Z
zaffiroborant
Guest
Sorry but I just canāt find it in me to take seriously someone who says or repeats this:Just discovered this pretty in-depth blog post from Jeff Lindsay on your question, posted on the same day you posted your question, actually.
mormanity.blogspot.com/2017/02/evaluating-book-of-mormon-claims-where.html
Dr. John E. Clark as Professor of Anthropology at BYU:
Really the whole blog is nonsense. for instance this:Book of Mormon cities have been found, they are well known, and their artifacts grace the finest museums. They are merely masked by archaeological labels such as āMaya,ā āOlmec,ā and so on. The problem, then, is not that Book of Mormon artifacts have not been found, only that they have not been recognized for what they are.
Jeff Lindsay:
A perfunctory check finds that the ātree of lifeā is a common element in religion world wide including Christianity, where Smith took it originally.Dresden Codex, one of four surviving pre-Columbian Maya books. It shows a sacrificial victim with a tree growing from his heart, a literal portrayal of the metaphor preached in Alma chapter 32.
And then this bit which is particularly ridiculous:
Maybe because elaborate thrones were well known from say France, England and so on.Even more specific, consider Riplakish, the tenth Jaredite king, an oppressive tyrant who forced slaves to construct buildings and produce fancy goods. Among the items he commissioned about 1200 B.C. was an exceedingly beautiful throne. The earliest civilization in Mesoamerica is known for its elaborate stone thrones. How did Joseph Smith get this detail right?
Lindsay presents nothing absolutely nothing.