That was an interesting address. If MacArthur were still alive, he’d surely be a very, very frustrated man right now.

“In Alma 60, with numbers dwindling due to battle losses, Moroni writes an epistle to Pahoran, the chief judge. One might say there’s a bit of trash talking in this epistle, but one would definitely say there is a death threat. This seems a bit like the Secretary of Defense mailing a death threat to the President of the United States. Pahoran seems to take in stride, though, and he had a good excuse for his slackerhood since he was kind of busy fighting of his own rebellion.”

If Douglas MacArthur had read the Book of Mormon, Moroni’s epistle to Pahoran would have been his favorite part. With leading the Philippine Army, World War II in the Pacific, Japanese occupation, and the Korean War, MacArthur hadn’t set foot in the U.S. in eleven years before he was relieved and then gave his speech to Congress. No overthrow of President Truman, thankfully.

I didn’t mean to attack you personally, I’m sorry that I gave that impression. Upon re-reading it, I honestly don’t see where I attacked you. Hamblin may indeed be correct, but there’s no way we can verify that until the Lord sees fit to release the source documents, or we hear from the participants themselves.

Until then, the best that analysts can rightly claim is a logical deduction based on BoM textual evidence, and what we know so far from Western Hesmisphere archaelogy and the history gathered since the beginning of European colonization.

Omission of qualifying phrases, and the lack of “couching” conclusions is inappropriate in my view. Granted, he may have made such blanket qualifications in parts that weren’t quoted by Tanya.

I just now followed the link, and I realized that Tanya left out the introductory words “It appears that…” in the quote that rubbed me the wrong way. Hamblin does provide some “couching phrases” in other parts of the article too.

I’m not offended by research into the Book of Mormon or by people offering their research and analysis. The more we glean from the Book of Mormon, the more we’ll be able to integrate that with past and future archealogical discoveries. And some of that has already been done, adding more and more plausibility to the Book of Mormon, and knocking down the alleged anachronisms one by one.

But I do believe that unqualified statements of analytical conclusion, presenting them as facts, is unjustified by the paucity of the record and by the many disclaimers that Mormon gave that he didn’t include the whole record, and by Mormon’s admitted editorial viewpoint. His goal was not to provide us with a detailed technical understanding, and the facts/figures/details that he reported, seem to reflect that coloring. It’s like we’re trying to reconstruct an elephant from just a tail and a trunk, without knowing what an elephant is supposed to look like.

Other items that cause me to believe so is that we don’t have any pre-Columbian textual material, except some rare Mayan codices, that may or may not correlate to Book of Mormon peoples. And, it was over 1000 years from the close of the Book of Mormon until any non-indigenous people were able to even start to write down the oral histories and traditions of the indigenous people.

Other than those, we have drawings, carvings, statuary, glyphs, symbols in architecture, archealogical stuff, but all those require speculation and deduction in their interpretation too. Any interpretation of that evidence must also be couched in things like “according to our best understanding to date…”

“I could also point to proof in the BoM for a greater level of training among elites…”

As I think of some of those passages (Ammon’s dexterity with the sword and sling, the stripling warriors’ successes, the apparent readiness of many citizens to go into the armies, the multiplicity of armaments, etc), I agree. But may I suggest the word _evidence_ as opposed to “proof” ? I likely would agree with your conclusions. But stating conclusions without couching or qualification, can make the same mistake that evolutionists do, presenting the most plausible and widely agreed-upon theory/interpretation as a proven “fact.”

An example of how overconfident presentation of academic conclusions as “fact” is a bad thing was given by the writer/director/narrator of the movie “Ancient America Speaks”, Paul Cheesman. Not only did he come across rather arrogantly in his film, later discoveries nullified some of his conclusions that he presented as undisputed facts.

The issue isn’t that Cheesman and other amateur apologists are “unprofessional” or not true academics. That’s not my point. It’s the almost arrogant sureness that both the professional and unprofessional, both the academic and non-academic can _sometimes_ illustrate by putting things forth as fact, and not as a best-guess/interpreation/inference/deduction/conclusion that is open to modification by future discoveries.

The best analogy I can come up with late at night is trying to fill in the picture of a jigsaw puzzle with 99% of the pieces missing. There aren’t any grounds for sureness, just best-guesses or educated-guesses, but guesses nonetheless.

Bookslinger, I actually agree with you that Hamblin is overconfident in what he infers. I include it, however, as an interesting possibility that seems reasonable based on the text we do have.

Tanya: Nice job.

I could go over the reason’s for Hamblin’s statement, but going through my own detailed research I concluded the same thing he did. I could also point to proof in the BoM for a greater level of training among elites (or you can look at my post titled “Nephite Military Training”). If you disagree with the analysis please say so. But you seem to be upset that its too hard, even as most critics say that they are presented too softly. Perhaps you have some examples of prior “hard” statements that were walked back. I have not seen any, and since warfare studies are pretty much nill I think the basics that Hamblin stated are both correct and appropriate.

A study of such things as armament and training gives me a greater appreciation for the book and makes me thank God even more that it has been given to us.

Finally, I don’t appreciate being attacked for study that I do out of a love for the Book. Perhaps you were just referring to Hamblin, but I do the same work that he has. I’m reminded of a political cartoon from the Cold War I found doing research, it showed Dean Acheson showing up to a meeting in Europe with 1 knife in his chest and 20 in his back. When his colleagues looked worried he points to the knife in his chest and says “This one is from the Communists”. Applied to this situation, we have enough knives being thrown by our critics, we don’t need more from our friends.