Could The Lamanites Really Have Disappeared

[David T]

Since the Book of Mormon definition of Lamanite ceased to be tribal very early (see Jacob 1:14), the insistence on finding genetic connections seems to be far beyond the point. Lamanite was "not Nephite," and that covers a very wide spectrum. Of course, we have re-established some genetic connection because we associate the term with any people who was in the Americas prior to the European invasion, but that still doesn't change the very expansive Book of Mormon definition.

I would highly consider anyone who wants to either attack, or defend, the idea of the plausibility of the historicity of the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerican lands to familiarize themselves with Brant Gardner's 6-volume Second Witness Commentary. It is very expensive (I'm purchasing them one by one as I finish them *grin*), but you should be able to get access by, at the very least, interlibrary loan.

While Brother Gardner would likely be the first to acknowledge they aren't perfect, I'll be the first to say they are currently THE best resource available. When I was on the edge of acknowledging an authentic ancient source for the Book of Mormon text (in fact, more than on the edge, teetering very much towards purely 19th Century inspired fiction), Gardner's book 'The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon' combined with his exhaustive commentary substantially added reasonable doubt to my 19th Century leanings, and in the process, added a great amount of depth and wonder to my reading of the Book of Mormon.

While belief in the Book of Mormon as having an ancient origin is still very clearly an act of chosen Faith, Gardner's work (based on and going beyond the foundation established by Sorenson) made this, for me, something that was not simply choosing between something intellectually sound, and something patently ridiculous. It has been the very definition of Faith Promoting - in respects to the ancient origin of the Book.

Just a note FWIW, and for those who may be willing to believe in the Ancient American Origin if there was more intellectual information, but finding it harder and harder to do so.

Edited August 8, 2013 by David T

[canard78]

Just a note FWIW, and for those who may be willing to believe in the Ancient American Origin if there was more intellectual information, but finding it harder and harder to do so.

Thanks. Of what little I've read so far, Brant Gardner's work is among the most balanced and most thorough I've read.

[canard78]

Look up "goat" or "ox". I'm sure you can figure it out from there.

So if the land they arrived on was already populated, how do we explain Joseph's Wentworth Letter.

We excuse his 'creative stories' (from Lucy's biography) as being after Moroni's visits. He had been shown in vision the people he would later write about.

In wentworth he says:

I was also informed concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of this country [America], and shown who they were, and from whence they came; a brief sketch of their origin, progress, civilization, laws, governments, of their righteousness and iniquity, and the blessings of God being finally withdrawn from them as a people was made known unto me:

...

In this important and interesting book the history of ancient America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel, at the confusion of languages to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country.

http://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/07/the-wentworth-letter?lang=eng

He makes no other mention of other inhabitants. Not in wentworth and not anywhere else. And he, unlike the rest of us, saw them in vision, he didn't just read about them in a book and read between the lines of verses like 1 Nep 18:25

[David T]

Canard, when one is willing to consider the option that Joseph wasn't the initial author of the text, it allows for the option that he was able to misunderstand key historical nuances suggested by it - especially if pre-conceived notions were brought to the table, and especially if the text was specifically concerned with teaching a less-than-nuanced (and less than documentary) spiritual dichotomy.

[David T]

And he, unlike the rest of us, saw them in vision, he didn't just read about them in a book and read between the lines of verses like 1 Nep 18:25

I don't see how an individual not familiar with anthropological nuances in native cultures seeing a bunch of Natives in visionary vignettes would really communicate all the specific information you suggest he would get by it.

Edited August 8, 2013 by David T

[canard78]

Look up "goat" or "ox". I'm sure you can figure it out from there.

Assuming you do mean this: "and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men."

You're aware that there are other scriptures where meat is described as being for the use of men? There's no implication in the other times that it's referring to some anonymous third party:

D&C 89:14 "...and all wild animals that run or creep on the earth; (15) and these hath God made for the use of man..."

D&C 49:19 "...the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and that which cometh of the earth, is ordained for the use of man..."

Moses 3:9 "...even all things which I prepared for the use of man; and man saw that it was good for food."

D&C 61:17 "...in the beginning cursed the land, even so in the last days have I blessed it, in its time, for the use of my saints, that they may partake the fatness thereof."

There may be an issue with my search function on my app but the only occurrences of "for the use of men/man/saints" is found in the "triple combination" and always substance as being for the use of people at the time. It doesn't imply they are for the use of an anonymous third party.

[canard78]

I don't see how an individual not familiar with anthropological nuances in native cultures seeing a bunch of Natives in visionary vignettes would really communicate all the specific information you suggest he would get by it.

So his visions must have excluded the arrival of Lehites into the populated area? And any other times the Lehites travelled around n

[David T]

So his visions must have excluded the arrival of Lehites into the populated area?

If he did have a vision of the arrival (do you have a reference for that, by the way, if you think he did?), nobody as far as I know is arguing there was a welcoming party on the coast, waving them in.

[Questing Beast]

So if the land they arrived on was already populated, how do we explain Joseph's Wentworth Letter.

We excuse his 'creative stories' (from Lucy's biography) as being after Moroni's visits. He had been shown in vision the people he would later write about.

In wentworth he says:

http://www.lds.org/e...letter?lang=eng

He makes no other mention of other inhabitants. Not in wentworth and not anywhere else. And he, unlike the rest of us, saw them in vision, he didn't just read about them in a book and read between the lines of verses like 1 Nep 18:25

Exactly. But then, according to some, JS was not "an expert", so his own "opinions" on the matter of historicity can be disregarded.

I don't buy the limited population angle and never did since I started reading the BoM cover to cover on my own, as a teen. Even then I knew that there were not enough people or time to account for "millions" of inhabitants by c. 380 AD, especially when you consider the "not numbered" of the slain in many of the previous wars. When you consider also the known real world population growth and effects of disease on it, the final population of the Americas, if dependent on the remnant of Jaredite and Lehite origins, would have been at most a few thousands only. So in order for the BoM to be literally possible historically it must include already existing populations before the BoM peoples arrived, which of course is problematic because JS specifically mentioned on the BoM peoples and no others....

[omni]

Canard, when one is willing to consider the option that Joseph wasn't the initial author of the text, it allows for the option that he was able to misunderstand key historical nuances suggested by it - especially if pre-conceived notions were brought to the table, and especially if the text was specifically concerned with teaching a less-than-nuanced (and less than documentary) spiritual dichotomy.

It wasn't just Joseph, it's been taught by almost every prophet we have. I'd be curious to know if there's any regular contributor on this board who doesn't believe that there were other inhabitants on the continent, but we have no scriptural or prophetic basis for that belief. It all comes from apologists.

Why have we been wrong on something for so long and why hasn't there been a correction? I don't expect a news conference, but the correction could be made very easily by our prophets in a conference talk by simply stating something along the lines of, "since the beginning of the restoration we have assumed that those civilizations described in the BoM were the sole inhabitants of this continent. We now know through modern science that they were few among many."

Issues like this are causing doubt among the membership, so why aren't the brethren leading the way rather than the apologists?

[guerreiro9]

Nowadays people seem to take the approach of distancing themselves from that literal perspective and instead creating a case for a diluted DNA, which means they're not really Lamanites at all, just like I'm not Swedish. You could say I have Swedish ancestry but I'm neither racially nor ethnically Swedish. That may be true of the native Americans today. If you could trace every line you might eventually find Lehi entually. But for the Native Americans to be called Lamanites, as they had been for 150 years seems to be a pretty loose definition.

You seem to have a very specific (and arbitrary) view of when a "label" can be applied to a set of people. I would ask you when exactly did your family line cease to be Swedish? Was it after the 1st generation or the 2nd or at some later point? What if someone in your same situation chose to identify themselves as Swedish, would they be in error? What if the Lord for his own purposes identified you as Swedish, would he be in error?

I do not deny that for a very long time many members of the Church (and some leaders) held a very naïve view of what it meant to be a Lamanite, but I do deny that this naïve (and very specific) view is the only valid or even the most correct usage of the word. That very specific usage of the word Lamanite does not fit with how it was used in the Book of Mormon, let alone how it should be used to describe a group of people 1400 years later.

The word Lamanite (as mentioned by others) was used in the Book of Mormon to designate anyone that did not align themselves with the Nephites. Its usage is identical to the usage of the word Gentiles, but it appears that Gentiles refers to all those in the Old World not aligned with the Israelites and Lamanites refers to all those in the New World not aligned with the Nephites. It was probably not a term used by the Lamanites themselves except for when conversing with Nephites. It had very little if anything to do with direct blood lines.

In the Book of Alma in the 54th Chapter we read the epistle of Ammoron the king of the Lamanites to Moroni. Ammoron declares himself to be a Lamanite, but states that he is a descendant of Zoram.

23 I am Ammoron, and a descendant of ^aZoram, whom your fathers pressed and brought out of Jerusalem.

24 And behold now, I am a bold Lamanite; behold, this war hath been waged to avenge their wrongs, and ^ato maintain and to obtain their rights to the government; and I close my epistle to Moroni.

If someone can only be considered a Lamanite if they are a pure blood descendant of Laman (or Lehi for that matter) then I believe we have just found a serious flaw in the Book of Mormon.

-guerreiro9

Edited August 8, 2013 by guerreiro9

[ERayR]

It wasn't just Joseph, it's been taught by almost every prophet we have. I'd be curious to know if there's any regular contributor on this board who doesn't believe that there were other inhabitants on the continent, but we have no scriptural or prophetic basis for that belief. It all comes from apologists.

Why have we been wrong on something for so long and why hasn't there been a correction? I don't expect a news conference, but the correction could be made very easily by our prophets in a conference talk by simply stating something along the lines of, "since the beginning of the restoration we have assumed that those civilizations described in the BoM were the sole inhabitants of this continent. We now know through modern science that they were few among many."

Issues like this are causing doubt among the membership, so why aren't the brethren leading the way rather than the apologists?

Speak for yourself. Don't be so all inclusive.

[David T]

It wasn't just Joseph, it's been taught by almost every prophet we have. I'd be curious to know if there's any regular contributor on this board who doesn't believe that there were other inhabitants on the continent, but we have no scriptural or prophetic basis for that belief. It all comes from apologists.

Why have we been wrong on something for so long and why hasn't there been a correction? I don't expect a news conference, but the correction could be made very easily by our prophets in a conference talk by simply stating something along the lines of, "since the beginning of the restoration we have assumed that those civilizations described in the BoM were the sole inhabitants of this continent. We now know through modern science that they were few among many."

Issues like this are causing doubt among the membership, so why aren't the brethren leading the way rather than the apologists?

It's now instructed to be taught in Seminary as a viable option. This is from the brand new Book of Mormon Seminary Teacher's Guide, for teachers of all of our High School Age youth:

"You may want to point out that the Book of Mormon does not claim to give a history of all the peoples who lived anciently in the Western Hemisphere. It is a record only of the descendants of Lehi (the Nephites and Lamanites) and the people of Jared. There may have been other people who inhabited the continents in the Western Hemisphere before, during, and after the events recorded in the Book of Mormon."

Edited August 8, 2013 by David T

[omni]

Speak for yourself. Don't be so all inclusive.

Correction-"we" pertaining to the brethren and general membership of the church, but excluding ErayR.

[David T]

I wouldn't be surprised if we found out that the only one truly maintaining the usage of Nephite and Lamanite in the post small-plates world was Mormon/Moroni, and he used them as literary labels for symbolic purpose, to connect the Founding Families from his Tradition to the events around him. IE, perhaps none of Mormon/Moroni's contemporaries actually used the terms 'Nephites' and 'Lamanites', but he labeled them and linked them after his eponymous ancestors for didactic purposes. Gardner gives very good evidence that this is highly similar to what he does in relation to the Gadiantons. Why not others as well?

Edited August 8, 2013 by David T

[guerreiro9]

I wouldn't be surprised if we found out that the only one truly maintaining the usage of Nephite and Lamanite in the post small-plates world was Mormon/Moroni, and he used them as literary labels for symbolic purpose, to connect the Founding Families from his Tradition to the events around him. IE, perhaps none of Mormon/Moroni's contemporaries actually used the terms 'Nephites' and 'Lamanites', but he labeled them and linked them after his eponymous ancestors for didactic purposes. Gardner gives very good evidence that this is highly similar to what he does in relation to the Gadiantons. Why not others as well?

The usage of Nephite and Lamanite appears to extend at least until the time of Christ's visit to the Americas. Samuel specifically identifies himself as a Lamanite, and Christ also identifies him as such, but I suppose it is possible that this was a later addition by Mormon. Either way it is apparent that the term Nephite and Lamanite is not just a "surname" directly passed from parent to child.

-guerreiro9

Edited August 8, 2013 by guerreiro9

[David T]

Since learning a bit about the history of the development of Biblical texts, especially the editing and compiling of the Deuteronomistic History (Genesis - 2 Kings), I give room for a LOT of leeway between the actual history and terminology and motivation used by ancients, and those applied to them by the future Editor and Compilers who were writing with a specific agenda and mission in mind. Chastising them for not writing up to the accepted standards of 21st Century documentary historians is all sorts of wonky.

Edited August 8, 2013 by David T

[cdowis]

wild goat vs domesticated goat

ox is a domesticated animal

I have suggested that the Jaredites had a colony in the area where Lehi landed, and were not part of the great destruction.

Edited August 8, 2013 by cdowis

[Calm]

I don't see how an individual not familiar with anthropological nuances in native cultures seeing a bunch of Natives in visionary vignettes would really communicate all the specific information you suggest he would get by it.

Especially if the vision was shown without explanatory commentary or not a lot of it.

If the Nephites and Lamanites were not all that distinct in their culture after awhile (and it would make sense to adapt to the new environment by picking up on tried and true methods of building, clothing, food, etc), surely they would look about the same as those surrounding them so how could he tell where one group stopped and the other started?

And is there any reason to supposed from the details given that he saw in vision a detailed recital of the arrival of the Lehites in the New World, since he described his information as coming from a "brief sketch" is there any reason to suppose that he saw more than where they came from and maybe their landing and setup of their colony in the area that was relatively uninhabited without an examination of the surrounding culture that existed at the time?

[ERayR]

Correction-"we" pertaining to the brethren and general membership of the church, but excluding ErayR.

I am not near as lonely as you would portray. Nor am I so rigid in the way I read and understand as you seem to be. I am also able to allow for common misinterpretations.

[omni]

I am not near as lonely as you would portray. Nor am I so rigid in the way I read and understand as you seem to be. I am also able to allow for common misinterpretations.

Remember, when you condemn me for my rigid reading and understanding, you are also condemning the brethren who have taught the concept from the beginning of the restoration.

[Calm]

Remember, when you condemn me for my rigid reading and understanding, you are also condemning the brethren who have taught the concept from the beginning of the restoration.

Not quite. I believe he is condemning**** you because he sees you are refusing to acknowledge other possibilities when presented. We have no way of knowing how most of these brethren would have responded if they were presented with the same ideas in the same way as Ray is suggesting.

*****I should make note that "condemning" is your word and that is why I used it...to reframe what you said into what I saw as a more correct position of Ray's, but since he also states that he does not condemn, but is only making an observation, I am adding this correction as well to this post.

Edited August 9, 2013 by calmoriah

[halconero]

Remember, when you condemn me for my rigid reading and understanding, you are also condemning the brethren who have taught the concept from the beginning of the restoration.

No belief or hypothesis ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood. Persuasion, long-suffering and love tend to work better.

[ERayR]

Remember, when you condemn me for my rigid reading and understanding, you are also condemning the brethren who have taught the concept from the beginning of the restoration.

Just an observation, not a condemnation. As for the brethren, whose arms you are attempting to wrap yourself in, I see them as doing the best they could with what they had.

Edited August 8, 2013 by ERayR

[omni]

Not quite. I believe he is condemning you because he sees you are refusing to acknowledge other possibilities when presented. We have no way of knowing how most of these brethren would have responded if they were presented with the same ideas in the same way as Ray is suggesting.

We do know how they would respond because they do have the same information we have. Unless you believe they've (and still are) been unaware of the overwhelming evidence that has been known for decades detailing the migration from Asia to the American continent.

To my knowledge there is no statement from our prophets correcting this errant belief and plenty in support of it. If one does eventually come (which I believe it will) why is it that our apologists are leading this change instead of our prophets?