Since the other post was getting to long I thought I'd add this.



Disease or sickness is rarely mentioned in the Book of Mormon. When it is mentioned, it occurs only in about 5 or 6 verses of the entire BOM and never in the context of warfare.

Historically disease has been endemic during war time. The BOM mentions war and battles numerous times. During the American Civil War, disease killed 2 out of 3 Confederate soldiers and roughly 3 out of 5 of the Union soldiers.



The Civil War was fought, claimed the Union army surgeon general, "at the end of the medical Middle Ages." Little was known about what caused disease, how to stop it from spreading, or how to cure it. Surgical techniques ranged from the barbaric to the barely competent.


While the average soldier believed the bullet was his most nefarious foe, disease was the biggest killer of the war… About half of the deaths from disease during the Civil War were caused by intestinal disorders, mainly typhoid fever, diarrhea, and dysentery. The remainder died from pneumonia and tuberculosis. Camps populated by young soldiers who had never before been exposed to a large variety of common contagious diseases were plagued by outbreaks of measles, chickenpox, mumps, and whooping cough.

The culprit in most cases of wartime illness, however, was the shocking filth of the army camp itself. An inspector in late 1861 found most Federal camps 'littered with refuse, food, and other rubbish, sometimes in an offensive state of decomposition; slops deposited in pits within the camp limits or thrown out of broadcast; heaps of manure and offal close to the camp." As a result, bacteria and viruses spread through the camp like wildfire.

Bowel disorders constituted the soldiers' most common complaint. The Union army reported that more than 995 out of every 1,000 men eventually contracted chronic diarrhea or dysentery during the war; the Confederates fared no better.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/civilwarmedicine.htm


This is more evidence that the BOM was written by Joseph Smith and his cohorts, Sydney Rigdon et al. It shows their shortsightedness in not including one of the most common elements of war---DISEASE.

The BOM merely mentions affliction in one instance which I was able to find, which was on a mormon website and showed the synonym as adversity.


Has anybody else not found it odd that the BOM never mentions such a prominent element of warfare?

No. I am not bothered by that at all.

The lack of mention of avocados bothers me more.

I think the lack of cumquats in the BOM is even more troubling,
smart ass.

That poster wasn't being a smartass. It's well known that Mezoamerican aborigenes ate avocadoes for thousands upon thousands of years as their main source of nutritional fat. Avocadoes are conspicuous by their absence in the BOM, the same way any book attempting to describe 21st century USA would be insanely erroneous to leave out mention of automobiles.

I apologize about the "smart ass" remark. I hadn't a clue about the history of avocados in the new world. Thanks for that information.

It doesn't really talk about peppers, tomatoes, and cilantro either.
It never occurred to me to look at cultural food as a very piercing fact about the BOM.
All of these foods are "New World" and were a part of the daily diet of many native tribes.

Hell, raccoons, ocelots, penguins...These are all creatures native to the Americas. A flightless waterfowl deserves some kind of mention, doesn't it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2010 10:21PM by itzpapalotl.

It doesn't need to mention every food item peculiar to the Americas. However, it does bring up food itself, talking about putative food staples like wheat and corn. However, Mezoamericans were eating a lot of avocadoes. Again, it's inconspicuous by its absence, when so many other food items familiar to Europeans are mentioned with specificity.

I assure you, I was being sincere.

Thanks! Something that had never occured to me previously.

Puzzled, you're welcome, historically disease killed more people than spears, bullets, arrows etc. The Book of Mormon never addresses this major issue. Read any historical war account and death by disease is paramount.

This issue would have been huge during the time the BOM purportedly took place. Joseph Smith et al simply failed to mention this critical and pervasive fact.

The whole problem with the BoM is that it posits a Biblical, Near Eastern world in the Americas, when in fact the Americas were totally different in ways far beyond early 19th century European settler imaginations.

Different animals, politics, food, agricultural products and issues, diseases, concepts, history, you name it. The BoM is glaringly anachronistic and out of place in the Americas in every way.

The only way Mormons continue to believe is to remain blissfully ignorant of any reality about the Americas.

I agree. This is very interesting and I hadn't really thought about it either.

No Walmarts mentioned, and there everwhere.