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A waste of 'cyber-ink'? IFF you believe that
something/anything that you say and, the tone with which you say it
(argumentative, graceless) will lead to a change of heart then, carry
on.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: March 19, 2005 08:38
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Why hasn't a
single BoM site been identified?
I thought it was you who browbeat Perry for using the internet? Now I
find, it is you who just cuts & pastes others work!
QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
Why does the Student Manual for Religion 121 & 122 "Book of Mormon"
prepared by the Church Educational system published by the Church of Jesus
Christ L. D. S. have a map of "Possible Book of Mormon
sites" ?
Why does the caption under this map read "NO EFFORT should be made to
identify points on this map with any EXISTING geographical locations"?
Without a GEOGRAPHY there can be NO Archaeology of the BoM!
Why do the Church leaders distance themselves from the "geography" of the
BoM?
Why are there over 60 possible BoM geographies? There is only ONE BIBLE
geography.
What BoM CITIES have been discovered?
Why don't scientist accept the BoM as a guide to history/arch/ancient
geography?
1973, Michael Coe, one of the best known authorities on archaeology of
the New World, wrote an article for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon
Thought "Let me now state uncategorically that as far as I know
there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is
not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the
foregoing to be true,... nothing, absolutely nothing,
has ever shown up in any New World excavation which would suggest to a
dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon... is a historical document
relating to the history of early migrants to our hemisphere." (pp.42,
46)
Dee F. Green (a Mormon) "The first myth we need to eliminate is
that Book of Mormon archaeology exists�. If one is to study Book of
Mormon archaeology, then one must have a corpus of data with which to deal. We
do not. The Book of Mormon is really there so one can have Book of Mormon
studies, and archaeology is really there so one can study archaeology, but the
two are not wed. At least they are not wed in reality since
no Book of Mormon location is known with reference to modern
topography. Biblical archaeology can be studied because we do know
where Jerusalem and Jericho were and are, but we do not know where
Zarahemla and Bountiful (nor any other location for that matter)
were or are. It would seem then that a concentration on
geography should be the first order of business, but we have already seen that
twenty years of such an approach has left us empty-handed."
(Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1969, pp. 77-78)
1975 Ferguson "I'm afraid that up to this point, I must agree with
Dee Green, who has told us that to date there is no
Book-of-Mormon geography." In a letter to Mr. & Mrs. H.W.
Lawrence, dated Feb. 20, 1976, "�you can�t set Book of Mormon geography
down anywhere - because it is fictional and will never meet the
requirements of the dirt-archeology."
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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." (Colossians 4:6)
http://www.InnGlory.org
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