Article claiming possibly Lehi's family never came to America?

[rodheadlee]

17 hours ago, bcuzbcuz said:

the Olmec were called Olmec by the Aztecs. What they called themselves we do not know yet but something different but not Nephite because the time record doesn´t (1200 BCe to 400 AD) The giant Olmec heads do not in anyway reflect a Jewish culture.

That's because the Olmec were probably the Jaredites not Nephites and definitely not Jewish.

[ksfisher]

1 hour ago, Johnnie Cake said:

CFR that Olmec's were Jaradites  I won't hold my breath

The way I've always read this phrased is that the Jaredites participated on Olmec culture, not that the Olmers were Jaredites.

[stemelbow]

We're left in the same place as always. 

Is it not true that those who are professional level archaeologists who study Mesoamerica and are not LDS find it preposterous that the BoM came from Mesoamerica at the time claimed?  If so, where in these discussions are we talking past each other? 

It seems the pros attempt to tell the story of what ancient civilizations were like based on what they can uncover in terms of artefacts and the like.  When their story is far different from what a book purports to have been reality they surely claim the book absurdity.  They have to else their whole discipline is to be questioned.   But that hasn't closed the book according to LDS professionals, it seems.  There is room because we simply don't know all that we think we know, or that we tell people we do know--because as it turns out there are assumptions that need to be made in order to conclude anything about these ancient peoples. 

Sometimes I get the impression God is sitting up there laughing at how silly we all can be.  I'm certain He's chucking nearly every time we conclude something definitively.  "How the hell do they know?"  He says, "it's like watching an unsuspecting squirrel running around merrily not realizing he's about to get caught by a fox". 

[rodheadlee]

1 hour ago, Johnnie Cake said:

CFR that Olmec's were Jaradites  I won't hold my breath

There is not a sound byte answer, you'll have to actually study it out. https://journals.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/JBMRS/article/viewFile/20079/18639

see the page marked 49 for some info from John E Clark. specifically the population chart. It's just a start you'll have to read some Mormon Codex and other works by John L Sorenson as well as Brant Gardner to get a better picture.

Edited February 1, 2016 by rodheadlee
spelling

[longview]

29 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Olmec civilization was replaced by the lowland Maya, who began building cities in the jungles of Guatemala about 500 to 400 BC. As with Olmec civilization, Maya civilization experienced peaks and troughs of development, with a mini-collapse about AD 200.[42] In short, the correspondences between the Book of Mormon and cycles of Mesoamerican civilization are striking.

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1383&index=6

Interesting reading.  One thought/question I have been mulling over for the past several years:  at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, there was a very powerful cataclysm that fractured rocks, buried cities into the ocean, etc, that changed the face of the land.  To the point of making parts of the land completely unrecognizable.  Would that create problems for an archaeologist (like you or Dr. Sorensen) to be able to properly relate features of the land that we see today with what might have been before the birth of Christ?  To the point of drastically altered shorelines?  Upheavals in the land that changed the topography and course of rivers?  Are there buried riverbeds?  Maybe the river Sidon remains hidden, waiting to be uncovered?

[rodheadlee]

14 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

We're left in the same place as always. 

Is it not true that those who are professional level archaeologists who study Mesoamerica and are not LDS find it preposterous that the BoM came from Mesoamerica at the time claimed?  

 

Of course they do. To admit to even one teeny weeny piece of evidence would be to acknowledge Joseph Smith received the plates from an angel and their content were ancient American writings.

[Anijen]

1 minute ago, longview said:

Interesting reading.  One thought/question I have been mulling over for the past several years:  at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, there was a very powerful cataclysm that fractured rocks, buried cities into the ocean, etc, that changed the face of the land.  To the point of making parts of the land completely unrecognizable.  Would that create problems for an archaeologist (like you or Dr. Sorensen) to be able to properly relate features of the land that we see today with what might have been before the birth of Christ?  To the point of drastically altered shorelines?  Upheavals in the land that changed the topography and course of rivers?  Are there buried riverbeds?  Maybe the river Sidon remains hidden, waiting to be uncovered?

In my opinion, the changes were incredible, but only unrecognizable to how they once were, but not unrecognizable to where they were. In other words they knew the place before and after and it was perhaps in some unrecognizable, but they still knew where they were and which way to go to arrive at a place.

We can read that the city Bountiful in the Book of Mormon was one of the places where it was changed, yet people still knew it was Bountiful and people still knew how to get there, in fact they were told to go there. 

[Kevin Christensen]

21 hours ago, longview said:

Interesting reading.  One thought/question I have been mulling over for the past several years:  at the time of the crucifixion of Christ, there was a very powerful cataclysm that fractured rocks, buried cities into the ocean, etc, that changed the face of the land.  To the point of making parts of the land completely unrecognizable.  Would that create problems for an archaeologist (like you or Dr. Sorensen) to be able to properly relate features of the land that we see today with what might have been before the birth of Christ?  To the point of drastically altered shorelines?  Upheavals in the land that changed the topography and course of rivers?  Are there buried riverbeds?  Maybe the river Sidon remains hidden, waiting to be uncovered?

Sorenson likes to point out that Mormon and Moroni did their writing and editing after the upheavals, and they seemed to have no problem with the before and after correlations. I've also got a copy of the book reviewed here by Neal Rappleye, with a geologist looking at the Book of Mormon accounts.

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-great-and-terrible-judgments-of-the-lord-destruction-and-disaster-in-3-nephi-and-the-geology-of-mesoamerica/

As far as the Sidon goes, I remain very impressed by Larry Poulson's approach:

"Although the narrow (small) neck is only mentioned three times in the Book of Mormon, it has been the
primary focus of attempts to define the geographic location of the Book of Mormon lands. This narrow focus
has resulted in numerous possible locations being proposed with, in many cases, little attention to whether
surrounding geography is consistent with the text of the Book of Mormon. The river Sidon , however, occurs
37 times in 28 different verses with accompanying directional and geographic information related to at least
six different geographical locations. Using satellite maps, a 3D satellite mapping program and the text of the
Book of Mormon, the geography of the Americas was analyzed in an attempt to find unique areas that
correlate with the textual descriptions of the river Sidon. The following comparison with the Grijalva River is
the result of that investigation."

http://bomgeography.poulsenll.org/grijalvasidon.html

It turns out to be quite fruitful as a context for specific details:

http://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2008-Larry-Poulsen.pdf

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited February 2, 2016 by Kevin Christensen

[Darren10]

19 hours ago, bcuzbcuz said:

the Olmec were called Olmec by the Aztecs. What they called themselves we do not know yet but something different but not Nephite because the time record doesn´t (1200 BCe to 400 AD) The giant Olmec heads do not in anyway reflect a Jewish culture.

That's regarding the Nephites not being the Olmecs. My point was that we do not know nearly as much about ancient America as we do about the ancient Mediterranean societies.

[Gray]

1 hour ago, rodheadlee said:

Of course they do. To admit to even one teeny weeny piece of evidence would be to acknowledge Joseph Smith received the plates from an angel and their content were ancient American writings.

Sounds like an amazing conspiracy!

[bcuzbcuz]

51 minutes ago, Darren10 said:

That's regarding the Nephites not being the Olmecs. My point was that we do not know nearly as much about ancient America as we do about the ancient Mediterranean societies.

Sorry, but I beg to differ. The museum of anthropology in Mexico City has hundreds of thousands of artifacts from Central American pre-columbian societies. Museums throughout the Americas, in the US, Central America and South America, have even thousands of artifacts from the Olmec society. Noticable are the animals the Olmec portrayed in their statutes and art. Their artwork featured jaguars, eagles, caimans, snakes and even sharks, identifying them with divine beings. Displays of Olmec art feature most often their oval formed head statues, with broad noses and thick lips. But their society also had strange mixtures of animal combinations, half human-half jaguar and I saw one of a human wearing the skin of an ape that fit like a suit but with ape hands sitting around the wrists and ape feet protruding at the ankles.  

But the BofM doesn´t mention sharks or eagles or caimans or jaguars or apes. The Olmec have artwork that portray fields of maize. If the Nephite or Jaredite populations shared their existence among the Olmec, then their writing strangely ignores these features.

[stemelbow]

3 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

Of course they do. To admit to even one teeny weeny piece of evidence would be to acknowledge Joseph Smith received the plates from an angel and their content were ancient American writings.

Not really.  The evidence we see so clearly as believers is not evidence to those who look at the artefacts and see something else.  Nahom is an amazing find and a great support for the early trek in the BoM to us.  To them it's just some place that Joseph found on an obscure map.  How?  Who cares?  Because to them it's far more reasonable that some map or piece of map was sitting in Joseph's hands at some point, than it is to say Joseph had the book read to his brain as he buried his head in a hat. 

 

I'm not trying to mock or deride either side.  It's just that both sides are coming from opposite directions.  no wonder we have so little actual productive dialog on this topic. 

Edited February 1, 2016 by stemelbow

[Calm]

Quote

Sounds like an amazing conspiracy!

Why would it require a conspiracy?  The story of finding the BoM is preposterous, especially if someone believes that there is no such thing as angels or at least believes that angels don't go around giving out records to young men.

I would hardly be surprised if the vast majority of people who were presented with the idea of the events of the finding of the BoM without any other teaching surrounding, especially absent the suggestion to read it and seek out the Spirit to confirm its truth, were to dismiss it outright as it is so unlikely in our day to day experiences.

I don't think that they look on it as "we can't admit the possibility because we refuse to acknowledge JS" and if that was what Rod meant, then I think he has overstated it, but I do think there is the ultimate implication there that if they were to consider the BoM as possibly what it claims to be, they must also consider the possibility that the story of its appearance is what is claimed...but it is most often probably no more complicated than "angels? yeah, right.  What a load of manure."

Edited February 1, 2016 by Calm

[Gray]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Why would it require a conspiracy?  The story of finding the BoM is preposterous, especially if someone believes that there is no such thing as angels or at least believes that angels don't go around giving out records to young men.

I would hardly be surprised if the vast majority of people who were presented with the idea of the events of the finding of the BoM without any other teaching surrounding, especially absent the suggestion to read it and seek out the Spirit to confirm its truth, were to dismiss it outright as it is so unlikely in our day to day experiences.

I don't think that they look on it as "we can't admit the possibility because we refuse to acknowledge JS" and if that was what Rod meant, then I think he has overstated it, but I do think there is the ultimate implication there that if they were to consider the BoM as possibly what it claims to be, they must also consider the possibility that the story of its appearance is what is claimed...but it is most often probably no more complicated than "angels? yeah, right.  What a load of manure."

It doesn't really follow that if the BOM is ancient then everything claimed about its provenance (including the angelic visitations) is true. I think the issue is really that the evidence does not point to any pre-Columbian Hebrew settlements in the Americas. 

Even finding evidence of one, with evidence of horses or a chief judge system, would not validate the historicity of the BOM. 

[Darren10]

18 hours ago, bcuzbcuz said:

Sorry, but I beg to differ. The museum of anthropology in Mexico City has hundreds of thousands of artifacts from Central American pre-columbian societies. Museums throughout the Americas, in the US, Central America and South America, have even thousands of artifacts from the Olmec society. Noticable are the animals the Olmec portrayed in their statutes and art. Their artwork featured jaguars, eagles, caimans, snakes and even sharks, identifying them with divine beings. Displays of Olmec art feature most often their oval formed head statues, with broad noses and thick lips. But their society also had strange mixtures of animal combinations, half human-half jaguar and I saw one of a human wearing the skin of an ape that fit like a suit but with ape hands sitting around the wrists and ape feet protruding at the ankles.  

But the BofM doesn´t mention sharks or eagles or caimans or jaguars or apes. The Olmec have artwork that portray fields of maize. If the Nephite or Jaredite populations shared their existence among the Olmec, then their writing strangely ignores these features.

Well, I guess Joseph Smith forgot to insert sharks into the narrative. That the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are known to contain that species of maritime predators so it's just silly for Joseph Smith to have missed that fact. Or, perhaps, the Book of Mormon is not so much a historical record as it is a theological one. That *could be* why there's no jaguars mentioned. The king of beasts in the Americas.

Now, my main point. I am not arguing that we have lots of artifacts from the Olmecs. Not a bit. My main point is that unlike knowing who the Phoenicians were (they were called "Phoenicians"), or, by name by Johnnie Cakes: the Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans (they were called "Greeks", 'Romans", and "Etruscans" respectively), we do not know what the Olmecs were called. If we do not even know the name of such a significant ancient Americans civilization, how do we know Jaredite artifacts are not found and simply designated as "Olmec"? New World archaeology is not nearly as developed as Old World archaeology.

[Bob Crockett]

1 hour ago, Darren10 said:

 how do we know Jaredite artifacts are not found and simply designated as "Olmec"? 

That is a classic appeal to ignorance.   Because we don't have evidence of aliens visiting earth, well, they must exist.

[volgadon]

21 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

That is a classic appeal to ignorance.   Because we don't have evidence of aliens visiting earth, well, they must exist.

See above for why your line of thinking is itself fallacious.

[bcuzbcuz]

On 2 February 2016 at 4:04 PM, Darren10 said:

Well, I guess Joseph Smith forgot to insert sharks into the narrative. That the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are known to contain that species of maritime predators so it's just silly for Joseph Smith to have missed that fact. Or, perhaps, the Book of Mormon is not so much a historical record as it is a theological one. That *could be* why there's no jaguars mentioned. The king of beasts in the Americas.

Now, my main point. I am not arguing that we have lots of artifacts from the Olmecs. Not a bit. My main point is that unlike knowing who the Phoenicians were (they were called "Phoenicians"), or, by name by Johnnie Cakes: the Greeks, Romans, and Etruscans (they were called "Greeks", 'Romans", and "Etruscans" respectively), we do not know what the Olmecs were called. If we do not even know the name of such a significant ancient Americans civilization, how do we know Jaredite artifacts are not found and simply designated as "Olmec"? New World archaeology is not nearly as developed as Old World archaeology.

You have missed my point entirely. The thousands of artifacts from the Olmec culture that are currently found and displayed in a great numbers of museums have certain identifiable traits that classify them as Olmec, whether or not we know that Olmec was how they said their name. The Olmec artifacts included a multitude of animals, jaguars, snakes, caimans and eagles. None of these creatures are mentioned anywhere in the BofM, therefore Olmec artifacts are not Nephite, nor Jaredite. The Olmec artifacts do not contain any images of elephants nor horses, nor pigs or goats, therefore the Olmec artifacts cannot be representatives of such a culture that had such animals.

[Gervin]

19 hours ago, bcuzbcuz said:

You have missed my point entirely. The thousands of artifacts from the Olmec culture that are currently found and displayed in a great numbers of museums have certain identifiable traits that classify them as Olmec, whether or not we know that Olmec was how they said their name. The Olmec artifacts included a multitude of animals, jaguars, snakes, caimans and eagles. None of these creatures are mentioned anywhere in the BofM, therefore Olmec artifacts are not Nephite, nor Jaredite. The Olmec artifacts do not contain any images of elephants nor horses, nor pigs or goats, therefore the Olmec artifacts cannot be representatives of such a culture that had such animals.

Exactly.

[ksfisher]

20 hours ago, bcuzbcuz said:

 The Olmec artifacts included a multitude of animals, jaguars, snakes, caimans and eagles. None of these creatures are mentioned anywhere in the BofM, therefore Olmec artifacts are not Nephite, nor Jaredite.

You're making the assumption that the Book of Mormon authors set out to describe their culture in such a way that you would be able to understand it.  They didn't, they set out to set down, on plates, information they felt would bring others to Christ.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[Bob Crockett]

1 hour ago, ksfisher said:

You're making the assumption that the Book of Mormon authors set out to describe their culture in such a way that you would be able to understand it.  They didn't, they set out to set down, on plates, information they felt would bring others to Christ.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Your proposition is not true.  Under the law, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.  I can''t recall exactly where your famous couplet was coined (I've had this discussion with Dan Peterson, and he found a source that trumped my 19th Century source), but it was by a Christian apologist arguing for the existence of God.   Not even Aquinas bought into this couplet, as he has an entire treatise attempting to muster proof of God. 

Thus, if there is no evidence that aliens have visited earth, then that is evidence that they haven't.  In the law, sometimes you are required to prove a negative, and you put on witnesses who say, "I didn't see it," "it didn't happen," or, "there is no such document in my files," etc.

Your couplet is simply an appeal to ignorance, meaning, the reason for advancing the couplet in the first place is to suggest that, indeed, aliens have visited the earth.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Bob Crockett

[ksfisher]

24 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

Your proposition is not true.  Under the law, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.  I can''t recall exactly where your famous couplet was coined (I've had this discussion with Dan Peterson, and he found a source that trumped my 19th Century source), but it was by a Christian apologist arguing for the existence of God.   Not even Aquinas bought into this couplet, as he has an entire treatise attempting to muster proof of God. 

Thus, if there is no evidence that aliens have visited earth, then that is evidence that they haven't.  In the law, sometimes you are required to prove a negative, and you put on witnesses who say, "I didn't see it," "it didn't happen," or, "there is no such document in my files," etc.

Your couplet is simply an appeal to ignorance, meaning, the reason for advancing the couplet in the first place is to suggest that, indeed, aliens have visited the earth.

"If someone were to assert that there is an elephant on the quad, then the failure to observe an elephant there would be good reason to think that there is no elephant there. But if someone were to assert that there is a flea on the quad, then one's failure to observe it there would not constitute good evidence that there is no flea on the quad. The salient difference between these two cases is that in the one, but not the other, we should expect to see some evidence of the entity if in fact it existed. Moreover, the justification conferred in such cases will be proportional to the ratio between the amount of evidence that we do have and the amount that we should expect to have if the entity existed. If the ratio is small, then little justification is conferred on the belief that the entity does not exist."

— J.P. Moreland and W.L. Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

 

I would propose that what we are looking for is more akin to an archeological flea than an elephant.  Especially if we are using the Book of Mormon as our field guide.

[bcuzbcuz]

On 6 February 2016 at 1:04 AM, ksfisher said:

"If someone were to assert that there is an elephant on the quad, then the failure to observe an elephant there would be good reason to think that there is no elephant there. But if someone were to assert that there is a flea on the quad, then one's failure to observe it there would not constitute good evidence that there is no flea on the quad. The salient difference between these two cases is that in the one, but not the other, we should expect to see some evidence of the entity if in fact it existed. Moreover, the justification conferred in such cases will be proportional to the ratio between the amount of evidence that we do have and the amount that we should expect to have if the entity existed. If the ratio is small, then little justification is conferred on the belief that the entity does not exist."

— J.P. Moreland and W.L. Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

 

I would propose that what we are looking for is more akin to an archeological flea than an elephant.  Especially if we are using the Book of Mormon as our field guide.

The absence of evidence is exactly that, the absence of evidence. There exist glaring absences of evidence of the Nephite cultures in Central or South or North America. There are glaring absences of the animals named in the Book of Mormon from animals found in the Americas. In reverse, the Book of Mormon is totally without evidence regarding animals and crops, native to the Americas.

Granted, when naming living creatures in the Americas, fleas are very far down on my list, almost to the point of invisibility. Yet I know that fleas can be encountered in the Americas. Your other example, though, the elephant can only be found in zoos and some circuses in the Americas. Very few people have elephants in their livingrooms.  

I grew up believing that the slayers of the Nephites were none other than the Lamanites and that those Lamanites were in fact the native peoples of the Americas. Indians (wrong name, but you get what I'm saying) were Lamanites. Gradually, over the years the groups known as Lamanites have grown smaller  and smaller. Lamanites are now the flea in the town square, and even then there pervades an astounding absence of evidence that the flea is, somehow, just beyond our field of vision.

And yes, there is an absence of evidence.

[piccione]

On 1/26/2016 at 11:18 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

It is evidence from Book of Mormon times and settings of the use of a set of symbols resembling the set of symbols on the Anthon manuscript.  Knowing what they say would be enlightening, and yes there are photographs of the cylinders in the literature.  If you don't think of them as evidence of anything much, then explain the elaborate comparative relationship between many symbols on very different documents coming from different times, places, and cultures, without invoking the phrase "just a coincidence."  The cylinder seals represent a significant anomaly for the thesis that there is not evidence for Book of Mormon peoples in Mesoamerica.  You might prefer more evidence, or bigger evidence.  I happen to believe that there is more and bigger evidence, thanks to having read Sorenson, Gardner, Clark, Wirth, Christenson, Wright, and others.  Alma 32, I notice, distinguished between that which conveys absolute certain knowledge, and that which supports "cause to believe" that falls short of absolute certain knowledge.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

If you haven't already done so, you may want to take a look at the free pdf book relating to the "Anthon manuscript" (BTW, it is actually pretty definitively been determined that it is NOT the manuscript taken to Anthon) at www.caractors.org .