I have encountered come apologists who are claiming that the Jaredites came to the Americas from Asia. Since they also came before Lehi, the BofM account matches the archeological and genetic evidence that has been found. This proves that the BofM is an accurate historical account.

This is the first time that I have encountered this argument and I have to say that I am surprised by this. As far as I can tell there are only two small problems with this apologetic defense.

First, the timeframe is wrong. The Jaredites were supposed to come to the new world around 2,200 B.C. The evidence shows that the migration from Asia took place about 10-15,000 years before that.

Second, the BofM says that the entire Jaredite civilization destroyed itself. They went extinct right around the time that Lehi is supposed to have arrived. So how could their genetic markers be found in any population that exists today?

Other than that, it is pretty watertight. :grimace: What do you think?

One apologist made a very misleading and deceptive video about this, and I had to respond in kind, with some Halloween clips thrown in just for fun.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWe-kZm1Aeo

Now they just have to get over the "submarine" problem.

But that shouldn't be too hard, right? I mean, right?

Boats with no ventilation that get smashed around carrying elephants and stuff voyaging for hundreds of days?

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,818710



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2013 03:12PM by steve benson.

I think that the Jaredites are the weakest part of the BoM.

It is entirely possible that the whole story could be pronounced a mythical spiritual legend of the Lamanites/Nephites. This could be the first step in declaring the whole book to be just 'inspired fiction'.

Pinning their hopes on the Jaredites just shows how desperate they are.

Heresy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think that the Jaredites are the weakest part of
> the BoM.
>
> It is entirely possible that the whole story could
> be pronounced a mythical spiritual legend of the
> Lamanites/Nephites. This could be the first step
> in declaring the whole book to be just 'inspired
> fiction'.
>
> Pinning their hopes on the Jaredites just shows
> how desperate they are.

If you think about it, the story of the Jaredites starts off with the confusing of the languages at the tower of Babel in 2,240 B.C. (or about then). Science has shown that this legend is a fictional myth. That means that the story of the Jaredites is also a myth. Having the mythical story of the Jaredites in the middle of the BofM means that it is a fictional story too. This proves that Joseph lied about the book. His entire credibililty is tied to the confusing of the languages in 2240 B.C.

dealingwithit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This proves that Joseph
> lied about the book. His entire credibililty is
> tied to the confusing of the languages in 2240
> B.C.

I brought this up (and the global flood, which is also mention in Ether) in a conversation with an apologist at FAIR (Brant Gardener). He said that both the confusing of tongues and the flood were local geography events. They only happened in a small isolated community which didn't know about the rest of the world, and believed they were the world...

It's all becoming part of the ever vanishing geography theory.

So now we've gone from the LGT to the EVGT so next is the TMGT (Totally Myhtical Geography Theory)?

Hah, I thought you were going add TMNT too

Well if I could actually type I might have.

dealingwithit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Second, the BofM says that the entire Jaredite
> civilization destroyed itself. They went extinct
> right around the time that Lehi is supposed to
> have arrived. So how could their genetic markers
> be found in any population that exists today?
>
> Other than that, it is pretty watertight.
> :grimace: What do you think?

Regarding your second "small problem". It's more than a small problem. It pretty much kills his theory. If the Jaredites existed and then killed themselves off, you're right the genetic markers wouldn't show up in today's population.

Unless the Jaredites bred with other groups of people. But if there were other people, the BOM didn't talk about it.

But you're also ignoring the fact that the best evidence to date points to a migration via the Bering Straights and not via submarines.

We could also talk about archeological and linguistic evidence. But that would make for a very long post.

No, if many people quietly left the Jaredite civilization, disgusted by the mutual genocide, and developed new civilizations, then the fiction would work better.

So, how come JS & Co. didn't move Ether to the beginning of the book when the 116 pages were lost? Either they were being stupid, or they could better use the Nephi story to accomplish their racist agenda. Maybe a little of both, since racism is stupid.

And presenting fiction as reality is stupider.

>So, how come JS & Co. didn't move Ether to the beginning of the book when the 116 pages were lost?

You might find Episode 5 at MormonLeaks to be of interest.

As your post suggests, there is evidence that the Book of Ether was added after the lost pages incident.

The problem for the Gold Bible Company was that the Jaredite story was not part of the storyline of lost 116 pages.

If the 116 pages reappeared after publication of the Book of Mormon, their storyline would be compared to the storyline at the beginning of the Book of Mormon. This is what Smith & Company were afraid of.

The storyline of the lost pages would not match the storyline created to replace the lost pages (at the front of the Book of Mormon) if that storyline included the Jaredite account.

So the Book of Ether had to be tacked on to the end of the book.

The other problem regarding the timing of their arrival is that the BoM with the PoGP teach that the flood wiped out the people of the American continent.

Ether 13:2
"after the waters had receded from off the face of this land it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord"

Moses 8:26-30
"And the Lord said: I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth, both man and beast... The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth."

So the flood included America, not just some local region in Mesopotamia or some such place.

TBMs don't even know their own doctrines or scriptures. They just trust that the very intelligent mops at BYU know the answers to these thorny issues and are comforted that someone smart does. But we know. We studied it. And now we're no longer Mo.

This is why the Garden-of-Eden-was-located-in-Missouri doctrine is so damning and why the apologists try to distance from it. The only way to explain how Adam and Eve's descendants ended up in the Middle East, is via Noah's global flood*. Otherwise, the Jaredites would not have needed to build their submarine barges to drift across the ocean.



* An alternative explanation would be to claim that the continents were all together (i.e. divided after the flood in the days of Peleg) for some time prior to the Tower of Babel, and that Adam & Eve's decendants migrated to the Middle East on foot. However, this is no more scientifically valid than the global flood (i.e. both are completely invalid), thereby offering no kind of intelligent help.

dealingwithit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Other than that, it is pretty watertight.





Yah right. Like unto a dish watertight.

Only one problem with that theory.

It's based on pure bullshit.

Buy 'em a kids' world globe at Toys R Us and give them some geography lessons...

Really, this one is also a shell game because the ancestors of Native Americans came from a fairly well-defined and isolated area of Siberia, probably, as noted, between 25,000 and 12,000 years ago... And most authorities believe it was in very small numbers (perhaps as few as 70 individuals).

As noted here elsewhere, SNP's in autosomal DNA have shown that all of the sequences of European DNA found among "Native Americans" can be shown to have arrived in the post-Columbus era...

And a bit more...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ket_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ket_language

Aha, a video! BTW, I liked yours, but this one essentially offers corroboration of the DNA evidence...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6050673836854498204#

Great references SLCabbie. Thanks

I went looking for this one via Google and couldn't find it... Miraculously somebody topped the thread I'd posted it on before... Perhaps it is as the MA&D crowd claims, and the Adversary does indeed operate on RFM...

http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&orig_handle=habataku&orig_number=916&handle=habataku&number=916&album_id=291#slideanchor

In his 1842 letter to John Wentworth, editor and proprietor of the Chicago Democrat newspaper, Joseph Smith wrote:

"In this important and interesting book the history of ancient America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of languages to the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country."

(This quote is online at www.lds.org; search for "Wentworth Letter".)

2 Nephi 5 is clear about when 'the Lord' cursed Native American forefathers Laman and Lemuel (and their 'unrighteous' followers) with dark skin: "The Nephites separate themselves from the Lamanites, keep the law of Moses, and build a temple—Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites are cursed, receive a skin of blackness, and become a scourge unto the Nephites. Between 588 and 559 B.C." (ref. http://scriptures.lds.org/en/2_ne/5)

LDS 'prophets' have repeatedly said that Native Americans are "sons and daughters of Lehi" (use that search term at www.lds.org to find the quotes).

Funny how - in the past 180 years - no LDS 'prophet' or other GA has ever referred to the indigenous peoples of the Americas as "sons and daughters of the Jaredites"!

Prof. Plum Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Funny how - in the past 180 years - no LDS
> 'prophet' or other GA has ever referred to the
> indigenous peoples of the Americas as "sons and
> daughters of the Jaredites"!

I think that even they know how flimsly that arguement would be. The GA's have been consistent that the native americans are descended from a lost tribe of Israel.

The guy in the video that I am rebutting, claims that the book of mormon never says that the people at the end are descendants of Lehi. He also claims that even if they were that we should not expect to find Jewish DNA since Lehi was of the tribe of Judah, not Joseph. He also says that no mormons believe those things.

I cannot believe that he could be this ignorant about it all. I think that he has to be lying, not just mistaken.

Prof. Plum Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Funny how - in the past 180 years - no LDS
> 'prophet' or other GA has ever referred to the
> indigenous peoples of the Americas as "sons and
> daughters of the Jaredites"!

this is just brilliant! thanks for your post! =)

here is all my research on the subject so far:
http://truthundertherazor.blogspot.com/search/label/native%20american

which encompasses quotes from JOD, BOM, HOC and now, the wentworth letter and quotes from lds church leaders found on lds.org =) thanks again



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2010 07:56AM by Nick Humphrey.

Prof. Plum Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> LDS 'prophets' have repeatedly said that Native
> Americans are "sons and daughters of Lehi" (use
> that search term at www.lds.org to find the
> quotes).
>
> Funny how - in the past 180 years - no LDS
> 'prophet' or other GA has ever referred to the
> indigenous peoples of the Americas as "sons and
> daughters of the Jaredites"!

why are they not called "sons and daughters of laman and lemuel?" =)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2010 08:50AM by Nick Humphrey.

I remember hearing Hinckley refer to the crowd as "our BOM ancestors" during his speech dedicating the temple in Lima, Peru. It appears to me that the changes in speech to less specific references goes right along with the changes in the preface of the BOM from "are the descendants" to "are among the descendants."

Yet another example of GA lack of reverence for their own "scriptures." Can you imagine a Catholic pope changing Jesus' words from "this is my body" to "this is like my body...."

To me, these backpedaling changes are proof that they themselves do not believe God spoke to anyone.

Didn't Hinckley refer to the people as having the "blood of Lehi" in their veins or something similar in that talk?

The interesting thing to me is that by changing the introduction, they are admitting that they have been wrong about who the Lamanites are for 170 years or so.

No biggie though

dealingwithit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Didn't Hinckley refer to the people as having the
> "blood of Lehi" in their veins or something
> similar in that talk?

here's hinckley saying that the people of bolivia are the sons and daughters of lehi:
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=9ce527cd3f37b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD
"I think particularly Lehi and Sariah and their children and progeny rejoice over the good work of one who tried to lift and help some of their posterity in the land of Bolivia.”

in 1974, the church in california had somethine called the lamanite youth conference:
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=13f246581c79b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=024644f8f206c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

Nick Humphrey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> in 1974, the church in california had somethine
> called the lamanite youth conference:
> http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale
> =0&sourceId=13f246581c79b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a__
> __&vgnextoid=024644f8f206c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aR
> CRD

Didn't the church also have something called the Lamanite relocation or education program where native american children would spend the school year with a white and delightsome LDS family in order to learn how to be Mormon drones?

Yes they did. A native american girl (high school age) came to live with the former bishop of our ward and his 8 kids. To say they were ultra-tbm would be an understatement.

This girl was a little rebellious. She was caught smoking, she liked to swear, tell dirty jokes etc. Apparently the final straw was when they found her reading The Exoricst, and they sent her back home.

That theory is da Shiz Biz. (SB, to be confused with BS)

the jaredites are living proof that the nephites screwed the buffalo

Wait do we have evidence for buffalo DNA?