A Horse Of Course

One of the many criticisms of the Book of Mormon is the mention of horses and other animals thought to be anachronistic. I don’t claim to have any stunning new insights, or any definitive “proof” of these things.

However, better scholars than I have written about several of the things about the Book of Mormon that have proven worrisome to some.  According to Wikipedia, ”In early 2009 a major Clovis cache, now called the Mahaffey Cache, was found in Boulder, Colorado,  with 83 Clovis stone tools. The tools were found to have traces of horse and cameloid protein. They were dated to 13,000 to 13,500 YBP, a  date confirmed by sediment layers in which the tools were found and the types of protein residues found on the   artifacts.[4]    “13,000-Year-Old Stone Tool Cache in Colorado Shows Evidence of Camel, Horse Butchering”. University of Colorado at Boulder. February 25, 2009. Retrieved 22 September 2010

In 2011, the Northern Great Basin Prehistory Project reported that Obsidian projectile points, bifaces, flakes and scrapers were recovered  with horse bones in basal sands dated between 13,000 and 14,600 cal. BP……However, a second horse phalanx was recovered from an adjacent 1×1 meter  excavation unit at a depth of 210-215 cm. It produced an AMS date of 13,140 cal. BP.
                                       

Dennis l. Jenkins

Human coprolites from this deposit have produced AMS                           radiocarbon dates as old as the camel astragalus. Radiocarbon dating                of  twigs, urine, bone, coprolite, cordate and charcoal have produced                more than 40 dates ranging from 1240 to 16,190 cal. BP. Artifacts and             coprolites found in well-stratified and soundly-dated contexts have          produced C-14 dates between 14,170 and 14,340 cal. BP…… At this point, we have proven that people occupied the caves during the time that camels and horses were present in the region. We are now working to  demonstrate that people had a part in the deposition of  their bones in the Paisley Caves. ….by Dennis L. Jenkins  Director, Northern Great Basin Field School.

Now this does not tell us there were horses in the time of the Jaredites or the Nephites. The only chronological reference to the Jaredites is that they left the Middle East at the time of the building of the Tower of Babel. And indeed Josephus tells us that “After this (the Tower of Babel) they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages, and went out by colonies every where; and each colony took possession of that land which they light upon, and unto which God led them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and the maritime countries. There were some also who passed over the sea in ships, and inhabited the islands.”

Then we have the problem of words which cannot be translated in any reasonable way. Can we know what animal is actually meant by the term “horse” in the Book of Mormon? What is the English equivalent of “enchilada,” for example? Michael Ash discusses onomastica in the following:

 First, it is important to remember that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient text–it’s a nineteenth-century translation of an ancient text. When we, as modern readers, read texts from ancient or foreign cultures, we often misunderstand what the ancient or foreign author was attempting to convey. Some of the things that seem “plain” to us are not so “plain” upon further investigation or once we understand the culture that produced the text…….When translators run into the problem of untranslateable words, they resolve the issue by way of several options–such as adaptation, paraphrasing, borrowing, and more.10 The same thing happens when people find it necessary to label new and unfamiliar items–what is known as cross-cultural onomastica  (onomastica refers to the names we assign to people, animals, or things). Anthropologists and linguists tell us that when a society encounters foreign floral and fauna, they often “loan-shift” words–they expand familiar terms to include unfamiliar items.11 Loan-shifting can also happen during the translation of one language to another.12 Two languages need not resemble each other phonetically in order for loan-shifting to occur.1

Instead of creating entirely new words for unfamiliar things, sometimes people tend to “translate” new things into their own language by expanding their current words to include the new item. …This problem is not limited to ancient societies. The American “buffalo,” for example, is actually a bison and is only distantly related to the water buffalo and African buffalo (the two true buffalos).14 What most Americans call a “moose” is actually an elk, “elk” are actually red deer, and “antelope” are not real antelopes.15…..When the Maya saw the European goat they called it a “short-horned deer”18 and when the Miami Indians, who were familiar with cows, first encountered the unfamiliar buffalo they simply called them “wild cows.” Likewise the explorer DeSoto called the buffalo “vaca” which is Spanish for “cow.” The Delaware Indians named the cow “deer,” and a group of Miami Indians labeled the unfamiliar sheep “looks-like-a-cow.”19The reintroduced Spanish horse was unfamiliar to the Native Americans and so it became associated with either the deer or the tapir. When Cortes and his horses arrived, the Aztecs simply called the unfamiliar horses “deer.” 20 One Aztec messenger reported to Montezuma: “Their deer carry them on their backs wherever they wish to go. These deer, our lord, are as tall as the roof of a house.”21

See the complete article at http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/AshHorse/

Horses and other animals are by no means the central message of the Book of Mormon. It is, as its Title Page proclaims, “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.”

The Mormon Church distributes free copies of the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Mormon. For your free copy of the Bible, go to Free Holy Bible and for a free Book of Mormon, go to Free Book of Mormon.

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