What do you do when archaeologists and anthropologists vehemently claim
there were more people other than who the scriptures claim were in your model
of the Land of Promise? Since 1946, Mesoamericanists have been claiming there
are more people in the Land of Promise than the scriptural record shows and
describes.
It should be kept in mind that while we do not know what happened in
and upon the Land of Promise between about 421 A.D. and about 1492 A.D., a
period of almost 1100 years, the period from the Flood down to 421 A.D. is
pretty well recorded, and from that information in the Bible and Book of
Mormon, we can get a fairly clear picture of what took place in the Western
Hemisphere.
We even have a picture, though sketchy at best, of the period from
around 1000 A.D. in the north area of the Western Hemisphere when Erik the Red
founded the first European settlement on what is now Greenland, and later his
son, Leif, accidently ended up landing on Nova Scotia (Vinland), what is today
New Foundland (a large island of the coast of Canada), though he stayed there
only through the winter, then left and never colonized the area or returned.
In fact, the scriptural record, from Ether, abridged by Moroni, to the
writings of Mosiah through 4th Nephi, abridged by Mormon, and
including the small plates of Nephi, with writings from Lehi through Amaleki in
the days of Mosiah and Benjamin—a writing covering a period of time from about
2100 B.C. to 421 A.D., or just over 2600 years. This scriptural record shows
that no one else lived in the Land of Promise.
In all that record, there is not one mention, hint, or reference to
another people being in, around, or on, or having come to the Land of Promise
other than the Jaredites, Nephites, Mulekites, and Lamanites (Ishmaelites).
Not only that, but Lehi, in his preaching to his family and the family
of Ishmael just before his death, makes it quite clear that the Land of Promise was been held in reserve for his seed as well as for certain other people of
the House of Israel the Lord would bring there, and others the Lord brought
there, such as the Jaredites.
If not from the scriptures, then were do the Mesoamericanists get there
idea of other people in the Land of Promise? It is the securlar history of
Guatemala as written by such 16th century thru 18th
century authors as Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Francisco Ximenez, Rabinal
Achi, Sor Juana de Maldonado, Rafael Landivar, Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y
Guzman, and numerous others.
In addition, works like the nine books of Chilam Balam (17th and 18th century Maya
miscellanies, named after the small Yucatec towns where they were originally
kept), and are the basis of the early Spanish traditions; and the “corpors of
mytho-historical narratives” of the K’iche’ kingdom in Guatemala’s western
highlands called the Popo Vuh, “Book
of the Community” or “Book of the People.” This latter work includes its
creation myth, diluvian event, adventures of a set of twins (Hunahpú and
Xbalanqué), and its genealogies.
Left: The oldest
surviving written account of Popol Vuh, dated 1701, by Francisco Zimenez;
Right: The Chilam Balam, the manuscript written and illustrated in Chumayal,
Yucatan, dates to the late 18th century; Bottom: The Dresden Codex,
an astronomical Mayan work containing 52 almanacs in the first 23 pages,
originally meant to divine the future, now used by Mesoamericanists to learn of
the past—it is one of the four Mayan manuscripts that still exist worldwide,
dated to before the 1700s
Whether or not the genealogies in these works are factual or just made
up to impress other groups of the importance of certain lineages, such as the
Inca did in Peru in their short history (1400-1532) to make other cultures fear
them by providing histories dating back a thousand years, is unknown. However,
the Mesoamerican writings are filled with histories, most fanciful myth, that
Mesoamericanists have taken as fact and inserted them into the concept of their
scriptural record of the Jaredite and Nephite people.
Consequently, it is not from the scriptural record that
Mesoamericanists base their claim that others existed within the Land of
Promise—it is from secular writing and archaeological studies that make such a
claim and are championed by these Mesoamericanists. Of course, the creators of
these claims for the most part also deny the existence of a Flood, the
existence of God, and the existence of a land held in reserve by the Lord for
his wise purposes.
It
should also be kept in mind that in the past fifty years, long after Jakeman
brought the Mesoamerican belief to BYU, much of what earlier generations
thought about pre-Columbian American civilizations has been superseded. The
sciences that study ancient civilizations have undergone significant changes.
In the early decades of this century, science was still thought of as the
search for and discovery of permanent and infallible truth. Today, scientists
and philosophers admit the nature of their enterprise requires that they
regularly reinterpret their theories and data.
As
an example, John L. Sorenson, the current guru of Mesoamerican belief or Land
of Promise model, insists that any belief in the Land of Promise being in “South
America is completely without merit, yet the knowledge that has come forth in
recent decades about South America being underwater, the west coast being above
the sea in what could be considered an island, has been found to be
geologically accurate.
However,
when one approaches a location with the idea that it has no merit, there is no
chance anyone is going to find anything that leads to a changing of his mind.
In fact, Sorenson begins his book (p1) in the very first sentence of the first
paragraph by saying, “Before any other type of investigation, we must establish
where the Book of Mormon story took place within the western hemisphere.”
By
its very instruction, this eliminates the scriptural record as the basis of
decisions-making and future lines of thought and replaces them with a
pre-determined view of the outcome, i.e., where the Land of Promise was
located, by which all other factors will be judged or compared. One would think
that this is a reverse process of the actual method of learning what the
scriptural record tells us of such a matter.
It
should be that the scriptural record is the main source, the first source, and
the source to trump all other sources as to where Nephi said he sailed and
landed, and where Mormon describes the Land of Promise to be and what it looked
like.
Such
an approach, as Sorenson espouses, opens the door for the inclusion of all
sorts of secular views that are not, from the beginning, consistent with the
scriptural record. Take, as an example, Sorenson (and other Mesoamericanists)
view that the Mayan calendar, which shows the Flood to be in 3114 B.C. as the
source of dating the Jaredite nation, 770 years before Moses lists the date of the Flood through the births of the patriarchs in Genesis and the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price.
On
the one hand, Mesoamericanists claim that within the past several decades,
professional studies in American archaeology, geography, culture, and language
have provided an enormous amount of information of great interest to readers
and believers of the Book of Mormon—information that earlier students of the
book may not have guessed even existed.
Yet,
at the same time, turn a deaf ear to the possibility, despite all the enormous
matching and agreement found between the scriptural record and the actual South
American location.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment