That is very impressive. And I am being sincere, not saracatic. You out book me by a long shot.
I have read Demarest and Townsend. I have read about Tedlock and his tours. Schele was doing such good work on the glyphs, it was really sad that her carrer was cut so short.
But you know, none of them said, at least in anything I read, that what they had discovered said the Book of Mormon was a fake.
I began reading about the Maya due to Brant Gardner's urging, but have continued because they are genuinely fascinating people. Their culture lasted thousands of years, their world-view was pervasive, and, apparently, effective.
Sethbag is correct. The point is not that these scholars are going to talk about the Book of Mormon in their work. The Book of Mormon, in the nonLDS world, despite the efforts of people like John Clark, is a total non-issue. It is a non-issue not because it's connected with a religion, it is a non-issue because there is NOTHING about it that sounds Mesoamerican in origin, and EVERYTHING about it that sounds nineteenth century in origin. It is only through dogged belief and the determination to MAKE it fit Mesoamerica that one can be persuaded by the type of evidence people like Sorenson and Gardner provide. Sorenson abused sources horribly to develop his theory, and every LDS since then has relied heavily on him. Gardner abuses the Book of Mormon in order to develop his theory, insisting it doesn't say what it clearly says. One striking example is that he denied, to me in an online conversation, that Zarahemla exercised political control over other polities. Anyone who has read the Book of Mormon knows better. And,
on his website, Brant also states that Zarahemla had political control over other polities. But in a conversation with me, because he knows that I know enough about ancient Mesaoamerica to know that that type of political control is an anachronism (Mesoamerican polities did NOT exercise that type of political control over other polities), he insisted that I was misreading the Book of Mormon.
When you make assertions such as "The Book of Mormon matches the warfare of ancient Mesoamerica", you are simply repeating what others have assured you is true. Well, it isn't. It doesn't match it at all, except for the fact that they fought wars. I have repeatedly, repeatedly, invited you to read my essays that explain this at great detail, complete with citations from many of the Mesoamerican scholars I cited above. You are relying on John Clark, John Sorenson, Brant Gardner - and whether deliberately or not, they are misleading you. They are telling you simple things in order to reassure your faith, when the actual picture is far different. I emailed Dr. Clark my concerns about his misleading statements in his BYU devotional, which is probably one of the sources for your repeated statement that Book of Mormon warfare matches Mesoamerica. He admitted this:
You have a very good eye and have picked a few spots in the talk
that have caused me to question my own text in its various revisions. A
published version is coming out in a few days in the Journal of Book of
Mormon Studies with some changes, but none to the issues you raise.
Since it is being published as a record of the talk I gave, I have not
fiddled with it much.
Let me start with the last point first, my lack of qualifying
statements. This was simply not the kind of talk where I could qualify
anything, so the statements are clearer and stronger than scientists are
comfortable with. Minimal qualifications for what I said would take
several days of talking. I think I could do it for each point, so I
stand by my list of assertions.
As a consequence of this talk and two later ones, I have begun
to question the opinions on these matters I received from others and
have decided to do the research to evaluate more critically the accuracy
of my own statements.
First, I praise Dr. Clark for his forthright answer to me, and he did give me permission to use his email.
When he referred to “lack of qualifying statements”, he was referring to the statements I made to him such as this:
You cited bows and arrows as being confirmed in Mesoamerica. My impression remains that the standard thought on this chronology of the bow and arrow in Mesoamerica is that it did not reach that area until around 800 AD or thereabouts. Even the atlatl, which some have suggested is what the “sword” was, is dated too late for the Book of Mormon period. The breastplates and headplates, from the description of Lucy Smith, were made of metal. There was no advanced metallurgy in Mesoamerica during the specified Book of Mormon period which would have been able to produce such an item.
This next statement:
“In summary, the practices and instruments of war described in the Book of Mormon display multiple and precise correspondences with Mesoamerican practices and in ways unimaginable to nineteenth-century Americans.”
concerns me for two reasons. The book of Helaman describes a conquest war, in which the Lamanites forced the Nephites to exodus their city, and the Lamanites possessed it. This type of conquest warfare was not known in Mesoamerica during that time period. Also, the end of the Book of Mormon wars describe a polity that controlled, at least during warfare, twenty cities that stretched over the Mesoamerican landscape (using John Sorenson’s map). There was no polity that powerful or wide-spread during that period of Mesoamerican history.
So when Clark made the statement:
The Book of Mormon mentions bows and arrows, swords, slings, scimitars, clubs, spears, shields, breastplates, helmets, and cotton armor–all items documented from Mesoamerica.
He was correct in that these are all documented from Mesoamerica, but the “qualification” he left out was that
they are documented from a much later time period in Mesoamerica.
All of these Book of Mormon apologists do the same thing that Clark has done. They make assertions that are misleading, because of all the qualifications they leave out. Brant and Sorenson talk about the linguistic evidence for metal in Mesoamerica, without mentioning that the linguistic evidence refers to simple metal,
not metallurgy. There is no dispute that ancient Mesoamericans took simple metal outcrops or meteorite rock and pounded that metal to make simple metal items, like mirrors. But the Book of Mormon describes the process of
metallurgy, and there is ZERO evidence of the process of metallurgy in ancient Mesoamerica within the Book of Mormon time frame.
The devil is in the details, and they are leaving out the details that matter the most.
Again, I’m not saying they are doing this out of malicious deception. But they are doing it. Look again at Clark’s statement to me:
Let me start with the last point first, my lack of qualifying
statements. This was simply not the kind of talk where I could qualify
anything, so the statements are clearer and stronger than scientists are
comfortable with. Minimal qualifications for what I said would take
several days of talking. I think I could do it for each point, so I
stand by my list of assertions.
First, he is incorrect in that itt would take “several days” of talking. It would take a line or two. But, if he did that, then his statements would not sound as “clear and strong” as he wanted them to sound. He believes in the Book of Mormon, and wants others to continue believing in it. So he is making faith-promoting statements to you to help you in that belief.
And maybe that’s ok with you. You are convinced that the Book of Mormon is true, anyway, and future evidence will support that, so it doesn’t matter if
current evidence does not support that. But know that when you repeat these statements apologists have told you without doing the necessary background work yourself to verify them, that you are repeating things that aren’t true, and anyone who has done the necessary background work will immediately recognize it.
Luckily for you, and Clark, and Gardner, and Sorenson, most Mormons and exmormons have not done the necessary background work.
by the way, you read Arthur Demarest’s Ancient Maya? Here’s his statement from page 34, 35, in discussing the nineteenth century knowledge about the Maya:
Some of the writers of the period, such as Augustus le Plongeon and Desire Charnay, were prone to imaginative digressions and drawn to wild speculations on the ancient Maya. Le Plongeon, James Churchward, and many others attributed the origins of achievements of the Maya and other New World civilizations to lost tribes from the Old World or from sunken continents. Unfortunately, such fantastic speculations are very effective in capturing public interest. Just as this epoch of popular antiquarian writings had launched modern scientific archaeology, it also seeded the development of the lunatic fringe of Maya archaeology (who even today besiege archaeologists with letters and emails on extraterrestrial influences, Atlantis, and the lost Semitic tribes!)
I think his view on the Book of Mormon is clear from that statement.
You know how apologists like Brant try to get around that clear statement? By saying things such as “well, this wasn’t a LOST tribe”, or pointing out that LGT accepts a pre-existing population, so the Nephites no longer have full credit for building the civilization. This is the best they can do.
People, including many experts, in the nineteenth century did believe that the ancient Americans were descended from the house of Israel when a portion of them migrated here. The Book of Mormon was not debated on that point in the nineteenth century. It said exactly what the population would have expected an ancient American document to say. But ever since the Maya glyphs have largely been decoded, knowledge about the time period has exploded, and eliminated the possibility that those ideas were correct. You and other believers keep repeating that developing knowledge supports the Book of Mormon, when it doesn’t at all. You are relying on the words of people who have decided that they don’t have the time to make the necessary qualifications their statements really require, so are telling you “clear and strong” statements that scientists would not support.
I see this over and over and over at MAD, at Z, and now here. I ignore it most of the time, but every now and then I just have to say something.