FAIR Conference: Roper's take on Book of Mormon geography


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EXCERPT: Roper, a resident scholar at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU, based his 90-minute remarks on four subjects:

1. Terminology — do terms used by Joseph Smith in his descriptions of the Book of Mormon, such as "this land," "this continent," or "this country," indicate, as some have suggested, any specific American setting for the Book of Mormon?

2. Did Joseph Smith's revelations include details about the geography of the Book of Mormon?

3. Regarding a handful of articles published under the editorship of Joseph Smith in the Times and Seasons regarding Central American discoveries — did Joseph Smith write these articles or were they written by others?

4. Might recent wordprinting studies offer a solution to the question of authorship?

LINK: FAIR Conference: Roper's take on Book of Mormon geography | Mormon Times

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  • 2 weeks later...

This was one of my favorite talks at the FAIR conference. It goes to show that Joseph Smith believed in a Mesoamerican model for the Book of Mormon. But that does not mean that he *only* believed in a Mesoamerican model. He made statements which placed the BOM over all of North and South America, something that really doesn't fit with the internal geography of the BOM. Personally, I think he was just making his best guess at where it happened, and it makes sense that the Nephites lived in North America, narrow neck of land was in Central America, and the Lamanites lived in South America.

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FAIR has never made a stance on BOM geography, but most of those involved with FAIR accept a limited geography for The Book of Mormon. I believe the text of The Book of Mormon implies a small area, not one that ranges from Canada to South America. I was merely pointing out that Joseph Smiths statements on BOM geography place it all over the map, and not necessarily in *only* one of the more popular theories that are currently being advertised. Anyone who claims that Joseph Smith *only* supports their position is either not being honest, or very ignorant of JS beliefs.

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I think that the Hopies may really have been Lehites who tok the boat to the North from BoM countries. Also the whowasitagain in California were Nefities (or Lamanities) that tok the boat to the North on the other site! These are the only places where the haplox is found and where the Lehites could have gone. In south there was a huge population (now under Arizonas rainforest), so Lehites went thowards North. Hopies seem to have been a big nation between 200bc to 400ad. Moroni may well have travelled up North and find them and lived with them the rest of his life.

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Oh yes I have... and the most interesting was that once I saw a show in tv about some American (North) indians.... the language... I felt I SHOULD understand it!

All the old medicinman things sound just like the American indians.. with a big drum and the joik ... the songs are alike.

I really liked that one. The girls ahve the Lapland dresses on

Typical Joiku (Joik in Norwegean)

An other one by the girls here:

One of the girls is from Norway. They speak Finnish and and a bit saami in between. The girls talk sami between themselves. At the end is a Joik about a boy and a snowracer... they teach the boy.

Modern:

This one is an old man ... film is .. sideways... YouTube - Nnorway - lappish joik songs

HEAVY joik in the Lord of the Rings:

:D

PS Finland is not a part of Scandinavia only part of the Nordic countries.... Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Island are Scandinavia...

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The haplogroup X (specifically X2a) does not mean Lehite DNA. The ones who are spreading that information have no formal training in genetics, while LDS geneticists claim that these claims are not factual. Here is an article turned blog post, that geneticist Ugo Perego helped write:

The Book of Mormon and the X haplogroup….again | FAIR Blog

and his FAIR conference address on the issue: The Book of Mormon and the Origin of Native Americans from a Maternally Inherited DNA Standpoint

DNA will never prove, nor dis-prove, The Book of Mormon

With that said, I agree, Maya, that it seems plausible that BOM peoples travelled "northward" to areas, and probably mixed with existing cultures in those areas. I am sure the Hopewell was one of those cultures. This blog post speaks of some of those travels: Another look at Barley in The Book of Mormon | FAIR Blog

Edited by livy111us
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Hi, Livy.

Good to see you(r words) again. I don't think I'm going to try to argue for haplogroup X as evidence about Book of Mormon geography anymore, but I do want to comment on the conclusions from the Dr Perego article you linked to:

Attempting to make such conclusions is a miscarriage of logic comparable to that of a hypothetical crime scene from which no DNA could be retrieved for the individual who committed the crime. Yet nevertheless, in order to solve the case, the DNA of thousands of people living in the area surrounding the crime scene is collected and analyzed, thus creating a comprehensive database of all these people. Will the database include the DNA signature of the criminal? If so, how could the perpetrator be identified among the thousands of others?

Criminality does not get recorded in mtDNA.

Ancestry, however, does get recorded in mtDNA.

So, surely using mtDNA to answer questions about ancestry is not the same as using mtDNA to answer questions about criminality.

And, curiously, with thousands of mtDNA samples having been collected from around the world, it’s perfectly reasonable to think we have several good hypotheses about what Sariah’s mtDNA might have looked like, and to think we will be able to make better hypotheses in the future.

I’ve rather disappointed that Dr Perego came to this inane conclusion after a very informative and well-written essay.

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Hello Bluejay,

I believe that Ugo was making this analogy because in both cases, we don't have the original DNA to work from. Even if we find Israelite DNA in the Americas, we cannot conclude that it is from Lehi or his party because we don't have a sample of their DNA to match it with.

Also, not all DNA from your ancestors survive. If someone does not have children, or only has boys, that mtDNA is gone. Even if they do have girls, over time, mtDNA is still lost.

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I think that the Hopies may really have been Lehites who tok the boat to the North from BoM countries. Also the whowasitagain in California were Nefities (or Lamanities) that tok the boat to the North on the other site! These are the only places where the haplox is found and where the Lehites could have gone. In south there was a huge population (now under Arizonas rainforest), so Lehites went thowards North. Hopies seem to have been a big nation between 200bc to 400ad. Moroni may well have travelled up North and find them and lived with them the rest of his life.

I believe the Hopi tribe is the remnant of the Ammonites.

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Hi, Livy.

I believe that Ugo was making this analogy because in both cases, we don't have the original DNA to work from.

I understand that. But, this is more a commentary on how empirical reasoning works, rather than a statement about what we can do with mtDNA. By Dr Perego's statements, one would have to conclude that empiricism can't answer any questions at all!

The original mtDNA isn't required: the tools to form good hypotheses about the original mtDNA already exist, and there is no reason why this information can't be used in the absence of solid knowledge.

So far, all the mtDNA in the Americas is consistent with the Beringian hypothesis. All it would take is one sample that is not consistent with a trans-Beringian migration to demonstrate that at least some native Americans are not from Asia.

Any Native American haplotype that clusters with Middle Eastern haplotypes in terms of genetics, and shows a divergence time from those Middle Eastern types that is consistent with the Book of Mormon timeline (i.e. ~2600 years) would be strong support for at least some aspects of the Book of Mormon narrative.

On the other hand, if no such haplotypes are found, Dr Perego may be right that we'll never be able to prove whether or not the Book of Mormon narrative is correct, but credibility would require us to shrink Book of Mormon geography to ever smaller scales in order to explain why evidence for is it hiding in ever smaller gaps in our knowledge about the ancient peoples of the Americas.

The only way that Dr Perego's statement makes sense is under the assumption that no native American mtDNA that clusters with Middle Eastern mtDNA and shows a BoM-plausible divergence time will ever be found. And, even under those conditions, I would certainly consider it sufficient evidence to reject anything but the most limited of Limited Geography Models.

-----

Also, not all DNA from your ancestors survive. If someone does not have children, or only has boys, that mtDNA is gone. Even if they do have girls, over time, mtDNA is still lost.

Big civilizations tend to leave big marks on their region. If the Lehites were as common as the Book of Mormon narrative makes it seem, the notion that all of their mtDNA has vanished is very hard to swallow. So, at the very least, the current mtDNA data has demonstrated the implausibility of the whole-hemisphere models.

Also, mtDNA is never actually lost through female lines when girls are consistently being born. Mutations may alter the mtDNA, but mutations leave hereditary signals that can be traced pretty easily.

I just don’t see any reason why Dr Perego feels that mtDNA is doomed to only yield ambiguity on this question.

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Good point.

Posted Image

Everyday Finnish People without their Nokias.

:roflmbo:

BTW Finland is the second best country to live in in Europe after a well known study. they ahd put Finland in first place and Swizerland as second, but they ahd made a mistake, oh well it is nice to be the 2nd best too! Finnish schools were best in Europe... somethign else was best but cant recall what.

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Does anyone else here think that the DNA of the Lamanites was manipulated when Laman, Lemuel & co. had their skin changed?

Considering the Nephites died out entirely some 1600 years ago, that would explain why we can't find a definitive genetic link between them and the Lamanites.

Edited by PrinceofLight2000
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