NHM again - quick thought

[_Sethbag]

Ok, in the Bill Hamblin thread, an old MAD thread was linked to where Dr. Hamblin made the absurd argument that the likelihood of a coincidence in Joseph Smith's choosing Nahom as a Book of Mormon place name were something like 10 trillion to one.

that Hamblin thread

I particularly laughed when the Dude popped in to enquire if monkeys had been brought up yet. ;-)

Hamblin's argument is absurd because I don't think anyone suspects that Joseph Smith was pulling random, 3-letter combinations out of some random generator, buying vowels from Vanna White, and throwing them into his Book of Mormon story. If Joseph Smith wasn't just picking utterly random 3-consonant strings, then Hamblin's math is irrelevent.

Just for the record, the following names appear in the Old Testament:

Nehum
Nahum
Naham

Those three names alone contain NHM, if one excludes the vowels as Hamblin does in his discussion, to correspond with Hebrew. Moreover, all three stand as a potential pattern, which Joseph Smith could imitate by the mere changing of one or two vowels, in order to sound more Biblical.

I wonder if Dr. Hamblin would go and redo his math, and give us some probabilistic reason why Joseph Smith could not possibly have swiped Nehum, Nahum, or Naham from the Bible, and just changed one letter, and used it in the Book of Mormon. I'm guessing it's not 10 trillion to 1.

[_Scottie]

No, but then he would just do the math on the probability of the Palmyra city library having every book that he is suspected of plagiarizing from.

[_Sethbag]

These mathematical probability arguments remind me of some of the really lame anti-evolution arguments I've read, where the arguer puts forth some really absurd model of how evolution is supposed to go, and then calculates some probability of it occurring, as like infinity to 1 or something like that. These arguments are always lame, and meaningless, because the model upon which the probability is based, is always flawed. In this case, nobody is actually saying that Joseph Smith created purely random three-letter combinations for his Book of Mormon names, and to suggest such as the basis for a probabilistic argument is absurd.

[_Scottie]

I'm wondering...

What are the probabilities that NHM is actually Nahom?

If I understand it correctly, it could be one of the following...


Nxhm
Nhxm
Nxhym

where x and y are any vowel (a, e, i, o, u).

That would be 35 possiblities. Now, factor that into whether Joseph Smith got it right...

Where's Tarski when you need him.

[_John Larsen]

I wonder what the probability is, that if you picked any large portion of the map anywhere in the world that you could find some place that resembles the word "Nahom". That isn't a particularly complex phoneme cluster. There are probably 1000's of places in the world that fit the bill, especially if you play loose with the vowels.

I also wonder what the odds are, that if some campers on vacation passed through an already peopled region and gave it a new name, it would stick.

[_charity]

How convenient for you all that you have short and selective memories.

It isn't just NHM and Nahom. It is also placement in relation to Jerusalme. It is also the context, a place of mourning.

So, what if you could find another place somewhere on the globe? Big deal. It isn't in a certain spot relative to Jerusalem.

If you are going to make fun of somebody, you at least out to be sure you don't open yourselves up for even worse condemnatin.

[_John Larsen]

How convenient for you all that you have short and selective memories.

It isn't just NHM and Nahom. It is also placement in relation to Jerusalme. It is also the context, a place of mourning.

So, what if you could find another place somewhere on the globe? Big deal. It isn't in a certain spot relative to Jerusalem.

If you are going to make fun of somebody, you at least out to be sure you don't open yourselves up for even worse condemnatin.

Everyone dies. I really don't think the death of a visiting old man would inspire the inhabitants to change the name of the place to "a place of mourning". Think about it. The place had a name before they got there. Death is sad, but would it make the natives alter their geographical naming scheme? That's ridiculous.

John

[_Scottie]

Good point, John.

Also, it's not like Lehi and sons were well liked in Jerusalem. What would make you think they would be well liked by the nomads?

I'm sure Lehi had many more dreams about the wickedness of the nomads, and condemned and called them to repentance.

But, yes, by all means, lets believe that they kept the name that Lehi had given the place after a short stay.

[_Sethbag]

One of the funniest arguments I've seen in the NHM debates is that there was a "burial ground" at NHM. This dovetails with what John Larsen just said.

A burial ground? How many places on Earth do you suppose you could go and places where people buried their dead. Um, how about all of them?

People are dying in every city, town, village, and hamlet on the planet. In every one of these places where the custom isn't to incinerate the corpse, or place it on top of a platform for the vultures to eat, the customary way to dispose of the dead is to bury them. Probably 99.99% villages and towns on the planet has a "burial ground" associated with it.

Secondly, as John says, what is the likelihood that there would be a Hebrew word for "place of mourning" that just so happens to come from the name of a little tribe, and that tribe's homeland,in a different nation or kingdom from Israel, many hundreds of miles away, merely because that tribe had a burial ground in that region? I don't think there's any reason to suspect that "place of mourning" in Hebrew is to be connected in any way with the name of this tribe, in whose area the temple was built, with the altar that has NHM inscribed on it.

And Charity, you guys really ought to stop saying things like "it's just right where Joseph Smith said it would be, when he said it would be". No, Joseph Smith didn't say where it would be. You guys take some fairly vague, not necessarily complete descriptions of the general way of travel of a given people over an 8 year period, and derive from that a particular place on the map, and then say that Joseph Smith said that's where it was.