Talk:Jaredites

message: One of the glaring problems with the book of mormon is that of the level of technology for the times excluded many items and actions being contemporay with the times. One of the worst is the forging of white stones into balls on a mountaintop before Christ was born.  Forging and iron working were not widespread until the middle ages, 10 centuries later. The irony of this is that is the exaple is used to teach, do all you can first, then let the lord do what you can not. I guess this would include inventing a new technology.
:Perhaps so. I'm no apologist, however, forging metalic or glass balls is found in other cultures including Egyptian and Indian, Aryan/Sanskrit as well as Masonic, Hebrew and Enoch legends (enoch forging brass orbs and gold plates, glass windows in Noah's ark, iron swords and glass in egypt, molten stones and glass in india, etc.). Even Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom point to forged stones. The idea is not new in history - similar legends exist other places. This is a problem with much of history - especially religious history - the abraham story, the exodus story, Jericho's walls, Jonah and the whale, Ur, Sodom and Gomorrah, Non-israelite Solomon's temple references, the crucifixtion story locations, ressurection of Jesus, etc. And i've just disucssed the Bible, let alone non-abrahamic texts which are even more suspect or more solid. Technology or landmarks are talked about that others believe did not exist until centuries later. 
:You've probably not chosen the best example, but it is a point that potential readers should take into account if they require physical evidence for religious history. Religion skeptics eat this up, but the believers wait until more data is available. -Visorstuff 19:25, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Technology and the Book of Mormon

message: In the section Jaredites as Hamites, there are two bullet items related to Archaeology and the Book of Mormon. The second bullet item is partially covered in the American civilizations portion of the Archaeology article, but the first isn't.  This is the first that I've learned of this information, so whoever placed this information in would be the one to add it to the Archaeology article. Val42 05:07, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Archaeology and the Book of Mormon

message: In the para which mentions the Olmec, which presently reads:
:Many Mormons believe that the Jaredites could be the Olmecs of Mesoamerica, due largely to similarities between archeological evidence and the recorded history of the Jaredites. It has been suggested that the Olmecs may have been of black African descent, because of the physiognomies on the ancient giant Olmec stone heads,
there seems to be a conflation of two separate (and non-standard) conceptions re the Olmec. One is the Mormon claim that the Olmec might represent the Jaredites, based on some interpretation of alleged archaeological similarities, and the other is the view put forward by several Afrocentrist sources (such as Ivan van Sertima) that the Olmec are descendents of Black African cultures, particularly the Mandé, based on alleged physiognomic similarities and a supposed 'decipherment' of the Olmec script as written in an African language, such as  Vai or Libyco-Berber. AFAIK, the Mormon claim does not rely upon the Afrocentrist one for its evidence, and the two are not related- so mention of the second one is not appropriate here, and should be removed.
Neither of these two conceptions re the Olmec find support beyond their close circle of proponents, and are in fact rejected/discounted by most if not all scholars active in the field. A disclaimer to this effect was recently removed, and to give the clearer picture something similar ought to be re-inserted.--cjllw | TALK 03:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've now deleted the sentence referring to the Afrocentrist version of Olmec origins, per the above argument (ie this is a separate claim, the 'evidence' of which is not relied upon by the BoM version.--cjllw | TALK 00:54, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Olmec 

message: Ok, a part of this article was originally like this:
They finally destroyed themselves about the time Lehi and the other refugees from Jerusalem arrived in America (see also Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites).
But almost a year ago Val42 edited it to this:
They finally destroyed themselves about the time Lehi and the other refugees from Jerusalem arrived in America (see also , Lamanites, and ).
Now I don't see any point in that and returned it to it's original version. But didn't anyone notice that before?
--Hayashi-no-Kame 16:26, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites 

message: I checked out this section of this article, and it doesn't seem to have any references to support this theory except for the last reference.  However, this last reference doesn't support the entire section.  Unless there are references and/or reasonable objections within a week, I will remove this entire section from the article. — Val42 01:16, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed the section, for the reasons stated above. — Val42 03:49, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Descendants of Ham

message: The article states 'The existence of the Jaredites is not generally accepted by non-LDS historians or archaeologists.' The phrase "Not Generally Accepted" implies that the overwhelming opinion of archaeologists does not object but implies there might be some acceptance, however I am not aware of a single scholarly paper defending the jaredite theory of pre-historical American population, other than those published by LDS universities.
Unless I hear an objection I'd like to change 'Not generally accepted' to 'Not accepted'. --Salimfadhley (talk) 11:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added this sentence, and - rather cowardly - said "not generally accepted" to avoid revert wars. I agree that "not accepted by any" is almost certainly correct. The same point applies to almost all the Mormon-related articles... LeContexte (talk) 13:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not Generally Accepted 

message: I reverted the phrase "The Jaredites are a mythical people written of in the Book of Mormon" to "The Jaredites are a people written of in the Book of Mormon".  This phrasing implies the book presents them as a mythical people.  Also, while the Book of Mormon's historicity is generally doubted, yet many Mormon readers believe it is literal.  
So there isn't really a consensus making this the common understanding necessary to qualify such an introductory label.  The article already states that many scholars doubt Jaredite existance, and the issue you're really concerned with is the subject of its own article at "Historicity of the Book of Mormon".  Rich jj (talk) 19:06, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "mythical" label