beastie wrote:Kerry was very sloppy, and it's not the first time I've seen him be sloppy. (by the way, I haven't read all the posts so maybe somebody already pointed this out.) But I don't think the case for plagiarism is clear-cut, because of how he introduced his post:
This from Allen J. Christensen, an expert in three of the Mayan languages in the New World.
This could actually have been Kerry's sloppy form of citing Christensen. It doesn't sound like the poster is claiming to be Christensen, in my opinion. So while the case for sloppiness and carelessness is easily made, the case for plagiarism is not.
How hard is it to:
This from Allen J. Christensen, an expert in three of the Mayan languages in the New World.
"Notice the important view that we *still* have no idea what the actual name of the ancient city is, but the name we have right now stems from our own era, 1936. This is the nature of the names for the cities all over Mesoamerica. WIthout knowing what their names are, and since so much was destroyed, how are we to tell *when* we have found something significant for the Book of Mormon? This is just one of the serious differences with the Book of Mormon as opposed to the Biblical names. It is just the fundamental nature of the situation that is so vastly different. We have to take into account the differences like what we read below before we can pronounce much of anything concerning either the finding, or the lack of archaeology for or against the Book of Mormon.
My own limited field of work is in the area of highland Maya languages, of which there are at least thirty-two. Each of these is really a separate language within the larger family of Maya languages—something like Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian, which are somewhat related based on common roots but are certainly not mutually intelligible. I work with three highland Maya languages (K'iche', Kaqchikel, and Tz'utujil). This does not, however, qualify me to work seriously in any of the other twenty-nine Maya dialects.
The ruins of Kaminaljuyú are certainly of the proper date to qualify as a Book of Mormon community, its major occupation dating from approximately 400 BC–AD 400. But the identification based on the name itself is wholly improper. Kaminaljuyú is a straightforward K'iche'-Maya language name meaning "hill of the dead." However, we do not know what the city's name was anciently. The name Kaminaljuyú was coined by a Guatemalan archaeologist and scholar, J. Antonio Villacorta C., in 1936 when the first mounds were excavated and it became obvious that the remains of a major city lay beneath them. The major mound was previously known as Quita Sombrero (Spanish for "take off the hat"), or by one of the Spanish names of the farms on which the ruins stood—Finca La Majada, Las Charcas, or La Esperanza. Although one complex text inscribed on a stone altar from ancient Kaminaljuyú has been uncovered, it is impossible at this point to read it because of the paucity of related texts and the absence of a Rosetta Stone–like key to its structure and language. It is therefore impossible to know until further texts are uncovered what the ancient inhabitants of this site called themselves or their city.
"
Or better,
This from Allen J. Christensen, an expert in three of the Mayan languages in the New World
:
"Notice the important view that we *still* have no idea what the actual name of the ancient city is, but the name we have right now stems from our own era, 1936. This is the nature of the names for the cities all over Mesoamerica. WIthout knowing what their names are, and since so much was destroyed, how are we to tell *when* we have found something significant for the Book of Mormon? This is just one of the serious differences with the Book of Mormon as opposed to the Biblical names. It is just the fundamental nature of the situation that is so vastly different. We have to take into account the differences like what we read below before we can pronounce much of anything concerning either the finding, or the lack of archaeology for or against the Book of Mormon.
My own limited field of work is in the area of highland Maya languages, of which there are at least thirty-two. Each of these is really a separate language within the larger family of Maya languages—something like Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian, which are somewhat related based on common roots but are certainly not mutually intelligible. I work with three highland Maya languages (K'iche', Kaqchikel, and Tz'utujil). This does not, however, qualify me to work seriously in any of the other twenty-nine Maya dialects.
The ruins of Kaminaljuyú are certainly of the proper date to qualify as a Book of Mormon community, its major occupation dating from approximately 400 BC–AD 400. But the identification based on the name itself is wholly improper. Kaminaljuyú is a straightforward K'iche'-Maya language name meaning "hill of the dead." However, we do not know what the city's name was anciently. The name Kaminaljuyú was coined by a Guatemalan archaeologist and scholar, J. Antonio Villacorta C., in 1936 when the first mounds were excavated and it became obvious that the remains of a major city lay beneath them. The major mound was previously known as Quita Sombrero (Spanish for "take off the hat"), or by one of the Spanish names of the farms on which the ruins stood—Finca La Majada, Las Charcas, or La Esperanza. Although one complex text inscribed on a stone altar from ancient Kaminaljuyú has been uncovered, it is impossible at this point to read it because of the paucity of related texts and the absence of a Rosetta Stone–like key to its structure and language. It is therefore impossible to know until further texts are uncovered what the ancient inhabitants of this site called themselves or their city.
"You can’t trust adults to tell you the truth.
Scream the lie, whisper the retraction.- The Left