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

[_JustMe]

beastie

Since the Nephite polity was Judeo-Christian, that means that the Judeo-Christian ideology would have spread throughout Mesoamerica.

That's a serious stretch loaded with assumptions.

[_beastie]

That's a serious stretch loaded with assumptions.

You say this because you are ignorant of Mesoamerican history.

Religion was completely enmeshed in politics and culture. It was one and the same. Impossible to separate.

But, by all means, demonstrate how I'm incorrect. You'll have to actually read something about ancient Mesoamerica, however, to do so.

[_JustMe]

beastie

This contradicts the assertions of MAD folks whom I think of as the “know nuttin’s”, who assert that due to the fact that the Spaniards destroyed the vast amount of Maya literature, that we “can’t really know” anything about ancient Mesoamerica with any degree of certainty. Other than the fact that this ignores the fact that the written word is not necessarily the most reliable transmitter of reliable historical information, and that “dirt information” provides quite a bit of information to those who know how to read it, it also ignores what experts like Coe say: we do know quite a bit about ancient Mesoamerica.

Archaeologists have always stressed the much vaster importance of written documents over mere artifacts from ancient civilizations for understanding their beliefs, fears, hopes, prayers, etc.

J. Eric Thompson also knew a helluva lot more than all the other Mesoamericanists combined and he absolutely dominated the field of Mesoamerica for over 35 years. And he had it all wrong, but make no mistake about it, he knew. Baby he knew! And none other than Coe exposed him for his vast arrogance and for keeping Maya studies behind by decades, literally decades. We may actualy know a lot about the Maya, which I have no reason to doubt. This hardly means we can make final conclusions on much of anything however.

[_JustMe]

beastie

You say this because you are ignorant of Mesoamerican history.

Did your crystal ball reveal this to you? You know I am ignorant of Mesoamerican history exactly how? Oh! Silly me, I should have known...... you have an "inside informant" just like Mr. Scratch does, and he toldja! That sneaky lil devil!

[_beastie]

Beastie said:

Other than the fact that this ignores the fact that the written word is not necessarily the most reliable transmitter of reliable historical information, and that “dirt information” provides quite a bit of information to those who know how to read it, it also ignores what experts like Coe say: we do know quite a bit about ancient Mesoamerica.

justme responded:

Archaeologists have always stressed the much vaster importance of written documents over mere artifacts from ancient civilizations for understanding their beliefs, fears, hopes, prayers, etc.

“Understanding their beliefs, fears, hopes, prayers” is just one element of exploring ancient cultures. The dirt provides information about the size, the complexity, and interactions, about polities – sometimes more reliably than the written word, which is full of propaganda.

For example, William Dever, on page 47 of What did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? said –

Finally, the “revisionists,” for all their insistence on the Bible as literature, have a curiously simplistic sense of literary theory, particularly in their notions of literary production. For them, the Hebrew Bible must be either reliable history (which it is clearly not), or blatant propaganda. They see no middle ground. They do not appreciate the fact that all literature in effect is fundamentally “propaganda”, that is, self-conscious expression of a worldview, usually in the advocacy of a cause. That the Hebrew Bible is in that sense “propaganda” is not in dispute among responsible scholars; the only question is whether or not such propaganda reflects anything of the real world of the time. And it inevitably does, otherwise it would not have been credible for those to whom it was originally addressed. Propaganda characteristically and deliberately exaggerates and distorts; but it does not freely invent. Even a caricature is an accurate, recognizable portrait in some respects, or otherwise it would have no impact. The task of the real historian is to get at the “history behind the history” in the Hebrew Bible, as we shall attempt in the following. The inability of the revisionists to separate fact from fiction in the ancient texts at their disposal, biblical or other, as discriminating commentators must do, is one of their more conspicuous failures.

Text is extremely useful, but it must be evaluated for accuracy in conjunction with “dirt” archaeology.

Dever goes on to explain how dirt archaeology “speaks” to archaeologists just as well as dirt does, on page 66 of the same text:

If the postprocessualists have set us back again upon the right rack in studying the past – assaying to write history based on archaeological data- we must confront once again questions raised earlier. What kind of history do we want? How do artifacts constitute data, and are such data primary or secondary? Here we may take a clue from the postprocessualists themselves. One of their persistent themes is “reading” the artifacts, not unlike reading texts. In fact, artifacts are texts, and similarly informative when skillfully and sympathetically interpreted. (Won’t that be news to the revisionists?)

We might begin to move beyond this impasse by developing a tentative outline of a “grammar” of texts, based on what I would argue are parallels between artifacts and texts. Here, in chart form, is what we must know in order to “read” or interpret texts and artifacts, both as “objects” in themselves and as “signs”.

(Note - due to format problem, I'm altering the chart format)

Texts compared to Artifacts:

Text – writing system Artifact – “language” of material culture
Text- vocabulary Artifact – artifacts of all types
Text – grammar Artifact – formation process
Text – syntax Artifact – ecological, socio-cultural context
Text – author, composition, date Artifact – date, technology
Text – cultural context Artifact – overall historical setting
Text – intent Artifact – “mental template” of makers
Text – later transmission, interpretation Artifact – natural-cultural transformation
Text – what the text “symbolizes” Artifact – what the artifact “symbolizes”
Text - how its “meaning” is relevant today Artifact – how its “meaning” is relevant today

Justme:

J. Eric Thompson also knew a helluva lot more than all the other Mesoamericanists combined and he absolutely dominated the field of Mesoamerica for over 35 years. And he had it all wrong, but make no mistake about it, he knew. Baby he knew! And none other than Coe exposed him for his vast arrogance and for keeping Maya studies behind by decades, literally decades. We may actualy know a lot about the Maya, which I have no reason to doubt. This hardly means we can make final conclusions on much of anything however.

And how was Coe able to do that?

I’ve always said that if the Book of Mormon was actually an ancient Mesoamerican document, it would be the find of the century. Scholars would be rushing to it in order to obtain greater information about ancient Mesoamerica. And not only are nonLDS archaeologists not rushing to it in order to obtain greater information about ancient Mesoamerica, but LDS archaeologists or apologists aren’t claiming that it provides additional information about ancient Mesoamerica, either.

Did your crystal ball reveal this to you? You know I am ignorant of Mesoamerican history exactly how? Oh! Silly me, I should have known...... you have an "inside informant" just like Mr. Scratch does, and he toldja! That sneaky lil devil!

This ain’t rocket science. Unless you are deliberately trying to present yourself as ill-informed about ancient Mesoamerica, you are relying on apologia alone for your information. But, go right ahead and prove me wrong. Start with explaining how my statement here:

Since the Nephite polity was Judeo-Christian, that means that the Judeo-Christian ideology would have spread throughout Mesoamerica.

is fundamentally misguided.

[_beastie]

You overstate your own ability to know what Daniel Peterson can and cannot do, of course........

By all means, demonstrate a way out of the conundrum I described.

[_Ray A]

I understand Dan's analogies, but even if we take the idea of continental drift, it wasn't discovered by a lone radical toiling upward in the night. Most initially rejected theories have had minor support from other specialists in the field.

Continental drift:

The hypothesis that the continents once formed a single landmass, broke up, and drifted to their present locations was fully elaborated by Alfred Wegener in 1912. [2] Although Wegener's theory was formed independently and was more complete than those of his predecessors, Wegener would later credit a number of past authors with similar ideas: [3] [4] Franklin Coxworthy (between 1848 and 1890), [5] Roberto Mantovani (between 1889 and 1909), William Henry Pickering (1907) [6] and Frank Bursley Taylor (1908).

The notion that continents have not always been at their present positions was suggested as early as 1596 by the Dutch map maker Abraham Ortelius in the third edition of his work Thesaurus Geographicus. Ortelius suggested that the Americas, Eurasia and Africa were once joined and have since drifted apart "by earthquakes and floods", creating the modern Atlantic Ocean. For evidence, he wrote: "The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three continents." Francis Bacon commented on Ortelius' idea in 1620, as did Benjamin Franklin and Alexander von Humboldt in later centuries.

Even in the case of Mendel, theories of genetics were independently being studied before Mendel. I read about this long ago, but can't remember where, but here is a link that partly explains it:

Even before MENDEL, it was already known that plants have a sexuality. It was also understood that both parents contribute equally to the procreation of their offspring. Experiments with hybrids became common around the turn of the 19th century and led to several new insights. In the 20th century, genetics developed into one of the fastest growing fields of modern biology. In the second half of this century, the molecular approach to genetics gained an enormous importance.

Consequently mother and father contribute equally and specifically to the procreation of the bastard. KÖLREUTER did also cultivate bastards of species of the genera Dianthus, Matthiola, Hyoscyamus, Verbascum, Hibiscus, Datura, Cucurbita, Aquilegia, Cheiranthus etc. But his studies left many questions unanswered. Cross-breedings were performed at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century with a whole range of more or less related plant species by a number of researchers with different success and not always clearly evaluable results. Most cultivators had practical aims. They were, for example, interested in a new colour of a certain ornamental plant, but took hardly any interest in the underlying processes.

A short notice of the French researcher and farmer M. SAGERET (1763-1851) deals with cross-breeding in the family of Curcubitaceae. For the first time in the history of plant hybrids the characters of the parental generation were grouped into opposing pairs. He found thus, when crossing two melon races of the species Curcumis melo L. the following segregation of characters: (see link)

Mendel was the first to experimentally demonstrate it, but not the first to hypothesise.

Does the Book of Mormon have such independent support? One critic wrote of Margaret Barker, one "apparent" supporter, though Barker has never really been clear on her stand re the Book of Mormon as history:

This is the basis of the second major problem: her complete lack of any historical analysis. There is no sense that traditions change and develop over time and that different contexts will provide different interpretations of the past and the present. She doesn’t seem to have any critical evaluation of why these religious elements were changed, or why they were “preserved.” Instead, the narrative theme of the changes is that of apostasy from a pure, original, true worship. While this theme will sound familiar to LDS readers, it represents an unsophisticated view of historical developments. A more responsible historical approach would be to see the multiplicity of claims to authority and authenticity, and that there were more than two views of the temple which survive from ancient Israel. This problem I think is repeated frequently in her historical method, which can best be described as parallelomania combined with vivid imagination. At best, she is simply uncritically repeating the historical imaginations of pious ancient Christians and Jews. At worst, she is producing her own pious imaginations and attempting to attribute them to early Christians and ancient Jews.

The missing link in her evaluation is that the information that she actually surveys really tells you how early Christians, Muslims, second temple Jews, and 20th century missionaries appealed to First Temple Judaism and to ancient Israelite religion as a basis for legitimacy and authenticity. There is no reason to suspect that what they actually said about that has any historical basis whatsoever. In the same way, Barker and many LDS thinkers are engaged in the same kind of project, to appeal to pure “origins” of Israelite religion in order to produce authenticity about contemporary beliefs and practices. Such an approach is necessarily partial and selective. Instead of learning about ancient Israel, we learn about those who are attempting to recount its history. If Barker’s work has any value, it is in the exposure of this theme in various religious traditions up until today.

To the contrary, even Mormon archaeologists like the Mathenys have said it just doesn't fit. If there is independent non-Mormon support for a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon, I haven't seen it, but rather all of it seems contrary to what has been proposed by people like Sorenson and Clark, et. al.

[_Trevor]

Thanks for that post Ray. That was very helpful. I especially was interested in the critique of Margaret Barker. Would you mind sharing the source?

[_Ray A]

Thanks for that post Ray. That was very helpful. I especially was interested in the critique of Margaret Barker. Would you mind sharing the source?

My Margaret Barker Experience

I accept American Express credit cards.

[_Ray A]

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.

That is, gagged. This is the part that always disturbs me. If the glory of God is intelligence, and we should seek truth from where ever it may come, there always seems to be some ecclestical qualifiers. And it reminds me of apostle Lyman's remark to B.H.Roberts regarding his critical studies of the Book of Mormon. "Will it promote our cause?"