The Most Serious Book of Mormon Anachronism (split from Midgley thread)

[_rcrocket]

For his mesoamerican expertise he's been cited in The Biblical Archaeologist several times as well as Biblical Archeology Review where his mesoamerican finds and conclusions were debated with equivalent scholars.

Specific citations (volume and issue numbers; article titles optional)?

Herschel Shanks, Against the Tide: An Interview with Maverick Scholar Cyrus Gordon, BAR 26:06 (Nov/Dec. 2000)

Herschel Shanks, "Danaans & Danites" BAR 2:02 (Jun. 1976)

"In America, Biblical Archaelogy Was -- And Still Is -- largely a Protestant Affair," (BAR 8:03, May 1982).

BAR invited Gordon to debate Cross. Cross, Phoenicians in Brazil?" BAR 5:01, Jan/Feb 1979.

His Mesoamerican work has been reviewed, as I point out, in the Atlantic, as well as in Carleton S. Coon, The American Historical Review, (June 1975); Eugene J. Fisher, "East and West," The Biblical Archaeolgist, (Spring 1980); Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, "The Were NOT Here before Columbus: Afrocentric Hyperdiffusionsim in the 1990s", Ethnohistory, (Spring 1997); George Carter, "The Quest for America," Geographical Review (Jan 1973); Nl. Rosenstein, "How Wide the Biblical World" The Biblical Archaeologist (Spring 1978).

Among others. This doesn't begin to list all the publications which gave him space. Agree or disagree, anybody who has studied Mesoamerican ethnology knows that Gordon is and has been one of the biggest players.

Beastie's style of argument really shows an astounding amount of naïvété when it comes to academic proofs and theories. I am not wedded to Gordon. I don't fiercely defend him as if my whole faith in God depends upon it. When I write in the field of history almost every source has its weaknesses, but I acknowledge minority and majority theories. Beastie's style of argument so bigoted that she can't see that perhaps a minority view exists. Instead, she attacks me personally on totally irrelevant matters. Why bother?

But, Gordon is one of the best there ever was in his field and it interests me that he championed this particular cause. One cannot ignore it as if it doesn't exist.

[_beastie]

Bob,

The problem is that you can't distinguish between a legitimate minority opinion and the lunatic fringe (see Demarest above). This provides, yet again, more evidence that you regularly accuse other people of behavior in which you are engaged yourself, such as this:

The problem you have on this board is that you have a pretender, Beastie, of somewhat intellectual capacity, who lacks the ability to apply discrimination and rigor to works of unequal ability to attempt to synthesize some truths or facts from the hubris. Instead, by sheer dint of the volume she puts out (does she have a life?) the more reasoned voices for discriminating synthesis are drowned out. Have an open mind on the subject.

I bolded the portion that describes you very well.

You have no discrimination when it comes to sources on this topic. You rely on dated sources that have largely been discredited or ignored due to their problematic origins. You avoid current scholars on the field most directly related. You have cited a tourist guide as evidence of the existence of the horse in ancient Mesoamerica, for heaven's sake.

There are minority opinions on this topic, to which I already referred - that there may have been transoceanic contact with the far east (not the middle east). Here's what Coe has to say on that topic:

From The Maya
Michael Coe
Sixth Edition
1999

page 57

There have been a number of contradictory theories to account for the rise of Maya civilization. One of the most persistent holds that the previously undistinguished Maya came under the influence of travelers from shores as distant as the China coast; as a matter of interest to the lay public, it should be categorically emphasized that no objects manufactured in any part of the Old World have been identified in any Maya site, and that ever since the days of Stephens and Catherwood few theories involving trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic contact have survived scientific scrutiny.

The possibility of some trans-Pacific influence on Mesoamerican cultures cannot, however, be so easily dismissed. Its most consistent proponent has been David Kelley of the University of Calgary, who has long pointed out that within the twenty named days of the 260-day calendar so fundamental to Mesoamericans is a sequence of animals that can be matched in similar sequence within the lunar zodiacs of many East and Southeast-Asian civilizations. To Kelly, this resemblance is far too close to be merely coincidental. Furthermore, Asian and Mesoamerican cosmological systems, which emphasize a quadripartite universe of four cardinal points associated with specific colors, plants, animals, and even gods, are amazingly similar. Both Asian and Mesoamerican religions see a rabbit on the face of the full moon (whereas we see a “Man in the Moon”), and they also associate this luminary with a woman weaving a loom.

Even more extraordinary, as the historian of science the late Joseph Needham reminded us, Chinese astronomers of the Han Dynasty as well as the ancient Maya used exactly the same complex calculations to give warning about the likelihood of lunar and solar eclipses. These data would suggest (but by no means prove) that there was direct contact across the Pacific. As oriental seafaring was always on a far higher technological plane than anything ever known in the prehispanic New World, it is possible that Asian intellectuals may have established some sort of contact with their Mesoamerican counterparts by the end of the Preclassic.

Lest this be thought to be idle speculation along the lines of the lunatic fringe books so common in this field, let me point out one further piece of evidence. Paul Tolstoy of the University of Montreal has made a meticulous study of the occurrence of the techniques and tools utilized in the manufacture of bark paper around the Pacific basin. It is his well-founded conclusion that this technology, known in ancient China, Southeast Asia and Indonesia, as well as in Mesoamerica, was diffused from eastern Indonesia to Mesoamerica, at a very early date. The main use of such paper in Mesoamerica was in the production of screenfold books to record ritual calendrical, and astronomical information. It is not unreasonable to suppose that it was through the medium of such books, which are still in use by Indoneisan people like the Batak, that an intellectual exchange took place.

This does not mean that the Maya – or any other Mesoamerican civilization – were merely derivative from Old World prototypes. What it does suggest is that at a few times in their early history, the Maya may have been receptive to some important ideas originating in the Eastern Hemisphere.

This is a minority opinion debated among real scholars with the expertise in the related field. Gordon's position is not. It is the lunatic fringe.

[_beastie]

Agree or disagree, anybody who has studied Mesoamerican ethnology knows that Gordon is and has been one of the biggest players.

This statement is a blatant lie.

[_beastie]

by the way, I have no doubt Gordon's claims got attention - like the attention he likely received in this article you cite:

"They Were NOT Here before Columbus: Afrocentric Hyperdiffusionism in the 1990s"

Abstract. This essay responds to a theory that has been aggressively promoted as fact by an influential group of Afrocentrists in recent years – that New World civilizations were created or were influenced by African visitors at key points in the centuries that preceded the European discovery of the Americas. As discussed in this essay, the theory is shown to have no support in the evidence that has been analyzed by specialists in various fields.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/483368

[_beastie]

Here is yet another hoax Cyrus uses as evidence: the Newark Holy Stones.

http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs ... 50301/1002

"You have to understand the historical situation at that time," Lepper said. "These (stones) were scientific forgeries, not a hoax, which is a practical joke. These were faked in order to advance or prove a scientific theory. People behind it were very, very serious."

The first stone unearthed had several flaws, including being found too close to the surface and the fact the writing was modern Hebrew for that time. Five months later, another stone, called the Decalogue Stone, was discovered much deeper, in the area of Jacksontown.

Again Wyrick found the stone, which seemed to answer all the flaws of the first stone. The stones were claimed to be conclusive proof that all men descended from Adam and Eve. After both stones later were found to be fake, and his premature death, the blame was put on Wyrick by former Newark Mayor Israel Dille.

[_Droopy]

Let me see further -- you've never read Gordon's works -- any of them. And you're commenting upon them?

Make no mistake, Beastie's primary source for much of her criticism, like some others here, is D. Michael Quinn. Beyond that, she quite clearly cherry picks the scholars and scholarly works useful for her polemical ends and discards other works unsuitable to that end.

She appears thoroughly unacquainted with the substantial corpus of ancient Spanish documentation of the civilizations and culture of the indigenous inhabitants of Latin American as they were found during the Spanish colonial period. Book of Mormon parallels? Well, the Spanish thought the Devil had arrived in the Americas before them and immersed the natives in a form of counterfeit Christianity, a feature of their civilization so obnoxious to them they felt it needed to be obliterated entirely, as much as was possible.

Beastie's claims regarding what effect Nephite civilization would have or should have had on the people's around them is so thoroughly speculative and presumptuous (no one, no one knows to any substantial degree what actually went on throughout South and Central American over the last two or three thousand years in anything outline form) that it can probably safely be set aside as rather tendentious; similar in both tone and assumption of certainty to the cock sure pontifications of Kevin Graham on equally uncertain and speculative ruminations.

Plausible Book of Mormon parallels and evidences are, in fact, substantial, but only supply us with various levels of plausibility, not decisive, argument stopping proofs. Beastie refuses to see the parallels and evidence as such because of a preexisting bias against the Book of Mormon and its claims that themselves are thoroughly resistant to rational augment or exploration, and hence, all really good potential evidence must be explained away through theoretical modeling of things, such as the nature of ancient political/religious socio-cultural systems of which we have, in point of fact, only fragmentary and incomplete knowledge (not including, of course, those civilizations we still know nothing of, and the presently existing languages we do know, but cannot read).

The really awful thing about atheism isn't its central premises, but its almost comatose resistance to what are clearly the severe epistemological and logical limitations of those premises. There are, regardless of smug claims of certitude where nothing approaching such certitude really exists, far more things in this world then Beastie, or Horatio, ever dreamed of in their philosophies.

[_Droopy]

I'm nonetheless humbled to reconsider my position that a Semiticist (and, I might add, one of the nation's best at the time) would be qualified to recognize Semitic cultural items outside of the Middle East. Got it. I'm learning. Keep feeding me valuable information. The "bozo" just put the pompous point on it; thanks.

Evidently you aren't learning much. You're just typing. If you tried reading, and then actually representing the ideas of others accurately, you would be much less tedious to deal with.

This coming from an utter intellectual vacuity.

Amazing.

[_Droopy]

Gazelam, what they heck are you talking about?

Does the fact that you don't know strike anyone as peculiar?

[_Droopy]

It becomes more apparent as time goes by, that Beastie is really a demagogue masquerading as an amateur scholar.

The dismissive credentialism that is almost her sole defense of her positions is evidence enough of that.

[_beastie]

Make no mistake, Beastie's primary source for much of her criticism, like some others here, is D. Michael Quinn.

LOL!! Yeah, that's why I quote him so much on my website. Oh, wait, I didn't quote him one time. Come on, droopy, back up at least one thing you say. Although I have no problem using Quinn when it's merited, he's certainly never been my "primary source", and particularly when the topic is the Book of Mormon. Apparently you're so utterly clueless you don't even realize Quinn actually believes in the Book of Mormon.

Beyond that, she quite clearly cherry picks the scholars and scholarly works useful for her polemical ends and discards other works unsuitable to that end.

Prove it. Provide the statements from Mesoamerican scholars that would contradict my criticisms of the Book of Mormon.

She appears thoroughly unacquainted with the substantial corpus of ancient Spanish documentation of the civilizations and culture of the indigenous inhabitants of Latin American as they were found during the Spanish colonial period. Book of Mormon parallels? Well, the Spanish thought the Devil had arrived in the Americas before them and immersed the natives in a form of counterfeit Christianity, a feature of their civilization so obnoxious to them they felt it needed to be obliterated entirely, as much as was possible.

Beastie's claims regarding what effect Nephite civilization would have or should have had on the people's around them is so thoroughly speculative and presumptuous (no one, no one knows to any substantial degree what actually went on throughout South and Central American over the last two or three thousand years in anything outline form) that it can probably safely be set aside as rather tendentious; similar in both tone and assumption of certainty to the cock sure pontifications of Kevin Graham on equally uncertain and speculative ruminations.

Plausible Book of Mormon parallels and evidences are, in fact, substantial, but only supply us with various levels of plausibility, not decisive, argument stopping proofs. Beastie refuses to see the parallels and evidence as such because of a preexisting bias against the Book of Mormon and its claims that themselves are thoroughly resistant to rational augment or exploration, and hence, all really good potential evidence must be explained away through theoretical modeling of things, such as the nature of ancient political/religious socio-cultural systems of which we have, in point of fact, only fragmentary and incomplete knowledge (not including, of course, those civilizations we still know nothing of, and the presently existing languages we do know, but cannot read).

The really awful thing about atheism isn't its central premises, but its almost comatose resistance to what are clearly the severe epistemological and logical limitations of those premises. There are, regardless of smug claims of certitude where nothing approaching such certitude really exists, far more things in this world then Beastie, or Horatio, ever dreamed of in their philosophies.

Have at it. Please. For once back up your claims. Share all that "substantial evidence". I expect documentation from reliable sources. And please don't waste our time with the generic garbage that Sorenson pedaled ("water is part of their religious imagery... and it is for Christianity, too!!! Wowee!!!!")