Saturday, October 27, 2012

Answering Recent Comments – Part XXII

Continuing with the comments previously mentioned in the last post, the first seventy-nine comments were answered in the previous 21 posts, the eightieth and additional comments are answered beginning below:
Comment #80 “Your Book of Mormon refers to barley and wheat, both of which were unknown in Central America, but fails to mention corn and potatoes which were commonplace in Mesoamerica.” Christopher.
Response: First of all, corn is mentioned in the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 6:22; 9:9,14). Second, what was unknown in Central America is not now, or never has been, an issue since the Book of Mormon lands were never in Central or Meso America, though barley or a variant has been found recently. Third, the Book of Mormon fails to mention a lot of things since it is neither a work on flora or fauna of the New World, but the dealings with God and a portion of the House of Israel in the Western Hemisphere—those small items that are mentioned, usually are mentioned for a purpose and are certainly not all-inclusive.
Comment #81 “D. F. Green in “Book of Mormon Archaeology: The Myths and the Alternatives,” states that some of the few LDS archaeologist have stated that there is no such thing as a Book of Mormon archaeology.” Sharky.
Ruins in (left) South America and (right) Mesoamerica of two ancient civilizations that existed during Book of Mormon times
Response: In both the Andean area of South America and the area of Mesoamerica, stand similar works of antiquity that date during the Book of Mormon period. These ruins that have been uncovered in the last hundred and fifty years or so show an advanced culture and civilization having lived in these areas with most of the things found in the Book of Mormon, such as stone buildings, and in the Andean area: stone walls for defense, unparalleled road and highway systems, palaces, temples, almost constant wars, and vast cities housing populations in the tens of thousands, unknown animals and grains mentioned in the scriptural record, metallurgy, advanced textiles, use of circumcision, mummification of the dead, etc., etc., etc. It stands to reason that archaeologists should consider these matches with the Book of Mormon, but they do not—they prefer to maintain their own little worlds of peoples and cultures they make up and name, which is not really science, but simply a series of attitudes that move in lock-step in a singular direction.
Comment #82 “One of the problems the Book of Mormon faces is that there is absolutely no mention of any other groups inhabiting or co-inhabiting its land space.” Christiana.
Response: That is because there were none! While Sorenson, Nibley and other Mesoamerican Theorists like to claim there were, there were none. The Lord promised Lehi none would be allowed to know about his land of promise and gave the reason why. The fact that none are mentioned and none were there only verifies the location and accuracy of the Book of Mormon.
Comment #83 “The Book of Mormon speaks of a culture of hundreds of thousands of people inhabiting an area the size of Utah. How is it possible so little evidence has been found in such a small area?” Axelrod.
Response: No one reading the Book of Mormon without preconceived ideas to a certain location would ever consider that the events described there, the descriptions of the land, etc., could have possibly taken place in an area so small as the size of Utah—85,000 square miles. Those who make such claims do the Book of Mormon a disservice. Besides, we know of at least 230,000 soldiers, plus wives and children—some half a million people or more, being killed in the final battle at Cumorah, and that was only Nephites, a thousand years after their arrival, who faced an army far larger in numbers. We also know of many millions of Jaredites killed in the final battles that took place after some 1500 years of occupation of the Land Northward, not to mention all those who lived over the centuries before the final demise of the Jaredites and later Nephites. We are not talking about a tiny area like the size of Utah.
Comment #84 “Demographic analysis shows that the thirty or so people in the initial groups could not logically account for the “multitudes” described in the Book of Mormon given probable annual growth percentages, natural disasters, and recurring wars in which “tens of thousands” are repeatedly lost. The Book of Mormon figures simply do not make any sense.” Jennings.
Response: I have written in numerous areas, including my books, the numbers in the original Lehi Colony and don’t have space here to repeat the process arriving at those figures, but the original number would actually be somewhere close to 90 to130 people. Taking half that number and multiplying them over generations, including the size of families they had as opposed to later family numbers and those of today, it has been estimated that easily the figure could be around 91,000,000 descendants--even half of that when liberally accounting for disasters, wars, etc. There would be no  need for any other people. Do the math.
Comment #85 “There are so many problems with the Book of Mormon, where to begin? How about the fact that though the Nephite period closes as recently as the 5th century A.D., only 1400 years before the Book of Mormon was published in New York there are no Book of Mormon place or people names evident in Central American culture.” Heinkel.
Response: The names we have from the Book of Mormon were Nephite. The Nephites died out in 385 A.D. The Lamanites hated all things Nephite. Who would expect to find any Nephite names anywhere after a thousand years, or fourteen hundred years, after their total and complete demise, in any of South, Central or North America.
Comment #86 “The original temple of Solomon took 70,000 workers, 80,000 “hewers” in the mountans and 3,600 overseers seven years to complete, yet some thirty or so people in Nephi’s time built a temple “like unto Solomon’s.” Not possible." Caldwell.
Solomon’s Temple was built of stone and decorated with intricate and expensive workings throughout
Response: “Like unto” does not mean it was the same huge size, had the same porticos, exterior walls, had to hew stones in far off mountains, or was built in seven years. Nephi says he “did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land, wherefore, it could not be built like unto Solomon's temple. But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon; and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine.” For all we know, he might have meant that more than size, shape, appearance, etc., it was like Solomon’s in its religious purpose and fine workmanship. We also have no idea how lolng that took to built--he writes about it some 30 years after reaching the Land of Promise. Obviously, like the Jews building Solomon’s temple, the Nephites building their temple worked very hard at it, built it to the best of their ability, and with the purpose to glorify the Lord. We don’t even know how much Nephi knew about the construction of Solomon’s temple, or its measurements—though he certainly would have seen it before Lehi left his home at Jerusalem.
(See the next post, “Answering Recent Comments – Part XXIII,” for more comments made about different posts on this website)

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