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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting

the Prophet Joseph Smith by Michael R. Ash

Recent scholarship suggests that Ur might have been in northern Syria and southern Turkey in a place known anciently as Aram-Naharaim (northwestern Mesopotamia in ancient times). Not coincidentally, ancient Aram-Naharaim was under the influence of Egypt during the days of Abraham. An added layer of support comes from the Book of Abraham’s mention of the Plain of Olishem, which apparently was a part of the land of Chaldea. While the bible never mentions such a place, scholars have recently discovered and inscription of the name Olishem dating to about 2250 BC in Northwestern Syria –just where we would expect to find it according to Joseph Smith.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Television Host, News Anchor, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

Barley was considered to be unknown in the New World when discovered by the Europeans. However, scientists have discovered that is entirely possible that this grain had disappeared not long after Book of Mormon times.  In an article in Science 83, Daniel B. Adams wrote of the archaeological research of the Hohokam Indians –a pre-Columbian culture that lived in Arizona from about 300 BC to AD 1450 and had been influenced by Mesoamerica. According to Adams: “The most startling evidence of Hohokam agricultural sophistication came when archaeologists found preserved grain of what looks like domesticated barley, the first ever found in the New World. Wild barleys have fibrous husk over each grain. Domesticated barley lack this. So does the Hohokam barley. Nearly half the samples from one site yielded barley”. Scholars now report that other examples of what may be “domesticated” barley have been tound in Eastern Oklahoma and southern Illinois dating from AD 1 to AD 900.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Television Host, News Anchor, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

By Michael R. Ash

Critics of the Book of Mormon contend that not only were many Book of Mormon weapons unknown in early Mesoamerica, but that war itself was virtually unknown. Recent studies have shown otherwise. Howard La Fay of National Geographic writes:

“Gone forever is the image of the Maya as peaceful, rather primitive farmers practicing esoteric religious rites in the quiet of their jungles fastness. What emerges is a portrait of a vivid, warlike race, numerous beyond any previous estimate… And, like the Vikings half a world away, they traded and raided with zest….The Maya –so long portrayed as peaceful, devout people were involved in warfare from very early times”.

As for weapons being unknown in in pre-Columbian American, recent findings have proved the opposite. The bow for instance was in fact known in Mesoamerica by at least the first millennium BC, precisely as described in the Book of Mormon. The Aztecs used the macuahuitl, which was a long wooden shaft with large pieces of obsidian flakes fixed into its edges. One Mayan warrior is know to have cut the head of a Spaniard’s horse with one stroke of his macuahuitl, or what the Spanish called his “sword”.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith by Michael R. Ash

The word tower in the Book of Mormon relates to a concept which goes back to Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. The “Tower of Babel” of Genesis, and the same “great tower” of Ether, refers to ancient Near Eastern ziggurats which measured from 80 to 230 feet high. Anthropologist John L. Sorenson observes: “It may seem strange to modern readers, used to considering narrow, soaring castle and cathedral spires as towers, that bulky mounds and ziggurats would be termed “towers” by the Book of Mormon scribes. But when the Spanish invaders saw the Mesoamerican temple platforms, they immediately called them torres, ‘towers,’ so height, not shape , must be the main criterion”. Both the early Near Eastern temples and the early American pyramid/temples were of similar construction, design, and purpose.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

By Michael R. Ash

According to Joseph Smith,  the Book of Mormon was “engraven on plates which had the appearance of gold, each plate was six inches wide and eight inches long and not quite so thick as common tin… The volume was something near six inches in thickness”. In 1984, Heather Lechtman, writing for Scientific America, addressed the recent discovery of several large metal objects in South America. Most of these objects were made out of hammered sheet copper. When these copper sheets were first unearthed, they were covered with a green corrosion. Once the corrosion was removed, however, they discovered that the copper had originally been covered with a thin layer of silver or gold so that these sheets “appeared to be made entirely out of those precious metals”. Lechtman explains that the most important alloy discovered at these South American sites was a mixture of copper and gold knows as “Tumbaga”. When copper and gold (the only two colored metals known to man) are melted together, they mix and stay mixed after they cool and solidify. This alloy was known not only in South America but in Mesoamerica as well.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

One reason that LDS scholars believed Book of Mormon events transpired in Mesoamerica is it’s the only place in the western hemisphere where a true writing system can be found for the Book of Mormon period. Since Joseph Smith’s day, however, critics have argued that there were no complex writing systems known in the New World during Book of Mormon times. Science has changed all that. Excavation of a tomb in Mirador uncovered the “remnants of two ancient bark paper books or codices”. An article in Science 86 explains that the Maya “wrote books on folded bark concerning historical, mythological, religious, astronomical, and mathematical matters”. Why have only four out of hundreds of Mesoamerican codices survived? Part of the reason, of course, would be deterioration with time. A second reason was that the Spanish priests destroyed these written records in their zeal to wipe out what they believed to be pagan superstitions.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a media personality in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

In Helaman 7:10 we read that Nephi went to pray on a tower in a garden by “the highway which led to the chief market”. This is the only use of the word “market” in the entire Book of Mormon and is mentioned only in passing.  Turning to Mesoamerica we find that a marketplace did indeed exist in ancient Mesoamerican times. Not only did large Mesoamerican cities have markets, but they typically had a main or chief market, according to recent discoveries by non-LDS scholars and archaeologists.

 

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a media personality in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by: Michael R. Ash

When we compare Book of Mormon cultural history with what is known of Mesoamerican history for the same period, we find some amazing similarities and no areas of serious conflict. A list of common cultural traits includes a belief in the cosmos with multiple realms, an underworld, flood legends, mountains as holy places where man connected with deity, and mounds…symbolizing the ascent to heaven. Modern archeology also verifies that the level of civilization depicted in the Book of Mormon generally agrees with Nephite and Lamanite chronology. When we compare this picture to what we find in Mesoamerican archaeology and historical research, the similarities fit the Book of Mormon in ways that Joseph Smith could not have known.  In addition to this, Mesoamericanists now agree that native inhabitants built seagoing rafts and traveled from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec both northward and southward in trading expositions…yet another interesting connection.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a media personality in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting

the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

While Mesoamerican archaeology has seen tremendous advances in the last two decades, a lot more research, money, and time will be required before a full picture and evaluation of ancient Mesoamerican life can be made. The emerging picture, however, fits neatly into the descriptions contained within the pages of the Book of Mormon. In the days of Joseph Smith, almost nothing was known about the former inhabitants of Mesoamerica. What little knowledge we do have about the ancient New World has come to light in very recent years.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason, 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

Is there an official Church position on the location of Book of Mormon events? The answer is a simple no.  Just because Joseph Smith spoke with Moroni and translated the Book of Mormon, doesn’t mean that he necessarily knew where the events took place. Joseph Smith never claimed to have revelation on the question of Book of Mormon geography. Without revelation to settle the issue, Joseph was as free to speculate as anyone else. The fact that Joseph could have made incorrect assumptions about the geography of events in his own book supports the proposition that Joseph was not the author, but was instead, the translator.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.