More Comments from Readers – Part I

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog:
Comment #1: “Do you really think Noah’s Ark has been found?”

A distant view of the Valley in which the ark slipped down off the mountain peak to its final rest; Top A: Location of the ark; Bottom: close-up view

Response: The photo above is claimed to be an outline of Noah’s Ark found on Mount Tendürek (next to Mount Ararat) in eastern Turkey (just north of the Iranian border) which features a boat-like formation reportedly exposed by heavy rains and earthquakes in 1948. It was named for Turkish Army Captain Ilhan Durupinar, who identified it in a Turkish Air Force aerial photo taken during a NATO mapping mission in October 1959. Photographs of the site were published in Life magazine in 1960, and a group from the Archeological Research Foundation surveyed the site in September of that year, and ever since then various claimants, most notably Ron Wyatt, have asserted that the "boat-shaped formation" found there contains the remains of Noah's Ark.
    In scripture, it says that Noah’s Ark landed upon the mountains of Ararat; mountains plural.  In the Hebrew text, it literally says the mountains of Urartu: that whole mountainous region of Eastern Turkey, which qualifies Mount Tendürek for the general location. Now Mt. Ararat is a 17,000 foot volcano which has erupted less than 200 years ago, and when most people have been looking for Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat, they have been looking in the Ohura Gorge, a vast area that “blew out” during the eruption. Mt. Ararat itself has a glacier on top of it that replaces itself (flows down the mountain) every 500 years or less.  Even so, people look for Noah’s Ark in the ice.
    It has been reported that on a television program showing people climbing around on Noah’s Ark in the ice and snow on Mt. Ararat, one person claimed to have found petrified wood there.  Though it was very convincing; it was later learned that the person claiming to have been there had never even been to Turkey, but was a paid actor who had taken wood, soaked it in juice, and baked it in an oven to make it look old.

The remains of the Ark. Note the length matches that of the Ark as described in the biblical scriptural record

However, archaeologist Ron Wyatt studied the area from afar for 17 years, finally in 1977 he was able to check out the actual area in the photograph, which remains sitting at 7,000 feet, in the midst of crevasses and landslide debris, and found a clear, grassy area shaped like a ship and rimmed with steep, packed-earth sides. A quick two-day survey revealed no sign that the object was man made. Yet a scientist in the group says nothing in nature could create such a symmetrical shape.
    In studying out the dimensions, Wyatt discarded the standard cubit measurement of 450x75x45 feet interpreted by most people in favor of the Royal Egyptian Cubit, which Wyatt believed Moses would have known (there was no Hebrew Cubit at the time), and found that the actual measurements of the outline was 515 feet, very close to the 500 feet of the Royal Egyptian cubit.
    To Wyatt, the remains really look like those of a giant ship, composed now of organic carbon, which is what is found in petrified wood. There were metal fittings, containing modern day alloys, with vertical and horizontal deck support timbers, rib timers, and other features that are evenly spaced, and the overall outline is 300 cubits long, as stated in the Bible account.
    After extensive analysis, Turkish scientists agreed with Wyatt’s assessment. We may never know the answer to your question, but this one looks pretty authentic.
Comment #2: Sadly all of this has been disproven. Learn about the Hopewell Indians and the new discoveries. Nephites did not land on the west coast of South America. I would take your article down as it is completely incorrect.”
Response:  Nothing has been disproven of which we write. Our are written according to the scriptural record an the latest archaeological information available. As an example, Mormon tells us: “Now, the more idle part of the Lamanites lived in the wilderness, and dwelt in tents; and they were spread through the wilderness on the west, in the land of Nephi; yea, and also on the west of the land of Zarahemla, in the borders by the seashore, and on the west in the land of Nephi, in the place of their fathers' first inheritance, and thus bordering along by the seashore” (Alma 22:28).
    Thus, along the West seashore was where Lehi landed and that initial land area was called the land of their father’s first inheritance. In Hebrew meaning, this is the first area of the Land of Promise settled in, and as late as 200 BC or so, it was still called “the land of first inheritance,” because it was where Lehi landed and settled in the overall land the Lord promised him—that is as Alma wrote: “the place of their fathers' first inheritance, and thus bordering along by the
    Your argument is not with us, but with Alma and Mormon for what they wrote. We just happen to agree with them and repeat it.
    As for the Hopewell Indians, you should read about them in scientific journals, historians and the Indian accounts of this ancient culture. As they state: “The Hopewell tradition (also called the Hopewell culture) describes the common aspects of the Native American that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and Midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 100 BC to 500 BC, in the Middle Woodland period.”
    The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society, but a widely dispersed set of related populations. They were connected by a common network of trade routes, known as the Hopewell exchange system (Douglas T. Price and Gary M. Feinman, “Images of the Past, 5^th Edition,” McGraw-Hill, New York, 2008, pp2744-277).

A Hopewell Hamlet

In fact, the Hopewell settlements were small villages or hamlets of a few rectangular homes made of posts with wattle and daub walls and thatched roofs. This hardly matches the Nephite record of building cities with walls around them (Alma 48:8). In addition, archaeologists claim that the bow was introduced to the Hopewell Indians here, but Nephi had the bow before reaching the Land of Promise (1 Nephi 16:14-15).
    These descriptions of the Hopewell hardly match a description of the Nephites or Lamanites found in the scriptural record.
Comment #3: “Who was the first writer to submit that the Land of Promise was in Mesoamerica?” Carlo S.
Response: It appears that Louis Edward Hills 1917 (RLDS) was the first writer to advance a fully limited Book of Mormon geography that confined Book of Mormon events, including the destruction of the Nephites and Jaredites, to ancient Mesoamerica. From 1917 to 1924, Hills, a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now called Community of Christ church), published several studies emphatically arguing for this view. He was attracted to Mesoamerica by traditions in the writings of Ixtlilxochitl, which he felt paralleled events in the Book of Mormon. He also contended that information in the text about distances made the hemispheric interpretation implausible. Hills argued that the Hill Ramah and Cumorah were not identical, yet he placed both locations within southern Mexico, with Ramah near Tehuantepec and Cumorah near Teotihuacan.
    J. F. Gunsolley, another RLDS writer, provided an additional interesting interpretation in 1922. Based on the description of Limhi's search party, he argued that the Jaredite destruction at Ramah must have taken place somewhere within or near the narrow neck of land. Since Ramah and Cumorah seemed identical (Ether 15:11), he reasoned, Cumorah would have to have been there also (L. E. Hills, Geography of Mexico and Central America from 2234 B.C. to 421 A.D., Independence, MO: 1917; A. Hills, Short Work on the Popol Vuh and the Traditional History of the Ancient Americans by Ixtlilxochitl, Independence, MO: 1918; and Hills, New Light on American Archaeology, Independence, MO: Lambert Moon, 1924).
Comment #4: “I have heard that the forth coming of the Book of Mormon can be found in the Bible. Is that true?” Kasandra K.
Response: There are a lot of innuendos, however, the most specific is found in Isaiah. In the twenty-ninth chapter of his book, he tells of an ancient record that would come out of the ground in the latter days, in a time preceding the restoration of Palestine as a fruitful field. (Isaiah 29:17-18) This record would be in the form of a book, he said, having to do with a people who had been destroyed suddenly (Isaiah 29:5).

Isaiah, the prophet, who lived in the middle of the 8^th century BC

Some words of this book, Isaiah predicted, would be taken to a learned man who would reject them. Then, he said, the book itself would be given to an unlearned man, whom we now know to be Joseph Smith, who fit Isaiah’s description for he had only a very meager formal education. In his hands, Isaiah said, this book would be published to the world by the miraculous power of God and would become a marvelous work and a wonder. (Isaiah 29:11-12, 14). They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmured shall learn doctrine (Isaiah 29:24).