Historical accuracy of the BOM

[LeSellers]

12 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

14 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

It is the account of the people who traveled from the Middle East to Peru

Prove it

14 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

Then please explain Moroni's visit to Joseph in 1822.

 and to the Yucatan Peninsula (or nearly so). They lived, they fought, they died, and they bear record of the Risen Christ in their sacred and secular annals.

Prove it

"Proof" is tough, but Joseph said the Lehites landed in Peru. The geography demands a limited space, and the words show us where that must be in relationship to the landing site.

"Prove it"?!?!? Who are you, Voldemort?

Lehi

[rpframe]

12 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

Then please explain Moroni's visit to Joseph in 1822.

Either Moroni lied or he told the truth. It was no meteor, it was no fairy tale, fat, big or otherwise. It is the account of the people who traveled from the Middle East to Peru (extending further south than today's country) and to the Yucatan Peninsula (or nearly so). They lived, they fought, they died, and they bear record of the Risen Christ in their sacred and secular annals.

If Moroni lied, then his "promise" is nullified. If no promise, what do we base our faith on? Christ Himself proclaimed the book to be true. Eleven men saw the plates, three of them saw Moroni. They say that God's voice witnessed the truth of the Book of Mormon to them. Is God, too, a liar?

Lehi

*rolls eyes*

I did not claim that it was a fairy tale... I did not claim that it did take place on another planet... I did not claim that Moroni lied... 

Simply put... someone could come up to me with thousands of pieces of "evidence" that the Book of Mormon is historically inaccurate, and I could easily still accept the Book of Mormon as true. The logic and science of men is incredibly inaccurate.

[LeSellers]

29 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Could it be 100% historically accurate? Maybe.  But the errors of men is a difficult thing to get around.

!00% is a superhuman standard, but, as Moroni said, we know of no errors. That hardly means there are none, but it does mean that the Book of Mormon is a truthful, historical account of a real people, and real events, and real prophets, and real promises and witnesses, and testimonies.

It is not a big fat fairy tale. It is another Testament of Jesus Christ, written by the people who experienced that events it recounts.

Lehi

Edited August 11, 2016 by LeSellers

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

I will preface my comment by saying that while I think that the BOM is true I am unsure about its historical accuracy. As in a true history of the people who lived on this continent.

Where are the ruins? they built great cities didn't they? where are the battlefields on which their wars were fought? where are the fossils..... not one grave of anyone? Not one horse bone? not one sword? not one temple?

 

There are ruins and battlefields and fossils and graves.  But the difficulty is that we really have no idea where on two continents all these events took place.  So, to conclusively tie in any of this to the events in the BoM is a physical impossibility.  That's why you're not going to see the "proof".

[omegaseamaster75]

7 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

"Proof" is tough, but Joseph said the Lehites landed in Peru. The geography demands a limited space, and the words show us where that must be in relationship to the landing site.

"Prove it"?!?!? Who are you, Voldemort?

Lehi

You claim 100% accuracy, I asked you to back it up now it looks like you are side stepping. 

I have been to Peru have you? I have been to Bolivia, I have been to the Yucatan, Guatemala, and many, many other archaeological sites nothing I have seen convinces me that any of the sites relates at all in any way to the BOM.

Now the argument is that these sites are to modern and don't date back to 600BC....well find me the ones that do I'll check them out.

[LeSellers]

7 minutes ago, rpframe said:

I did not claim that it was a fairy tale... I did not claim that it did take place on another planet... I did not claim that Moroni lied.

Nor did I say you had. This is all hypothetical, and in contrast to the truth.

 

8 minutes ago, rpframe said:

Simply put... someone could come up to me with thousands of pieces of "evidence" that the Book of Mormon is historically inaccurate, and I could easily still accept the Book of Mormon as true. The logic and science of men is incredibly inaccurate.

My point, which seems lost in the ether somewhere, is that your hypothetical is inconsistent with the reality of truth and the Restoration.

Lehi

[LeSellers]

7 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

You claim 100% accuracy, I asked you to back it up now it looks like you are side stepping.

No, I did not. I postfaced my comment of accuracy with Moroni's caveat.

8 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

I have been to Peru have you? I have been to Bolivia, I have been to the Yucatan, Guatemala, and many, many other archaeological sites nothing I have seen convinces me that any of the sites relates at all in any way to the BOM.

No, I haven't. I doubt that your experience was germane. Did you go as an archaeologist, a tourist, a missionary?

I have read people whose research I trust and who demonstrate that the areas a few hundred miles north of Panama and northward to the Yucatan Peninsula is a very likely locale for the events' of the majority of the Book of Mormon account as we have it.

Lehi

[tesuji]

35 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

It would have to be historically "true", but not necessarily "accurate".  This is somewhat in line with LeSeller's statement (quoting Moroni) about the mistakes of men.

Any author who writes about the things going on around him will not get all the historical data correct.  And these were not historians.  They were prophets.  The knew the general activities of the people accurately enough.  But to compare them to the classical standards of historical accuracy is asking too much.  Could it be 100% historically accurate? Maybe.  But the errors of men is a difficult thing to get around.

And the editor was a military general.

[Maureen]

28 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

Then please explain Moroni's visit to Joseph in 1822.

Either Moroni lied or he told the truth.....

It's weird how you ask did Moroni lie and not did Joseph lie. We only know of this character Moroni through Joseph Smith. If he's a fictional character then the character can lie or tell the truth or both in the story. If he's presented as a real person but in fact is really fictional, then the creator of that fictional person, who is trying to pass him off as real is the liar.

M.

[omegaseamaster75]

7 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

I have read people whose research I trust and who demonstrate that the areas a few hundred miles north of Panama and northward to the Yucatan Peninsula is a very likely locale for the events' of the majority of the Book of Mormon account as we have it.

Lehi

CFR

[rpframe]

12 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

Nor did I say you had. This is all hypothetical, and in contrast to the truth.

 

My point, which seems lost in the ether somewhere, is that your hypothetical is inconsistent with the reality of truth and the Restoration.

Lehi

Who says my hypothetical has to be consistent?

[LeSellers]

9 minutes ago, Maureen said:

It's weird how you ask did Moroni lie and not did Joseph lie.

Why weird? does it matter who of them lied?

9 minutes ago, Maureen said:

We only know of this character Moroni through Joseph Smith.

Well, no, we don't. There are millions of us who know Moroni visited Joseph that night and the next morning and the following anniversaries. But that won't satisfy you, I'm sure.

Nonetheless, there were three men who also saw Moroni: David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris.

Lehi

[LeSellers]

8 minutes ago, rpframe said:

Who says my hypothetical has to be consistent?

It should be internally consistent, at least.

Lehi

[rpframe]

3 minutes ago, LeSellers said:

It should be internally consistent, at least.

Lehi

Says you lol.

Besides, I watch a lot of scifi....

I could EASILY hedge up all inconsistencies by presuming that God, being all powerful...  has the powers to make things and people, disappear, time travel, and instantly teleport.

But that would be another thread entirely, and I don't have the time for that.

[tesuji]

1 hour ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

I will preface my comment by saying that while I think that the BOM is true I am unsure about its historical accuracy. As in a true history of the people who lived on this continent.

Where are the ruins? they built great cities didn't they? where are the battlefields on which their wars were fought? where are the fossils..... not one grave of anyone? Not one horse bone? not one sword? not one temple?

 

As others have said, we don't know where it took place. I personally think most discussion of "Book of Mormon geography" is a waste of time, because of this.

I don't think we know much of what was happening in the world 2000 years ago. We have sparse records and most everything else is buried. How can we even know how much we don't know? 

One of the most famous civilizations - the Greeks - for them we have an estimated only 5% of the records that they wrote.

However, if it all took place in the jungles of Yucatan, then in that case I would't be surprised we haven't found much. Wood, etc will have rotten away. Iron and steel would be rusted away. Everything else could be covered with jungle. And maybe some of the stuff we've found is BoM stuff, who really knows.

Swords, horse bones, etc - I think we do have some evidence for that kind of thing. Here's some speculation:
http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/publications/archaeological-evidence-and-the-book-of-mormon
http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/publications/horses-in-the-book-of-mormon
http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Warfare/Weapons/Swords

In the end, though, it's obvious to me that the Lord wants to try our faith, regarding the Book of Mormon. So we put our trust in him, we feel the witness of the Holy Spirit that it's true, and we learn form the teachings in the book. Full scholarly-type evidence will come later - it's not the most important thing for now.
 

Edited August 11, 2016 by tesuji

[tesuji]

People often bring up the DNA question in a thread like this. So here, read this:

https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies

[rpframe]

9 minutes ago, tesuji said:

In the end, though, it's obvious to me that the Lord wants to try our faith, regarding the Book of Mormon. So we put our trust in him, we feel the witness of the Holy Spirit that it's true, and we learn form the teachings in the book. Full scholarly-type evidence will come later - it's not the most important thing for now.
 

This ^

[omegaseamaster75]

35 minutes ago, tesuji said:

People often bring up the DNA question in a thread like this. So here, read this:

https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies

Conclusion
Much as critics and defenders of the Book of Mormon would like to use DNA studies to support their views, the evidence is simply inconclusive. 

So nothing....

[Guest]

1 hour ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

I have been to Peru have you? I have been to Bolivia, I have been to the Yucatan, Guatemala, and many, many other archaeological sites nothing I have seen convinces me that any of the sites relates at all in any way to the BOM.

Now the argument is that these sites are to modern and don't date back to 600BC....well find me the ones that do I'll check them out.

What exactly would convince you?  

As far as 600 BC, I don't see how that is a decisive date since the "great civilization" that we know of in the BoM was actually from about 200 or 150 BC onward.  And as far as can be told, there weren't even a million people in the entire nation.  Or possibly around a million at most.  So, how are you going to search two continents and accurately find fossil records or any archaeological evidence of some small nation that barely spanned what might be the size of New Jersey when you don't know where this New Jersey is?

There is far more unknown than is known and because the small speck of desired knowledge is not in a subset of the small speck of known, you're dismissing it as false.

How do you reconcile your faith in the story of Joseph Smith's prophetic calling and the UTTER lack of historicity of the BoM?

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

Conclusion
Much as critics and defenders of the Book of Mormon would like to use DNA studies to support their views, the evidence is simply inconclusive. 

So nothing....

You didn't even read the article, did you?  You'd have found that the article actually agrees with your statement.  But you just gave a knee jerk reaction as if you knew something we didn't.

[omegaseamaster75]

My conclusion is that we don't know, and yes I read it. I had read it previously it's nothing new. In one of the very first parts of the article it states that the scriptural part is more important that the actual historical accuracy of what is written, I agree

My knee jerk reaction as you put it is in response to those that claim it must be 100% accurate (baring human error) or it's all false. I say it's not 

Edited August 11, 2016 by omegaseamaster75

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

My conclusion is that we don't know, and yes I read it. I had read it previously it's nothing new. In one of the very first parts of the article it states that the scriptural part is more important that the actual historical accuracy of what is written, I agree

My knee jerk reaction as you put it is in response to those that claim it must be 100% accurate (baring human error) or it's all false. I say it's not 

So, what do you say it is?

[tesuji]

18 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

Conclusion
Much as critics and defenders of the Book of Mormon would like to use DNA studies to support their views, the evidence is simply inconclusive. 

So nothing....

The article isn't trying to prove anything. It's addressing critics who think DNA disproved the Book of Mormon - by, as you've said, showing that DNA studies related to Book of Mormon people are inconclusive.

[omegaseamaster75]

3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

So, what do you say it is?

I have yet to see anything that even comes close to proving one shred of physical evidence that proved the veracity of the BOM.  Maybe someday this will be revealed to us, and maybe not. 

I do however take it on faith that it is true, and if I find out that it is just a bunch of allegorical stories to make us feel good it does not diminish the veracity of the teachings in that book or the fact that it was brought forth by the gift and power of God through the prophet JS.

We know that JS never translated directly from the plates he had in his possession it was all by revelation through the seer stone. Yes moroni did appear to him and yes there were/are golden plates.

[UtahTexan]

I believe it.