Another Jaredite torpedo against the Book of Mormon ...

[_Canucklehead]

Also, since Mahonri Moriancumr and Jared didn't have their language downgraded (those lucky bastards, they got to stick with XP), should we expect to see Sumerian roots in Mixe-Zoquean languages?

[_Chap]

I have been predicting for a while that apologists will eventually deal with the Jaredites by calling it a Nephite myth, more or less. I'm pretty sure I have read at least one apologist on MAD begin to do so, but can't quote him.

Better still. some apologists are beginning to suggest that Nephi may be a Nephite myth:

People who want to take the Book of Mormon seriously as a historical document have to keep in mind the distinction between what a document says, and what actually happened. For 1 and 2 Nephi, there may be a gap between the two big enough to sail a barge through. Rather than conclusively identifying the Nephites as descendants of Semitic people who left Palestine around 587 B.C., “Nephi” may be the origin tale of a people who didn’t actually know all that much about where they came from.

http://www.timesandseasons.org/?p=4538

Down the page someone comments:

One last point: the same kind of question might be raised about the Jaredites. Does Ether confirm the historical accuracy of the Tower of Babel as recorded in Genesis, or has that story come to serve as an origin narrative for a people who are not necessarily connected to it?

There is light at the end of their tunnel ... but it doesn't lead where they think it does!

[_beastie]

Heh. Not to toot my own horn (actually it would be a sad little toot anyway that sounds kinda like: beastie has spent too much time debating Mormon apologists), but I'm pretty sure I was the first person to start suggesting this out loud. I should have copyrighted it.

And really, how far removed is this from my theory that the best explanation for the Book of Mormon is a pimply Mayan teenager writing a fantasy in his mother's basement?

[_Boaz & Lidia]

In the Wentworth letter Smith makes it clear he thinks the Jaredites (around 2,250 BC) were the first inhabitants of (at least North) America: see the other thread on this. He was just flat wrong, despite the fact that he claimed to have had his information on early New world demographics from an angel, as well as from the golden plates that the angel (Moroni) revealed to him.

You have a hypothesis, but nothing conclusive as noted in the other thread.

The whole story of the Jaredites depends on the literal truth of the story of the Tower of Babel, and the Confusion of Tongues.

A historical event yes, just as the flood. However, not necessarily how it's portrayed in English considering the possible Hebrew usages.....

This is however utterly contradicted by the evidence of early writing in at least two languages, Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, both of which were already in use to write two quite unrelated languages a thousand years before the supposed date of the Tower of Babel.

I addressed this in the other thread. It seems to have gone unanswered so I'll post it again here....

This actually might be some good evidence for a local flood. If Genesis 10:5 takes place before the tower of Babel, then the language confounded at the tower was the local language which makes more sense in the case of a local flood.

In that case, then we see other possible Hebrews usages for "all the earth" and "whole earth" ('erets ) comming into play. These could just as easily be the "whole district" or the "whole nation" etc.

bcspace, may I recommend a new avatar for you?