Comment #1: “The three Mayan codices, covering the ancient time period as that of the Nephites, have no inclusions of any kind in either Egyptian or Hebrew. Nor are there such inclusions on the ruins of two of the oldest cities of Palenque and Copan in Mesoamerica. Michael Z.
Response: Much older than either Palenque or Copan is the city of Kaminaljuyu, near Guatemala, which is a site of the Maya civilization that was primarily occupied from the Formative Period in 1500 BC until its decline after the Late Classic Period which ended in 900 AD. In fact, Copan did not originate until a Maya leader, Yax Kuk Mo of Tikal arrived in Copan Valley in Honduras in 427 AD and began a dynasty claimed to have had 16 rulers—becoming one of the greatest Maya cities during the Classic Maya Period, with the great period of the city, paralleling that of other major Mayan cities, occurred during the Classical period, AD 300-900.
In neither case do these cities cover the Nephite period of Beginning at 600 BC and Ending at 400 AD.
The Madrid Codice, often called the Tro-Cortesianus codice as the four surviving codices, are written in pictographic images
As to the codices, there are actually four remaining Mayan hieroglyphic codices: the Dresden, Grolier, Madrid or Tro-Cortesianus, and Paris codices. However, according to Drs. Gabrielle Vail and Christine Hernandez, along with a very large team that have been studying the actual texts, these screenfold codices do not date to the Nephite period. It is true that the ruins of Palenque are claimed to have been dated from 226 BC to 800 AD, the codices themselves were not written until sometime between 1200 AD to 1521 AD, what is called the Late Preclassic to Early Post classic
Their work, the Maya Codices Database Project, is quite clear on the dates involved, and that this is an ongoing project, not by any means complete as suggested. In addition, Maya culture can also be investigated from documents of the period of European occupation that discuss the indigenous culture; which are texts written by the Maya themselves after many years of being christianized and educated by the Spanish conquerors. But there are precious few hieroglyphs found that date earlier than long after the demise of the Nephite culture. For some unfathomable reason, Book of Mormon critics continually cite problems that have nothing to do with the issue of their critique. The Lamanites never wrote in Reformed Egyptian, nor did they write in Hebrew except for a very brief period after being taught how to do so in B.C. times.
Whatever the language the Lamanites later developed, had nothing to do with what was used by the Nephites. As for your two cities, little is known of the rulers of Copán before the founding of a new dynasty with its origins at Tikal in the early 426 A.D. (after the demise of the Nephites). All of Copán's known history dates from that time to about 822 A.D., covering the time of their 16 or 17 claimed rulers, though two of their names are unknown. As for Palenque, we have covered this before in this blog, but not even the name of the site is truly known. It had been abandoned for several centuries before the Spanish arrived, and they were told by the local Chol Maya it was called Otolum, meaning "Land of strong houses," which, obviously, is not the real name. The city is claimed to have been dated to 226 B.C., but that is an estimate for little has been excavated there, and few studies made, though something of it is known from 599 A.D. onward, when it is claimed to have been rebuilt by Maya Ajaw, K'inich Janaab' Pakal (Pascal the Great)--again, long after the Nephite demise.
Screenfold codices. They fold together into the size of a single board
Maya codices were written in a screenfold manner as shown here. The ideograms were strange to the Spanish, such as Friar Diego de Landa, the 16th century Bishop of Yucatán, and motivated by curiosity, undertook the task of gathering all the codices they could find and deciphering them with the help of interpreters. They then saw them as diabolical, and impelled by fear, undertook a systematic burning of all the codices they could find
Comment #2: "Since the Book of Mormon was engraved on metal plates, which takes a lot of time and not allow for correcting errors, why is it so wordy?"
Response: It is understandable that people writing on metal would be brief since the task is laborious with limited space—yet on almost every page the Book of Mormon reveals a text that is much wordier than needed to convey the basic message. In fact, there are numerous repetitions and wordy phrases like, "And it came to pass." To critics, who lack understanding of ancient Hebraic writing techniques, this is an obvious evidence of fraud.
However, the wordiness of the scriptural record is quite supportive of Hebrew or a similar Semitic language and an obvious feature of Biblical Hebrew. Certainly, ancient Hebraic writers would not have written like Hemingway—even though they had the challenge of engraving their sacred records and quite selective in what they chose to write about, when they did write scripture, they wrote it in Hebrew style. Why would they depart from their Hebraic literary tradition, the language of sacred scripture?
In fact, scholars of ancient languages have noted that Hebrew tends to be wordier than Greek or other languages. Written Hebrew often has the flavor of an oral language, filled with repetitious elements like chiasmus (that would be used to help an orator remember the structure of the story) and repetitive phrases. These latter serve not only a poetical or stylistic role, they also may occur as an editorial tool.
As indicated in the previous post, (for example, parenthetical phrases, or repeating phrases at the beginning and end of a parenthetical remark, can serve a role similar to the modern use of parentheses to mark the insertion—a tool known as repetitive resumption, which is a Hebraic literary technique in which editorial comments are framed between two parallel statements.
The repetition of statements could function somewhat like our use of parentheses in modern English to mark where an explanation or departure from the story had occurred. This is seen in the Old Testament in Joshua 1:7-9, which begins with a command to be strong and courageous, followed by what some scholars see as an editorial insertion about the need to study the law daily, followed by a repetition of the command to be strong and courageous. This is a pattern, abundantly used in the Book of Mormon.
The lawyer Zeezrom and his followers
For example, in Alma 10:32 and Alma 11:20, two passages stating that the object of Nephite lawyers was to get gain, and that they got gain according to their employ. In between, in Alma 11:1-19, there is a lengthy parenthetical explanation about Nephite law, payment for judges, and the monetary system. The departure from the story appears to have been added editorially to help readers understand the significance of Zeezrom's subsequent offer of six "onties" (a large measure of silver) to Amulek if only he would come to his senses and deny the existence of a Supreme Being (Alma 11:22), which essentially is a parenthetical expression.
This is also seen in Alma 22:17-24, where Mormon is describing the Lamanite king’s extensive land over which he ruled. In the midst of this, he digressed to provide the reader with an extensive understanding of how this land of the Lamanites corresponded to the land of the Nephites, and then added the Nephite control to the narrow neck of land and what existed beyond that in the Land Northward. Or in Helaman 10:3 where the disciple Nephi, while walking back to his house, considers the people: “And it came to pass as he was thus pondering—being much cast down because of the wickedness of the people of the Nephites, their secret works of darkness, and their murderings, and their plunderings, and all manner of iniquities—and it came to pass as he was thus pondering in his heart, behold, a voice came unto him saying:”
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