You are right, Hiddekel is just another name for the Tigris, APPARENTLY.
I write 'apparently' because it was new information to me, since I don't speak Hebrew, not because it is somehow in doubt. It is definitely another name for the Tigris,
as you can see here -- Hebrew: חידקל
Ḥîddeqel, biblical
Hiddekel
The Ucumacinta is just another name for the Sidon, APPARENTLY. So that one is located in the real world, too. Having a different name in another language doesn't make it a different physical location. You have summed it up logically again. Thank you.
You're welcome.
With the knowledge we have it would be a better idea to put Eden in the Near East rather than in Missouri of the US. But since you can't tell me exactly where it was, and you apparently don't think it was a real place anyway, why the indignant posture about someone saying it was in Missouri area of the US?
For the very reason you yourself just stated: it contradicts the knowledge that we have concerning where the story about it came from. It's not a matter of whether or not I personally believe it to have been a real place or not. I have no way of knowing, and it really doesn't matter for the purposes of this conversation, because even if I believe it to be an allegory, I can be wrong or it can still
be based on an actually existing place, and in neither case is there any reason to assume that it is based in Missouri or anywhere other than Mesopotamia, since that's where the stories about it have come from. If there had been an equally ancient tradition among the people of Missouri that located it there, rather than in Mesopotamia, I would say that there would be equal chance that it is based on something in Missouri or at least something
coming from Missouri. But that's not the case, as you seem to recognize.
When I heard it the first time, I thought it was remarkable that a person would even be so bold as to even say it, and it became an interesting subject with my piers. The idea is not so laughable, Noah was in his arc well over 100 days. How far do you think the arc traveled from his home (presumably within the area of Eden) to its final resting place? Could the arc have started in the Americas and traveled over 100 days to Erarat? Not out of the realm of possibilities.
The distance from Mount Ararat, which is near the border of Armenia and Turkey, to Missouri is
6,398 miles. It would of course depend on the weight of the ark (is this supposed to be the same one that is filled with animals to be saved from the flood? I imagine that would slow things down considerably), the currents and winds, the exact trajectory of the arc, and many other factors. I guess you could say it is
possible, but my question would be how
likely it would be to have happened, particularly given the complete lack of evidence to suggest that such a voyage happened when the BOM narrative would require it to. According to Herodotus, it took the Phoenician fleet hired by Egyptian king Necho II (d. 595 BC) three years to circumnavigate Africa, which is a distance of
22,680 miles. That would yield a distance of approximately 21 miles a day (22,680 miles / 1095 days = 20.7 miles). If Noah were travelling at that speed in his ark, the journey across the ocean from Missouri to Mt. Ararat would take approximately
304 days. (6398 / 21 = 304.666666667)
I guess you're right that this is over 100 days, but
considerably over. If you have a better way to calculate what seems reasonable for the time (read: the time of Noah, with the technology and constraints that he conceivably had) and distance that must be crossed to make such a journey, feel free to present it.
So JS says Missouri, so what to you?
I think he is incorrect and this is just a fanciful story that is taken by faithful Mormons to be true in some fashion. See above for why, if your own common sense is not enough to tell you that this should not be taken literally.
You are being factual about Eden, and the 4 rivers? Please, everyone is guessing.
It's not a matter of guessing where the Tigris and the Euphrates are. You can find them on any map.
They are clearly marked. Please don't deny what your eyes can see for the sake of Joseph Smith. That does more to discredit him and the people who follow the religion he founded than I ever could.
But you are snarky about JS and his statement, you give him no benefit of the doubt that you give everyone else.
I don't give him the benefit of the doubt because he says things that are
demonstrably false, with no backing as to why they should be reconsidered in his favor. This is the same as I treat literally everyone else. You either have an argument to present that corresponds to something in the real world or you do not.
No, they have not. Our leaders tell us to no longer use Mormons, LDS, and Latter-day Saints.
Our prophet said that Jesus was not pleased that these nicknames leave his name out. It is his church not Mormons church, not the LDS's church, it is the Church of Jesus Christ.
This is your belief and ecclesiology, but obviously no one here is going to agree with it. I personally will oppose it every single time I see it, without exception. Your church is not Christian, your religion is not a form of Christianity, and whatever JS 'restored' is certainly
not the Church of Jesus Christ our Lord.
So we can say The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or we can shorten it to The Church of Jesus Christ, or The Restored Church of Jesus Christ. Just so that the name of Jesus Christ is present in the presentation.
This makes sense in terms of what they are trying to achieve via PR, but it's kinda funny relative to their stance on this matter just a few years ago.
Example:
(Sorry for the weird bar code thing in the corner; it is explained in the comments by the uploader that this is there because it is being mirrored from another website. Hopefully it doesn't distract too much from the point of the video.)
My wife said an interesting thing to me, and that was that if our prophet knew that Jesus was angry or not pleased, it means that there was a discussion between our prophet and Jesus Christ. Jesus had tried before to correct this abuse, but whether the prophets did not get the seriousness of the moment or the people were not listening to the prophet, I do not know, but President Nelson made it perfectly clear that we are abusing the name of his church. I have chosen to use the shorter version, the Church of Jesus Christ.
Moreso than not taking it seriously, an observant person would ask why they went ahead with a propaganda film for your religion called
Meet the Mormons as recently as four years ago. What were your leaders up to then, if it is true that realizing that Christ is angry about this issue means that they had been in personal contact with Him? Were they just
not in personal contact with Him four years ago...? That's a bit unnerving, if you truly believe these people are prophets with an assumed insight into what God wants and does not want.
If that is true then change your name to the Church of Jesus Christ of Oriental Orthodoxy. That would be a wise choice.
Orthodoxy is the faith that is established on His teachings and acts as testified to by His disciple St. Mark the Apostle in the land of Egypt during the first century AD. As such, to say "Orthodox Church" regardless of anything else that may go with it ('Oriental' Orthodoxy is a concession to the fact that we are not the only communion that claims to hold to the Orthodox faith of our fathers; the name of the Church in its own Coptic language is just "the Egyptian Orthodox Church", with no further qualifiers:
Tiekklesia Enremnkimi Enorthodoxos) is to
already proclaim that we are the Church of Jesus Christ, as nothing else but the pure teachings and salvation of Lord has been brought to us, and we are interested in preserving and furthering nothing but this.
But now that you mention it, the popular version of the Coptic Cross (which is the symbol of our particular Church throughout the world) does say this explicitly, as it is right to say:
Around the cross in Coptic:
Iisous Pekhristos Epshiri Emefnouti, which means "Jesus Christ, the Son of God". As this is our cross specifically -- every church has their own version that is connected to their history and culture -- we are explicitly identifying ourselves and our Church with Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our belief in Him.
There are many places still there predating JS. For instance Kamorah is still there
Where can I find information on the pre-JS history of what your religion calls Cumorah? When I searched for it just now, I just came up with the Mormon narratives about it. Even on supposedly impartial sites like Wikipedia.
and Lamani is a ruins that is still there and these have been there since BOM days.
You mean
Lamanai, the
archaeological site in Belize? Obviously that is not "Lamani", and in any case it comes from Yucatec Maya, which is in no way genetically related to any Afro-Asiatic language...so that kinda shoots it being evidence for the BOM, doesn't it? It's not even really coincidence, since that's not its actual name. That's just another instance of Mormons claiming something that is 'close enough' for their apologetic purposes to be evidence of what they claim it is. But it's not evidence. It's not anything. You have nothing. Yucatec Maya is not 'Reformed Egyptian', Lamanai is not Lamani, the Hill Cumorah is a tourist trap, and this is all just really sad.
Name two more. (I assume one will be 'Nahom', which I've already dealt with a million times, so I want something else to work with. please.)
So it is with great wisdom that the Lord has saved anything to bring forth in our time about anything from the BOM peoples from an archaeological standpoint. There is, however, evidences that still tell us that these people existed
Where? Where is this evidence?
but our faith that they existed is the most important thing.
But when it is faith
in spite of evidence, you are just lying to yourselves and everyone else. If we know better, like how we now know with scientific precision via DNA tests that no Semitic people ever inhabited the pre-Columbian Americas, and you still choose to believe something else because your faith says you should, then go ahead and do that. Just don't pretend that you have evidence that you don't have or reality is anything other than what it is. Stick to faith claims only and stop pretending that your religion is supported by real world evidence when it isn't.
Faith is the true building block of being saved by Jesus Christs, and faith is what we must have with regards to the BOM lands. It is nice, however, to discover something that belongs to these people and support our faith. Such as, it has now been discovered in a deep well, the jawbone of a horse, dated to BOM times. A regular sized horse jawbone, not 15,000 years old, but 2,000 years old, and before Columbus landed in the Americas. So it was nice to have little pieces of evidence crop up once in a while to support our faith.
I don't know anything about the horse jaw bone that you are talking about, but again, this is an interpretation that supports your faith according to people who
already believe in it, just like how you've apparently latched on to Mesoamerican ruins that say nothing one way or another about the BOM as some supposed 'evidence' of its veracity. What good does a horse bone do? It may revise the dating of pre-Columbian horses in the Americas, but it doesn't magically make these giant civilizations of Nephites and Lamanites who supposedly killed each other by the thousands suddenly appear in the historical record out of nowhere.
Unless the BOM's historicity stands and falls on the existence of horses in the pre-Columbian Americas (read: unless that is
literally the only problem with the narrative), you are stretching things like this beyond what a reasonable person could conceivably consider as evidence. It's pure confirmation bias and nothing else. Were you not a Mormon, you'd look at it as a jaw bone and nothing to get enthused about.
