I will Believe the Book of Mormon as history when...

[_Daniel Peterson]

where these great works have convinced anyone to teach about the history, in a H-I-S-T-O-R-Y course, the city of Zarahemlah, the river of Sidon and the peoples/cultures of the Jaradites-Nephites-Lamanites-Mulekelites???

As I've pointed out to you several times, Pal Joey, Mesoamerican studies are typically housed -- at BYU and beyond -- not in H-I-S-T-O-R-Y departments but in A-N-T-H-R-O-P-O-L-O-G-Y departments.

That fact has absolutely nothing to do with Mormonism, or FARMS, or Provo.

Please feel free to provide an example or some level of evidence that would be accepted outside the metro Provo-Orem area if you can.

I've already done that. The trouble is, I can't seem to figure out what the standards for evidence must be in Old Towne Dogpatch. Please advise.





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[_Gazelam]

High priests robe:


Statue found in Merica Yucatan


JSH 1:35
35 Also, that there were two stones in silver bows—and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim—deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones were what constituted “seers” in ancient or former times; and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book.

[_harmony]

[quote="Gazelam"]snip photosquote]

Hindus have robes too, Gaz. So? What's your point?

[_Chap]

where these great works have convinced anyone to teach about the history, in a H-I-S-T-O-R-Y course, the city of Zarahemlah, the river of Sidon and the peoples/cultures of the Jaradites-Nephites-Lamanites-Mulekelites???

As I've pointed out to you several times, Pal Joey, Mesoamerican studies are typically housed -- at BYU and beyond -- not in H-I-S-T-O-R-Y departments but in A-N-T-H-R-O-P-O-L-O-G-Y departments.

That fact has absolutely nothing to do with Mormonism, or FARMS, or Provo.

Please feel free to provide an example or some level of evidence that would be accepted outside the metro Provo-Orem area if you can.

I've already done that. The trouble is, I can't seem to figure out what the standards for evidence must be in Old Towne Dogpatch. Please advise.





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Suppose one Googles <anthropology course Olmec>. One may then come across such pages as this one:

http://www.txstate.edu/anthropology/cou ... duate.html

There we find a respectable anthropology department offering courses like this one:

3345 Archaeology of Mexico. (3-0) This course examines the development of culture from early hunters and gatherers through the appearance of agriculture to the rise of civilization. The focus on the course is on the emergence of complex society among groups such as the Olmec, Aztec, and Maya.

Or this one:

3326 Maya History and Society. (3-0) The purpose of this course is to develop a knowledge of Maya Civilization from historical as well as anthropological perspectives. Students will study the features of the Classic Period Maya and Modern Maya societies including the religious and economic life styles.

In such courses students will be given an anthropological perspective on groups that the teachers of those courses believe to have actually existed, such as the Olmec, Aztec and Maya.

Can one find an anthropology course in any American university not taught by a member of the CoJCoLDS in which the nouns 'Nephite' or 'Lamanite' occur in a similar context to that in which 'Olmec', 'Aztec' and 'Maya' are found above, that is as names of groups of people actually believed by the teacher of the course to have existed?

No, one can not.

And the reason is that apart from certain members of the CoJCoLDS no-one, whether an anthropologist or not, believes that the groups designated by the terms 'Nephite' and 'Lamanite' existed.

[_Daniel Peterson]

That's scarcely news, Chap.

[_Chap]

That's scarcely news, Chap.

Quite.

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[_Daniel Peterson]

I agree.

Minority opinions are dumb.

You and Pal Joey and I are now all on the same page:

http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx

[_TAK]

Dr.P congrats on the new FARMS Director:

Professor Hoskisson, who teaches in the Department of Ancient Scripture at BYU, earned a doctorate in ancient Mesopotamian studies at Brandeis University, in Massachusetts, and focuses on Semitic philology and Ugaritic grammar as well as on LDS topics. He served a mission in Austria and, in the course of his graduate studies, spent some time at the University of Tübingen, in Germany....

Hmm.. Mesopotamian studies.. Mesopotamia (from the Greek meaning "land between the rivers") is located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, ..

Between Two Rivers?!! When Mesoamerica pans out and you need to move the Hill Cumorah again I think you have your spot all lined up. Genius!!

[_Chap]

I agree.

Minority opinions are dumb.

What a scary point of view!

I can agree with DCP's approach only in a very limited sense: those minority opinions about material aspects of the world which are by and large and on the whole only held by people who were born into families holding certain religious beliefs often do tend to be, well, to use DCP's rather crude phrasing, 'dumb'.

These include, for instance, the belief that monkeys built a bridge between the mainland of India and the island of Sri Lanka (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_Bridge), and the belief that the American continent was once inhabited by people of Hebrew descent called Nephites and Lamanites, of whose history the Book of Mormon is a partial record.

Almost everybody who holds the first of those two beliefs was born and brought up in South Asia in a family that would describe itself as Hindu by religion; almost everybody who holds the second of those two beliefs was born and brought up in the US, probably in the state of Utah, in a family that would describe itself as LDS by religion.

Outside those groups, these beliefs have almost exactly zero success in getting anyone with a moderate degree of education and access to relevant information to adopt them. That is quite a suggestive fact, and of course it takes us right back to the OP of this thread.

[_Brother of Mahonri]

. . .

I didn't realize how much I missed CA until I was able to be "home" last month. They don't have decent Mexican food in NC. I think I ate Mexican almost every day I could get away with it while I was there. :)

When I got back home from my mission several ward members asked me "What did you miss the most?"

I replied "Mexican food."

Most of them then said the exact same thing, "but I thought you went to Argentina?"


(and this wasn't even a Utah ward!)


:sigh:

;-)