Archaeology and Science Against Book of Mormon

THE HILL’S BOOKLET

HOEKEMA’S ARGUMENT

EVIDENCES FOR THE BOM EXAMINED

A LUMP FROM LINDSAY’S PAGE

OTHER FACTS

The Mormon Church and its offshoots claim that its scripture The Book of Mormon which appeared in 1830 as the result of an alleged miracle is a record of ancient America.  If so there should be archaeological evidence.  There is none.  But Mormons choose to disagree despite all the opposition outside the Church.  Some Mormons say that since the book records great cataclysms at the time of the death of Jesus and after that there should be none left after all that destruction.  Without the evidence, there is nothing to convince that the book simply is nothing more than a nineteenth century hoax. 

THE HILL’S BOOKLET

  

There was a booklet - published by one of the sects, the Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, that believes that Smith was a fallen prophet and has no time for Doctrine and Covenants or anything to do with Mormonism but follows his early revelations - called Geography of Mexico and Central America from 2234 BC to 421 AD.  It purports to show that the Book of Mormon fits archaeology in these areas.  The Introduction mentions that this region was the centre of ancient America and the most advanced part.  The Book of Mormon has a reasonably advanced civilisation so this would have to be its region.  There was glyphic writing there.  But this writing has no resemblance to Egyptian so that indicates that the booklet is wrong.  The booklet unwittingly answers the problem of how the hill near Joseph Smith’s home where he found the plates could be the scene of the great battle that destroyed the Nephites when there is no archaeological evidence.  The Mormons believe that that hill was the Hill Cumorah for Smith said so.  But this booklet notes that the Book of Mormon does not justify that idea and that Cumorah was located in Central America.  So it would think that the plates Smith used were dug up from Cumorah and removed to Smith’s hillock.  The Cumorah it has in mind has no evidence of a great Jewish battle that led to the extinction of the Jews in America either.  Conveniently, we are not told of this.

  

It is not enough to identify the cities in the Book of Mormon with ruins in the region for there are so many spots with ruins that this can be done easily enough.  The booklet is suspect when the Temple of Copan is identified as the temple like Solomon that the Nephites built.  But the altar of Solomon had horns and was plated in gold.  The altar in this temple was a huge block of stone six by four feet and resting on four stones.  And it was on top of steps which was forbidden by the Law of Moses.  And the Nephites had no Levitical priests to offer sacrifice. 

  

The morning star was held to be sacred to the god and so the people recorded its appearance and it was linked to the birth of the god (page 5).  This is thought to match the Book of Mormon saying that a star appeared over America at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ.  But the Book never says it was a morning star.  And the priests were always reading signs in the stars therefore their seeing signs in Heaven for their gods being born in Heaven was nothing new.  And these legends were too late to have much value.  The booklet quotes with approval the declaration in Native Races Volume III page 267 that the god, Quetzal-Coatl, had pure white skin and wore white and used the morning star as his symbol.  Christ was not white skinned. 

  

The booklet is totally unable to say that any of the names of the ruined cities in Central America matches the cities in the Book of Mormon for they do not. 

 

Believers reply that the names have been changed in translation and through the changes that languages go through over time.  But the ancients used words with vowels and consonants so there was no need for a huge change.  We might call Espania Spain in English but that is not the same as an ancient unknown city being translated say as Zarahemla or Nephihah when archaeology finds its name was something very dissimilar.  It is different for we developed our word for Spain gradually over time though it was more sensible to call it what its inhabitants called it, Espania, and this was done because of the difference in language.  When there was no such word as Zarahemla or Nephihah in English would the translator use the words as the ancients used them without any change?  No, the most up to date name would be used.

  

The Smithsonian Institution has officially declared that the Book of Mormon is no help at all with archaeology. 

  

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HOEKEMA’S ARGUMENT

  

In A.A. Hoekema’s book, Mormonism, he argues from the language and transmission of the Book of Mormon that it is a hoax.

  

He observes that God is not likely to give us a new Bible in a totally unknown language, Reformed Egyptian, that has never been proved to exist when he wrote the Bible in known tongues.  Mormons would say it does not matter as long as the BOM was translated right by the power of God.  I say one would expect God to have told Smith to copy the characters that he translated so that the miracle could be proved.  It would have been impossible for Smith to invent a language and alphabet like Egyptian.

  

It is absurd that Nephi wrote in Egyptian on the Plates when he could have used his native Hebrew.  The Jews were not interested in Egyptian.  Incredibly the Book of Mormon even says that the Plates of Laban were written in Egyptian (Mosiah 1:4).  Historically, the change from Hebrew to Egyptian makes no sense.  And Egyptian is more primitive and less clear than Hebrew.  The Jaredites had a tongue that was derived from that of Adam and Eve and they were extinct except for one man, Coriantumr, when the Nephites arrived in America.  Yet Moroni was able to translate their 24 Golden Plates of Ether about 400 AD!  And I would ask why these Plates were not already translated?  The Jaredite Coriantumr could have translated them.

  

Mormon 9:33 states that Moroni had to write in Reformed Egyptian and not Hebrew for Hebrew was too large and the Plates were too small.  But Egyptian is not an alphabetical script and Hebrew would take up less space.  Why were the plates not made bigger?  Moroni says we meaning that Mormon was as unintelligent as he was.

  

There is the problem of the grammatical errors in the original handwritten Book of Mormon which the Church has corrected over the years.  One verse has Moroni saying he wrote on a rent.  The Church changed it to say rent part of his garment (Alma 46:19).  The Church might say that these errors were just colloquial forms of English and it prefers to change them to keep sceptics from scoffing.  Correcting God’s mistakes?  The Church would say it is not correcting God for it does not matter as long as the main words are intact and the meaning can be worked out.  But can you say a book that leaves out words has the meaning intact?  You don’t know if it has. 

  

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EVIDENCES FOR THE BOM EXAMINED

 

The Jeff Lindsay pages on Mormon apologetics are the best places to go to see the Mormon answers to anti-Mormon complaints about Mormonism and to see the evidence for the Book of Mormon.

  

The Mormon Church has to get proof for the Book of Mormon that supports it better than any other sacred book is supported by evidence.  It has to be able to do better than them in the evidence stakes if it is the word of God. 

 

It is certainly true that the Book of Mormon has worse evidence in its favour than the Bible.  “And now as I have said concerning faith – faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21).  If faith is to have any hope of being accepting of the truth it has to have evidence for it and good evidence.  The evidence for the Book of Mormon being true is poor now but it was worse in the 1800’s when the book appeared.  That would mean that if good evidence turns up it is too late for the fact that it was not there from the start would mean that this verse was discredited and the Book of Mormon is anti-evidence for it expects us to take as true what has no evidence for it.

  

Among the commonest arguments he uses is that the critics moan about there being no evidence for the Book of Mormon characters and cities and places.  He says there is some evidence that some of the places mentioned in the book have been found.  He brushes off the objection that there is no evidence for the characters on the basis that there is no evidence for the existence of Cain, Noah, Moses and countless other Bible characters either.  Many of the places in the Bible have never been found.  The good thing about his reasoning is that if the absence of evidence is a basis for rejecting the Book of Mormon it is a ground for rejecting the Bible as well.  It is nonetheless certain that if you cannot prove the existence of Jesus or Moses then you cannot prove that they are prophets of God.  They could exist and still not be prophets so knowing for sure that they exist would still leave plenty of room for religious faith in them.  Depending on possibly legendary prophets is like using water as an antibiotic instead of the tablets.

  

It is far more important for the Mormons to prove that the journey of the Lehites in First Nephi in 600 BC happened than anything else because it is reported to have happened in a region which gets more detail than anywhere else in the Book of Mormon.  We know for a change where the author is talking about.  It is the Holy Land and Arabia and the Red Sea.  It is correct also to assume that if say where the river Laman and the Valley of Lemuel are assumed by Mormons to be cannot be the right place then the Book of Mormon is untrue.  The same goes for the other places.

  

Mormons think the Lehites departed for America from Arabia. 

  

Lindsay says that Lehi and his companions went south south-east of Jerusalem and near the borders they found Nahom and they buried Ishmael there and then they went east to a paradise place called Bountiful and there they built the ship that was to take them to America.  The Mormon scholars think these places have now been located.  They make a lot of the fact that anti-Mormons sneered at such a nice place like Bountiful existing where the Book of Mormon said and have been proved wrong.  But think of it this way.  Smith knew the area through which he said the Lehites travelled was desert.  But he needed to have them build a ship so he had to invent the paradise for he had to explain how the Lehites survived and how they got the wood for the ship and how they got strong enough to build it.  He knew that paradises come and go a lot in the desert.  The Book of Mormon description is vague enough to show that Bountiful could have been in many other regions.  It fails to tell us exactly how far the site was away from Jerusalem which shows that Smith was being careful. 

 

The fact that a place just for burials has been found in the area where the Lehites supposedly were before they went to America called Nhm or Nehem can be put down to coincidence for there were many such places.  Yet the Mormons say this place is Nahom.  The Book of Mormon only says that Ishmael was buried at Nahom and not that Nahom was just a place for burial so the Mormons are stretching things.  Smith knew from his Bible that Nahom or Nahum meant mourning and that was why he chose the name for the burial place of Ishmael which he made up for he said there was great mourning there over Ishmael.  It stands to reason that the gentile neighbours were not going to call the place Nahom over Ishmael.  The Jews at that time believed in ethnic cleansing and did not like Gentiles.  Thus the Gentiles would not have liked them either!

  

The Book of Mormon says that Nahom is to the south southeast of Jerusalem and a place called Nahem has been found there which Lindsay finds very impressive.  But the name is just pure luck.  The directions are not good enough and why could the Book of Mormon not mention some town or city and how far it was from it if it wanted to give its location?  Directions like that could lead one anywhere.  Critics have found that the name of the place goes back to 900 AD contradicting the Book of Mormon which would need it to go back to 600 BC.  An artefact from around 600 BC has turned up referring to a tribe called Nihm.  But the tribe does not prove that the place name existed then or that it existed where the Book of Mormon said.

  

Jeff Lindsay’s boast that Smith could not have fabricated the Book of Mormon when a site matching Bountiful has been found to the right of Nahom as the Book of Mormon said is childish because the book does not say how far away.  There are paradises all over the place.  The place is Wadi Sayq but even the Mormon apologists use a lot of maybes when they say this is the place.  One reason they say it is Bountiful is because there is plenty of timber there and the Lehites could have learned about shipbuilding there.  Lindsay says that it is the place for it was reasonably easy to get to from Nehem ignoring the fact that the Book of Mormon says that the journey between the two places was very long and arduous and there was much affliction and the women had children there meaning that they must have got pregnant on the journey for they would not have travelled on a hazardous route if they had been pregnant in Nehem (1 Nephi 17:1).  And one wonders what the Lehites were doing staying in tents at Bountiful if Lindsay is right about it being a shipbuilding place (1 Nephi 17:6).  God says he will show them how to build the ship ruling out Lindsay’s claim that they could have learned from the people there and Nephi even wonders where the tools are going to come from and God directs him to find ore.  All this refutes what the Mormons are saying.  They are using the Book of Mormon to fake the evidence for their religion just like Protestants use the Bible to get one another to hate Catholics.  It is simply untrue that since the timber at the site the Mormons say is Bountiful is plentiful that it must be the place mentioned in the Book of Mormon for there was no way the Lehites needed much wood for it would not have been a large ship. 

  

Lindsay then says the site supposed to be Bountiful has a mountain nearby and that there would have been plenty of drinking water available when the Lehites were able to stay there and there were cliffs nearby and ore and flint just like in the Book of Mormon.  But when Smith located the spot near the sea for the sake of the ship he naturally said there were cliffs as well for there usually are near the sea.  And as for Lindsay and his drinking water, the Book of Mormon does not say there was any but he just assumes it which is untoward because the Book of Mormon has them travelling through the desert and forgets to say what they did for water.  The mountain could have been anywhere.  The Book of Mormon does not say it was near the site. 

  

Lindsay has the nerve to admit that Nehem was in some European geography books but argues that Smith was too much a farm boy to look up the books and come up with Nahom.  So Smith looking up a book would be a greater miracle than supernaturally learning of the place?  I don’t think so!  Lindsay says the critics say Smith saw it in a book while they hold he was ignorant enough in geography to think that Jerusalem was a land not just a city.

  

Lindsay alleges that Smith did not know that there were walls around Jerusalem on the basis that Emma Smith said so.  But Smith knew that there had to be walls around cities long ago.  Emma misunderstood or lied and it is hard to believe that of all the things Smith would have said that she would remember that one.  And when he said about the caves he could have meant caves any distance away so he did not have to know how near the caves were to put references to the caves in the Book of Mormon.  He would have assumed that there were caves there anyway since he knew from the gospels that Palestine was a hilly and stony country.

  

Lindsay says a plausible site for the Valley of Lemuel and the River Laman has been found in Arabia.  He admits the river is not much more than a stream that flows certain times of year but argues that the Book of Mormon like the Hebrew fashion calls streams rivers.  But God would be more accurate than that when he translated the Book of Mormon through Smith.  The Book says it took them three days to get there and Lindsay says the 70 mile distance could have been covered by camel in that time though it would not be easy.  The implausible thing is that they would not have been in that big of a hurry!  The Book of Mormon does not say they were on the run from pursuers?  When the river was named Laman it must have been a permanent river for it was meant to be a permanent tribute to Laman.  Lehi said he wanted Laman to be like the river and flow continually into the fountain of righteousness so it was a permanent river for a temporary one would be a bad picture of what he wanted Laman to do.  It was a big big gushing wide and permanent river.  Only a river like that would inspire Lehi’s thought!

  

Lindsay says the name the Nephites gave the ocean they sailed on which was Irreantum meaning many waters (1 Nephi 17:5).  The name exists in the Apocrypha which Smith read but is a bit different in the Book of Mormon.  But Lindsay wants to know why the Book of Mormon changed the spelling. The two words are phonetically identical so all Smith had to do was to use a different spelling but which would give the same sound.  The truth is that Smith had to change it for he said that Mormon wrote in altered Egyptian and that the Hebrew of the Nephites was very different from the original.  Lindsay quotes Hugh Nibley saying that the Book of Mormon version of the word fits the Coptic word for many ir-n-ahte.  This is nonsense for there are still differences.  You even have to add m at the end to make Irreantum.  Many is not the same as many waters.  Nibley is inadvertently contradicting the Book of Mormon.  He leaves no room for the word in the Book of Mormon to mean waters as well as many. 

 

Others say the name Irreantum comes from Egyptian and Ir is river re mouth na is many and tehem is water.  This shows that you can make bizarre words mean anything you want them to.  You can pretend to get meaningful matches from a host of languages.  There are plenty of languages and dialects in the region the Lehites allegedly travelled through to make that easy. And Jews were more likely to use Hebrew words to name places with. 

  

Lindsay thinks that the references to a house of a god named Lehi may authenticate the existence of the prophet Lehi from the Book of Mormon.  There is no evidence at all that this god is Lehi.  And why would Lehi be seen as a god?

  

Lindsay proposes that there was a connection between ancient America and Egypt for Egypt got imports of tobacco and coca from America.  But this has nothing to do with proving that the Book of Mormon is true.  The Book of Mormon is not about Egyptians but only claims to have been written in Egyptian.

  

Lindsay makes a lot of some of the strange names in the Book of Mormon that seem to have been authenticated as real or close to real since.  He does not mention that the prophet Zenos a name which Smith probably made up happens to match the name of the Greek philosopher Zeno.  These things happen.

  

He said that once the critics were sneering at the fact that the Book of Mormon calls some Jewish characters Alma a Latin woman’s name but were proven wrong when a text found in 1961 referred to a man called Alma.  The Book of Mormon contains many strange names.  It is only natural with all the languages in the world that if you make up words that most of them can be made to seem to have been derived from them.  You need to prove the Book of Mormon before you can say Alma was derived from Hebrew for that is the only way you can be sure it was.  Lindsay is begging the question in a subtle and clever way.  Watch out for similar fallacies for they are rife in religious writings.

  

Lindsay quotes a Rabbi Yosef who found that the name of the compass the Lehites used called the Liahona makes good sense in Hebrew for Lia means round and Lawah means to start or stop and Lon means to abide.  But this trick can be played with lots of languages.  And Hebrew dictionaries were common enough in Smith’s neck of the woods for fundamentalists used them to find out exactly what the Bible said here and there.  Notice too that only the first word is any way close.  For example, if the Book of Mormon had been written in English it would have been argued that Lia comes from lead as in guide and hona from hone as in perfect.  This is better than the Rabbi’s idea because the compass leads perfectly.  Lead perfectly is a better idea for naming a compass than round, start and abide.  Abide has no relevance to a compass at all.

  

Lindsay boasts about the Bat Creek inscription found in Tennessee proves that Hebrews were in America like the Book of Mormon says for the inscription was in Hebrew.  But then he quotes the authority for this statement as saying the inscription fits Paleo-Hebrew the best.  So it only fits Hebrew so it might not be Hebrew.  The inscription was so short that it was once thought to be Cherokee (J. Huston McCulloch, "The Bat Creek Inscription: or Hebrew?").  And items found with the inscription have been found dating from between 32 AD and 769 AD.  Mormon said that the Hebrew was altered like the Egyptian.  He said that the Hebrew was hard to write with and the altered Egyptian was smaller and that was why it was used instead.  If they altered the Egyptian that much then what did they do with the Hebrew?  When they changed the Egyptian to the extent that picture writing takes up less space than Hebrew then the Hebrew would have been changed beyond recognition so finding real Hebrew in America would undermine the Book of Mormon.

  

He says the reason for the difference between the Mesoamerican and Egyptian hieroglyphs is that the former were inspired by the Egyptian ones but formed hieroglyphs of their own.  So the concept came from Egypt but not the content.  Lindsay admits that there is no causal connection between the two systems at all for the meaning and grammar and characters have nothing in common but argues that this does not matter as long as some of the same ideas lay behind the creation of both.  If the meaning and grammar and symbols are so different then the only thing they have in common is using pictures to represent things and the way they liked to inscribe their texts on walls.  This shows how mistaken Lindsay’s logic is.  Some parallels are not enough.  We need evidence that they shared at least some characters and meanings and grammatical structure.  Lindsay says that nobody can argue from the non-existence of Nephite inscriptions that the Nephites did not exist for there are no inscriptions from the time of Moses or David. 

  

This shows us that Lindsay is unable to give any good evidence and concentrates mainly on a pile of maybes, for example, maybe there are no Nephite inscriptions for the Europeans destroyed them and maybe there is a reason why there is no genetic evidence that Native American Indians have descended from the Jews, to refute the critics of Mormonism.  When you depend on too many maybes there is something amiss.  That is what evidence is for getting rid of the maybes so that the whole thing becomes believable.  The Book of Mormon cannot be the word of God when that is all that Mormonism can do.  Using Lindsay’s logic you can defend belief in anything.

  

There were a lot of grammatical errors in the 1830 Book of Mormon yet when some of these seem to match the structure of Hebrew Lindsay says it shows the Semitic origin of the book.  Anybody can write a book full of errors in grammar and sentence structure some of which concerning that it could be said that they have been translated from some language or other.  Lindsay the Book claims that the Nephites altered the Hebrew and says it was written in Reformed Egyptian for heaven’s sake.  The Book of Mormon plagiarised the Bible so much that many Semitic features and structures got into the book.  Anybody who argues that “King Laman, who having entered into a treaty” is an indication of Hebrew origins and influence is a crank.  We all have heard people who would use similar expressions.  The problem with all fundamentalist apologists is that they never sit down and work out the mathematics of coincidence and what statistics say and they end up seeing amazing wonders where there are none.

  

Lindsay says that there is a chiasmus, a way of using contrasts poetically, in the Book of Mormon proving that the Book did not originate with Joseph Smith.  This is a form of poetry used by the Semites and he says it appears in Alma 36 which is the best example.  But the chapter is about the contrast between sin and goodness and damnation and salvation and joy and sorrow and uses a way of writing similar to that of the psalms that anybody who was familiar with the Bible could easily imitate.  The Book of Mormon is supposed to contain parallels that fit ancient writings like some of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were unavailable to Smith and are a sign that the book really did originate among ancient Jews.  But many of the writings were written after the Nephites went to America.  And parallels are inevitable for the Jewish and Christian symbolism and imagination can follow much the same patterns in many ways.  For example, both religions use the dichotomy between light and darkness and have much the same morality and share their stress on one God.  Thousands of parallels can be found between religious teachers of unrelated traditions.  It is like when you have many teachers teaching computers.  If you were taping all they said and compared them you would find that they sometimes say things in nearly the same words though they are miles apart.  The reason is that they are talking about the same thing which increases the chances of them using the same words or structure of meaning and thinking of the same comparisons.  When you get familiar with the Psalms you will find that it is easy to imitate the style.  I certainly can by inventing my own psalm.  Thus the chiasmus has a natural explanation.  The Tanners have found the psalm of Nephi (2 Nephi 4) in the Book of Mormon has been pieced together from several psalms in the KJV and so it is not to be wondered at if it is like Hebrew poetry.  But the Mormons make a big deal of it.  The Mormon Church won’t tell you that lots of English students especially in the past had to study the structure of Hebrew poetry in the English translation.  Oliver Cowdery could have helped Smith write the poetry in the Book of Mormon.  The intention was to create something nice that people would take to and make famous.  Plus something could be a chiasmus by chance.  When you are writing about opposites it is easy for them to appear.

  

There were books in Smith’s day that studied the poetic style of the chiasmus.  To one familiar with the psalms it would not be hard to replicate.  And there are ones in Doctrine and Covenants created by Smith when Smith was not claiming to be translating anything but giving the word of God in Smith’s own words.

  

Lindsay accepts the view that the entire Book of Mormon story in American took place in Central America.  He gives no quotations from the Book to prove this and why did the Mormon Church not believe that until nowadays?  The Mormons have looked for a place that might be the most plausible candidate for being the Book of Mormon land and have read all this back into the book.  It’s just an interpretation, a rationalisation.  It’s no good.  Anybody can write a book along the lines of the Book of Mormon say about Ireland and then make it look like it fits what archaeologists have found.

  

Lindsay claims that the prophecy by Nephi made centuries before Christ that there would be cities that sank and were burned and there would be great disasters with exploding mountains and a cloud of darkness left by the disaster before the heavens open and the Lamb of God appears to the people.  The Mormon Church thinks that evidence of these volcanic disasters at the time of Christ has been found in Meso-America.  Lindsay says that since Smith did not have this evidence and it has turned up today it shows that Smith was sincere and Nephi was a true prophet.  But this is based on the assumption that the Book of Mormon land is in that part of America.  You need very serious and powerful evidence before you can say that a prophecy was fulfilled.  God in Deuteronomy 18 says the evidence has to be perfect which is logical enough when God said before that that he comes first.  There is no evidence at all that anybody in the Book of Mormon had prophetic power which is why according to the standard implied in Deuteronomy 18 it has to be discarded.  The fact is that the Book of Mormon never hints that the disaster was volcanic in nature.  It speaks of a storm, a tempest, lightning and says that the city of Zarahemla took fire and does not say that lava did it and says the earth swallowed Moroniah meaning that it fell into a hole and was replaced by a high pile that became a mountain and it says the disaster affected the land northward the worst (3 Nephi 8:12).  Lindsay says it means the north part of Central America.  But when the book is not clear on this it probably means the whole of North America.  One thing is for sure, the claim of the Book of Mormon that the entire land was changed and reshaped forever because of the disaster is false even if you assume it is just Central America it is about.  The book even goes as far as to say that any big rocks about were smashed to pieces.  It means a supernatural disaster not a natural volcanic upheaval.  Lindsay is being selective like all Mormon apologists.  Lindsay admits that the disaster could have happened according to many scholars up to fifty years after 70 AD.  If he was not so prejudiced he would know to wait until he was sure first.  Lindsay doesn’t realise that he is accusing God of being an awful teacher.  A book of history that is so unclear is poor history.

  

The Book of Mormon reveals that the ancestors of the Native American Indians are the Lamanites - rebel Jews.  The American Indians have never been found to be carrying Jewish DNA.  Lindsay says that the Book of Mormon does not rule out loads of mixing with other races that could have led to this DNA becoming unavailable.  He says that in Rebecca L Cann’s DNA study that no Native Americans were involved so there is still no evidence one way or the other.

  

The next claim is that Smith could not have known about farming olives the way it is described in Jacob 5.  Any encyclopaedia could have told him that.  We must remember as well that the account is a parable and Smith did not care if he made a mistake – say if an olive branch cannot be grafted on to another tree – for the olive tree was not a tree but a symbol of Israel.  It was not about biology.  Lindsay is fooling himself and us again.  If Smith turned out to be right that was just a coincidence.  Lindsay says the Nephite did not grow olives but one wonders how this parable could be any good if they didn’t because they needed to know what an olive tree was and why it was a good symbol for Israel.  They needed to know that it was a symbol of preciousness because olive oil is so precious and useful.  By implication then Jacob 5 implies that they did have olive trees and that is against the archaeological evidence.

  

The Book of Mormon wars were fought after harvest in winter and the winter was said to be warm in one place.  Lindsay uses this evidence to show that the book is plausible because harvest time needs to be kept free for the sake of the food and people don’t fight the best when too well fed and that the Book of Mormon land was in central America which is warm in winter.  Lindsay offers Alma 51 as proof of the latter assertion though there is not a hint in it that it was not just the mild part of winter it had in mind.  And most wars are fought at harvest time for the enemy likes to attack the food source.  Lindsay seems to think that the Nephites and Lamanites lived on rich food and were not very mobile when it was plentiful!  Not right.  Both sides could fight when both sides are well-fed for as long as both are in the same boat they can have a good chance of fighting their best.

  

Lindsay argues that a sign of authenticity is that the Book of Mormon knew of the unknown until recently tradition of the Jews centuries before Christ of putting their records in their treasury.  But he does not tell us that most people do put their records where they will be safe and that is usually where the money is.  And he does not remind us that the records in question were the brass plates of Laban.  Metal items naturally go where other metal items are.  The plates were treasure for Heaven’s sake!

  

The fact that temples had two pillars in Mesoamerica and a place the people could not enter is assumed to have been inspired by knowledge of Solomon’s temple.  You need more than that to establish a connection for all temples consist of priests changing rooms, rooms for placing the deity in, altars and courts.  The Jews believed that there could only be one true Temple for the Temple was the later version of the Tabernacle that the people of Israel made in the desert and there was only one Tabernacle and one holy place in it for communing with the deity so probability is against the Mormon claim.  When the main trait of a Jewish temple isn’t shared with it by these temples then it is very likely that the other things they have in common are just coincidence.  After all, temples are supposed to be houses of worship ad sacrifice and there is a room for the God so they must have lots of things in common anyway. 

  

Lindsay says that since Helaman 7:10 speaks of a tower in the middle of a garden that this shows knowledge of the recently discovered fact that the ancients in America used urban gardens and towers.  But this is dishonest for the tower in the book could have been wood and the ones found by archaeologists are stone.  And the Book of Mormon never says the garden was in a city.

  

In a page about the Isaiah Variants in 2 Nephi 12 of the Book of Mormon Lindsay says that Smith’s translation took a chunk out of Isaiah here but added some differences that were not in the King James Bible.  The eerie thing about this is that it adds the words ships of Tarshish to the reference about ships of the sea in the KJV which some believe was in the original.  They believe that for ships of the sea and ships of Tarshish are similar in Hebrew which could have resulted in ships of Tarshish being left out by mistake or mistranslated.  So it seems that he corrected the KJV here by supernatural power.  The Mormons admit that it cannot be proved that the emendation is a restoration of what Isaiah originally wrote.  They just say it is possible.  So here we just have more Mormon speculation when they want us to believe the Book of Mormon was able to restore a lost rendering of Isaiah!

 

The Mormons admit that there were books that Smith might have consulted which gave both ships of Tarshish and ships of the sea as possible translations but think that there is no evidence he could have got to them.  When he learned of the translation problem he just put in both words.  I believe Oliver Cowdery who Smith once got to help him translate, who was a schoolteacher, played a large role in the writing of the Book of Mormon.  There may have been somebody else too.  The Mormons just assume that if the Book of Mormon is a forgery then Smith alone wrote it.  It is an assumption that is convenient for them for they heap ridicule on the suggestion that Smith authored the Book of Mormon and pretend he was barely literate.  But somebody could have done research for Smith.

 

It is obvious that it is mistaken to say that Isaiah would have written about the ships of Tarshish and the ships of the sea and then about the luxury ships for he could have left out the middle reference to the ships of the sea.  To say that Smith supernaturally corrected Isaiah without using books that he might have used is madness no matter how unlikely it was for him to have thought of using a book.  You don’t say a caring guy who stabs his mother is innocent because he couldn’t have done it even though the knife was seen in his hand.

 

The Book of Mormon follows the KJV in translating a word for fancy ships as pleasant pictures.  This shows that the author of the Book of Mormon was only human for fancy ships is, going by the context the right translation and he blundered here. 

 

 

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A LUMP FROM LINDSAY’S PAGE

  

I have extracted the following from Lindsay’s page, Plagiarism in the Book of Mormon? for I consider it important.  Lindsay has created it to refute the view that the book, View of the Hebrews, written by Ethan Smith was used to invent the Book of Mormon.  His point is that though there are several parallels between the conclusions of Ethan’s book and the Book of Mormon these do not prove that the Book of Mormon was inspired by the book.

  

 

Lindsay goes that the Book of Mormon matches an imaginary book called Man’s Journey to the Moon.

 

Numerous parallels between the history of man's voyages to the moon and the transoceanic voyages in the Book of Mormon suggest that accounts of lunar journeys may have been a primary source for Joseph Smith.  Consider the following startling parallels: 

Both accounts provide detailed stories of long and dangerous journeys. 

Both accounts describe unusual compasses which were used for guidance on the journey. 

Both involved unusual ships for the journey. 

Like the astronauts of Apollo 11 and other spacecraft, the Jaredites travelled to a New World in a generally airtight vessel. 

Special high-tech lighting elements were needed for the sealed Jaredite vessels, just like the electric light sources used by the astronauts. 

In both cases, information is stored on metallic objects - brass or gold plates for the Nephites, and magnetic computer media (iron oxide disks?) for the moon voyagers. 

Both involve the discovery of a new land. 

Both involve a small group of souls departing from a proud and wicked society 

Members of both groups engaged in prayer and respectful reference to God during the journey. 

Both groups expressed great gratitude upon reaching their destinations. 

The initial voyagers in both cases saw their journey as having great significance to future generations. 

Both groups brought objects from the old world to the new world they discovered. 

One group was guided by the strong arm of the Lord, while the other group was led by Neil Armstrong. Surely this is more than mere coincidence! 

Passages in both texts refer to astronomical terms such as the heavens, the stars, the earth, the moon, and the planets. 

The astronauts found the surface of the moon to be desolate, free of vegetation, and the Book of Mormon talks about the discovery of a similar land called the Land of Desolation. 

Some Book of Mormon names show striking similarity to names of objects on the moon. For example, the crater "Mairan" is quite similar to the Jaredite name "Moron" and may even be related to "Mormon." 

The moon crater "Godin" is very similar to the Book of Mormon names "Gideon" and "Gadianton." 

The moon crater "Rabbi Levi" may also account for the Jewish influences seen in the Book of Mormon. 

The Pyrenes mountain range on the moon may explain the Book of Mormon name "Pahoran." 

The moon's Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Rains, may account for the name "Irreantum" given to the "many waters" of the ocean by the Nephites. 

 

The importance of all this is that if the Mormon Church really believes it then why does it lay so much stress on alleged matches between Book of Mormon names and names used in the Holy Land and Egypt and thereabouts when this study shows it could just be coincidence?  Also, Lindsay’s attack on the fact that the View of the Hebrews has provided the background for the Book of Mormon is unfair.  There is a difference between parallels that will appear naturally and ones that are deliberate.  This is a distinction not made by Mormon apologists when it comes to their holy books. 

 

Smith would and could have had access to View of the Hebrews.  That counts for a lot.  And especially when it was about the SAME SUBJECT namely the ancient inhabitants of America such as the Book of Mormon was.  Lindsay’s comparison with his imaginary book  is a hoax.  This is proven by the fact that he had to invent a book to find the parallels and couldn’t use an existing work.

   

For example, every novel will have parallels with other novels in hundreds of details.  Sometimes even main points in the stories will parallel one another.  But if there are too many parallels in the main points you know that plagiarism has taken place and this has happened in the case of the Book of Mormon and the View of the Hebrews. 

   

One can see parallels where there are only accidental or incidental ones and these are not necessarily plagiarism.  For example, if one book describes a long journey in a ship and another one does the same the second may be plagiarising in this thing but it is not necessarily plagiarising if it says that there were lots of supplies on the ship and there were complaints among the crew like the first because these things will have to said anyway for they would be expected on a long journey.

   

The Mormon Church plainly does not understand how to tell if plagiarism is real or not.  The Tanners have found parallels between the Book of Mormon’s Nehor and the newspaper story in the Wayne Sentinel, a paper the Smiths subscribed to, of a man called Strang who was executed in 1827.  There were more parallels between Strang and the book of Mormon’s Korihor.  A story in the same paper is identical and even identical down to the words in several points.  The story is the Sea Voyage and has been plagiarised to create the story of the Lehites on their voyage to America.  Parts of the Book of Mormon version were even extracted from Mark chapter 4.  Read all about it in The Case Against Mormonism, Volume 2.  The Mormon Church will have to admit at most that the parallels may be there and that is enough to cast doubt on the credibility of the Book of Mormon.  Mormons think in terms of true or false but the Book could be neither believable or unbelievable but in limbo.

 

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OTHER FACTS

 

The Mormon Church thinks that the expression “their souls did expand” in Alma 5:9 is so odd that it could not have been invented by Joseph Smith.  The expression appears in Ugaritic and Akkadian sources.  It’s Semitic.  But it is not much good as evidence for the Germans use the same expression.  The Book of Mormon makes it clear that the expression means rejoicing.  We must remember that in Christianity heart and soul are sometimes used interchangeably.  An open heart full of joy and generosity might have made the fairly simple Joseph to think you could say the same of a soul thus he translated this into fancy King James Version language so it became “their souls did expand”.  It evidently means their hearts overflowed or expanded with joy.  Smith must have heard puppy loves saying their hearts would burst if they loved any more?  And all grammatical anomalies in the way a person writes can be matched up to some ancient expression.

   

1 Nephi 2:9 supposedly says that the sea is a fountain of waters which is a Near Eastern expression Smith did not know about.  So the Church says.  But when you look at the verse you see that it was plagiarised from a verse in the gospel of John which speaks of a fountain of living waters.  It was just a coincidence.

   

Pity the Church never points out the blunders like 3 Nephi 13:13 having Jesus teaching the Lord’s Prayer and saying, “But deliver us from evil”, while the correct translation is, “Deliver us from the evil one”.  The Book of Mormon just used the incorrect version that was used in all Churches.  Other blunders are Jesus using words like raca and mammon which he used in Palestine in America to a nation that would not have known what he meant.  

   

Another Mormon boast is that at Qumran the ideas of baptism and several doctrines similar to Christianity existed even before Christ meaning that the Book of Mormon is proved plausible when it says that explicit knowledge of Christianity existed before Jesus came in ancient America.  But the similarities are naturally explicable.  For example, baptism was suggested in the Law of Moses when it prescribed washing for uncleanness.  The fact that paganism went further than the Jews of Qumran at being closer to Christianity says a lot.  There is a huge difference between any prophecy in the Old Testament, and any parallel to Christianity in the preceding religions and the too clear fore-knowledge of Christ and his works that exists in the Book of Mormon.

   

The Mormons say nowadays that they believe every verse of the Bible.  They know fine well that the Church of Rome would not have removed the evidence of the clear knowledge of Christ among the Jews before he came from the Bible and yet it is absent from it. 

 

If you compare the Bible with the Book of Mormon it shows that the prophecies in the Book of Mormon closely match many verses from the New Testament.  These Book of Mormon portions then had to have been copied from the Bible by Joseph Smith.

   

The Mormon Church says that a line from the Book of Enoch was quoted in the Book of Mormon before Enoch was discovered.  But the Church translates the Enoch verse in question in exactly the same English wording as the Book of Mormon has.  So the meaning is the same in both books but the Church translates Enoch to match the Book of Mormon perfectly and that is dishonest.  You could use that trick to prove that Shakespeare was quoting Stephen King.  The Book of Mormon does not even claim to be quoting and it is unfair of the Mormons to say it is quoting.  And how would believers in ancient America be able to quote from books written in other parts of the world that they had no contact with?  The Book of Mormon never said that it was quoting Enoch!

   

The Mormon Church which believes that it is the restoration of the true Church of Jesus Christ says that when Jesus said two thousand years ago that the gates of Hell would never prevail against his Church he meant the Church would never fail but did not rule out men failing to keep up the Church and falling away.  So that allows them to say they can believe what Jesus said and still maintain their traditional doctrine that the Churches have all apostatised from the true faith.  In context, Jesus said that he was founding his Church on a rock which was certainly the faith of Peter but not Peter himself and this Church would never die meaning that this community that holds the faith of the rock will never die.  But it could exist in Heaven not on earth when the earth apostatises so it does not promise that the Church will always exist on earth.

   

In the Jeff Lindsay pages LDS FAQ, The Restoration, we read many things that cannot be true.

   

The Mormon Church assumes that Matthew 13 with the parable of the sower says that the Church founded by Christ would apostatise totally.  Hugh Nibley the Mormon apologist says that the parable which starts off by saying some seeds were killed by the sun for having no root and others fell among thorns and failed to grow and others brought forth great abundance describes three separate eras.  The last era is the seed growing after the Church is recovered from its apostate condition.  But there is no hint of this three eras stuff at all in the parable.  It says the seed was sowed once and the three things that happened to it.  For the Mormons to be right there would need to have been new seed sown for the third era.  The Mormons think that the parable of the vineyard in Luke 20 predicts the destruction of the faith of the Church but it only says that Israel will reject the son and its privileges will be given to new nations. 

   

Polycarp said the light went out when the apostles died but he only means that the era of revelation had closed for he certainly did not think of himself as an apostate.  But the Mormons say he meant the Church apostatised soon as they died.  Jesus did say the Church would not stay loyal but he did say a handful would stay true.

   

The Gospel of John makes it clear that though it wants people to believe in Jesus the apostasy had already happened for though Jesus tried to establish a Church it kept failing.  Even the Mormons who use John to prove the Christian Church left the faith don’t go that far for they want to believe in the apostles.  But Jesus himself in John complains that despite his following and baptising nobody believes in him (3:32).  We know he meant the apostles for the gospel portrays them as traitors.  No effort was made to show they had to be exceptions.  The believers only believed in his powers but not in what he said (John 2:23-25; 6:36).  The gospel says that the apostles will remember the sayings of Jesus but never says they will believe in them.  Some of the apostles were brothers of Jesus and John says his own brethren did not believe in him (7:5).  It does not say the apostle ones were exceptions.  It does not say some of his brothers.  It just says his brothers.  John 14:7 accuses the apostles of apostasy.  Jesus said he was the light of the world as long as he was in the world (John 9:5).  But the light had to be transmitted through the apostles.  He was saying when he would die the light would be extinguished.  The Mormons accept the pessimism of St John’s gospel and then they are so positive about their own huge cult.  Surely if loyalty is so difficult and unnatural then chances are the Mormon Church is apostate?

   

In Matthew 17:22 Jesus told the disciples that they would long to see Jesus just for one day again in the future and learn from him and it would not happen and then he warned because of this they must not run after other Christs.  They would only want a new Christ and to learn from him if they had departed from the old one.

   

The Mormon Church has no business using Isaiah 24:5,6 which says that the whole earth lies destroyed and only a few men are left after a destruction by fire which God has sent because of transgression and because the covenant has not been kept as evidence of apostasy for it has not been fulfilled yet.  Also, no religion should be allowed to incite the Osama Bin Ladens of this world to destroy the planet by fire under the belief that this is God’s will despite the evil example of Jesus who had himself killed for religious reasons. 

   

Mormonism is led by apostles.  Lindsay says that the need for a continued apostolic office in the Church an office of Twelve Apostles was shown when Matthias was pulled in to take the place of Judas in Acts.  But the apostles were just for functioning as full-time witnesses to the resurrection and as prophets of God in the full sense.  The Mormon apostles have not seen Jesus.  There is no evidence that the Mormon Church is right to have twelve apostles. 

 

Mormonism says the apostate Church which became Catholicism done away with the office.   No apostate Church would have done that had the office existed.  It wasn’t in its advantage to.  Besides, it followed something that was similar in all essentials with a system of bishops and priests representing the apostles but not being apostles themselves and which regarded itself as beneath them in authority. 

 

Mormonism says only validly ordained Mormon priests can baptise.  Why did the apostate Church depart from the doctrine that a priesthood alone could confer water baptism for the Church loved priestcraft and the power it brought?  The Mormon Church holds that this priesthood power is of supreme value in the Church and the main part of the restoration of the gospel.  Even the Book of Mormon is no use without it.  So the priesthood then is more important than the Book of Mormon.  John the Baptist supposedly ordained Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to a priesthood which Smith to Cowdery’s horror later said was the Aaronic Priesthood for he wanted to introduce a new priesthood called the Melchizidek priesthood.  Cowdery said it was just the priesthood not Aaronic or Melchizidek priests and that there could be no new Aaronic priests for that was a mimic of the Aaronic priests of the Bible who had to belong to the tribe of Levi.  Later Peter, James and John ordained them to the Melchizedek priesthood.  Then why do we not have a stronger and better in quality and quantity witness to these events than what we have?  The Book of Mormon speaks of priests but it does not say that they have to be ordained by an apostolic succession – that is, nobody can ordain a priest but a priest.  Why could we not have the neighbours seeing three men laying their hands on them but not knowing that they were supernatural beings?  Why does God who supposedly does not want to force people to believe not present the evidence to some in a natural way – perhaps by preventing their eyes from seeing the glory - so that they do not know that something supernatural has happened though it has?  If God gave as much evidence for Mormonism as Mormons say then why could he not give more in the important things instead of scattering it about?

   

Isaiah 2 is supposed to predict the Mormon Church headquartered in the Rocky Mountains!  To read the prophecy is enough to show how improbable that is!

 

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Conclusion

 

There is no convincing evidence from archaeology or science that the Book of Mormon is true.

 

Monday, 21 January 2008

BOOKS CONSULTED 

 

A GATHERING OF SAINTS, Robert Lindsay, Corgi, London, 1990 

A MARVELLOUS WORK AND A WONDER, LeGrand Richards, Deseret Books, Utah, 1976 

AN ADDRESS TO ALL BELIEVERS IN CHRIST, David Whitmer, Board of Publications of The Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, Lacy Road, Independence, Missouri  

ARE THE MORMON SCRIPTURES RELIABLE?  Harry L Ropp, IVP, Illinois, 1987  

ASK YOUR BISHOP, Ira T Ransom, 317 W 7th South, Brigham City, UT 84302  

CHANGES IN JOSEPH SMITH’S HISTORY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1965  

CHANGING OF THE REVELATIONS, Apostle Daniel McGregor, Church of Christ, Independence, Missouri 

GOD’S WORD FINAL INFALLIBLE AND FOREVER, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985 

CONCISE GUIDE TO TODAY’S RELIGIONS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1983 

HOW TO ANSWER A MORMON, Robert A Morey, Bethany House Publishers, Minnesota, 1983 

JOSEPH SMITH AND MONEY DIGGING, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1970 

JOSEPH SMITH’S BAINBRIDGE NY COURT TRIALS, Wesley P Walters, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Salt Lake City, 1977 

LARSON’S BOOK OF CULTS, Bob Larson, Tyndale, Wheaton, Illinois, 1988 

MORMONISM SHADOW OR REALITY?  Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1972 

MORMONISM, AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978 

MORMONISM, MAGIC AND MASONRY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1988  

MORMONISM, MAMA AND ME, Thelma Geer, Calvary Missionary Press, Arizona, 1983 

MORMONISM, THE PROPHET, THE BOOK AND THE CULT, Peter Bartley, Veritas, Dublin, 1989 

NEW LIGHT ON MORMON ORIGINS, Rev Wesley P Walters, Utah Christian Tract Society, 1967 

SOME MODERN FAITHS, Maurice C Burrell and J Stafford Wright, IVP, Leics, 1988  

THE BIBLE UNEARTHED, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Touchstone Books, New York, 2002

THE BOOK OF COMMANDMENTS, Church of Christ, Temple Lot, Independence, Missouri, 1995 

THE BOOK OF MORMON, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Deseret Enterprises Ltd, Manchester, UK, 1972  

THE CASE AGAINST MORMONISM, VOL 2, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1968 

THE FACTS OF MORMONISM ARE STRANGER THAN FICTION, Charles Crane and J Edward Decker, Christian Information Outreach, Kent, 1982 

THE HUMAN ORIGIN OF THE BOOK OF MORMON, Wesley P Walters, Ex-Mormons for Jesus, Florida 1979 

WHY THE CHURCH OF CHRIST WAS ESTABLISHED ANEW IN 1929?, Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, Independence, Missouri

 

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THE WEB

 

THE BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES

www.exmormon.org/file9.htm

Excellent refutation of the claims of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon

 

Barry R Bickmore 

www.geocities.com/Athens/parthenon/2671/EC.html

 

MORMON SCHOLARSHIP, APOLOGETICS AND EVANGELICAL NEGLECT, Carl Mosser and Paul Owen,  

 www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/cpoint10-2.html#mosserowen

 

BOOK OF MORMON QUESTIONS  

www.lds-mormon.com/bookofmormonquestions.shtml

 

MORMONISM UNVAILED: MORE EVIDENCE THAT IT IS TRUE.  Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry 

 www.carm.org/lds/unveiled_defended.htm

 

THE ABRIDGEMENT OF D&C 137 

 www.saintsalive./com/mormonism/falseprophetjs/htm

 

THE BOOK OF MORMON: ONE TOO MANY M’S Stephen Van Eck 

 www.infidels.org/library/modern/stephen_eck/toomany.html  

 

EGYPTIAN CHARACTERS 

www.mormonstudies.com/seer2.htm  

This shows that when Smith translated the book of Abraham he invented hieroglyphics where there was a piece missing from the papyri.  The characters Smith added make no sense to translators.  Yet he translated these imaginary hieroglyphics!  His mother and close associate David Whitmer spoke of Joseph copying characters of the gold plates of the Book of Mormon before he translated and that like the Book of Abraham Smith often produced two lines in the manuscript with the translation of a single character which shows that the whole Book of Mormon thing was a hoax.

 

MORMON FARMS 

www.xmission.com~country/reason/farms_1.htm  

by Jerald and Sandra Tanner.  Gathers evidence that indicates that it was possible that Smith was insane and had manic depression. 

 

DR CHARLES ANTHON RE AUTHENTICITY OF WRITING SAMPLES ALLEGEDLY COPIED FROM THE GOLDEN PLATES 

www.mormonism-web.com/anthon.htm

 

INTERVIEW OF MARTIN HARRIS 

www.xmission.com/~research/about/docum4.htm 

 

COMMENTS ON THE BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES: A RESPONSE TO JERALD AND SANDRA TANNER

www.mormons.org/response/bom/witnesses_Roper.htm

A ridiculous rebuttal that has been taken into account for this book and refuted. 

 

FACTS ON THE BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES, PART 1

 www.irr.org/mit/bomwit1.html

Excellent refutation of the reliability of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon 

 

THE STOLEN MANUSCRIPT

www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bom_early_problems/goldenbible_stolenmanuscript.htm

 

 

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