Possible Modern Source for the Book of Mormon

[_Runtu]

For those of you who are asserting that "there is no case for an ancient Book of Mormon that is worth considering," can I get a show of hands on how many of you have read (or at least skimmed) Sorenson's Mormon's Codex and Gardner's six-volume commentary? Just curious.

Gardner, yes, but I haven't read Sorensen yet. Considering Sorensen's past work, I don't hold out a huge amount of hope.

[_Bazooka]

For those of you who are asserting that "there is no case for an ancient Book of Mormon that is worth considering," can I get a show of hands on how many of you have read (or at least skimmed) Sorenson's Mormon's Codex and Gardner's six-volume commentary? Just curious.

John's own summary of Mormon's Codex:

Geography

Given the broad geographical placement already sketched, in the book I identify 25 pointed correspondences between map features near the Isthmus of Tehuantepec on the one hand and Book of Mormon lands on the other. Here I mention only three of the 25:

According to the Book a “narrow pass” connected the land northward with the land southward at a strategic point within the narrow neck. A minor elevation a number of miles long occurs in the geology of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec that provides a “pass” over which ancient (and modern) communication links run northward and southward above annual flood waters.
The account in Alma Chapter 2 of a battle between Nephite rebels and loyalists has it beginning on a hill across the Sidon river immediately east of the capital city; from there the rebels were pursued up to the nearby land of Gideon, then they moved back down to the Sidon, where a battle ensued at a ford across the river. Precise plausible parallels are found in the upper basin of the Grijalva river for all features reported.
The hill Ramah of the Jaredites, which is the same as the hill Cumorah of the Nephites, was where the final extermination of both peoples took place; that hill corresponds In all relevant parameters to Cerro El Vigía in the Tuxtla mountains of south-central Veracruz.

http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/ ... mons-codex

Nevo, tell me....roughly how many Nephite artefacts from the final extermination of the thousands (millions?) of Jaredites and Nephites has John L. Sorenson found in and around Cerro El Vigia? Just curious....

Human Biology

The skin color of some native American groups in Mexico and Central America according to early Spanish observers were virtually the same as European “white ” people. This corresponds to the Book of Mormon description of its Nephite population as “fair” as against the darker, more numerous Lamanites.
Artistic representations of individuals from ancient Mesoamerica patently show among them Mediterranean-looking folks as well as Asians, Oceanians and Africans. More specifically a minority of specifically Semitic people are seen to be one component among ancient Mesoamericans.
Mesoamerican art also represents men with substantial beards whose parallel in ancient times is almost exclusively with the Near East. Those representations are concentrated in the area in Mesoamerica where and at the times when Book of Mormon peoples apparently dwelt.

Really? John's going with God literally turning the Lamanites skin colour dark and linking that to some native American groups being reported as lighter than some others? And because some Mesoamerican pictures show beards and they had beards in the Near East....Oh. My. God.

[_Kishkumen]

For those of you who are asserting that "there is no case for an ancient Book of Mormon that is worth considering," can I get a show of hands on how many of you have read (or at least skimmed) Sorenson's Mormon's Codex and Gardner's six-volume commentary? Just curious.

Nevo, I can't say what you think is worth considering. I speak for myself, and my encounters with the scholarship of Sorenson and Gardner on this particular topic have convinced me that their work, while interesting, is not at all compelling. Have I read all of their work? No. But, I do know something of how they work with the evidence and secondary literature (their methodologies). I am not trying to insult them. Brant is a wonderful person and brilliant to boot. I look forward to reading his work on the translation of the Book of Mormon. Sorenson seems like a real gentleman and scholar as well.

The real problem, however, is that the substantive connections between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica are just not there. Brant's method is an excellent example of brilliantly creative eisegesis, for example (finding Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon). The problems with Sorenson's work have been illustrated well enough.

No one is saying that we have definitive proof that these purportedly ancient civilizations did not exist in the Americas. What I am saying is that we have insufficient ancient evidence to do much of anything productive with the question, if we are hewing to the usual standards of historical scholarship. Sure, if you have a testimony of the Book of Mormon as an ancient text, you may benefit from the interesting speculations and extrapolations of these scholars. But, for the rest of us, it is probably enough to know that the biggest evidence of the antiquity of the Book of Mormon is the text of the Book of Mormon itself, and the book provides us very poor evidence for its antiquity. Rather--and this is where the LW comes in--we see plentiful evidence of its 19th century origins.

[_Gadianton]

So Water Dog rushes into the forum demanding critics bear the "burden of proof" and then it turns out archeology is entirely subjective and nothing can be proven. Well gee Water Dog, I guess the only option is for us to accept the Book of Mormon is true! You win!

[_Kishkumen]

So Water Dog rushes into the forum demanding critics bear the "burden of proof" and then it turns out archeology is entirely subjective and nothing can be proven. Well gee Water Dog, I guess the only option is for us to accept the Book of Mormon is true! You win!

As always, Dean Robbers comes to the crux of the matter with remarkable succinctness and wit.

[_beastie]

For those of you who are asserting that "there is no case for an ancient Book of Mormon that is worth considering," can I get a show of hands on how many of you have read (or at least skimmed) Sorenson's Mormon's Codex and Gardner's six-volume commentary? Just curious.

I've had dozens of lengthy conversations with Brant over the past decade or so. His only focus is finding Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon, as Kish referenced. His assertion that the Book of Mormon people were so minor and insignifcant that they couldn't reasonably be expected to have an impact on Mesoamerican history is untenable, unless you actively ignore what the Book of Mormon itself says. I go into this problem at length on my website on these two sections in particular:

http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com/holy-lord.html

http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com/politi ... power.html

I, and others, have already demonstrated how Sorenson can't be trusted to use sources properly. And now you're acting as if we don't read Mormon Codex that we can't possibly have an informed opinion????

How many of Sorenson's references have you checked so far? You're asking for trouble if you take anything he says at his word, without checking. And it will take work to check his references, because he often uses obscure sources. That may or may not be deliberate, but I have my suspicions.

[_Spanner]

Reading Sorenson's presentation linked above, and assuming he presented his best examples, I am unlikely to make a great effort to read the whole book, I can see myself doing endless reference checking, as I can't trust his use of them given his past behaviour. As noted above, if he has identified sites, then it would be a simple thing for some BYU archeologists to go and dig up the evidence which will still be there. For many of the other points you have to do major damage to the Book of Mormon.

For me, the issue of bronze age myths being presented as history invalidate the book's of own claims, and deutero Isaiah is the last straw. There isn't really any reason to read Sorenson. We know there were civilisations in mesoamerica and rhethere are bound to be sufficient similarities to claim numerous hits for Joseph. A clever person might do the same thing with the Hobbit, situating it in mesoamerica.

So it is not like finding some elephants or horses survived into the Mayan period would make me a believer again.

[_Themis]

For me, the issue of bronze age myths being presented as history invalidate the book's of own claims, and deutero Isaiah is the last straw. There isn't really any reason to read Sorenson.

There really is a lot of evidence against the Book of Mormon, nothing good for.

We know there were civilisations in mesoamerica and rhethere are bound to be sufficient similarities to claim numerous hits for Joseph. A clever person might do the same thing with the Hobbit, situating it in mesoamerica.

The biggest impact I see for now with the Late war is that it not only destroys many apologetic's used in favor of the Book of Mormon, but shows how many smart intelligent apologists have easily fallen victim of parallelomania. Something critics have said for a long time. Of course this also affects critics as well.

So it is not like finding some elephants or horses survived into the Mayan period would make me a believer again.

No, but then there existence in the Americas during Book of Mormon times would need to be something Joseph couldn't have thought possible for it to be evidence for the Book of Mormon. Many people back then knew about Elephantidae remains being found. If we found they did exist then it just removes a couple of pieces of evidence against the Book of Mormon. Funny that we focus on horse and elephants when others animals are listed that never existed here anciently and there is no real arguments trying to show they did.

[_Roger]

Kish wrote:

...and the book provides us very poor evidence for its antiquity. Rather--and this is where the LW comes in--we see plentiful evidence of its 19th century origins.

There is an obvious and in my view fatal contradiction between the "plentiful evidence of its 19th century origins" vs. the claims of those who were in the same room with Smith as the "translation" took place. Virtually every eye witness claimed that Smith received the translation from God as words appeared in the stone. Several have God himself correcting errors. This leaves no room for Smith to influence the text. Yet even as far back as B.H. Roberts, Mormon apologists have recognized a definite 19th century influence. D & C 9 is often used as a means of explaining that problem. But the two views are contradictory and in my opinion completely incompatible. The claim was that God gave Smith the translation word for word precisely because this was something an allegedly uneducated farm boy could never pull off on his own. And yet apologists are often quite comfortable allowing Joseph plenty of room to "study it out" in his mind.

It's been a while since I've looked into this, so I'm rusty, and I'm committing the sin of posting while only glancing through the thread (in my defense, who has the time to read through 70 pages?) however, you mentioned, Kish, at the beginning of this thread that you have never been very impressed with the Spalding authorship claims. I'm curious what makes you think these parallels are more impressive?

What I find extremely compelling about the Spalding parallels is the similarity between Smith's discovery narrative and Spalding's. Have you run across anything that compares to that?

All the best,

Roger

[_robuchan]

According to the Book a “narrow pass” connected the land northward with the land southward at a strategic point within the narrow neck. A minor elevation a number of miles long occurs in the geology of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec that provides a “pass” over which ancient (and modern) communication links run northward and southward above annual flood waters.

Bummer that Sorenson's very first point of his best ones is already messed up (northward, southward), because they have to completely ignore the theme of the book (explanation of where Native Americans came from) to make any of it come close to working.