Grains In Mosiah 9:9

[Analytics]

I'm one of those poor unfortunate souls who thinks the Book of Mormon is obviously of 19th Century American origins. The Response to Dr. Michael Coe thread makes me wonder if my thinking is just too 1975 to appreciate the obvious plausibility of the book that modern scholars see. Just to get a sense of what I'm missing with the latest scholarship, I thought it might be best to focus in on a single verse. Mosiah 9:9 comes to mind, because it illustrates some of the problems I have with taking the Book of Mormon seriously, and hopefully you guys will see this as a slow ball.

The verse reads:

And we began to till the ground, yea, even with all manner of seeds, with seeds of corn, and of wheat, and of barley, and with neas, and with sheum, and with seeds of all manner of fruits; and we did begin to multiply and prosper in the land.

Laying this onto a Mesoamerican framework, I read it as saying that around 200 B.C., a Mayan and his people planted corn, wheat, barley, and some other things, including "neas" and "sheum". I consider this a solid strike against the authenticity of the Book of Mormon being an historical account, because the Mayan didn't have wheat and barley.*

Please disabuse me of this hopelessly naive viewpoint.

________________________________________________________

*We know they didn't have wheat and barley for a couple of reasons. First, if they had wheat and barley there would be archelogical evidence of it. Second, (and more importantly), wheat and barley don't grow in the tropics or subtropics, which encompass all Mayan lands. Even if Nephi did bring wheat and barley seeds with him, it wouldn't have grown in Mesoamerica.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Analytics

[Zakuska]

Hordeum pusillum (aka Little Barley )

Has been found in a harvesting context in archeological sites all over the Americas.

And Shuem has been shown to be a perfectly good word from the middle east of the period for various types of "grain".

Edited August 18, 2011 by Zakuska

[Craig Paxton]

I'm one of those poor unfortunate souls who thinks the Book of Mormon is obviously of 19th Century American origins. The Response to Dr. Michael Coe thread makes me wonder if my thinking is just too 1975 to appreciate the obvious plausibility of the book that modern scholars see. Just to get a sense of what I'm missing with the latest scholarship, I thought it might be best to focus in on a single verse. Mosiah 9:9 comes to mind, because it illustrates some of the problems I have with taking the Book of Mormon seriously, and hopefully you guys will see this as a slow ball.

The verse reads:

Laying this onto a Mesoamerican framework, I read it as saying that around 200 B.C., a Mayan and his people planted corn, wheat, barley, and some other things, including "neas" and "sheum". I consider this a solid strike against the authenticity of the Book of Mormon being an historical account, because the Mayan didn't have wheat and barley.*

Please disabuse me of this hopelessly naive viewpoint.

Yeah this one is a slow ball pitch.... Just like white and delightsome was a mistranslation of pure and delightsome...neas and sheum was a mistranslation of Peas and Rheum (rheum being an ornamental form or rhubarb)...ok ready for a faster pitch. You see the Zeniffites were into ornamental plants in addition to their grain production.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Craig Paxton

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Yeah this one is a slow ball pitch.... Just like white and delightsome was a mistranslation of pure and delightsome...neas and sheum was a mistranslation of Peas and Rheum (rheum being an ornamental form or rhubarb)...ok ready for a faster pitch. You see the Zeniffites were into ornamental plants in addition to their grain production.

Never once heard this. It also seems as if you are presenting a straw man about white and delightsome.

[Analytics]

Hordeum pusillum (aka Little Barley )

Has been found in a harvesting context in archeological sites all over the Americas.

And Shuem has been shown to be a perfectly good word from the middle east of the period for various types of "grain".

My understanding is that Hordeum pusillum grows in the Eastern and Central U.S., as far south as Arizona. I might be mistaken, but I don’t think it grows in the tropics or subtropics.

It sounds like you are proposing the Central United States and Middle East as plausible Book of Mormon locations.

[Analytics]

Yeah this one is a slow ball pitch.... Just like white and delightsome was a mistranslation of pure and delightsome...neas and sheum was a mistranslation of Peas and Rheum (rheum being an ornamental form or rhubarb)...ok ready for a faster pitch. You see the Zeniffites were into ornamental plants in addition to their grain production.

May I request that we keep this focused on Mosiah 9:9?

[Zakuska]

My understanding is that Hordeum pusillum grows in the Eastern and Central U.S., as far south as Arizona. I might be mistaken, but I don’t think it grows in the tropics or subtropics.

It sounds like you are proposing the Central United States and Middle East as plausible Book of Mormon locations.

Its been found in various sights in Mexico too.

9. “…extensive archaeological evidence also points to the cultivation of little barley in the Southwest and parts of Mexico.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology , “Terminal Archaic and Early Woodland plant use at the Gast Spring site (13LA152), southeast Iowa” Spring 1998 by Dunne, Michael T, Green, William, pg. 8

Edited August 18, 2011 by Zakuska

[etana]

I'm one of those poor unfortunate souls who thinks the Book of Mormon is obviously of 19th Century American origins.

... and some other things, including "neas" and "sheum".

Sheum is a good one. It is an Akkadian (Babylonian) form of a Sumerian word originally meaning barley. It appears to have undergone some semantic widening in the intervening centuries (as is common) to be given here alongside something else that was translated as "barley"

This is not something an early 19th century farm boy could have known.

[Analytics]

Its been found in various sights in Mexico too.

9. “…extensive archaeological evidence also points to the cultivation of little barley in the Southwest and parts of Mexico.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology , “Terminal Archaic and Early Woodland plant use at the Gast Spring site (13LA152), southeast Iowa” Spring 1998 by Dunne, Michael T, Green, William, pg. 8

My understanding is that Mayan food only grows in the Mayan lands of the tropics and sub-tropics. In contrast, "little barley" grows in the mutually exclusive climate of desert grasslands.

The Mayan and the little barley were in mutually exclusive parts of Mexico.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Analytics

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

My understanding is that Mayan food only grows in the Mayan lands of the tropics and sub-tropics. In contrast, "little barley" grows in the mutually exclusive climate of desert grasslands.

The Mayan and the little barley were in mutually exclusive parts of Mexico.

Who has claimed that they Mayan's were Nephites?

[Zakuska]

My understanding is that Mayan food only grows in the Mayan lands of the tropics and sub-tropics. In contrast, "little barley" grows in the mutually exclusive climate of desert grasslands.

The Mayan and the little barley were in mutually exclusive parts of Mexico.

True, If one follows a strict Meso-American geography.

The complaint from the critics has always been... No Barley was EVER grown anywhere in the Americas before the Conquistadores brought it. Now that Archeology has proven that a form of it was. They are moving the Goalposts again.

[cdowis]

From our friend Chris:

Two other puzzling plants are mentioned in Mosiah 9:9, among those cultivated by the Zeniffites: "sheum" and "neas." The former word has recently been identified as "a precise match for Akkadian s(h)e'um, 'barley' (Old Assyrian 'wheat'); the most popular ancient Mesopotamian cereal name." The word's sound pattern indicates it was probably a Jaredite term. This good North Semitic word was quite at home around the "valley of Nimrod," north of Mesopotamia, where the Jaredites paused and collected seeds before starting their long journey to America (Ether 2:1, 3). (Incidentally, the form of the word as the Book of Mormon uses it dates to the third millennium B.C., when the Jaredites left the Near East. Later, it would have been pronounced and spelled differently.) Apparently the Nephite scribe could not translate it to any equivalent grain name, nor could Joseph Smith do so when he put the text into English. The plant and its name no doubt were passed down to the Nephites/Zeniffites through survivors from the First Tradition, just as corn itself was. Since the words barley and sheum were both used in the same verse (Mosiah 9:9), we know that two different grains were involved, but what "sheum" might specifically have been in our botanical terms we cannot tell at this time. Perhaps this was amaranth?

Sheum is often cited as a major bull's-eye for the Book of Mormon, but I have several objections to this claim.

(he later writes)

What Livingstone has shown is that whenever the Babylonian word for barley was written phonetically, it was spelled without the initial "sh" consonant. Spellings included e-a-am, a-am, u-um, e-ia, e-u, e-im, e-a-am, e-i, u-um and um. It was only when writing in Sumerian that the she symbol was used for barley. And when Livingstone examined the ancient lexical texts, he found that the schoolchildren were taught that the name of the Sumerian she symbol was u-um. That is, they were using the Sumerian she symbol, but substituting their own Babylonian pronunciation.

Here is Livingstone's conclusion:

If this [u'um] was the common word in Babylonian then it is more than likely that it also existed in Old Akkadian and could then have existed along with se, 'barley', as a loanword in Sumerian. ... In summary, the evidence allows but does not require the existence of a word se'um, 'barley'. It does, however, manifestly require the existence of a word u'um.

So it appears that the existence of an Akkadian word she'um for barley is something of an open question, despite appearing in some recent Akkadian lexica and dictionaries. Add this to the list of reasons why this particular apologetic fails to convince.

My response is two-fold:

sheum is a legitimate word, but it is also a loan word. Anytime a word is taken from one language into another, there can be a variation in the pronunciation and spelling, as Livingstone points out. While the Sumarians may not have emphasized the "sh" sound, that does not mean that the Nephite language would have done the same. Why does Chris think that this word came down to the Nephites thru the Sumarians, using their modified pronunciation?

Second, this word is obviously not barley, since it is already mentioned, but perhaps another grain. In Akkadian, it can mean "grain", as I remember from the lexicon.

Clearly the Nephites did not speak Akkadian, so it would be a loan word, and can mean any type of grain, as well as barley. So Chris contents himself that this is just another coincidence, while the believers see it as a home run.

So what else is new?

Edited August 18, 2011 by cdowis

[Analytics]

Sheum is a good one. It is an Akkadian (Babylonian) form of a Sumerian word originally meaning barley. It appears to have undergone some semantic widening in the intervening centuries (as is common) to be given here alongside something else that was translated as "barley"

This is not something an early 19th century farm boy could have known.

Are you suggesting by this last statement that sheum is a hit? I don't understand how.

What does this mean in the context of the Book of Mormon? As far as I can tell, you are suggesting something like this: The Lehites imigrated to the new world, where they became genetically engulfed in the local Mayan population. They brought with them the word "sheum", and the Mayans stopped using the word they'd previously used for one of their local foods (beans, perhaps?), and started calling it "sheum". Then, when Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon and came across the word "sheum", he couldn't figure out know how to translate that as "bean", so he just left "sheum" there.

Is that basically it?

[livy111us]

True, If one follows a strict Meso-American geography.

The complaint from the critics has always been... No Barley was EVER grown anywhere in the Americas before the Conquistadores brought it. Now that Archeology has proven that a form of it was. They are moving the Goalposts again.

Hordeum pusillum has been found in archaeological sites in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Arizona and elsewhere. It is not a grain that is exclusive to "desert grasslands" but can, and is currently grown in Mayan areas. If they can do it now, I assume that the Mayans could have done it thousands of years ago. I am no expert in this field by any means, but do believe that this is one point that LDS are getting more evidence of as time goes on. It was originally thought that barley was introduced by Columbus, then it was found in Arizona, and Arizona alone. We then found out that it was a staple to many ancient Indians who lived in what is now America through archaeology. Now we are beginning to find it in Mexico and I believe we will begin finding it more and more South as time goes on.

[cinepro]

Just to make sure I'm clear on this, Mosiah 9:9 is telling the story of Zeniff leading a group of people to inhabit the land of "Lehi-Nephi", which is the original land of "inheritance" for the Lehites after their landing. And when they finally get this land, they plant the grains mentioned.

So the original land of inheritance has to be in a place hospitable to wheat and barley cultivation, right?

Here's the parts of the world that grow wheat in our day:

Here's barley:

Edited August 18, 2011 by cinepro

[Analytics]

Who has claimed that they Mayan's were Nephites?

John Sorenson has linked the geography of the Book of Mormon with the geography of Mesoamerica, and the prevailing view of Mormon scholars is that is the only geography that fits. The Mayan lived in that land during the Book of Mormon times. Sorrenson said, ""The city of Nephi was probably the archaeological site of Kaminaljuyu."

Are you suggesting that the Mayan were the Lamanites, and the Nephites were a different culture in the same time and place?

[etana]

Are you suggesting by this last statement that sheum is a hit? I don't understand how.

What does this mean in the context of the Book of Mormon? As far as I can tell, you are suggesting something like this: The Lehites imigrated to the new world, where they became genetically engulfed in the local Mayan population. They brought with them the word "sheum", and the Mayans stopped using the word they'd previously used for one of their local foods (beans, perhaps?), and started calling it "sheum". Then, when Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon and came across the word "sheum", he couldn't figure out know how to translate that as "bean", so he just left "sheum" there.

Is that basically it?

i suspect that must have involved a lot of effort to manufacture an explanation that clearly avoided what i meant, attempted to create a straw-man and to ridicule.

[Analytics]

Here's barley:

That map is a little misleading, because it shows barley production by country, not climate. Barley only grows in the grasslands of neastern Mexico, and doesn't grow near Mesoamerica.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

John Sorenson has linked the geography of the Book of Mormon with the geography of Mesoamerica, and the prevailing view of Mormon scholars is that is the only geography that fits. The Mayan lived in that land during the Book of Mormon times. Sorrenson said, ""The city of Nephi was probably the archaeological site of Kaminaljuyu."

Are you suggesting that the Mayan were the Lamanites, and the Nephites were a different culture in the same time and place?

I have heard it suggested that the were among the Mayan's. I am not aware of any one (other than critics) that suggest that the Nephites were Mayan.

BTW the jury is still out were exactly the Nephites were or what is a "Nephite" city in a meso american context.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Mola Ram Suda Ram

[Analytics]

i suspect that must have involved a lot of effort to manufacture an explanation that clearly avoided what i meant, attempted to create a straw-man and to ridicule.

No, it isn't a strawman, and I'm not trying to ridicule. I'm trying to understand the implications of Sumerian word existing in a book that purportedly took place in Mesoamerica.

I was also trying to illustrate why I believe that this connection to the old world raises more problems than it solves.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

That map is a little misleading, because it shows barley production by country, not climate. Barley only grows in the grasslands of neastern Mexico, and doesn't grow near Mesoamerica.

The map does show that currently barley is grown in mesoamerica. Of course I would hate to think that Cinepro was actually trying to give a positive argument for the church.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

wheat and barley don't grow in the tropics or subtropics,

Do you have a reference for this?

[Analytics]

I have heard it suggested that the were among the Mayan's. I am not aware of any one (other than critics) that suggest that the Nephites were Mayan.

BTW the jury is still out were exactly the Nephites were or what is a "Nephite" city in a meso american context.

What we know is that the Nephites had really big cities, and that all of the really big cities that existed in Mesoamerica during the Book of Mormon timeframe were Mayan cities.

What other theories are out there?

[Analytics]

Do you have a reference for this?

I heard it in the three-part documentary Guns, Germs, and Steel. It goes into great detail about why civilization grew in the fertile crescent, while it didn’t grow elsewhere, and then why western civilization flourished in Europe and eventually the United States, but not in the tropics. The nutritional value of wheat and barley are key to answering these questions, as well as understanding where they grow and don’t grow. The documentary is on Netflix—it’s worth seeing if you get the chance.

[Analytics]

The map does show that currently barley is grown in mesoamerica. Of course I would hate to think that Cinepro was actually trying to give a positive argument for the church.

Here is a website that has a map that shows where Barley is currently grown:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_barley_production

It isn't grown in Mesoamerica. Unless there have been recent genetic alterations that I haven't heard about, it can't grow in Mesoamerica.