Attempting to Map the BOM

[Oliver_Cowdery]

10 hours ago, canard78 said:

Can I just point out that it's LamAnites eating horses?

"Laminates eating horses" sounds like a very strange office supplies fetish. 

What next? Will we discover the Book of Mormon has a character who "photocopies leaping hamsters" or "staples dancing elephants?"

....

Carry on...

Sometimes I just get tired of Pre-Columbian horses walking into my house unannounced.  I lay down some that horse devouring laminate in the entryway to keep them out.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[Oliver_Cowdery]

12 hours ago, Ouagadougou said:

        It seems to me that all 40 of the above questions are honestly, fairly and sensibly stated."

With God all things are possible.  And likewise in the world of apologetics all words in scripture can be redefined as needed to build an adhoc speculative explanation.  The loose translation theory gives us cover to edit the scriptures in our minds at will.

Edited December 9, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[Marmonboy]

1 hour ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

With God all things are possible.  And likewise in the world of apologetics all words in scripture can be redefined as needed to build an adhoc speculative explanation.  The loose translation theory gives us cover to edit the scriptures in our minds at will.

And the inerrant theory leaves no doubt that scripture must conform to whatever perfect ideal we choose, or else the whole thing is wrong.

[Oliver_Cowdery]

4 hours ago, Marmonboy said:

And the inerrant theory leaves no doubt that scripture must conform to whatever perfect ideal we choose, or else the whole thing is wrong.

The inerrant theories I'm familiar with means something a little different than that.  The people who adhere to Biblical inerrancy (or BoM inerrancy) don't leave open the possibility that the scriptures can be wrong and don't see themselves at the authority in scriptural matters.  An inerrant theory basically says that whatever the scriptural text says is correct, end of story.  

You see that more in the Bible belt than with Mormons. But I do know of individual Mormons who come close to what I'd describe as BoM inerrantists.  They've basically applied Biblical inerrancy thinking to the BoM. They don't think of themselves the the ones who pick the perfect ideal.  Instead they see the text as being the ideal, and that it is their job to change their own thinking to be inline with whatever a plain reading of the text says.  They typically scoff at the ideas put forth by modern apologists as heretical.  And a FAIR or FARMS minded apologist would probably dismiss them as fundamentalists.

 

Edited December 9, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[pogi]

17 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

As the Joseph Smith papers project shows, Joseph Smith included in the official history of the church Oliver Cowdery's discussion of the NY Hill Cumorah as constituting the ancient Hill.   That's enough for me -- officialdomness.  Then, when the First Presidency announced the purchase of the Hill Cumorah, they explained its history; you can guess what I'd tell you.  Shocking, crazy stuff, I'd say.

It is "official" folks, Oliver Cowdery had a discussion of the NY Hill Cumorah as "constituting the ancient Hill".  That settles it! 

Many early church leaders believed that it was the actual hill Cumorah, but not because it was revealed as such.  Their guess is as good as mine.

 

[pogi]

15 hours ago, Ouagadougou said:

1. Is it reasonable that men smart enough to build such watertight and airtight boats, following divine instructions, would do all the planning, material gathering and construction, and finish all eight before the question of breathing and seeing occurred to any of them?

I only got to your first question then became bored.

1.  Is it reasonable that men "following divine instruction" from God, would immediately question the design of God? 

The thing that you have to consider is that faith is reasonable when God is talking to you.  I think that probably answers all of your other points.

[thesometimesaint]

On 12/8/2016 at 9:45 AM, lostindc said:

Disclaimer, I am not saying the BOM is true or false in this post.

When one attempts to map the BOM what exactly is the difference compared to mapping Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings or something similar?

 

Both books are nearly impossible to map because one is a fiction (Lord of the Rings) and the other has yet to have any locations discovered in the Americas.  Without a map spot/geocode, how can one attempt to map the Book of Mormon?  Why even try?  It's not like we can build a shapefile focused on the geocodes surrounding the Book of Mormon because we don't know the location.  No location = no different than attempting to map Middle Earth in terms of making some maps.  

When we start getting reasonable explanations for the Mountains of Mordor we'll talk.

[lostindc]

14 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

When we start getting reasonable explanations for the Mountains of Mordor we'll talk.

Is New Zealand okay?  I mean, all I am doing is guessing just like the Limited Geography Theory or whatever.  

[thesometimesaint]

No. New Zealand doesn't meet the internal references in the Book of Mormon.

Frodo lives.

[smac97]

1 hour ago, lostindc said:

Is New Zealand okay?  I mean, all I am doing is guessing just like the Limited Geography Theory or whatever.  

It would be nice if we could have a respectful, good faith discussion of such things, instead of one rife with snide ignorance and snotty sarcasm.

New Zealand is not in the running because it does not meet the parameters for The Book of Mormon, most notably this.

-Smac

[Oliver_Cowdery]

I kind of think the Hill Cumorah would be the obvious starting point. But if we really can't start at the Hill Cumorah.  Maybe we could at least start with the site Zelph was found.

 

And given that Zelph was known from the Rockies to the Hill Cumorah, can we at least use one of the Zelph accounts to establish that the Hill Cumorah is not in the Rocky Mountains?

 

Edited December 9, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[Bob Crockett]

2 hours ago, pogi said:

It is "official" folks, Oliver Cowdery had a discussion of the NY Hill Cumorah as "constituting the ancient Hill".  That settles it! 

Many early church leaders believed that it was the actual hill Cumorah, but not because it was revealed as such.  Their guess is as good as mine.

 

What settles it, according to my post, is that it became a part of the official Church History and was endorsed by the First Presidency in the 1920s.  It became and was "official."   Whether that was correct or not is a different matter.  Official statements can be wrong.

[Oliver_Cowdery]

25 minutes ago, smac97 said:

It would be nice if we could have a respectful, good faith discussion of such things, instead of one rife with snide ignorance and snotty sarcasm.

New Zealand is not in the running because it does not meet the parameters for The Book of Mormon, most notably this.

-Smac

34 He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent

Assuming Moroni speaks about the division of continents the same way we do today, and we assume we can take Moroni literally we can rule out every other continent but the North American Continent as a possible location of the Book of Mormon.  

Edited December 9, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

34 He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent

Assuming Moroni speaks about the division of continents the same way we do today,

I don't think that assumption is necessary to rule out New Zealand as a possible site for the events of The Book of Mormon.

Quote

and we assume we can take Moroni literally

"Take Moroni literally" means . . . what, exactly?

Quote

we can rule out every other continent but the North American Continent as a possible location of the Book of Mormon.  

Well, pretty much.  I'm not sure precisely what Moroni was referring to when he said "this continent," as it may or may be a reference to "the Americas" (and hence include what we call "South America"), or whether he meant principally or exclusively "North America" (which I would assume would more or less correspond with what we call "North America," which includes "the landmass north of the Panama-Colombia border").

Many (most?) LDS scholars who have studied this issue posit that most or all of the post-Bountiful events described in The Book of Mormon took place in Central America, often centering around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.  Since North America as a "continent" extends to the Panama-Columbia border (assuming that Moroni was generally referencing modern geographical reckonings), these theories comport with Moroni's statement.  I will also note here that Moroni's statement is only one of many, many references points on which a geography theory about The Book of Mormon can/should be crafted.

There are, of course, other theories, including the Hemispheric Model(s), the Heartland Model (that is the "heartland of North America"), and the Great Lakes Model.  There are some less well-known theories, including the South American Model, the African Model, the Malay Model, and the Isle of the Sea Model.

Personally, I have found the theories in the preceding paragraph problematic.  I am more persuaded that the Central America Model is correct.  In any event, I do not think there is a good faith basis for asserting New Zealand as a possible site for The Book of Mormon.

Alas, I would go into this in further detail, as I find this general topic to be fascinating, but I do not believe the OP is interested in a good faith discussion.  So I won't bother, except to quote William Hamblin in anticipation of complaints about the varying theories above:

Quote

Wilson first strives to discredit the Book of Mormon by unfavorably comparing the present state of knowledge about ancient Nephite sites with the state of knowledge about biblical sites. He begins his discussion of Book of Mormon geography by proclaiming that “one might expect that determining the geographical setting of the Book of Mormon lands would be a fairly simple undertaking” (2a). He provides no evidence or analysis to indicate why this dubious assumption should be accepted. In fact, quite the opposite is true. There are several notable examples where precise reconstruction of archaic geographies has proven difficult if not impossible.

The Bible itself is a case in point. For example, modern sites for only 55 per cent of the place names mentioned in the Bible have been identified2—and this from the most carefully scrutinized and studied book in the world. For example, where is Mt. Sinai? There are over twenty candidates. What is the route taken by the Israelites in the Exodus? Again, there are many different theories. These and many other issues of biblical geography are all hotly disputed. Furthermore, the fact that there is widespread agreement on many questions of geography is simply an indication that scholarly consensus has been achieved but not necessarily that the consensus is correct.

...

{W}ithout the continuity of place names between biblical and modern times, only about 36 of the 475 biblical place names could be identified with certainty. But in fact those 36 are identifiable largely because it is possible to triangulate their relationship to known sites, moving from the known to the unknown. It is only because there are numerous biblical sites known with certainty through the continuity of place names that these other 36 sites can be located.

...

The reconstruction of Book of Mormon geography thus faces several difficulties not found in biblical geography. In Mesoamerica there is a discontinuity of toponyms, whereas there is strong continuity in Palestine; inscriptional evidence from Mesoamerica uses symbolic glyphs for cities rather than phonetic transcriptions of the names, whereas inscriptional evidence in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine usually contains a phonetic component; and finally, there is no Pre-Classic onomasticon (place-name list) for Mesoamerica, whereas Palestine has Eusebius’s detailed Onomasticon, as well as those of later pilgrims.  These items allow historians to create a map grid based both on names and distances between sites for key biblical toponyms.  As noted above, a more accurate comparison to Book of Mormon geography is that for Bronze Age western Anatolia, where similar problems of reconstruction exist. Thus, while Wilson’s point that biblical geography is better documented than Book of Mormon geography is readily conceded, that point by no means proves that the Book of Mormon is ahistorical, as Wilson concludes.

If academics/scholars and the world in general can accommodate ambiguity regarding the geography of The Bible, they should also be able to accommodate ambiguity regarding the geography of The Book of Mormon.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited December 9, 2016 by smac97

[smac97]

On 12/8/2016 at 3:12 PM, Bob Crockett said:

I have.  Lots of problems.  Have a paper ready for publication on the point although it is too convoluted for reviewing editors and probably the reading public.  I will try and post it up.

I look forward to it.

Thanks,

-Smac

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Bob Crockett said:

What settles it, according to my post, is that it became a part of the official Church History and was endorsed by the First Presidency in the 1920s.  It became and was "official."   Whether that was correct or not is a different matter.  Official statements can be wrong.

It is "settled" for you because it is "official", yet you acknowledge that it may be wrong?  That doesn't feel very settled to me.  I am not bound to accept anybody's opinion, even if it is an "official" opinion, but I will take it under consideration.

[pogi]

2 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

34 He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent

Assuming Moroni speaks about the division of continents the same way we do today, and we assume we can take Moroni literally we can rule out every other continent but the North American Continent as a possible location of the Book of Mormon.  

Historically speaking, the Americas or the "New World" was not really separated into individual continents.  We are the United States of America, not the United States of North America. Historically, the Americas (the entire Western Hemisphere) was considered the 4th part of the world (The New World), while the Old World consisted of Europe, Africa, and Asia.  There were only 4 continents instead of the 7 that we name today.  I don't know how the continents were commonly divided in Joseph's time, but it is unlikely that Moroni would have used our modern geographical divisions.

[lostindc]

Bob,

 

Your theories regarding BOM geography are just as valid as the LGT clan.  Both are essentially unmappable and just guessing, but your viewpoint is the only viewpoint ever endorsed by Mormon leadership. 

 

[Oliver_Cowdery]

58 minutes ago, pogi said:

Historically speaking, the Americas or the "New World" was not really separated into individual continents.  We are the United States of America, not the United States of North America. Historically, the Americas (the entire Western Hemisphere) was considered the 4th part of the world (The New World), while the Old World consisted of Europe, Africa, and Asia.  There were only 4 continents instead of the 7 that we name today.  I don't know how the continents were commonly divided in Joseph's time, but it is unlikely that Moroni would have used our modern geographical divisions.

I used google ngram to confirm that you are correct.  In the corpus of books google uses the terms North or South America actually started coming into use around 1830.

If someone can point me to an old text book or map that shows all of america painted as one continent, I think we could confirm it further.

 

Edit:  I found a map from 1801 that separates North and South America into two different continents.

So, eh, I guess I don't know what to make of all this.  But I've at least found that map makers were drawing a distinction between North and South America by the time Moroni appeared, but book authors were not?

 

Edited December 10, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[Oliver_Cowdery]

5 hours ago, smac97 said:

"Take Moroni literally" means . . . what, exactly?

Well Moroni's message was delivered three times word for word.  So I think his words should be something that should be considered accurate enough that we should be able to parse it word for word.  I just wanted to make sure before I started parsing Moroni quotes that no one would chime in and just to say that I can't take Moroni's statements literally or that Moroni was somehow speaking off the cuff, or that Joseph Smith didn't remember the quotes word for word.  Joseph was somehow able to remember exactly with a word for word recital when Moroni rattled off scriptures that differed from the Bible.  According to the narrative as I understand it, Joseph somehow remember what Moroni said word for word until he wrote his history (in June of 1839).  Even if he was uneducated he must have had quite a memory in order to do that.

Edited December 10, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[James Tunney]

59 minutes ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

Well Moroni's message was delivered three times word for word.  So I think it should be considered something that should be considered accurate enough that we should be able to parse it word for word.  I just wanted to make sure before I started parsing Moroni quotes that no one would chime in and just to say that I can't take Moroni's statements literally or that Moroni was somehow speaking off the cuff, or that Joseph Smith didn't remember the quotes word for word.  Joseph was somehow able to remember exactly with a word for word recital when Moroni rattled off scriptures that differed from the Bible.  According to the narrative as I understand it, Joseph somehow remember what Moroni said word for word until he wrote his history.  Even if he was uneducated he must have had quite a memory in order to that.

Yes but if Joseph Smith were alive today he probably would change the Moroni quotes just like he changed what Jesus apparently said in the D&C because clearly Jesus didn't mean bow or rod, but meant a reference to the aaronic priesthood of course.

[strappinglad]

On a point of pedanticism , someone needs to avail himself of the ' edit ' function to clarify the use of the word ' laminate ' instead of ' lamanite ' so as to disabuse those who think they are reading about flooring or kitchen counter material.

On the topic of maps, was ancient Troy not found by actually following the text to hunt for it?

[Oliver_Cowdery]

1 hour ago, strappinglad said:

On a point of pedanticism , someone needs to avail himself of the ' edit ' function to clarify the use of the word ' laminate ' instead of ' lamanite ' so as to disabuse those who think they are reading about flooring or kitchen counter material.

On the topic of maps, was ancient Troy not found by actually following the text to hunt for it?

Oh, I am keeping that spelling just the way it is. How do you know that was a mistake?  Lamanites might just be a new group of people you may not have heard of.  

Kind of like how we know Elias wasn't merely the Greek name of the Hebrew prophet Elijah.  What appeared to be Joseph Smith's error might actually be Joseph revealing that there are two different prophets that were previously thought to be two names for the same person.

Edited December 10, 2016 by Oliver_Cowdery

[strappinglad]

Sorry, don't think I've heard of that Elias... unless you mean that John the Baptist fellow.

[smac97]

2 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

Well Moroni's message was delivered three times word for word.  

Yes.

2 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

So I think his words should be something that should be considered accurate enough that we should be able to parse it word for word.  

Still with ya.

So how do you parse out his reference to "this continent?"

2 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

I just wanted to make sure before I started parsing Moroni quotes that no one would chime in and just to say that I can't take Moroni's statements literally

What do you think "literally" means in this context?

2 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

or that Moroni was somehow speaking off the cuff,

I've never heard a Latter-day Saint suggest this.

2 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

or that Joseph Smith didn't remember the quotes word for word.  

Or this.

Thanks,

-Smac