Do we know where the Valley of Nimrod was? Or the Tower of Babel? You may correct that the Jaredites came from the Near East, or that this is a reasonable assumption. This is not a matter I have looked into much. I’m just questioning your assumptions to further the dialogue. Here’s an interesting webpage that’s relevant to the subject.

- Joshua Steimle

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Genesis 11:2 states that the Tower of Babel was built in the land of Shinar. The land of Shinar was in what is now Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinar

It is clear from the Book of Ether that the Jaredites came to the New World by crossing the Atlantic Ocean. They were not American Indians. The ancestors of the Indians came here by crossing the Bering Strait over ten thousand years ago. DNA evidence clearly links them to those who currently live in north east Siberia.

If the Jaredites were not Semites, they were certainly Caucasians. If the Book of Mormon is true it has to be the case that millions of Caucasians lived in the New World for centuries before the time of Columbus without leaving any evidence of their existence: nothing in the archaeological record, nothing in the DNA of the Indians.

You respond that the evidence has not been discovered yet. The only reason you believe that is because you want to.

You are a businessman, and seem to be a successful one. If you used this kind of reasoning in your business, you would have lost it long ago. Bad management decisions can cripple or destroy businesses, even large corporations. In order to avoid bad management decisions one should have an unsentimental awareness of the difference between truth and falsehood. Believing something because you want to, with no evidence at all, is dangerous in any field.

Why would this have been relevant to their spiritual history if it didn’t directly impact their civilization? Which part of the Book of Mormon would have been the appropriate place to mention the religious practices of what the Nephites would have considered far-distant civilizations that had no effect on the Nephites? What reason would God have to include such information in the Book of Mormon?

Do we know where the Valley of Nimrod was? Or the Tower of Babel? You may correct that the Jaredites came from the Near East, or that this is a reasonable assumption. This is not a matter I have looked into much. I’m just questioning your assumptions to further the dialogue. Here’s an interesting webpage that’s relevant to the subject.

- Joshua Steimle

——–

Shortly after their first expeditions to the region [in the mid 1500s], the Spanish initiated a number of attempts to subjugate the Maya who were hostile towards the Spanish crown and establish a colonial presence in the Maya territories of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan highlands. This campaign, sometimes termed “The Spanish Conquest of Yucatán,” would prove to be a lengthy and dangerous exercise for the conquistadores from the outset, and it would take some 170 years and tens of thousands of Indian auxiliaries before the Spanish established substantive control over all Maya lands.

Unlike the Aztec and Inca Empires, there was no single Maya political center that, once overthrown, would hasten the end of collective resistance from the indigenous peoples. Instead, the conquistador forces needed to subdue the numerous independent Maya polities almost one by one, many of which kept up a fierce resistance. Most of the conquistadores were motivated by the prospects of the great wealth to be had from the seizure of precious metal resources such as gold or silver; however, the Maya lands themselves were poor in these resources. This would become another factor in forestalling Spanish designs of conquest, as they instead were initially attracted to the reports of great riches in central Mexico or Peru.

The Spanish Church and government officials destroyed Maya texts and with them the knowledge of Maya writing, but by chance three of the pre-Columbian books dated to the post classic period have been preserved.[which?][18] The last Maya states, the Itza polity of Tayasal and the Ko’woj city of Zacpeten, were continuously occupied and remained independent of the Spanish until late in the 17th century. They were finally subdued by the Spanish in 1697.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization

- Joshua Steimle

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The Indian civilizations that existed were polytheistic and practiced human sacrifice. If the Nephites existed they would have taken notice of this. It certainly would have been relevant to their spiritual history.

The Western world didn’t even know of the existence of the Maya until the mid 1800s, and nothing that could be called sophisticated archeological research can be said to have been performed until the 20th century. Most of what we know has been discovered within the past few decades.

I have personally traveled in Guatemala and Mexico looking at ruins, and have seen hundreds of unexcavated sites. I have been told that there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of known sites that have, as yet, not been excavated. There are areas in the uninhabited countryside of Mexico where you can drive for hours, passing ruins every minute, and few, if any, of them have been excavated. Many of the best-known archeological sites have still not been fully excavated. It can take decades to fully excavate a single site covering one or two acres. They leave many of them buried because as soon as they remove the dirt and plant material then the rains start to destroy the ruins, and they simply lack the manpower and financial resources to do the work necessary to preserve them.

If you want to claim that we are in a late stage of archeological research in Central America then fine, but I will respectfully disagree based on my firsthand experiences.

“Here again you are basing your argument on evidence that has not been discovered yet, and evidence for which there is no reason to believe exists, other than your desire that it exists. ”

I am not saying the Book of Mormon is true based on evidence that has not been discovered. I am merely saying that the lack of evidence cannot be used as a credible argument against the Book of Mormon, because we possess only a small sliver of information about the ancient civilizations of Central America and there is still much to be learned. What you are claiming, in essence, is “We’ve done 1% of the archeological work to be done in Central America, and there is no mention of the Book of Mormon people, therefore the Book of Mormon is false.” The natural question would be “What about the other 99%?”

- Joshua Steimle

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At most, from the time of Abraham to the time of the crucifixion is two thousand years, or twice the time span of the Book of Mormon.

Where does it say this?

- Joshua Steimle

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Ether 2:1 “And it came to pass that Jared and his brother, and their families and also the friends of Jared and his brother and their families, went down into the valley which was northward, (and the name of the Valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter) with their flocks which they had gathered together, male and female of every kind.

1. The Bible covers a much larger span of time.

2. Travel and trade on a large scale were very well established in the Old World, which was not only facilitated by the geography of that area, but also rendered more necessary by the scarcity of resources. Travel in a tropical jungle area is quite difficult, and the ready availability of resources makes trade less of a necessity.

3. Other civilizations were highly relevant to the spiritual history of the Israelites. When another civilization destroys the spiritual center of a civilization and takes all its inhabitants captive, that’s something to be mentioned. Had this not happened, there would likely be less mention of the Babylonians in the Bible.

4. The Bible was an ad hoc collection of original writings put together by men. The Book of Mormon was focused summary created by a prophet who had specific instructions from God to include only certain things. While it is to be expected that there would be similarities, it is also reasonable to expect there to be differences.

5. “There is no mention of the Nephites and Lamanites outside of the Book of Mormon.” – That we have yet found, and there is much archeological work yet to be performed. We have barely scratched the surface.

6. “There is no mention in the Book of Mormon of Indian civilizations and nations that we know existed.” – And there is no reason for them to have been mentioned if they were not relevant to the spiritual history of the Nephites.