Bill Hamblin: "The Book of Mormon is Historically Fallible."

[_Mister Scratch]

Wow... I don't know if anybody else has noticed, but there is an utterly fascinating thread underway on the aptly named MADboard in which Prof. Hamblin is really painting himself into a corner. He has been trying to fend off pretty well-mounted attacks from The Dude, Addictio, CKSalmon, and others---and I have to hand it to him, he has been holding his own fairly well. The thread in question is entitled "Lack of Arachaeological Evidence Supporting the Book of Mormon," and last I checked, it had fallen down to the second page.

The crux of the debate---as so often seems to be the case with this subject---is methodological. Prof. Hamblin has been saying his usual (quite bizarre, in my opinion) song-and-dance about how "empirical evidence" of history does not exist. (This seems especially odd in light of the fact that he has no problem "chalking up points" for archaeological evidence which *does* support the Book of Mormon. Why doesn't he pooh-pooh that away as being "un-empirical"?)

What has been so fascinating about the thread, imho, is the back-and-forth between the participants. Addictio is constantly having to clarify his position, and to correct Prof. Hamblin's butchering of his posts, while The Dude ultimately resorted to calling Prof. H. "a huge jerk" (for which he got scolded, in big red font, by the Mods.)

Especially interesting to me is the following from Professor Hamblin:

Dude apparently believes that it is unlikely that vast libraries of ancient texts can be destroyed. Perhaps he can show me the surviving texts from the hundreds of thousands of scrolls once housed in library of Alexandria, or the equally large library at Pergamum; as far as I am aware, not a single of the hundreds of thousands of scrolls once kept in these libraries survives. In fact, barring some papyri fragments found (uniquely) in Egypt, all surviving ancient Greek and Roman books exist largely in copies of copies of copies from the eighth century AD or later. (e.g. the earliest complete manuscript of Homer’s Illiad comes from the tenth century AD, nearly 2000 years after Homer. It survives only because Byzantine aristocrats valued Homer as literature and copied it, and because Byzantine scholars fleeing the Turks in the fourteenth century AD brought copies of it to Italy; the oldest copies survive in Renaissance libraries in Florence, Venice and Milan, not Greece.) Excluding writing on non-perishable materials (stone, metal, clay tablets, etc.) or preservation in special circumstances and ecological conditions (Egyptian tombs, DSS, Chinese scrolls at Dunhuang), the vast majority of ancient manuscripts no longer exist. The disappearance of texts is the norm in history, not the aberration. Survival of ancient books is aberrant. In the absence of cultural continuity facilitating copying and transmissions of manuscripts, most ancient texts are lost.

(emphasis added)

Coupled with this:

The Book of Mormon does not describe “highly literate civilizations.” Nearly all mention of writing in the Book of Mormon is associated with a particular scribal linage preserving their clan records. There are exceptions, mainly with elites exchanging epistles, also implying literacy was an elite phenomenon.

(emphasis added)

And this:

The reason we can’t “identify” Nephite sites is because we lack sufficient texts giving the ancient pronunciation of proper names to allow us to do so. How can we possibly be expected to determine if a particular site is or is not Zarahemla if we do not know the ancient name of that site? It boggles the mind that Anti-Mormons are so thick-headed that they can’t seen this patently obvious fact.

Now, please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Professor Hamblin shooting himself in the foot here? I.e., is he not (perhaps unintentionally) drawing a parallel between the preservation of The Iliad and the handing down of the Book of Mormon? (Both survive because of inscription efforts performed by cultural elites; both serve to aid in historical authentication and verification.) And if so, shouldn't we be able to use the Book of Mormon as a kind of textual "authenticator" of history in the same way that we would use The Iliad or some other ancient text? (Part of Prof. H.'s argument seems to be saying that we must have written texts in order to verify/identify historical facts.

A bit further on, he contributes this baffling post:

Historical "facts" exist, in the sense of actual past events (APEs), just like galaxies exist, whether we humans can see them or not. APEs can only be observed, however, through the lens of texts written by humans beings who are biased, fallible, etc. These ancient authors are often confused, ambiguous, mistaken, and lie. Furthermore, we only a have portion of the once extant texts, and even all the once extant but now lost texts only describe a small portion of APEs. How, then, do you propose that we can objectively understand APEs, we we can only observe a small portion of APEs, and those "through a lens darkly" of past fallible human perception and descriptions? Rejection of the possibility of objectively understanding the past is not a rejection of an objective past, but the recognition of the fallibility and limitations of human knowledge, both on the part of the ancient authors who wrote the texts, and the modern scholars who try to understand them.

Huh? What I don't understand is why he is so insistent upon the importance (and, as it happens, fallibility---and honestly, did you ever expect to see an LDS apologist arguing for the historical fallibility of the Book of Mormon???) of written texts in the assessment of "actual past events." He says elsewhere, "I believe the past can not be empirically known because it cannot be directly observed, nor experimented upon. Perhaps you have some other understanding of empirical." Fair enough, be we *can* handle, view, observe, and experiment upon artifacts, human remains, rock carvings, and any number of historical/archaeological data, can we not?

All in all, a very fascinating thread. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

[_beastie]

Oh, geez. Same old, same old.

I'm just starting to read through the thread, and noticed this on the first page:

4- The fundamental problem of Book of Mormon archaeology is the lack of pre-Classic pronunciation for a sufficient number of Mesoamerican toponyms. The fact of the matter is that we know the pronunciation of very few Precolumbian toponyms from the time of the Book of Mormon. Indeed, we don’t know the names of most of the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica—what, for example, is the ancient name of the people we now call the Olmecs? Without that data there is no way to test Book of Mormon geography. If we had, say, 1000 toponyms from Pre-Classic Mesoamerica we could quite easily test the authenticity of Book of Mormon geography. We have no such data. The problem is thus not that the Book of Mormon fails the test, the problem is that we have no data base with which we can even begin to conduct the test at all. Most evangelical critics of the Church cannot grasp this simple idea.

This is utter baloney. Hasn't Hamblin read Soreson??

Hamblin seems to be saying that since we don't know the original names of these sites, we can't identify any Book of Mormon sites. This ignores a vast amount of information that the Book of Mormon actually does provide, other than the names. This was how Sorenson developed his theory - he used all the background information provided. For example, enough geographical features are specified that Sorenson claims only certain areas in Mesoamerica could qualify. So we limit the search to those areas that match the specified geographical details. Then we look at what kind of polity was described. What kind of social complexity is described? What kind of government? What kind of warfare? All these things provide crucial information about the size and development of the polities, which narrows the search even more.

As I said, I'm only getting started on this thread, so maybe someone calls him on this particular nonsense.

These type of threads are the reason I disabled my MAD password. I wouldn't be able to resist posting on the thread, which is pointless and a black hole in terms of time consumed.

[_Mister Scratch]

Oh, geez. Same old, same old.

I'm just starting to read through the thread, and noticed this on the first page:

4- The fundamental problem of Book of Mormon archaeology is the lack of pre-Classic pronunciation for a sufficient number of Mesoamerican toponyms. The fact of the matter is that we know the pronunciation of very few Precolumbian toponyms from the time of the Book of Mormon. Indeed, we don’t know the names of most of the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica—what, for example, is the ancient name of the people we now call the Olmecs? Without that data there is no way to test Book of Mormon geography. If we had, say, 1000 toponyms from Pre-Classic Mesoamerica we could quite easily test the authenticity of Book of Mormon geography. We have no such data. The problem is thus not that the Book of Mormon fails the test, the problem is that we have no data base with which we can even begin to conduct the test at all. Most evangelical critics of the Church cannot grasp this simple idea.

This is utter baloney. Hasn't Hamblin read Soreson??

Hamblin seems to be saying that since we don't know the original names of these sites, we can't identify any Book of Mormon sites. This ignores a vast amount of information that the Book of Mormon actually does provide, other than the names. This was how Sorenson developed his theory - he used all the background information provided. For example, enough geographical features are specified that Sorenson claims only certain areas in Mesoamerica could qualify. So we limit the search to those areas that match the specified geographical details. Then we look at what kind of polity was described. What kind of social complexity is described? What kind of government? What kind of warfare? All these things provide crucial information about the size and development of the polities, which narrows the search even more.

As I said, I'm only getting started on this thread, so maybe someone calls him on this particular nonsense.

Yes.... And am I wrong, or is he really painting himself into a corner when he uses The Iliad as an analogy? In other words (and to rather grossly oversimplify), we can use Homer's text in order to verify historical data, but it is somehow a "no-no" to do this with the Book of Mormon? Is this not what Prof. H. is saying? Is he not making a false analogy?

[_beastie]

Brant also used the lack of archaeological evidence for Israelites in Egypt in past conversations I had with him on the matter. That only works with those wedded to the idea that this part of the Bible did, indeed, described actual historical events, rather than a later developed origins myth. For those of us quite willing to accept, as many scholars do, that the story of the exodus from Egypt is largely myth, this argument only provides support for questioning the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I argued this extensively in my last MAD thread with Juliann, who never did appear to get it. Dever and other archaeologists do not believe that portion of the Bible recites factual history, because of the lack of archaeological evidence for it. This demonstrates exactly what Book of Mormon apologists want to avoid - that archaeologists expect to find supporting evidence for these events, and when none can be found, conclude the story is mythological in origin.

[_beastie]

Yes, he's painting himself into many corners. Also note this:

2- If the Bible is ancient, it does not necessarily follow that it is historical. That is to say there are many ancient works of fiction. E.g. The Golden Ass, the Mahabharata, Homer’s Iliad, etc. are all ancient books. This does not demonstrate that they are historical. Most evangelical critics of the Church cannot grasp this simple idea.

This is utter baloney. I'm not EV nor can I speak for them, but I've participated in many of these sort of discussions and I have YET to see ANY nonmormon, EV or secular critic, not grasp this differentiation. This is a complete figment of Hamblin's imagination.

Oh, and how nice to see addictio. I thought he had cleansed himself of the internet habit for good. The direction of the conversation will be in good hands with him around.

[_beastie]

The existence of the ancient Lehites, by contrast, yields no corresponding set of identifiable empirical facts and therefore their claimed existence has no explanatory power. In particular, there is not a single identifiable ancient American archaeological site or artifact, or any identifiable feature of such a site or artifact, with which the ancient Lehites have (or are claimed by LDS archaeologists to have) such a causal, explanatory relationship. If we expand the inquiry from archaeology to anthropology/ethnography, the same lack of empirical facts and explanatory power obtains. The posited arrival of the Lehites in ancient Mesoamerica has no causal, explanatory relationship to anything that is known about the oral or written languages of ancient Mesoamerica, or regarding the religion, culture or biology (genetic identity) of ancient Mesoamericans.

I want to emphasize addictio's point, which is one I've tried to make repeatedly as well:

The history of ancient Mesoamerica looks exactly as it would look if the "Nephites" had never existed. There is NOTHING in ancient Mesoamerican history that requires their existence, period.

Now, this fact perhaps wouldn't be so damning if one were discussing a small group of people who never had any relative power or influence to speak of. But the Book of Mormon describes a far different scenario: it describes a very powerful group of people who had tremendous influence over their area, even if the area is as small as LGT insists.

I encourage anyone who doubts this point to read my essay on Polities and Power, which expands this point.

http://zarahemlacitylimits.com/wiki/ind ... _and_Power

I'll offer one paragraph from that essay, and emphasize that I provided supporting details from both the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerican scholars:

The capital city of Zarahemla exerted a great deal of control over the other polities that extended throughout the entire region demonstrated earlier on the map showing the general region in question. Again, utilizing mapquest along with Matheny’s map, I roughly approximate the area under Nephite control to be 75,000 square miles. Santa Rosa aside, there is simply no ancient Mesoamerican polity that had this type of power. It rivals that of the Aztec Empire, which stretched over 80,000 square miles. Regardless of whatever disagreements Mesoamerican scholars may have regarding super-states versus peer polities, not a single one suggests that such an empire existed during the Book of Mormon time frame. If Zarahemla exerted the type of control over a region as large as depicted in the Book of Mormon, then it would have been an empire to rival the stature of the much later Aztec Empire…but still left not a single trace of its existence.

[_Mister Scratch]

Prof. H. has just posted this delicious nugget:

We have very few surviving texts from Preclassic Mesoamerica, compared to hundreds of thousands of texts from the ancient Near East. Furthermore, the phonetic component of place and personal names in the Maya script is generally not known, or uncertain at best. Why should Anti-Mormons claim that the two cases are in any way compatible, and provide a methodologically legitimate basis for comparison of the relative results.

What other methodological approach would Prof. H prefer that we use, I wonder? One that relies only on artifacts? Or one that looks for the remains of horses, elephants, cumoms, and cureloms? Perhaps he wants to devise a totally unheard of means of investigating the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I'm all ears on this one.

Imagine two murder investigations, case A and case B. In case A we have DNA evidence under the fingernails of the victim, which can be positively matched with the DNA of suspect A. In case B, however, we have no DNA evidence from the victim or crime scene, even though we have the DNA of suspect B. Would anyone claim that, because we can match the DNA of suspect A with DNA from crime scene A, that we should also be able to match the DNA of suspect B with the DNA from crime scene B, even though we have no DNA from crime scene B?

A pretty poor, and grossly oversimplified analogy, imho. It would be much more apt if, in the example of case B, there was no evidence whatsoever save a written testimony from a person who had recently been dabbling in some dubious activities.

Isn’t such a claim manifestly impossible? Then why should we expect to be able to find the names of Preclassic Mesoamerican sites and kings without texts?

We *do* have a text: it is called The Book of Mormon.

[_guy sajer]

The reason we can’t “identify” Nephite sites is because we lack sufficient texts giving the ancient pronunciation of proper names to allow us to do so. How can we possibly be expected to determine if a particular site is or is not Zarahemla if we do not know the ancient name of that site? It boggles the mind that Anti-Mormons are so thick-headed that they can’t seen this patently obvious fact.

It seems to me that archeological sites with evidence of steel, oxen, horses, wheeled vehicles, and other Book of Mormon artifacts would be key to identifying Book of Mormon sites. That we haven't found evidence of any of the above strikes me as a better explanation as to why we cannot "identify" Nephite sites. Even if we could fix the location in some kind of sense, confirmation would require the location and identification of such artifacts.

Historical "facts" exist, in the sense of actual past events (APEs), just like galaxies exist, whether we humans can see them or not. APEs can only be observed, however, through the lens of texts written by humans beings who are biased, fallible, etc. These ancient authors are often confused, ambiguous, mistaken, and lie. Furthermore, we only a have portion of the once extant texts, and even all the once extant but now lost texts only describe a small portion of APEs. How, then, do you propose that we can objectively understand APEs, we we can only observe a small portion of APEs, and those "through a lens darkly" of past fallible human perception and descriptions? Rejection of the possibility of objectively understanding the past is not a rejection of an objective past, but the recognition of the fallibility and limitations of human knowledge, both on the part of the ancient authors who wrote the texts, and the modern scholars who try to understand them.

If this is the case, then it makes precious little sense to invest so much into the accuracy (historical, doctrinal, etc.) of any ancient text, including, notably, the Bible and Book of Mormon.

Thus in attempting to defend the Book of Mormon, Hamblin in essense argues that we shouldn't take it too seriously.

I get the feeling that this is not the message the Bretheren would want us to internalize.

[_dartagnan]

The Dude was suspended for calling Hamblin a jerk.

Join the club Dude.

[Physics Guy]

The Dude was suspended for calling Hamblin a jerk.

Join the club Dude.

Wait.... he was suspended? I know they lectured him, telling him he was on "thin ice," but they went ahead and actually suspended him? As to Bond's question about "who's left to purge," here is part of the answer....

Edited to add:

The reason we can’t “identify” Nephite sites is because we lack sufficient texts giving the ancient pronunciation of proper names to allow us to do so. How can we possibly be expected to determine if a particular site is or is not Zarahemla if we do not know the ancient name of that site? It boggles the mind that Anti-Mormons are so thick-headed that they can’t seen this patently obvious fact.

(emphasis added)

I have a question. Perhaps I am merely being "thick-headed," but I wonder why it is that LDS apologists assume that Zarahemla had some different "ancient name" other than . . . Zarahemla? I.e., Why would Joseph Smith get it wrong? Or, for that matter, on what basis do apologists believe that the "cultural elites" who were inscribing the Gold Plates would get it wrong? Bottomline: Why do Prof. Hamblin and others assume that Zarahemla is not the correct name for some given site?