Hi Prodigal,
Z is right–I never said Mormons don’t believe in the miracle stories. My point was that the fact that we know where ancient Jerusalem was located is not very convincing evidence that the Bible is literally true. Everyone already knew Jerusalem was a real city. On the other hand, since unbelievers pretty universally have thought of the Book of Mormon as complete fantasy, nobody would expect to find ANY of the sites mentioned in the text that were not in the Bible. Therefore, the fact that we have now found an ancient site called NHM right where Mormon scholars were saying it probably was, is a stunner. Nobody who was a not a believer would ever have expected such a thing.
There were Caananites and Philistines evidence was found without exact locations being known. Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin were destroyed and easily found and identified by the ruins.
Of the 30+ fortified cities named in the Book of Mormon, no evidence can be found.
Biblical evidence of scriptures dating to the 7th century, BC have been found. The Dead Sea scrolls contain the Old Testament and are dated to between 200 and 100, BC. There is evidence from the New Testament dating back to a few years after they were written. That’s evidence from 2000 to close to 3000 years old.
There is no evidence of any transcripts from the Book of Mormon. The events of the Book of Mormon ended, supposedly,around 400, AD. The first documentary trace was 1400 years later giving the appearance that the book itself was “constructed” in the 19th century.
Where is the history? Where are the documents? There has been an abundance of history traceable when it comes to the Bible.
Evidence of the Bible, like the Dead Sea scrolls is on display for people to see for themselves.
Where are the plates the Book of Mormon came from? If they were true, wouldn’t they be on display for others to see?
Coins mentioned in the Bible have been found dating back to the first century.
No coins spoke of in the Book of Mormon have ever been found. Those coins would have been in use for almost a thousand years.
Wars and battles recorded in the Bible, the Assyrian Empire dating 911–612 BC for example, not cities that might be easily found but battlefields, are evidenced by arrowheads and spearheads that have been found.
The huge battle told of in the Book of Mormon between the Lamanites and Nephites between 400 and 421AD, nothing is found.
A much smaller event in the first century AD, in Palestine, produced evidence of skeletal remains, coins and other artifacts. This event was written about by Josephus, a Roman general, who told of hundreds committing suicide rather than being taken captive. According to him, there were approximately 900 people that died.
In the Book of Mormon, there were millions of Jaredites slain, including the women and children, yet no skeletal remains, no swords or any other evidence has ever been found. Centuries later the Lamanites destroyed the Nephite nation at the same hill, Cumora. Tens of thousands of people were slain according to the Book of Mormon. Again, no skeletal remains, bones, steel swords, shields, chariot parts, etc. were found. Why doesn’t the LDS allow an archaeological dig on the Cumora Hill? This would prove the Book of Mormon, or disprove it which could be quite embarassing.
Herod’s built the wall, known as the wailing wall, about 2030 years ago. It was destroyed 50 years later by the Romans. The temple in Jerusalem was also destroyed in 70AD. There is evidence there to this day.
According to Nephi, another temple was built in the Americas similar to Solomon’s temple. Jews are not allowed to build temples anywhere except Mount Moriah. The next problem is the Book of Mormon identifies Lehi as a descendant of Joseph. Lehi appoints his two sons, according to the Book of Mormon, as priests of the new temple. According to the Old Testament, which I assume, Lehi would have lived by forbid any priests except Aaronic priests. Doesn’t the Book of Mormon claim to uphold the Old Testament law?
There is no evidence that the prophets that, supposedly wrote the Book of Mormon, existed. This is unlike the high priests and prophets from the Old Testament. Not only are they in the Bible, there are other evidences available showing these men existed.
There is much evidence of the existence of Jesus in the middle East. The Jews, Romans and other non-Christians wrote about Jesus, even though some writings are not favorable.
According to Mormons, Jesus came to the Americas and converted thousands to Christianity, yet again no evidence exists in any source other than Mormon sources, written by Mormons.
I got that information by taking notes from the video, “
The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon.” So, I am open to corrections if anyone cares to watch the video and let me know. The video offers many ex-LDS anthropologists opinions that claim the Book of Mormon is incorrect in many aspects, but again I invite everyone to view the video and make up their own minds. Besides ex-LDS, there are many archaeologists and anthropologists that have nothing to gain one way or the other that offer facts as they see them.
With all the above arguments, Mormons cling to a stone that has the initials NHM on it. That evidence is questionable as indicated below. I say questionable as there is no way to prove it one way or the other, like many Mormon teachings, claims or accusations even.
Criticisms of connection
Known criticisms include the following (Vogel 2004, p. 609):
The fact that the Book of Mormon does not explicitly mention contact with outsiders during Lehi’s journey.
It is suggested that the pronunciation of NHM is unknown and may not relate to Nahom at all.
It has been suggested that Joseph Smith simply created the name Nahom as a variant of the Biblical names Naham (1 Chron. 4:19), Nehum (Ne. 7:7) and Nahum (Na. 1:1), although this fails to account for the plausible placement of the actual location of NHM relative to the description of character Lehi’s purported journey in the Book of Mormon story.
Availability of information on NHM to Joseph Smith
Critics state that Joseph Smith could have learned about the existence and location of NHM from existing 19th century sources or from acquaintances who had access to additional libraries. Libraries available to Joseph Smith would have been the Manchester Public Library and the library at Dartmouth College, at neither of which Smith was a member, although it is unknown whether any of his acquaintances had access to additional libraries or books from Europe that were brought to America and kept in private libraries. Of the books dealing with the ancient Near East that were available in the Manchester library before 1830, LDS scholars suggest that none of these would have given Smith good information on ancient Arabia, and that they would have provided him with inaccurate information even if he had been able to gain access to them (Peterson). When Smith was five years old, his family moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire and lived there from 1811 to late in 1813, just down the road from Dartmouth College. The Dartmouth library acquired a copy of Robert Heron’s translation of Niebuhr’s work (which had information regarding NHM), but not until 1937. Therefore, this information was not available in its library during the time that the Smith family lived in the town of Lebanon (Brown 2001).
Vowel variance and pronunciation
Some have said that the link between Nahom (or Nehhm, as spelled in Niebuhr’s work) and NHM is invalid because the vowels between the names Nahom and Nehhm do not match (Tanner & Tanner 1996, p. 183). Others indicate that modern vowel variance is to be expected because Hebrew does not have written vowels. The current pronunciation of the location and tribal area is said to be Nihm rather than Nahom. Some critics state that the time from Ishmael’s death to now is not long enough to account for the change in pronunciation (Vogel 2004, p. 609), although scholars indicate that historical variation in root pronunciation (possibly due to Arabic influence) may allow for this change (Barney 2003).
There is a quote on the video from the late LDS President, Gordon B. Hinkley that I thought everyone would find interesting, even though it more of a topic of another thread:
As a Church we have critics–many of them. They say we do not believe in the traditional Christ of Christianity. There is some substance to what they say. Our faith, our knowledge, is not based on ancient tradition…Our faith, our knowledge, comes of the witness of a prophet in this dispensation…"
**2Co 11:4 Because any chance comer has only to preach a Jesus other than the one we preached, or you have only to receive a spirit different from the one you received, or a gospel different from the one you accepted – and you put up with that only too willingly.
Gal 1:8 But even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven preaches to you a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let God’s curse be on him.
Gal 1:9 I repeat again what we declared before: anyone who preaches to you a gospel other than the one you were first given is to be under God’s curse.
**
), but that doesn’t excuse such arrogant statements. The fact that texts from the Mayan period have been somewhat recently deciphered doesn’t really say much about the “Reformed Egyptian”, either. In fact, it’s completely unrelated. As for the difference between the older Mayan glyphs and the newer (“their ability to read it has gone back to near zero”), so what? That also says nothing about the supposed “Reformed Egyptian”, and there are plenty of cases where a 350 year time-span does NOT significantly impair the ability to read texts. I myself analyzed Old and Middle English texts earlier this summer for part of a class with relatively little difficulty, have read the very first Lithuanian book in the original with even less difficulty (Mazvydas’ 1547 Catechism), and have been told by fluent Icelandic speakers that in their homeland people read the Old Norse sagas in the original with almost no difficulty at all. It is not as though all languages change at the same rate, so a language like Lithuanian has most closely preserved what we theorize to the forms of Proto-Indo European, as Icelandic apparently has with those of Old Norse. So I am having trouble finding much meaning in the protestations of these so called experts in this video that because people have trouble with the older Mayan glyphs this somehow directly correlates with their hypothesis regarding the “Reformed Egyptian” of which there is absolutely ZERO EVIDENCE. At least the Mayan glyphs are actually existent, even if they are difficult to decipher!
