Responses and Answers to Jaredites Posts – Part IV

Continuing with the comments that have been received regarding the most recent series we have posted on the Jaredites.
    Comment #1: “Come on now, are you so naive that you believe the tower of Babel story? I have a hard enough time with people who keep quoting the Noah Flood myth, let alone Nimrod and his tower” Jocko O’F.
    Response: What can I say—I’m a sucker for old Bible stories. It might be of interest to know that someone once wrote: “A lot of Americans believe quite naively that Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address, but their totally uncritical acceptance of the fact does not prevent it from being true.” In that same vein, a person may accept any story naively or may look at it critically—their approach and opinion does not alter whether a story is true or false.

U.S. military soldiers visiting the Ziggurat in Iraq. This construction dates back to Biblical times; other ziggurats are found in 29 locations scattered throughout Mesopotamia
    While the story of the Tower of Babel at first sounds imponderable to many ears, it is not to the informed. Interestingly enough, this story fits our best knowledge of earth’s earliest civilizations like a well-tailored glove. In fact, in the land of the Bible, the ancients built most of their cities around sacred towers with uncanny similarities to what we find in the Tower of Babel narrative. Today referred to as ziggurats, these massive structures first appear during the Uruk period, from the end of the third millennium B.C. up to sixth century B.C., and were common to the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians, each a pyramidal structure built in receding tiers upon a rectangular or square platform with a shrine at the summit of a centralized tower.
   The earliest ziggurat discovered to-date is at Erech in Mesopotamia, an ancient city a little to the west of Ur. Another Biblical age ziggurat is that of “The House binding Heaven and Earth” at Nippur, and another at Babylon where the remains of an ancient massive tower are still visible.

Ziggurats still in existence in Mesopotamia. Similar ziggurats were also built in Peru and Mesoamerica
    People everywhere building towers. And why were they building towers—to get to heaven. The tower was, to use the Babylonian formula, the markaz shame u irtisim, the "binding-place of heaven and earth," where alone one could establish contact with the upper and lower worlds. That goes not only for Babylonia but also for the whole ancient world. The towers were artificial mountains, as any textbook will tell you, and no temple-complex could be without one. The labors of Dombart, Jeremias, Andrae, Burrows, and others list numerous such towers built throughout the world as a means of helping men get to heaven, which is another example of finding the Flood story in almost every culture and civilization found anywhere in the ancient world.

Top: Ziggurat at Ur in Mesopotamia; Middle: Ziggurat at Eanna; Bottom: Ziggurat at Uruk in Mesopotamia
    In addition, those peoples who scattered aboard from the Tower of Babel when the languages were confounded, also found reason to build along the same manner—some for the same reason, to keep from being destroyed by another Flood, and others simply because it was the manner in which they had experience at building. It is interesting that throughout Central and (western) South America there are evidences of numerous such ziggurats having been built anciently by the earliest civilizations there.

Top Left: Ziggurat at Tucume in Peru; Top Right: Ziggurat at Huaa del Sol in the Moche Valley of Peru; Bottom Left: Ziggurat at El Mirador in Guatemala; Bottom Right: Ziggurat at Teotenango, Tula, Mexico
    Thus, to consider that the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel is a myth seems contrary to world-wide evidence readily available to any researcher.
    Comment #2: “I recall a stupid comment you made about the Nephite horses having been eaten by the Lamanites being the reason they disappeared in the Americas. Are you still sticking with that?” J.E.
    Response: Well, I’m glad you’ve stuck with me all this time, despite your disagreement with me; however, I presented that as a possibility since numerous species have been eaten, hunted, and driven to extinction by the expansion and involvement of man over the past few centuries. Given the lack of farming ability of the Lamanites at the time, their prolonged Civil War, etc., it was suggested as a possibility—after all, food during wartime is at a premium. Many armies have eaten their own animals even though they were needed to prosecute the war. However, I do not think it was as stupid of an idea as that of Science who claims the horse, which originated in the Americas, for some unknown reason wandered off and those remaining for some unknown reason became extinct at a time when there were very few people living. But hang in there, I do have some good ideas once in a while, I’m told.
    Comment #3: “I’ve never written or commented before, but I am so impressed with your writing, knowledge and ideas that I just have to tell you how much I enjoy your blog and how much I have learned from it. I hope you will stay with it—it is better than any religion class I’ve taken at BYU” Marilyn L.
    Response: Thank you for your gracious comment.
    Comment #4: “Apologists have mentioned that a pre-historic form of horse did exist there anciently; however, they migrated away from America and the horses that remained in America died out some 10,000 years ago, thousands of years before even the Jaredites arrived in America” Carlyle G.

Response: In 2344 the Lord caused a Great Flood to cover the Earth. “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered” (Genesis 7:20). What’s more “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died” (Genesis 7:21-22). Further, “And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth” (Genesis 7:23).
    To me, that pretty much says that any horses that were anywhere, in the Western Hemisphere, in the Eastern Hemisphere, in the promised land, everywhere, died! That means, whatever existed anywhere prior to 2344 B.C., died! Plain and simple! It matters little that Science claims that horses became extinct in the Americas in 10,000 B.C. (it is definitely arguable that anything existed in 10,000 B.C.). So no matter when and where horses became extinct in what is now called the Americas, nothing lived except what was in the Ark during 2344 to 2343 B.C. As Moses put it, “And Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 7:23).
    After the Flood ended and the “the face of the ground was dry,” God spoke to Noah and told him leave the ark and to “Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle land of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth” (Genesis 8:17).
    Therefore, horses (along with all other animals, from 2343 B.C. forward existed only in the area of the ark’s landing—Mesopotamia and the surrounding region. Any land animals, any land animals at all, that ended up in the Western Hemisphere, were brought there by man. The Jaredites brought numerous animals to the promised land—the Western Hemisphere (Ether 1:41; 2:2). This also includes what the conquistadors brought and the European settlers after that.

When Lehi landed in the Land of Promise, Nephi writes that they found, among other animals, the horse (1 Nephi 18:25)—it was not a sloth, tapir, or other animal as John L. Sorenson so irresponsibly claims and others micmic, but a horse. Joseph Smith, who knew horses well having grown up on a farm and spent his early adulthood on farms, wrote "horse" and the Spirit validated that.
    A horse is a horse.
    What happened to the horse during the final wars of the Nephites and Lamanites, which lasted for several decades, or between the final conquest of the Nephites in 385 A.D. and the coming of the Europeans in the 1490s, is unknown, though rational thinkers can probably suggest a few realistic possibilities.