"Not A Trace"

[cdowis]

The problem is whether or not the Book of Mormon allows for non Jaredite, Mulekite or Lehite people. On the surface, it doesn't (which is how it has been taught by Joseph Smith and the Church for the last 180 years).

Thanks for the link, but apparently it is not working. I see no statement that only the BOM peoples lived in America. Can you give us that updated link where JS said, "No one lived on the American continent except for those mentioned in the BOM". I have never heard that statement before, so I look forward to that reference.

Obviously, if you feel compelled to believe in the "others" you can dig as deep as you need to make an argument. But that's what being an apologist is all about.

All I have to do is look in the BOM text. As I previous posted, I was very much a believer in the "empty America" model until an antimormon pointed out where that was incorrect. It is through a personal detailed reading of the text that I came to that conclusion. Not thru any "apologetic" efforts, but study and reason.

The critics are themselves digging deep to get past what the BOM text tells us.

But if you think that Nephi saying he saw the same domesticated animals that we are told the Jaredites had previously is some sort of indicator that there were others, the argument for "others" is obviously far flimsier than I had previously thought.

I don't like to repeat myself. I agree that these were probably Jaredites, probably intermarried with the Asians, but this refutes the "America was empty" argument. It doesn't matter specifically who was living in those huts.

We do know from the BOM text and archeology that the Nephites/Lamanites were not alone.

As I have pointed out previously, this fits well with one interesting archeological discovery. In Chile, around 600BCE, the inhabitants of a village changed a 1500 year custom of burying their dead inside the town itself. They now started to have the graves well outside the city, which fits the practice of the Jewish religion.

Maybe a coincidence, maybe they were "others" who has joined with the Nephites.

Anyway, I don't see why you are so defensive that many of us accept what the BOM text tells us.

Edited June 17, 2011 by cdowis

[dougtheavenger]

The problem is whether or not the Book of Mormon allows for non Jaredite, ...

I don't see it that way. The Book of Ether, which is basicly Jaredite history, says the Jarodites were the first Americans. The timeline of 2,200 BC is derived from the Bible, not the Book of Mormon. So, if it doesn't mesh with science then we have yet another discrepancy between the Bible and science. The Book of Mormon remains the most correct book of scripture.

[Robert F. Smith]

I don't see it that way. The Book of Ether, which is basicly Jaredite history, says the Jarodites were the first Americans. The timeline of 2,200 BC is derived from the Bible, not the Book of Mormon. So, if it doesn't mesh with science then we have yet another discrepancy between the Bible and science. The Book of Mormon remains the most correct book of scripture.

I know of no reason (biblical or otherwise) to place the arrival of the Jaredites in the New World any later than 3100 B.C.

[Robert F. Smith]

Of course, and I think they were many colonies of Jaredites scattered around, including after the destruction of the Jaredite nation.

The myth is that America was completely empty when Lehi landed. You seem to agree that this myth has been refuted, regardless of who actually lived here. Jaredites, and asians lived here prior to Lehi's landing.

Nephi does not identify them, and archeologists can only surmise their identity, so that question is unanswered.

Correct.

When I took my first college course in archeology and biblical history in the Summer of 1966 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, our main text was John Bright, A History of Israel, 1st ed. (London, 1960). When I hear anti-Mormons whining about the lack of detail on "others" in the Book of Mormon, I not only consider that it is not intended as a travelogue or anthropology text, but I immediately compare similar narratives in the Bible a la John Bright's observation (page 67) that the

Genesis narrative is painted in blacks and whites on a simple canvas with no perspective in depth. It depicts certain individuals and their families who move through their world almost as if they were alone in it.

We need to consider what is reasonable to expect from such religious texts, as well as to consider strongly ingrained Mesoamerican traditions which moot our demands that they speak to us in some "modern" sense.

[cdowis]

I don't see it that way. The Book of Ether, which is basicly Jaredite history, says the Jarodites were the first Americans.

You are mistaken. It makes no such statement.

Before you start posting certain verses in Ether, may I suggest that you first read them very carefully. Many others have made that same mistake.

Edited June 17, 2011 by cdowis

[dougtheavenger]

You are mistaken. It makes no such statement.

Before you start posting certain verses in Ether, may I suggest that you first read them very carefully. Many others have made that same mistake.

OK. Let me rephrase my statement. The Book of Ether does not contain the statement "the Jaredites were the first Americans". However, it does contain a number of statements that lead me to believe that they were.

[cdowis]

OK. Let me rephrase my statement. The Book of Ether does not contain the statement "the Jaredites were the first Americans". However, it does contain a number of statements that lead me to believe that they were.

I used to interpret it that way as well, until I looked at what the archeologists and historians have to say.

Facts are stubborn things.

[bookofmormontruth]

Interesting, this is new to me. They must have left out these familiar Temple Recommend Questions? Maybe they do it differently in other states?

Nothing about the origins of Mormonism is "clear".

for the BoM to keep from being relegated to the status of a badly conceived fantasy.

Hugh Nibley was fighting his whole life against a strong impulse to disbelieve.

"Do you have a testimony of the restoration of the gospel in these the latter days?"

"Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?"

I haven't left the Church. Tonight, in fact, I go to the stake presidency to get the second half of my temple recommend interview.

"Are you honest in your dealings with your fellowmen?"

[cdowis]

I might add that the Jaredites may have thought when they arrived that they were the only ones around. We cannot always believe what the history tells us since they were mortals, and could not see beyond the next mountain, much less hundreds or a thousand miles away.

As Nibley points out, we tend to see the scriptural account from a "God's eye" point of view. For example, a belief that all of the Jaredites were destroyed, when there may have been distant colonies that survived.

I think that we need to be thoughtful about the historical accounts that we read in the scriptures, not confusing doctrine with possible historical inaccuries.

Edited June 18, 2011 by cdowis

[dougtheavenger]

I used to interpret it that way as well, until I looked at what the archeologists and historians have to say.

Facts are stubborn things.

I am unaware of any discrepancy between science and the Book of Ether except in so far as there are competing theories within the scientific mainstream. I know that the scientific mainstream holds that the first human colonization began about 12,000 years ago. However, that is a conflict between the Bible and science, not the BoM and science.

Here are the points of agreement between mainstream theories on the peopling of America and the Book of Ether.

1. The first colonizaton of America was a migration event rather than a stream of migration over a long period of time.

2. The number of people in the first migration event that peopled America numbered about 70 individuals.

3. The first people to colonize America arrived by boat.

4. The first Americans left no "genetic trail"; ei, those people in the Old World most closley related to Native Americans live thousands of miles from the Bering Straits.

[brightpath]

It isn't a question of absorption by a huge pool of Native Americans. It is a problem of irrefutable, scriptural statement: in the D&C (3:18-20), THE LORD himself says that the Lamanites (Amerinds) are the descendants spoken of in the BoM. So their DNA should at the very least compare in a related fashion to Semitic peoples somewhere. And this is clearly not the case. Speculating on how the Lehites found people here already and how the Lehites got "lost" DNA-wise in the shuffle of centuries, is special pleading; and trying to make sense of the assertions of the BoM without evidence. The evidence apparently satisfies geneticists who are not TBMs

Who did the Lehites find in America beside the Mulekites?

[Questing Beast]

Who did the Lehites find in America beside the Mulekites?

Nobody, according to the actual BoM text. They found animals that were (later) domesticated, the "ox and goat and cow". But they found them in the wilderness, in the forests, not penned or husbanded by indigenous people; the text says nothing about anyone else. And I find that to be a problem, since the BoM populations, even especially in the first generation, do impossible things with the puny number of people that could descend from the combined Lehites and Mulekites. So obviously "the others" were already there, just not mentioned, if the BoM is true history.

If it is Joseph Smith's creation, then the gaff with the population assertions and implications is easily explained....

[LeSellers]

Who did the Lehites find in America beside the Mulekites?

Since we have only the record of the Nephite faction of the Lehite tribe, we can t say with any certainty that there were not myriads of cultures the "Lehites" found.

However, we know that they shared the continent with the Jaredites for 400± years while the Nephites were ignorant of their history, so, no matter how large the Nephite nation was, geographically, it would have been difficult to the point of impossible for them never to have run into a few stragglers.

Lehi

[dougtheavenger]

Nobody, according to the actual BoM text. They found animals that were (later) domesticated, the "ox and goat and cow". But they found them in the wilderness, in the forests, not penned or husbanded by indigenous people; the text says nothing about anyone else. And I find that to be a problem, since the BoM populations, even especially in the first generation, do impossible things with the puny number of people that could descend from the combined Lehites and Mulekites. So obviously "the others" were already there, just not mentioned, if the BoM is true history.

If it is Joseph Smith's creation, then the gaff with the population assertions and implications is easily explained....

Really? How about Sherem? Jacob 7

read Nephi's neighbors

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=15&num=2&id=505

Edited June 19, 2011 by dougtheavenger

[dougtheavenger]

Could I change "Semitic" to Middle Eastern then? I was using "Semitic" as a generalization for the ME peoples. Have they been heavily replaced since c. 600 BCE? I do not believe so. Therefore, any ancient connection in the Amerinds to any ancient ME peoples would be close enough to show a ME genetic relationship. That would satisfy the BoM claim that the Lehites originated from the ME, of which "the land of Jerusalem" is unarguably a part....

Great. I have the evidence to "satisfy the BoM claim that the Lehites originated from the ME". It is the Y-chromosome haplogroup, Q1a3a, which is found in the Middle East and about 30% of Native Americans in the US (Hammer 2005) and is universally accepted as pre-Columbian by mainstream science.

Gee that was easy.

Edited June 20, 2011 by dougtheavenger

[Pahoran]

"Clearly", I am going to quibble over your use of that word. Nothing about the origins of Mormonism is "clear".

Actually a great deal "about the origins of Mormonism" is perfectly clear. If you don't want to see it, then that's your problem.

Joseph Smith can be a farmer involved with "oxen and cows and goats" and still not be versed in the correct, specific terminology of the wild varieties. It doesn't matter. "The goat and the wild goat" refers to different species; the kind that is domesticated and the kind that is hunted in the wilderness. Obviously not all varieties of goat were domesticated by the Lehites. And of the bovines that they found in the forests/wilderness, they domesticated both oxen and cows. The picture given us by the text of 1 Nephi is a wilderness, a forestland, devoid of human beings.

If you were to actually read the Book of Mormon with the care expected of someone who is making any good-faith effort to understand it, you'd know that the Lehi party don't arrive in the Americas until Second Nephi. First Nephi is set entirely in the old world and on the ocean crossing.

It doesn't make you a bad person for not knowing that. It does, however, make you completely unqualified to pontificate about the Book of Mormon in any way.

Because it demonstrates that you are and remain quite uninformed on the subject.

The BoM never specifically mentions "others". They are only implied, and the asserted activities of the Lehites make "others" absolutely necessary in order for the BoM to keep from being relegated to the status of a badly conceived fantasy.

I love it when an anonymous nobody takes it upon himself to be patronising towards a major work of religious literature. It shows how wonderfully the human ego can be inflated by nothing at all.

I haven't left the Church. Tonight, in fact, I go to the stake presidency to get the second half of my temple recommend interview.

Which by now is past. Did you tell him the plain, unvarnished truth about your Internet activities? If he were to log into this forum, would he recognise you by the content of your posts?

As I have said many times already, when we write in response to what others have said we are writing/responding FIRST to ourselves; we are talking to ourselves.

According to what? Questing Beast's First Law of Amateur Psychobabble?

In other words, Hugh Nibley was fighting his whole life against a strong impulse to disbelieve.

I'm sure your opinion on this subject is every bit as valuable and well-based as all your others. To those of us who have actually read him, your attempt to drag Hugh Nibley down into the mire of your own disbelief has failed.

Sorry.

That process is always a two-way street; toward belief or away from it toward a different belief. We always believe something. The more we learn the more complicated it gets. I have respect for anyone who remains open to learning, no matter what that might be. And I have other feelings for people who simply deny, shout even, and refuse to listen to anything that looks the least bit confrontational.

Thank you for that interesting confession. Here is one of my own: I have respect for those who walk their own talk. I have other feelings for the slimy dissemblers who pose as believers to fit in, but show their apostasy when posting anonymously.

Your intellect, however grand you imagine it to be, is in the end only a tool. You are not better than anyone else, even those few people who really aren't as smart as you.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Questing Beast]

Really? How about Sherem? Jacob 7

read Nephi's neighbors

http://maxwellinstit...15&num=2&id=505

Oaks: "In contrast, if the Book of Mormon only purports to be an account of a few peoples who inhabited a portion of the Americas during a few millennia in the past, the burden of argument changes drastically."

The BoM does not "purport" any such thing. Scholars do that for it. The LGT has its own set of built in problems - as we have rediscovered on this forum recently. The LGT is no panacea for sweeping aside objections to historicity....

[Questing Beast]

Great. I have the evidence to "satisfy the BoM claim that the Lehites originated from the ME". It is the Y-chromosome haplogroup, Q1a3a, which is found in the Middle East and about 30% of Native Americans in the US (Hammer 2005) and is universally accepted as pre-Columbian by mainstream science.

Gee that was easy.

Cool! I will wait to hear more on this. My assumptions on genetics and their import to the BoM have undergone a lot of revision as a result of this forum. As I stand currently, I will not make any assertions about what any DNA tracking research means vis-a-vis the BoM; because it appears that this field of study is still too incomplete for anyone to claim that the evidence to date conclusively proves or disproves anything the BoM has to say about ME connections....

[Questing Beast]

Actually a great deal "about the origins of Mormonism" is perfectly clear. If you don't want to see it, then that's your problem.

Mormon history and origins is like watching the Church film Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Restoration. Which version? And if you stick with only either version, you still have the contrasting details, the fulsome accounts, which inject inconsistency and even confusion. I stand by what I said, NOTHING is perfectly clear about the ACTUAL origins of Mormonism.

If you were to actually read the Book of Mormon with the care expected of someone who is making any good-faith effort to understand it, you'd know that the Lehi party don't arrive in the Americas until Second Nephi. First Nephi is set entirely in the old world and on the ocean crossing.

Read it again, brother: 1 Nephi 18:23-25

Which by now is past. Did you tell him the plain, unvarnished truth about your Internet activities? If he were to log into this forum, would he recognise you by the content of your posts?

Yes, I did. And no, he would not recognize "me" by Questing Beast's posts. That's because I don't talk this way with the folk I attend church with. The venue of church attendance is for discussing the Church's doctrine via curriculum put out by the Church. If I were to inject my opinions they would distract and annoy, thus producing a counter-productive atmosphere to learning about what the members are there to learn. They are not there to learn what Questing Beast believes that is different from Church doctrine. Where I can contribute, I rarely do even then. There are plenty of people wanting to participate. Yesterday in gospel doctrine class, all five people sitting around me said things several times. I said nothing at all, and felt "visible" by my silence. It was an odd feeling.

I'm sure your opinion on this subject is every bit as valuable and well-based as all your others. To those of us who have actually read him, your attempt to drag Hugh Nibley down into the mire of your own disbelief has failed.

Now you're just descending to the level of calling me a liar.

Thank you for that interesting confession. Here is one of my own: I have respect for those who walk their own talk. I have other feelings for the slimy dissemblers who pose as believers to fit in, but show their apostasy when posting anonymously.

Your intellect, however grand you imagine it to be, is in the end only a tool. You are not better than anyone else, even those few people who really aren't as smart as you.

Regards,

Pahoran

Have you read this before? "I know practically nothing about almost everything (and everybody is in exactly the same condition)".

As I do very little talking at my church meetings or to any of my neighbors, you could say that I do walk my own talk. "Here", the anonymity is useful. Or do you go by "Pahoran" in your ward and stake?

I am a "believer"; in far more than merely a massaged, doctored, tailored, selective, "faith-promoting" version of Mormon origins; or the exegesis of Existence presented by the dogma of only one religion....

[cdowis]

Nobody, according to the actual BoM text. They found animals that were (later) domesticated, the "ox and goat and cow". But they found them in the wilderness, in the forests, not penned or husbanded by indigenous people;

Are you familiar with the ad hoc argument? We are now going from "JS does not know what an ox is" to another equally absurd argument -- they were domesticated "later".

Finding these *right now* domesticated animals in the forest does not preclude them from being in pens, or unattended. Obviously a domesticated goat will not remain as such for very long -- note that Nephi specifically mentioned "goats and wild goats". The "wild goats" were running free, while the "goats" were penned up.

the text says nothing about anyone else. And I find that to be a problem, since the BoM populations, even especially in the first generation, do impossible things with the puny number of people that could descend from the combined Lehites and Mulekites. So obviously "the others" were already there, just not mentioned, if the BoM is true history.

Your logic contains so many flaws, I don't know where to begin. But let me help. These details were in the large plates, and were specifically excluded from the small plates according the command of God.

If it is Joseph Smith's creation, then the gaff with the population assertions and implications is easily explained....

"JS wrote it"is your fundamental assumption.

Throughout the BOM text it tells us that there were "others". Clearly it is consistent with the commandment of the Lord regarding the small vs the large plates.

Critics may wish, desire, and even demand that Nephi, et al, tells us all the missing details, to clear up those doubt filled questions, but Nephi decided that such matters are best left to the other record.

We are stuck with Moroni 10:4-5 and Alma 32 and a few hints here and there.

Edited June 20, 2011 by cdowis

[Pahoran]

Mormon history and origins is like watching the Church film Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Restoration. Which version? And if you stick with only either version, you still have the contrasting details, the fulsome accounts, which inject inconsistency and even confusion. I stand by what I said, NOTHING is perfectly clear about the ACTUAL origins of Mormonism.

Then you stand by a falsehood.

Which I shall attribute to your pervasive ignorance.

Read it again, brother: 1 Nephi 18:23-25

Point taken. Nephi discovered domesticated animals.

Yes, I did. And no, he would not recognize "me" by Questing Beast's posts. That's because I don't talk this way with the folk I attend church with. The venue of church attendance is for discussing the Church's doctrine via curriculum put out by the Church. If I were to inject my opinions they would distract and annoy, thus producing a counter-productive atmosphere to learning about what the members are there to learn. They are not there to learn what Questing Beast believes that is different from Church doctrine. Where I can contribute, I rarely do even then. There are plenty of people wanting to participate. Yesterday in gospel doctrine class, all five people sitting around me said things several times. I said nothing at all, and felt "visible" by my silence. It was an odd feeling.

IOW, your SP does not know what you actually have to say when you're not trying to deceive him into signing your Temple Recommend.

Got it.

Now you're just descending to the level of calling me a liar.

Not in this instance. I accept that you are arrogant enough to genuinely suppose that your amateur psychobabble has some application to (safely) dead Mormons you've never met.

Have you read this before? "I know practically nothing about almost everything (and everybody is in exactly the same condition)".

Your mistake is to arrogantly assume that everyone else is as ignorant as you are on the same subjects.

The admission that you don't know much is faux humility if the qualifier allows you to tell yourself that nobody else knows any more.

As I do very little talking at my church meetings or to any of my neighbors, you could say that I do walk my own talk. "Here", the anonymity is useful. Or do you go by "Pahoran" in your ward and stake?

I am a "believer"; in far more than merely a massaged, doctored, tailored, selective, "faith-promoting" version of Mormon origins; or the exegesis of Existence presented by the dogma of only one religion....

Exactly. You are a "believer" in the products of your own smugly self-important imagination, which bears practically no resemblance to the faith of the Latter-day Saints, which, in fact, you reject outright.

Did your Stake President know that when he signed your Temple Recommend?

Regards,

Pahoran

[dougtheavenger]

Cool! I will wait to hear more on this. My assumptions on genetics and their import to the BoM have undergone a lot of revision as a result of this forum. As I stand currently, I will not make any assertions about what any DNA tracking research means vis-a-vis the BoM; because it appears that this field of study is still too incomplete for anyone to claim that the evidence to date conclusively proves or disproves anything the BoM has to say about ME connections....

Here is more. See page 5. The lineages that are unique to American Indians are in red.

http://www.genpage.c...AHaplogroup.PDF

Q1a3 in the Middle East. see page 5 Q1a3* and M346. Note : as Roberta Estes points out in the first link, The nomenclature has changed. Q1a3 has become Q1a3a

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2156-10-59.pdf

BOTTOM LINE

The M346 mutation that defines the particular strain of the Q lineage found in Native Americans is also found in the Middle East, India and Europe, but not found in East Asia or other parts of Asia where it would need to be to support the theory of an Asian paternal ancestry for most Native Americans.

Edited June 20, 2011 by dougtheavenger

[cdowis]

Did your Stake President know that when he signed your Temple Recommend?

Regards,

Pahoran

]

I think this is inappropriate.

[Pahoran]

I think this is inappropriate.

You are probably right. However, if you read back a little, you will notice that QB was busily assuring us that he's not really a non-believer because he attends Church and had a TR interview with his Stake President just yesterday. IOW, he was waving his TR in our faces to convince us that he's not really as apostate as he appears.

Since he was the one who thought his TR had evidentiary value, the question of whether it was obtained honourably or not becomes not only relevant, but inevitable.

However, I will happily refrain from questioning the basis of QB's Temple Recommend, if he refrains from trying to conjure by it.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Questing Beast]

@Pahoran: "conjure?" I don't need to convince you of anything. I was responding to the assertion that I am being dishonest. But I see now that anything I could possibly say would only be taken as prideful blather. As I am not required to post my opinions to suit yours (especially vis-a-vis what defines apostasy), this conversation involving you, as those before it, is at an end....