Does anybody else consider the Book of Mormon to be fiction?

[stemelbow]

Let's say the book as we have it is not an accurate depiction of all that happened in the claimed BoM time and place.  Perhaps, we'll say Moroni was a real person and his story as told in the BoM is accurate enough, but he was totally confused about his people's own history.  Nephi and Lehi never were.  That which was included in the plates was myth.  But what the heck did he know?  He was told it really happened.  And we'll say, as it turns out, all the other stories and peoples in the book are either real people who lived, in some cases or mythological stories with named people who never were supposedly having lived lives that never were. 

If that were the case, would we consider the book fiction or non?  And if scripture, what would it matter? 

[clarkgoble]

On 3/14/2017 at 6:22 AM, churchistrue said:

Our basic difference is that I don’t buy this LGT-Mixing Population-Vanishing culture concept.  I think it’s unreasonable, based on the text, to assume the Lehites and Mulekites abandoned their language and culture and intermarried (not just a little here and there but everyone every generation in a way that their DNA vanishes).  I agree with you that based on their assumption, we should not expect to find remains of their language and culture and DNA (though based on what I understand with the DNA I think it’s more appropriate to say it’s possible to not identify their DNA not that it’s unlikely to not identify their DNA).  These were the kings, the ruling class, they brought an evolved culture.  And there's no evidence they dumped any of this or intermarried in the text.

Again we know they mixed with the groups they designated as Lamanites which was purely defined as a political term for those who opposed them in the early history. We don't have records of what the muelikites or lamanites were doing since they weren't around the Nephites except when the Nephites were either being attacked or merging with the Lamanites. It defies expectation that those groups wouldn't have merged with the indigenous populations even if one expected the Nephites to not mix. (Which I think is itself a dubious assumption -- look at the Biblical history and what it says about mixing with others even though we know there was abundant mixing from history)  

I think there's compelling evidence there were other languages although the old Hebrew and reformed egyptian writing (whatever that was) persisted as a limited priestly language. There's lot of places where it's explicit they encounter other languages and that the language of the scriptures wasn't the language of the people.

Quote

In summary, I think nearly all the LGT-Mixing Population interpretations of text in the BOM are totally stretched and forced.  I think you and others pushing this theory are turning the text into whatever you want.  I disagree with it.  Further, if I can't trust words like horse, chariot, father, brother, Josephites, how can I trust words like faith and repentance?  How do I know my modernism hasn't botched the definitions of those words?  Do I need someone to give me long, tortured explanations about why faith doesn't really mean faith if you look at the text closely?

Obviously we can't convince someone against their expectations. I think the reason these things are compelling is simply because it happens all the time in traditional translations (especially translations of translations) and when new populations encounter new fauna. It's not like there aren't abundant examples of this that the various writers provide.

More significantly I think this is the only answer for dealing with the KJV and so this ends up just being a variation of "why is the KJV quoted so much in the Book of Mormon?" (Even in places where it's clearly not translating a text quoting the Bible, such as in Alma 13 which is before the book of Hebrews was written) That is the expectation is that any translation should be a relatively tight translation and the evidence is overwhelming that the text is a loose translation that liberally quotes KJV phrases to translate similar ideas. So I suspect the reason you find Brant's explanations of words forced is because you find any view of the translation as other than tight to be forced, presumably because of expectations.

The only real way to persuade you that I can see is to explain why a loose translation is a perfectly acceptable approach to the translation in general. Once that gets accepted, the rest follows naturally.

[clarkgoble]

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Let's say the book as we have it is not an accurate depiction of all that happened in the claimed BoM time and place.  Perhaps, we'll say Moroni was a real person and his story as told in the BoM is accurate enough, but he was totally confused about his people's own history.  Nephi and Lehi never were.  That which was included in the plates was myth.  But what the heck did he know?  He was told it really happened.  And we'll say, as it turns out, all the other stories and peoples in the book are either real people who lived, in some cases or mythological stories with named people who never were supposedly having lived lives that never were. 

If that were the case, would we consider the book fiction or non?  And if scripture, what would it matter? 

I'd consider it fiction and yes it'd matter a great deal. In particular any sentence that has an essentially indexical meaning ceases to have that meaning. That means references to priesthood are just allegory and there is no priesthood power, the promises made to the people most particularly never were made to the people. Even the grounds for trusting the allegorical comes from the indexical - for the same reasons that a fiction with a good moral message can't ground that message because the author is creating events.

So, for instance, Ayn Rand creates a totally contrived situation for her characters to justify believing in her particular form of libertarianism. Yet we can't say we should believe it because of Atlas Shrugged. One can't "go galt" the way she portrays in real life. The portrayed justifications are lies and avoid all sorts of complexities. If someone believed in libertarianism because of Atlas Shrugged they would be engaged in bad reasoning. In the same way if someone believed in Mormon ethics because of the Book of Mormon and it was fiction they would be believing for bad reasons.

The usual defense by valuable fiction proponents is that fictions have a more catalyst function. That is they don't justify belief but they raise questions we might never otherwise consider that can get raised elsewhere. A secondary claim is that they explain ideas better that pure more theological or philosophical texts could do. That is so you understand the principles better. I'm fine with that secondary effect, but suspect that inherently the portrayals in such fiction aren't realistic and so have a large distorting function as well.

Edited March 16, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Brant Gardner]

On 3/15/2017 at 4:44 PM, churchistrue said:

Still not following you.  A group of 25 went from where to where and immediately intermarried, dropped their language and culture and had their DNA vanish?

There is an interesting problem with your question. How many groups of 25 do you know about? In particular, how many who have vanished? 

It isn't 25, but there is a very well known case of one, where a Spaniard not only assimilated into the Maya, but adopted them so completely he led them in war against the Spanish.

Perhaps heading the list of small groups who assimilated, and were therefore lost, and who have not been found linguistically, nor with DNA, is the Jamestown colony. There are stories of them leaving to join with the natives, but there is no actual evidence (conclusive evidence, in any case) to say so.-

As Clark pointed out, mixing his pretty common throughout the world. The Normans in England never created a French-speaking nation. Because they kept separate, and were the elite who made the rules (and were more than 25), they gave Anglicized loan words, but England does not now speak French (and the loan words are pretty noticeable because they cover some specific subsets of the English language). We don't have that kind of comparative data for the New World, and the major influences would have been about one and a half millenia eariler. That is a long time to try to preserve a language that was not the dominant spoken language. Latin and Greek were preserved, but as scholarly languages, not spoken languages.

Icelandic DNA is an interesting case. There are pretty good genealogical evidence of the early populations, but the DNA preserved in the descendants only represents 300 or the much larger number of original settlers. Most of the ancestral DNA has been lost--and that is relatively modern.

If you begin with the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon might be a representation of an ancient immigrant population, then the historical assumption would be that it would be very rare for language or DNA to be preserved. For the DNA, even Simon Southerton, who disagrees with the historicity of the Book of Mormon, agreed that under the conditions of the smaller population being absorbed into the larger, that the DNA would likely be lost.

If you begin with the historical assumption (modern textual reception history) that the Book of Mormon represents all Native American ancestry, then it would be correct that they wouldn't be expected to lose language and DNA without any trace. So there is a case where those assumptions would be contrary to history. However, that very assumption of the universal ancestry is completely contrary to history and evidence that the only value it has is to say that something that is known not be be true couldn't be true. Saying that 19th century Mormons weren't very good at linguistics, DNA, history, or the effects of time on small immigrant groups is true, but not very surprising. It certainly doesn't suggest that we have to abandon scholarship in order to believe in the Book of Mormon.

 

[PeterPear]

1 hour ago, Brant Gardner said:

There is an interesting problem with your question. How many groups of 25 do you know about? In particular, how many who have vanished? 

It isn't 25, but there is a very well known case of one, where a Spaniard not only assimilated into the Maya, but adopted them so completely he led them in war against the Spanish.

Perhaps heading the list of small groups who assimilated, and were therefore lost, and who have not been found linguistically, nor with DNA, is the Jamestown colony. There are stories of them leaving to join with the natives, but there is no actual evidence (conclusive evidence, in any case) to say so.-

As Clark pointed out, mixing his pretty common throughout the world. The Normans in England never created a French-speaking nation. Because they kept separate, and were the elite who made the rules (and were more than 25), they gave Anglicized loan words, but England does not now speak French (and the loan words are pretty noticeable because they cover some specific subsets of the English language). We don't have that kind of comparative data for the New World, and the major influences would have been about one and a half millenia eariler. That is a long time to try to preserve a language that was not the dominant spoken language. Latin and Greek were preserved, but as scholarly languages, not spoken languages.

Icelandic DNA is an interesting case. There are pretty good genealogical evidence of the early populations, but the DNA preserved in the descendants only represents 300 or the much larger number of original settlers. Most of the ancestral DNA has been lost--and that is relatively modern.

If you begin with the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon might be a representation of an ancient immigrant population, then the historical assumption would be that it would be very rare for language or DNA to be preserved. For the DNA, even Simon Southerton, who disagrees with the historicity of the Book of Mormon, agreed that under the conditions of the smaller population being absorbed into the larger, that the DNA would likely be lost.

If you begin with the historical assumption (modern textual reception history) that the Book of Mormon represents all Native American ancestry, then it would be correct that they wouldn't be expected to lose language and DNA without any trace. So there is a case where those assumptions would be contrary to history. However, that very assumption of the universal ancestry is completely contrary to history and evidence that the only value it has is to say that something that is known not be be true couldn't be true. Saying that 19th century Mormons weren't very good at linguistics, DNA, history, or the effects of time on small immigrant groups is true, but not very surprising. It certainly doesn't suggest that we have to abandon scholarship in order to believe in the Book of Mormon.

 

It's amazing the rabbit hole one has to travel through to support the incorrect geographical location (Mesoamerica) for the Book of Mormon. After 1,000 years, Mormon declared he was a pure descendant of Lehi. I'd like to see your family history traced back to 1017 with no intermingling with other "natives."

Yet, to support a Mesoamerica location you have to assume Lehi's group upon landing in "Mesoamerica" which had numerous people, despite the Lord's promise to Lehi that the land would be for an inheritance to his descendants, then intermingled with "the natives" forcing Lehi's descendants to lose their DNA.

Then out pops Mormon 1000 years later to claim he's a pure descendant of Lehi and you ignore it. Is this verse fiction according to your Mesoamerica theory?

20 I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my Savior Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem, (and no one knew it save it were himself and those whom he brought out of that land) and that he hath given me and my people so much knowledge unto the salvation of our souls.

And what of Ether hiding his gold plates in a manner that the people of Limhi some 300 years later found them? It doesn't sound as if Ether was concerned about anyone finding them despite all the numerous "Mesoamerican Natives" running around according to your Mesoamerica theory.

Contrast that with Moroni burying his gold plates into the ground to prevent the Lamanites finding and destroying them.

No offense, but I believe you spend more time trying to justify your MesoAmerica theory than learning the text of the Book of Mormon.

Edited March 17, 2017 by PeterPear
Typo

[Glenn101]

51 minutes ago, PeterPear said:

After 1,000 years, Mormon declared he was a pure descendant of Lehi. I'd like to see your family history traced back to 1017 with no intermingling with other "natives."

Hmmm, maybe Nephi and the people of Zarahemla did not intermarry so much after all.... The twelve tribes did have some sort of taboo about marrying non-Israelites (although it did happen). If that were the case, the DNA issue is almost completely moot.

 

[Ouagadougou]

1 hour ago, PeterPear said:

It's amazing the rabbit hole one has to travel through to support the incorrect geographical location (Mesoamerica) for the Book of Mormon. After 1,000 years, Mormon declared he was a pure descendant of Lehi. I'd like to see your family history traced back to 1017 with no intermingling with other "natives."

Yet, to support a Mesoamerica location you have to assume Lehi's group upon landing in "Mesoamerica" which had numerous people, despite the Lord's promise to Lehi that the land would be for an inheritance to his descendants, then intermingled with "the natives" forcing Lehi's descendants to lose their DNA.

Then out pops Mormon 1000 years later to claim he's a pure descendant of Lehi and you ignore it. Is this verse fiction according to your Mesoamerica theory?

20 I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my Savior Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem, (and no one knew it save it were himself and those whom he brought out of that land) and that he hath given me and my people so much knowledge unto the salvation of our souls.

And what of Ether hiding his gold plates in a manner that the people of Limhi some 300 years later found them? It doesn't sound as if Ether was concerned about anyone finding them despite all the numerous "Mesoamerican Natives" running around according to your Mesoamerica theory.

Contrast that with Moroni burying his gold plates into the ground to prevent the Lamanites finding and destroying them.

No offense, but I believe you spend more time trying to justify your MesoAmerica theory than learning the text of the Book of Mormon.

And it doesn't state in the BoM that they abandoned the "language of their fathers;" it actually states the opposite -- they preserved this language.  Moroni was still writing in reformed Egyptian to the very end, so how did their language disappear or get dissolved into other indegenious groups when they never abandoned it?  

And the church leaders said for over 100 years that the Hill Cumorah was in New York...not Central America.  

[Calm]

Would hardly be that big of a deal to be a pure descendant if the Lehites were the vast majority of the people (Mulekites making up the rest).

[Kenngo1969]

6 hours ago, PeterPear said:

... No offense, but I believe you spend more time trying to justify your MesoAmerica theory than learning the text of the Book of Mormon.

Right.  The man only wrote a six-volume set, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, and he knows nothing about the text?  We're supposed to take the word, instead, of some anonymous Internet poster whose credentials are completely unknown to us???  

Gimme a break!  

[churchistrue]

10 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

There is an interesting problem with your question. How many groups of 25 do you know about? In particular, how many who have vanished? 

It isn't 25, but there is a very well known case of one, where a Spaniard not only assimilated into the Maya, but adopted them so completely he led them in war against the Spanish.

Perhaps heading the list of small groups who assimilated, and were therefore lost, and who have not been found linguistically, nor with DNA, is the Jamestown colony. There are stories of them leaving to join with the natives, but there is no actual evidence (conclusive evidence, in any case) to say so.-

As Clark pointed out, mixing his pretty common throughout the world. The Normans in England never created a French-speaking nation. Because they kept separate, and were the elite who made the rules (and were more than 25), they gave Anglicized loan words, but England does not now speak French (and the loan words are pretty noticeable because they cover some specific subsets of the English language). We don't have that kind of comparative data for the New World, and the major influences would have been about one and a half millenia eariler. That is a long time to try to preserve a language that was not the dominant spoken language. Latin and Greek were preserved, but as scholarly languages, not spoken languages.

Icelandic DNA is an interesting case. There are pretty good genealogical evidence of the early populations, but the DNA preserved in the descendants only represents 300 or the much larger number of original settlers. Most of the ancestral DNA has been lost--and that is relatively modern.

If you begin with the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon might be a representation of an ancient immigrant population, then the historical assumption would be that it would be very rare for language or DNA to be preserved. For the DNA, even Simon Southerton, who disagrees with the historicity of the Book of Mormon, agreed that under the conditions of the smaller population being absorbed into the larger, that the DNA would likely be lost.

If you begin with the historical assumption (modern textual reception history) that the Book of Mormon represents all Native American ancestry, then it would be correct that they wouldn't be expected to lose language and DNA without any trace. So there is a case where those assumptions would be contrary to history. However, that very assumption of the universal ancestry is completely contrary to history and evidence that the only value it has is to say that something that is known not be be true couldn't be true. Saying that 19th century Mormons weren't very good at linguistics, DNA, history, or the effects of time on small immigrant groups is true, but not very surprising. It certainly doesn't suggest that we have to abandon scholarship in order to believe in the Book of Mormon.

 

These are terrible examples to support your claim that the expected outcome, ie " the scenario suggested would be the most consonant with what we know of most of human history" is that a group of 25 settlers coming from a more advanced civilization quickly intermarries and integrates into the new population, such that evidence of its DNA, language, and culture completely vanish.  

You know a heck of a lot more about this subject than I do.  But if you want me to believe your claim that this is the expected outcome, then you must have several examples to show me.  Because it goes exactly opposite of what is intuitive.  And when I think of all the instances of settlements I know of, not a single one look like this.  In fact, they are nearly all the opposite of this.  But granted, my examples are generally more modern, and this is not my field of expertise.  

 

[churchistrue]

21 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Lamanites which was purely defined as a political term for those who opposed them in the early history.

Are we sure about this?  We're a couple generations at least into the America time period and Jacob notes that the people are still called Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites.  He tells us he's going to simplify into Lamanites and Nephites.  But we have no reason to believe this is a "political" term.  The reader is expected to assume it's a family lineage, imo.  In fact, for the rest of the book, we're clued into important exceptions to that rule.  With different "ites" mentioned.  (see list below) References for the Lamanites to "Father Lehi" and "descendants of Laman".  We come back to Zoramites several times.  We also identify in a group who is a Lamanite and who is a Nephite dissenter.  In 4th Nephi, we have references again back to all the "ites".  

 

List of "ites" in the BOM.  

Amalekite

Amalekites

Amalickiahites

Amlicites

Ammonihahites

Ammonites

Amulonites

Ishmaelites

Israelites

ites

Jacobites

Jaredites

Josephites

Lamanite

Lamanites

Lemuelites

Nephite

Nephites

Zoramite

Zoramites

[Brant Gardner]

11 hours ago, PeterPear said:

No offense, but I believe you spend more time trying to justify your MesoAmerica theory than learning the text of the Book of Mormon.

Except that understanding history and population dynamics is required no matter where you place the Book of Mormon. You may ignore them anywhere, but you are ignoring archaeology, history, population dynamics, DNA, and many other things. So it really has little to do with Mesoamerica, and everything to do with how we can accept the Book of Mormon as an authentic text from history.

Assuming that you might mention that there is DNA evidence for a Mississippian location for the Book of Mormon, please know that the research that was cited was not fully explained (the article traced it over the Bering Strait), and that it is now about 20 years old. It has been contradicted by more recent studies. There is no researcher, current on their science, who would accept that argument.

[Rain]

On Tuesday, March 14, 2017 at 7:42 PM, Brant Gardner said:

...

Weak in impact, rather like the little kingdoms of Israel and Judea when seen in the records of the Egyptians, Hittites, or Babylonians. Yet you read the Bible and it would seem that they should have been much more important. As for finding proof, I keep seeing people present that as an argument--as though it actually had meaning. It seems that the only time anyone understand much about archaeology is from the Old World, which not only had a long-standing tradition of keeping placenames, but also had writing and texts.

The New World is very, very different. There isn't much proof of any people. For example, we have people we call Olmecs. That is a modern name that arose from a mistake. We have the Maya, but it is unlikely that any of the ancient cities we found would have described themselves as Maya. Archaeology only rarely gets to have things like proof. Usually, and most particularly in the New World, we have evidence. Evidence is built into an argument to demonstrate a picture of the past that is coherent based upon the known evidence, and using all available evidence. That construction shifts as we learn more. What I find remarkable, is that the trend of increasing understanding of the peoples in that region has coincided with a picture that makes the Book of Mormon even more compatible with that region of the world than it was when we knew so much less (and therefore could make up more things--like the famous pacifist interpretation that held sway in American interpretations for so long, and is now seen as naive).

Thank you for talking about this.  I know there is a whole lot more to this (and what I know is very little), but I have been reading about the Spanish white towns because we are headed to Spain and I'm trying to figure out where to stay.  While the towns are often blending together in my mind I have also been interested in their differences based on geography. Their fortresses or churches at the top of their hills struck me yesterday in the idea of how much impact each town did or didn't have in the whole history. I don't even know how to really describe it,  but what you said here helps explain what I was thinking.  It will be interesting to learn more about them now that you said that and how it will tie in with my reading of the Book of Mormon. I know what I said here may not make any sense.  Just know I appreciate what you said.

[morgan.deane]

12 hours ago, PeterPear said:

It's amazing the rabbit hole one has to travel through to support the incorrect geographical location (Mesoamerica) for the Book of Mormon. After 1,000 years, Mormon declared he was a pure descendant of Lehi. I'd like to see your family history traced back to 1017 with no intermingling with other "natives."

Yet, to support a Mesoamerica location you have to assume Lehi's group upon landing in "Mesoamerica" which had numerous people, despite the Lord's promise to Lehi that the land would be for an inheritance to his descendants, then intermingled with "the natives" forcing Lehi's descendants to lose their DNA.

Then out pops Mormon 1000 years later to claim he's a pure descendant of Lehi and you ignore it. Is this verse fiction according to your Mesoamerica theory?

20 I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my Savior Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem, (and no one knew it save it were himself and those whom he brought out of that land) and that he hath given me and my people so much knowledge unto the salvation of our souls.

And what of Ether hiding his gold plates in a manner that the people of Limhi some 300 years later found them? It doesn't sound as if Ether was concerned about anyone finding them despite all the numerous "Mesoamerican Natives" running around according to your Mesoamerica theory.

Contrast that with Moroni burying his gold plates into the ground to prevent the Lamanites finding and destroying them.

No offense, but I believe you spend more time trying to justify your MesoAmerica theory than learning the text of the Book of Mormon.

There is an interesting tidbit from Chinese history that might have bearing on the concept of a pure pedigree.  During the period of disunion the Chinese elite often intermarried with the Turkish tribes that had invaded and set up their own short lived kingdoms. This is no different than many other places and times throughout history such as the Norman invasion already mentioned.  The interesting part is that this Sino Turkish elite ended up producing some of the strongest leaders in Chinese history and became the standard of what was considered pure ethnic Han individuals.  So lets say we have elder Gong from the quorum of the seventy, who can trace his Chinese ancestry back to the 9th century Tang dynasty. I don't see any evidence that he claims to be pure Chinese, but if he did, there is a good chance from a genetics standpoint he is not. Though he trace his Chinese ancestry back over 1000 years, what was "pure Chinese" itself has changed. Mormon claiming to be a pure descendant is likely the same phenomenon and hardly disqualifies Brant's points. I have little doubt that Mormon had a very good and venerable pedigree. (Though like other great families throughout history, there could have been some embellishment, or co mingling of facts with myth in his family history so we might take his claim with a grain of salt. This isn't the first chapter of Matthew or anything.)   But just like the Chinese, the concept of what was "pure" Nephite from a genetic standpoint likely hanged and included a good deal of intermarriage and loss of genetic signature seen by scholars.  

[Rain]

On Wednesday, March 15, 2017 at 10:26 AM, Kevin Christensen said:

Happily, Peter Novick addressed this issue at Sunstone.

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/image-is-everything-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain/

Each community has a "group licensed way of seeing" and each community has its own dynamic for dealing with the tension caused by other ways of seeing.  For several decades now, LDS historians have choices about who they prefer to apply for a license for seeing. 

Richard Bushman offered his take in The Social Dimensions of Rationality in 1996:

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1127&index=8

The answer, I've argued for a long time, is to not try to claim immunity from criticism on grounds of being objective, but to openly acknowledge one's ideological stance so that the implications can be critically considered, and to consciously turn away from paradigm-dependent criteria, and towards paradigm-independent criteria for evaluating claims.   There is a marked difference between dismissing an argument as "Not us" (whatever group that "us" happens to be), and taking the challenge and risk of exploring and explaining notions of "Why us?" rather then them.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Thank you for quoting this: I will only report that to an ever-increasing number of historians in recent decades it has not just seemed unapproachable, but an incoherent ideal; not impossible, in the sense of unachievable (that would not make it a less worthy goal than many other goals that we reasonably pursue), but meaningless. This is not because of human frailty on the part of the historian (that, after all, we can struggle against), not because of irresistible outside pressures (these too we can resist with some success, if not complete success). No, the principal problem is different, and it is laughably simple. It is the problem of selecting from among the zillions and zillions of bits of historical data out there the handful that we can fit in even the largest book, and the associated problem of how we arrange those bits that we choose. The criterion of selection and the way we arrange the bits we choose are not given out there in the historical record. Neutrality, value-freedom, and absence of preconceptions on the part of the historian would not result in a neutral account, it would result in no account at all, because any historian, precisely to the extent that she was neutral, without values, free of preconceptions, would be paralyzed, would not have the foggiest notion of how to go about choosing from the vast, unbelievably messy chaos of stuff out there.50"

I've found myself digging and digging and digging into information so much about the Spanish white towns I mentioned above that I am overwhelming myself. I am just never going to be able to learn it all and certainly not before I need to make a choice of where we are going.  At some point I have to just make a choice  and be ok with the idea that I don't know it all. 

I appreciate more now, with what you said, how people studying and writing in these fields have to at some point write from a bias. There is just no way to have ALL the info and even if you did how could you share it concisely enough that others will be able to read it. 

I appreciate the goal of trying to be unbiased with the understanding that no one will be. The idea seems to be more that we should go with a framework of what we are understanding in these fields, but be willing to be open to change the framework when needed. It also helps me in a gospel sense of having a goal to be more like God, understanding we have the tiniest understanding and being willing to open our understanding as we learn more about Him. 

[PeterPear]

15 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Right.  The man only wrote a six-volume set, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, and he knows nothing about the text?  We're supposed to take the word, instead, of some anonymous Internet poster whose credentials are completely unknown to us???  

Gimme a break!  

Really? He wrote six volumes and he ignores the lineage of the man who compiled and wrote the Book? And after who it was named?

Ha ha ha ha ha!

HA HA HA HA HA HA !

So what of Mormon declaring he's a pure descendant of Lehi? Your argument is a logical fallacy, as there are also Antis who've written volumes about the Book of Mormon ... and all Nations, Kindreds and Tongues will be speak both good and ill of Joseph Smith and by extension the Book of Mormon he translated by the gift and power of God. That will fill more than six volumes.

You gimme a break.

[Meadowchik]

Mormonism Was Founded on Magical Thinking  

Joseph and the witnesses believed in second sight and claimed to experience it in other matters before they ever saw the plates. He and his early believers also used seer stones and divining rods for discovery of objects they believed were hidden.  Joseph was used to his parents recalling tales of treasures in the hill Cumorah, before his discovery of the plates.  In other words, it is the same epistemological techniques used in treasure-hunting, second-sight and seer stones, etc..., with which Joseph saw the angel Moroni and the plates, with which the witnesses "saw and handled" the plates and the angel, with which Oliver Cowdery, Hyrum, and others entered the cave inside Cumorah containing the plates, the sword of Laban, and enormous stores of records and wealth.

Second sight, even involving whole groups, was not an isolated event at those times.  There are accounts of other groups of people seeing marvelous things with their spiritual eyes and believing what they had seen until their deaths.

This type of thinking is aptly described as magical thinking.  No actual treasure was ever produced by Joseph with these powers, the same powers he says brought him the plates and the Restoration.

So this type of thinking has everything to do with Mormonism, it is at the absolute core of Mormon foundations, including the translation of The Bi's ok of Mormon.

The continued emphasis of Moroni's promise is a modern example of magical thinking still in use today in the Church. People insist that feeling good is evidence of an entire tome's entire truthfulness.

Yet the Church has shied away from its explicit magic and occult origins. In the early church, several members broke away when, upon being question, Martin Harris said the he "saw and handled" the gold plates with his second sight, not with his physical eyes or hands. This suggests to me that, even in the early beginnings, the Church was rapidly revising the narrative of its origins in fundamental ways in order to be palatable to more diverse types of believers.

No, I cannot believe in the Church under these conditions: The Book of Mormon being a work of fiction did not occur in a vacuum. It required deception and hurting others and still does,  having institutionalised it. I have experienced this hurt and pain and deliberate deception of others, and I know that such work is not God's work. I believe that if the missionaries and members had always taught the unvarnished truth, the Church would have died out in the 19th century.

Edited March 18, 2017 by Meadowchik

[Kenngo1969]

8 hours ago, PeterPear said:

... You gimme a break.

OK, I will.  I usually ignore you anyway.  It won't scrape any skin whatsoever off of my nose to return to that default position.  

[PeterPear]

2 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

OK, I will.  I usually ignore you anyway.  It won't scrape any skin whatsoever off of my nose to return to that default position.  

Brilliant riposte.

So by ignoring me you're ignoring the author of the Book of Mormon who stated:

3 Nephi 5:20I am Mormon, and a pure ^adescendant of Lehi

Then you will return back to your default position that Lehi's group landed in Mesoamerica, intermarried with the Natives and Lehi's DNA faded away.

Got it. Is your default position also that the Prophet Mormon was a liar?

Edited March 18, 2017 by PeterPear

[Rajah Manchou]

2 hours ago, PeterPear said:

Brilliant riposte.

So by ignoring me you're ignoring the author of the Book of Mormon who stated:

3 Nephi 5:20 I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi

Then you will return back to your default position that Lehi's group landed in Mesoamerica, intermarried with the Natives and Lehi's DNA faded away.

Got it. Is your default position also that the Prophet Mormon was a liar?

This doesn't seem like as big a problem as you are making it out to be. Especially since no one here has a default position that the Prophet Mormon was a liar. Perhaps the Nephites didn't intermarry and their DNA was mostly preserved through the time of Mormon but went extinct at Cumorah. And it was the Lamanites that intermarried.

There is evidence that groups in southern Mexico lived in close proximity to each other but did not mix.

[Kenngo1969]

2 hours ago, PeterPear said:

Got it. Is your default position also that the Prophet Mormon was a liar?

Limited, careening rapidly toward Banned?

Do not put words in my mouth that I did not say.

[Rajah Manchou]

On 3/17/2017 at 8:31 PM, churchistrue said:

These are terrible examples to support your claim that the expected outcome, ie " the scenario suggested would be the most consonant with what we know of most of human history" is that a group of 25 settlers coming from a more advanced civilization quickly intermarries and integrates into the new population, such that evidence of its DNA, language, and culture completely vanish.  

You know a heck of a lot more about this subject than I do.  But if you want me to believe your claim that this is the expected outcome, then you must have several examples to show me.  Because it goes exactly opposite of what is intuitive.  And when I think of all the instances of settlements I know of, not a single one look like this.  In fact, they are nearly all the opposite of this.  But granted, my examples are generally more modern, and this is not my field of expertise.  

This claim that it is impossible for a civilization to completely vanish is made frequently. We have discussed it in other threads so apologies for the repeat.

A prime example of a known civilization being founded by foreign arrivals from a more advanced civilization (a man had a dream he should board a boat and rule over a new land) and completely vanishing is the Kingdom of Funan in Southeast Asia. Chinese explorers visited the Kingdom in 240 AD and told of hundreds of walled cities with wooden towers and elephants, chariots, iron, gold, swords and even groups of westerners (probably Iranians) with books written in a western script. There is no identifiable archeological evidence of this kingdom and no genetic evidence of Iranians and Middle Easterners living among the indigenous groups. The script and books that were kept in libraries and archives are lost. And the great armies of 100,000+ soldiers with iron swords are known only in the texts. No traces of dead soldiers or great battle scenes anywhere. Fittingly, the site of one of the larger conflicts was called Komorriya or Kamara. 

Another example is the massive Kingdom of Srivijaya which was completely lost after a fertilizer plant was unknowingly built on top of the ruins of the capital city. Nobody knew there was an ancient kingdom there until after the plant had been built

"Little physical evidence of Srivijaya remains. There had been no continuous knowledge of the history of Srivijaya even in Indonesia; its forgotten past has been resurrected by foreign scholars. Contemporary Indonesians, even those from the area of Palembang (around which the kingdom was based), had not heard of Srivijaya until the 1920s when the French scholar, George Coedes, published his discoveries and interpretations in the Dutch- and Indonesian-language newspapers."

If you don't consider these to be good examples, I'd be curious to know why.

[Kenngo1969]

3 hours ago, PeterPear said:

Brilliant riposte.

So by ignoring me you're ignoring the author of the Book of Mormon ...

Deleted.

Edited March 18, 2017 by Kenngo1969

[notHagoth7]

On 3/16/2017 at 11:54 PM, Ouagadougou said:

...Moroni was still writing in reformed Egyptian to the very end, so how did their language disappear or get dissolved into other indigenious groups when they never abandoned it?...

Because their form of writing appears to have been preserved only among the relatively few trained up in the Nephite scribal tradition.

Consider the sons of King Benjamin, who, centuries after Nephi, had to be taught the language of their fathers to be able to even read the plates. 

Very similar to the demise of Tironian notes/shorthand in Europe:  

• Was introduced into Europe contemporary with Hagoth and the stripling warriors, roughly a century after King Benjamin.
• Was used by scribes in Europe for centuries (although the general European public couldn't discern Tironian).
• Became a lost art generations ago, with the meaning of many TIronian characters now unknown.

You wouldn't know modern shorthand without extensive training. Ditto with reformed Egyptian/Tironian.

Fair 'nuf?

Edited March 18, 2017 by notHagoth7

[churchistrue]

1 hour ago, Rajah Manchou said:

This claim that it is impossible for a civilization to completely vanish is made frequently. We have discussed it in other threads so apologies for the repeat.

A prime example of a known civilization being founded by foreign arrivals from a more advanced civilization (a man had a dream he should board a boat and rule over a new land) and completely vanishing is the Kingdom of Funan in Southeast Asia. Chinese explorers visited the Kingdom in 240 AD and told of hundreds of walled cities with wooden towers and elephants, chariots, iron, gold, swords and even groups of westerners (probably Iranians) with books written in a western script. There is no identifiable archeological evidence of this kingdom and no genetic evidence of Iranians and Middle Easterners living among the indigenous groups. The script and books that were kept in libraries and archives are lost. And the great armies of 100,000+ soldiers with iron swords are known only in the texts. No traces of dead soldiers or great battle scenes anywhere. Fittingly, the site of one of the larger conflicts was called Komorriya or Kamara. 

Another example is the massive Kingdom of Srivijaya which was completely lost after a fertilizer plant was unknowingly built on top of the ruins of the capital city. Nobody knew there was an ancient kingdom there until after the plant had been built

"Little physical evidence of Srivijaya remains. There had been no continuous knowledge of the history of Srivijaya even in Indonesia; its forgotten past has been resurrected by foreign scholars. Contemporary Indonesians, even those from the area of Palembang (around which the kingdom was based), had not heard of Srivijaya until the 1920s when the French scholar, George Coedes, published his discoveries and interpretations in the Dutch- and Indonesian-language newspapers."

If you don't consider these to be good examples, I'd be curious to know why.

To be clear, I am not arguing that it's impossible for a civilization to completely vanish.  I think the LGT'ers have made enough of a case that we can see it's at least *possible*.  What I'm challenging is the likelihood.  Brant Gardner is claiming it is what we should expect, it is "most consonant" of what we understand with other similar situations.  Specifically the intermarrying and dropping of culture and language, even when going from high civilization to low, and even when the colonizers become the kings and rulers.  I'm admitting I don't have enough expertise to challenge this, but I was hoping for some examples.  None had been given previously.  I'll look into your Funan example.