Chap wrote:That's something different from Kishkumen's reference to invaders claiming that a land is empty, when it is not - which in the context of this board is presumably to be understood as referring to the fact that Lehi and company seem to think they have arrived in a country devoid of inhabitants.
The Latin phrase terra nullius means 'the land of nobody', and refers to the claim that nobody has ownership of the land in question. By saying, for instance, that Australia was terra nullius, people from Europe were not claiming that there was nobody there (there obviously was, and they were seen as a nuisance), but rather that there was nobody who owned the land, as opposed to wandering about on it in a state of nature.
Of course pre-colonization populations in some parts of the world were, by modern European standards, relatively sparse, so that it could reasonably be said that there was a lot of empty land to be exploited, without denying that there was a pre-existing population. But again that is not the kind of claim that needs to be made to deal with the case of Lehi and his group, who were in any case hardly in a position to take over the land of anybody inclined to resist.
I am sorry to see that I have betrayed Kishkumen into the sins of wrath and profanity. But as I understand it nobody on this board gets to make assertions and then demand that other people should spare them the trouble of documenting what they wish to assert.
Yes, Chap, we all know the high standards of scholarship that are demanded on this recreational discussion board and expect everyone to be a jackass about others not providing citations.
The terra nullius concept is a legal outgrowth of preexisting attitudes that colonial powers had toward colonized peoples. It is true that there is a difference between the land belonging to no one and the land not having anyone on it, but the initial denial was more along the lines of the latter. The New World was commonly described as virgin territory that was waiting there to be exploited. Even in the case of Mormon colonization of Utah, the settlers exaggerated the degree to which they were blazing a new trail and had found an empty place to call their own.
In Greek colonization stories earlier settlements, evidence of which exists in the archaeological record, are routinely ignored, while the Greeks portray themselves as the ones bringing civilization. The foundation myth of Rome naturally ignores the Iron Age settlements in favor of a fairytale about a hero founder named Romulus. It is characteristic in ancient Greco-Roman literature to focus on the hero-founder at the expense of accuracy, largely because historical accuracy was not on anyone's mind. The hero-founder was often the object of religious cult. I can easily conceive of a fairly decent apologetic argument about the Book of Mormon's treatment of pre-existing populations having a theological purpose of sorts. But then, I don't believe the Book of Mormon to be ancient.
For example, it is obvious that the book does not claim that NO ONE was there before Lehi, because it goes on to show who WAS there, and spends an entire section of the work recounting the history of those people. Duh. The question is whether one should hold the book to historical accuracy in a generic situation where, according to the standards of dealing with such matters up to fairly recent times, no such expectation is warranted. In other words, to claim that this particular problem, that there are inaccurate depictions of the population situation in the Book of Mormon, is a slam dunk against its authenticity only betrays the historical illiteracy of the person making the criticism.
This is all pretty routine stuff and hardly controversial. If you are interested in learning you can look it up.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist