LDS Joseph Smith's Claim of an Apostasy is a Lie

[dzheremi]

I'm just trying to get a sense of what you're actually arguing for. So far it seems to be "the Mormon narrative is correct, regardless of how baseless it is", which is no longer a claim about language in particular, so I'm not interested in it. Again, it's nobody's business if Mormons want to believe things with no evidence. It only becomes anyone else's business when they claim things that are demonstrably false, or claim to have some sort of evidence to back up their claims that they do not actually have.

Unfortunately, the Mormon claims regarding the historical reality of 'Reformed Egyptian' fall into "Not Even Wrong" territory, so you're right: we are going in circles, because we don't appear to be able to meet in a neutral place where we can agree as two human beings living in the actual physical world about the difference between and evidentiary weight of the existence of something vs. the non-existence of something.

For anyone reading this who might not be aware of the concept of "Not Even Wrong"-ness, here is a short excerpt from Wiki:

The phrase "not even wrong" describes any argument that purports to be scientific but fails at some fundamental level, usually in that it contains a terminal logical fallacy or it cannot be falsified by experiment (i.e. tested with the possibility of being rejected), or cannot be used to make predictions about the natural world.

The phrase is generally attributed to theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or sloppy thinking.[1][2] Rudolf Peierls documents an instance in which "a friend showed Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not even wrong'."[3] This is also often quoted as "That is not only not right, it is not even wrong," or "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!" in Pauli's native German. Peierls remarks that quite a few apocryphal stories of this kind have been circulated and mentions that he listed only the ones personally vouched by him. He also quotes another example when Pauli replied to Lev Landau, "What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not."[3]

^^^

This is what Mormon linguistic and historical claims are like. They're not only not right, they're so far off from being even scientifically falsifiable that they're not even wrong. It seems like to some in the LDS community this is akin to being possible or even plausible, but that's really not how things work. Again, I could claim to have found ancient Martian Arabic that says whatever I want it to say, but just because nobody could 'prove' that I didn't (since there's no evidence that it isn't Martian Arabic...) wouldn't mean that my claim is supported by evidence. Since I have the only sample, and I control what it says by virtue of the fact that I am the 'interpreter' of it (in this scheme where for whatever reason I wouldn't be dismissed as a fraud outright... *cough*), the claim and the evidence are essentially one and the same. It's not anything that exists outside of my claims about it, so it is impossible to scientifically verify or discount. And hence it really has no value as a claim. It's a fictional story, and nobody should take it seriously as a historical or linguistic claim. This is exactly the case with the LDS' 'Reformed Egyptian', as well.

 

[withwonderingawe]

Look, according to the Book of Mormon they created a shorthand Egyptian to fit their own manner of speaking to use on the plates and that's it. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[BigDaddy4]

Look, according to the Book of Mormon they created a shorthand Egyptian to fit their own manner of speaking to use on the plates and that's it. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

And you know the BoM is correct how?

 

[Peter1000]

Again, WWA, Egyptian is not a Semitic language. All that stuff giving Nephi this or that derivation via Semitic is pretty irrelevant, though it may be useful in establishing the place of an Egyptian form relative to other members of Afroasiatic (which is not what you are trying to do by claiming that it is specifically Egyptian, I take it).

Looking at the Coptic, ⲛⲉϥ (nef) does mean 'sailor' (Crum 238b). I could find no evidence that it means 'captain, skipper, chief of sailors', though perhaps the BYU members linked to in your passage don't use standard reference works like Crum's dictionary (don't know why; everyone else does, and it has been republished several times since its initial publication in the 1930s, since no one has surpassed it since then).

So what am I supposed to make of this, exactly? For one thing, all of your sources are either BYU/LDS-affiliated, which are not scholarly (I'm not saying people from BYU or the LDS community can't be scholars, only that they'd have to publish something outside of this sphere to be taken seriously by non-LDS people), or appear to be claiming things contradicted by non-LDS sources, like Crum. I did look up the non-LDS footnotes and in the one reference I could find online (Ranke's book of personal names, which is quite good at first blush) it does seem that nf-w appears as a personal name, with the variant nfw-j. In Coptic, noufi means 'good'; the qualitative form retains the final [r] that one of your sources says dropped out by a certain point ('a thousand years earlier' than when exactly?), yielding "noufer". Neither of these sound like what I've heard LDS people call your book's protagonist, "Nephi" (pronounced like Nee-fai, hence my earlier attempt to give it some kind of Egyptian etymology along those lines). The problem with the attempted Egyptian etymology here is that if your source is right that Nephi appeared as a personal name not after the New Kingdom, then it would have to have fallen out of use by the end of the 11th century BC, as the New Kingdom itself lasted from 16th century BC to the 11th century BC. All LDS sources I've seen say that Nephi lived in the 6th century BC, which is five centuries after this name would've stopped appearing in Egyptian records. So again, it's hard to see how your claims are supported by your sources as I'm presuming you want them to be.

Readers of this thread, which do you think is more likely: That this Nephi person would've had an Egyptian name which would have been unknown as a personal name in that language starting hundreds of years before he was ever born, or that this nfw-j/noufi/Nephi thing is pure coincidence (and something of a stretch, too) and its significance to LDS scholars says a lot more about the religious claims that they are trying to prove than anything scientific?

Personally, I'm going with the second option, which again is fine. Just stop trying to present your book as being historically and scientifically grounded and we don't need to be at loggerheads over anything. It is nobody's business if LDS people want to believe and preach that an Israelite with an anachronistic Egyptian name came to North America and became a founder of and prophet to a great civilization there is absolutely zero evidence of, so long as LDS recognize that this is what they are doing. I mean, I believe that a virgin was chosen by God to bear the Son of God who became incarnate, lived, preached, was crucified on the cross, died, and was resurrected after three days, and there is exactly zero physical evidence for any of that, either. There is, as I understand it (not an anthropologist here), quite a bit of evidence for the existence of Jesus as a man in first century Palestine, who was at least known to non-Christian writers of his day and immediately afterwards as a leader of a community which emerged from first century Messianic Jewish movements, and who was eventually crucified by the Romans. Beyond that, these are all faith claims, for which there is zero scientific evidence, and there will never be any forthcoming, because...well, that's not how science works. The incarnation, the resurrection, etc. are not scientifically falsifiable. Therefore they are non-scientific by their very nature. So believe me, I am sympathetic to the situation that LDS people find themselves in. It's a place where all religious people have to come and find their own peace eventually.

So just as I am as a Coptic Orthodox Christian, if I were a Mormon, I imagine I would have to be content with those aspects of my faith that are similarly not scientifically falsifiable, and leave the actual science to actual scientists, not self-interested propagators of the Mormon narrative as science or history (linguistics, genetics, etc.) -- because it clearly isn't that.

You finally have to end your discussion with this: "because it clearly isn't that, as far as the evidence that exists today and as far as I know today." Then we would appreciate your knowledge and your understanding and your work. But I will say thank you for your words, it was interesting. Maybe some day you will help us make a breakthrough with Jesus and with Lehi, Nephi, Laman, Lemuel, and Sam. Keep up the good work, keep praying that God will allow you to use that degree for something wonderful.

 

[withwonderingawe]

And you know the BoM is correct how?

Because I read it, pondered on it and then prayed on it then the Holy Spirit testified, there is no other way to know.

 

[dzheremi]

You finally have to end your discussion with this: "because it clearly isn't that, as far as the evidence that exists today and as far as I know today." Then we would appreciate your knowledge and your understanding and your work. But I will say thank you for your words, it was interesting. Maybe some day you will help us make a breakthrough with Jesus and with Lehi, Nephi, Laman, Lemuel, and Sam. Keep up the good work, keep praying that God will allow you to use that degree for something wonderful.

Well that's just it, Peter: If it's there, then there's no reason not to evaluate it and treat it as any other language. The Gospels were written in Greek (disregarding the 'Aramaic primacy' argument that a minority of not-surprisingly usually Syriac people make), and since we know Greek, we can know what they say and what they don't say. So there's no real contradiction in saying "I believe in the claims of this text as a matter of faith, and I can subject it to the same evaluation as I would any ancient document." The problem with the Reformed Egyptian claims of the LDS is that they don't have the supporting evidence that they would need to be able to claim that this is a real form of Egyptian that actually existed in the world, and this is how it is demonstrably Egyptian, and so on -- or for that matter that it is a real writing system used to write any language that ever actually existed (for those who would prefer to say that it was used to write some other language, and is not actually Egyptian, it was just called that by Lehi or whatever). So it is not supportable on any front, as far as I can see.

And of course to support it dispassionately (without favor or disfavor for LDS faith claims, but just as a language or writing system that really existed), we would need this kind of documentary evidence. For all the reasons that I have already given over and over in this thread, I feel pretty confident in saying that it will not be forthcoming at any point in the future. But of course I wouldn't be much of a linguist if I said that I was not willing to entertain the possibility of other, presently unknown dialects of Egyptian surfacing in the future (there are already at least half a dozen accepted dialects of Coptic alone). I don't think Reformed Egyptian as painted by the LDS would be one of them, but we cannot simply close the book on this language just because some people who are not dispassionately interested in Egyptian might claim this or that about it. Those people are quite simply mistaken in their claims, but the search for evidence may continue unabated anyway. So I would welcome any such evidence, but to be accepted it would have to subject to scientific scrutiny just as any other linguistic evidence is.

 

[mmksparbud]

Look, according to the Book of Mormon they created a shorthand Egyptian to fit their own manner of speaking to use on the plates and that's it. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

No---Mormons have made a mountain out of a nothing. He is just putting the mountain back into the less than molehill that it is. You've glorified these writings that you insist are from God. We believe the bible is from God--so you can believe BOM and the rest are from God--but to tell us that our book is corrupted and yours are the truth because JS said so is not going to endear you to anyone. So you can keep your golden calf, but don't tell us it the real truth--cause it ain't.

 

[fatboys]

Well that's just it, Peter: If it's there, then there's no reason not to evaluate it and treat it as any other language. The Gospels were written in Greek (disregarding the 'Aramaic primacy' argument that a minority of not-surprisingly usually Syriac people make), and since we know Greek, we can know what they say and what they don't say. So there's no real contradiction in saying "I believe in the claims of this text as a matter of faith, and I can subject it to the same evaluation as I would any ancient document." The problem with the Reformed Egyptian claims of the LDS is that they don't have the supporting evidence that they would need to be able to claim that this is a real form of Egyptian that actually existed in the world, and this is how it is demonstrably Egyptian, and so on -- or for that matter that it is a real writing system used to write any language that ever actually existed (for those who would prefer to say that it was used to write some other language, and is not actually Egyptian, it was just called that by Lehi or whatever). So it is not supportable on any front, as far as I can see.

And of course to support it dispassionately (without favor or disfavor for LDS faith claims, but just as a language or writing system that really existed), we would need this kind of documentary evidence. For all the reasons that I have already given over and over in this thread, I feel pretty confident in saying that it will not be forthcoming at any point in the future. But of course I wouldn't be much of a linguist if I said that I was not willing to entertain the possibility of other, presently unknown dialects of Egyptian surfacing in the future (there are already at least half a dozen accepted dialects of Coptic alone). I don't think Reformed Egyptian as painted by the LDS would be one of them, but we cannot simply close the book on this language just because some people who are not dispassionately interested in Egyptian might claim this or that about it. Those people are quite simply mistaken in their claims, but the search for evidence may continue unabated anyway. So I would welcome any such evidence, but to be accepted it would have to subject to scientific scrutiny just as any other linguistic evidence is.

Having the gold plates would prove nothing. I will tell you why. From your perspective there should only be one meaning. That I agree with with. I call it a the lure intent of the author. The problem is that word don't mean the same thing in any language. You know this yet in order for you to believe that reformed Egyptian exists you have to have proof that it is real. You have to have a copy of in your hands. Let's suppose that the church had them all along and said here they are. You can't read them because they are in a form that has been changed to fit. Let's suppose that the current prophet said that God revealed the key thing translating it. You started to translate it and it does not translate perfect into the Book of Mormon. Ah ha the church is false. I will explain a problematic this. You did not translate it the same way Joseph Smith did. The translators or the brim and thinking did not work by just reading what it says. It worked through the knowledge and understanding of Joseph Smith. One of the reasons he did not get the plates the first time he saw them was he would not be able to translate it with enough knowledge to have a more pure intent nth at is why I believe that one of the reasons Joseph did not retranslated the 116 pages is because it would have not been perfect word for word translation because his knowledge had increased. His understanding had increased. So his perspective would have saw things slightly different and the critics would have jumped on that and you know it is true. Anyone can find fault. Anyone can disbelieve. I have a neighbor who says he has seen God the Father and Mother. To be honest with you I struggle with that. I don't disbelieve but I don't jump up and say " I believe" either.

 

[mmksparbud]

It doesn't matter whether it could be deciphered or not---It would be here able to be examined and tested--like the shroud of Turin. It doesn't matter if there are skeptics, if it is the actual burial cloth of Jesus or not--it is there, seen, examined, tested---not somebody's made up story.

 

[withwonderingawe]

In Abraham 1 he gives a list of gods ;

For their hearts were set to do evil, and were wholly turned to the god of Elkenah, and the god of Libnah, and the god of Mahmackrah, and the god of Korash, and the god of Pharaoh, king of Egypt;

Some Mormons have bent over backwards trying to make something out of these names but the answer is very simple. These are not the names of the gods but are either people or place names of the those who worshiped the gods.

Compare it with Ex 4 “ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” Abraham is not a god but Yahweh is the God of Abraham.

Joshua 10:29
Then Joshua passed from Makkedah, and all Israel with him, unto Libnah, and fought against Libnah:

Elkanah is the name of Hannah’s husband in Samuel 1 but this takes place hundreds of years before that, but it shows there were similar names. On the other hand it might be a place name. “And the Lord broke down the altar of Elkenah, and of the gods of the land, and utterly destroyed”

So these gods we see under the lion bed in facsimile 1, the four sons of Horus, are the gods worshiped by these people.

*The god of the Pharaoh was Sobek and his idol was a crocodile, in facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham, Joseph correctly identifies him as “The idolatrous god of Pharaoh”

There is another odd name mentioned in Abr 1 Shagreel. We do not know if it is a place or person. Abraham says his god is the sun and we know Ra was the Egyptian sun god. Ra was merged with Sobek and became Sobek-Ra. He was depicted as a man with a crocodile head and then a round disk of Ra over his head.

Abr 1
9 And it came to pass that the priest made an offering unto the god of Pharaoh, and also unto the god of Shagreel, even after the manner of the Egyptians. Now the god of Shagreel was the sun.

*I'm adding to my thoughts here, I went through the first facsimile sometime ago when someone posted a video at beliefnet trying to show it was an ordinary funeral facsimiles from the Book of the Dead. One of the websites I went to which was trying to show how Joseph made this all up used an Egyptologist from Columbia University. I was a little curious about him, turned out he was not quite an ex-Mormon with an ax to grind. I then realized how careful one has to be. Pro Mormon will of course lean one way and the disgruntled will lean another.

* Within Mormon circles there is a little discussion on who actually drew in the picture, there is a lot of doubt that it was Abraham because this must have been past down for generations, kind of obvious. There seems to be some editing by someone who calls himself 'I'. "...and that you may have a knowledge of this altar, I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record." Apparently editing records like this wasn't all that unusual, the person doing it just assumes you know he's doing it. In Malachi the speaker moves from the Lord to Malachi and back again several times with no grand announcement.

There is another little argument about the gods under the lion table. They are four sons of Horus and I don't know why some Mormon scholars want to stick to the idea that they represent the "god of Elkenah" as if there was a god named that. As I went back through my notes I saw that I missed this; Note that in chapter 1 verse 7 it says "The priest of Elkenah was also the priest of Pharaoh" Pharaoh was a person thus Elkenah was person who shared a priest with Pharaoh. The jar under the take with the falcon head is Qebehsenuef and he was worshiped by Elkenah. I understand Nibley agrees with me, never read anything of his. Joseph did get another point right, in facsimile 2 he says the four "Represents this earth in its four quarters." which they do.

• Imsety - human form - direction South - protected the liver - protected by Isis.
• Duamutef - jackal form - direction East - protected the stomach - protected by Neith.
• Hapi - baboon form - direction North - protected the lungs - protected by Nephthys.
• Qebehsenuef - hawk form - direction West - protected the intestines - protected by his mother Serket

*These facsimile were a cottage industry, the basic outline would be there and then the person buying it would ask the scribe to fill in the different items they wanted. My first question came with the claim that the bird in our picture was a Ba, the Ba represented the soul or spirit leaving the body and is a falcon with a human head.

But our poorly drawn little bird looks nothing like a Ba at all, so I doubted it greatly. Instead I think it is indeed a falcon which represented deity. It was mostly used for Horus but sometimes for Montu and Ra. Joseph claimed it represented "The Angel of the Lord" or deity.

/oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/Offprint%20-%20Scalf,%20Foy%20-%20Birds%20in%20the%20Religious%20Landscape%20-%20OIMP%2035.pdf

*I did use non Mormon sources through most of my searching and as I searched I noticed how poorly drawn this facsimile was. In all the other cases of Ba drawings the lines are precisely drawn like the one above. Sometimes their wings are spread out, very neatly. But our little bird has droopy wings and the face is a little messed up. It makes it pretty clear that an amateur drew it. Someone had at the beginning of their scroll an unfinished facsimile and drew in their own pictures.


*Joseph calls the lines at the bottom "the pillars of heaven"
I found this at Rediscover Ancient Egypt with Tehuti Research Foundation www.egypt-tehuti.org/temples.html

As described in various Ancient Egyptian texts, the temple or pylon is:
...as the pillars of heaven, [a temple] like the heavens, abiding upon their four pillars ... shining like the horizon of heaven ... a place of rest for the lord of neteru [gods], made like his throne that is in heaven ...like Ra when he rises in the horizon ... like Atum’s great house of heaven.

*And Figure 12 there are wavy lines which surround the crocodile Joseph says this "signifying expanse, or the firmament over our heads… to be high, or the heavens …"

This from the same website as above;
"This wall isolated the temple from its surroundings which, symbolically, represented the forces of chaos. Metaphorically, the mud resulted from the union of heaven and earth. The brick wall itself was therefore set in wavy courses to symbolize the primeval waters, representing the first stage of creation."

The crocodile came from the waters so somehow they thought the waters as heaven. I think it comes from Gen 1:6-7. The ancient peoples did share their myths back and forth a lot.

The point here is the person who drew this was trying to show they were in a temple.

Well I'm done for now, I'll give ya some more later.

 

[BigDaddy4]

Because I read it, pondered on it and then prayed on it then the Holy Spirit testified, there is no other way to know.

The Holy Spirit cannot testify a falsehood is true. From metallurgy to crops to animals and more, some things described in the BoM just aren't true. I would question the spirit that is testifying to you.

 

[fatboys]

The Holy Spirit cannot testify a falsehood is true. From metallurgy to crops to animals and more, some things described in the BoM just aren't true. I would question the spirit that is testifying to you.

Your wrong again. Let's suppose that while translating the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith came across a discription of an animal that ridden or was hunted or milked? What would you call them. I use to raise a lot of cattle and run them in the summer time on the forest. We would pasture them in several different areas that were fenced. It covered about 35000 acres. I ran with other cattlemen and we were in an association. There was about 1800 head run there and in the fall we would gather them up. We would get the bulk of them out in the first two weeks. We would be riding everyday from sun up till dark trying to find them. After two weeks it would be the fun time. There would be just a couple Cowboys and the herder. Sometimes we would get some and other times we would get skunked. Many times we would run onto hunters and we would ask if thy had seen any cattle. Almost every time they had seen anything they would call them cows. Didn't matter if they were a bull or a calf they were all cows. So when we found them we would laugh at what they told there was.

 

[mmksparbud]

Your wrong again. Let's suppose that while translating the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith came across a discription of an animal that ridden or was hunted or milked? What would you call them. I use to raise a lot of cattle and run them in the summer time on the forest. We would pasture them in several different areas that were fenced. It covered about 35000 acres. I ran with other cattlemen and we were in an association. There was about 1800 head run there and in the fall we would gather them up. We would get the bulk of them out in the first two weeks. We would be riding everyday from sun up till dark trying to find them. After two weeks it would be the fun time. There would be just a couple Cowboys and the herder. Sometimes we would get some and other times we would get skunked. Many times we would run onto hunters and we would ask if thy had seen any cattle. Almost every time they had seen anything they would call them cows. Didn't matter if they were a bull or a calf they were all cows. So when we found them we would laugh at what they told there was.

The hunters who couldn't tell the difference between and bull or a cow were led by the Holy Spirit????!!!

 

[fatboys]

The hunters who couldn't tell the difference between and bull or a cow were led by the Holy Spirit????!!!

You missed my point. I thought you might. See some people don't know the difference when the see cattle and so they just call them all cows. Now do understand?

 

[mmksparbud]

You missed my point. I thought you might. See some people don't know the difference when the see cattle and so they just call them all cows. Now do understand?

I understood that---what has that got to do with the Holy Spirit statement that you quoted with that??

 

[fatboys]

I understood that---what has that got to do with the Holy Spirit statement that you quoted with that??

You really don't want to understand. I'm not expecting you to accept these teachings but at least make it look like you understand. I remember when I first went out on my mission no we were at the mission home in Salt Lake City. We got to visit with an apostle and ask any question we wanted. Some of the questions were really good questions but then there were some elders that asked the most stupid questions. I hadn't been active in the church very long but could have answered it. They wasted my time and everyone's else's time. It's like listening to a reporter at a news conference asking the most stupid question that had been asked and answered twenty times before. I feel this way here sometimes. It's like years ago I was teaching the sixteen year olds in Sunday school. Like ten boys and one girl. Must have been a full moon that year. Anyway they were the most rambunctious group. I would be teaching them a particular doctrine and the spirit would be strong and their attention would be focused on what I was teaching. Just at that point where I thought they could feel the spirit one of them would pipe up and interrupt with "hey did you see so and so bike yesterday". I knew they were possessed. That is the same frustration I feel here.

 

[withwonderingawe]

The Holy Spirit cannot testify a falsehood is true. From metallurgy to crops to animals and more, some things described in the BoM just aren't true. I would question the spirit that is testifying to you.

Ya don't think Mormons haven't thought that through? In the Bible it has "Tubal-cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron" well before Noah and according to some calculations that would be before 4000bc. But the Bronzes and Iron ages didn't start until 3000 bc, so now what are we to believe? Throw the Bible out or just take it on faith and assume we don't know everything.

The same thing can be said about the Book of Mormon there are something which are amazingly right and other things which as yet have not been found. Those which study these things have looked at the different lengths of marches and some many days of travel and decided the Book of Mormon took place in a 500 mile radius. If one could locate those 500 miles then maybe we would find more.

The Book of Mormon speaks of a deforestation and there was one in Central America. It was caused by all the building they were doing and the cement they used. Well the Book of Mormon has them building with cement. It speaks of a maritime industry and the Myans had a large one, they shipped things all over the place. It talks about pearls, not diamonds and rubies but of pearls. Myans had pearls.

If we look at the horses there is something very interesting. First the Jaradties brought their animals with them, so not a lot. Plus these people left sometime shortly after the tower and at that time horses weren't any bigger than today's pony. They were first domesticated around 3000 bc and used for food. In the Book of Mormon no one ever rides a horse, no one jumps up on their horse and rides away. Instead they are treated more like a flock.

"and having reserved for themselves provisions, and horses and cattle, and flocks of every kind, that they might subsist for the space of seven years" 3 Nephi 4

There is one place where it says "they should prepare his horses and chariots" so it does seem at least the king had some sort of cart that was either pulled or carried by these little horses. At some point it is assumed they just all died off or were eaten.

So we have to take it on faith just as much and you do the Bible.

 

[mmksparbud]

You really don't want to understand. I'm not expecting you to accept these teachings but at least make it look like you understand. I remember when I first went out on my mission no we were at the mission home in Salt Lake City. We got to visit with an apostle and ask any question we wanted. Some of the questions were really good questions but then there were some elders that asked the most stupid questions. I hadn't been active in the church very long but could have answered it. They wasted my time and everyone's else's time. It's like listening to a reporter at a news conference asking the most stupid question that had been asked and answered twenty times before. I feel this way here sometimes. It's like years ago I was teaching the sixteen year olds in Sunday school. Like ten boys and one girl. Must have been a full moon that year. Anyway they were the most rambunctious group. I would be teaching them a particular doctrine and the spirit would be strong and their attention would be focused on what I was teaching. Just at that point where I thought they could feel the spirit one of them would pipe up and interrupt with "hey did you see so and so bike yesterday". I knew they were possessed. That is the same frustration I feel here.

The statement is question was this:

The Holy Spirit cannot testify a falsehood is true. From metallurgy to crops to animals and more, some things described in the BoM just aren't true. I would question the spirit that is testifying to you.

So no--0I do not understand how ignorant people ignorant people who can not tell the difference between a cow and a bull is relevant to the Holy Spirit!--Sorry--but I don't see it. I lived in North Dakota for 4 1/2 years---hunters--and every year, farmers literally had orange sheets they placed over their cattle with the word COW on it to try and keep these idiot, drunk hunters from shooting them!!---this still has nothing to do the Holy Spirit. Not trying to be obtuse--I simply have no idea what you mean as an answer to that statement.

 

[mmksparbud]

Ya don't think Mormons haven't thought that through? In the Bible it has "Tubal-cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron" well before Noah and according to some calculations that would be before 4000bc. But the Bronzes and Iron ages didn't start until 3000 bc, so now what are we to believe? Throw the Bible out or just take it on faith and assume we don't know everything.

The same thing can be said about the Book of Mormon there are something which are amazingly right and other things which as yet have not been found. Those which study these things have looked at the different lengths of marches and some many days of travel and decided the Book of Mormon took place in a 500 mile radius. If one could locate those 500 miles then maybe we would find more.

The Book of Mormon speaks of a deforestation and there was one in Central America. It was caused by all the building they were doing and the cement they used. Well the Book of Mormon has them building with cement. It speaks of a maritime industry and the Myans had a large one, they shipped things all over the place. It talks about pearls, not diamonds and rubies but of pearls. Myans had pearls.

If we look at the horses there is something very interesting. First the Jaradties brought their animals with them, so not a lot. Plus these people left sometime shortly after the tower and at that time horses weren't any bigger than today's pony. They were first domesticated around 3000 bc and used for food. In the Book of Mormon no one ever rides a horse, no one jumps up on their horse and rides away. Instead they are treated more like a flock.

"and having reserved for themselves provisions, and horses and cattle, and flocks of every kind, that they might subsist for the space of seven years" 3 Nephi 4

There is one place where it says "they should prepare his horses and chariots" so it does seem at least the king had some sort of cart that was either pulled or carried by these little horses. At some point it is assumed they just all died off or were eaten.

So we have to take it on faith just as much and you do the Bible.

They difference between the animals on the different sides of the Atlantic was extraordinary. The natives only had a few animal servants. They had the dog, two kinds of South American Camels, the guinea pig, and several kinds of fowls. Before the Columbian Exchange the natives had no beast of burden and did their hard labor entirely on their own. On Columbus’s second voyage in 1493 he brought horses, dogs, pigs, cattle, chickens, sheep, and goats. When the explorers brought the new animals across the ocean it introduced a whole new means of transportation, a new labor form, and a new food source. The animals were rarely troubled by the diseases the humans were. So while the humans died off, the animals were thriving on the rich wildlife.

The pigs reproduced the fastest and served as meat for the explorers. Swine herds were found everywhere. In 1514, pigs had multiplied to about 30,000 in Cuba. The pig of this time was a little different then today’s pig, it was more like a speedy wild boar. Pizarro brought pigs with him to Peru in 1531. Also De Soto brought them with him to Florida, and the thirteen that he brought multiplied to seven hundred three years later. This just shows us how rapid they were reproducing. http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/hist106web/site19/animals.htm


All the records of the Spaniards into Central America state they had no horses, no pigs, no chickens, no goats or sheep--there was and still is, an animal that is in the pig family, but not the wild boar or domesticated pig. The had llamas, vicuña--in the camel family--no horses, of any kind were seen---apparently, JS had not read those reports. Do you have ay idea of how many manuscripts and paintings and letters there are for this time period?? Just check this site out. I am from Central America, this is my root culture so I've always had an interest. This site just lists the may, many available sources of information written from the days of Columbus and Spaniards. Eye witness accounts.

http://loc.gov/rr/hispanic/guide/encameri.html

 

[fatboys]

They difference between the animals on the different sides of the Atlantic was extraordinary. The natives only had a few animal servants. They had the dog, two kinds of South American Camels, the guinea pig, and several kinds of fowls. Before the Columbian Exchange the natives had no beast of burden and did their hard labor entirely on their own. On Columbus’s second voyage in 1493 he brought horses, dogs, pigs, cattle, chickens, sheep, and goats. When the explorers brought the new animals across the ocean it introduced a whole new means of transportation, a new labor form, and a new food source. The animals were rarely troubled by the diseases the humans were. So while the humans died off, the animals were thriving on the rich wildlife.

The pigs reproduced the fastest and served as meat for the explorers. Swine herds were found everywhere. In 1514, pigs had multiplied to about 30,000 in Cuba. The pig of this time was a little different then today’s pig, it was more like a speedy wild boar. Pizarro brought pigs with him to Peru in 1531. Also De Soto brought them with him to Florida, and the thirteen that he brought multiplied to seven hundred three years later. This just shows us how rapid they were reproducing. http://public.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/hist106web/site19/animals.htm


All the records of the Spaniards into Central America state they had no horses, no pigs, no chickens, no goats or sheep--there was and still is, an animal that is in the pig family, but not the wild boar or domesticated pig. The had llamas, vicuña--in the camel family--no horses, of any kind were seen---apparently, JS had not read those reports. Do you have ay idea of how many manuscripts and paintings and letters there are for this time period?? Just check this site out. I am from Central America, this is my root culture so I've always had an interest. This site just lists the may, many available sources of information written from the days of Columbus and Spaniards. Eye witness accounts.

http://loc.gov/rr/hispanic/guide/encameri.html

That's really interesting. Here is the problem. They are just guessing.