Tapirs As Horses

[cdowis]

I responded just as you were posting.

You didn't bother reading the entire verses, did you. You just did a search on chariot and guessed at the meaning of the text.

Who said anything about Ben Hur? Joseph Smith wasn't familiar with this film, but he was perfectly aware of the fact that chariot generally refers to a wheeled, horse-driven device used for traveling and war. How on earth could chariots be used for transportation when the wheel wasn't used by the Ancient Americans?

Ben hur chariots is my term for war chariots. There is no reference to chariots used in war, but just for transportation.

The mesoamericans were familiar with the wheel. But, as I said, I am not going to spoon feed you.

They were symbols of authority and royalty, which means they were usually big and flamboyant in appearance. This means it is less likely a Tapir could pull one, especially without wheels.

The tapir pulling "chariots" is still the unanswered question in this thread.

snip

Your reliance on the usual petulance is just further evidence that you cannot defend your argument otherwise. So you lose.

Your wish is my command.

Please put me on your ignore list, and I will do the same.

Edited August 21, 2011 by cdowis

[Alan]

I think this whole discussion is unprofitable. The Book of Mormon says the Nephites had horses. Therefore, they had horses - end of story.

[cdowis]

Alan,

While I agree with you, there are those who still hold to the tapir theory and I want to give them a chance. I have already learned a few things that give me pause. The only thing left is the domestication of tapirs, so that they are able to pull wagons/chariots.

I have been mistaken in some of my views, and this may be one of them. Let's give everyone a chance. Frankly, if DP thinks it is a viable option, I am willing to take another look at it.

[smac97]

OK, so I am not very sophisticated. You mention the evidence from linguistics and anthropology, but how about the real world.

Here are a few questions:

1. Can tapirs be domesticated? According to wiki, they are relative acquatic animals, similar, perhaps, to hipps. How well do they do in a domesticated enviromnet. Amon tended the king's tapris, so exactly what was he doing? Did the tapirs cooperate while he was tending them.

The short answer is that tapirs can be domesticated.

As an aside, I found your reference to hippopotami ("hipps") interesting. We all know what these animals are, but Herodotus (the classical Greek historian) apparently had to figure out a name for the creatures when he described them in The Histories 2.73. What appellation did he use? "Hippopotamus," which is Greek for "riverine horse."

So if an ancient Greek historian can describe a hippo as a "river horse," can an ancient Nephite historian describe a tapir as a "horse?"

I think it's possible.

2. Can they actually pull a load -- a wagon, a chariot with a person. Has anyone tried it. Is there any evidence that the mayas, aztecs ever attempted it. I read that they average three feet tall.

The Mesoamerican variety (Baird's Tapir) can grow to be nearly six and a half feet in length and can weigh more than six hundred pounds.

3. Are they edible? The BOM makes it clear that horses were used for food, so how about tapirs? Have the mayans, aztecs used them for food. I read that they have a tough skin.

Yes, they have been used for food.

These are questions from this unsophisticated lout who disagrees with the tapir theory. I saw nothing in wiki that gives any answers to these questions.

You might be interested in this article about tapirs (I culled some of my above answers from this article):

http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/AshHorse/

Thanks,

-Smac

[cdowis]

The short answer is that tapirs can be domesticated.

Really? And you can give us a little bit more details. Can they be used to pull a wagon with a driver in the wagon. Are we talking about horse domestication, or more like an ox.

Edited August 21, 2011 by cdowis

[David Bokovoy]

But a chariot?

• Lamoni commands servants to prepare horses and chariots, Alma 18:9 (Alma 20:6).
• Ammon prepares Lamoni’s chariots, Alma 18:10, 12
• Nephites gather with horses and chariots, 3 Ne. 3:22
• the Father will destroy chariots of Gentiles, 3 Ne. 21:14 (Micah 5:10).

See, now we have to come up with some explanation as to why chariot doesn't really mean chariot. Do you see a trend here? The apologetic method is to take a reductionist approach and reduce it to the "domestication" of an animal. But that's clearly an understatement of what the Book of Mormon describes. It isn't enough to say Tapirs could be used to pull carts, therefore this must have been the animal Nephi and Alma had in mind when using a "generic" word for multiple animals which Joseph Smith for some reason chose to translate "horse." The argument is pretty convoluted if you think about it, and relies on so many "ifs" and "maybes" that it really makes the whole thing implausible

Kevin, you've raised some good arguments against the theory, but in terms of Book of Mormon "chariots," I'm personally open to a number of possibilities, including the use of a Semitic hendiadys. Outside of the two Old Testament citations, the English word "chariot" appears a total of five times in the Book of Mormon. Significantly, none of these examples use the word “chariots” on its own without the word “horses”:

“They should prepare his horses and chariots” (Alma 18:9)

“Ammon was preparing his horses and his chariots” (Alma 18:10)

“Ammon had made ready the horses and the chariots for the king” (Alma 18:12)

“He caused that his servants should make ready his horses and his chariots” (Alma 20:6)

“They had taken their horses, and their chariots” (3 Nephi 3:22)

In my mind, the fact that the term “chariots” always appears as a Book of Mormon idiom linked with the noun “horses” via the conjunction “and” suggests that the phrase “horses and chariots” may function as a type of hendiadys, meaning a grammatical construct whereby a single complex idea appears expressed through two words linked by a conjunction. Hendiadys appears as a regular idiomatic feature in Semitic languages.

Examples of hendiadys in the Old Testament include:

Gen. 3:16: “your pain and your conception = your painful conception”

Gen. 12:1: “your land and your birthplace = your native land”

Gen. 13:13: “wicked and sinners = wicked sinners”

Ex. 14:20: “the cloud and the darkness = the dark cloud”

Since the word “chariots” always appears linked with the noun “horses” by a conjunction in its Book of Mormon use, I believe readers should remain open to the possibility that the Book of Mormon idiom “horses and chariots” reflects a biblical-like example of Hendiadys meaning “horse chariots.” As such, the Nephites may have used the expression “horse chariots” to refer to a number of traditional Mesoamerican transportation devices in the same way that some people use the expression “steel horse” to refer to a motorcycle, or “horse power” to denote units of power measurement.

As such, the phrase need not suggest a literal "horse and chariot," even though I would actually agree with you that the expression seems to contextually denote a transportation type device.

Best,

--DB

[smac97]

You really believe that "God" would get this wrong?

The Book of Mormon is not a treatise on mammalian taxonomy.

Horses, the really big kind coexisting with humans during our entire recorded history, are specifically known animals the world over.

Really? So the inhabitants of precolumbian Mesoamerica knew all about horses?

Joseph Smith made sure that his scribe of the moment got what he saw as text right before moving on.

References, please, for Joseph's description of the translation process for The Book of Mormon.

There is no conceivable way that "God" would allow tapirs or llamas or hippos or curloms and cumoms to be translated as HORSES.

Yes, there is. (See? I can resort to unsupported, because-I-say-so assertions to!)

That's what translation is: turning words and concepts from one language into their equivalents in another language.

What if the second language does not have a word for the first? Like when Herodotus was describing the hippopotamus. There was no Greek word for this animal, so he called them hippopotamuses (Greek for "river horse").

As I mentioned in my previous post: If an ancient Greek historian can describe a hippopotamus as a "river horse," can an ancient Nephite historian describe a tapir as a "horse?"

I think it's possible.

You might as well assert that "king" Lamoni was really "President" Lamoni. The concepts are not the same in our language. And neither are jumped up animal substitutes for horses. Either that, or "God" has a viciously sophomoric sense of humor....

You are operating under a boatload of assumptions. Linguistic, historical, anthropological, doctrinal, etc.

The validity of these assumptions is not self-evident.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited August 21, 2011 by smac97

[smac97]

I find the idea that Lamoni was riding to a distant village on a chariot pulled by tapirs..... I just don't see it. It is an unnecessary distraction.

I don't think the text requires such an interpretation.

"Chariot" could easily refer to a sedan chair (borne by servants), and the tapirs could have been beasts of burden bearing or pulling/dragging supplies for the trip.

Hopefully Dan will set is straight that this is indeed possible in the real world, rather than some academic, mental exercise. It's killing us, and he appears sympathetic to that theory.

"It's killing us?" What are you referring to here?

Thanks,

-Smac

[Daniel Peterson]

He purported to translate Reformed Egyptian into English. Period. If the Reformed Egyptian Text mentioned tapirs, the apologetic logic goes like this: Since Joseph Smith didn't know what the English equivalent was for that animal, he used the closest thing, which in this case was horse.

Really? I've never heard that argument.

My impression is that you don't really understand the tapir=horse argument. At least, I see no sign that you do. But perhaps I should bow to your superior knowledge of the apologetic mind.

"Liahona" has no English significance whatsoever, but he translated it exactly as it was called by the early Nephites.

Quite so.

Likewise, if these tapirs were called "zing-zings" in their ancient tongue, then Joseph Smith would have simply translated it as zing-zing. It wouldn't really matter if English readers knew precisely what animal was being referenced.

Probably correct.

It establishes a context in which this term was understood in the Book of Mormon and at the very least the mind of the man translating (Joseph Smith). He is, after all, the one you need to be making goofy word choices.

This doesn't seem to accord with any explanation of the taper/horse link that I've ever heard.

It is possible that Joseph Smith used the wrong word, for the wrong animal, that lived on the wrong continent, providing the wrong service, etc etc.

Yes, it's probably possible. But it seems a bit of a strawman.

I don't believe that your summary of "the apologetic logic" correctly reflects Dan's perspective. As I understand the logic, it's not that Joseph didn't know the English word tapir (though he probably didn't), it's that the Nephites may have used the word "horse" for tapir, etc. in the same way that the Greeks used the word "horse" for hippopotamus.

So according to the theory, the word "horse" appears in the original plate text as a reference to a variety of animal species.

Precisely.

Although, once again, it's not actually my argument. But I do regard the tapir=horse idea as a possibility.

[Joseph Antley]

Well, first of all, even the Greeks distinguished between the two. One was simply a horse and the other a "river horse." So I don't think this is a good example, although it is a popular one in LDS lit.

Not sure if you took the time to actually look this up, but while our English hippopotamus does derive from the Greek words meaning "river horse," in ancient Greek texts they were still often simply called "horses." One example is from Diodorus Siculus, the 1st century B.C. Greek historian. Diodorus gives a detailed description of the hippopotamus while describing peculiar Egyptian animals but simply calls it the hippos, or "horse," never the "river-horse."

As for animals, the Nile breeds many of peculiar form, and two which surpass the others, the crocodile and what is called the horse. ... The animal called the horse is not less than five cubits high, and is four-footed and cloven-hoofed like the ox.

Diodorus Siciulus, 1.35.

Edited August 22, 2011 by Joseph Antley

[Hamba Tuhan]

The fact that it quotes the Bible's usage of a chariot means they understood what the word meant.

I work in sixteenth-century encounter texts--in my case, documents written by Europeans (primarily Jesuit missionaries) in Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific. In a classic case of loan-shifting, the Portuguese in the East applied their word for fig, figo, to bananas as well. In Jesuit letters from this time period, therefore, the word can refer either to figs or bananas. A reference to Adam and Eve having covered their shame with figo leaves is an obvious allusion to the Bible and suggests figs. A discussion about having been feasted in a local village with roast pork and roast figos suggests bananas--not because the text itself makes this clear but merely because it's the only way of resolving an apparent anachronism, domesticated European figs not having been known to exist in the region during this time period. In many other cases, the distinction is not clear at all, and we have no way of knowing what was 'meant' by a particular use of the word.

That's due to the fact that, to my Jesuit letter writers, none of this discussion would even have made sense. They knew Biblical figs (with Indian-born Jesuits knowing them only from the Bible), and they knew local figs (bananas), and to them they were the same thing simultaneously--regardless of what later Linnaean classification or DNA studies might suggest. This is precisely what happens in loan-shifting, which is one hallmark of encounter literature:

'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).

Edited August 22, 2011 by Hamba Tuhan

[BCSpace]

In my experience -- I haven't yet encountered an exception to the rule -- those who cackle the loudest about the suggestion that Nephites might have called tapirs "horses" have been those who failed to fully grasp the point, which is actually pretty sophisticated and quite justifiable in terms of historical linguistics and anthropology.

I disagree. Assuming the Book of Mormon is true, no matter which method or combination of methods of the translation of the plates one ascribes to, the most logical conclusion is that if JS didn't have an english word for what he saw or read, there would have been a another word like "curelom" or "cumom" in place of "horse". In this case,

. Edited August 22, 2011 by BCSpace

[Hamba Tuhan]

I disagree. Assuming the Book of Mormon is true, no matter which method or combination of methods of the translation of the plates one ascribes to, the most logical conclusion is that if JS didn't have an english word for what he saw or read, there would have been a another word like "curelom" or "cumom" in place of "horse".

OK, but what if the word on the plates was indeed 'horse'? Do we have any way of determining from the text alone if the word had experienced loan-shifting in the New World?

Edited August 22, 2011 by Hamba Tuhan

[Jeff K.]

smac97, on 21 August 2011 - 05:47 PM, said:

The short answer is that tapirs can be domesticated.

Really? And you can give us a little bit more details. Can they be used to pull a wagon with a driver in the wagon. Are we talking about horse domestication, or more like an ox.

To what level?

Water-loving, a tapir not only swims well, but has the ability to walk on the bottom of ponds and rivers. It's often said that tapirs are "docile," but they may also throw tantrums, during which they will sometimes gnash and bite. Strong as an ox and nearly indestructible (I knew one tapir that liked to toss a cast-iron bathtub around his yard), tapirs emit chirp-chirping sounds that you could easily mistake for a bird. They'll eat almost anything, but a favorite food is, almost universally, bananas.

In the literature, tapirs have been called "stupid," "clumsy" and "awkward," none of which are true. A domesticated tapir may not come when you call its name and it won't walk on a leash, but it's far from being stupid. It may appear to be ungainly, yet it can turn on a dime, out-maneuver a Weimaraner while playing "tag," can figure out how to open a standard round doorknob, drink water from a Coke bottle, nibble carefully from a fork, and learn to recognize the sound of one car engine over another. With its keen sense of smell, a tapir can pick up the scent of a lettuce leaf yards away. And speaking of lettuce, the closest I can come to describing the smell of a tapir is to say it smells like a crate of lettuce!

Lastly, there's a story I found amusing, and I hope someday I can again locate the source. Apparently the great French zoologist, Cuvier (I think it was Cuvier), announced to the world one year that all the large land mammals had been discovered - there would be no more found. The very next year, the Malayan tapir became known to Western science. I hope I have this information right, and I don't offhand know the year, but it's such a good story I had to tell it. Thank you for visiting the Tapir Gallery. I hope you'll stay and spend a little time with these anomalous, unique and under-appreciated animals. Welcome to the fascinating world of tapirs!

What are tapirs

The tapir is a herbivore and spends it's time browsing for food to eat. The tapir eats leaves, twigs, branches, buds, shoots, berries, fruits and aquatic plants. Due to it's large size, the tapir has few natural predators in it's environment but it is known to be prey upon by wild cats such as tigers, jaguars and cougars along with large reptiles like crocodiles and even the odd snake. The human is believed to be the most common predator of the tapir as they have been hunted for food and even domesticated in some areas.

Tapir

[inquiringmind]

Are they edible? The BOM makes it clear that horses were used for food

Where does the BOM say that?

Edited August 22, 2011 by inquiringmind

[shalamabobbi]

missing the saddle though..

http://www.tassava.com/blowing-and-drifting/2011/04/30/tapir-story/

[blackstrap]

I too think horses and chariots means horses and chariots. Consider the story of Ammon.The King was well pleased with Ammon and gave him the worthy job of what?, attending to the tapir shed and the travois. It was obvious to the king the Ammon had considerable military talents so why not appoint him in the military job. Otherwise he becomes a manure shoveler.

Now if there was an animal switch,I prefer the deer as a horse because apparently the Mesoamericans thought that the Spanish were riding deer.And deer are used today as pullers of carts and even ridden.

On a note about horses and chariots,they are not of much value in a tropical forest.Best to use them in open grasslands or deserts.Horses or donkeys do serve quite well as beasts of burden even in jungles but not pulling wagons or carts.

[inquiringmind]

Could someone tell me where the BOM says that horses were used for food?

If we are talking about horses (and not dear) that would be contrary to the Law of Moses.

Were they used for food by the Jaredites, the Laminites, or the Nephites?

Edited August 22, 2011 by inquiringmind

[Calm]

Could someone tell me where the BOM says that horses were used for food?

If we are talking about horses (and not dear) that would be contrary to the Law of Moses.

Were they used for food by the Jaredites, the Laminites, or the Nephites?

Horses are listed in 3 Nephi (possibly elsewhere, can't remember) along with other animals that are specifically used for food as well as grains, also descriptions using the terms "provisions" and "substance". The theory is that since they are listed in a list of what appears to be food sources, they may be also used as a food resource.

This may be helpful: http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/AshHorse/

Edited August 22, 2011 by calmoriah

[KevinG]

Horses are listed in 3 Nephi (possibly elsewhere, can't remember) along with other animals that are specifically used for food as well as grains, also descriptions using the terms "provisions" and "substance". The theory is that since they are listed in a list of what appears to be food sources, they may be also used as a food resource.

This may be helpful: http://www.fairlds.o...ormon/AshHorse/

So... the horse is a main course of course of course unless its only bread?

[Bernard Gui]

In the readers' comments section of Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec 2010, p.8, there is an interesting discussion on Judahite chariots, including a reproduction of the only known pictorial representation of one:

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRU4-jkhuM0qX5-eiP__9Hs5z_d-arKp9T3opoqabiOQWlCAZz4

...pulled by 2 men. The writer notes this is probably a royal ceremonial chariot rather than a war chariot.

Bernard

Edited August 22, 2011 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

The first mention of a Lehite chariot is in Alma 17, 500 years after Lehi left Jerusalem. There is no indication he brought a chariot with him. The Lehites read about chariots in the brass plates but there probably were no illustrations of chariots in the brass plates. So how do we know what a Lamanite or Nephite chariot looked like?

Bernard

[jo1952]

Horses are listed in 3 Nephi (possibly elsewhere, can't remember) along with other animals that are specifically used for food as well as grains, also descriptions using the terms "provisions" and "substance". The theory is that since they are listed in a list of what appears to be food sources, they may be also used as a food resource.

This may be helpful: http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/AshHorse/

Here is an interesting youtube video by Stan Lutz who has been studying the ICA stones of Peru. Not only does he show us some stones with horses, but some are pulling chariots. These are pre-Spaniard artifacts. This guy is a Christian - he has no agenda regarding the LDS Church. This is from a series of short lectures - the first one covers the questions of authenticity - which he brings up and continues to defend in several of the other clips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBftoq9QZck&feature=related

My theory, if anyone is interested, is that the extreme technolocial advancements depicted in the stones are a result of the knowledge passed on to mankind when they came to the earth to take the daughters of man to wife. The stones depict such things as brain surgery (skulls have been found where individuals survived these surgeries because new bone growth was observed where operations were performed. They also depict heart transplants which appear to have been successful, as they also knew to take amniotic fluid from a pregnant woman and soak transplanted organs in the fluid to prevent rejection of the organ in the recipient. In the book of Enoch we are taught they brought this knowledge with them and taught it to the people. Hence, there really weren't aliens who came to the earth; rather it was the angels who took an oath together to do this thing. The knowledge they taught was not supposed to be taught, as man was supposed to learn these things in his own due time. Of course, we know that the offspring of the angels and daughters of man produced the giants known as the Nephilim. These offspring caused destruction, brought great and perverted sins upon the earth to the point where God brought the Great Flood upon the earth in order to destroy the wickedness.

Interestingly, the stones also depict several types of dinosaurs which the people used not only for food, but they also appear to have trained and ridden them. It's an amazing series to watch. Surely, this could help explain how Joseph saw a "war horse" which was unfamiliar and frightening.

I would also draw our attention to some of the comments made by Solomon wherein he speaks about how there is nothing new that mankind has not already known though it has been lost....or words to that effect.

Enjoy,

jo

Edited August 22, 2011 by jo1952

[Questing Beast]

The Book of Mormon is not a treatise on mammalian taxonomy.

Really? So the inhabitants of precolumbian Mesoamerica knew all about horses?

Sure. The BoM says so. It was seeing a man riding a "war horse" that was unfamiliar and even frightening.

References, please, for Joseph's description of the translation process for The Book of Mormon.

Witnesses described the process. Oliver Cowdery, iirc, is the specific source for the line-by-line text appearing; and Joseph Smith assuring that what was written was correct, by having the scribe read it back, before moving on.

But then, you were being disingenuous, since you already know that Joseph Smith never described the translation process.

Yes, there is. (See? I can resort to unsupported, because-I-say-so assertions to!)

What if the second language does not have a word for the first? Like when Herodotus was describing the hippopotamus. There was no Greek word for this animal, so he called them hippopotamuses (Greek for "river horse").

As I mentioned in my previous post: If an ancient Greek historian can describe a hippopotamus as a "river horse," can an ancient Nephite historian describe a tapir as a "horse?"

I think it's possible.

If English does not have a word for a particular animal, then Joseph Smith gave the grammatical sounds for the unknown animal. We have two anyway: curlom and cumom: Apparently extinct animals of unusual size, making them especially useful when domesticated. To write "horses", numerous times, can only mean the animals we are familiar with. (Perhaps Joseph Smith had never heard of a tapir, and the Lehite word, for the Jaredite word, was curlom or cumom; so in his rustic ignorance, Joseph Smith spoke that word without knowing about the extant animal.)

You are operating under a boatload of assumptions. Linguistic, historical, anthropological, doctrinal, etc.

The validity of these assumptions is not self-evident.

Thanks,

-Smac

And your boat is leaking. At least taking the BoM literally is far safer than twisting logic on its ear to get out from under the reality that no evidence for horses in pre-Columbian America exists outside of the BoM assertions of the same. Evidence for horses can always turn up eventually. Archeology has only scratched the surface. Does the BoM hold together otherwise? If it does, then just wait patiently, with faith, and your "boatload" of evidence will turn up, someday....

[mfbukowski]

In last evening's fireside, Mark Wright discussed how the term "horses" could also refer to deer; he views the word "chariot" to mean something like human powered sedan chair or palanquin

Has anyone posted this link yet? http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/AshHorse/