Dr. Michael Coe – An Outsider’S View Of Book Of Mormon Archaeology

[Olavarria]

Has anyone listened to this interview?

I am a huge fan of Michael Coe and own 2 of his books. I love the fact that he is willing to discuss Mormon topics.

The biggest thing I get out of this video is that people like Coe and Sorenson are reading the BoM through completly different lenses.

When Coe and many Mormons think of Nephites they envision:

When Sorenson and apologists think about Nephites, they envision:

On the whole it was a very enjoyable interview, but Coe does more to demolish Mormon folklore than the Book of Mormon itself. Anachronisms are serious arguments against the book, but the lack of Hebrew script at Copan or "the compass" are not among them. I also wonder how well Coe and Dehlin have read the book itself. The Lamanites that destroyed Mormon's people were not some "dark skinned", de-evolved barbarian race, that slaughtered an advanced "white" race. That idea sits well with Mormon folklore but not the Book of Mormon itself.

I'm not aware of anyone doing actual "Book of Mormon archeology" and Sorenson-ite apologists aren;t expecting to find wheels, gold plates or Hebrew writing. What you do have is people studying the Book of Mormon in light of archeology, but that's a very different thing. He does praise some of Sorenson's work on diffusionist theory, John E. Clark and the NWAF.

Thoughts?

Edited October 11, 2011 by Pedro A. Olavarria

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Yep, there was a big thread about it not too long ago - ah, here 'tis: Response to Dr. Michael Coe

A few of my (erm, somewhat exasperated and impatient) comments in there included:

Okay, so I finally found time to finish all the podcasts, and wow. I am actually stunned. The false assumptions, the blatant misreadings, the ex cathedra pronouncements, the high school obsession with social acceptance, the laughably groundless "percentages" of the likelihood of certain claims, the completely needless misinformation and speculative innuendo and groundless accusations of racism, the amateur psychologizing and undergraduate-level philosophizing, the appeal to a monolithic "scientific" or "intellectual" worldview ...

I was aware of the LDS scholarly material on practically every one of these issues as a skeptical teenage atheist. I wasn't expecting too terribly much from Coe, but I was pretty broadsided by Dehlin's comments. I like and respect both dudes (I know Coe is certainly not an anti-Mormon, as Dehlin was worried faithful LDS would think), but their perspectives on these issues was just ... vicariously embarrassing, really.

I do hope FAIR/FARMS gets a qualified respondent quick - Coe's sheer authoritarianism (which this interview has demonstrated to be completely irrelevant in the narrow niche of Book of Mormon intersections with secular archaeology) has the potential to hurt people who are struggling with their faith, and it's entirely avoidable if we would all just do our own homework.

In fact, when you think about it, this is actually a great opportunity: if we simply respond (in list-form, basically) to every point Coe and Dehlin make, we'll essentially counter almost every false claim about Mormonism out there and have it all recorded in one nice, tidy package.

This was seriously eye-opening on the state of "educated" opinion on Mormonism. Absolutely incredible.

Coe's mistake was thinking that his [Fawn Brodie-influenced] interpretation of the Book of Mormon (and the related issue of the method of translation) is identical with what the text actually says.

It is a not uncommon problem among Mormons as well.

Edited October 11, 2011 by JeremyOrbe-Smith

[Olavarria]

Yep, there was a big thread about it not too long ago - ah, here 'tis: Response to Dr. Michael Coe

A few of my (erm, somewhat exasperated and impatient) comments in there included:

I agree with alot of the points made on one of those posts. Like I said, it blasted a well deserved hole through alot of Mormon folklore but said almost nothing about the actual Book of Mormon itself.

Edited October 11, 2011 by Pedro A. Olavarria

[ldsfaqs]

Has anyone listened to this interview?

I am a huge fan of Michael Coe and own 2 of his books. I love the fact that he is willing to discuss Mormon topics.

The biggest thing I get out of this video is that people like Coe and Sorenson are reading the BoM through completly different lenses.

When Coe and many Mormons think of Nephites they envision:

When Sorenson and apologists think about Nephites, they envision:

On the whole it was a very enjoyable interview, but Coe does more to demolish Mormon folklore than the Book of Mormon itself. Anachronisms are serious arguments against the book, but the lack of Hebrew script at Copan or "the compass" are not among them. I also wonder how well Coe and Dehlin have read the book itself. The Lamanites that destroyed Mormon's people were not some "dark skinned", de-evolved barbarian race, that slaughtered an advanced "white" race. That idea sits well with Mormon folklore but not the Book of Mormon itself.

I'm not aware of anyone doing actual "Book of Mormon archeology" and Sorenson-ite apologists aren;t expecting to find wheels, gold plates or Hebrew writing. What you do have is people studying the Book of Mormon in light of archeology, but that's a very different thing. He does praise some of Sorenson's work on diffusionist theory, John E. Clark and the NWAF.

Thoughts?

I don't really agree.... I think the Nephites were "generally" a lighter skinned people, including aspects of skin color, modernity, and moral living. While certainly I would agree that they weren't "our" white, and I certainly believe that the skin color indications in the BOM are primarily in reference to symbolism, I do believe that in a smaller respect the BOM most certainly does indicate an actual variation in skin color as a known theme to the peoples themselves.

Further, I don't think any mormon believes that the Nephites where the "degree" of white that the above picture expounds. I don't think the author of that particular picture was going for race realism.

[Gervin]

Obviously, early Nephites had cool helmets made from longhorn cattle. As a native Texan, I'm glad to see the longhorn steer had a place in Book of Mormon culture (even do I are an aggie).

[Olavarria]

I don't really agree.... I think the Nephites were "generally" a lighter skinned people, including aspects of skin color, modernity, and moral living. While certainly I would agree that they weren't "our" white, and I certainly believe that the skin color indications in the BOM are primarily in reference to symbolism, I do believe that in a smaller respect the BOM most certainly does indicate an actual variation in skin color as a known theme to the peoples themselves.

Further, I don't think any mormon believes that the Nephites where the "degree" of white that the above picture expounds. I don't think the author of that particular picture was going for race realism.

Strictly speaking a Nephite could be a:

1)descendant of Nephi (Mosiah 25:2).

2)Someone that was allied with Nephi and his descendants(Jacob 1:14).

3)Someone who was part of God's covenant people(4 Nephi:37-38)

Strictly speaking, a Lamanite could be:

1)a descendant of Laman(Alma 55:4).

2)anyone who is not a Nephite(Jacob 1:14).

3) anyone one who rejected the true gospel of Christ(4 Nephi 37-38)

After 3 Nephi, the terms Nephite and Lamanite are strictly religious identities.

Edited October 11, 2011 by Pedro A. Olavarria

[Robert F. Smith]

This is one of a series commissioned by Joe Smith and based on Wagner's Götterdämmerung.

This is a shot of a couple of stripling warriors from Mel Gibson's film version of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, Apocalypto.

On the whole it was a very enjoyable interview, but Coe does more to demolish Mormon folklore than the Book of Mormon itself. Anachronisms are serious arguments against the book, but the lack of Hebrew script at Copan or "the compass" are not among them. I also wonder how well Coe and Dehlin have read the book itself. The Lamanites that destroyed Mormon's people were not some "dark skinned", de-evolved barbarian race, that slaughtered an advanced "white" race. That idea sits well with Mormon folklore but not the Book of Mormon itself.

I'm not aware of anyone doing actual "Book of Mormon archeology" and Sorenson-ite apologists aren;t expecting to find wheels, gold plates or Hebrew writing. What you do have is people studying the Book of Mormon in light of archeology, but that's a very different thing. He does praise some of Sorenson's work on diffusionist theory, John E. Clark and the NWAF.

I'm am more interested in hearing Mike Coe's reminiscences of his days as a grad student of Tom O'Dea at Harvard, and what he might have learned about Mormon folklore while studying the Mormons with O'Dea in Ramah, New Mexico, back in the 1950s. See O'Dea's book The Mormons which resulted from that project.

Meantime, rather than blathering on about the lack of a "compass," it would be nice to hear Coe discuss the magnetite "pointer" found at the Early Formative Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán (Fuson 1969:508-510, Coe in Sharer & Grove 1989:79; Lowe 1989:44 [fig 4.6 item n],53-54; Coe & Diehl 1980:244-245 figs 251, 255). Coe told Robert Fuson that this "pointer" was

a flattened, oblong piece that is perfectly squared on all faces, and with a longitudinal groove extending along one surface. The object was made with such great care that it appears to be machined (Fuson 1969:508).

Coe succesfully tested the pointer on a cork mat in a plastic bowl of water, and also suggested that the Olmec may have suspended magnetite mirrors on string for the same purpose. Fuson notes that the pointer could as easily have been floated on liquid mercury – available and extensively used in ancient Mesoamerica (Fuson 1969:508-510; cf. Baity 1973:443; Carlson 1981:117-147).

Edited October 11, 2011 by Robert F. Smith

[Olavarria]

The main jist of the interview consisted of Dehlin asking Coe questians about chariots, swords, flora and fauna and, what I understand them to mean when discussing Zarahemla, a virtual Crown Heights in the Mesoamerican heartland.

Coe is a grandmaster of mesoamerican archeology but I'm not sure he or Dehlin really have a grasp for the current state of BoM apologetics. For example, when Dehlin asks him about Lehi's trail and honey bees in Arabia, Coe respeonds by stating that the NW be and the OW bee are two different species that evolved independantly of one another. When Dehlin asks Coe about possible loan shifts in Nephite vocabulary that might explain equating something like a tapir with a horse, Coe describes how the Spanish brought actual bovine to the NW and together with the natives applied the Mayan word for tapir, tsimin, to the new animal but then insists that linguists know where and how the Mayan language developed etc. When talking about the Jaredites and the Olmec, all Coe says is that there is nothing in the Olmec that comes from the Middle East, it's all native american.

My problem with this is that NO ONE is claiming that NW bees came from the OW or that the Mayan word for tapir came from Hebrew. Similiarly, no one is claiming that the Olmec are the Jaredites but rather that the Jaredites are a dynasty who's founders originated in the OW and that they participated in Olmec culture. That's a very different thing. Coe reminds us that we'll never find chariots because they didn't exist, but doesn't seem to realize that most apologists agree with him on that point.

So I'm not sure either Coe or Dehlin are familiar with the arguments made by people like Clark, Gardner or Sorenson. Nothing written about the Book of Mormon by Gardner, Clark or Sorenson is mentioned or discussed BUT there's a whole lot of Ancient America Speaks and Izapa 5.

Edited October 11, 2011 by Pedro A. Olavarria