"And it came to pass" Mayan geocities link

[_Jersey Girl]

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5499/Book of Mormon/came2pass.html

"And It Came To Pass" in the Book of Mormon, Bible and Mayan Hieroglyphs


"And it came to Pass" - occurs in the English translation of the Book of Mormon 1,381 times. It is found in all books except Moroni. Sometimes the phrase is recorded "Now it came to Pass" or "For Behold it came to pass" or "But Behold, it came to pass". or "and it shall come to pass."

The phrase is not unique to the Book of Mormon, the Bible utilizes the phrase or one of its derivatives, 526 times in the Old Testament and 87 times in the New Testament. This supports the fact that this phrase "and it came to pass" is Hebrew in origin and correlates with Nephi's statement, "Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians."

Apparently, the Maya people, who lived in Southeast Mexico and Guatemala, may have adopted the phrase "and it came to pass." Recent discoveries in the translations of the glyphs of the 7th Century AD Maya ruins of Palenque manifest the phrase "and then it came to pass" and "it had come to pass." Recently, another glyph has been interpreted as "and it shall come to pass."

In 1985, a Mayanist scholar, David Stuart, observed that the (Anterior Date Indicator) ADI and (Posterior Date Indicator) PDI named by Eric Thompson functioned as a grammatical and literary feature in both colonial and modern Maya languages. He speculated correctly when he interpreted the sound of the glyph as "Ut" in the Chol language and "Utchi" in the Maya language, meaning "to happen, or to come to pass." (Schele 1987:26)

Two years earlier, John Justeson and Will Norman found a consistency in an event indicator that appear as the word "IWAL," which means the action is ongoing at the time, such as "and" or "and then." Together, UT-IWAL in the PDI in Maya glyphs read "and then it came to pass" or "and now it came to pass."

So, one of the things which so many have criticized in the Book of Mormon, 'comes to pass' as one of the evidences of its truthfulness.

Comments anyone?

[_Boaz & Lidia]

What a fool.

He, like the other apologists, have a distinct NEED to believe.

This is evidence of that desperate need.

[_beastie]

This is nonevidence for two reasons:

1 - all complex languages have some sort of word or phrase that indicates passage of time.

2 - The Book of Mormon was not written in the Mayan language, nor were the Nephites Mayan, according to Book of Mormon scholars.

This does indicate how weak the state of Book of Mormon/Mesoamerican apologetics is, that something like this somehow gets celebrated as evidence.

[_RockHeaded]

It is proof that those that try to discredit the Book of Mormon are grasping. One second 'and it came to pass' was anoying an proof the Book of Mormon isn't true because it's found in the Bible, now it's nothing an apologists are grasping because they have a distinct need to believe. Too funny. The fact that 'and it came to pass' is used several times in Mayan glyphs is pretty telling. Yes, this was used a lot in the Book of Mormon, and yes it's used a lot in Mayan glyphs. Draw your own conclusions.

[_harmony]

It is proof that those that try to discredit the Book of Mormon are grasping. One second 'and it came to pass' was anoying an proof the Book of Mormon isn't true because it's found in the Bible, now it's nothing an apologists are grasping because they have a distinct need to believe. Too funny. The fact that 'and it came to pass' is used several times in Mayan glyphs is pretty telling. Yes, this was used a lot in the Book of Mormon, and yes it's used a lot in Mayan glyphs. Draw your own conclusions.

Time passes everywhere, Rock, even for the Mayans. That doesn't mean a small group of Jews inserted a Hebrewism in the Mayan language. That just means the Mayans are at least as smart as the Jews in noticing that time passes and something happen. And it came to pass.

[_RockHeaded]

It is proof that those that try to discredit the Book of Mormon are grasping. One second 'and it came to pass' was anoying an proof the Book of Mormon isn't true because it's found in the Bible, now it's nothing an apologists are grasping because they have a distinct need to believe. Too funny. The fact that 'and it came to pass' is used several times in Mayan glyphs is pretty telling. Yes, this was used a lot in the Book of Mormon, and yes it's used a lot in Mayan glyphs. Draw your own conclusions.

Time passes everywhere, Rock, even for the Mayans. That doesn't mean a small group of Jews inserted a Hebrewism in the Mayan language. That just means the Mayans are at least as smart as the Jews in noticing that time passes and something happen. And it came to pass.

I can't tell you how many times I've read somewhere that 'and it came to pass' is proof that Joseph Smith copied from the Bible and that the Book of Mormon wasn't true. That is what I was saying. You can make your own judgement on it, as I said make your own conclusion. But if you are going to be a critic be ready for something to come back that may prove something different than what you thought was correct. And, it 'could' be proof that the Book of Mormon is true, but it really isn't a huge thing because as you said the Mayans are at least as smart as the Jews.

[_Chap]

It is proof that those that try to discredit the Book of Mormon are grasping. One second 'and it came to pass' was anoying an proof the Book of Mormon isn't true because it's found in the Bible, now it's nothing an apologists are grasping because they have a distinct need to believe. Too funny. The fact that 'and it came to pass' is used several times in Mayan glyphs is pretty telling. Yes, this was used a lot in the Book of Mormon, and yes it's used a lot in Mayan glyphs. Draw your own conclusions.

The problem with 'it came to pass' in the Book of Mormon is that it occurs a whole lot more frequently than it ever does in the Bible. It therefore cannot be explained as simply a Hebraism, and the most obvious explanation from those who do not believe in the ancient origin of the Book of Mormon is the one provided by Mark Twain - the high frequency is what you get when a not very highly educated person ('an uneducated farm boy', remember?) is trying to generate Biblical-sounding text on the fly:

The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures. . . Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

Of course 'and it came to pass' is not used in ancient Mayan writing. All that is claimed is that two markers have been identified, one of which refers to present events (meaning something like 'it happens') and another referring to past events (it happened).

If you wanted to make a link the the Book of Mormon, you would have to argue:

1. Reformed Egyptian (assuming this to be real rather than a figment of Joseph Smith's imagination) was in some way linked with Mayan glyphs. No apologist has ever tried to argue this, and it is by its very nature unlikely, given that everyboyd agrees that if the Nephites existed and wrote anything it would have been in a semitic language, to which Mayan is totally unrelated.

You would also have to show that:

2. The marker rendered as 'it happened' occurs with the same exceptionally high frequency in Mayan writing as it does in the Book of Mormon. There appears to be no evidence of this.

For a sober account of this business by a believing LDS scholar (Brant Gardner) see:

http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ancient ... 7pass.html

The furthest he goes in his conclusion is to say:

What it tells us is that the plate text from which the Book of Mormon was translated followed the conventions of ancient documents prior to the invention of punctuation.

Now you can agree or disagree with that. But Mayan glyphs prove the Book of Mormon is true? No.

[_Coca Cola]

When Solomon Spaulding's friends and family first heard Mormon missionaries read from the Book of Mormon in Conneat, they recognized it as the writing of Spaulding (the writings of Solomon with lots of religious stuff added to it). Solomon had written a story using the names Nephi, Lehi, Lamanite, Mormon, etc. He had written a historical romance explaining the origin of the American Indians. To make the text sound ancient, he used the same form of language as in the Bible. Apparently Solomon used the phrase "it came to pass" so many times in his novel, that his friends referred to him as "Old come to pass."

From what I've read, these witnesses seem reliable.

In my opinion, this is a very convincing explanation for why this phrase appears so many times in the Book of Mormon.

[_antishock8]

It is proof that those that try to discredit the Book of Mormon are grasping. One second 'and it came to pass' was anoying an proof the Book of Mormon isn't true because it's found in the Bible, now it's nothing an apologists are grasping because they have a distinct need to believe. Too funny. The fact that 'and it came to pass' is used several times in Mayan glyphs is pretty telling. Yes, this was used a lot in the Book of Mormon, and yes it's used a lot in Mayan glyphs. Draw your own conclusions.

Dude. It doesn't say "And it came to pass.." Not even close. Not in quantity. Not in meaning. Please.

[_Canucklehead]

It is proof that those that try to discredit the Book of Mormon are grasping. One second 'and it came to pass' was anoying an proof the Book of Mormon isn't true because it's found in the Bible, now it's nothing an apologists are grasping because they have a distinct need to believe. Too funny. The fact that 'and it came to pass' is used several times in Mayan glyphs is pretty telling. Yes, this was used a lot in the Book of Mormon, and yes it's used a lot in Mayan glyphs. Draw your own conclusions.

As a matter of fact, I just realised that I recently read a 19th Century court case from Quebec which contained the phrase "il s'est passé que ..." Now, this phrase could be rendered in English as "it happened that" BUT it could also be rendered as "it came to pass that" This is AMAZING new evidence which supports the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in the Saguenay region of Quebec! My beliefs have been vindicated!