Original: https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/6jd4fm/budding_apologists_create_book_of_mormon_nahom/
I donāt think I have ever seen a beating like this. Maybe the Jenkins v. Hamblin debate. Although this might be worse. Whatās interesting about this is youāve got a guy who clearly isnāt an academic, heās not a professional bible scholar or anything like that, but he completely destroys those who are. It cannot be described, only witnessed. Posting to preserve for posterity. I suspect these comments will all disappear.
It all starts with a video posted by Book of Mormon Central, Evidences of the Book of Mormon: Nahom, and then proceeds with a blog post and discussions in multiple comment areas on youtube and the blog.
If you arenāt familiar with the Nahom / NHM apologetic argument, I recommend just watching the video in its entirety. Watch it either way, itās hilarious. This is supposed to be indisputable evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Not only that, but the only piece of real physical historical evidence. Itās a big deal.
In summary, the claim is that the Book of Mormon gives a detailed description of the route the Nephites took from Jerusalem to Bountiful, identifying places by name, landmarks, compass directions, etc., and that this description fits perfectly with the middle east in a way that would have been unknowable to Joseph Smith or any early 1800s people in America. In particular, Nephi writes that Ishmael was buried in a place called Nahom, and that they have found this exact place, by name, over in the Middle East, along with ancient tombs bearing inscriptions of Book of Mormon names. Impressive.
Lots of commenters are saying itās just a coincidence, or there are so many other anachronisms it doesnāt matter, and bringing pretty typical arguments along those lines to dispute the video. Nobody disputes the Nahom finding itself Then out of nowhere this random guy Andrew shows up, claims he speaks Arabic and has traveled to all these locations in the middle east and systematically debunks the whole thing. There is no Nahom, it hasnāt been found, all the claims in the video are madeup fiction.
In response to this the apologists start rubbing feces all over themselves. And then it only gets worse from there.
Hereās the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOPFob0cjfw
Hereās the blog post by Neal Rappleye, where he responds to critics of the Nahom video. Some important characters. Neal Rappleye, Stephen Smoot, and James Cutler. These people are all apologists with Book of Mormon Central.
Neal posts his critique of the critics.
http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2017/06/responding-to-new-video-on-nahom-as.html
In response Andrew posts:
I did my undergraduate studies in the Middle East. I speak Arabic. I lived in Yemen. I visited several of the the so-called āNHMā sites while I was still an active/believing member, including sites near Marib like the Barāan temple, Jidran and Ruwaiq mountains, among other ruins in the region and all over the country, as well as sites in Oman like Dhalkuut.
I was excited to visit these places and see them for myself as they constituted what is literally the only piece of supposed evidence for Book of Mormon historicity. What I found was pretty underwhelming, nothing at all like what is described, and somewhat faith shattering. This video grossly misrepresents the NHM āevidence,ā to the point of deception, leveraging sensationalism and sound effects to construct pseudoevidence.
Short version, point by point, every single ācorrelationā in this video is misrepresented.
Nehem is NOT a burial site, itās a vast mountain range. And the ruins referenced in the video are in a completely different location that is NOT in Nehem. Moreover the ruins themselves are not at a specific site, but scattered all over the place, thousands of such sites, all over the country. Going back to Nehem, it doesnāt match with the text of the BOM, which describes them as following a path along the coast of the Red Sea. About 140 miles of impassable mountain range separates Nehem from the coast.
To put this in context, this is what the area looks like: http://bit.ly/2s3WAOQ
BOM doesnāt say anything about turning east and passing through 140 miles of nasty mountains before getting to Nahom. It says they turned east AFTER getting to Nahom, suggesting it would be near the coast somewhere. I really canāt emphasize enough how nasty the Nehem area is. Lehi slept in a tent? Good luck hauling tents over those mountains. Zero sense for a long list of reasons. Go over there and see Nehem for yourself, of all potential places for them to travel to, it is literally the worst! An impossible location.
And then getting into the language, the H and M characters in Nehem the place DO NOT match with the NHM on the altars, nor do they match with the NHM in the hebrew word ānachamā thatās being referenced as a potential āword playā with the word āmournā in the text of the BOM. There are about 4 distinct arabic letters/sounds which get clumsily described as H in English, but in the original language these are distinct letters as different as A and Z. The word ānachomā in hebrew is completely different than ānahom.ā Just as different as ānazomā.
So you have some burial sites, literally thousands of them scattered all over the country, everywhere, found a tombstone at one location (not in Nehem) which bears the 3 characters NHM (which also donāt match the NHM characters used in the place name Nehem), and the Nehem location is completely at odds with the BOM text in terms of terrain and geography, but somehow all this is a correlation?
And then there is the ānearly eastwardā business. Pick a spot literally anywhere in the Yemen, and in many parts of Saudi Arabia for that matter, head āeastwardā and youāll end up at some coastline. About 1600 miles of coastline to work with. There is nothing special about vaguely saying, go south along the coast, turn east at some unspecified location, and then arrive at some other unspecified location where you can build a boat. This isnāt a correlation.
The dating. The NHM altars are irrelevant for the aforementioned reasons, but nonetheless, the dating isnāt credible. The altars were not dated through scientific means like radiation, etc. In context, the original dating was literally just a guesstimate based on the expertise of the german archaeologist. And that guy places the stones likely AFTER Nephi. And then the subsequent āresearcher,ā Aston, who pushed the dates back used even worse methodologies than the original guy. Aston isnāt a credible archaeologist, he writes conspiracy books on UFOs! Canāt make this stuff up.
Adding to all this are other things I could say. There are a lot of Jewish ruins in Yemen, symbols all over the place. It is my opinion that the area name Nehem comes from Nehemia the Jewish prophet / historical figure, who was a big deal 5th century BC. See the Book of Nehemia. If Nehem is a reference to Nehemia, which would make a lot of sense, that is after Nephi.
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Holy shit that last post was epic.
CONTINUED 2
Ouch. Neal replies, mostly ignoring what Andrew says, but then some exchange happens. In the course of that exchange Andrew says some other things that are pretty interesting. In one of Nealās responses he argued that the Nephites did not travel along the coast of the Red Sea, but further inland.
Andrew replies:
Getting back to the meat of the discussion. Iād love to hear more about this argument that the Nephites didnāt travel along the coast. How is that reconciled with the text which specifically says they did?
āAnd we did go forth again in the wilderness, following the same direction, keeping in the most fertile parts of the wilderness, which were in the borders near the Red Sea.ā
How does that description fit with travelling 140 or so miles inland on the complete opposite side of a mountain range?
Either way Iām still not sure how this solves the problems I pointed out. Nehem still is in the mountains. BOM doesnāt describe them moving across the mountains. Why would they enter Nehem at all? If they were traveling along the famous incense trail, that would have been east of Nehem, so they would have had to go west over the mountains to get to Nehem. And again, the burial sites referenced with the inscriptions arenāt in Nehem.
The video makes some very specific claims. Iām just going to quote the narrator directly.
āā¦a team of German archaeologists found an ancient altar in southwestern Arabia with the name of a local tribal region inscribed on its side. That name, Nehem.ā
This isnāt true. Objectively false. An altar was found. And it has ancient writings believed to resemble the English sounds N H M. But this refers to a family/tribe, not a physical place. And itās not known that this tribal name matches with the Nehem place name. In the video a whole bunch of liberties are being taken to correlate data for which no relationship has actually been established.
āThis altar, which dates back to about 800 BCā
This is in dispute, a dubious claim. But video presents it as factual.
āAnd its [the altar] location is exactly where youād expect it to beā¦ā (And at this point the map in background shows line going to Nahom.)
No, itās not exactly where youād expect it to be.
For starters, the altar, which is what the narrator is specifically talking about, IS NOT IN NEHEM!!! The altar is at a burial site which is not in Nehem. The video is straight up lying. And as Iāve also pointed out, āwhere youād expect it to beā is also in dispute re the text of BOM. BOM says they were at the coast, not 140 miles inland.
āAdditionally, Nehem was one of the largest burial areas in ancient Arabia, making it a natural location for Ishmaelās burialā
As stated, no it wasnāt. Nehem had nothing to do with the burial sites referenced and was not itself a āburial area.ā
What do burial sites have to do with the Book of Mormon anyway? Oh, because Ishmael is buried in Nahom? So youāre saying Nehem is a special location in Yemen where everybody gets buried? Everybody comes from afar to bury in this special site? So, duh, itās a ānatural location." Letās put Ishmael here. How cool, we found a burial site, a specific graveyard, called Nahom, the only one for hundreds of miles around, and gee golly, the BOM says Ishmael was buried in Nahom. How cool is that? Correlation after correlation after correlation. Even if Joseph Smith had seen the name Nehem on a map somewhere, I mean, there is no way he could have known it also happened to be a special sacred burial site, the only one in southwest Arabia!
Except, A&D$FG!!, Nehem is not a burial site. And therefore this ācorrelationā makes no sense whatsoever. If Ishmael was buried in the Nehem area of Yemen, it could have been anywhere. Under a pile of rocks on a random spot on one of the hundreds of mountains. Plus, the burial sites referenced, there are sites just like them all over the whole country. There is absolutely nothing āuniqueā about the Marib or Nehem regions in terms of burying people. This is completely false. You canāt make the claim that this is a special ānatural locationā when an equivalently ānatural locationā exists literally everywhere!
CONTINUED 3
At this point Stephen Smoot chimes in, the speaker in the video. Here is his comment in quotes with Andrewās responses.
Stephen,
Thanks for the response. Letās see how this goes.
āGo ahead and tell that to S. Kent Brown and Warren Aston with a straight face.ā
Happy to. Actually, Iād love to get more details. The way it comes across to me is some weekend warriors wandered into Yemen like tourists, took a shuttle to some ruin sites, following some terp around, and out puked all this b.s. It has Tim Mahoney and Ken Ham written all over it.
āSo on the one hand, Latter-day Saint scholars, when they donāt publish in non-Mormon journals, are dismissed as āapologistsā who donāt dare expose their theories to peer review. But when they do, then suddenly it means āliterally nothingā and is itās just an ad hominem fallacy to make mention of it.ā
I think you may be confusing me with someone else, because who are you talking to? When did I say anything about LDS apologists needing to publish?
Since youāve brought this up though, I am not personally of the opinion that peer review is a holy grail. It can be a great thing when done right, but it can also work in the opposite direction. The devil is in those details, like whoās doing the peer review for starters.
Correct me if Iām wrong here, but all this NHM business is published only in LDS apologetic journals, no? Or pay to play kind of journals? The Journal of Arabian Studies that Neal cites, which Aston is published in, isnāt that a pay to play journal? Itās not reputable. And this is further demonstrated by Astonās citation index. Literally the only people who cite his publications are LDS apologists.
āWe are now officially through the looking glass.ā
Aināt it great when your own crap gets flung back at you?
āFor the 8,000th time: the tribal name is derived from the region that tribe resided in.ā
For the 8,001st time: Iām supposed to just take your word on that? The nameās do not match. And, ahem, the burial site also isnāt in Nehem!
You do realize the NHM radicals go with a lot of words? Like flamingos. Perhaps the NHM reference is about a tribe that lived in a little fishing village that was the home to flamingos. You can find flamingos all over Yemen and Oman, and also further north in Saudi Arabia. They are on both the west coast with the red sea and the southern coast of the arabian peninsula.
This brings up another point too. Why turn east at all? Why wouldnāt Nephi be directed to Al Hudeidah? It would cut their journey in half. This is the historical shipbuilding capital of the arabian peninsula.
And what about Sinai? Iām going to have to go back to the BOM and really read the directions they give. Why do we assume they went along the coast of Saudi Arabia instead of on the other side of the red sea in Egypt? Maybe Nahom is in Eritrea and Bountiful is in Somalia? Out of curiosity I just did a quick search and you wonāt believe it. There is an Eritrean singer named Nahom Yohannes! This canāt be a coincidence.
*āIf I were to call myself Stephen the Provoite, what might we suppose about where the name comes from?ā *
Well, we might suppose that youāre related to Ćtienne Provost, perhaps youāre from Quebec.
āIs that a tribal name or a geographical name?ā
Tribal, thatās how arabic names work. Like Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. House of Saud is quite large. A whole country named after them, and the people are spread all over the world. As it happens there is a city in Yemen named Sauda. If all you found was SAD on a tombstone it might get really confusing trying to trace that person to a location. But it would work in your favor as a āword playā pun.
āFrankly, it is hard for me to escape the conclusion that the only reason why you are claiming āitās not known that this tribal name matches with the Nehem place nameā is because you donāt want it to match. Literally every single authority on this I have encountered, both Mormon and non-Mormon, conclude that the Nihm tribe and the Nehem/Nehhm region noted in later Islamic and post-Islamic sources are one and the same.ā
Well youāre really going out of your way to be disagreeable and distract from your inability to link the two, arenāt you?
The fact still is that the NHM on that stone doesnāt match with the Nehem characters in arabic. Repeating myself, Iām still failing to understand the significance of this point though, because the burial location isnāt in Nehem to begin with.
Off hand Iām thinking of some people we could consult though. A company in Saudi Arabia called Naham Tech, owned by the Al-Naham family. I wonder if they have any relatives buried in Saudi Arabia? Could take this research in all kinds of new directions. And then there is the Al-Naham restaurant in Doha. You know, come to think of it, thatās pretty interesting. Maybe weāre looking at this all wrong. Nephites didnāt follow the coast along the red sea, they followed the coast along the arabian sea, but to them it looked āredā in the fleeting light! And then they turned eastward into Qatar. Northern end of the peninsula youāll find some hidden gems with enough wood to build at least one or a couple ships.
āThe burden of proof (there is it) rests on you to dispute the dating of the inscriptions. Until you give me a good reason to believe otherwise, Iām going to stick with Vogt and subsequent scholars who safely date the inscriptions to the time indicated in the video.ā
Oh now this is really getting fun.
Iām happy to accept Vogtās dating, and this is what Iāve said, several times. You guys are the ones that threw him under the bus for Aston. My argument is, nope, I want Vogt back. The date you cite in the video comes from Aston, aka the Ufologist. And the reason you side with Aston is because Vogt dated the stones AFTER the time of Nephi.
But youāre glossing over several of my points. One, what does the date matter to begin with when the stone is not found in Nehem? Two, while Iām accepting Vogtās dating Iām also putting in context what he actually did. All he did was offer his OPINION, pulled out of his educated arse, that the stones probably dated to 6th century BC. He didnāt shine some laser beams on the rock and Siri answered back, 551 BC! How a conclusion was arrived at is very important for readers to understand.
"Itās really funny, Andrew, how you came strutting in here with your opening salvo about your illustrious experience with Arabic and traveling in Yemen. Not to diminish your experience by any means, but when Neal pointed out a handful of authorities who contradict your bombastic rhetoric and sweeping claims, you suddenly accused him of appealing to authority. "
I didnāt accuse anything. I pointed out what he did. He ignored effectively everything I said, motioned to some other dudes with ātheyāre right because they said it.ā Funny is an understatement.
āWhat kind of madness is this? Either experience and academic chops matter or they donāt. You canāt have it both ways.ā
Youāve spun me around so many times Iām confused myself. Are you saying they do or donāt matter? It kind of sounds like youāre defending an appeal to authorityā¦
āBut you know what? In the end, I agree with you. This is matter of who to trust. Should I trust āAndrew,ā an Internet blog commenter whom I basically have to just take on his word has the experience he claims to have? Or should I trust the combined academic chops of several seasoned Near Eastern linguists and archaeologists, and other experts who have published in peer reviewed journals on this matter, and upon whom the research team at Book of Mormon Central drew when producing this video?ā
Well thatās quite a display of self flagellation. So your not just defending it, thatās the hill youāre choosing to die on. Ok.
Just to recap. Youāre making multilevel marketing videos that pimp a product youāve never tried for yourself, and that you admit total ignorance about, which may not actually even exist, all based on the pay to play āpeer reviewedā publications of a UFO conspiracy theorist and other acolytes of his.
CONTINUED 4
ROFL!
While all this is going on Andrew is waging a two-front war, having an exchange with James Cutler over in the youtube comments area. Neal and Stephen seem to have quit and James has taken over. Here are screen shots of the exchange, and there is one part in particular I want to save below.
- http://imgur.com/kGanEvu 2) http://imgur.com/E0xG2Z6 3) http://imgur.com/O1BWyhe 4) http://imgur.com/17voN7O 5) http://imgur.com/hYx42FR 6) http://imgur.com/yUEhtWi 7) http://imgur.com/8EbLPSf 8) http://imgur.com/Ct5b1IS 9) http://imgur.com/XRHRcRS 10) http://imgur.com/RMCLSdr 11) http://imgur.com/EeqYjeJ 12) http://imgur.com/gF2aTBt 13) http://imgur.com/28jTQf4 14) http://imgur.com/SIQ9X4S 15) http://imgur.com/YXdH2zF
My summary will not do this justice. James says some pretty crazy stuff. Such as this.
Also, the evidence obviously isnāt about Jewish ruins. Itās about ruins that bear the name NHM. It sounds like you are confused. *No one should care about how many ancient ruins in Arabia have symbols of any kind on them, unless they bear the name NHM, because, logically, that would make this evidence less of a bullseye for the BoM.
WTF?
But this is where things take an interesting turn. James makes a new claim about the wording of a passage in 1st Nephi that isnāt included in the video, but apparently has been published elsewhere in apologetic journals.
James says.
It actually says they traveled in āthe bordersā near the Red Sea, which, again if I am not mistaken, is quite similar to the meaning of the name āHijazā, the name of that very mountain range running along parallel to the Red Sea coast. Another fascinating bullseye for Joseph, if he made it all up.
Andrewās responds.
Sorry, but you are mistaken. The arabic āhejazā does not mean āborders,ā it means ābarrier,ā as in you cannot get across the freaking thing. Itās a massive āwall of chinaā that prevents you from getting to the coastline. And this is why the famous incense trail was on the east side of said barrierā¦ people would have much preferred to travel along the coast where things are green and more fertile, but the problem is you sort of have to pick one side or the other.
BTW, Iām not sure how this would be a āfascinating bullseyeā for Josephā¦? Can you please walk me through your logic on that? Is this another one of those absurd word plays? Joseph uses the word āborderā and you interpret this to be a name of a mountain rangeā¦ āin the borders near the Red Seaā actually means āin the borders mountain range near the Red Seaā Not quite as humorous as the āmeat commerceā thing, but this would definitely rank pretty high on the list of SMH arguments Iāve come across.
James then comes back with a gigantic rant which includes this.
Andrewās comments over there get seemingly more and more desperate as the conversation continues, which to me is a clear sign of defense mechanisms getting the best of a person who could just admit they werenāt as right at the end of the conversation as they thought they were going into it. Hereās one example from a later portion of the conversation:
āGetting back to the meat of the discussion. Iād love to hear more about this argument that the Nephites didnāt travel along the coast. How is that reconciled with the text which specifically says they did? āAnd we did go forth again in the wilderness, following the same direction, keeping in the most fertile parts of the wilderness, which were in the borders near the Red Sea.āā
This is an obvious problem, as the text nowhere says, including in the portion quoted, that they traveled on the coast. This has been a crucial talking-past-each-other problem since the beginning. Really itās just Mormons saying something rather clear, and Andrew ignoring it. It seems like one of those situations where Andrew must have come to a really strong aha!-moment conclusion in isolation, thought it was really compelling when he came up with it, then he tested it out in public by communicating his thoughts to other people, and his brilliant objection got ran over by a busāthe bus of obvious reality. The fact is the BoM never says they traveled on the coast. It says they traveled āin the bordersā and the borders were near the Red Sea. Look at a map of the Hijaz mountains, folks. Interpretations are things people can disagree about, but what Andrew has no power to change is the fact that the text never says these words: āthey stuck to the coast of the Red Seaā. It says something that would more reasonably mean that āthe bordersā they traveled in were near the Red Sea. And thatās a curious expression. Since when was it a common expression to say that one has been traveling āin the bordersā without specifying what is being bordered? A curious expression indeed. Not one I would easily be able to attribute to Josephās imagination or dialect. Thatās why the connection with the Hijaz/Hejaz mountains makes so much sense to me. And again, the linguistic connection was already made by others who sound more knowledgeable than Andrew. Andrew can nonetheless claim he, not they, is the real expert. Thatās fine. I just have no reason to believe him instead of someone else if he doesnāt sound more credible than them to me. Andrew hasnāt really said anything to demonstrate his superior authority/expertise. Again, he hasnāt even brought up the observations of these other experts.
But as far as the ābarrier, not borderā objection is concerned, hereās a link to an actual thesaurus:
There everyone interested will find that, lo and behold, it turns out āborderā and ābarrierā can in some cases be synonymous. Itās almost as if Andrew had said, āNo, you fools! That word means ācrimsonā, not āredā!ā Uh ā¦ actually, those words are a lot more similar than some people seem to think they are.
The fact that this is the sort of thing critics are now resorting to quibbling about makes it even harder for me to see how they arrived at such a disdainful and high level of certainty through purely rational and objective means.
These kinds of conversations require a lot of time out of life. There are things I could have learned about the BoM by not engaging in a lot of these conversations. I had to spend a lot of time simply going through things Iāve already known about for a long time to address objections that should have led a lot of people to find answers where Iāve found them and where anyone can easily find them. If theyāre interested in looking.
People, please go to bookofmormoncentral.orgās archive to find the answers youāre supposed to be looking for to the questions you have. If youāre not averse to asking Mormons like me and others here questions, you might as well go to that archive.
I appreciate the sincere questions and objections. Andrewās objections here clearly are not sincere, but they have good answers anyway. To get a clear view of that, go to the blog post linked above.
CONTINUED 5
So this is where they go into full persecution complex mode. Andrewās response.
No, I have not read this paper by Jeff Lindsay that you speak of. Iām googling it up this instant as I type this.
I see a page here, āShazer on Lehiās Trail: Perhaps More Interesting Than You Thoughtā
Reading this feels like reading a Star Trek blog. Iāve walked into a Trekkie convention. The guy Lindsay comes across to me like someone who is too smart for his own good. A rainman-like mind combined with boyish creativity and profound levels of ignorance. He ought to try writing fantasy novels and get paid for this type of work.
James, again no disrespect, but if you canāt understand how fanciful this is, we are way past the point of sane discussion. The idea that the english word ābordersā is a reference to the Hejaz mountains is completely and totally idiotic. Itās pure fiction. And very pedestrian and uninteresting fiction at that.
Hereās a sentence.
And we did go camping in the woods, following the same direction, keeping in the most fertile parts of the forest, which were in the borders near the Brazos River.
Your argument, or Lindsayās rather, which you can do not more than parrot it seems, is that there is a mountain range alongside the Brazos River and that this is where we camped? No, we didnāt camp on the border of the landmass, which is bordered by the river, so weāre basically on the bank of the river, or pretty darn close to it, nope, there is a freaking mountain range in the middle of east texas and thatās where we are!
Do you speak English? Is it your first language?
Even if the word āhejazā meant āborder,ā what in the sacred name of common sense are you talking about?
One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other thing!
But again, āhejazā doesnāt mean āborderā it means ābarrier.ā These are different meanings. James, please take an English 101 course when you go to college. Different words have different meanings. One word can also have multiple meanings.
Point - to point your finger at someone, the knife has a sharp point, james doesnāt understand the point of this discussion.
Languages are amazing.
A thesaurus is not a list of words that mean the exact same thing. It does group synonyms, but usually there arenāt that many of those and the longer part of the list is ārelatedā words. Go back and take a look at that link. Notice how they color code things? There is a short list of words that are considered to be close to the same meaning in orangeā¦ with varying shades of orange. And then below that is āmore words related to barrierā Pretty far down that list you find āboundary,ā which lists āborder,ā along with other words like brink, compass, frontier, outpost, rim, skirt, terminal, etc. But thatās not all, there are other related words too further down. Like dike, levee, embankment, citadel, detention, captivity, among others, but my favorite, straitjacket! I think that is the most sensible parallel of allā¦ the Book of Mormon is a mental straitjacket. Joseph was trolling you when he wrote āborders near the red sea.ā
Forgive me, James. Yes, I am making fun of you, but I do so lightheartedly.
Whatās funny though is using your logic here, we could just crack open a thesaurus, go through the whole book of mormon, and replace any word that suits us with another ārelatedā word from the thesaurus, and completely change the meaning of the whole book into something we could produce some physical evidence for.
Languages also arenāt the same. Just because a certain rule works in English doesnāt mean it works in Arabic. Just because an English thesaurus shows two words as being related does not mean that an Arabic thesaurus will too. The etymology and meaning of the words is completely different.
Again I repeat though, and for the last time, āhejazā does not mean borders. It means barrier. The HJZ roots have other meanings too, āto hold back, restrain, hinder, prevent, to keep away, to block off, to close, to bar, to isolate, confine, seclude, to make inaccessible, to arrest, to detainā Shall I go on? None of the meanings are to border something, edge or boundary, etc. There is a word for that though, āmahdoodā
You use this apples to oranges example of ācrimsonā vs āred.ā Those are both colors. border and barrier do not mean the same thing at all. these are not synonyms. and yes, you are a fool if you think otherwise. Do you ever hear Trump talking about ābuilding a border?ā Build a border! Build a border! No, Trump supporters arenāt chanting that. Because the border is already there. They instead chant, āBuild a barrier, build a barrier,ā specifying a particular type of barrier, ābuild a wall, build a wall.ā
Also, some other fun tidbits to add in here. Hejaz, as a name, refers to many things in Arabia. There is a Hejaz mountain range, which weāve been talking about, but there is also a district in Saudi Arabia called āHejaz.ā And this is an area that has a lot of history going pretty far back in time. Iāll let you figure out the implications of that. Hint: the english word āborderā that doesnāt mean āhejaz,ā which of the multiple Hejazs is it referring to?
Jamesā response to this is a lunatic screed that includes this bit.
One thing that will get in our way, I suspect, is linguistics. You keep insisting, for example, that Hijaz doesnāt mean what those other people say it means, but that it means what you say it means. I acknowledge that it means barrier. But how do you know itās so strict and monosemous in its meaning that it canāt possibly also mean something like border? How do I know to trust you over those other people, Andrew? Fluff and banter and psychological fantasies about turning us Mormons into little children aside, what can you say to actually address the countervailing observations that have been made by people who have also been in the same places youāve been, and who know more about the Semitic languages you claim to know?
CONTINUED 6
And then Andrew comes back with the kill shot that ends the entire NHM debate. Not just the debate with James, or Neal, or Stephen, but the entire NHM debate burned to the ground. All thatās left is to scatter the ashes and salt the earth where it stood.
Somewhere in all this chaos youāve generated there has got to be one thing we can focus on. Since you brought up hejaz, how about we just stick to that?
You said, āYou keep insisting, for example, that Hijaz doesnāt mean what those other people say it means, but that it means what you say it means. I acknowledge that it means barrier. But how do you know itās so strict and monosemous in its meaning that it canāt possibly also mean something like border? How do I know to trust you over those other people, Andrew?ā
In keeping with the pattern thus far your comprehension leaves much to be desired. I never said hejaz was monosemous. I offered lots of other meanings for the word, but āborderā simply isnāt one of them. How do I know? Because I speak Arabic. The same way I know 2+2=4, because I know mathematics.
Iāve got an idea, which should settle the matter. I challenge you to produce anything written in arabic that uses the word hejaz in the manner you describe. Wait, Iāve got an even better idea. I have an Arabic Book of Mormon in a box somewhere, how about we just lookup 1 Nephi 16:14 and see what word it uses for border?
One sec, brb.
Found it!
Here is the last sentence of 1 Nephi 16:14 from the Arabic BOM. (switching to Arabic mode)
Ų«Ł ŁŲ§ŲµŁŁŲ§ Ų§ŁŁ Ų¶Ł ŁŁ Ų§ŁŲµŲŲ± Ų§Ų” Ł ŲŖŲ®Ų°ŁŁ Ų§ŁŲ§ŲŖŲ¬Ų§Ł Ų°Ų§ŲŖŁ ŁŁ ŁŲ§Ų²Ł ŁŁ Ų§Ų®ŲµŲØ Ł ŁŲ§Ų·Ł Ų§ŁŲØŲ§ ŲÆŁŁ ŁŁŁ Ų§ŁŁ ŁŲ§ Ų·Ł Ų§ŁŁ ŲŲ§Ų°ŁŁ ŁŁŲØŲŲ± Ų§ŁŲ§ŲŁ Ų±
Since weāre aiming for a less snarky tone, Iāll just break this down for you. The relevant part of the sentence is this.
Ų§ŁŁ ŁŲ§ Ų·Ł Ų§ŁŁ ŲŲ§Ų°ŁŁ ŁŁŲØŲŲ± Ų§ŁŲ§ŲŁ Ų±
In english characters, āal manatiqu al muhadeeha lil bahr al ahmar,ā which translates, āthe area bordering the Red Sea.ā
minataqa = area
al-bahr al-ahmar = red sea
And the verb for āborderingā isā¦ mahdood, the same word I cited in my last post. You may notice some differences though. The word āmahdoodā is a bit different than āmuhadeehaā for instance, thatās because itās conjugated. The word lil is a grammar construct, combining the prefix āalā in a pointing kind of way. Not sure how to describe it. Anyway, I think you get the idea. Well, probably not, but Iām done.
Now, just in case you think Iām trying to pull a Die Hard on you, that I get my rocks off by making up gibberish sentences in Arabic for strangers on the internet, Iāve taken the liberty of taking a picture of the book with my phone and uploading it. Here is the link.
Before dropping the mic I have one more thing to add. Iām really glad you took the discussion in this direction. Because, I believe this puts the final nail in the NHM coffin. Earlier I translated the text to read āthe area bordering the Red Sea,ā which is accurate, but itās not the best translation. I translated it that way because we were comparing with the same verse in the English BOM, so I wanted to use that same word for consistency, ābordering.ā A more accurate translation however for those who speak Arabic would be āadjacentā or ānext to.ā Itās not just bordering, but a more specific proximity is implied by the word.
So in english it reads, āin the borders near the Red Sea.ā
And in arabic it reads, āthe area adjacent to the Red Sea.ā
Huh. They both mean the same thing, but the Arabic is more explicit, isnāt it? Borders near the red sea has a little big of a wiggly feel to it, near can be argued as somewhat subjective. 20 ft, 20 miles, 200 miles. I mean if youāre standing in Utah, 200 miles is ānearā by comparison. That word adjacent though is sharp and unambiguous. There is no wiggle room here, this is clearly describing them as being right next to the coast.
So, based on the text, which has now been witnessed by the divine pattern of two, no, Nehem in the Yemen cannot possibly be the Nahom spoken of in the Book of Mormon.
In the end, the one and only piece of physical evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon is unraveled by the churchās own Arabic translation of the Book of Mormon.
Not sure how youād go about it, but I kind of wish I could take these people and show them Milo Rossiās videos about various archeological conspiracies (he hasnāt covered BoM stuff as far as I know, but maybe he should). Then ask them whether or not they believe the conspiracies discussed and rebutted. See if they can spot the hypocrisy.
Also, thanks for preserving this here; been out of the church for a while but only started checking out the exmo reddit recently, so I hadnāt seen the original. And now using reddit puts something of a bad taste in my mouth. /shurg
Wow! Another Milo Rossi fan!! If you like him, look up Stefan Milo as well. Stephan Milo goes into more human evolution and human migrations. Amazing stuff.
Thanks for the recommend; quickly browsing through what heās got on YouTube thereās definitely stuff Iād be interested in watching.
