BLAINE: Let us reason together as one man reasoneth with another--the following is good meat for reasoning.
Q. Why hasn't a single Book of Mormon site been identified? [top] A. This claim is incorrect. I must emphasize the significance of the apparent discovery and confirmation of two significant, previously unknown (even ridiculed) places mentioned in the Book of Mormon: Nahom and Bountiful. They match in terms of function, physical description, geographical location, and even a persisting place name in the case of Nahom. Both sites are in the Arabian Peninsula, as described on my Book of Mormon Evidences page. Both provide powerful evidence pointing to authenticity, at least for the book of First Nephi. It also appears that we have confirmation of the existence of the Valley of Lemuel and the River of Laman in locations consistent with Nephi's description. The River of Laman, said by Nephi to be "continuously flowing" into the Red Sea, was long said to be ridiculous by anti-Mormon critics, who alleged that there were no continuously flowing rivers feeding the Red Sea. But it's there. It's not huge like the Mississippi River, but there is definitely a substantial and continuously flowing stream in an impressive valley by the Red Sea in the place required by the Book of Mormon text. So how do the critics explain that? In addition, a number of Central American sites have been tentatively identified. A number of serious LDS researchers think that the Book of Mormon city of Nephi may have been the large ancient city of Kaminaljuyu, now comprising part of modern Guatemala City (partly covered by modern civilization, unfortunately). Many factors are consistent with the Book of Mormon, allowing for plausibility - but not a positive identification. Sorenson's An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon discusses many of the geographical, textual, cultural, and historical factors that provide plausibility for Kaminaljuyu as the city of Nephi. Likewise, an excellent and plausible case has been made for a hill in southern Mexico, el Cerro Vigia, as the ancient place called the Hill Cumorah, where the final battle scene in the book occurred. (The "Hill Cumorah" in New York State is where the gold plates were eventually buried by Moroni and clearly was not the Book of Mormon location of the final battle.) An excellent account of the many factors poin ting to el Cerro Vigia is given by David A. Palmer in In Search of Cumorah, Horizon Publishers, Bountiful, Utah, 1987. This 3,000 foot high hill appears to meet the requirements that can be extracted from the Book of Mormon account of the two large battles that occurred there (size, terrain, location, presence of "many waters," etc.). Sorenson's analysis from a different perspective is consistent with much of Palmer's analysis. Another article of interest, offering specific candidates for a Book of Mormon river and associated lands, is "A Correlation of the Sidon River and the Lands of Manti and Zarahemla with the Southern End of the Rio Grijalva (San Miguel)" by John L. Hilton and Janet F. Hilton, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1., Spring 1992. Q. Why do Mormons think that new evidence will eventually resolve conflicting data about the Book of Mormon? Why don't you have all the evidence needed to accept it already, as we do for the Bible? [top] A. We can have faith that conflicting data will be resolved because it has been resolved in numerous ways already. Consider the issues of cement, of horses, of barley, of transoceanic voyages, of tents in Mesoamerica, of the ancient use of metal plates, of the existence of Bountiful - all of these were ridiculous errors in the past, which now have serious evidence behind them to lend plausibility to the Book of Mormon. If the text were a fraud, we would expect the flow of evidence to go the other way: as we learn more about the ancient world, the foolishness of the fraud should become more apparent. It's just the opposite. Humility is needed to accept that not all answers will be given on demand. Given that archaeological investigation in the Middle East is done at a pace over 10 times more intensely than in Mesoamerica and has been done for about 10 times as long, we should not be surprised that much more has been found relevant to the Bible than to the Book of Mormon, which is largely the history of a particular family line in what may have been a sea of other lines and even other peoples. We talk about the Aztecs, for example, as one people - overlooking the mind-boggling complexity of the fact that there were over 20 different cultural groups living in the Aztec capital (now Mexico city) when the Spaniards came, with multiple languages, customs, etc. Yet the dominant culture, the Aztecs, is about all we hear of. The details of the many peoples of Mesoamerica are a long way from being understood, and basic assumptions about the most dominant, and well documented groups are in a state of turmoil. It honestly is too early to expect mountains of specific confirming data, but the general picture looks promising (have you rea d An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon?). There is much which points to the PLAUSIBILITY of the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica. As for the Bible, there is actually painfully scant evidence for the foundational stories of Genesis and Exodus. There is not a trace of Eden, of Noah, of Joseph in Egypt, of the patriarchs, nor of the liberation of Hebrew slaves. Though the record tells of many thousands of people wandering in the Sinai desert for decades, there is not a single clear trace of their presence there, which is truly surprising, so say the scholars, if the story really happened. For example, according to Harvey Arden, "In Search of Moses," National Geographic, Jan. 1976, p. 3 (as cited by Michael R. Ash, FARMS Review of Books, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2001, p. 5): The Bible's account of Moses is, alas, as geographically perplexing as it is spiritually enlightening. Scores of geographic placenames in the Books of Exodus through Deuteronomy - wherein Moses' story is told - simply cannot be pinpointed on a modern map with any certainty. And there is no hard evidence that Moses really existed either. We know he did from the sacred records we have, but those who insist on "evidence" can dismiss those as being made after the fact to explain the man-made religion that evolved among the Hebrews. If the fall, the Sinai covenant, the Exodus, etc., are all fiction, then the message of the New Testament is jeopardized, no matter how certain we are that people named Jesus, Peter, and Paul actually existed. With maybe 100 times more research data available for the Bible - and many confirmations of later parts of the text - it is still improper to say that the Bible has been proven to be true. Scholars can still freely dismiss it as a work of man, not of God, based on the lack of evidence that they see (or are willing to see). But again, the Arabian Peninsula confirmations of numerous points in the Book of Mormon is extremely powerful evidence that 1st Nephi could only have been written by someone who made the very journey described by Nephi. No one could have fabricated that text in 1830 or even in 1950. I am still waiting for the critics to offer any kind of an alternate theory. If one requires intellectual evidence, that alone is enough to demand respect for the book. The issue of chiasmus in the text - some of the best examples found anywhere in ancient Semitic literature - is another one that the critics cannot explain, and one that has convinced some non-LDS scholars that the Book of Mormon is an authentic ancient document (though they have not joined the Church - yet - as a result, to my knowledge). The chiasmus issue is pretty heavy evidence. It's woven through the Book of Mormon in ways that would be impossible to fabricate in 1830 and would be extremely difficult to achieve even today by a richly skilled writer aware of the technique. Alma 36 i s simply overpowering. ---------- "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." 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