Obviously, the BoM is riddled with so many ridiculous claims it's easy to laugh off any specifics they try to throw out there. Most often they explain these inconsistencies by saying Joseph Smith simply gave similar animals the wrong names, oxen are actually wild gazelle, or elephants are mastodon. The claim on the mastodon existing in the New World is easily verifiable through the existence of ancient remains.

With the limited geography to reconcile inconsistencies with DNA and other lack of evidence, I decided to focus on one particular claim of mastodon existing as far south as Mexico. Because there was seeming to be scholarly evidence I was continually thrown this example and told to disprove the claim.

Since Chapman's article is cited the most, and it provides direct quotes from the original article, I've chosen to link it. http://chapmanresearch.org/PDF/Elephant%20and%20The%20Book%20of%20Mormon%20NF.pdf

It probably looks familiar to most of you. Please scroll halfway down the first page to where Chapman cuts and pastes from the original article in American Antiquarian that talks about the find of mastodons remains inside an excavated city in Mexico.

My friend called American Antiquarian to get the full article for me and I am now providing it to the entire exmormon community. Please note the massive quote mining they've done to take the entire article completely out of context! Here is the entire article in three links. It is three pages long and starts at the bottom of the first page at "Elephant Remains in Mexico."

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/6696/page1j.jpg
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5919/page2h.jpg
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/9875/page3tj.jpg

The very same article they quote from pretty much calls the entire claim an overblown hoax!

Not surprised. I have found that it generally only takes checking two or three consecutive footnotes to a "scholarly" apologetic work to find a crooked reference.

Next time, please include a scan of the title page for reference purposes. Thank you :-)

This article was published over a century ago--and EVEN THEN, the findings were considered overblown! This IS the state of Mormon Apologetics--and you're all right: out-of-context quote mining from ANY source is the only way to support Mormonism's ridiculous, untenable claims.

Google Books link to entire journal:

http://books.google.com/books?id=VZMLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA395&lpg=PA395&dq=%22from+the+city+of+mexico+comes+a+statement+bearing%22&source=bl&ots=KcBXQlk5uS&sig=oORi3HbWLIK0XN8tyi8wEJfP83E&hl=en&ei=tYuvTNeJNZnAnwe8x8iFBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22from%20the%20city%20of%20mexico%20comes%20a%20statement%20bearing%22&f=false


Thanks, vhainya, for the interesting post!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2010 05:49PM by Fetal Deity.

Nice, didn't know this was on Google books now. I appreciate the link.