Surviving Jaredite Names in Mesoamerica

[Bonnie]

Joseph Smith told the North American Indians that they were the lamanites. Everyone knew about the Indians fighting each other. So it was nothing new for him to put it in his story.

That is true. When white settlers came to NA, they encountered tribes that often warred with one another. The Mesoamericans seemed to have done so at a much greater degree, but so what? That still does not prove the BoM is true.

 

[Bonnie]

More opinion.

Again, you missed the point. It wasn't about war. It was about the preparations for war ... exactly as the Book of Mormon describes it. This kind of preparation was not known to Americans in 1800. This information didn't come out until... well, read the article again. It has the date.

Deleted

 

[Bonnie]

LOL. They must have forgot about it.

That does not answer my question. As usual.

 

[Bonnie]

You'd be waving the shirt. You can't wave a hole.

No one could wave an actual hole, which would be an empty space, that is true. But what I wrote stands. I could still say I waved the hole in my husband's shirt. Which would be the part of the shirt with the hole in it. So, again, that proves nothing about the BoM.

 

[Bonnie]

No kidding. The word "God" isn't Hebrew either.
It's English

Of course not. But putting adieu in the BoM is anachronistic and stupid. Like putting ciao or Auf wiedersehen in an English Bible.

 

[Bonnie]

You still don't get it. Up until 1970, the idea that "Mesoamerican natives waging war against each other" was new. But this kind of denial is what I'd expect from our critics.

Yes, I do. Just because more evidence came to light about how violent Mesoamerican indians were is still not evidence for the BoM.

 

[Bonnie]

Hebrew language - Wikipedia

In its widest sense,Biblical Hebrew refers to the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing between the 10th century BCE and the turn of the 4th century CE. ... Also called Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew. It was written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

So? NT

 

[Bonnie]

4. The seal of Mulek​

First, realize that evidences of a sacred text are extraordinary things. Artifacts that support the Old Testament, for example, are rare and highly treasured by people of faith in Israel and throughout the world.

Now consider a small clay emblem for stamping documents excavated in Jerusalem in the 1980s with the name Malkiyahu ben hamelek, or Malkiyahu son of the king. This seal dates conveniently to the late 7th or early 6th centuries B.C.

Book of Mormon readers are well aware of a tribal group who claimed to descend from a son of King Zedekiah named Mulek. (Helaman 6:10; 8:21) Trouble is, history wasn’t aware of any “Prince Mulek”, let alone any children of King Zedekiah who would have survived the Babylonian massacre. And one who found allies and migrated to the New World? That’s what makes this seal so interesting. Mulek is easily an hypocoristic, or shortened, form of Malkiyahu, exactly as today we’d shorten Alexander to Alex or Nathaniel to Nate. Mulek may have also been mentioned in Jeremiah 38:6.10 This artifact is so small it could fit on your fingernail, yet its implications could be enormous.

Pure speculation. Smith could have easily made up Mulek.

 

[Bonnie]

3. Cement​

For one particular physical evidence, look no further than a plethora of archaeological sites from many different centuries, but particularly centuries on either side of the meridian of time. That evidence? Cement.

During the 1st century B.C., the Nephites faced a tricky challenge. The worst fears of the Lorax had come true: The land had been scavenged of timber. This forced them to rely upon cement construction for housing and other buildings, becoming, or so we’re told, quite the experts (Helaman 3:7).

No one in Joseph Smith’s time could have pointed to any Native American cement wall or fountain. B. H. Roberts wrote a letter in 1932 citing a few sources for cement work that pre-dated the Book of Mormon’s publication, but this information was highly obscure until the middle of the 20th century. Employing the word “cement” was cited as anachronistic proof of the Book of Mormon’s fabrication.7

Once again, patience transformed this into a non-issue. Not only have cement structures been identified throughout Mesoamerica, but as Dr. John Sorenson noted, “The first-century-BC appearance of cement in the Book of Mormon agrees strikingly with the archaeology of central Mexico.”8 Dr. John W. Welch pointed out that no archeologist in 1829 could have known how accurately the dating of this technological adaptation correlated with what was happening on the ground.9

Cement - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Greeks and Romans Edit
Lime (calcium oxide) was used on Crete and by the Ancient Greeks. There is evidence that the Minoans of Crete used crushed potsherds as an artificial pozzolan for hydraulic cement.[12] Nobody knows who first discovered that a combination of hydrated non-hydraulic lime and a pozzolan produces a hydraulic mixture (see also: Pozzolanic reaction), but such concrete was used by the Ancient Macedonians,[13][14] and three centuries later on a large scale by Roman engineers.[15][16][17]

There is... a kind of powder which from natural causes produces astonishing results. It is found in the neighborhood of Baiae and in the country belonging to the towns round about Mount Vesuvius. This substance when mixed with lime and rubble not only lends strength to buildings of other kinds, but even when piers of it are constructed in the sea, they set hard under water.

— Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Liber II, De Architectura, Chapter VI "Pozzolana" Sec. 1
The Greeks used volcanic tuff from the island of Thera as their pozzolan and the Romans used crushed volcanic ash (activated aluminium silicates) with lime. This mixture could set under water, increasing its resistance to corrosion like rust.[18] The material was called pozzolana from the town of Pozzuoli, west of Naples where volcanic ash was extracted.[19] In the absence of pozzolanic ash, the Romans used powdered brick or pottery as a substitute and they may have used crushed tiles for this purpose before discovering natural sources near Rome.[12] The huge dome of the Pantheon in Rome and the massive Baths of Caracalla are examples of ancient structures made from these concretes, many of which still stand.[20][2] The vast system of Roman aqueducts also made extensive use of hydraulic cement.[21] Roman concrete was rarely used on the outside of buildings. The normal technique was to use brick facing material as the formwork for an infill of mortar mixed with an aggregate of broken pieces of stone, brick, potsherds, recycled chunks of concrete, or other building rubble.[22]

So, lots of ancient peoples used cement/concrete. Again, this proves nothing. But it does prove that Mesoamericans were smarter than given credit for.

 

[Magdalena]

Ask a question about the "evidence". I'm sure we'll be glad to discuss it.

I did. He didn’t.

 

[Bonnie]

Staggering evidence? Drunken, more like it.

LOTS of people probably left Jerusalem in the 6th century BC. So, this proves nothing. Except that Smith took the Biblical name Nahum and changed it to Nahom.

MORE on NHM:

NHM – A Place Name from the Book of Mormon? – Mormonism Research Ministry

www.mrm.org

Of course, Mormons will say it is biased, but then,so is all of this stuff posted from pro-Mormon archaeological sites.

Here is another link on this same subject,written a bit later, I think:

Finding Nahom: The Continuing Search for Archaeological Confirmation of the Book of Mormon – Mormonism Research Ministry

www.mrm.org

In fact, the location of Nahom has not been archaeologically confirmed. In his short discussion of this, evangelical author and professor Philip Jenkins explains,

“When you actually look at the vaunted clincher evidence about Nahom, and understand how tenuous the alleged connections are, your response should properly be: when you get there, there’s no ‘there’ there.

“Just what exactly was found? Smith refers to a place called Nahom. The altar inscriptions, on the other hand, refer to a people or tribe. As a sober account in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies notes, one text commemorates Bi’athar, son of Sawdum, son of Naw’um, the Nihmite. Based on extensive analogies, that last name should refer to a family title, like Benjaminite, with no necessary suggestion that the ancestral family was linked to the burial site. Usually, such tribes did not construct places bearing their names, but that’s not an absolute.

“And that’s it? THAT ‘is the First Verifiable Book of Mormon Site’?

“To give the authors credit, they honestly cite the inscription word as Nihmite, without pretending it was ‘really’ Nahom. Yet despite this precise quotation, the story morphs and expands in popular retelling, until it becomes something like ‘The Book of Mormon describes a place in Arabia called Nahom. And now scientists have discovered inscriptions using the same name at that very place! Whoa!’ For Mormons, as for many other religious denominations, the Internet has vastly accelerated that process of folk-tale evolution, fueled by wishful thinking.”

At the bottom of the page in this link is a list of other links one can go to, with more info about this.

 

[Mesenja]

Mormanity
Burying Nahom

Both Nahom in the Book of Mormon and Nihm in Southern Arabia match in the following interlocking details:

Both are places with a Semitic name based on the tri-consonantal root nhm.

Both pre-date 600 bce (implied in 1 Nephi 16:34).

Both are places for the burial of the dead (1 Nephi 16:34).

Both are at the southern end of a travel route moving south-southeast (1 Nephi 16:13–14, 33),which subsequently turns toward the east from that point (1 Nephi 17:1).

Both have “bountiful” lands,consistent in 12 particular details,approximately east of its location (1 Nephi 17:4).

While the presence of similar names in the Bible might be able to explain the first of these correlations,it simply cannot account for the all the ways the two places correspond. Daniel C. Peterson once commented,“nhm isn’t just a name. It is a name and a date and a place and a turn in the ancient trail and a specific relationship to another location.”
Suggesting that Joseph Smith simply got the name Nahom from the Bible is an insufficient explanation of the correlation.

​

 

[Mesenja]

Studio et Quoque Fide​

A Blog on Latter-day Saint Apologetics, Scholarship, and Commentary

Responding to the New Video on Nahom as Archaeological Evidence for the Book of Mormon
on June 20, 2017

Many of my (few) readers have probably already seen the new video by Book of Mormon Central on Nahom as archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, starring my good friend (and co-author on a related paper) Stephen Smoot. If you haven’t, check it out.


As usual, comments sections wherever this video is shared have been flooded by Internet ex-Mormons insisting this not evidence for the Book of Mormon. I’ve actually had a few productive conversations with some reasonable people who don’t think Nahom is, by itself,compelling evidence—and I can understand that. But the insistence that Nahom is not evidence at all is just,frankly,absurd. So I’ll just go ahead and preempt about 90% of future responses to this post by responding to the most common arguments against Nahom/NHM now:

1. The Book of Mormon is false,therefore there can be no evidence,therefore this is not evidence. First,this is circular reasoning. It assumes the conclusion (Book of Mormon is false) which the evidence presented (in this case,Nahom/NHM) is intended to challenge,and then uses that assumed conclusion to dismiss the evidence. Not a valid argument. Second,something need not actually be true in order for evidence which supports it to exist. Lots of things which are not true can be and have been supported by evidence. So even if we grant the conclusion (which,for the record,I do not),that does not prove that NHM/Nahom is not evidence which supports the opposite conclusion (the Book of Mormon is true).

2. There is no evidence for X,Y,and Z in the Book of Mormon,so this is not evidence either. This is a red herring,or more simply a type of misdirection. Instead of dealing with the actual argument and data built around NHM/Nahom,this argument points to (perceived) deficiencies in evidence for other Book of Mormon claims (horses,metallurgy,New World cities,etc.) and then argues (or implies) that since there is no evidence for these things,this also does not count as evidence. Whether NHM/Nahom is evidence is an independent question from whether or not there is other evidence,and it is entirely possible to have evidence for somethings and not for others—evidence is not an all or nothing scenario. So lack of evidence for,say,horses,does not mean there is no evidence for,say,Nahom.

3. Nahom is not identical to NHM because vowels. When people actually begin engaging the actual correlation,this is usually the first argument. But it is literally impossible to get any closer with the inscriptional evidence,since most ancient Near Eastern writings do not use vowels. To demand stronger evidence than what the very best data itself could ever conceivably support is simply irrational and unfair. Furthermore,scholars have generally accepted correlations between biblical names and inscriptions with far less phonological similarity than Nahom and Nehem/Nihm.

4. Joseph Smith could have gotten a similar name (Nahum) from the Bible. Well,sure he could have. But nothing in the Bible would have suggested that he should use it as a place name at the end of a south-southeastward trail along the Red Sea;or that he should have a deceased character buried there;or have his group turn eastward there;or that he should have a “bountiful” coastal land eastward from there,and so on. This only explains a single dimension of this multidimensional evidence.

5. Joseph Smith saw a map with Nehem/Nehhm on it. When these maps were first discovered,they were dismissed as evidence for the Book of Mormon because they didn’t prove the place was there in 600 BC. Now that archaeology confirms NHM is older than 600 BC,these maps are suddenly supposed to explain how Joseph Smith knew that? Come on. To my knowledge,none of these maps have been placed closer than ~300 miles from Joseph Smith while translating the Book of Mormon. And they have hundreds of names. Why only Nahom? And why not actually spell it as it appears on the maps (Nehem/Nehhm)? Oh, and these maps still don’t explain all the details above. And finally, some of both Joseph’s supporters and critics appear to have used maps to debate the fine points of 1 Nephi in the 1830s and ’40s. Yet none of them got the details of 1 Nephi right,and none of them noticed Nehem or made a connection to Nahom. So why are we to think Joseph Smith did?

6. The archaeological evidence is for a tribal name,not a place name. The inscriptions say that the donor was a Nihmite, which is—per the British Museum catalogue entry for the inscription—a person from the Nihm region. Nehem is a tribal territory, and thus the name of both the tribe and the place. The conflation of the tribal and place name is also evident in the way the tribal name shows up in Arabian geographical treaties and lists from the Islamic era.


Several of these are already in the video, and yet people still respond with these objections. So odds are this preemptive effort is in vain,but alas,still I try. Anyway,enjoy the video and be sure share it!

 

[Mesenja]

Wikipedia
Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America

There is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism, but there is no scholarly consensus as to its extent.

Moroni 9:7-8

 

[Bonnie]

How did he manage to copy Isaiah from the KJV with his head in his hat?

Not to mention 2 chapters of one of the OT books, Malachi, I think it is. Smith's varies from the KJV only in two words. You put it down on here once, when a Mormon demanded to be shown more than a partial sentence, that Smith put in the BoM that he got from the KJV. I forget where it was quoted in the BoM, however.

 

[Bonnie]

Studio et Quoque Fide​

A Blog on Latter-day Saint Apologetics, Scholarship, and Commentary

Responding to the New Video on Nahom as Archaeological Evidence for the Book of Mormon
on June 20, 2017

Many of my (few) readers have probably already seen the new video by Book of Mormon Central on Nahom as archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, starring my good friend (and co-author on a related paper) Stephen Smoot. If you haven’t, check it out.


As usual, comments sections wherever this video is shared have been flooded by Internet ex-Mormons insisting this not evidence for the Book of Mormon. I’ve actually had a few productive conversations with some reasonable people who don’t think Nahom is, by itself,compelling evidence—and I can understand that. But the insistence that Nahom is not evidence at all is just,frankly,absurd. So I’ll just go ahead and preempt about 90% of future responses to this post by responding to the most common arguments against Nahom/NHM now:

1. The Book of Mormon is false,therefore there can be no evidence,therefore this is not evidence. First,this is circular reasoning. It assumes the conclusion (Book of Mormon is false) which the evidence presented (in this case,Nahom/NHM) is intended to challenge,and then uses that assumed conclusion to dismiss the evidence. Not a valid argument. Second,something need not actually be true in order for evidence which supports it to exist. Lots of things which are not true can be and have been supported by evidence. So even if we grant the conclusion (which,for the record,I do not),that does not prove that NHM/Nahom is not evidence which supports the opposite conclusion (the Book of Mormon is true).

2. There is no evidence for X,Y,and Z in the Book of Mormon,so this is not evidence either. This is a red herring,or more simply a type of misdirection. Instead of dealing with the actual argument and data built around NHM/Nahom,this argument points to (perceived) deficiencies in evidence for other Book of Mormon claims (horses,metallurgy,New World cities,etc.) and then argues (or implies) that since there is no evidence for these things,this also does not count as evidence. Whether NHM/Nahom is evidence is an independent question from whether or not there is other evidence,and it is entirely possible to have evidence for somethings and not for others—evidence is not an all or nothing scenario. So lack of evidence for,say,horses,does not mean there is no evidence for,say,Nahom.

3. Nahom is not identical to NHM because vowels. When people actually begin engaging the actual correlation,this is usually the first argument. But it is literally impossible to get any closer with the inscriptional evidence,since most ancient Near Eastern writings do not use vowels. To demand stronger evidence than what the very best data itself could ever conceivably support is simply irrational and unfair. Furthermore,scholars have generally accepted correlations between biblical names and inscriptions with far less phonological similarity than Nahom and Nehem/Nihm.

4. Joseph Smith could have gotten a similar name (Nahum) from the Bible. Well,sure he could have. But nothing in the Bible would have suggested that he should use it as a place name at the end of a south-southeastward trail along the Red Sea;or that he should have a deceased character buried there;or have his group turn eastward there;or that he should have a “bountiful” coastal land eastward from there,and so on. This only explains a single dimension of this multidimensional evidence.

5. Joseph Smith saw a map with Nehem/Nehhm on it. When these maps were first discovered,they were dismissed as evidence for the Book of Mormon because they didn’t prove the place was there in 600 BC. Now that archaeology confirms NHM is older than 600 BC,these maps are suddenly supposed to explain how Joseph Smith knew that? Come on. To my knowledge,none of these maps have been placed closer than ~300 miles from Joseph Smith while translating the Book of Mormon. And they have hundreds of names. Why only Nahom? And why not actually spell it as it appears on the maps (Nehem/Nehhm)? Oh, and these maps still don’t explain all the details above. And finally, some of both Joseph’s supporters and critics appear to have used maps to debate the fine points of 1 Nephi in the 1830s and ’40s. Yet none of them got the details of 1 Nephi right,and none of them noticed Nehem or made a connection to Nahom. So why are we to think Joseph Smith did?

6. The archaeological evidence is for a tribal name, not a place name. The inscriptions say that the donor was a Nihmite, which is—per the British Museum catalogue entry for the inscription—a person from the Nihm region. Nehem is a tribal territory, and thus the name of both the tribe and the place. The conflation of the tribal and place name is also evident in the way the tribal name shows up in Arabian geographical treaties and lists from the Islamic era.


Several of these are already in the video, and yet people still respond with these objections. So odds are this preemptive effort is in vain,but alas,still I try. Anyway,enjoy the video and be sure share it!

Sorry, this is just so much damage control.

 

[Bonnie]

Very good. However, the structure of the sentence being discussed shows the word being used as a noun.

So? nt

 

[Bonnie]

Wikipedia
Cannibalism in pre-Columbian America

There is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism, but there is no scholarly consensus as to its extent.

So? nt

 

[Theo1689]

Sorry, this is just so much damage control.

It's also spamming and plagiarism.
But it does demonstrate that Mormons can't think for themselves.

 

[Magdalena]

It's also spamming and plagiarism.
But it does demonstrate that Mormons can't think for themselves.

Or speak for themselves in some instances.