Joseph - A Liar?

[CrimsonKairos]

You should have those eyes looked at, Biz. They seem to be rolling around of their own accord in your head.

Maybe it's a side-effect of your odd diet. B)

[Guest bizabra]

Seems to me that YOU are the one "swallowing" a load of "gnat". After all, you think that JS needed to use substitute words for actual words, even though the words he supposedly subbed out were known and understood by his contemporaries.

Guess Hugh Nibley and his crazy apologetics might be to blame. Or, if you yourself have never read any of his mental acrobatics, you got your "meal" from someone who heard about his version of why JS used steel and horses, etc. instead of obsidian blades or tapirs/deer.

Common sense goes right out the window when true believers try to square reality with their belief system, so I'll just have to remember that whenever I post anything.

sigh. . . . . . Sometimes I think I feel just a bit like how Galileo must have felt when he was brought before the inquisition to defend (and then ultimately forced to retract) his certain knowledge that the world was NOT the center of the universe. The Catholic church fathers KNEW that he was wrong, even though THEY were the ones blinded by their own beliefs.

Oh well.

[Dale]

It doesn't matter how Joseph Smith's contemporaries understood the Book of Mormon animals to be regular animals. What matters is only what the text means if it is viewed as a translation. Dr. Sorenson based on the study of the text demonstrates it's far from uncertain that the text meant old world animals. I am not a huge fan of Hugh Nibley. But Dr. Sorenson's suggestion has been well defended for several years. Dr. Sorenson's suggestion is a good suggestion regarding Book of Mormon animals. Some have disputed his argument, but I am not convinced his critic's have refuted his argument. New approaches to The Book of Mormon contain's the best formulated response to his suggestion I have seen. (Signature Book's)

Hugh Nibley contrary to allegations of his critic's isn't always guilty of bad apologetics. I think he got off base at times, but I think a lot of his thinking is sound. Some of his best critic's I have read has come out of my Signature Book's material. Person's as scholarly as he was have read his critic's and find much of his thinking generally sound. I am quite aware of allegations of Hugh Nibley's mental acrobatics as I have read such criticisms. I am not impressed with all the criticisms his scholarship has recieved.

[Gabelma]

I think sometimes its easier to say we just don't know - neither history or archaeology are exact sciences, the US has been way behind the UK with the use of imaging equipement. The US has been heavily populated in areas since the beginning of modern archaeology with Thomas Jefferson's work on the mound people. Its highly possible the Nephites took animals with them. There are so many if buts and maybes

I understand that so far no steel has been found however I don't see why the Nephites couldn't have had steel there is Iron Ore in the Americas, and the technology has been around since 1400BC in East Africa - highly possible the Nephites came across the technology whilst wandering in the wilderness. The capability to make steel has been around since the bronze age.

Concerning animals and grains were are assuming there was no trade - yet cocaine has been found in Egyptian Mummies indicating trade did exist

But ultimately does it matter? If God has witnessed to you that the Book of Mormon is true it may just all be fables either way it contains information that he wants us to know, to use and grow from.

Charley

[Snow]

Guess Hugh Nibley and his crazy apologetics might be to blame. Or, if you yourself have never read any of his mental acrobatics, you got your "meal" from someone who heard about his version of why JS used steel and horses, etc. instead of obsidian blades or tapirs/deer.

Can you give me the specifics and references for Nibley's acrobatics why JS used steel and horses, etc. instead of obsidian blades or tapirs/deer?

I am not familiar with them.

[BenRaines]

Remains Show Ancient Horses Were Hunted for Their Meat

Hillary Mayell

for National Geographic News

May 11, 2001 Scientists have found the first definitive proof that early humans in North America hunted horses for their meat.

Prehistoric horses, which were much smaller than today's horses, standing about 4.5 feet (1.5 meters) high at the shoulder, became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Scientists considered it likely that hunting by humans was a factor in their extinction, but until now there was no hard proof.

The first conclusive evidence comes from spearheads tainted with the residue of horse protein. They were found along with other animal remains on the river plain of St. Mary's Reservoir in southern Alberta, Canada.

"In the past, we could really only attribute the demise of these ancient horses to climate and environmental changes," said Brian Kooyman, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary and the lead scientist at the dig.

"There has been suggestive evidence at other sites—Lubbock Lake in Texas, for instance—that early peoples were utilizing horses," he said. "But this discovery raises the very real possibility that overhunting by the Clovis people played a significant role in the extinction."

European explorers reintroduced horses to the New World several thousand years after the ancient ones died out.

Prehistoric Detective Work

The floor of the reservoir is covered with animal tracks of mammals, including wooly mammoths, camels, giant bison and helmeted musk oxen. "Clovis points," the spearheads associated with some of the first humans to reach the continent, found in the river plain have been dated to between 11,000 to 11,300 years old.

"The area where the remains were found is large—3 to 4 square kilometers [1 to 1.5 square miles]," Kooyman said. "We uncovered the remains of a prehistoric horse with several smashed vertebrae and bones that bore evidence of butchering, and then two of our students found several Clovis points around 550 yards (500 meters) away."

Laboratory analysis showed that the spearheads had the residue of horse protein on them; they apparently had been thrust into the horse.

"It was a near miss," Kooyman said of the discovery. "We weren't going to bother testing them [for horse protein residue]. We'd had similar findings before and the points all came back from the lab clean. But the two graduate students kept insisting we send them in, and we're glad they did."

This is one of the first articles I remember reading about original horses on the North American continent.

Ben Raines

[Snow]

This is one of the first articles I remember reading about original horses on the North American continent.

Ben Raines

Yes - but those horses were thought to have been extinct by the time the Nephites arrived.

[Doctor Steuss]

I’m just trying to figure out how many buffalo were roaming the plains of America in the 1800’s. In fact, I’m trying to figure out how many buffalo were hunted and killed by Native Americans…

Oh wait… never mind, I found the answer:

Zero.

A bison, a bison. My kingdom for a bison.