Is there archaeological evidence for the book of Mormon?

Answer 1

* The large sections of the Book of Mormon which are copied from the Christian Bible undoubtedly have archaeological evidence. The sections which are not from The Bible do not, and are in fact refuted by Archaeology.

* The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship Research at Brigham Young University has links to scholarly research documenting archaelogical and historical, cultural and linguistic evidence for the Book of Mormon.The body of scholarship, which has been growing in volume and sophistication of method and detail for at least the last forty years, is worth reviewing.

Answer 2

Although, there are many people who believe that there is no archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, it is in my opinion and others that there is.

1. Joseph Smith lived in the upper state of New York.

2. The Book of Mormon originate from an angel from the translation of golden plates. ( in New York, Penn.)

3. Many historians refer to a quote in the Book of Mormon: 'A narrow neck of land'. Ther eare narrow necks of land on the Great Lakes. There is one near Buffalo, NY.

4. In the final battles. The dead were burried in mounds.

a. Pres. Thomas Jefferson describes a mound that he burrowed into in the state of Virginia near the Rivanna River in 1780. The mounds had been used by Indians to bury their dead. Jefferson also states that there were many mounds thoughout the region.

The majority of the mounds were destroyed by treasure hunters and farmers. Today vertually none exist.

5. We need to look into the American Indians that lived in the Ohio and Mississippi areas of America. I highly recommend the 'Hopewell' Indians. They existed during the Book of Mormon time frame.

6. There are some books about these findings.

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No there is not. Respected Mormon archaeologist Professor Dee F. Green stated "The first thing we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists.... If one is to study Book of Mormon archaeology, then one must have a corpus of data with which to deal. We do not.

...no Book of Mormon location is known with reference to modern topography. Biblical archaeology can be studied because we do know where Jerusalem and Jericho were and are, but we do not know where Zarahemla and Bountiful (nor any location for that matter) were and are.

...a concentration on geography should be the first order of business, but we have already seen that twenty years of such an approach has left us empty-handed. (Dialogue, op. Cit., Summer 1969, pp. 77-78)

Answer 3

There is some evidence, which is usually discredited by those who do not believe that the Book of Mormon is a real historic record. Symbols and items found with ancient South American and Mexican Temples hold similarities to Book of Mormon concepts. The traditions of Quetzalcoatl, the 'great white god', are strikingly similar to the story of Christ visiting the people in the Book of Mormon. Pre-Columbian South American and Mexican artwork depicting white men with beards and horses can also be explained by the Book of Mormon. There are also Judeo-Christian symbols found among many of these artifacts, which provides further evidence for the Book of Mormon.

Check out the "Related Links" below for websites about this topic.

Answer 4

No. According to Ether 9:17-19, the Jaradites had "cattle of oxen and cows, sheep, swine and goats, horses and asses, elephants, as well as 'cureloms' and 'cumons', so there ought to be archaeological evidence of them in the Americas before the time of Columbus, but none has ever been found. Wikipedia says "It is widely accepted that the only large mammal to be domesticated in the Americas was the llama and that no species of goats, deer, or sheep were domesticated before the arrival of the Europeans to the continent." It is more or less possible to explain the references to domesticated sheep and goats as mistranslations, but the clear absence in pre-Columbine America of swine, horses, asses and elephants is something yet to be explained in any way consistent the the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Alma 18:9-10,12, 20:6; 3 Nephi 3:22 refer to chariots, but there is no evidence of wheeled vehicles in the Americas. There are several references to swords made out of steel. In case the reference to 'steel' is a mistranslation of another metal, Mosiah 8:10-11 refers to the swords found to be covered with rust. There is no archaeological evidence of the use of steel in the Americas, and certainly not as early as the earliest mention in the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon describes the Nephite people as having a written language based on Hebrew and Egyptian. Some characters of this 'Reformed Egyptian' language have supposedly been preserved in the 'Anthon Transcript', of which "Recent scholarship, including handwriting analysis, suggests the "Caractors" document was written by David Whitmer's brother John Whitmer in or after 1829". The Smithsonian Institution says (Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon, 1996), "No inscriptions using Old World forms of writing have been shown to have occurred in any part of the Americas before 1492 except for a few Norse rune stones which have been found in Greenland."