Mormons; the Problem of Iron, Alcohol & the Wheel

[rrosskopf]

As far as Nibley "never being refuted."

[quote="wiki]Scholarly criticism

Kent P. Jackson and Ronald V. Huggins have criticized Nibley for misusing or misrepresenting sources, and for sloppy citations.[32][33] Shirley S. Ricks responded to Huggins, saying Nibley's use of sources was good, and describes the extensive work done to vet Nibley's citations during preparation of more recent editions of his work.[34]

Nibley has also been criticized for his use of evidence drawn from widely disparate cultures and time periods without proper qualification.[35] More specifically, Douglas F. Salmon finds Nibley guilty of "parallelomania" in his effort to connect the Book of Mormon to various ancient texts. Salmon notes:

"The number of parallels that Nibley has been able to uncover from amazingly disparate and arcane sources is truly staggering. Unfortunately, there seems to be a neglect of any methodological reflection or articulation in this endeavor.[36]"

[/QUOTE]

Yes - and none of these criticisms refute any of his work. They are vague, and reek of sour grapes. Anyone who has done any research knows the difficulty in maintaining proper references. These criticisms are vague because the skeptics couldn't find anything more substantial to say. It is ridiculous to suggest that we can't compare the Book of Mormon to other ancient texts. Their criticism is that he did too good of a job.

 

[rrosskopf]

No, you absolutely cannot be both an apologist and a historian.

That is an interesting point of view, but I believe it is somewhat naive. All historians are apologists, promoting their own view of history. Every historian looks at history and perceives it through their own point of view, prejudices, and values. Thus we have two radically different histories of Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith the Prophet and Joseph Smith the conman. The same data is used to form both histories. The conclusions tell us more about the historian than the man.

 

[rrosskopf]

No one had iron or steel swords, no one. There is no evidence, direct of indirect of the presence of iron or steel swords in the Pre-New World, especially on the scale or arming and entire army with them.

I don't know of any hard evidence that iron swords existed in precolumbian America. That's why people believe it to be an anachronism. In ten or twenty or thirty years maybe someone will find one. I won't hold my breath. Iron rusts.

 

[Nietzsche]

Thus we have two radically different histories of Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith the Prophet and Joseph Smith the conman.

Those two are not mutually exclusive. I clearly don't think Smith was a prophet, but I don't think he was intentionally making things up either. Far as I'm concerned, he was quite clearly a conman in his early life and apparently changed his ways after what he thought was a legitimate religious experience. Whether it was divine inspiration or just a man suffering from a mental disorder is up in the air, but it really isn't in dispute that he was a conman at one point in his life.

That is an interesting point of view, but I believe it is somewhat naive. All historians are apologists, promoting their own view of history. Every historian looks at history and perceives it through their own point of view, prejudices, and values.

..not decent historians. The job of the historian is to look at what we know and when we come upon eras, civilizations or people where evidence & such is scarce, you attempt to piece together lost narratives by using similar examples from history where the record is more complete along with a little bit of Occam's Razor. 99.999% of the time the most simple/least fantastic explanation is the correct one. And the notion of iron-age Israelites traversing the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans is simply ludicrous.

I don't know of any hard evidence that iron swords existed in precolumbian America. That's why people believe it to be an anachronism. In ten or twenty or thirty years maybe someone will find one. I won't hold my breath. Iron rusts.

Which is why we don't have any examples of even older iron weapons from the likes of China, Indo-China, Thailand and what have you, right?

 

[ether-ore]

This may help... http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/publications/steel-in-the-book-of-mormon

 

[Nietzsche]

This may help... http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/publications/steel-in-the-book-of-mormon

The entirety of that rests on the argument that when Joseph Smith said "steel", he wasn't actually talking about steel or iron. This leads to far, far more problems than it solves. If we follow this path of logic the next question should be what else is written in there that doesn't mean what those words, well, actually mean.

As far as the two layers of English(19th Century American English and the "Bibely" sounding KJV English) is concerned...that's also another massive problem. Why is the text, which is supposed to be a translation of some undiscovered dialect of Hebrew, written as if it should be contemporary with 16th century England? This is without getting into the other problems regarding the inconsistency of the BoM's language in general. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it(the BoM) reads like someone going for the "feel" of 16th Century English without actually knowing the grammar, sentence structure & conventions of that language.

 

[fantome profane]

That is an interesting point of view, but I believe it is somewhat naive. All historians are apologists, promoting their own view of history. Every historian looks at history and perceives it through their own point of view, prejudices, and values. Thus we have two radically different histories of Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith the Prophet and Joseph Smith the conman. The same data is used to form both histories. The conclusions tell us more about the historian than the man.

You are missing the point.

You can accuse historians (notice that word - accuse) of being biased. And certainly every human being has their own bias and prejudice, and that must be understood. I am not naive. But it is the job of a historian to try to present an unbiased view.

But you cannot accuse an apologist of being biased, because that is not a accusation, it is a job description. An apologist is a advocate by definition. An advocate cannot be unbiased. So an apologist cannot be a historian by definition.

 

[ether-ore]

The entirety of that rests on the argument that when Joseph Smith said "steel", he wasn't actually talking about steel or iron. This leads to far, far more problems than it solves. If we follow this path of logic the next question should be what else is written in there that doesn't mean what those words, well, actually mean.

As far as the two layers of English(19th Century American English and the "Bibely" sounding KJV English) is concerned...that's also another massive problem. Why is the text, which is supposed to be a translation of some undiscovered dialect of Hebrew, written as if it should be contemporary with 16th century England? This is without getting into the other problems regarding the inconsistency of the BoM's language in general. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it(the BoM) reads like someone going for the "feel" of 16th Century English without actually knowing the grammar, sentence structure & conventions of that language.

Well, the purpose for your argument is to discredit the BoM over this minor issue. The nature of metallurgy back then is unknown to me, but it doesn't matter. The BoM is not about metallurgy. It is about the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you wish to reject it on those grounds, that is between you and God.

 

[rrosskopf]

An apologist is a advocate by definition. An advocate cannot be unbiased.

I see it as a chicken and egg sort of thing - if the the apologist is just doing a job, then maybe you are right. But what if a historian has a deep understanding of something based on his research? Is he not allowed to share his convictions? What if his first duty is to the truth? I am not paid. If I am an apologist, then it is because I have arrived at certain conclusions based on study and research and experience. So which came first? The chicken or the egg?

 

[rrosskopf]

And the notion of iron-age Israelites traversing the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans is simply ludicrous.

Are you aware of the ship of Jews that floundered off the coast of Africa, and the modern African tribe - as black as black can be - that are descended from them? Are you aware that the Arabs, where Lehi is believed to have ended his journey across Arabia, were expert sailors and knew how to chart their positions according to the stars? It doesn't sound like it.

 

[rrosskopf]

The entirety of that rests on the argument that when Joseph Smith said "steel", he wasn't actually talking about steel or iron.

The Book of Mormon was translated in 1830, so the real question is whether an 18th century understanding of the word "steel" could refer to any hardened alloy. The first development of the periodic table was late 18th century, with just 33 elements, so their comprehension of elements might have been elemental in the extreme. Today the word "steel" is usually used to indicate an iron alloy, but has that always been the case? The root word doesn't seem to have any connection to iron, but rather to hardness. There is no doubt that the Hebrew word for steel has nothing to do with iron alloys specifically. How should Joseph Smith have translated it? If he has translated it as bronze, would it convey the same sense of a hardened metal alloy? It seems like a lot of backseat quarterbacking by people who just assume the Book of Mormon is false. I have discovered many things - by assuming the Book of Mormon is true.

 

[rrosskopf]

Why is the text, which is supposed to be a translation of some undiscovered dialect of Hebrew, written as if it should be contemporary with 16th century England?

That is actually an exaggeration. There might be one or two words that were considered archaic in 1830, but generally speaking, the language was well known. It was the "proper" English as opposed to the colloquial English, as established by the single greatest reference of the English language, the English Bible.

 

[rrosskopf]

it(the BoM) reads like someone going for the "feel" of 16th Century English without actually knowing the grammar, sentence structure & conventions of that language.

On that we can agree. The English, while generally following the English of the Bible, is full of sentences that are grammatically incorrect. Curiously, in almost every case, these odd sentences follow the conventions of Hebrew grammar. So the backwoods prophet, who couldn't write a decent letter (according to his wife), was an expert at Hebrew grammar...
Let me show some examples...

In Hebrew, instead of asking if something is true, they often will ask if something is NOT true, meaning the exact same thing.
"I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true;" (Moroni 10:4)

In Hebrew, numbers and lists of objects are joined by an "and". This is known as the repeated conjunction.
"And it came to pass that two hundred and thirty and eight years passed away." (Jarom 1:13)

In Hebrew, adjectives are often joined by the word "of". This is known as the Construct State.
"And I beheld a rod of iron, and it extended along the bank of the river, and led to the tree by which I stood."

In Hebrew, the author heads the list that includes any other people.
"Behold, I and my brethren will go forth into the lands of Zarahemla." (Alma 27:15)

In Hebrew, the same word is often used as both noun and verb in the same phrase. This form is known as the cognate accusative.
"Behold, I have dreamed a dream." (1 Nephi 8:2)

These are examples of Plural Amplification.
"...there shall be bloodsheds..." (2 Nephi 1:12) "...labor with all their mights..." (Jacob 5:72)

These are examples of the Emphatic Pronoun.
"And I, even I, whom ye call your king..." (Mosiah 2:26) "...and I, even I, in my old age..." (Mosiah 10:10)

In Hebrew, "forward" is used for past events, and "back" is used for future events.
"I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments unto his children." (Alma 13:1)

Examples of Hebrew naming convention and idioms can also be found throughout the book.

 

[rrosskopf]

Which is why we don't have any examples of even older iron weapons from the likes of China, Indo-China, Thailand and what have you, right?

Yes, I get that your answer is tongue in cheek. Perhaps a better example would be India, which lies at the same lattitude as Mexico. The earliest examples of swords from India date to about 400 AD, 500 years after the Nephites discovered the Jaredite swords, which were already almost completely rusted away. So yeah - maybe rust is the reason that we can't find older swords in India. The Bhagavad Gita was written no later than 300 BC, and it talks of swords, so we know they had them.

 

[Sapiens]

It is amazing to me how many things need to have stories and explanations invented. That is the real issue here, the sheer number of things. A horse here, an elephant there, is it steel or iron or brass or bronze, was it a horse was it a tapir or maybe a deer, and so on and so forth, each of these is a stand-alone issue that the Mormons try to pretend are not there with claims of relic mastodon populations on Wrangle Island, or quote mines where they neglect to repeat from the original paper that the teeth were mineralized and much older and thus not originally deposited in the post-extinction bed where they were found, fake languages, pretend translations, lost mummies and funereal texts that when described by Smith when he thought they were gone for ever took off on yet another flight of fancy that was exposed when they . It just goes on, and on, and on ... a intentional misinterpretation piled on top of a willful misunderstanding that rests on a quote mined falsity that depends on an outright lie (for the Lord, of course). The apologists are tireless. When is little barley (Hordeum pussilum) the same as plant as barley (Hordeum vulgare) Only when the apologists get a hold of it, you know, the same time that a tapir, or a peccary or a deer is a horse. But what is lost track of is the fact that any one, any single one of these items, is all that is needed to expose the BOM for what it really is, a con man's fabric of lies ... and I've not really gotten into the Book of Abraham.

The only argument that the apologist really has to fall back on is that a case has been made for some few things that in the 19th Century were not known to be in the New Word then, but that are now claimed to be known. They express the hope, in a massive argument from ignorance, that all will eventually be found.

In most all cases these items are semantic games played by apologists. For example, apologists claim that it was thought there were no palaces in the New World, no great cities and no highways, yet Hernan Cortés, in what is known as his, "Second Letter to Charles V (1520)," describes (and names as such) all three. So we can clearly see that many of the items dubbed "anachronisms" are actually straw-men, used just like the old world items, byy insertion into the list for the sole purpose of watering down the list and providing easy targets whose discrediting will rub off on those that are real. There are many examples of this tactic, supposedly Smith was unfamiliar with carved monuments, yet the town of Cazenovia, New York, has documentation of monument carvers going back to 1810, the Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 and Egyptian carved stone monuments were common knowledge.

Basically the list of 15 items is a premeditated sham, designed for advantage in a debate against the uninformed, but tissue paper thin when exposed to light.

 

[Nietzsche]

Are you aware of the ship of Jews that floundered off the coast of Africa, and the modern African tribe - as black as black can be - that are descended from them? Are you aware that the Arabs, where Lehi is believed to have ended his journey across Arabia, were expert sailors and knew how to chart their positions according to the stars? It doesn't sound like it.

You mean the Lemba?

Making it to North or South America from Arabia is a wholly different beast from making it just to Africa. A ship & crew, starting anywhere in the Middle East, would never have to leave sight of the coastline to make it to Africa. However to make it to the Americas you've got no choice but to leave sight of land, whether you're going the Pacific or Atlantic route. This journey was still incredibly treacherous to 16th century seamen, operating far, far superior vessels and with far, far superior seamanship skills.

This is not unlike the Wright Brothers attempting a flight around the world with just the Wright Flyer.

Yes, I get that your answer is tongue in cheek. Perhaps a better example would be India, which lies at the same lattitude as Mexico. The earliest examples of swords from India date to about 400 AD, 500 years after the Nephites discovered the Jaredite swords, which were already almost completely rusted away. So yeah - maybe rust is the reason that we can't find older swords in India. The Bhagavad Gita was written no later than 300 BC, and it talks of swords, so we know they had them.

These things are indeed true. However, there are many significant differences. Specifically, we've got countless references from neighbouring cultures, none of these societies and their cultures just "disappeared", their art & other such accomplishments are still with us, and most importantly their metallurgical knowledge & skills were never somehow lost.

That last bit remains the most important. In every society that develops it, metallurgy becomes the most important thing it has. As I stated in my opening post, even the smallest of states can become nigh-invincible with the right metallurgy. The Assyrians went from being a fourth-rate power in the Levant to The Power, with an empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to the water-sheds of the Nile and up into Anatolia.

Where did these people go? Assuming they existed at all, why was their grand-total effect on pre-Columbian America so small that God literally had to tell someone about it?

On that we can agree. The English, while generally following the English of the Bible, is full of sentences that are grammatically incorrect. Curiously, in almost every case, these odd sentences follow the conventions of Hebrew grammar. So the backwoods prophet, who couldn't write a decent letter (according to his wife), was an expert at Hebrew grammar...
Let me show some examples...
-examples list cut for brevity- .

I've seen this particular argument before, though I feel like I should mention that I've not met a single non-Mormon who specializes in Hebrew who'd refer to Smith's Hebrew with the words "expert" or even "moderately acceptable".

But you've helped remind me of something, so that's good.

Reformed Egyptian, or what I've seen a number of Egyptologists choose to call it, "Deformed English". Supposedly a script, or maybe a language, or..something. Something that those(Non-Mormon, obviously) versed in Ancient Egyptian culture & language refuse to even call "Egyptian". Do you have any defense regarding it? Because I don't even know where to begin.

 

[rrosskopf]

Reformed Egyptian, or what I've seen a number of Egyptologists choose to call it, "Deformed English". Supposedly a script, or maybe a language, or..something. Something that those(Non-Mormon, obviously) versed in Ancient Egyptian culture & language refuse to even call "Egyptian". Do you have any defense regarding it? Because I don't even know where to begin.

The reformed Egyptian characters are one of the strongest evidences of authenticity. Almost every character had either an exact match or a close match to the Egyptian Demotic. Even the word "Mormon" was found spelled out in the Demotic.
http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/Anthon_Transcript-Crowley/1942_02-IE.PDF

 

[Nietzsche]

The reformed Egyptian characters are one of the strongest evidences of authenticity. Almost every character had either an exact match or a close match to the Egyptian Demotic. Even the word "Mormon" was found spelled out in the Demotic.
http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/Anthon_Transcript-Crowley/1942_02-IE.PDF

You have a non-Mormon source for this?

 

[rrosskopf]

Where did these people go? Assuming they existed at all, why was their grand-total effect on pre-Columbian America so small that God literally had to tell someone about it?

We know the Olmec mined tons of iron ore. We don't know what they did with it all. Some appears to have been used as mirrors. We know the Olmec civilization disappeared, leaving entire cities vacant. There are many theories as to the cause, but little hard evidence. They are still the most likely candidate for the Jaredites.
You have caused me to study metalurgy in much greater depth, and for that I thank you. I have read from a couple of sources that iron swords, when they first appeared, were no stronger than the bronze swords. They were just cheaper to make. The first iron swords were steeled by pounding them with a hammer, just as bronze swords were steeled by pounding them with a hammer. Both were subject to warping or breaking with a strong blow, and were kept short to reduce that possibility. Although true Carbon Steel was stronger and occasionally used - there are several examples in museums - the cheaper poor quality swords continued to be far more abundant than the fancy alternative well into the 13th century.

 

[rrosskopf]

You have a non-Mormon source for this?

Why? Because all Mormons are liars? Do you think the pictures are photoshopped? Perhaps we have a mole that put the Anthon characters into the Demonische Grammatik? Shall we just wait for all the die-hard atheists to get baptized Mormon before we open our eyes? ;-)