A thought occurred to me last night. The BoM asserts that ancient Israelites immigrated from the ANE and spread over the Americas, increasing until there were millions of them.
Set aside for a moment that these population figures are impossible.
Set aside that these millions of people seem to have vanished in a poof by the time the Europeans got here, and were not present by the 16th century. So they went from a few to a few million to none over a few centuries.
Set aside that there were already millions of people living here long before they got here, whom they seem to have either not noticed or not bothered mentioning in their book.
Set aside that they left no archeological record of their existence, which is physically impossible.
What would a place look like if Jews immigrated there from the ANE and spread across it? Hello...Europe from the first through 18th centuries, when Jews left Israel, immigrated to Europe and dispersed across it, mixing with existing populations there to varying degrees?
What did we see? Groups of people who continued to practice Judaism, although in a different form, who maintained the ability to read, write and speak Hebrew, although a variation of Ancient Hebrew. People who built synagogues. People who copied the Torah and carried it with them even as they moved from one place to another. And, of course, people whose DNA carried certain markers of their semitic forebears.
Did we see any of this in 17th century America?
