Many of the historical claims made by religious books are of the supernatural variety. A classic example is the resurrection of Jesus. For events such as these, there is generally no empirical evidence to examine, and one must rely on written reports. The same is true of supernatural events in the BoM. Yet, the BoM makes many mundane claims as well, and these fall into spheres such as archaeology, anthropology, biology and linguistics, which are the province of empirical investigation The BoM is essentially a thousand year history of peoples on the American continent, and as such it was bound to include various details of their lives, culture and civilization. Naturally, a legitimate historical record would have gotten these details correct, whereas a fanciful tale spun by a relatively uneducated frontiersman would be prone to numerous errors. As it happens, the BoM bears almost no resemblance to the actual historical record from the Mesoamerican times it purports to describe (600 BC-400 AD). The number of errors in this regard are too plentiful to list in their entirety, so I will merely highlight some of the more egregious cases.
Archaeological Fallacies:
The BoM makes mention of various technological products which were unknown to Mesoamerica. These include chariots (Alma 18:9) when there were no wheeled vehicles of any kind, steel swords (Ether 7:9) when there was neither steel nor swords, bellows for blacksmithing (1 Nephi 17:11), and silk (Alma 1:29). The BoM describes a vast civilization of millions who inhabited cities for hundreds of years, yet no ruins from even a single BoM city have ever been identified. No BoM place-names were in use when Europeans arrived in the New World.
Anthropological Fallacies:
The culture described in the BoM conflicts radically with that of the actual inhabitants of Mesoamerica. The BoM peoples had a seven-day week (Mosiah 13:18), but no Mesoamerican calendar matches this. And Nephi, who came to the New World from Jerusalem, never bothers to contrast these strikingly different places. Most stunning of all, the BoM never once indicates that the American continent was anything but uninhabited when the refugees from Jerusalem arrived. Of course, there were actually millions of Native Americans occupying the land from one coast to the other.
Biological Fallacies:
The BoM refers to a host of animals that did not exist in the pre-Columbian Americas or had been extinct in that region for thousands of years preceding the period described in the book. These include the ***, bull, calf, cattle, cow, domestic goat, horse, ox, domestic sheep, sow, swine and elephants. Several common animals that actually existed in Mesoamerica (deer, jaguars, tapir, monkeys, sloths, turkeys, llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs) are never mentioned. Also described are crops that didn't exist, such as wheat (Mosiah 9:9) and barley (Alma 11:7) Indeed, the agricultural techniques required to produce those crops didn't exist either. Once again, crops that were commonly known to Mesoamerica (chocolate, lima beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, manioc) are not referenced. Perhaps the gravest blunder of all is the BoM's assertion of a Hebraic origin for the American Indians. In Joseph's Smith's day, the now firmly-established Asiatic origin for Native Americans was known only in some scholarly circles.
Linguistic Fallacies:
There are no examples of "reformed Egyptian" (the language Joseph claimed was written on the plates) in Mesoamerican history. And no Native American language is related to either ancient Egyptian or Hebrew, whereas a relationship does exist between Native American languages and Asian (Siberian) languages. Furthermore, no BoM proper names (Nephi, Laman, Zarahemla) appear in any of the many Mesoamerican writings that have been discovered. And speaking of proper names, Greek names such as Lachoneus, Timothy and Jonas appear in the BoM, but Nephi and his family left Jerusalem in 600 BC, long before Greek culture would have had any impact on the Hebrews.[5]
. And thank you Erich, but I've already wasted 4 years of my life studying religion only to reject it completely afterwards. But thanks.
Haha, no but seriously don't worry. I'm not here to make you uncomfortable. I only extended an invitation to you. I'm not forcing you.
