Ray T. Matheny on Book of Mormon Archaeology

[_aussieguy55]

Wes Walters told me years ago after he presented the paper , he was told to keep his mouth shut if he wished to continue in his job at BYU.

[_Dr. Shades]

Wes Walters told me years ago after he presented the paper , he was told to keep his mouth shut if he wished to continue in his job at BYU.

That doesn't surprise me one bit. What surprises me is that he didn't already know that in advance.

[_beastie]

Who cares.... Another non-expert in the fields he's criticizing..... That was his opinion, certainly not the Truth.

And what I mean by non-expert in the field, is that he doesn't deal with Mormonism and the Sciences, thus obviously he's an outsider having no perspective of how things relate.

No different than Coe or any other "expert" in a particular field who have NOTHING to do with Mormonism and the field in question. Sure, back in the 80's there were maybe a few finds that some false presumptions were made on, but certainly not since, and certainly not the "totality" of today's scholarship.

Atheists used to say the same thing about Christians when they used the Bible to research the sciences/history. Turns out those "poor ignorant Christians" did a LOT of good and valid work on the Bible and the sciences well before it FINALLY became "in vogue" with the rest of the world to at least refer to it when researching history.

Why do you anti-Mormons, you "Christian" ones, use arguments against Mormonism that you should know better not to? One quarter of your arguments are double standards and hypocritical?

Do you realize that:

1 - Matheny is Mormon
2 - Matheny is a professor of anthropology at BYU
3 - Matheny specializes in Mesoamerica

[_beastie]

Here are some interesting comments from a 1984 Sunstone talk by BYU anthropology professor Ray T. Matheny, now retired.

"[P. 26] People have continually dragged up esoteric examples of many of these things. I don’t know how to evaluate these. Sorenson has found a reference from Lanai where a sheep’s wool has been found in an archaeological context in the Valley of Mexico. Also, metal-tipped, iron-tipped weapons used by the Aztecs when the Spaniards were invading is another thing. I really don’t know how to understand these esoteric finds that are made. They are not in a context that is understandable to me. We find esoteric things all over the world in an archaeological context, but we don’t understand what they mean. They are just oddities that appear. The things that we understand are fit into a system. … And so the archaeologist has neglected a lot of these little things. Many Mormon scholars have tried to put these esoteric things together and thread together a story that would support the Book of Mormon. In general, the archaeologist does not do this.
...
"[p. 33] I have felt that Mormons, in particular, have been grasping at straws for a very long time trying to thread together all of these little esoteric finds, out of context, and really don’t have much meaning when they’re isolated. But I like to work from the scientific base, because science base is the thing that I understand."

Panel with John Carlson, Ray T. Matheny, and Bruce Warren, “Book of Mormon Archaeology,” Sunstone Symposium, Salt Lake City, Utah, August 25, 1984, transcript in the Americana Collection, University Archives; L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

Good find!

Of course his wife, Deanne, wrote an impressive article, Does the Shoe Fit, published in Brent's book. She seriously critiqued Sorenson's arguments. I can't remember where I read this, and will have to verify it somehow, but I remember reading that she was pressured to stop. I don't think either Matheny has made public comments in this issue since then.

[_Buffalo]

Ahh, but you can make a scientific study of The Apocalrock to see the salvation of our God and convince all nations that God set his seal upon the earth to verify that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the whole earth and the Messiah of the House of Israel and the resurrection and the life of all nations.

Come on. This is why it was prepared. To pull the rug out from underneath the pride of human intellect that denies God. Consider this your wake up call. don't just take my word for it. Go see it for yourself. Prove me wrong. Can ya?

You can find faces in any mountain in the world, if you want to find them. Your rock is not special.

[_RayAgostini]

Deanne Matheny, Does the Shoe Fit? A Critique of the Limited Tehuantepec Geography.

In my view, the quest for Book of Mormon historicity, to phrase it in the words of the immortal Malcolm Muggeridge, is "chronicles of wasted time".

[_beastie]

I finally found the reference I vaguely remembered, but it was RAY, not Deanne, who got into a bit of hot water over his comments.

Other Mormon scholars have been less willing to trowel over these apparent inconsistencies. In at least one public forum, BYU archaeologist Ray Matheny has been surprisingly blunt about the serious dilemmas posed by these rather glaring holes in the archaeological record. "I'd say this is a fairly king-sized problem," Matheny observed at a tape-recorded symposium in 1984 in Salt Lake City. "Mormons, in particular, have been grasping at straws for a very long time, trying to thread together all of these little esoteric finds that are out of context. If I were doing it cold, I would say in reviewuating the Book of Mormon that it had no place in the New World whatsoever. It just doesn't seem to fit anything that I have been taught in my discipline in anthropology. It seems like these are anachronisms:' Matheny concluded his talk with a sockdolager: "As an archaeologist," he said, "what [can] I say . . . that might be positive for the Book of Mormon? Well, really very little." Several Mormon archaeologists told me that Matheny's remarks caused considerable stir within church circles and came close to costing him his tenured position at BYU. Matheny has since carefully refrained from further public commentary on this subject, and he declined to be interviewed for this story.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/Mormon/mormon33.html

by the way, the same article mentions more of Ray's credentials:

Likewise, Brigham Young University boasts a number of world-renowned Mesoamerican archaeologists such as John Clark, who has done pioneering work in the area of the early-preclassic Maya, and Ray Matheny, whose National Geographic-funded excavations of the Mayan El Mirador ruins in the Peten rainforest of Guatemala are among the most extensive in the New World. Richard Hansen, a Mormon archaeologist affiliated with UCLA, has digs under way elsewhere in the Peten that are already yielding intriguing finds.

If LDSfaq does not return and admit he made his statements out of sheer, unadulterated ignorance, he/she is a coward.

LDSfaq, who perhaps was addressing his own image in the mirror:

Why do you anti-Mormons, you "Christian" ones, use arguments against Mormonism that you should know better not to? One quarter of your arguments are double standards and hypocritical?

I guess it doesn't really apply to LDSfaq, since I'd guess he/she didn't know better not to use such a magnificently ignorant argument in the first place.


[quote]

[_CaliforniaKid]

Wes Walters told me years ago after he presented the paper , he was told to keep his mouth shut if he wished to continue in his job at BYU.

Ray Matheny was told this? Do you happen to know by whom?

ETA: Thanks, beastie!

[_Brackite]

in my opinion, The most damning evidence against the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Theory for the Book of Mormon are the DNA Results that have been Published from the Native Mesoamericans from Mexico. Out of one of the Published DNA Results, which consisted of 477 individuals from the Native Mesoamericans from Mexico, 241 of them belonged to haplogroup A2, 136 of them belonged to haplogroup C1, 84 of them belonged to haplogroup B2, 13 of them belonged to haplogroup D1, two of them belonged to haplogroup D4h3, while just one of them belonged to an European haplogroup.


Linguistic and maternal genetic diversity are not correlated in Native Mexicans:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... =pmcentrez

[_Nightlion]

Ahh, but you can make a scientific study of The Apocalrock to see the salvation of our God and convince all nations that God set his seal upon the earth to verify that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the whole earth and the Messiah of the House of Israel and the resurrection and the life of all nations.

Come on. This is why it was prepared. To pull the rug out from underneath the pride of human intellect that denies God. Consider this your wake up call. don't just take my word for it. Go see it for yourself. Prove me wrong. Can ya?

You can find faces in any mountain in the world, if you want to find them. Your rock is not special.

Yes you can find one face on practically anything. But can you find the complexity and number of more than thirty layered one on top of another or just from another angel crafted by intelligent composition that is the hallmark of The Apocalrock? NO KIDDING!. And would another mountain be juxtaposed against the LDS apostasy? Would it fulfill five prophecies? Would it be hidden in plain sight for 180 years to catch the unsuspecting unawares when their iniquity was ripe? Would it be aligned with the sun as an important part of its message and deliberate construction? Nothing special, huh, I thought as much with only a couple of sightings many years ago.

I had a vivid dream that prefigured my destiny in 1982 that showed three hidden particulars of The Apocalrock. I looked for these shapes on every road trip I took with my wife and kids as my witnesses. Saw them perfectly and precisely as shown in my dream hidden in early morning light of Summer on The Apocalrock. This is the oldest relic on earth. The earliest script. The most ancient revelation. A prepared treasure to prove God is true to a generation of denial against the hour of judgment.