Dumbest FairMormon quote ever? Horses and chariots

[Not Buying It]

I saw this quote on Reddit and had to look it up, I couldn’t believe anyone would actually say something this stupid. Aaaaand sure enough, FairMormon (shouldn’t that be Fairchurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints?) actually said this:

(Scroll to the bottom). https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Book ... and_tapirs

The Book of Mormon does not mention horses pulling chariots. The BOM does not mention horses being ridden. Horses are mentioned with chariots several times. Assuming that they were present in order to pull the chariots must be extrapolated.

[Palerider]

I've heard this explanation from Fair before and found it very satisfactory. In my own mind I bent this hoop even wider with the thought that the word "chariot" is just a borrowed name that the Hebrew/Egyptian cultures had aqcuired from the diasporan explorers that were scattered to the East Indian continent around 800 BC and then returned to the Levant just in time to scribble a few lines on the brass plates for their nephew, Laban. The closer translation for "chariot" is actually the word "rickshaw" which signifies, "One who pulls by himself and keeps his horses at home in the stables".

One should not misconstrue that when the BofM states in Alma 18:9,12 that Ammon was "(preparing the king's) horses and chariots, (to) conduct him forth to the land of Nephi", that those horses would be involved in any way in the actual transport.

In reality they were being "prepared" mentally to be left at home, just as my dog gets told, "you have to stay" when I can't take her out with me. Horses are quite sensitive animals that need this type of reassurance to not get their hopes too high.

See the East Indian prototype of a Nephites/Lamanite "chariot" in the photo provided.

[Not Buying It]

I've heard this explanation before and found it very satisfactory. In my own mind I bent this hoop even wider with the thought that the word "chariot" is just a borrowed name that the Hebrew/Egyptian cultures had aqcuired from the diasporan explorers that were scattered to the East Indian continent around 800 BC and then returned to the Levant just in time to scribble a few lines on the brass plates for their nephew Laban. The closer translation for "chariot" is actually the word "rickshaw" which signifies, "One who pulls by himself and keeps his horses at home in the stables".

One should not misconstrue that when the BofM states in Alma 18:9,12 that Ammon was "(preparing the king's) horses and chariots, (to) conduct him forth to the land of Nephi", that those horses would be involved in any way in the actual transport.

In reality they were being "prepared" mentally to be left at home, just as my dog gets told, "you have to stay" when I can't take her out with me. See the East Indian prototype of a Nephites/Lamanite "chariot" in the photo provided.

Well, you’ve got a point Palerider . But the Nephites and Lamanites must have been incredibly dumb that it never occurred to them to use the horses to pull the chariots when they were preparing both of them for travel.

All joking aside, how incredibly asinine. No rational person would ever conclude that the BoM is communicating that the horses weren’t pulling the chariots. Besides, the problem isn’t whether the horses or chariots were used, the problem is there is no archeological evidence they were ever even there, whether the horses were pulling the chariots or the chariots were pulling the horses or the people were pulling the horses in chariots. The issue of whether or not the horses pulled the chariots is completely irrelevant when no evidence of either in the Americas before Columbus has ever been found.

[græy]

Our ward's resident apologist likes to note that JS was probably just loan-shifting the word "chariot" because no one in his day would have understood the word "palanquin."

We know that pre-Columbian palanquins were a thing in the Americas due to the story Atahualpa being surrounded by conquistadors while still on his palanquin. The Spanish would kill one servant holding the palanquin and rather than fight off the invaders, another servant would rush to fill his spot rather than let the emperor's "chariot" fall to the ground.

So there, mystery solved.

But wait... it turns out that palanquin was in fact listed in the 1828 Webster's dictionary as "palankeen" so they could have at least looked it up. And if JS was so kind as to dumb down palanquin to chariot for the local yokels, why use words like ziff, curelom, or rameumpton? Why not call them by locally understood words like fool's gold, llama, and rostrum or podium?

[jfro18]

All of this becomes moot when you realize that everything points to a tight translation, and that Joseph Smith used words no one had heard of (curelom, cumom, deseret) so that excuse goes out the window.

That FAIR and people like Dan Peterson continue to try and just expand the playing field to keep things even remotely possible shows just how desperate things have become as we've learned more about the past and how the Book of Mormon just got it all wrong.

I hate this church because that line from FAIR will work on people who are believing members and just need *something* to grab onto in order to not let go of their testimony, and FAIR knows that... they know it's deceptive but they'd rather be deceptive and keep people in than honest and watch people leave.

[Dravin]

I've heard this explanation from Fair before and found it very satisfactory. In my own mind I bent this hoop even wider with the thought that the word "chariot" is just a borrowed name that the Hebrew/Egyptian cultures had aqcuired from the diasporan explorers that were scattered to the East Indian continent around 800 BC and then returned to the Levant just in time to scribble a few lines on the brass plates for their nephew, Laban. The closer translation for "chariot" is actually the word "rickshaw" which signifies, "One who pulls by himself and keeps his horses at home in the stables".

What I love about linguistic arguments like this is they are irrelevant to the English Book of Mormon. Lets say that through the linguistic route you describe the symbol(s) for "chariot" ended up on the Brass Plates and that to Mormon who was abridging things that the symbol(s) meant "human pulled wheeled cart". All of this is irrelevant to the whole rock-in-hat 'translation' in which God supposedly revealed directly to Joseph the word in English. Why wouldn't God just reveal "cart"? Why would he be bound to the linguistic history and quirks of Reformed Egyptian? What is being proposed is the kind of translation errors that machine translation produces rather than those you'd expect of a skill translator (which you'd assume God is)... maybe it really was an iPhone in a hat?

[jfro18]

What I love about linguistic arguments like this is they are irrelevant to the English Book of Mormon. Lets say that through the linguistic route you describe the symbol(s) for "chariot" ended up on the Brass Plates and that to Mormon who was abridging things that the symbol(s) meant "human pulled wheeled cart". All of this is irrelevant to the whole rock-in-hat 'translation' in which God supposedly revealed directly to Joseph the word in English. Why wouldn't God just reveal "cart"? Why would he be bound to the linguistic history and quirks of Reformed Egyptian? What is being proposed is the kind of translation errors that machine translation produces rather than those you'd expect of a skill translator (which you'd assume God is)... maybe it really was an iPhone in a hat?

Yep. There's a very long thread on mormondiscussions about this that is absurd but covers the idea that the plates were translated almost by committee spiritually before given to Joseph...

If you want to kill some time reading some serious twisting and turning to make things work: http://www.mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3 ... =1&t=51468

[RubinHighlander]

Our ward's resident apologist likes to note that JS was probably just loan-shifting the word "chariot" because no one in his day would have understood the word "palanquin."

We know that pre-Columbian palanquins were a thing in the Americas due to the story Atahualpa being surrounded by conquistadors while still on his palanquin. The Spanish would kill one servant holding the palanquin and rather than fight off the invaders, another servant would rush to fill his spot rather than let the emperor's "chariot" fall to the ground.

So there, mystery solved.

But wait... it turns out that palanquin was in fact listed in the 1828 Webster's dictionary as "palankeen" so they could have at least looked it up. And if JS was so kind as to dumb down palanquin to chariot for the local yokels, why use words like ziff, curelom, or rameumpton? Why not call them by locally understood words like fool's gold, llama, and rostrum or podium?

This reminded me of that BOM movie "Testaments" they used to show in the JS building, the one where Jacob's dad loses his sight during the big storms and Jacob finds his faith when a ray of light hits his eye through the trees. When Kohor hires Jacob as a sculptor and sends him to Ikea for pretty sea shells, Jacob rides on a type of palanquin. It would have been so much better if they had given him a chariot with horses, we could have made a killer tapir gif with that footage!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFITzc3cuY

[Hagoth]

I don't have a quote (too lazy) but the suggestion that this is a so-called-steel sword patterned after Laban's bejeweled Old World sword falls pretty flat with me:

[Hagoth]

This reminded me of that BOM movie "Testaments" they used to show in the JS building, the one where Jacob's dad loses his sight during the big storms and Jacob finds his faith when a ray of light hits his eye through the trees. When Kohor hires Jacob as a sculptor and sends him to Ikea for pretty sea shells, Jacob rides on a type of palanquin. It would have been so much better if they had given him a chariot with horses, we could have made a killer tapir gif with that footage!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFITzc3cuY

I had never seen Testaments before, so I clicked through it and watched a few scenes. So, they wrote a fan fiction about a fan fiction because they couldn't find a good enough story with sufficiently deep characters in said fan fiction?

I gotta say the production value is pretty impre$$ive.

[oliblish]

This reminded me of that BOM movie "Testaments" they used to show in the JS building, the one where Jacob's dad loses his sight during the big storms and Jacob finds his faith when a ray of light hits his eye through the trees. When Kohor hires Jacob as a sculptor and sends him to Ikea for pretty sea shells, Jacob rides on a type of palanquin. It would have been so much better if they had given him a chariot with horses, we could have made a killer tapir gif with that footage!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnFITzc3cuY

I had never seen Testaments before, so I clicked through it and watched a few scenes. So, they wrote a fan fiction about a fan fiction because they couldn't find a good enough story with sufficiently deep characters in said fan fiction?

I gotta say the production value is pretty impre$$ive.

Did you watch the very end where Jesus make the blind man see and he looks up and the first thing he sees the face of Jesus gleaming in the sunlight?

[RubinHighlander]

The monkey was the most entertaining part of that movie.

[Hagoth]

Did you watch the very end where Jesus make the blind man see and he looks up and the first thing he sees the face of Jesus gleaming in the sunlight?

I went back and watched it. Kinda looks like a 70s shampoo commercial.

[Dravin]

My favorite part of The Testaments is they used some stock jungle noises and so at one point there is a dinosaur roaring in the background. Ooh... found it, just a couple seconds from here.

[RubinHighlander]

My favorite part of The Testaments is they used some stock jungle noises and so at one point there is a dinosaur roaring in the background. Ooh... found it, just a couple seconds from here.

LOL! Jurassic BOM!

[Sheamus Moore]

I don't have a quote (too lazy) but the suggestion that this is a so-called-steel sword patterned after Laban's bejeweled Old World sword falls pretty flat with me:

Remember back in the day when corporal punishment was a thing at school? Looks like a fancy 'hack' paddle...