Forgive me, Ray, when you stated you had nearly “finished” my website and your primary criticism was that I wasn’t referencing the opposing viewpoint, I thought you meant you had, you know, nearly finished my website and had noticed that I wasn’t referencing the opposing viewpoint. I didn’t realize this was code for “I’m almost finished with the horses section and think beastie should have cited Sorenson’s specific rebuttal.
So here is the section Ray thinks contains such a stellar rebuttal that I was seriously remiss not to explore it in detail.
The fact that scientists generally doubt the presence of any animals other than those they have "authoritatively" agreed upon so far does not mean that they will not change their minds in the future (p. 305). A classic case involves the "chicken." George F. Carter, emeritus professor of geography at Texas A & M University, is completing the editing of a volume of papers (assisted by a F.A.R.M.S. grant) to be published by TAMU Press that covers evidence for the New World occurrence of this fowl before the time of Columbus. He and others have published on the topic previously.120 He has assembled a wide range of evidence—from zoology, archaeology, history, linguistics and ethnography—that has been long ignored or resisted by conventional scientists, which demonstrates that at least one race, and probably more than one, of the Old World domestic chicken was present and used in the New World (mainly for sacrifice) before the Spaniards brought their birds from across the Atlantic. Actual chicken bones have been found over the last fifty years at several sites in the western United States without their being acknowledged in the formal literature. The bones exist and they were dug up by legitimate archaeologists, but they have been tucked away undiscussed—some for many years—because "everybody knows there were no chickens before the Spaniards arrived." Carter's volume will demand these be properly reconsidered. Yet this is only a little more scandalous than the neglect given the possibility that real horse bones have been found in Mesoamerica dating to the time of the great civilizations.121
Matheny's treatment of the horse illustrates, again, how carefully one must read the scriptural text before attempting to compare it with outside information. She assumes that the "Jaredites and Nephites . . . were well-acquainted with horses" in the Old World, hence they would not "have mistaken a deer or a tapir for a horse" (pp. 307-8). But we do not know whether or not the Jaredite party were "well-acquainted with horses." The text says nothing about the subject in relation to their land of origin. No one knows from exactly what part of the Near East they began their journey to America. In general we suppose it was Mesopotamia, but even if that should be correct, were horses common, rare, or unknown there, or were they domesticated at all at ca. 3000 B.C.? Whatever the case for their homeland, the Jaredite party's trip across Eurasia and the ocean consumed years, after which few if any of the pioneering generation in the new land may have survived long enough to tap their memories regarding animals in their original land as they encountered fauna in the New World. (The only mention of "horses" in their record, in Ether 9:19, comes generations after the landing.) As we have the Book of Ether through Moroni's translation, I assume that the term "horse" in Ether 9:19 is from him and refers to the same beast to which the name is applied in Mormon's record.
Of course Nephi and his cohorts certainly knew horses, yet keep in mind that the Hebrew term for horse, sus, means basically "to leap," and other ("leaping") animals, including the swallow, bore related names.122 The fact that deer are also leapers might have justified the early Nephites in applying to them a Hebrew name that had been applied to the horse in Nephi's Jerusalem. (Compare Egyptian ss, "horse," and shs, antelope; note also, in the Mixtecan language of Mexico, yi-su, "deer.")123 But nowhere in the scriptural text do we get a definite answer to the question of how the Jaredite/Nephite "horse" relates to the animal kingdom as we know it. There are other thought-provoking examples of possible ambiguity in Nephi's Hebrew nomenclature which Joseph Smith's English translation of, say, 1 Nephi 18:25 may not adequately reflect: the word for ox, in Hebrew aluph, was from a root meaning "tame" or "gentle," which could also be applied to a friend. (Could it apply to a tapir?) Another Hebrew word was teo, "wild ox," but it also applied to a species of gazelle.124 One of nine Hebrew words for sheep, zemer, is translated in different versions of the Bible as both "mountain sheep" and "rock-goat," while one Jewish scholar believes it to mean an antelope.125 And if someone balks at the idea that Joseph Smith may not have translated every term "correctly," consider the enigmatic statement in Enos 1:21, the Nephites "did raise . . . flocks of herds." As I noted, this is quite surely a Hebraism, for Hebrew baqar translates as "ox," or "cattle," or "herd."126 I suppose that Joseph was "right," although in English the translation is more than puzzling.
It is not just the Book of Mormon text that is obscure, however. The Spaniards were very unclear about some of their encounters with newly discovered American animals. They left behind in their historical records a mishmash of names for animals which we know today by other labels.127 Were they "mistaken," as Matheny thinks the Jaredites would have been, when the Europeans called bison "cows," the turkey a "peacock," pronghorn antelope "animals like flocks of sheep," or the tapir "a species of buffalo of the size and somewhat looking like an ass?" If the Spaniards made ad hoc, puzzling naming decisions when they discovered and labelled New World animals, I grant the same option to the people of Lehi. We reveal our ethnocentrism if we demand nice natural-science logic on their part when we see the strange names applied by the Europeans.128 Those like Matheny who question my interpretations for Book of Mormon animal names at least ought to become informed on the topic by mastering the literature on documented cases of terminological ambiguity. I've shown where to begin, not how to conclude.
My critic goes on to doubt that deer were ridden in Mesoamerica—an interesting possibility that I suggested. She turns to a selection of representations of human-animal pairs, all from the Maya lowlands, outside the Book of Mormon area I recognize. She cites guesses by archaeologists about what those scenes might or might not mean. Her result is that the question of whether deer were ridden is left up in the air. But she ignores ethnohistoric information laid out by Professor Dibble in the department where she graduated, which tells us about the Aztecs' encounter with Spanish horses. They spoke of "the deer-which-carried-men-upon-their-backs, called horses."129 Such information shows that there is nothing inherently implausible in the idea. (In Siberia deer have been ridden for centuries.)
But if one is going to try to make sense of Nephite or Jaredite animal use, the need—once more—is to read the Book of Mormon text meticulously. So I hasten to note that the Book of Mormon says nothing to suggest that deer, or any other animals, were ever ridden. The only reason I raised the matter in An Ancient American Setting was to show that the role of animals in Mesoamerican cultures was probably more varied and extensive than routine scholars have supposed.130 Two references in Mosiah suggest that "burdens" were placed on an animal called an "ass."131 But all verbs and adjectives in the Book of Mormon text relating to animal use need careful study. Neither "domesticated" nor an equivalent term occurs, for example. The Jaredites are said to have "had" certain animals,132 and the Nephites "did raise" flocks, according to Enos 1:21.133 "Horses and chariots" were used to "conduct" (what an enigmatic verb!) a party from place to place within the general land of Nephi (Alma 18:9-12). Then 3 Nephi 4:4 lumps "horses" with "provisions" and "cattle, and flocks of every kind"—as food supply—which the Nephites accumulated "that they might subsist." Clearly, we need to get on with the basic textual study on this topic. To that end I included in "Animals in the Book of Mormon" an exhaustive appendix, "Animal References in the Book of Mormon." I wish Matheny had done some of that spadework instead of just giving opinions.
The note about biological characteristics of American populations in relation to the Book of Mormon (p. 310) shows overconfident reliance on "mainstream" physical anthropology. Matheny could well engage in broader study of the subject, going beyond the selective "top 40" lists of acceptable literature favored by standard American physical anthropologists. Of particular value would be reading in the history of this sub-discipline, starting perhaps with Juan Comas.134 He makes it apparent that U.S. "mainstream biological anthropology" is paradigm- (and clique-) limited so as to include certain researchers, like the trendy, much-published Christy Turner, but to exclude arbitrarily an Andrzej Wierçinski (and, with a condescending smile, most other physical anthropologists outside the USA).135
Incidentally, while it is true that "most features of cranial morphology are considered to be very responsive to environmental change" by physical anthropologists today, that has not been demonstrated but largely assumed.
With the exception of the bolded sentence, which I will deal with in a moment, the bulk of his rebuttal was to simply repeat his assertion that the “horse” could be a naming or translation error. Did I deal with this in my essay? Perhaps someone who reads more carefully than Ray will notice that
the entire tapir section was dealing with this theory. As I explained extensively in the essay, even if the “horse” was really animal X, one can still judge by the
context of animal X in the Book of Mormon whether or not this is a feasible alternative.
In regards to the bolded sentence, how am I supposed to respond to information that may be a “possibility”?? This rumor has been floating around the internet for
years, without any appearance of the remarkable discovery. Any citations desperate folks can dig up that hint otherwise usually date from the fifties or earlier, when radio-carbon dating was more unreliable.
Considering how sloppy Sorenson has been with his own research, he has a lot of nerve suggesting the wider Mesoamerican archaeological community has been negligent in the horse question.
Now, yes, I could have included this in my essay, and maybe for Ray’s sake, I will edit it in. But was this rebuttal really so significant that my essay was notably lacking in not referencing or citing it in particular? Not in my opinion. I don’t have the time or the inclination to include every bit of apologia on the subject, unless it offers something significant.