The maps are pretty cool.  What do you think?

This review should not be considered comprehensive.  I have reviewed their 60 page pdf file called “An Approach to Book of Mormon Geography“.  Since I downloaded and read a copy of this article, they have added a few more articles found on their Geography page, but I have not had time to review these.  I will invite David and Lynn to stop by and answer questions about their theory.

I have reviewed a few other theories in the past.  I reviewed BOMC’s Great Lakes Theory, Ralph Olsen’s Malay Theory, and Venice Priddis’ South American Setting.  My purpose in reviewing theories is to provide constructive criticism.  Some people have very thin skin, and I try to be charitable, providing both pros and cons to a theory.  I want someone’s theory to be right, so it is imperative to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of a theory.  I claim no allegiance to any theory–it’s just a topic I love to discuss.  I still plan to review two of the bigger heavyweights: Sorenson’s Theory, and Meldrum’s Theory.  Additionally, Theodore Brandley’s North American Theory, and Garth Norman’s MesoAmerican Theory are also future topics I plan to post on (lest anyone think I was running out of ideas.)  (Norman and Sorenson overlap quite a bit, but there are some important differences.)

Lynn Rosenvall is a geography professor at the University of Cardston, and received his PhD in geography from Cal-Berkeley.  His son David has an MBA from BYU and is Chief Technological Officer of Imergent Inc. (StoresOnline.com).  They’ve put together an impressive array of satellite maps using Google maps for their theory.  The Website dedicated to the theory is called A Choice Land.  I printed a copy of the Theory from Feb 2009–the current version on the website is from March 2009.  I’m not sure how long it has been published, but as I understand it, the theory is pretty new.

Strengths

I guess the first striking feature to me about this theory is the fact that the Peninsula is much more of a north-south orientation than Sorenson’s MesoAmerican theory.  Another strength of Baja is that the “narrow neck of land” is actually narrow–Sorenson’s narrow neck isn’t nearly as narrow.  Another bonus is the fact that the Baja Peninsula is much closer to the generally accepted Book of Mormon locations than say the Malay Theory.

In the overview article, the Rosenvalls go into great detail on showing how similar the climate of Baja California is to the Mediterranean.  Nephi says he brought seeds with him to the New World, and these seeds grew.  It is important for the climates to be similar.  (Another theory I reviewed shows Chile/Peru have Mediterranean climates as well.)  I think this is an important aspect of their theory.  The Rosenvalls point out that many of the fruits and vegetables we eat in America are grown on the Baja Peninsula.

The Rosenvalls seem to follow Sorenson’s methodology for calculating distances.  I view this as one of Sorenson’s greatest contributions to Book of Mormon research, and I’m glad to see that the Rosenvalls seem to follow a similar method for calculating distances.  It is pretty apparent to me that the Book of Mormon lands are much smaller than the hemispheric models that early Mormons (and many lay members) thought about the Book of Mormon.

The Rosenvalls make a case that the Uto-Aztecan language bears similarities to Hebrew.  I think this is both a strength and a weakness, but I’m putting this in the strength section.  Frankly, I think the Rosenvalls should really expand on this point.  I note that there is more information in the new PDF than the one I downloaded last year, but I think it should be expanded upon further.  This has the potential to be a big help with their theory.

Weaknesses

Since I mentioned languages, I ought to explain weaknesses as well.  While these language families are in the Southwestern US and mainland Mexico, I don’t believe there is evidence that Indians on the Baja Peninsula spoke in one of these language dialects.  Perhaps they traveled off the Baja Peninsula, but these ties need to be strengthened to really take advantage of this information.  Even if there are similarities between Uto-Aztecan languages, I’m not aware of any DNA evidence linking Uto-Aztecan tribes to the Mediterranean, which is another problem.

While I understand this is an introduction to the theory, there are many other aspects of Book of Mormon that are merely touched on, or completely missing.  The theory discusses flora and fauna extensively, but doesn’t discuss wheat, barley, or silk.  Animals aren’t mentioned either, such as the elephants or animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  What is the best candidate for cureloms and cumons?  Is there evidence for sheep, horses, or cows?

Additionally, does the archaeology date to Book of Mormon times?  Is there evidence that chariots existed?  Have swords, cimitars, or other weapons been found?  I will say as a general rule, that most North, Central, or South American theories cannot find any evidence archaeologically for many of the weapons mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  For a theory to really stand out, such evidence needs to be found.

Sorenson has found a sharp weapon that he is calling a sword: sharp obsidian triangular blades attached to a wooden club, but the Book of Mormon says the swords rusted, so however sharp and lethal Sorenson’s obsidian/wood weapon is, it certainly wont rust.  This type of evidence needs to be accounted for by any theory, and the lack of mention of these problematic parts of the Book of Mormon needs to be addressed in the overview.

Warfare

I’ve come across Morgan Deane, and I hope to invite him to participate in this discussion.  Morgan has his own site called Warfare and the Book of Mormon.  Morgan has a Masters Degree in History, and has presented papers on Napoleonic warfare and published papers about Asian, Napoleonic and Book of Mormon Warfare.  Since the Rosenvalls included information about battles (roughly pages 36-50), I’d like to see what Morgan thinks of Baja geography in relation to some of these battles.  I will defer to him completely as to whether this is a strength or a weakness.  (Morgan, I’m also curious for you to comment on my previous post about the Exodus–I discuss Egyptian chariots, and wonder if you might comment on some of the warfare mentioned in that theory as well.)

So, what do you think of this Baja Theory?

What I found interesting was the fact that there were many similarities.  The same experts and evidence often appeared in multiple videos, yet often different conclusions were provided.  It reminds me of the debate concerning Book of Mormon evidence.

During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

For more than 1700 years, Christians have been looking for Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the 10 Commandments.  Constantine’s mother, Helena was probably the first Christian in search of Christian artifacts in the 4^th century.  When Christians came across a strange-looking bush at the base of a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula, they erected a monastery claiming that they had found Mount Sinai.  The monastery still exists today, and you can walk the steps that these early Christians have claimed as the real Mount Sinai.

Prof Philip Davies, University of Sheffield, “When it comes to the Exodus, we have no evidence that it happened, and a good deal of evidence that it didn’t.  They made it up.”

Professor Eric Cline, George Washington University, “We do not have a single shred of evidence to date.  There is nothing archeologically to attest to anything from the biblical story: no plagues, no parting of the Red Sea, no manna from heaven, no wandering for 40 years.”

Dr. Kathlyn M. Cooney, Egyptologist, Stanford University,, “the most likely reason that we’re not finding any evidence for the Exodus in Egypt is that it didn’t happen the way that the Bible said it did, or that it didn’t happen at all.”

Since that famous (infamous) sermon in 2001, Wolpe has gone on to soften his words a bit.  In March 2010, he said it was possible that a small group of people left Egypt, came to Canaan, and influenced the native Canaanites.  Even skeptics admit there could be something to the story.

Cline, “I think there’s a very good chance that what actually took place was a series of migrations waves or migrations if you will, over three or 400 years of people leaving Egypt and making their way up to Egypt in ones, twos, threes, maybe even tens, hundreds at the most.”

So, let’s talk about some of the biggest questions concerning the Exodus.

The Burning Bush.

The Bible says that God spoke to Moses in the form of a burning bush that was not consumed.  As mentioned previously, a strange bush was found at the base of the traditional Mount Sinai.  Is there another explanation for this burning bush?  Colin Humphreys has an explanation for a burning bush, involving real fire.  As we all know, oil and natural gas are prevalent in the Middle East.  Humphreys believes the Acacia Bush is an ideal candidate for the Burning Bush.

“The most common bush in the desert is the acacia bush, and we know that if you burn an acacia bush you get charcoal.”

The Acacia Bush maintains it’s shape and turns to charcoal.  He gives a demonstration using a natural gas barbecue grill and an acacia bush.  The bush maintains it’s shape, even though flames shoot through the bush.

When did the Exodus Happen?

There are two main theories:  the Early Exodus Period, and the Late Exodus Period.  Supporters of the Early Period point to 1 Kings 6:1, ““Now it came about in the four hundred and eightieth year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel…that he began to build the house of the Lord.”  Most historians put the Temple of Solomon at 965 BC.  This would put the Exodus at approximately 1445 BC.

Pharoah Thutmoses I reigned from 1525-1512 BC.  Scholars have speculated that his daughter Hatshepsut may have rescued Moses from the Nile.  She served as Pharoah from 1503-1482 BC, and battled with her stepson Thutmoses III (1504-1450 BC) for control of Egypt.  Thutmoses III eventually removed nearly all traces of Hatshepsut’s monuments.  Thutmoses III death in 1450 coincides well with the date of this Early Exodus time period.

Supporters of the late period refer to Exodus 1:11, “And they built for Pharoah store cities, Pithom and Ramses.”  Ramses II seems to be the most likely Pharaoh.  He lived 1290-1224 BC.  He moved the capital from Thebes to the Nile Delta, and built a new city called Pi-Ramses.  Some archaeologists have linked this city built on top of an ancient Israelite city.

Simcha Jacobovici believes the date of Exodus may be earlier.  He believes the eruption of the Santorini Volcano in 1500 BC may explain many of the Biblical plagues.  The Egyptian name Ahmose means “brother of Moses” in Hebrew—an interesting play on words.    At this time, Egypt was ruled by a Semitic people called the Hyksos, people who were hated by the Egyptians.  Since Joseph was of Semitic origins, this may have helped him join the ranks of the Hyksos ruling class.  The Bible refers to a pharaoh that “knew not Joseph.”

Egyptians have recorded and event called “the Hyksos Expulsion” around 1500 BC.  Could it be the Israelites were expelled, rather than left freely?  Perhaps it depends on who writes the history.

Is there an Israelite presence in Egypt?

In 1967 Professor Manfred Bietak, Chair of Egyptology at the University of Vienna, discovered the ancient Egyptian capital of Avaris.  It was the home to many ancient Egyptian pharaohs.  Some believe the architecture of this city bears resemblance to later Israelite/Canaanite architecture.

Jacobovici attributes Avaris to the Hyksos, while Dr Bryant Wood refers to the ruins as “Asiatic”, similar to later Canaanite   Let me quote from the Exodus Revealed video.

Dr Bryant G Wood, Director of the Associates for Biblical Research, “In this small village, there is stratum D2 dating to the time of Joseph.  All the remains are Asiatic in nature, material culture is Asiatic—there is nothing Egyptian.”

A map of the excavation site confirms its distinctive Israelite origins.  Archaeologists immediately recognized that the design of this horseshoe shaped dwelling was identical to structures built in Israel centuries later.  It was a prototype of Hebrew architecture constructed near the time Joseph was believed to have lived in Egypt.

…

There should be evidence of Israel’s arrival in Canaan, the Promised Land sometime between the 14^th and 12^th centuries BC.  Such evidence does exist.  More than 3200 years ago, the Pharaoh Mernepteh, ventured out of Egypt on a military campaign to the Land of Canaan.  Later, in a poem proclaiming his victory, he boasted that “…Israel is laid waste.”  This inscription dates from about 1210 BC, and establishes that the Israelites had arrived and settled in Canaan, well before the Mernepteh’s conquest at the end of the 13th century.

Additionally at Telamarna in Egypt, archaeologists have uncovered a series of letters on cuneiform plates.  Many were authored by Canaanite rulers early in the 14^th century BC.  These letters contain desperate pleas to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten for military assistance to defend Canaan from nomadic invaders.  One of them warned that if pharaoh does not act, “…all Canaan will be lost.”  The invaders were identified by the term “apiru”.

Wood, “This is kind of a generic term for stateless individuals who weren’t connected with any particular urban center and so the Israelites undoubtedly would have been referred to as either Apiru, or Asiatics by the Egyptians.”

Dr Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University, “I do think that the term Apiru is the origin of the term Hebrew.”

If the name Apiru referred to the name of the Hebrew people, then the Telhermana inscriptions provide strong evidence for the presence of Israel in Canaan.  They also suggest Israel may have entered the country earlier than scholars had previously thought, at the beginning of the 14^th century BC.  Recent excavations of the Canaanite city of Hazor also support a 14^th century Israelite invasion.  Evidence has been uncovered that the city was destroyed at least twice during the period described in the biblical books of Joshua and Judges.

Scattered among the remains of a large palace were Egyptian and Canaanite idols—their heads and hands intentionally chiseled off.  Archaeologist Amnen ben Tour, has concluded by process of elimination that the invading Israelite army must have ravaged Hazor.  For neither the Egyptians, nor the indigenous Canaanite would have purposely destroyed their own gods.

How can we explain the Plagues?

I presented Jacobovici’s position on the plagues in my previous post.  National Geographic (NG) had similar explanations for plagues 2-6 dealing with insects and frogs.  NG even interviewed several entomologists and epidemiologists to further pin down the actual types of bugs most likely in these infestations.

The first plague, turning the Nile to blood has a few different explanations.  Jacobovici believes an underground natural gas into the Nile may have caused caused the waters to turn red and kill all the fish.  Two lakes in Cameroon turned blood red in 1984 and 1986.  Epidemiologist John Marr believes microscopic algae may have turned the Nile blood red.  In 1995, a coastal river in North Carolina turned bright red due to an algae bloom.

Marr, “Wisteria was labeled the cell from hell because it killed millions if not billions of fish.  If that occurred in North Carolina in the 1990’s, why couldn’t it have occurred in Egypt 3000 years ago?”

The last plague has some interesting interpretations too.  Moses prophesied that the firstborn of Egypt would all die, and the Israelites would be spared if they put lamb’s blood on their doorposts.  The Destroying Angel would “pass over” homes with lamb’s blood.  So, how can scientists explain such a selective mode of death?  Some believe the Firstborn is metaphorical.

Epidemiologist Martin Blaser of NYU, “There is no disease that we know of that just affects the firstborns, so I take that it’s a metaphor for a disease that kills one out of every 3 or 4 people.”

Blaser thinks bubonic plague may have been the culprit, because it affects both animals and humans.  Eric Cline of George Washington believes the plagues could refer to a “Sea People” that attacked Egypt.

Cline, “The attack of the Sea Peoples was probably the Egyptians worst nightmare.  They are the fiercest warriors that the Egyptians have faced, and the Egyptians tell us that everybody went down in the face of these sea peoples.  Only the Egyptians were able to stand, and even that was a Pyrrhic victory because the Egyptians were so weakened that they were never the same again.”

Although the Egyptians never mentioned the plagues, they did document these attacks in pictographs on the mortuary Temple of Ramses III.  Archaeological finds match these writings.

Cline, “I see no need to use divine intervention when human intervention can explain it just as well, if not better.”

Others believe the death of the firstborn may have been more literal.  Epidemiologist John Marr recently investigated the mysterious death of children that was due to a mold.  He postulated that following the plagues of locusts and hail, much of the grain in Egypt would have been moist and in short supply.

Rare molds can wreak havoc on human health, and can even cause internal hemorrhaging.  With little else to eat, the Egyptians may have resorted to moldy toxin laced grain.  Death would come suddenly, with no visible cause, as if the victims were touched by an angel of death.  Still, why the first born?  Marr found his answer, the final piece to the puzzle in an Egyptian tradition.

Marr, “During the times of famine, the eldest, the oldest Egyptian child would be given a double portion of food in order to stave off starvation.  Instead of saving them, it killed them.”

Jacobovici has another theory for the selective deaths during this final plague.

SJ, “The final plague took place at midnight, after Moses ordered the Israelites to sit down to what became known as the first Passover meal.  While the Israelites were involved in the Passover ritual, the Egyptians slept, and then it happened: every firstborn male Egyptian died.  Every house was affected.  No one has ever been able to offer up a plausible scientific explanation for the death of the firstborn until now.  According to our scenario, at this point in the sequence of events that began some 6 months earlier, the gas leaks that set the chain of plates in motion would have finally erupted.  Carbon dioxide would have seeped to the surface, and being heavier than air, would have killed animals and sleeping people before it dissipated harmlessly into the atmosphere.

In case you think all this is conjecture, consider this.  It happened in exactly the same way in 1986 at Lake Nyos, Cameroon.  On the fateful night of August 21, the villagers at Nyos went to sleep.  They couldn’t have known that the carbon dioxide gas which had turned the lake blood red, was now reaching a critical point.  As the people of Lake Nyos slept, the top of the lake was keeping the carbon down like a cap in a pop bottle.  But then the earth rumbled, and a landslide took place sending rock into the water, disturbing the surface pressure and releasing the gas.  The gas then rose to the surface, and like some alien monster, emerged from the water, droplets forming on it, turning the invisible gas into a visible fog.  The fog then rolled across the water, and across the land, suffocating everything in its path.  And as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared, dissolving harmlessly into the atmosphere.

The next day those who had been sleeping on higher ground woke up to find some 1800 people dead, hundreds of cattle and small animals also dead, all around there was deadly silence.

SJ, “After the death of the First born, Pharaoh finally relented, letting Moses take his people out of Egypt.  According to the Bible, what made pharaoh give up was the selectivity of the deaths: the fact that it was only male, firstborn who died.  It was this selectivity that demonstrated to him that God himself was involved.  How can we account for this?

Well, Egyptian firstborn males had the privileged position.  They were the heirs to the throne, to property, title, and more.  They slept on Egyptian beds low to the ground, while their brothers and sisters slept on rooftops, sheds, and wagons.  The Israelites sitting up at their first Passover meal did not feel a thing, while the low traveling gas suffocated the privileged Egyptian males sleeping in their beds.

How many people participated in the Exodus?

The Bible says that 600,000 men left Egypt.  Adding women and children would have increased the total number to 2.5 million people, the size of modern-day Brooklyn, NY.  If the group were that large, there should be some evidence somewhere in the wilderness.

Cline, “if the Biblical numbers are correct, and you’ve got two and a half million people wandering around for 40 years, I would want to find entire landscapes denuded.  I’d want to find hundreds of sheep and goat carcasses, the bones.  Even if they didn’t ask for directions wandering for 40 years, there would be something.”

However, archaeologist Jim Hoffmeier of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School says the number is probably far fewer, due to a mistranslation dating thousands of years.  The original Hebrew says there were 600 elith.

Hoffmeier, “The word elith can be translated 3 different ways:  it can be translated thousand.  Elith can also be translated to the clan.  The third option is that it’s a military unit, which I think is a more plausible scenario.”

According to Hoffmeier’s interpretation, instead of 600,000 men and their families, there were as few as 5000.

Hoffmeier, “we’re talking about a few tens of thousands, certainly not hundreds of thousands, adding women and children making it millions.”

How did the Red Sea part?  Where did the Israelites cross?

There are 3 main theories for the crossing of the Red Sea: a northern, central, and southern route.  Those supporting a northern route point to volcanic activity to explain the parting of the Red Sea.

Geo-archaeologist Floyd McCoy researches tsunamis at the University of Hawaii.  He says a tsunami might have created a land passage for the Israelites across a lagoon.  Although we think of a tsunami as a lot of water, what comes before is the disappearance of water.

Floyd, “Sometimes you get a warning that a tsunami is coming.  Sometimes that ocean disappears, and that’s called draw down.  Remember what a wave looks like; it’s sinusoidal:  bottom, top; trough, crest.  If the trough comes in first, that’s draw down; the ocean disappears.

The Israelites would have crossed on the northern edge of the Mediterranean ocean according to this theory.  However, several Egyptian military outposts have been found along a northern route into Israel dating to the Exodus period.  Many believe the Israelites would have avoided these military outposts when trying to leave Egypt.

In addition to the Biblical mistranslation of elith, Hoffmeier believes the Red Sea is a mistranslation, and the parting of the sea may have occurred closer to home.

Hoffmeier, “The Hebrew Yam Suf literally means sea of reeds.  When the Greek translators took the Hebrew Yam Suf and translated it into Greek, they translated it as Red Sea instead of Reed Sea.  So we’ve been stuck with a faulty translation for over 2000 years.”

Hoffmeier has been working with Prof Stephen O. Moshier, Geologist of Wheaton College.  Together they have pieces together satellite photos and ancient maps to identify a sea of reeds.  They’ve come up with Lake El Balah, on the eastern border of Egypt.  Jacobovici paints another picture of this scenario.

Hoffmeier, “It’s an ancient lake that survived until the 1850’s.  When the Suez Canal was put in, this ancient lake finally died.  Professor Manfred Biatek after conducting a thorough study of this area, proposed that this lake was known to the Egyptians as Ha Tufi, meaning the marshland, the marshy sea.  And the word tuf, the Egyptian word for reeds is the same word as suf in Hebrew.  So Yam Suf, he suggested, was a name derived from this body of water.  Now it is called the El Balah Lake.”  [In Hebrew it means the lake where God devoured.]

…

SJ, “Identifying the precise location of Yam Suf means that we can finally explain the miracle of the parting of the sea. This satellite photo clearly demonstrates that Lake El Balah is close to the edge of the Nile Delta, where soil accumulates and collapses from time to time.  As Pharaoh chased the Israelites to the shores Lake El Balah, the extreme seismic activity that caused the two plates and the Santorini eruption would have now caused the delta to start sliding into the eastern Mediterranean.  As this millions of tons of soil moved forward, the edge of the African plate, which had now released from its burden must have risen between one to one and a half meters.  In other words, the sea parted.

Water would have cascaded from higher ground to lower ground and drained from pools and sinkholes creating dry land for the Israelites to cross.  At this point, further seismic activity, or another collapse of the delta would have sent a major tsunami crashing against the coasts.

Pellegrino, “We get some glimpse of these tidal waves in Turkey where they carved out channel scablands 30 miles inland.  In order to do that at the shore, these waves would have had to have been more than half as high as the Empire State Building, and that’s exactly the description that we do have in the Bible.”

SJ, “If the tsunami went a mere 12 km inland, it would have reached Lake El Balah and engulfed the Egyptian army.  By this point, according to the Bible, the Israelites had advanced beyond the reach of the waves.

Those who support a central route believe Moses and his followers crossed an ancient frankincense trail across the central Sinai Peninsula.  In his younger days, Moses killed an Egyptian while defending a Hebrew slave.  The Bible says he fled to the land of Midian, in Modern Day Saudi Arabia.  It is likely that Moses would have followed the frankincense trail to Midian.  It is the shortest, most direct route to Midian.  If Moses had made the trek before, it is likely he would have followed it again.  Dr Lennart Moller of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden notes that the Bible says that

In the Book of First Kings, In approximately 950 BC, King Solomon’s is said to have built his navy at Ezion Geber near Elath, an ancient city on the northern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba.  According to the Hebrew text, this gulf where Solomon’s ships were said to harbor, was call yam suf.

He believes Newieva Beach is large enough to hold a large Israelite party, and it has some unusual features that make crossing there more likely than other places.

The geography of the Gulf of Aqaba also resembles descriptions of the Yam Suf God once parted for Israel.  Aqaba is extremely deep, plunging more than a mile in some spots.  It is adjacent to a dense wilderness of rugged mountains.  It is located clearly outside the borders of ancient Egypt, as recognized during the time of Moses.  These similarities to the scriptures have led Lennart Moller and others to theorize the Gulf of Aqaba is the Red Sea of the Exodus story.  If they are correct, then 2 distinct possibilities for a crossing point exist:  the first is located on the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula, on the Straits of Tyron.  This channel 5 miles across is one of the most popular recreation areas on earth, as spectacular reefs and marine life attract divers from throughout the world, but the topography of the sea floor here would have made crossing highly unlikely.

For less than a mile offshore, a subterranean canyon plunges nearly 1000 feet at a grade so steep, passage on foot through jagged coral beds would have been virtually impossible, even if the waters were miraculously removed.  70 miles north of the straits, near the center o the Aqaba coast, another potential crossing site extends into the sea.  It is called the Newieva Peninsula.

Moller was attracted to Newieva Beach because of some interesting coral formations.

Moller, “The first time I was diving there, of course we were then looking for possible artifacts, and I had seen some pictures of what we could look for.  I was skeptical and excited because if this is the place for the crossing, then of course, that’s a big thing, so I was excited about that.  But I was also skeptical because 3500 years—that’s a long time.  But if Newieva is the crossing site, then of course you would expect to find remains of the Egyptian army.”

Like others who had explored Newiva before him, Moller immediately recognized the difficulty of this search.

Moller, “If we assume a number of artifacts were spread out on the sea bed, sooner or later corals would start to grow on them, and of course if you have an array of some coral all growing on something, it’s very hard to distinguish the structure that was there in the very beginning.”

Though the coral complicates any search here, it may have been instrumental in preserving the shapes of artifacts, for coral is a living organism that will not begin to grow on a foundation of sand or silt.  Instead, it must first attach itself to a solid object where it will sometimes conform to the shape of its host.

Moller, “So for instance if it were to grow on a wooden artifact, the wood would normally disappear in the sea waters after a time.  But if you have corals growing on the wooden artifact, the corals could have the shape of the wooden artifact and then the coral would consume the wood and material over a periods of time, but still keep the shape of the wooden artifacts.”

During the course of his exploration, Moller observed the pattern of coral growth at Neweiva differed from other parts of the gulf.  Unlike the coral at the northern and southern ends of Aqaba which often forms large dense reefs, sometimes covering acres, the formations at Nuweiva beach are generally smaller, and scattered randomly across the bottom of the sea floor.  Divers familiar with the area have compared the distribution of coral here to a junkyard, and the aftermath of a disaster.  This description is fitting, and among the strange formations in these waters, many display features indicative of human engineering.

Moller, “When we dive, and when we film, at the Neweiva location, we look for certain structures, and you try to look for 90 degree angles, or circular objects, wheel like structures, so that is what you scan for when you dive.  There are situations where you see something that looks like an axle, a hub, some that looks like a wheel, and you say to yourself, this is a coral reef.  This coral grew on an artifact, and that is what’s different to me when I compare corals at other locations around the world.”

Since the earliest explorations at Newieva, one distinctive type of formation has often been identified on the sea floor, a slender table-like structure, sometimes standing on end with a coral encrusted base, a straight shaft, and a circular top.

Moller, “It’s a 90 degree angle, and right angle between something that looks like an axle and a wheel.  You can see this in different varieties, and it looks very different from normal coral.  It is like a man-made structure with a coral roof on it.

While most of the possible artifacts found on the coast of Newieva are covered with coral, one significant discovery was not.

Moller, “There is one find at the Neweiva location that is of great interest, and this is the gilded wheel.  It is a wooden basic structure of the wheel, and it is covered with gold or electrum, a mixture of silver gold, and corals have not been able to grow on it.  It’s been fairly well preserved, although it’s very fragile.  It seems the wooden content has been dissolved.  You could break it if you try to remove it.”

After its discovery, the fragile wheel-shaped veneer was photographed and left in place on the sea floor.

Later analysis revealed that its dimensions and design resembled four-spoked chariot wheels painted on a 18^th Dynasty tomb wall near the Biblical date of the Exodus.

Moller referenced a southern crossing point as well, but dismissed it because of the steep cliffs and jagged coral.  Proponents of a southern route believe a volcanic land bridge may have appeared at this area.

Stephen J. O’Meara, Volcanologist, Volcano Watch International flies over an active volcano.  “Imagine the Jews, reaching this massive land bridge, formed by lava.  Here we have earth being created before our eyes.  You can see the lava flow going into the ocean on a new bench of land.  This is a very highly unstable platform of land.  The bench will not last for long.  This whole area can fall in just a matter of minutes.  Massive collapses have occurred here in Hawaii almost in the blink of an eye.”

The Red Sea forms part of the Great African Rift System.  The entire region has an explosive volcanic history.

O’Meara, “Although we see a very small lava flow, you have to in your mind scale this up to a massive volcanic eruption 3200 years ago.  It enters the water, the water boils, it disappears.  It’s enough to choke valleys and cause land bridges.”

In O’Meara’s scenario, an underwater eruption could have created a temporary unstable lava bridge.  The surface layer of lava cools quickly when it hits the water.  The Israelites could have crossed over this new land.

O’Meara walking on lava, near bright red lava flow, “But what’s amazing about this lava, even though it’s so hot that I have to keep walking right at this moment, that if I had to, to save my life, I could wait, walk over this lava in 10 minutes.”

This new unsupported land could have quickly disintegrated.

O’Meera, “and then when the Egyptians were on their chariots, [hops around because of the heat] and they tried to cross this same bed, the lava gave way.”

The collapse of this land bridge would have plunged pharaoh’s army into the sea.

O’Meara, “It makes sense.  Volcanoes are the only thing that makes sense.  The Bible is just filled with volcanic references and especially in Exodus out from the plagues to the parting of the Red Sea, and seeing pillars of fire, and mountains quaking, and burning bushes, all of them just in Exodus.  You imagine, you come up here and see this and you are not a scientist.  There were no scientists back then.  Listen to it!  [lava crackling]  It’s talking to you!  It’s written in the Bible, God says, ‘I am the rock.’  There you are!”

Where is Mount Sinai?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are several proposed locations for Mount Sinai.  The traditional location is at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.  Tradition for this site goes back to the 4^th Century.  After Moses escaped to Midian, he found the Burning Bush.

Many scholars believe that Mount Sinai is in the Land of Midian in modern day Saudi Arabia.

Separated by the Red Sea and the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula, Moses married a Midianite woman, tended the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, and lived in obscurity for years, until the day he wandered to the base of Mount Sinai.  There God spoke through a burning bush and revealed his plan to free Israel from bondage.  Given the Biblical record, some believe that Mount Sinai must be in Midian, but is there any other evidence to support this theory?

Several Jewish documents, some written several hundred years before Christian traditions, locate the mountain of God in Midianite territory.  In 250 BC, a council of 70 Hebrew scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek for the first time.  Their translation of the Exodus account presupposed that Mount Sinai stood in the Arabian Peninsula.  Three centuries later, the Jewish philosopher Philo placed the mountain “east of the Sinai Peninsula” and south of Palestine.  At the same time, the apostle Paul, who was educated under the Rabbi Gamaliel, also located Mount Sinai in Arabia (Galatians 4:25).

Kerkeslager, “So Paul and Philo, when they used the word Arabia, they’re not thinking of the Sinai Peninsula.  Once again, I think that point needs to be emphasized very clearly.  In terminology, Arabia in the 1^st century, Greek geographers usually had in mind the Arabian Peninsula.  That’s how that term is used.”

Perhaps that most specific description of Mount Sinai’s location can be traced to the first century historian Josephus, who wrote “it was the highest of mountains…” near “…the city of Madian.”  Shortly after this account, Madian was identified in the Arabian Peninsula by the Greek geographer Ptolemy.  1900 years later, archaeologists excavated this city that according to ancient records had once stood near Mount Sinai.  The ruins of Madian lie just outside the modern day town of El-bod near Saudi Arabia’s northwest coast.

…

Viveka Ponten of Stockholm, Sweden said, “I have always been interested in archaeological finds that could confirm the truths of the Bible.  I have wanted come to Saudi Arabia to see for myself—I want to be able to say ‘I have seen this place’.”

In 1996, Vivika Ponten entered Saudi Arabia on a work permit.  During the following years, she made several trips to Jebel Elboz.

Ponten, “It was very difficult to find the mountain.  I think I had been there for 7 months before I came to the mountain the first time.  We went around looking for it in the desert.  I did 5 long day trips—5 different locations, just looking and looking for this place.”

Throughout her search, Ponten encountered a strong local tradition that Moses had once lived in Arabia.

Ponten, “It seems to be a tradition among the locals there that this mountain range is called Jebel-Musa.  They call it that, and many places have the name of Moses, like their wells, that they call Adien-Musa, or Bijan-Musa, which means ‘the well of Moses’.”

When Ponten finally reached Jebel Alboz, her attention was drawn to specific features of the mountain that resembled the Biblical description.  Most prominent was a jagged peak, more than 8000 feet in elevation, and blackened, as if scorched by fire.  [Deuteronomy 9:18, the Lord descended on it in fire.)

At its base, an enormous pile of boulders, at least 15 feet high and 60 feet across (Exodus 32:5, he built an altar in front of the calf.)  The flattened top of this structure had the appearance of being man-made, and etched into its rock faces were petro glyphs of bovine creatures, cattle and bulls.  The distinctive horns and some of the inscriptions resemble pictures of ancient Egyptian Apis bulls.  Could these stones be the remains of an Israelite altar, once built at the base of a holy mountain?  Conclusive investigation is not possible at this time, for Saudi law severely limits all foreign research.

Ponten, “They have put up archaeological signs that tell this is an archaeological area, and you’re not supposed to trespass here.  It’s evident that the Arabs themselves consider this to be some old site of archaeological interest.

Satellite photos of the area have revealed another geographical feature that parallels the Biblical account: a sprawling plain more than 10,000 acres.  Flat, surrounded by mountains, and adjacent to the dried bed of an ancient river, it could have provided an ideal place for the Israelite encampment 3500 years ago.

Just west of the mountain stands another link to the possible Exodus account: a towering rock, 60 feet high.  It is split from top to bottom, and evidence of water erosion is etched into its base.  Many features of Jebel Alboz reflect the Biblical account of Mount Sinai.  As the highest mountain of northwest Arabia, it matches ancient Jewish historical records.

Kerkeslager, “Based on the textual evidence, Jebel Alboz is as good of a guess as any; it might even be the best guess.  It’s definitely better than anything in the Sinai Peninsula, and probably better than any other guess that we have.  It would be nice to have some excavation, and that’s really [why] we need excavations.  We need somebody who is competent, trained archeologist to go in and record the material carefully, submit it for dispute and debate among other scholars, because there are too many gaps in our knowledge.”

The intriguing similarities between Jebel Alboz, and the Biblical record may indeed stimulate new investigation here. Yet whether or not future excavations confirm this site as the actual mountain of God, a considerable body of documentary evidence indicates that Mount Sinai is located somewhere in northwestern Arabia.

Others believe Mount Sinai is somewhere on the Sinai Peninsula.  Jacobovici discusses another possible location discovered by Prof Uzi Avner.

Holy mountains in the desert are marked by ancient, open-air, rock sanctuaries.  In this area there is only 1 mountain surrounded by sanctuaries.  Today that mountain is called Jebel-Hashem el-Tarif.

Although this entire are is in the middle of a military zone, we got to it.  This mountain perfectly fits all the criteria for Mount Sinai.  It is surrounded by a huge plateau that could have accommodated hundreds of thousands of Israelites.  It is easily accessible.  It literally sits on the main trans-Sinai highway, which follows the topography of the ancient route.

Prof. Uzi Avner, Arava Environmental Institute, Israel, “The Mountain is not very high, only about 200 meters above the plateau, but it is very conspicuous.  You can see it from a distance.  The unique point is that it is surrounded by actually the largest concentration of open air sanctuaries that we now today in the desert.”

Conclusions?

So, do we need to believe that any of these scenarios?  Both skeptics and believers seem to agree that faith and science are two different animals.

Hoffmeier, “For people that have religious convictions, they don’t need proof.”

Cornuke, “it all boils down to, this is a supernatural event, and you can’t explain it in any other way.”

Ultimately, the power of Exodus lies more in faith than in science.

Cooney, “There’s no real scientific proof that the Exodus took place, but as a Christian or as a Jew, you shouldn’t need scientific proof to be a person of faith.  Faith doesn’t need to be scientifically proven, nor should it be; it’s faith.”

Cameron, “It seems that the Bible, geology, and archaeology, are all telling the same story.  But skeptics, who would like to regard the Exodus as myth, might resist the idea that it actually happened, because this would imply that God does indeed exist.  Believers on the other hand may feel that a scientific explanation of the Biblical story takes God out of the equation. “

SJ, “But in the Book of Exodus, God does not suspend nature, he manipulates it.  In other words, according to the Bible, we should be able to understand the science behind the miracles.  The greatest miracle of them all was the parting of the sea.

Rabbi David Wolpe believes that the historicity of the events in the Bible should not matter; faith is not determined by the same criteria as empirical truth.

So, what do you think?  Does any of this convince you of the historicity of the Exodus?  Do you think the Exodus is myth?

His second book, By the Hand of Mormon, is seen as his most important contribution to Mormon studies to date because it is the first academic survey of the significance of the Book of Mormon to believer and skeptic alike to be published by a major academic press (Oxford University Press). In it, Givens argues that the Book of Mormon has been important primarily for its existence and extra-textual historical claims rather than for its contents. Givens also makes a case for what he calls “dialogic revelation” as a novel contribution of the Book of Mormon. In current projects, he seems to be moving in the direction of broader engagement with religious themes across time and the western religious and philosophical traditions.

Critical response

General critical response to Givens work has been favorable from fellow scholars like Jan Shipps, Richard Bushman, and Harold Bloom. The New York Times referred to his work as “provocative”^[1] and Harper’s praised him for being “fair-minded and unbiased.”^[2] Some critics, however, have faulted him for what they see as an apologetic bent. Givens is a practicing Mormon who served as bishop in a local congregation for some years.

Givens seems to admit that literary evidence is a bit more compelling than archaeological evidence.  As a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, he may have a bias there, but I think he is right.  I’m more interested in the archaeology, so I want to talk about that first.  (I plan a few posts on Givens.)  So, let’s talk about archaeology.  From page 112,

The New World Archaeological Foundation

New winds began to blow in 1945, when the new president of Brigham Young University created a chair of archaeology and filled the post with M. Wells Jakeman, one of the first Mormons formally trained as an archaeologist.⁸⁰  Three years later, the new Department of Archaeology sponsored its first field work in southeastern Mexico.  Then, in the 1950s, an amateur scholar named Thomas Ferguson (present on that first 1948 dig) tried to nudge the church further into a new era of engagement with Book of Mormon archaeology.  Until now, church leaders and intellectuals from Joseph Smith to B.H. Roberts had waited upon the external evidence for the Book of Mormon as it gradually materialized–or, in some cases, failed to materialize.  Ferguson advocated vigorous effforts to uncover dramatic proof he was sure could be found.

…[page 113]

Overconfident he may have been.  But Alfred V. Kidder, a leading American archaeologist and past head of archaeology work for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, reviewed the copy that Ferguson sent him and gave teh young enthusiast encouragement.  More importantly, he helped Ferguson draft a proposal in April of 1951 asking hte church to fund an ambitious project of archaeological investigations, aiming to solve “the paramount problem of origins of the great civilizations of Middle America.”⁸²  Several months later, the church denied the request for the five-year, $150,000 plan.⁸³

Undeterred, by June of 1952 Ferguson had raised private funds sufficient to organize the Middle American Archaeological Foundation–later changed to the New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF)–and to sponsor the first year of excavations in Mexico at those sites Ferguson tentativel identified as Nephite lands.  Board members included Alfred V. Kidder, Gordon F. Ekholm (of the American Museum of Natural History), and Gordon R. Willey (of Harvard).  Esteemed biblical archaeologist W.F. Albright offered his congratulations and support, and Thor Heyerdahl wrote Ferguson that his own recent work confirmed that “there was a white people in Southern Mexico and Guatemala many centuries before Columbus.”⁸⁴

I need to take a break here.  William Albright was a big export in the 1948 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I believe he did quite a bit of research in the excavation of the Biblical city of Jericho.  He is a world-renown archaeologist, teaching at John Hopkins University.  Thor Hyerdahl is famous for sailing a bamboo raft he named Kon Tiki without mechanical power.  He travelled 4300 miles each way, proving travel from South America to the Polynesian islands was possible.  Obviously, this proves Lehi’s journey was possible.  So, these 2 experts, in addition to the other experts were some pretty important heavyweights in the field of archaeology.  Continuing on,

The foundation was expressly commissioned, in the words of Kidder, to test three theories about the origin of teh advanced civilizations of Mesoamerica: “(1) That they were autochthonous [indigenous, native--I had to look that up];  (2) That, as set forth in the Book of Mormon, they were derived from ancient Israel; (3) That their rise was due to stimuli from some Asiatic source.”⁸⁵  The fact that archaeologists from Harvard, Carnegie, and American Museum of Natural History were apparently willing to consider the Book of Mormon as constituting a serious theory of Mesoamerican peopleing to be tested alongside their competing theories could be interpreted by some as a dramatic coming of age for Book of Mormon studies.  An NWAF editor and emininent archaologist, J. Alden Mason, insisted that the organization was not in the business of confirming scriptural accounts of antiquity, that the purpose of teh foundation was “not to seek corroboration of the Book of Mormon account.”⁸⁶  Still, even if the approach was scientifically objective and the whole enterprise not just archaology in the service of apologetics, teh prestige of those endorsing hte project had lent powerful support to the credibility of the Book of Mormon.  The text was clearly a viable player on teh field of Mesoamerican stuides.  Non-Mormon scholars had just indicated as much, and in print.

… [ page 114]

Excavactions shed enormous light on a range of occupations that span a period both preceeding and postdating Nephite history.  They unearthed pottery, figurines, codices, tombs, and canal works–but without discovering anything as conclusive as Nephi’s tomb.  The most impressive find, in Ferguson’s opinion, was a set of tiny cylinder seals with markings apprently daing between 400 and 700 B.C.  The biblical archaeologeist W. F. Albright identified the markings on one as “degenerate cartouches of Mediterranean inspiration.”⁸⁸  In a subsequent book, Ferguson listed some 300 cultural elements that he argued parallel Middle Eastern culture.⁸⁹  His enthusiasm was such that he was soon discussing a documentary film project with Twentieth Century-Fox and a Book of Mormon museum, filled with his discoveries, with hotelier Williard Marriot.⁹⁰  Though his lasting influence upon Book of Mormon scholarship was negligible, Ferguson did much at the time to raise the visibility of Mormon research.

Givens discusses the Smithsonian Institution letter (that anti-Mormons love to quote) stating that they do not use the Book of Mormon as a guide for archaeology.  John Sorenson is now the foremost expert on Book of Mormon archaeology in Mesoamerica now.  Of course, I’ve talked previously about other theories, including South America, New York, and the Malay Theory, but Mesoamerica is by far the leading theory among Book of Mormon geography buffs.  So, what do you think of the state of New World archaeology as it relates to the Book of Mormon?

George has recently shifted his focus from the Old World to the New World.  George is a proponent that the Book of Mormon lands are in Peru.  His latest newsletter dated Oct 13, 2009, says,

10 Reasons Why the Book of Mormon Took Place in Peru

By George Potter

My new book, Nephi in the Promised Land is now available in the Nephi Project Discovery Store. When I started writing Nephi in the Promised Land, several people questioned my efforts. I heard typical comments like these: “The Book of Mormon people were the Mound Builders of North America.” “I took a cruise to Mexico, and our LDS guide showed us the ruins of Zarahemla.” While these members are sincere in their beliefs, they must either have an extremely limited knowledge of New World archaeology, or their version of the Book of Mormon is quite different from the one I grew up reading. Here is what my copy of the Book of Mormon states:

1. The Book of Mormon was inscribed on metal plates.

2. The Nephites mined gold and also worked copper and silver.

3. The Nephites made swords of steel, a derivative of iron.

4. The people of the Book of Mormon had herds of animals that could be described as sheep.

5. They also had animals that were described as horses.

6. The Nephites had a Semitic-like language.

7. The Nephites had a written language that became lost (Jacob 4:1,2).

8. The Nephites and Jaredites worshipped a white god who had the form of a man.

9. The Nephites had costly apparel.

10. The Jaredites built cities has early as the third millennium B.C.

These ten characteristics of the Book of Mormon people are not fringe elements of their storyline. During the next three months I will discuss, one by one, each of these elements of the Book of Mormon account and why they all point to Peru.

The newsletter lists a few more of the reasons Potter likes Peru. I’ve previously quoted from Potter’s newsletter when he heralded an iron ore discovery and Cohen DNA in Peru. What do you think?

For those who don’t know the origins of the Book of Abraham, Joseph claims to have translated the Book of Abraham from some Egyptian papyrus that he purchased from a person exhibiting Egyptian artifacts.  The papyrus were originally believed to have perished in a fire, though some of these scrolls were actually discovered in 1967, and translated by Egyptologists.  The translation has no resemblance to the Book of Abraham, and seems to be a sort of funeral scroll.  Therefore, some people charge that the Book of Abraham is really a fraud.  Even if this is a fraud, how does this explain the similarities to the Jewish Midrash, and the Koran?

To counter these claims,  Hugh Nibley notes that not all of the papyrus was found.  Perhaps there were some funeral scrolls mixed in with the Book of Abraham, and perhaps the real Book of Abraham that Joseph translated was not found.  Many critics scoff at this claim.

However, I have also been learning about the Gospel of Judas.  Scholars have known for centuries that a gospel attributed to Judas existed, because of a reference by an ancient Christian priest named Saint Ireneaus in 180.  The Christian canon did not exist in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, and St Ireneaus was of the first Christian leaders to try to create a canon of Christian writings.  He was one of the first to make the claim that there should be four gospels, and that many of the other gospels (at least 50 at the time) that were in existence at the time were false.  He specifically mentioned the Gospel of Judas as an especially dubious heresy.

Until recently nobody knew the Gospel of Judas existed.  Some Egyptian papyrus was discovered in 1978, and shopped on the black market for many years.  (It was actually advertised in the classified ads in the New York Times, and sold or stolen several times on the black market.)  There was even a National Geographic special announcing the discovery of the Gospel of Judas in 2006.

The discovery is very interesting, and the ancient document was written in an ancient form of Egyptian, called Coptic.  (Is this “reformed Egyptian”?)  The Coptic Christian Church still exists today, and dates from this early time period.  The copy discovered isn’t quite as old at Ireneaus, but dates to about the 1600 years ago.  It’s not quite as old as Ireneaus, but it certainly is ancient, and might be the same gospel he was referring to.  Ireneaus was talking about a Greek text, but he Gospel of Judas is probably a Coptic translation of the original Greek text.  (You may want to learn more about Gnosticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi Library from my previous post on this.)

Prior to the National Geographic special, rumors that the Gospel of Judas had been found were rampant among the academic community.  The book was mixed up with several other books (apparently these ancient Egyptians were trying to conserve papyrus), many of which had nothing to do with spiritual subjects.  Someone apparently leaked a photograph of some of these papyri on the internet, and most scholars were of the opinion that the Gospel of Judas did not really exist.  The internet photograph claimed that the writings were the Gospel of Judas, but the translation was obviously of another book.  So, the Gospel of Judas find was deemed a hoax.

However, National Geographic obtained the papyrus, and had some modern scholars translate it.  Sure enough, the internet photographs were genuine, but only contained a portion of the entire papyrus.  The Gospel of Judas, was mixed in with some other writings, and it is an extremely important and interesting find in ancient Christian writings, because it shows a much greater diversity of Christian thought.  The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic text, which was a competing form of Christianity, and was just as big or bigger in some parts of the Roman Empire.  When Constantine converted to Christianity, he converted to Orthodox Christianity, and then set about persecuting the Gnostics.  Eventually the persecution forced them out of existence.

So, I want to quote from Bart Ehrmann’s book called The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot.  Bart is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and participated in the translation of this lost gospel.  I just found some of the experiences with the Gospel of Judas as strikingly similar to Nibley’s theory about the Book of Abraham.  From page 67,

In chapter 1, I described my trip to Geneva in December 2004.  There I laid eyes on the Gospel of Judas for the first time.  I was obviously elated by the possibilities.  But as I returned from my trip I had more questions than answers.  I had looked over some pages of the Coptic text but had no opportunity to study and translate them.  What could be found on the pages I had seen?

…page 68

While still thrilled by the prospects, I found a discussion on the Internet that made my heart sink.

There is a Dutch blogger name Michel van Rijn who runs a very peculiar web site that specializes in debunking claims about modern art and ancient artifacts.  Van Rijn had gotten wind of the Gospel of Judas story, tracked down some leads, and learned that National Geographic was planning to spend considerable time and effort promoting the release of the document and its translation-and presumably would make a lot of money off it.  Van Rijn decided to explode the entire operation by publishing all the surviving materials before National Geographic itself had a chance to do so.

Van Rijn found an American scholar, Charlie Hedrick-a New Testament scholar I have known and liked for years-who claimed to have photographs of the Gospel of Judas and to have already made preliminary translations of them.  In order to squash any speculation about the Gospel, and to beat National Geographic to the punch, van Rijn published the photographs and the translations.  When I read them, I was massively disappointed.

The first text appeared to have nothing to do with Judas and Jesus.  It was a Gnostic document whose main figure was someone called Allogenes, who prays to God and hears God’s answer.  The text had Gnostic characteristics, and it would be of some limited interest to scholars of Gnosticism.  But as far as Judas and Jesus were concerned, it was a complete bust.

It is amazing how even those of us who teach for a living fail to practice what we preach.  Every semester in my undergraduate courses at Chapel Hill I have to tell my students not to trust everything they find on the Internet, since anyone can publish anything there, and there is often no way of knowing if the source is credible or bogus.  In this particular case, not having followed my own advice, I was completely taken in.

What I didn’t know at the time, but eventually came to realize, is that Hedrick had translated the wrong text.

My first indication that something was amiss came in July 1, 2005.  I was in New York on other business and had set up a lunch date at the Harvard Club with Herb Krosney, whom I mentioned earlier as the investigative journalist who had originally tracked down the Gospel of Judas, found that it was owned now by the Maecenas Foundation in Geneva, interested National Geographic in the story, and more or less single-handedly pushed the story forward-leading eventually to my hurried trip to Geneva six months before.  Over lunch in July I expressed my real frustration that the whole story was soon to collapse on itself, that there was not in fact much of a story at all, because I had read the Hedrick translation and frankly couldn’t understand why National Geographic was still interested in pursuing the matter.

Herb knew what was actually in the text, but he was not at liberty to give me all the details.  With a twinkle in his eye, he suggested that I not believe everything I read on the Internet (the advice I give students just about every week).  But I persisted; I had seen the photographs of the Coptic pages, they looked similar in quality to the pages I had seen in Geneva, I had seen Hedrick’s transcription of the pages, and I had checked his translation.  There just wasn’t much there.  All Herb could do was throw out a tantalizing hint: maybe Hedrick was translating a different part of the book.

It was only later that I realized what had happened.  As we will see in this chapter, when scholars first gained access to this manuscript and were able to determine its contents, they believed it contained fragmentary copies of three texts. Two of which were already known from earlier archaeological discoveries: the Letter of Peter to Philip and the First Apocalypse of James, copies of which had been discovered had been discovered among the writings of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945.  The third text was the gold mine: the Gospel of Judas.  But it was not until Florence Darbre, the expert in manuscript restoration, and Rodolphe Kasser, the eminent Coptologist responsible for editing and translation the text, had worked on the manuscript for three years that they realized what no one-including van Rijn and Hedrick-had before suspected.  The final part of the manuscript contained not just one document-the Gospel of Judas-but two.  The other one was a fragmentary copy of an otherwise unknown Gnostic treatise about this figure Allogenes.  Hedrick had assumed that his photographs were from the Gospel of Judas.  They weren’t.  They were from a different text.  This changed things drastically.

…page 70

One of the strangest facts about archaeological discoveries of early Jewish and Christian manuscripts is that the most spectacular finds are almost never made by trained archaeologists.  Most of them are the result of pure serendipity.  Moreover, they are typically discovered by people who have no idea what it is they have discovered and no sense of their real worth.

…page 71 [formatting slightly changed]

The limestone box contained four different manuscripts in codex form (that is, they were books, not scrolls).  Later scholars would identify these ancient codices as follows.  None of them, except the Gospel of Judas codes, has yet been published or otherwise made public:

1.       A mathematical treatise, written in Greek

2.       A fragmentary copy of the Old Testament book of Exodus, also in Greek

3.       A fragmentary copy of some of the New Testament letters of the apostle Paul, written in Coptic

4.       The codex containing the Gospel of Judas (as I will explain later, we have the complete beginning and end of the Gospel, and much of the middle, but some portions have not been lost because of the rough handling of the manuscript after its discovery; about 10-15 percent of the text is now unrecoverable), along with three other fragmentary texts, all of them Coptic:

a.       The Letter of Peter to Philip (in a version slightly different from the one discovered at Nag Hammadi),

b.      The First Apocalypse of James (also different from the Nag Hammadi version),

c.       And the Gnostic treatise on Allogenes (which is a different work from the Nag Hammadi tractate that is entitled “Allogenes”)

The discovery of the Gospel of Judas, with the initial skepticism of its existence lends credibility to Nibley’s contention that the Book of Abraham might still be still missing, and that they were combined with other non-religious texts.  Since I have been reviewing Rough Stone Rolling again, I decided to see what Bushman had to say on the topic.  From pages 285-6,

…Michael H. Chandler, who arrived in Kirtland on July 3, 1835, with four mummies and some rolls of papyrus.  Something of an opportunist and promoter, Chandler had exhibited the artifacts in Cleveland in March and come to Kirtland, he said, because of Joseph Smiths translating powers.  Chandler’s account of the mummies is full of contradictions.  He claimed he had inherited the artifacts from his uncle, Antonio Lebolo.  Lebolo had indeed obtained Egyptian artifacts around 1820 and distributed the finds to various European museums before he died in 1830, but no mention of Chandler or mummies were made in Lebolo’s probate papers.  He had earlier arranged for a Trieste merchant to sell eleven mummies that were forwarded to New York, and probably Chandler purchased the artifacts in New York, thinking to exhibit them and then sell them.  On inspecting the papyri, Joseph announced that one rolls contained the writings of Abraham of Ur and another the writings of Joseph of Egypt.  Excited by this discovery, he encouraged some of the Kirtland Saints to purchase four mummies and the papyri for $2,400, a huge sum when money was desperately needed for other projects.

…

Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham is best thought of as an apocryphal addition to the Genesis story of Abraham, in the same vein as the Enoch passages in the Book of Moses.  Characteristically, Joseph’s translated account did not repeat the familiar biblical stories, instead expanding on a few verses about Abraham’s origins in Ur of the Chaldees, adding material not mentioned in the Bible.  The published version contained two chapters giving an account of Abraham’s ordeal in Ur and his departure for Canaan and Egypt.

… page 290

The Abraham texts gave Joseph another chance to let his followers try translating.  While working on the Book of Mormon in 1829, Joseph invited Oliver Cowdery to translate: he tried and failed.  Now with the Egyptian papyri before them, Joseph again let the men with the greatest interest in such undertakings-Cowdery, William W. Phelps, Warren Parrish, and Frederick G. Williams-attempt translations.  Parrish was told he “shall see much of my ancient records, and shall know of hiden things, and shall be endowed with a knowledge of hiden languages.”

Through the fall of 1835, the little group made various attempts.  “This after noon labored on the Egyptian alphabet, in company with [brothers] O. Cowdery and W. W. Phelps,” Joseph’s journal notes.  They seem to have copied lines of Egyptian from the papyrus and worked out stories to go with the text.  Or they wrote down an Egyptian character and attempted various renditions.  Joseph apparently had translated the first two chapters of Abraham-through chapter 2, verse 18, in the current edition-and the would-be translators matched up hieroglyphs with some of his English sentences.  Their general method can be deduced from a revelation given to Oliver Cowdery after he failed to translate the gold plates:  “You must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right, I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you.”  One can imagine these men staring at the characters, jotting down ideas that occurred to them, hoping for a burning confirmation.  They tried one approach after another.  Joseph probably threw in ideas of his own.  Eventually, they pulled their work together into a collection they called “Grammar & A[l]phabet of the Egyptian Language,” written in the hands of Phelps and Parrish.

Of all the men working on the papyri, only Joseph produced a coherent text.  What was going on as he translated?  For many years, Mormon assumed that he sat down with the scrolls, looked at each Egyptian word, and by inspiration understood its meaning in English.  He must have been reading from a text, so Mormons thought, much as a conventional translator would do, except the words came by revelation rather than out of his own learning.  In 1967, that view of translation suffered a blow when eleven scraps of the Abraham papyri, long since lost and believed to have been burned, were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and given to Latter-day Saint leaders in Salt Lake City.  Color pictures were soon printed and scholars went to work.  The texts were thought to be papyri with his translation, and the same pictures appeared on the museum fragments.  Moreover, some of the characters from the Egyptian grammar appeared on the fragments.  The translation of these texts by expert Egyptologists would finally prove or disprove Joseph’s claims to miraculous translating powers.  Would any of the language correspond to  the text in his Book of Abraham?  Some Mormons were crushed when the fragments turned out to be rather conventional funerary texts placed with mummified bodies, in this case Hôr’, to assure continuing life as an immortal god.  According to Egyptologists, nothing on the fragments resembled Joseph’s account of Abraham.

Some Mormon scholars, notably Hugh Nibley, doubt that the actual texts for Abraham and Joseph have been found.  The scraps from the Metropolitan Museum do not fit the description Joseph Smith gave of long, beautiful scrolls.  At best the remnants are a small fraction of the originals, with no indication of what appears on the lost portions.  Nonetheless, the discovery prompted a reassessment of the Book of Abraham.  What was going on while Joseph “translated” the papyri and dictated text to a scribe?  Obviously, he was not interpreting the hieroglyphics like an ordinary scholar.  As Joseph saw it, he was working by inspiration-that had been clear from the beginning.  When he “translated” the Book of Mormon, he did not read from the gold plates; he looked into the crystals of the Urim and Thummim, or gazed at the seerstone.  The words came by inspiration, not by reading the characters on the plates.  By analogy, it seemed likely that the papyri had been an occasion for receiving a revelation rather than a word-for-word interpretation of the hieroglyphics as in ordinary translations.  Joseph translated Abraham as ne had the characters on the gold plates, by knowing the meaning without actually knowing the plates’ language.  Warren Parish, his clerk, said, “I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of heaven.”  When Chandler arrived with the scrolls, Joseph saw the papyri and inspiration struck.  Not one to deny God’s promptings of Abraham and Joseph.  The whole thing was miraculous, and to reduce Joseph’s translation to some quasi-natural process, some concluded, was folly.

The peculiar fact is that the results were not entirely out of line with the huge apocryphal literature on Abraham.  His book of Abraham picked up themes found in texts like the Book of Jasher and Flavius Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews.  In these extrabiblical stories, Abraham’s father worshiped idols, people tried to murder Abraham because of his resistance, and Abraham was learned in astronomy-all features of Joseph Smith’s narrative.  Josephus says, for example, that Abraham delivered “the science of astronomy” to the Egyptians, as does Joseph’s Abraham.  The parallels are not exact; the Book of Abraham was not a copy of any of the apocryphal texts.  In the Book of Jasher, Abraham destroys the idols of King Nimrod with a hatchet and is thrown into a furnace; Joseph’s Abraham is bound on a bedstead.  The similarities are far from complete, but the theme of resisting the king’s idolatry and an attempted execution followed by redemption by God are the same.  The parallels extend to numerous small details.

Joseph may have heard apocryphal stories of Abraham, although the Book of Jasher was not published in English until 1829 and not in the United States until 1840.  A Bible dictionary published by the American Sunday School Union summed up many of these apocryphal elements.  Whether Joseph knew of alternate accounts of Abraham or not, he created an original narrative that echoed apocryphal stories without imitating them.  Either by revelation, as his followers believed, or by some instinctive affinity for antiquity, Joseph made his own late-and unlikely-entry in the long tradition of extrabiblical narratives about the great patriarch.

…page 293

In light of Joseph’s language study, the Egyptian grammar appears as an awkward attempt to blend a scholarly approach to language with inspired translation.

So, what do you make of Nibley’s contention?  Is it plausible?

He showed me a video produced by Arthur Kocherhans, who produced several videos supporting this theory.  While the interviews are very canned, they do present some really interesting information.  I guess one of the biggest things to consider is that proponents of the theory claim that much of the South American continent was under water.  They note that the rain forests are below sea level even today, and that the Amazon River was so wide that it covered much of the continent.  They also note that no human ruins have been found in this area.

from the cover of Venice Priddis book

There have been several people who have promoted this theory (or variations of it.)  The map to the left comes from Venice Priddis book., The Book and the Map.  I believe the first person to propose such a theory was Birrell in 1948.  Arthur Kocherhans book is Lehi’s Isle of Promise.  I was surprised that George Potter also is a proponent of this theory.  George has done some excellent work and may have located Nephi’s harbor in Khor Rhori, Yemen.  I just got an email newsletter saying George was going to move his studies from the Middle East to South America.  I attended a fireside by George about 2 years ago and was quite impressed with his scholarship.  George maintains a website at the Nephi Project where he details his archaeological research.  You can sign up for a free email newsletter, and he has a few books and videos for purchase.

Pros of the theory:

Proponents of this theory proclaim several reasons why they like this theory.

1. Joseph Smith is reported to have said that Lehi landed 30 degrees south of the Equator
2. The climate is more similar to a Mediterranean climate than Mesoamerica.  They note that Nephi claims to have brought seeds that would grow here, but not Meso.
3. It has a real narrow neck of land, unlike Meso
4. Potter recently claimed on his website that Hebrew DNA and iron were found here.  However, I believe the Jewish DNA claims could be related to Spanish settlers, not natives.  Also the iron ore was used for body paint, rather than swords.  Still, it is a potentially important find.

Cons of the Theory

1. Sorenson claims that it unlikely that the land changed dramatically just 2000 years ago.  Perhaps the Amazon River was this wide, but was it this wide just 2000 years ago?
2. Generally DNA evidence is weak for all American settings for the Book of Mormon
3. Elephants, silks, and metal swords do not seem to exist here.

I have previously highlighted a Great Lakes Theory, and the Malay Theory.  How do you think it compares?

Check out this map, and a few other links!

Proposed Malay Setting

Here are a few Wikipedia links you might find interesting as well, the Malay Theory, and info about other theories.

Book of Mormon geography is one of my favorite topics, and it’s been a while since I talked about it.  Wouldn’t it be cool to find some archaeological evidence?  There are over 100 theories concerning Book of Mormon geography.  Since they can’t all be correct, obviously, some scientists are digging in the wrong place.  Let’s review some of the theories again.

In 1991, John Sorensen of BYU, the “dean” of Book of Mormon geography, created a book called “The Geography of Book of Mormon Events: A Source Book“.  (It is hard to find because it has no ISBN #, but can be purchased at the BYU Bookstore as well as some bookstores specializing on obscure Mormon books.)  I reviewed the theories.  I grouped them into basic categories, and discovered a 7^th category when Last Lemming posted a comment at my blog about an African theory.  Here they are:

(1)   Internal Theories. These are maps which just read the BOM and ignore where they might have occurred, but try to figure out rough distances, and major landmarks that the true map must exhibit. This is a good starting point for “real-world” maps to compare themselves to.  Any scholar should probably start here first.

(2)   Hemispheric Models. Mormons originally thought that the Book of Mormon peoples covered the entire North and South America. Most serious scholars now doubt this, but many church members probably still believe this today.

(3)   Central America Models. The bulk of “mormon approved” scholars support this general theory. While there are disagreements about where the “narrow neck of land” exists, such as Panama, Mexico, Guatemala, etc, these theories can be lumped into this category.  This is the theory that is most accepted by Mormon Scholars.

(4)   South America Models. Joseph Smith is reported to have said that Lehi landed 30 degrees South of the equator, in what would be modern day Chile. There are several theories that try to confirm this, and most people who support this group of theories believe that most of South America was under water, and that the continent rose up during the major earthquakes mentioned in the BOM during Christ’s crucifixion in the Old World.

(5)   The Great Lakes Theories. This proposes that since the golden plates were found in NY, the BOM lands must be nearby, and proposes that the Great Lakes were the Sea East, West, etc.  This theory has recently received a boost from people like Rodney Meldrum, and is making some inroads into Mormon thought.

The book is now close to 20 years old.  Since it was published, a flood of new theories have been created.  The following 2 theories are some of the most radical.

(6) The African Theory by Embaye Melekin.  The link to this theory on my blog no longer works, but Michael Ash wrote a review of this theory in 2001.  Melekin claims that his book titled, “Manifestations mysteries revealed,” has proven “beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Book of Mormon is an African book and about Africans. . . . My book will change the church and the belief of the Mormons drastically.” Well Melekin didn’t change Ash’s opinion, and I don’t give this theory much credence.

(7) The Malay Theory. This theory says it would have been much easier for Nephi to travel a 4000 mile journey to the Malay Peninsula than a 16000 mile journey in open seas to the Americas. The author notes better language similarities, better DNA evidence, and other evidences to support his ideas, while clearly noting that he is not sure how the plates got to NY.

One need only look Wikipedia to see the common problems with all the American theories.  (Important note-look at the top of the article-there are many messages at the top of the article stating that the findings in the entry are highly disputed, so use that information as you will.)  Here’s a brief listing of problems with theories 2-5.  Archaeological evidence has failed to produce many of the following animals and plants existed during the Book of Mormon period:

• Horses
• Elephants
• Cattle and cows
• Sheep
• Goats
• Swine
• Barley and wheat

Additionally, Native Americans were much more primitive than is mentioned in the Book of Mormon-there were no chariots, or even wheeled vehicles in the Americas, and iron was not used for weapons.  Iron ore has been discovered in Peru, but its purpose was primarily for body paint.  Here are some other problems:

• Chariots or wheeled vehicles
• Steel and iron
• Metal swords, which had “rusted”
• Cimiters
• System of exchange based on measures of precious metals
• Silk
• Knowledge of Hebrew and Egyptian languages

DNA seems to be another problem.  I did a post last July on a book I read called “DNA and Tradition:  The Genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews“, by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman.  Jewish DNA has been a relatively important topic in the scientific community, and a gene has been discovered, called the Cohen gene which seems to date back to the time of Aaron and Moses.  This Cohen gene theoretically represents the Levite tribe, of which Moses and Aaron were a part of.  Medically, the Cohen gene has been linked to neurological problems.  In my talk with Ann (What’s the difference between Arabs and Persians?), she acknowledged that Jews do carry some unique genetic traits.

So, lest anyone think I’m advocating the position that the Book of Mormon is archaeologically unsound, let’s look at the Bible for a minute. I did a post which tries to show the good and bad news of Biblical Archaeology.  There is no evidence that Jews existed prior to about 700 BC.  That means that there is no archaeological evidence of Moses, Saul, Joseph, Adam, Eve, Job, Abraham, Noah, and everyone who pre-dates 700 BC.  Some scholars go so far as to claim that the Exodus never happened.  There is an inscription about David in the Tel Dan stele, which seems to indicate that a King David may have existed, but scholars are split as to the veracity of this claim.  There is even a lack of contemporary evidence that Christ existed, though the writings after his crucifixion certainly add a significant amount of credible evidence that Christ probably existed.  Either way, science will never be able to prove he was resurrected, which is a fundamental tenet of all Christianity.

So my point is that the Bible and the Book of Mormon’s primary value are in their religious and spiritual validity, not necessarily scientific validity.  Certainly the Bible has more archaeological evidence than the Book of Mormon, but there are many archaeological questions for both books.

Does lack of evidence prove these people did not exist?  No, we are only a discovery away from proving the skeptics wrong.  Can a spiritual person still be a scientist?  Yes, according to Maimonides, a rabbi who wrote 700 years ago.  A quote from DNA and Tradition:  The Genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews says,

“His writings directed the person of faith to realize that there is much more hidden than revealed, both in the traditional Biblical writings and also in the natural world.  Our challenge is to continually study and investigate both realms, with the realization that apparent conflicts are merely artifacts of temporary incomplete understanding in one or both realms.  This avoidance of intellectual pride, allows the person of traditional religious faith to work comfortably within the framework of rigorous scientific hypothesis and empiricism.  This is also in keeping with the rationalist approach in Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed.”

So, what if the Book of Mormon is true, but like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, we’re “digging in the wrong place?”  I decided to look at one of the radically different geography theories-the Malay theory by Ralph Olsen.  I discovered it in the footnotes of the Wikipedia article on Archaeology and the Book of Mormon.  He even has his own section here.  The footnotes list a link to a Sunstone article he did.  (You must open the attachment with the free Adobe Reader.)

In the Sunstone article, he lists his mailing address, so I wrote him a letter.  Ralph Olsen is a retired chemistry professor at Montana State University, with research interests in plants, soils, and microbes.  I asked him why he picked Malay as a possible Book of Mormon location, and he cited several reasons:

(1)    The peninsula is North-south, unlike Sorenson’s east-west orientation

(2)    The problems with animals go away.  Elephants, sheep, horses, etc. all date to the proper time period

(3)    The civilization dates to the proper time period, and has had chariots, iron, silk, etc

(4)    There was a dark-skinned people pre-existing on the peninsula.  If they intermarried with the Lamanites, (while the Nephites did not intermarry) that would explain the “dark and loathsome” comment in the Book of Mormon

(5)    The oceanic travel makes more sense

(6) Alma 63: 5 And it came to pass that Hagoth, he being an ^aexceedingly curious man, therefore he went forth and built him an exceedingly large ship, on the borders of the land ^bBountiful, by the land Desolation, and launched it forth into the west sea, by the ^cnarrow neck which led into the land northward.

a.       Traditional Mormon scholars seem to support the idea that Hagoth travelled eastward and populated the Pacific Islands (such as Hawaii, Tonga, etc),

b.      Scholarly consensus indicates that Native Americans came from Asia, hopped across the Pacific Islands (such as Hawaii, Tonga, etc), before arriving in the Americas.  Olsen’s theory seems to be backed up by more scientists

(7)    DNA evidence seems to be better.  I blogged previously about the 12 Tribes of Israel.  As we know from the Book of Mormon, Nephi and Lehi were from the tribe of Manasseh.  Unrelated to this theory, a Jewish documentary filmmaker named Simcha Jacobovici has made the claim that the tribe of Manasseh may be located in the Malay Peninsula in his film “Quest for the Lost Tribes”, which I blogged about previously.

a.       While not endorsing the Malay Theory, Simon Southerton commented on my blog that “I’m not aware of any DNA evidence from South East Asia linking populations there with the Middle East. South East Asia has been heavily populated for tens of thousands of years, with large civilizations. It is possible that Jewish sailors colonized parts of Asia though.”

I know Southerton gets a lot of flak from FARMS and FAIR for his DNA studies.  I know Rodney Meldrum is making some claims that Cohen DNA has been found in the Americas.  However, Southerton says that Meldrum’s work is based on old genetic tests, and is no longer valid.  Southerton’s rebuttal is found here.

Unrelated to this theory, a Jewish documentary filmmaker named Simcha Jacobovici has made the claim that the tribe of Manasseh may be located in the Malay Peninsula in his film “Quest for the Lost Tribes”, which I blogged about previously.  Jacobovici mentions that when Babylon invaded Israel and scattered them in 600 BC, that some of the tribes were taken across land to Malay.  This could seemingly explain how the Mulekites got there, and why the Nephites (who travelled by boat) couldn’t understand them.

There is also a legend in Malay stating that some shipwrecked Jewish people landed there, possibly indicating the Nephites landing there. As we know from the Book of Mormon, Nephi and Lehi were from the tribe of Manasseh.  Jacobovici states in his film that some of the local citizens in Malay claim to be from the Tribe of Manasseh.

Olsen has written a short book called “A More Promising Land of Promise”, which is available for purchase on his own website.  He also sent me a much longer, unpublished manuscript, which goes into further detail, than his published book.  He encourages people to critique his work, so if you have problems with his theories, be kind, but please express them.  My biggest problems with the theory are:

(1)    How did the plates get to New York?  Olsen admits that he doesn’t know-possibly a miracle?  But he also points out that Sorensen doesn’t adequately explain how the 200 lb plates moved from Guatemala 3000 miles north to NY without a wheeled vehicle.

(2)    If the Book of Mormon lands are in Asia, then Joseph’s account that the Book of Mormon contains a record of the inhabitants of the American continent, then Malay is clearly not.  Joseph Smith History 1:34 “[Moroni] said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang.”

a.       Olsen’s argument emphasizes it differently, instead emphasizing “and the source from whence they sprang.” He says the Source is the Malay Peninsula, and that is how to overcome this apparent discrepancy. I can see his point, but I know that is not a traditional understanding of that scripture, and I’m not sure I buy it.

So, what do you think?  Do you have any other major problems with the theory?  Is there anything you like about the theory?