    
godchild (godchild)
Intermediate Member
Username: godchild
Post Number: 379
Registered: 1-2005
Posted From: 64.28.53.177
| | Posted on Saturday, July 16, 2005 - 10:39 am: | 
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Some members of the LDS Church have made fantastic claims about archaeologists using the Book of Mormon. For example. one letter circulated among LDS members in Ohio in 1959 claimed that the Book of Mormon was used by "the government to unravel the problem of the aborigines...it was 1920 before the Smithsonian Institute officially recognized the Book of Mormon as a record of any value...it is true that the Book of Mormon has been the guide to almost all of the major discoveries...This record is...recognized by all advanced students in the field".
Because of many false statements disseminated by members of the LDS Church, such as the one cited above, the Smithsonian Institution was forced to publish a statement concerning these matters. The 1986 statement begins with a denial of the claims put forth by Mormon enthusiasts:
1. The Smithsonian Institute has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archeologists see no direct connection between the archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book ("Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon," Smithsonian Institution, Spring 1986).
In 1973, Michael Coe, one of the best known authorities on archaeology of the New World, wrote an article for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1973. After summarizing Book of Mormon claims, he frankly stated:
Let me now state uncategorically that as far as I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the foregoing to be true...nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever shown up in any New World excavation which would suggest to a dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon...is a historical document relating to the history of early migrants to our hemisphere.(pp.42,46)
Some LDS scholars are beginning to publicly admit that archaeology does not furnish any significant evidence for the Book of Mormon. See F. Green, who at one time served as editor of the University Archaeological Society Newsletter, published at the church's Brigham Young University, made it plain that archaeological evidence did not prove the Book of Mormon:
The first myth we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists...If one is to study Book of Mormon archaeology, then one must have a corpus of data with which to deal. We do not. The book of Mormon is really there so one can study archaeology, but the two are not wed. At least they are not wed in reality since No Book of Mormon location is known with reference to modern topography. Biblical archaeology can be studied because we do know where Jerusalem and Jerico were and are, but we do not know where Zarahemla and Bountiful (nor any other location for that matter) were or are. It would seem then that a concentration on geography should be the first order of business, but we have already seen that twenty years of such an approach has left us empty-handed (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1969, pp.77-78).
to be cont.
For more information on the Book of Mormon and many other subjects, see the book, Major Problems of Mormonism, available from Utah Lighthouse Ministry. |