DiscussMormonism.com

charity wrote:Read this article in the Salt Lake Trib. Then let's talk.

http://www.sltrib.com/Faith/ci_7483717

Every Mormon prophet since the church's founding in 1830 has taught that Indians descended from Lamanites. The perceived link explains the church's initial outreach to Indians in the northeast and later in Utah. It is why the church created an Indian Placement Program, urging members in the 1950s to care for those they saw as part of their religious family. Mormon missionaries working in Central and South America have always told potential converts the Book of Mormon is their ancestors' story.

"The first rule of historical criticism in dealing with the Book of Mormon or any other ancient text is, never oversimplify. For all its simple and straightforward narrative style, this history is packed as few others are with a staggering wealth of detail that completely escapes the casual reader. The whole Book of Mormon is a condensation, and a masterly one; it will take years simply to unravel the thousands of cunning inferences and implications that are wound around its most matter-of-fact statements. Only laziness and vanity lead the student to the early conviction that he has the final answers on what the Book of Mormon contains."
...
"Turning to the Book of Mormon, is it not possible there also to fall into the old sectarian vice of oversimplifying? Are there not many Latter-day Saints who will insist that every American of pre-Columbian descent must be a Lamanite because, forsooth, there were once Nephites and Lamanites, and the Nephites were destroyed? Yet the Book of Mormon itself makes such an interpretation impossible."

– Hugh Nibley, 1952 (The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 5: Lehi in the Desert / The World of the Jaredites / There Were Jaredites, FARMS/Deseret Book, 1988, p. 237.)

There is not a word in the Book of Mormon to prevent the coming to this hemisphere of any number of people from any part of the world at any time, provided only that they come with the direction of the Lord; and even this requirement must not be too strictly interpreted, for the people of Zarahemla “had brought no records with them, and they denied the being of their Creator” (Omni 17), i.e., they were anything but a religious colony. No one would deny that anciently “this land” was kept “from the knowledge of other nations” (2 Nephi 1:8), but that does not mean that it was kept empty of inhabitants, but only that migration was in one direction — from the Old World to the New; for even as Lehi was uttering the words just quoted, the Jaredites were swarming in the east, and the old man referes to others yet to come, “all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord.” Must we look for all these in the Book of Mormon?

– Hugh Nibley, 1952 (found in CWHN, Vol. 5, pp. 251-252)

Maxrep wrote:Charity, that's a great article. Thanks for posting. I am curious as to WHY you posted it though? Seems like it does no favors overall to the LDS cause.

LifeOnaPlate wrote:

Maxrep wrote:Charity, that's a great article. Thanks for posting. I am curious as to WHY you posted it though? Seems like it does no favors overall to the LDS cause.

I guess you missed my post.

That's why Stephens, the Idaho biologist, works so hard to explain the lack of DNA evidence for Lamanites.
He sees a parallel between the Mormon text and the Bible.
Biblical writers viewed themselves as the stars on God's center stage, a favored people. To everyone else at the time, the Hebrew prophets and people were little more than a footnote in the epic histories playing out around them.
Though some biblical names, places and episodes have been identified by archaeologists, scientists have not found any hard evidence that the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt even took place.
The same could be true of the Book of Mormon, said Stephens, co-author with Jeff Meldrum of Who are the Children of Lehi: Lamanite Identity, DNA and Native American Origins, is due out later this year.
"It tells the story of a small group of people among a lot of other groups who were largely unaware of this tiny colony," he said. "How small would a subpopulation have to be before it would be completely missed?"

Always Thinking wrote:Hmm...the Bible has a lack of evidence, and so does the Book of Mormon. That has got to mean the church is true, right?

Maxrep wrote:
I was reading Nibley on my mission - waste of time.

Maxrep wrote:

LifeOnaPlate wrote:

Maxrep wrote:Charity, that's a great article. Thanks for posting. I am curious as to WHY you posted it though? Seems like it does no favors overall to the LDS cause.

I guess you missed my post.

I was reading Nibley on my mission - waste of time.

"provided only that they come with the direction of the Lord; and even this requirement must not be too strictly interpreted"

What does this mean? Early inhabitants of the American continent were sent by God, err - well, not always! Mormons sometimes act like Meerkats, always making sure to have many empty holes with which to take cover in.