NOM

Come Follow Me, lesson 5, Jan. 27 - Feb. 2, 1 Ne 16-22
Annotated BoM starting at 1 Nephi 16

If I wanted to encourage thought and try to understand devout believers better, I might ask:  
"Can you think of a good reason to say there were horses in the Americas in Book of Mormon times?"
(as in 1 Ne 18:25)

Things to consider:  

• Anachronism: a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place (Merriam-Webster)
• Merely one anachronism can prove a document is not from the time frame it claims. For example, if we had a document claiming to be from 1979 that mentioned the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion and deaths, we could correctly reject that it was from 1979 because the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred in 1986. In fact the first Space Shuttle flight didn't occur until 1981.
• The Book of Mormon claims to be written by and about inhabitants of the Americas between roughly 2000 BCE until 421 CE.
  One thing these Book of Mormon writers observe in the Americas during this time is horses.
• There were no horses in the Americas during the claimed time frame of the Book of Mormon.
• Some apologists speculate that perhaps Joseph was referring to some other animal that he was unfamiliar with, so he used the name of an animal he knew, "horse" in this case. This is described as using a loanword for the unfamiliar thing being translated. This does not fit the description given by the Church of how the book was translated from reformed Egyptian characters to English word-for-word and would require that God be the source of the confusion for the word in question ("Book of Mormon Translation").
• Furthermore, we have examples of animals and plants that Joseph was unfamiliar with for which God apparently gave Joseph a name instead of Joseph presuming the right to usurp God by using a loanword (plants: neas and sheum in Mosiah 9:9 and animals: cureloms and cumoms of Ether 9:19), so this apologetic of using loanwords is awkward considering the claim that an all-knowing God was in charge of the translation. From the Book of Mormon examples of plants and animals that no one can identify, God clearly didn't need loanwords, and using such loanwords has been the source of confusion and speculation for believers.
• If the Church were comfortable with the loanword speculation, we would expect it to use it commonly. Instead, the issue is usually ignored. Other times the Church may offer another explanation. For example, for the 1 Ne 18:25 mention of horses, the current Book of Mormon Student Manual for Religion 121-122 explains on page 40 that, “There was controversy regarding horses in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus arrived. However, modern archaeological discoveries have shed new light on the subject.” It then quotes from the New Americanized Encyclopedia that: “Fossil remains of true horses . . . are found abundantly in deposits of the most recent geological age, in almost every part of America. . . In that continent however, they became quite extinct, and no horses, either wild or domesticated, existed there at the time of the Spanish conquest.” And, then the article explains that this is a “curious but as yet unsolved problems in geographical distribution.” 
• There seem to be multiple editions of the New Americanized Encyclopedia, but they seem to be published in the early 1900s, maybe as late as 1903. Based only on this citation from more than 100 years ago, one could speculate that perhaps pre-Columbian American horses went extinct in the Americas after the Book of Mormon timeline.
• However, there is no recent controversy whether horses were in the Americas during the time reported in the Book of Mormon. Horses became extinct in the Americas by 8,000 years ago. That’s 4,000 years or more before the Book of Mormon Jaredites, and horses were not reintroduced in the Americas until Europeans brought them back more than 1,000 years after the claimed destruction of the Nephites.
• Why use an obscure, scientifically ancient, ambiguous source like this as context for the mention of horses in the Book of Mormon?Does anything about Book of Mormon horses or the explanations for them offered by Mormon apologists or by the Church fit the work of a God who works after the manner of plainness (2 Ne 31:3)?
• Why would the Church and its apologists give us these speculations when prophets have warned not to teach, "the philosophy of men mingled with a few scriptures" (Apostle Ezra Taft Benson here)?

If you could ask believers questions about this week's Come Follow Me lesson, what would you ask?

Trivia:
The phrase "came to pass" is used 31 times in 1 Ne 16. With only 39 verses, the phrase is used once every 1.26 verses on average in this chapter. The phrase "came to pass" is used 1,355 times in the book, so the phrase is used 5.67 times per chapter on average, or once every 4.87 verses on average. (This does not include "come to pass" or other variations of the phrase, but they are few compared to the number of times "came to pass" is used.)

Have fun studying!
Annotated Book of Mormon

Previous Lessons 

• Lesson 1
• Lesson 2
• Lesson 3
• Lesson 4

This is good... of course getting a believing member to care about the historicity of horses is going to be a tall task.

Most responses I've seen are "We just don't know because the science is evolving" or the complete distrust in dating the bones/fossils.

But I love how you point out how the church uses a source and then completely ignores what that source is actually saying. That's important.

jfro18 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 10:13 am of course getting a believing member to care about the historicity of horses is going to be a tall task.

So true, and because of that, I realize my audience will rarely include believers. A person has to be ready in order to seriously consider the points I’m making; at least that’s how it was for me almost 12 years ago when I went down the rabbit hole.

Thanks jfro!

There are only 4 things you need to know to make it all work:

1) Flocks = turkeys
2) Horses = tapirs
3) Chariots = sedan chairs
4) Chariots are not actually drawn by horses, even though they are frequently mentioned together. Example(with appropriate substitutions):

Alma 18:9 And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding thy tapirs. Now the king had commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their turkeys, that they should prepare his tapirs and sedan chairs, and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi; for there had been a great feast appointed at the land of Nephi, by the father of Lamoni, who was king over all the land.

10 Now when king Lamoni heard that Ammon was preparing his tapirs and his sedan chairs he was more astonished, because of the faithfulness of Ammon, saying: Surely there has not been any servant among all my servants that has been so faithful as this man; for even he doth remember all my commandments to execute them.

You have a natural tendency to assume that horses AND chariots means that the two things go together somehow, like in the Bible, where there actually were horses and chariots. In this case, however, your testimony can be preserved if you are able to mentally frame the tapirs as emotional support animals King Lamoni and his chair bearers. You might think that trying to heard a bunch of undomesticable animals along with you everywhere you go on your sedan chair might actually slow your progress, but apparently the mere presence of these animals cheered the chair bearers up and made them move even faster. This becomes obvious when Ammon tells Lamoni of the plight of his imprisoned brothers and Lamoni, realizing that time is of the essence, makes calls for arrangements to get on the road to rescue as soon as possible:

Alma 20:6 Now when Lamoni had heard this he caused that his servants should make ready his tapirs and his sedan chairs.

See? there's a very good reason the two things always go together.

Hagoth,

If not for the context of this board and some understanding of your take on Mormonism, I’d be stuck by Poe’s Law. Well written.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:52 pm

Alma 20:6 Now when Lamoni had heard this he caused that his servants should make ready his tapirs and his sedan chairs.

See? there's a very good reason the two things always go together.

when and apologist says "loan shifting", It seems more likely that they mean "testimony shifting".

There are some recent efforts to imply that the Appaloosa horse, bred by the Nez Perce was here in pre-Columbian times. There is no archeological record to support that claim. It is based solely on some DNA evidence that has not been corroborated by a peer group.
The DNA indicates that a small group of "pure" Appaloosa horses have a definite connection with Asian horses of Kyrgyzstan.

My understanding is that early on in the 15-16 hundreds, spotted horses became popular in Europe and were brought in from Asia through France. Cortez' cargo record shows he included several spotted horses in his first voyage to the Americas that most likely would have descended from those Asian horses.

Also the Russian trappers and explorers coming to Alaska and as far south as California would have brought Asian horses to trade with the Northwest tribes (Shoshone and Nez Perce).

There are a number of ways the Asian stock could have entered North America post-Columbus. There is no evidence of pre-Columbian archeological finds regarding American horses until going back a minimum of 8000 years.

If Native Americans had the horse in pre-Columbian times there would be plenty of evidence in the archeological record.

annotatedbom wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 3:38 pm
Hagoth,

If not for the context of this board and some understanding of your take on Mormonism, I’d be stuck by Poe’s Law. Well written.

Great stuff annotated!

I saw something interesting in the BOM Student manual you referenced:



(screenshot from page 40 of the BOM manual linked in first post; highlights mine)

I looked elsewhere in the manual, and every other citation had a year included in the citation.

Why would the church editors omit the year for the Encyclopedia reference? Perhaps it was just an oversight? Or could it be they didn't want to draw attention to a scientific reference that is over 100 years old?!?

Advocate wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 1:01 pm Why would the church editors omit the year for the Encyclopedia reference? Perhaps it was just an oversight? Or could it be they didn't want to draw attention to a scientific reference that is over 100 years old?!?

Great point. Maybe I’m thinking in terms of a false dichotomy here, but I t really seems to be either very sloppy scholarship, or an egregious attempt to lead people to believe something that isn’t true. The second possibility would be dishonest according to the Church’s own teaching, but given the obscurity of the reference and the lack of date you bring up, the dishonesty seems the most likely possibility to me.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 11:34 am

Hahaaa! This should be somebody’s avatar.

Palerider wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 10:21 am If Native Americans had the horse in pre-Columbian times there would be plenty of evidence in the archeological record.

This. Horses were so useful and transformative if society, the evidence would be quite clear that they had been here during the time frame in question.

annotatedbom wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 6:46 pm

Palerider wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 10:21 am If Native Americans had the horse in pre-Columbian times there would be plenty of evidence in the archeological record.

This. Horses were so useful and transformative if society, the evidence would be quite clear that they had been here during the time frame in question.

Mesoamerican art is full of images of macaws, bats, monkeys, jaguars and other animals that were considered significant. Funny they overlooked the only pack animal and one that would have that would have completely reshaped their economy. Oh yeah, the BoM says there were oxen too, but they also forgot to include them in their art and writing.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 9:59 pm

annotatedbom wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 6:46 pm

Palerider wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 10:21 am If Native Americans had the horse in pre-Columbian times there would be plenty of evidence in the archeological record.

This. Horses were so useful and transformative if society, the evidence would be quite clear that they had been here during the time frame in question.

Mesoamerican art is full of images of macaws, bats, monkeys, jaguars and other animals that were considered significant. Funny they overlooked the only pack animal and one that would have that would have completely reshaped their economy. Oh yeah, the BoM says there were oxen too, but they also forgot to include them in their art and writing.

Hagoth,

This reminded me that the problem goes the other direction too. We often mention many of these anachronisms in the BoM, but I think it’s also relevant that the many plants and animals that were so important to pre-Colombian Americans are almost all absent from the BoM text. Am I remembering correctly that the only one mentioned in the BoM that was actually in the Americas, in a significant way to their society, was corn?

annotatedbom wrote: ↑Tue Jan 28, 2020 7:34 am

Hagoth wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 9:59 pm

annotatedbom wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 6:46 pm
This. Horses were so useful and transformative if society, the evidence would be quite clear that they had been here during the time frame in question.

Mesoamerican art is full of images of macaws, bats, monkeys, jaguars and other animals that were considered significant. Funny they overlooked the only pack animal and one that would have that would have completely reshaped their economy. Oh yeah, the BoM says there were oxen too, but they also forgot to include them in their art and writing.

Hagoth,

This reminded me that the problem goes the other direction too. We often mention many of these anachronisms in the BoM, but I think it’s also relevant that the many plants and animals that were so important to pre-Colombian Americans are almost all absent from the BoM text. Am I remembering correctly that the only one mentioned in the BoM that was actually in the Americas, in a significant way to their society, was corn?

Basically, yes. There is a form of American barley which appears to have seen limited cultivation in North America. I seriously doubt that Joseph Smith knew any more about the history of corn than he knew about wheat. He probably assumed that it there would be no problem in claiming the Jaredites and Nephites brought both grains.