I have a difficult time understanding why you feel you have to posit so extraordinary a chain of events to somehow causally link Moroni/Comoros with Moroni/Cumorah. And what you've posited is an extraordinary chain of events, regardless of what you may think. It crosses at least 4 cultures,
Is the number "four" somehow difficult for you? Are you one of those who think of the ancient world in one dimension? The Greeks were Greeks, the egyptians were egyptians, the Jews were Jews, and each culture uncontaminated by any other culture.
That is a very old point of view, and merely reflects your ignorance of the ancient world.
What you find incredible, I find very possible.
several centuries, and thousands of miles.
Sigh. And American culture has been effected by cultures thousands of mile away, and thousands of years ago (e.g. Greek, Roman).
Your logic is breathtaking in its simplicity and ignorance of history.
There are several missing links, including why there exists the inherent linkage you posit between the two names and where in the "Arabic culture" these names are found. In short, your post constitutes some of the wildest speculation I've seen in a long time,
Matched only by your ignorance of ancient history and culture. You may try to impress us with your credentials, but the application of your pretended knowledge is very apparent in this post, overly simplistic and profoundly uneducated.
In short, Chris, I am not particularly impressed by your opinion. You gonna have to do better than that.
You might start your education by reading Nibley's several books on the Book of Mormon, where he explains such connections. It's a good place to begin.
I replied,
Wow, Charles. So what you're saying is that I'm an ignorant, profoundly uneducated, overly simplistic, one-dimensional thinker parading my credentials to fool you into accepting my opinion. That's an excellent argument; clearly you must be right and I must be wrong.
American culture is not a good model for understanding the ancient world, Charles. American culture has the printing press and the internet, which not only help import ideas from other cultures, but which also crystallize those ideas and stabilize language. We also have airplanes, automobiles, and steel ships. And we've only been around for a couple hundred years. The Arabs arrived in Madagascar in the seventh century. That means that between Lehi's departure and the earliest Arab influence in Madagascar there was more than a millennium. A lot of cultural and linguistic drift could happen in a millennium in the ancient world, especially when you're talking about small immigrant groups merging with other cultures as in the case of Lehi's group. If you could posit some kind of actual mechanism for the connection you're positing, then I'd be more than willing to listen. But until you do, you are making a truly wild and unfounded assertion.
-Chris
