Themis wrote: Yes according to the story in the Book of Mormon Nahom was a place, but that means you are unwittingly admitting NHM is not evidence of Lehi really existing.
A civilization the size of Rome, with extensive industries, written records, horses, livestock, temples, wheeled transportation...all vanished. But there's an enscription in Arabia that an amateur found and there's a wordprint study that no one but a Mormon accepts. So there.
Oh, and I understand the "nature of revelation". It's called making things up.
SteelHead wrote:There is no NHM region period. The NHM inscription we are discussing is a tribal name, not a place name.
NHM is a tribe, but for Lehi's clan it was a place.
Themis wrote:Yes according to the story in the Book of Mormon Nahom was a place, but that means you are unwittingly admitting NHM is not evidence of Lehi really existing.
It's like arguing that a billboard advertising a Laker's game is evidence that there must have been a lake near the stadium at some point.
Lemmie wrote:It's like arguing that a billboard advertising a Laker's game is evidence that there must have been a lake near the stadium at some point.
It is worse than that. This argument is analogous to saying that since "BigBubbs" the graffiti artist sprayed his tag on a rock, now means that the place name for the area surrounding the rock is BigBubbsville.
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.
Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality. ~Bill Hamblin
Lemmie wrote:It's like arguing that a billboard advertising a Laker's game is evidence that there must have been a lake near the stadium at some point.
It is worse than that. This argument is analogous to saying that since "BigBubbs" the graffiti artist sprayed his tag on a rock, now means that the place name for the area surrounding the rock is BigBubbsville.
Lemmie wrote:It's like arguing that a billboard advertising a Laker's game is evidence that there must have been a lake near the stadium at some point.
It is worse than that. This argument is analogous to saying that since "BigBubbs" the graffiti artist sprayed his tag on a rock, now means that the place name for the area surrounding the rock is BigBubbsville.
But what if that's what the Still Small Voice told you to do? If it can tell you to decapitate drunk dudes and murder 9 year old girls at Mountain Meadows, all bets are off.
Lemmie wrote:It's like arguing that a billboard advertising a Laker's game is evidence that there must have been a lake near the stadium at some point.
It is worse than that. This argument is analogous to saying that since "BigBubbs" the graffiti artist sprayed his tag on a rock, now means that the place name for the area surrounding the rock is BigBubbsville.
Maks wrote:But what if that's what the Still Small Voice told you to do? If it can tell you to decapitate drunk dudes and murder 9 year old girls at Mountain Meadows, all bets are off.
Ah, but OP made the mistake of titling this thread with the caveat that facts trump feelings (a rookie mistake, I know. How will mg engage?!) The still small voice is de facto quashed by the loud big facts!
Saying that reference to NHM in the Book of Mormon is incontrovertible evidence for its truthfulness because NHM exists is about as meaningful as saying that reference to the Great Waters in the Book of Mormon is evidence for its truthfulness because great waters exist.
Fact is that the narrative that follows mention of NHM in the Book of Mormon, in all its facets, has been proven to be utter nonsense beyond any shadow of a doubt.
In any number of posts on this board, I and others have described the scientific literature (some of it by highly respected realMormon scholars) demonstrating that nowhere along the coastlines of Yemen, Oman, or Fujairah, is there any place, now or in the ancient past, that would have provided the raw materials needed to build the blue water oceangoing vessels as described in the Book of Mormon.
Having lived and worked in the Abu Dhabi and Muscat, I have driven and hiked the wadis along pretty much the entire coast in question, through Duqm and down to Salalah. The Book of Mormon narrative regarding Bountiful, and what was supposed to have transpired there in ancient times, is a joke.
Reading the science that shows it is a joke is one thing. However, nothing beats walking the land and seeing how big of a joke it really is.
Just another example of facts, this time from science and natural history, that don't care about unfounded beliefs and the feelings they engender.
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David Hume: "---Mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous, those in religion are dangerous."
DrW: "Mistakes in science are learning opportunities and are eventually corrected."
In addition, and as John Hamer has pointed out, Nahum is a book in the Old Testament. Also, there were maps in Joseph's day with a place called Nahom identified. In other words there were multiple natural ways Joseph could have been inspired to use Nahom when translating the Book of Mormon.
Ironic isn't it? The "best" physical evidence believers can offer up of a purported American continent civilization that supposedly numbered in the millions and spanned almost a thousand years, is a 3 letter common tribal name they have to misidentify as a place name, located where building and launching transatlantic vessels would be impossible on the the continent of Asia.
The question isn't "how could Joseph have known?", the question is given the large numbers of names and locations he just made up or borrowed from his surroundings, it's a wonder he didn't by happenstance get more such coincidences.
The reality is that claiming NHM and Nahom as a bullseye is akin to peppering the entire side of a large barn with buckshot and drawing a bullseye around a single errant pellet hole they found on the opposite side of the barn.
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"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
peacemaker wrote:Nahom is archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon. As one travels south-southeast of Jerusalem along the major trunk of the ancient Arabian, the route branches east toward the southeastern coast at only one point: Nehem. The tribal region Nehem happens to be west of bountiful. How did Joseph Smith get that right? For an ancient Israelite the Arabic word "NHM" looks like the Hebrew nhm which means "mourning". The Book of Mormon uses obvious Israelite wordplay for Nahom in chapter 16. Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon in less than 90 days without using any notes, so there is no way it is all a coincidence.
“Tha Nahom Follies” by Philip Jenkins
Pure coincidence offers a more than adequate explanation for the supposed parallel – which, as I will show, is not even that close. When you actually look at the vaunted clincher evidence about Nahom, and understand how tenuous the alleged connections are, your response should properly be: when you get there, there’s no “there” there.
Just what exactly was found? Smith refers to a place called Nahom. The altar inscriptions, on the other hand, refer to a people or tribe. As a sober account in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies notes, one text commemorates Bi’athar, son of Sawdum, son of Naw’um, the Nihmite. Based on extensive analogies, that last name should refer to a family title, like Benjaminite, with no necessary suggestion that the ancestral family was linked to the burial site. Usually, such tribes did not construct places bearing their names, but that’s not an absolute.
And that’s it? THAT “is the First Verifiable Book of Mormon Site”?
I could ask a follow up question. If the Lehi folks were still erecting inscribed monuments while they were crossing Arabia, why did they give up the practice (together with all traces of their writing, technology, pottery-making, metallurgy, architecture etc) the moment they hit the New World? Making a fresh start? And if they did keep up those skills and customs, where are the archaeological remains?
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
If it can tell you to decapitate drunk dudes and murder 9 year old girls at Mountain Meadows, all bets are off.