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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