book of mormon inconsistencies
This section will contain several things that have been found inside the Book of Mormon that don’t fit the time period. “An anachronism is when an author's writing contains something from a future time period which couldn't realistically be in the time period they've written it into. For example, William Shakespeare wrote in his play, "Julius Caesar," that Brutus said, "Peace! Count the clock," with Cassius replying, "The clock has stricken three." The problem is that the play took place in 44 BC—a time period in which such clocks had not yet been invented. Shakespeare took something familiar to him, a clock that strikes the hours, and placed it in his story when no such clocks existed. Because the play was fictional, it is seen as simply an error on Shakespeare's part. If, however, someone were to claim that they had found an ancient writing from 44 BC that had the play written on it, it would clearly be seen as a forgery on someone's part because of the clock anachronism.” Here is a list of many of the common anachronisms (not my list, but good none the less)
ANACHRONISMS:
Critical Questions regarding the Book of Mormon that I agree with… (not my questions…)
MY OWN THOUGHTS: I was researching about the Book of Mormon, and the current thought is that the “Narrow neck of land” most likely would be down in Central America somewhere, and the geographic area of the Book of Mormon is probably not more than 200-300 miles in diameter. How could they travel all around the lands by foot otherwise? I have also seen predictions that the Book of Mormon took place down on the Baja California Peninsula, as well as upstate New York.
This also brings into question the white Lamanite that Joseph Smith discovered, some sort of skeleton that was allegedly a “White Lamanite” named Zelph. So did the Book of Mormon take place up by New York? Where’s the narrow neck of land?
The Book Of Mormon is not supported by any linguistic evidence:
“The Book of Mormon is further undermined by the fact that there is no evidence of a Semitic/hieroglyphic/demotic hybrid script (called Reformed Egyptian in the text) or a spoken Hebrew dialect ever being used by pre or post-Columbian natives of North or South America. To the contrary, the current body of evidence indicates that there were many different spoken and written languages utilized among the various peoples of Ancient America that have no resemblance to Hebrew or Egyptian texts or languages.
This proliferation of language variants among existing Native tribes undermines the Book of Mormon claim of a single language used for the entire Book of Mormon people. Language does evolve; but not at such an unprecedented rate as to leave such a scattering of textual and vocal variants (all with no resemblance to the Book of Mormon 'mother tongue') within such a short period of time (less than 2000 years from the end of the Book of Mormon narrative to the present).
In fact, the text of the Book of Mormon indicates that the peoples within the narrative took great care to preserve their language from evolving or fracturing into different dialects. In 1st Nephi, Nephi is commanded to get the brass plates from Jerusalem to preserve "unto our children the language of our fathers" (1 Nephi 3:19). Later in the text, the Nephite nation encounters a second group of Hebrew migrants and finds that their "language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them". As a result, Mosiah (the Nephite leader) found it necessary that they should be taught in his (Nephite - Hebrew) language (Omni 1:17-18). For the duration of the Book of Mormon narrative, there is no indication that the principle narrative groups ever deviated from their language of origin (spoken or written) for 1000 years.
How then do we account for the thousands of languages that were spoken in North and South America prior to first contact with Europeans in the early 11th century?
How can a civilization on the scale described in the Book of Mormon maintain linguistic homogeneity for 1000 years and then splinter into thousands of varying and demonstrably unrelated languages in the next 1000 years?
Due to the physical absence of the gold plates, there is no body of Ancient American evidence with which to compare Joseph Smith's claim that Ancient Americans used a Hebrew/Egyptian hybrid language. The only evidence in existence is the 'Anthon Transcript' which (according to Smith and his associates) was taken to Professor Charles Anthon for a certificate of authenticity.”
DNA: “DNA disproves that the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the Indians.
With the advances in modern science, biologists have made remarkable progress in tracing human migratory patterns based on identifiable gene markers contained within mitochondrial DNA. Of particular interest to Americans (and to Latter-day Saints) was the origin of Native Americans - long hypothesized to have migrated from Asia over the Bearing Strait several thousand years ago? This widely accepted theory contradicts the Book of Mormon's hypothesis that American Natives are the descendants of Semitic migrants who arrived here descended from Asia, not Israel as the church teaches. Asian migrants have populated this continent for over 50,000 years. The thousands of DNA samples from every known tribe of Native Americans indicate an Asiatic rather than Semitic origin and give greater support to the theory of a prehistoric Asiatic migration across the Bearing Strait.
The most common defense proffered by Mormon apologists in this case is that the Book of Mormon does not offer a testable hypothesis. In fact, in 2005, noted Mormon historian Richard L. Bushman went so far as to say that the American continent was not even the definite location of the Book of Mormon peoples. He writes: "The Book of Mormon deposited its people on some unknown shore -- not even definitely identified as America -- and had them live out their history in a remote place in a distant time." - Richard Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 97”
Recent change to the Title Page of the Book of Mormon: Recently the church has changed some of the wording on the title page. It USED to say… "Past editions of that page say all of the people chronicled in the book "were destroyed, except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.""
The new editions changed one word… “The Lamanites "are among the ancestors of the American Indians."
MY THOUGHTS: To me, this is a huge change. When I was first taught about the book of Mormon and the church history, I was taught that the book of Mormon teaches about the Native Americans that were the first ones to settle North America. They were the principle Native Americans, and all current Indians descend from these Native Americans from the book of Mormon.
So now the church is acknowledging or saying that there were Native American’s that existed or lived here in North America long before the Book of Mormon times, and that Nephi and family were NOT the principal ancestors.
Another thing that has bothered me is the claim that there are 1769 King James Version edition errors in the Book of Mormon, errors that are unique to the 1769 edition. So what were they doing in the Book of Mormon if it is supposedly an ancient text? How did that happen? For further discussion on this point, SEE HERE.
For more problems with the Book of Mormon, please see the references below. There are too many for me too go through here, and other people have done a much better job.
ANACHRONISMS:
- HORSES: Notice the horse in the LDS depiction of the Stripling Warriors from the Book of Mormon. Scientists say that the modern-day horse did not exist in the Americas during Book of Mormon times. It is universally accepted among mainstream archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians that there is no evidence of the existence of a pre-Columbian horse, excepting the long-extinct species.
Horses are mentioned fourteen times in the Book of Mormon, and are portrayed as an integral part of the cultures described. There is no evidence that horses existed on the American continent during the 2500-3000 year history of the Book of Mormon (2500 B.C. - 400 A.D.) Horses evolved in North America, but became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene). Horses did not reappear in the Americas until the Spaniards brought them from Europe. They were brought to the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus in 1493 and to the American continent by Cortez in 1519.
Apologists assert that there is fossil evidence that some New World horses may have survived the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, though these findings are disputed by critics. If the horse did exist in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times, then not a single bone or tooth from any of these horses has ever been discovered, despite the fact that the remains of an abundance of other animals have been discovered in Mesoamerica.
If horses existed in ancient Mesoamerica during the Book of Mormon time period, then despite the fact that ancient Mesoamericans depicted many animals in art and ideology, they never depicted a horse or included the horse in any of their mythology.
If the horse existed in Mesoamerica since Jaredite times, then it left no trace of the sort of social evolutionary impact that we see in other cultures that possessed the horse.
If the Book of Mormon "horse" is really a tapir, then tapirs were domesticated only by one small group of people, never to be replicated by anyone else, despite sharing characteristics that disqualify large mammals from domestication.” - ELEPHANTS: Elephants are mentioned twice in a single verse in the Book of Ether. Mastodons and mammoths lived during the Pleistocene in the New World, however, as with the prehistoric horse, the fossil record indicates that they became extinct along with most of the megafauna about the end of the last Ice Age. The source of this extinction is speculated to be the result of human predation, a significant climate change, or a combination of both factors. It is known that a small population of mammoths survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska up until 8,000 B.P., but even this date is thousands of years before the Jaredite record in the Book of Mormon begins.”
Ether 9:19 "And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants..."
“LDS Church Response: We regret that we could not find this issue answered by the LDS church in any church publication or web site. However we found responses from LDS apologists. Scientists just haven't found the evidence yet.
Mastodons lived in North America starting about 2 million years ago and thrived until 11,000 years ago—around the time humans arrived on the continent—when the last of the 7-ton (6.35-metric-ton) elephant like creatures died off.
So although Mastodons (once again not elephants) lived in the Americas, they died out several thousands of years before the Jaredites even came to the Americas.” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061003-mastodons.html
- CATTLE and COWS: There are six references to cattle made in the Book of Mormon, including verbiage suggesting they were domesticated. There has been no evidence recovered that Old World cattle (members of the genus Bos) inhabited the New World prior to European contact in the sixteenth century AD.
Apologists argue that the term "cattle" may be more generic that suggesting members of the genus Bos, and may have referred to bison, mountain goats, llamas, or other American species. According to the Book of Mormon, varieties of "cattle" (including goats and sheep) could be found in ancient America. Without these the Nephites could not have kept the Law of Moses, as directed.
LDS Apologists note that the word "cattle" may refer to the ancestor of the American bison, Bison antiquus (of the sub family Bovinae). Bison antiquus, sometimes called the ancient bison, was the most common large herbivore of the North American continent for over ten thousand years, and is a direct ancestor of the living American bison.
However, no species of bison is known to have been domesticated as the "cattle" in the Book of Mormon are suggested to have been. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that the only large mammal to be domesticated in the Americas was the llama; no species of goats, deer, sheep, or other "cattle" were domesticated before the arrival of the Europeans to the continent. Apologists counter that the wording in the Book of Mormon does not require the "cattle" to have been domesticated in the strictest sense. For example, Enos in the Book of Mormon tells that the Nephites raised "flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind..." - Enos 1:21, see also 2 Nephi 17:25 - GOATS: Goats are mentioned three times in the Book of Mormon placing them among the Nephites and the Jaredites. In two of the verses, "goats" are distinguished from "wild goats" indicating that there were at least two varieties, one of them possibly domesticated, or tamed.
Domesticated goats are not native to the Americas, having been domesticated in pre-historic times on the Eurasian continent. Domestic goats were introduced on the American continent upon the arrival of the Europeans in the 15th century, 1000 years after the conclusion of the Book of Mormon, and nearly 2000 years after they are last mentioned in the Book of Mormon. The mountain goat is indigenous to North America, but it has never been domesticated, and is known for being very aggressive.
Matthew Roper, a FARMS writer, discussed the topic of goats in, Deer as "Goat" and Pre-Columbian Domesticate. He noted that when early Spanish explorers visited the southeastern United States they found Native Americans herding tame deer. Quoting an early historian of Spain, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, recorded:
"In all these regions they visited, the Spaniards noticed herds of deer similar to our herds of cattle. These deer bring forth and nourish their young in the houses of the natives. During the daytime they wander freely through the woods in search of their food, and in the evening they come back to their little ones, who have been cared for, allowing themselves to be shut up in the courtyards and even to be milked, when they have suckled their fawns. The only milk the natives know is that of the does, from which they make cheese."
Mr Roper also noted early Spanish colonists called native Mesoamerican brocket deer goats. He quotes, "Friar Diego de Landa noted, 'There are wild goats which the Indians call yuc.'" He quoted another friar in the late 16th century, "in Yucatán 'there are in that province ... great numbers of deer, and small goats'. - SWINE: “Swine are referred to twice in the Book of Mormon, and the narrative of the Book of Mormon suggests that the swine were domesticated. There have not been any remains, references, artwork, tools, or any other evidence suggesting that swine were ever present in the pre-entrada New World.
Apologists note that Peccaries (also known as Javelinas), which bear a superficial resemblance to pigs, have been present in South America since prehistoric times. LDS authors advocating the original mound builder setting for the Book of Mormon have similarly suggested North American peccaries (also called "wild pigs") as the "swine" of the Jaredites. Critics rebut that peccaries have never been domesticated. - BARLEY and WHEAT: “Grains are mentioned twenty-eight times in the Book of Mormon, including barley and wheat. The introduction of domesticated modern barley and wheat to the New World was made by Europeans sometime after 1492, many centuries after the time in which the Book of Mormon is set.
FARMS apologist Robert Bennett offered two possible explanations for this anachronism: "Research on this matter supports two possible explanations. First, the terms barley and wheat, as used in the Book of Mormon, may refer to certain other New World crop plants that were given Old World designations; and second, the terms may refer to genuine varieties of New World barley and wheat," states Mr Benett of the Maxwell Institute. "For example, the Spanish called the fruit of the prickly pear cactus a "fig," and emigrants from England called maize "corn," an English term referring to grains in general. A similar practice may have been employed when Book of Mormon people encountered New World plant species for the first time."
Apologist Robert R. Bennett of FARMS postulates that references to "barley" could refer to Hordeum pusillum, also known as "Little Barley", a species of grass native to the Americas. The seeds are edible, and this plant was part of the Pre-Columbian Eastern Agricultural Complex of cultivated plants used by Native Americans. Hordeum pusillum was unknown in Mesoamerica, where there is no evidence of pre-Columbian barley cultivation, but evidence exists that this plant was domesticated in North America in the Woodland periods contemporary with mound builder societies (early centuries A.D.). He states that this information "should caution readers of the Book of Mormon not to quickly dismiss references to pre-Columbian wheat as anachronistic.".
Critics rebut these claims, rejecting the notion that Hordeum pusillum was the "barley" that Joseph Smith referred to in the Book of Mormon. They also note that the earliest mention of barley in the Book of Mormon dates to 121 B.C. which is several hundred years prior to cultivation of Hordeum pusillum in North America, and the arrival of the Norse. - SILK (Alma 1:29)
- CHARIOTS (Alma 18:9) Archaeologists say that wheels were not used for travel in Pre-Columbian America. The knowledge of the wheel for transportation may have been in existence but seems to be limited to the use in toys. If the Nephites and Lamanites used chariots, why wouldn't this extremely valuable idea continue to be used by the descendants of the Ancient Americans? If Lehi's descendants did use a wheel, there would be evidence of wheels in the Americas before Columbus. Technology spreads quickly, especially an innovative one like the wheel.
- SEVEN DAY WEEK (Mosiah 13:18) (not known to Ancient Americans)
- CIMETERS (Old-World two-handed steel blade) Mosiah 9:16 (and other verses) Cultural artifacts or circumstances mentioned in the Book of Mormon that have not been discovered or verified in any ancient American archaeological expedition or historical investigation in the last 200 years
- There are others, the Book of Mormon currency for example, but I think this is sufficient for my needs.
Critical Questions regarding the Book of Mormon that I agree with… (not my questions…)
- Why is it that numerous LDS books and papers describe proposed Book of Mormon locations for cities and the "narrow neck of land"? No city has been identified as being Nephite, Lamanite, Jaredite, etc. For example, Zarahemla was occupied for hundreds of years, but we still don't have any real evidence of it ever existing. The Book of Mormon describes a time period from 2000 BC to 400 AD and millions of people. No city they occupied has yet to be found.
- Why didn't any of the place names from the Book of Mormon still exist when Columbus arrived?
- Where was the Hill Cumorah? Was it in New York or Central America? If it was in Central America, why hasn't it been found? If it was in New York, how did they move that quickly and where are all the remains?
- Why don't significant gaps exist in the archaeological record of Mesoamerica if these "missing" people existed?
- Did the Book of Mormon take place outside of Mesoamerica? The History of the Church records an incident from June, 1834 in which Joseph Smith identified a skeleton found in an Indian burial mound in Illinois: "... the visions of the past being opened to my understanding by the Spirit of the Almighty, I discovered the person whose skeleton was before us was a white Lamanite, a large, thick-set man, and a man of God. His name was Zelph ... who was known from the Hill Cumorah, or eastern sea to the Rocky Mountains." (HOC 1904 ed., II: 79-80).
- Why don't [non-Mormon] archeologists theorize Hebrew or Egyptian linkages or influences in Mesoamerica?
MY OWN THOUGHTS: I was researching about the Book of Mormon, and the current thought is that the “Narrow neck of land” most likely would be down in Central America somewhere, and the geographic area of the Book of Mormon is probably not more than 200-300 miles in diameter. How could they travel all around the lands by foot otherwise? I have also seen predictions that the Book of Mormon took place down on the Baja California Peninsula, as well as upstate New York.
This also brings into question the white Lamanite that Joseph Smith discovered, some sort of skeleton that was allegedly a “White Lamanite” named Zelph. So did the Book of Mormon take place up by New York? Where’s the narrow neck of land?
The Book Of Mormon is not supported by any linguistic evidence:
“The Book of Mormon is further undermined by the fact that there is no evidence of a Semitic/hieroglyphic/demotic hybrid script (called Reformed Egyptian in the text) or a spoken Hebrew dialect ever being used by pre or post-Columbian natives of North or South America. To the contrary, the current body of evidence indicates that there were many different spoken and written languages utilized among the various peoples of Ancient America that have no resemblance to Hebrew or Egyptian texts or languages.
This proliferation of language variants among existing Native tribes undermines the Book of Mormon claim of a single language used for the entire Book of Mormon people. Language does evolve; but not at such an unprecedented rate as to leave such a scattering of textual and vocal variants (all with no resemblance to the Book of Mormon 'mother tongue') within such a short period of time (less than 2000 years from the end of the Book of Mormon narrative to the present).
In fact, the text of the Book of Mormon indicates that the peoples within the narrative took great care to preserve their language from evolving or fracturing into different dialects. In 1st Nephi, Nephi is commanded to get the brass plates from Jerusalem to preserve "unto our children the language of our fathers" (1 Nephi 3:19). Later in the text, the Nephite nation encounters a second group of Hebrew migrants and finds that their "language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them". As a result, Mosiah (the Nephite leader) found it necessary that they should be taught in his (Nephite - Hebrew) language (Omni 1:17-18). For the duration of the Book of Mormon narrative, there is no indication that the principle narrative groups ever deviated from their language of origin (spoken or written) for 1000 years.
How then do we account for the thousands of languages that were spoken in North and South America prior to first contact with Europeans in the early 11th century?
How can a civilization on the scale described in the Book of Mormon maintain linguistic homogeneity for 1000 years and then splinter into thousands of varying and demonstrably unrelated languages in the next 1000 years?
Due to the physical absence of the gold plates, there is no body of Ancient American evidence with which to compare Joseph Smith's claim that Ancient Americans used a Hebrew/Egyptian hybrid language. The only evidence in existence is the 'Anthon Transcript' which (according to Smith and his associates) was taken to Professor Charles Anthon for a certificate of authenticity.”
DNA: “DNA disproves that the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the Indians.
With the advances in modern science, biologists have made remarkable progress in tracing human migratory patterns based on identifiable gene markers contained within mitochondrial DNA. Of particular interest to Americans (and to Latter-day Saints) was the origin of Native Americans - long hypothesized to have migrated from Asia over the Bearing Strait several thousand years ago? This widely accepted theory contradicts the Book of Mormon's hypothesis that American Natives are the descendants of Semitic migrants who arrived here descended from Asia, not Israel as the church teaches. Asian migrants have populated this continent for over 50,000 years. The thousands of DNA samples from every known tribe of Native Americans indicate an Asiatic rather than Semitic origin and give greater support to the theory of a prehistoric Asiatic migration across the Bearing Strait.
The most common defense proffered by Mormon apologists in this case is that the Book of Mormon does not offer a testable hypothesis. In fact, in 2005, noted Mormon historian Richard L. Bushman went so far as to say that the American continent was not even the definite location of the Book of Mormon peoples. He writes: "The Book of Mormon deposited its people on some unknown shore -- not even definitely identified as America -- and had them live out their history in a remote place in a distant time." - Richard Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 97”
Recent change to the Title Page of the Book of Mormon: Recently the church has changed some of the wording on the title page. It USED to say… "Past editions of that page say all of the people chronicled in the book "were destroyed, except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.""
The new editions changed one word… “The Lamanites "are among the ancestors of the American Indians."
MY THOUGHTS: To me, this is a huge change. When I was first taught about the book of Mormon and the church history, I was taught that the book of Mormon teaches about the Native Americans that were the first ones to settle North America. They were the principle Native Americans, and all current Indians descend from these Native Americans from the book of Mormon.
So now the church is acknowledging or saying that there were Native American’s that existed or lived here in North America long before the Book of Mormon times, and that Nephi and family were NOT the principal ancestors.
Another thing that has bothered me is the claim that there are 1769 King James Version edition errors in the Book of Mormon, errors that are unique to the 1769 edition. So what were they doing in the Book of Mormon if it is supposedly an ancient text? How did that happen? For further discussion on this point, SEE HERE.
For more problems with the Book of Mormon, please see the references below. There are too many for me too go through here, and other people have done a much better job.
REFERENCES:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism
- http://www.mormonthink.com/book-of-mormon-problems.htm#didntexist
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapir
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelph
- http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms
- http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/a-scientist-looks-at-book-of-mormon-anachronisms/
- http://cesletter.com/debunking-fairmormon/book-of-mormon.html
- http://www.mormonhandbook.com/home/anachronisms.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronisms_in_the_Book_of_Mormon
- https://www.lds.org/ensign/1984/10/digging-into-the-book-of-mormon-our-changing-understanding-of-ancient-america-and-its-scripture-part-2?lang=eng