Category: Mesoamerica
Ancient American Goggles and the Nephite/Jaredite “Interpreters,” Part 2
My previous post, “Don’t Google ‘Spectacles,’ Google ‘Goggles’: The Nephite ‘Interpreters’ as a Book of Mormon Anachronism” (hereafter Part 1), raised the possibility that ancient Mesoamerican “goggles,” sometimes depicted as…
Don’t Google “Spectacles,” Google “Goggles”: The Nephite “Interpreters” as a Book of Mormon Anachronism
When Joseph Smith received the gold plates of the Book of Mormon, he also apparently obtained the Nephite/Jaredite “interpreters,” said to be like “spectacles,” that could be used to assist…
John S. Robertson Offers Strong Support for Brian Stubbs
Recently Brian Stubbs, a leading and widely respected expert on the Uto-Aztecan language family, provided a guest post with his detailed response to a harshly critical review of his work…
Guest Post from Brian Stubbs: A Response to Chris Rogers’ “A Review of the Afro-Asiatic: Uto-Aztecan Proposal” in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies
I’m pleased to offer an important guest post from Brian Stubbs, one of the world’s leading experts in Uto-Aztecan languages and a scholar whom I deeply respect for his insights…
Evidence At Last: The Many Aspects of John Lloyd Stephens’ Work That Strengthened Mormons in the 1840s
A delightful trend in modern Book of Mormon criticism today is to scour books, articles, and maps for information that hypothetically could have aided Joseph Smith in fabricating many of…
In Defense of Dr. John E. Clark’s “Ludicrous” Assessment of Early Criticism of the Book of Mormon
Dr. John E. Clark’s presentation on archaeology and the Book of Mormon, the subject of a recent post here, has been taken to task by one of our critics for…
Evaluating Book of Mormon Claims: Where Do We Stand after 187 Years?
After 187 years of critics poking fun at the Book of Mormon and exposing its weaknesses, today it seems to be the established view of numerous highly educated elites that…
Uto-Aztecan and Its Connection to Near Eastern Languages, Part 3: The Egyptian Infusion, Plus the Explanatory Power of Stubbs’ Framework
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we introduced examples of cognates characteristic of two Semitic infusions into Uto-Aztecan, named by Stubbs as the Semitic-p and Semitic-kw infusions,…
More Thoughts on the Heartland Model of Book of Mormon Geography
The Book of Mormon Archeology Foundation (BMAF.org) has a handy short list of major flaws with the recent “Heartland Model” for Book of Mormon geography. While most LDS scholars who grapple…
Stone Boxes on Display in Mexico City
In March, my work duties took me to Mexico City, where one evening I had a little time to rush through the National Museum of Anthropology. One thing that was…
