worked on translation projects in the military and on deployments for the last two decades. (In Iraq, I helped set up and run what is likely the largest translation project in history.) So they capture my interest. On the other hand, I can't imagine placing my spiritual life on hold--yes or no, in or out, reset or system failure--for the decades it would literally take to understand these issues thoroughly and arrive at a conclusion. I love discussing Deutero-Isaiah and how it relates to the BoM, but understanding the arguments behind its authorship and textual history takes years even for those studying it as full-time students. I personally just couldn't wait that long and couldn't afford to wait that long as I navigate life with my family. Either God exists or he doesn't, either we can communicate with him or we can't, either the BoM is true or isn't. Discussions about translation mechanics are fun (and rather addicting for me), but the first study should always involve the promise in Moroni 10.

Best to you and yours.

[Robert F. Smith]

Doug,

If I understand what you're saying, this seems like an overly long and hard process. Many things about the BoM intrigue me, including the actual mechanics of translation, KJV excerpts and language, Deutero-Isaiah, etc. These interest me not only because I love the BoM but because I have a degree in translation and have worked on translation projects in the military and on deployments for the last two decades. (In Iraq, I helped set up and run what is likely the largest translation project in history.) So they capture my interest. On the other hand, I can't imagine placing my spiritual life on hold--yes or no, in or out, reset or system failure--for the decades it would literally take to understand these issues thoroughly and arrive at a conclusion. I love discussing Deutero-Isaiah and how it relates to the BoM, but understanding the arguments behind its authorship and textual history takes years even for those studying it as full-time students. I personally just couldn't wait that long and couldn't afford to wait that long as I navigate life with my family. Either God exists or he doesn't, either we can communicate with him or we can't, either the BoM is true or isn't. Discussions about translation mechanics are fun (and rather addicting for me), but the first study should always involve the promise in Moroni 10.

Best to you and yours.

It is a long, drawn out process to acquire the knowledge and intellectual tools with which to address the questions Doug asks, but then so is learning to be a competent brain surgeon.

So you quite rightly appeal for a more direct epistemology: Let the Holy Spirit be your guide. Only in that way can we ever have true certainty, along with the time to read a story to our children.