Horses in the Book of Mormon

[JustHangingOn@57]

Is this (a) a funny article from the Onion or (b) The unofficial official position of the church on a particularly thorny question about BOM anachronisms:

https://www.fairmormon.org/archive/publ ... -of-mormon

[nibbler]

First, it is important to remember that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text–it’s a nineteenth-century translation of an ancient text.

[Not Buying It]

Blah blah blah deer tapirs blah blah blah one horse skeleton was found at a pre-Columbian depth in 1957 blah blah blah. Let me sum up the argument - we got nothing other than assuming Joseph Smith meant tapir when he translated horse, because the Urum and Thummim or rock in a hat or whatever the hell he was using to “translate” at the time couldn’t tell a horse from a deer or a tapir. We found a few pictures on the internet of people riding deer, so that’s plausible, right?

Man apologists have to work hard to keep the cognitive dissonance at bay. I’m going with the most likely answer - see my signature line.

[RubinHighlander]

Near the end of the Pleistocene period–about 10,000 years ago–the most recent ice-age came to an end. During this time several large mammals that once roamed the Americas became extinct.

So...they are disagreeing with the 7k year old Bible timeline?

It quickly becomes apparent that reformed Egyptian had a small vocabulary. What does one do with a small vocabulary when there is a need to include a variety of new and unfamiliar items? The solution is to expand the definition of existing words.

An thus you'll need to expand your imagination in order to make any of these ridiculous arguments work.

In my opinion, a more likely candidate for the Nephite loan-shift “horse” would have been the Central American tapir.

So tell your N. American geography TBMs to fetch off!

[Not Buying It]

This just in - remember this Arnold Friberg picture of Helaman and the 2,000 Stripling Warriors?

01.2.jpg (37.1 KiB) Viewed 13179 times

Archaeologists have just unearthed an actual picture of Helaman leading his young warriors:

01.1.jpg (53.3 KiB) Viewed 13179 times

[Palerider]

As usual the article is heavily laden with my favorite mormon apologetc words:

1. It seeeems...
2. May or maybe
3. Apparently
4. Perhaps
5. Why couldn't it be that...

Additionally, it's interesting how many assumptions are made about "Reformed Egyptian", a language that has never been seen or heard. Only proposed by Joseph.

I also find it disingenuous that the ONLY two possible options presented are:

(1) definitions were expanded to include new meanings and (2) horses were present but their remains have not been found.

There isn't even the remote possibility that:

(3) JOSEPH SMITH MADE ALL THIS CRAP UP...!!!

So with either of the two restricted options promulgated by the church....they still win. The BofM is still true,true,true.

Personally, because of the stated purpose of the BofM being the restoration of the plain and precious parts of the Gospel, I'm very inclined to take it's statements at face value and prefer the "plain reading" that this poor sap of an apologist seems to reject at every opportunity.

[Rob4Hope]

I read the first few pages of the article and had to quit.

Like you all said above: "Joseph made it up" is the BEST answer still there is.

Apologists are mealy mouthed liars. They just like to wear ties and get degrees from religious schools...

[Palerider]

One other item.

I don't see why horses are the only issue that apologists sweat blood over. The big (literally) problem is elephants, right?
How do they explain those creatures away? Where is the animal that can compare in any way to an elephant?

[IT_Veteran]

Just heard the new episodes of Mormon Stories with Dr Coe today and they were talking about this. Evidently someone has located mastodon bones in Florida. That’s the latest apologist argument for elephants.

They discussed the horses today too. There have been pre-Columbian horse bones discovered in the new world. The apologist they were rebutting brought that up. Failed to mention they were about 8,000 years old and were extinct in the Americas not long after that.

They talked about chicken remains found in Peru. They were able to test the dna - they came from Polynesia.

Just as interesting are the things missing from the BoM. Evidently turkeys were a big part of the Mesoamerican culture. So was chocolate. Evidently, they used cocoa beans as a form of trade - not coinage.

[moksha]

Don't forget the proto-tapir, Astrapotherium Magnum.

[Palerider]

Just heard the new episodes of Mormon Stories with Dr Coe today and they were talking about this. Evidently someone has located mastodon bones in Florida. That’s the latest apologist argument for elephants.

So if I'm understanding this correctly, when the BofM says "horse" it MEANS tapir or deer, right?

But when it says "elephant" it really means.....wait for it....elephant!

Is that cherry picking or what? It just makes no sense whatsoever. Mormon apologists are truly the Cirque du Soleil of psychological self-deception. They deserve some sort of award for such an over the top performance.

[nibbler]

It quickly becomes apparent that [Joseph Smith] had a small vocabulary. What does one do with a small vocabulary when there is a need to include a variety of new and unfamiliar items? [Start every sentence with, "And it came to pass."

FTFY

[Rob4Hope]

There is, of course, the metallurgy problem...and the food problem...and the location problem...the language problem...the DNA problem...the plagiarism problem...the early bible error problem...the anachronism problem of synagog problem...the anachronism "church" problem...the tall tale problem of Laban, stripling warriors, Jaredite barges...the massive textual changes problem...the rock in the hat problem...the forced "witnesses" problem...the JST problem...the Isaiah problem...the reformed Egyptian problem...etc.

Those are the ones that just come up in my mind...

But aside from the horses, there is a BIG problem with swords. There is, IMHO, no way to dispute that when Nephi was making tools, as in finding ore and making a bellows, they were METAL TOOLS! That sets the stage for metallurgy. So a sword is a SWORD...as in metal blad, say some 2 feet or so long, used for killing.

I once heard an archeologist person say it would have been impossible for them to have swords without leaving some tell-tail signs, such as mining tailings. There is none of that. There are no coins, no tailings, no kilns, no burn pits...NOTHING that would show signs of metallurgy.

Someone above said something about the elephants?

Bahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

[Hagoth]

It quickly becomes apparent that [Joseph Smith] had a small vocabulary. What does one do with a small vocabulary when there is a need to include a variety of new and unfamiliar items? [Start every sentence with, "And it came to pass."

FTFY

Uh, you use its name (e.g. curelom )

[JustHangingOn@57]

FTFY

Uh, you use its name (e.g. curelom )

"And it came to pass that they did ride all manner of beast, even the curelom and the convfefe"

[slavereeno]

Uh, you use its name (e.g. curelom )

Why would the "translation" allow for curelom, cumom, seninie etc. and not "tapir" or "deer" or some other foreign word for those animals. Shouldn't curelom and cumom have been "loan-shifted" also!? I just don't get how apologists get to have their cake and eat it too.

[Reuben]

Uh, you use its name (e.g. curelom )

Why would the "translation" allow for curelom, cumom, seninie etc. and not "tapir" or "deer" or some other foreign word for those animals. Shouldn't curelom and cumom have been "loan-shifted" also!? I just don't get how apologists get to have their cake and eat it too.

When a person is doing a translation, you have to allow for inconsistency in that person's process. I think this, as well as unduly mixing models of translation and hand-waving, is how they get away with it.

I think trying to pin down a translation model is the best way to show the weakness of the arguments.

Model A: Analogous to human translation. Cool, you can have both cureloms and tapirs as horses. But what's up with reading English words off a stone, then? Or, if they weren't English words, what were they, and how did Joseph know what they meant?

Model B: Analogous to machine translation. Joseph just reads English words off the stone. But then what's up with cureloms and tapirs as horses? Bad programming? The resurrected beings who programmed the stone gave their deep neural networks bad training data?

Model C: Transmission from Moroni, who did the translation. Joseph just reads Moroni's words off the stone. Cool, this solves a lot of problems. Now what about those plates? Why give them to Joseph at all?

Hand-waving about how we don't know much about the translation process ensues...

[oliver_denom]

I love this slip of an admission up front:

Some of the things that seem “plain” to us are not so “plain” upon further investigation or once we understand the culture that produced the text.

The text is simple and straight forward, let me spend the next half hour confusing you with nonsense to help keep the faith.

[2bizE]

This just in - remember this Arnold Friberg picture of Helaman and the 2,000 Stripling Warriors?

01.2.jpg
Archaeologists have just unearthed an actual picture of Helaman leading his young warriors:
01.1.jpg

This preserved image is actually of Thranduil, an Elvin King I first met while my friends were being held captives in his prison in middle earth. I was able to sneak in and break by friends free from the prison. We escaped by floating down a river in wooden barrels while Orcs tried to kill us. True story. The magic ring I used on occasion to hide was similar in power to the magic stones used by Joseph Smith many years later. Thranduil was a great king.

[Hagoth]

I just don't get how apologists get to have their cake and eat it too.

Moving along, quickly please, from the tapir diorama, I would like to draw your attention to our magnificent chiasmus display."