Continued from the previous post regarding an evaluation of Meldrum’s 14 factors, and why a voyage around Africa for Lehi and a landing in Florida is ill-founded. The first 10 factors were posted in the earlier articles, here we continue below with the last two on Meldrum’s list:
Map of the areas in the Eastern U.S. that Meldrum indicates, Note that Rod L. Meldrum’s landing for Lehi is at Crystal River, Florida, along the Gulf Coast
13. Signs of Hebrew writing or relics: Bat Creek Stone, Holy Stones, Hebrew Earthworks, etc.
The so-called Bat Creek stone or tablet, found in 1889 in an undisturbed burial mound in eastern Tennessee, is claimed to have Hebrew writing on it. This excavated tablet, found in a Cherokee burial in Loudon County, Tennessee, has been touted as evidence, and by some even “proof,” that the Cherokee had a written language and that it was based on the Hebrew tongue. While the mound in which the Bat Creek stone found has been radio-carbon dated to 1355 AD, the tablet itself was Carbon-14 dated to somewhere between 32 A.D. and 769 AD, based on wood fragments found with the inscription.
The Bat Creek stone, which has been the center of disagrements since first found, became the subject of contention in 1970 when Cyrus H. Gordon, American scholar of the Semitic language, cultures and histories as well as ancient Near East languages, though claiming no particular claim to expertise in Cherokee, proposed that the letters of the inscription were Paleo-Hebrew (member of the Canaanite family of alphabets) of the 1st or 2nd century AD rather than Cherokee , and therefore evidence of pre-Columbian transatlantic contact (Cyrus H. Gordon, Before Columbus: Links Between the Old World and Ancient America, Crown Publishers, New York, 1971).
In 1991, archaeologists Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas, relying on a communication from the scholar on Semitic languages, Frank Moore Cross, concluded that the inscription is not genuine paleo-Hebrew but rather a 19th-century forgery, with John W. Emmert, the Smithsonian agent who performed the excavation, the responsible party. In a 1993 article in Biblical Archaeology Review, Semitist P. Kyle McCarter Jr. stated that although the inscription “is not an authentic paleo-Hebrew inscription,” it “clearly imitates one in certain features,” and does contain “an intelligible sequence of five letters—too much for coincidence.” McCarter concluded, “It seems probable that we are dealing here not with a coincidental similarity but with a fraud” (P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., "Let's be Serious About the Bat Creek Stone," Biblical Archaeology Review. Vol.19, July/Aug. 1993, pp54-55, 83).
An illustration in an 1870 Masonic reference book giving an artist's impression of how the Biblical phrase "holy to Yahweh” would have appeared in Paleo-Hebrew, which bears striking similarities to the Bat Creek inscription, correctly translated the inscription "Holiness to the Lord," though "Holy to Yahweh" would be more correct. They conclude that Emmert most likely copied the inscription from the Masonic illustration, in order to please Thomas with an artifact that he would mistake for Cherokee (Robert C. Mainfort and Mary L. Kwas, “The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Exposed,” American Antiquity, vol.64, Oct. 2004), pp761-769).
At this point it should be noted that Hoax expert Kenneth Feder says the peer reviewed work of Mary L. Kwas and Robert Mainfort has “demolished” any claims of the stone's authenticity (Kenneth L. Feder, Encyclopedia of Nubious Archaeology; From Atlantis to the Walam Olum, ABC-CLIO, October/November 2010, pp39-40). In addition, Mainfort and Kwas themselves state “The Bat Creek stone is a fraud” (Robert C. Mainfort, Jr.. and Mary L. Kwas, “The Bat Creek Fraud: A Final Statement,” Tennessee Anthropologist, vol.18, Fall 1993), pp87-93).
The Holy Stones found in the Newark Earthworks in Newark, Ohio
As for the “holy stones,” The Newark Holy Stones refer to a set of artifacts allegedly discovered by David Wyrick in 1860 within a cluster of ancient Indian burial mounds near Newark, Ohio, now generally believed to be a hoax. The set consists of the Keystone, a stone bowl, and the Decalogue with its sandstone box. The site where the objects were found is known as The Newark Earthworks, one of the biggest collections from an ancient American Indian culture known as the Hopewell that existed from approximately 100 BC to AD 500 (“Hopewell Culture,” Ohio History Central, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio).
In fact, The Newark Holy Stones are considered by almost all archaeologists to be an archaeological fraud used to support the "Lost Tribes" theory, which posits an ancient Israelite presence in Ohio. The idea that there is a connection between the ancient Hopewell mound builders and Jewish settlers that were in the Americas before Columbus is considered a form of pseudoarchaeology, and considered one of the most infamous frauds in Ohio archaeology.
The Newark Ohio Earthworks
Early Ohio archaeologist Matthew Canfield Read wrote that frauds “will always in some way represent the ideas of the time of the forgery.” This is particularly true of the “Holy Stones.” Nevertheless, the “Holy Stones” continue to find support in some contemporary special interest groups, such as some supporters of extreme cultural diffusionism”
The principal Newark “Holy Stones," when considered in their historic context, were hastily conceived and rather sloppily executed scientific forgeries. It is surprising, but revealing, that they were taken so seriously by so many in the 19th century. It is even more surprising, and correspondingly more revealing, that some today still take them seriously as supposed relics of an ancient Israelite presence in Ohio.
Two later additions to the "Holy Stones" corpus, or collection of written texts on the subject, clearly are hoaxes and are widely, if not universally, recognized to be such
Consider for a moment that if the oldest imagery in Tennessee is writing on the rock walls of caves, how does this equate to Lehi and his people, with a highly developed written language and one thousand years of history when they arrived in the Land of Promise, that this rock art and simplified alphabet claimed to be Hebrew, would be completely out of place and not relate to Lehi and his descendants.
14. Access to Rivers: Chattahoochee only river source brings ice into the gulf
The Chattahoochee River enters Lake Seminole from the north (Flint River from the northeast) and exits the Lake as the Apalachicola River southward to Hathcock Bay and then on to the East Bay, Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.
However, it should be noted that the word “ice” does not appear anywhere in the Book of Mormon, nor does the word “gulf” in relation to water appear. Like the honey discussed earlier, this point or factor has nothing to do with the location of the Land of Promise.
In these 14 Factors of Rod L. Meldrum meant to support his belief and model of the location of the Land of Promise, not one shows any support for his North American “Heartland” theory. And as for his trip around Africa and Atlantic Ocean approach for both the Jaredites and the Nephites, his own maps, as well as other theorists’ maps who claim this route, all are ill based, if not for the difficulty of a novice ship’s crew, the current in the Gulf, sweep from west to east and north to south would preclude any West or Panhandle of Florida landing. The Jaredites, who were even more dependent on the wind than Lehi, could never have made such a voyage.
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