Do Mormons Still Believe The Book of Mormon to Be Actual History?

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Medawlinno said:
The thing is, is that what supposedly occurred in the new World with respect to the BoM, just does not exist in any N/A oral tradition; it’s just not there. One would expect to find something in the oral traditions.
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Medawlinno said:
Not so with the peoples of the BoM – there’s zero evidence in the N/A oral traditions.
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Which Native American oral traditions have you examined?

Here’s a story of the Nivaclé tribe in Paraguay that recognized a Book of Mormon story and converted because of this: Tribe Knew Book of Mormon Stories Before Missionaries Arrived + 4 More Facts About the Church in Paraguay | LDS Living

And here are oral history accounts from Peru: Four Peruvian Versions of the White God Legend

I hope this helps…
 
I just got back from the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. It was very interesting. Apparently they were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, but not Reformed Egyptian.
 
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TOmNossor:
You are actually mistaken (as @dougch already told you) when you say “Mormonism declares Quetzalcoatl was Christ,”
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The sitting “Prophet” of the Mormon Church wrote, “The story of the life of the Mexican divinity, Quetzalcoatl, closely resembles that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same being.” In a Catholic view he was not the “Church,” but he did declare an idea which has pervaded Mormonism every since. Therefore, my statement was true.
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TOmNossor:
So, a Catholic priest saw parallels between Christ and Quetzalcoatl.
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No, the fact is a Catholic priest never did this.
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TOmNossor:
Some LDS embraced this first-hand account of the pre-Columbian beliefs as evidence for the BOM and you say “Mormonism declares….”
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The sitting President of the Mormon Church was not just “some LDS.”
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TOmNossor:
I don’t have a quote from Father Sahagún. I determined while it could SOUND pro-BOM, it was not sufficiently strong to be used as a pro-LDS argument. I do not actually remember the words of Father Sahagún, but he and other have been used by Anglicans and New-agers to point to Christ in the pre-Columbian Americas so it is not just LDS who understood the parallels being drawn (drawn incorrectly IMO, but drawn).
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You do not have quotes from Father Sahagún because they don’t exist. The only people that tried to turn statements made by Cortés and Father Shahagún into the idea that the American Indians had seen Christ were those who wanted to believe that the American Indians were the lost tribes of Israel, which include the Mormons.
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TOmNossor:
I do not point to Quetzalcoatl as pro-BOM evidence and I calmly speak against it when I can. That is what someone who ATTEMPTS to be OBJECTIVE does.
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Science knows the American Indians NEVER claimed to have seen Christ. Mormon Brant Gardner accepts this contrary to President John Taylor’s declaration. He wrote, “Quetzalcoatl might appear to be a remembrance of Christ, but only because LDS authors have put their own spin on the story that the Spanish fathers had already spun into Christian gold from native Aztec straw.” Tom believes Brant.

An objective person would know that it was never the Catholic priest that started this silliness; that is a fact. A pro-Mormon, anti-Catholic would have to ignore this fact to make the Priest look silly instead of Mormonism.
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TOmNossor:
Thus I dismiss Quatzequatel = Christ as EVIDENCE for the BOM. The connections are not IMO sufficient to demonstrate that Christ’s visit to the New World CAUSED the connections seen by Catholic, Anglican, New Age, and LDS scholars.
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Objective? I don’t think so.
 
All Mormons can do is “paint in the background” creating some vague idea of a place based on a desire to believe a coincidence or two and turn it into the Book of Mormon story. Like the Mormon desire to believe Quetzalcoatl was Jesus.

This place, whether it is Mesoamerica or the American midwest, will always have the problem of the details proving the Book of Mormon to be a 19th century work of fiction.
 
Any sources that are not from the LDS??

The Nivaclé story is essentially ‘Mormon folklore’ - Nivaclé cosmology is very shamanistic; no relationship to the BoM.

It basically amounts to a faith-promoting story. Any Native account that is remotely similar will be completely blown out of proportion, taken out of context, and considerably more ‘read’ into it that what the remote similarity ever was to begin with.

Stories like this kind of remind me of some of the stories one hears about “tongues” – they have been retold to the point where they have become cliché and have taken on the title of a virtual “urban legend”.

Why would such accounts be so obscure from mainstream anthropology?
 
If the shoe fits. You can’t stop with the sophistry, like it’s some kind of disease.

Your assertions don’t make something that is made up, a made up “truth”.

I realize these are confusing time, where truth is subjective, to the point of absurdity.

Did you just claim to make a list of objects listed in the BoM as being evidence of something? You’re killing me. 😂

Let me know when you find glass windows, or a pre-Colombian horse culture.
 
Just came across this short video discussing Book of Mormon archeological evidence, or really the lack thereof. He makes many of the same points posters have been making in this thread. I thought one of the more compelling arguments he makes is that even in LDS research circles, there is no agreement as to the location of the BoM civilizations in the New World, mostly because they haven’t found anything solid yet that would support one theory over another. I agree with the speaker, however, that the text of the BoM supports the idea that these civilizations were large, prosperous, and powerful. The text says there were battles where hundreds of thousands were killed. That does not support the theory of some LDS researchers who claim the BoM is really confined to small, isolated groups of people. That theory seems to be really more of an admission that despite a lot of looking, they haven’t been able to find anything significant supporting the historicity of the BoM in ancient America.

 
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Anyone found those “reformed Egyptian” scrolls? Why is it “reformed Egyptian”? How is it different from “Old Egyptian”.
 
Joseph Smith called the characters on the Book of Mormon golden plates “reformed Egyptian.” Nobody knows what that means though, as we have no examples of it. According to JS, once he was done “translating” the BoM, the plates were taken back by the angel Moroni. No other examples of this language have ever been found, and no one else ever got to examine the actual plates…
 
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I noticed that the article also said it was the Mayan civilization multiple times. Yes the Mayan civilzation was very large. What does that have to do with the Book of Mormon?
 
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I had understood it to mean the Hebrew language (or a variety thereof) which was written using Egyptian writing (more like Demotic than Hieroglyphic) rather than the Hebrew alphabet - which brings on a slew of additional questions and issues.
 
All I know is that the LDS people I’ve known have been among the finest, most-upstanding people I’ve met.
 
That is very true. Great people for sure. But that has nothing to do with the fact that the BoM is fiction.
 
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Quarterback. Steve Young is a direct descendant of Brigham Young (and looks just like him). Jim McMahon was never LDS (to the constant dismay of BYU while he was there, BTW). And Ty Detmer never made it in the NFL.
 
Agreed - I’ve known many as well, particularly from Scouting.

I do have to say though, when we use their school area (which for our local LDS church is attached to the church itself) for some of the Eagle Rank Board of Reviews, District Meetings, etc., we are watched by the older ‘elders’ like bloody hawks. A bit unnerving actually - sounds a bit paranoid, but it’s almost like they have something there we’re not supposed to see.
 
I talked with some Mormon missionaries and they really believe that Jesus was in America with the natives and that they will have their own planet as governor. I remember that Jesus warned about false prophets.
 
I have a different view, of the location of events, that the BoM, occurred in the USA, and not Central America. So many years I had trouble with the book, even before computers, and internet.
 
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