Restored Israel

admin December 24th, 2010

INTRODUCTION
In hindsight correlating the Book of Mormon with American archeological evidence is somewhat of a no-brainer. All the evidence is there exactly like the Book of Mormon describes it. Zerahemla as the most influential and populous city on the continent. The walls and fortified cities of Captain Moroni, the contrasting cultures and ethnic styles of the Lehites and Jaredites. The alternate languages of the Mulekites, Nephites and Lamanites. And most obviously, the flight and destruction of the Nephites culture by the Lamanites all the way from Meso-America to New York State. Just as the Book of Mormon states, these cultures covered the entire breadth of North America, to the extent that there is hardly a major archeological find on the continent that was not a part of the Book of Mormon cultural framework… and yet not a single scholar or layman has been able to present a decisive correlation from the time of the Books revelation until now.

Why? Why have LDS scholars, BYU religionists, and Ivy League intellectuals all missed the mark? Perhaps a detailed answer to that will have to wait for another time, but suffice it to say, it all boils down to the ‘pride of the world’. God originally decided to reveal the Book of Mormon to a young unlearned boy because the learned of that culture couldn’t see past the distorted world-view of their time. For similar reasons it has been and will always be young knowledge-hungry minds that have the desire and ability to see past the distorted world-view of their cultures to which He decides to reveal the archeological correlations to. Ones who are still teachable enough to be led over the “stumbling blocks” which have unwittingly blinded the rest of us. It is those stumbling blocks which are a short answer to the why. There are two major “stumbling blocks” in modern scientific culture which have blinded everyone to the obvious– carbon dating and uniformitarianism. These two principles lay at the foundation of our modern interpretation of pre-history and are ingrained into the psyche of all credible scholars. Yet as valuable as these are in piecing together the past, they can be overwhelmingly misleading.

CARBON DATING
The fact that carbon dating has some significant limitations should be self-evident to anyone who has even a shred of faith in the Bible. Carbon dates show that Israel’s city of Jericho existed as a walled, continuously inhabited city from at least 7,000 BC. Might it be a bit more intelligent to think that carbon dating could sometimes give drastically skewed results than to suppose that evolving neolithic pre-adamites were living in the city 3,000 years before the biblical date of the fall? The same is true for the PaleoIndians of North America dating from 12,000 BC. Shouldn’t we at least try to believe in the scriptural timeline instead of supposing that these cultures were animals that God used to evolve into a “fabled” Adam and Eve? This unfortunately requires more faith in a literal interpretation of scripture than even most LDS scholars posses. Even the scarce handful of BYU scholars that actually believe in things like a literal Fall of Adam or a literal Nochean flood which are virtually irreconcilable with archeologically dated pre-history, still for some reason take Meso-american carbon dates as gospel. Radiometric dating is an invaluable tool for those seeking to reveal the past, but the reality is that the further back in time one goes the more skewed its results become (see this article to see more details about what is right and wrong about radiometric dating)

UNIFORMITARIANISM
The second stumbling block which skews our modern view of prehistory is uniformitarianism. As a fundamental framework of assuming modern day processes are the key to unraveling the past history of earth this theory is invaluable and tremendously effective. The problem, however, is that there have indeed been cataclysmic events in the past for which we have no modern analogs. The continental destructions described in the Book of Mormon are one such example. Many LDS scholars have tried to pass the events mentioned in 3 Nephi 8-10 off as large local volcanic events such as the eruptions of Tambora or Krakatoa in 1815 & 1883. However, the continental destructions in the Americas associated with the death of Christ were in reality much, much bigger. Big enough, in fact, to drastically alter portions of the geography of Meso-America modifying two of the Book of Mormon narrative’s most conspicuous geographical features; The narrow neck of land, and the River Sidon. (see this article for a more detailed article on the geological changes at the time of Christ). The remnants of these features are geologically and archeologically evident but are geographically inconspicuous. For instance, the river Sidon although still Mexico’s longest river was slowly dissected by the same gradual regional uplift which raised the entire Central Mexican Cordillera from near sea level to their current 3,000-7,000 ft elevations. Gradually changing what was a shallow constricted portion of the Gulf of Mexico into large endorheic lakes, and finally enormous desert playa basins.

To those educated under the didactics of strict uniformitarianism, such a claim sounds almost unbelievable, but the evidence is truly overwhelming. By mentally overcoming these two stumbling blocks, every major city, culture, geographical feature and event falls perfectly into place. The truth becomes self evident and logical. The biggest archeological ruins correlate with what they should be–the most prominently mentioned Book of Mormon cities. Every major archeologically identified culture such as the Archaic, Maya, Olmec, Zapotec, Toltec, Anasazi and Hopewell correspond with the people’s outlined by Mormon. Each of their cultural centers become a major land mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Zarahemla correlates with the most obvious archeological ruin–Teotihuacan, the largest prehistoric city in North America, and at its height, perhaps the world.

The Book of Mormon is not just throwing around cliché expressions when it says “the wisdom of the world shall perish”. These prophets foresaw our scientific framework. They understood the learning of the latter-day Gentiles with both our great truth and our “great stumbling blocks” (2 Nephi 26:20). And the Book of Mormon is the key to overcoming all of them. By tracing how archeologically dated things are skewed from the true dates given us in the Book of Mormon, we can create a correlation curve which then can be used to correlate the bible with old world archeology. Using this method we soon see how scientists actually have found the evidence for nearly every major biblical event without even knowing it.

This paper will walk through the archeological and scriptural correlations of each major culture of the Book of Mormon, beginning with the Jaredites. As well as take a glimpse of Old World history from a new perspective.

• scriptural science , works in progress
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