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Okie Doke, i have another question that i’m struggling to find answers to. I was watching the 2003 LDS movie the book of mormon and this jumped out at me Nephi and his Brothers all married sisters, making thier children cousins. Nephi later claims it had been 30 years since they left Jerusalem when Laman starts planning to raise an army to wage war against Nephi. Nephi also states he and his descendants had become a city. How is any of that possible? for one thing enough time had not passed to grow in such great a number and two cousins breeding with cousins, doesn’t usually work out too well.
Many thanks in advance to anyone who can explain this to me.
The simple answer is that those who accompanied Lehi were not the only people there. I don’t want to get too apologetic here, but 2 Nephi chapter 5 does allude to the idea there were more than just Lehi’s family their spouses, and Zoram there when he speaks of all who believe. Two things: what DJ said, and the simple fact that “city” can mean a community of any size. We might automatically interpret it to mean a town of considerable size, but it could be like many cities here in Nevada (and nearly all other large states) that are nothing more than a few families living in the same location. Without giving any of my personal opinions on the subject, I’ll just direct you to this article found on from FM that deals with this question. http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1378&index=2 From another point of view, if you don’t see the Book of Mormon as literally having actually taken place, and view it more as a literary work, there is always the thing we learned in high school English – suspension of disbelief. DarkJedi wrote:From another point of view, if you don’t see the Book of Mormon as literally having actually taking place, and view it more as a literary work, there is always the thing we learned in high school English – suspension of disbelief.
My feelings too, DJ. Makes life much easier in some ways, doesn’t it? I just wanted to fill Beccaboo in on how the church tries to explain it.
🙄 Myself personally if i am to not take the book of mormon literally then i can’t believe it at all. That being said, thank you so much!!! i remember as a kid learning from the bible about a large group of people leaving Jerusalem but i can not for the life if me, find the biblical scripture now to back that up. It was one of the reasons i listened to the misionaries when they came to my door, because i had always been curious as to what had happened to these people when they left jurusalem. The bible never elaborates on them. So i was shocked when i saw the movie because it presented it as though only the two families left. So now having read Nephi 5 i feel better. I had considered their definition of city might be different to ours, especially since, the worlds population was smaller and i even considered that their definition of war might have been similar to say “warring mafia families” but that still didn’t explain genetics. I asked the missionaries and they reminded me of Adam and Eve but that just opens another can of worms for me, because i can think of no reasonable explanation for how two people could breed such diverse races. As a kid the Jehovah witnesses taught me, that we were closer to perfection back then and thus interbreeding wasn’t a problem and race was explained via the tower of babel when god scattered the nation to the four corners of the globe and changed everyone language.
But again i’m not sure how much of that i can swallow either.
History is much more complex and messy than the abridgments we have – both from religious and non-religious texts. For example, if I take the Book of Mormon as historically accurate to any degree, based on what the Book of Mormon actually says, I am convinced that the Lamanites intermingled with a large, indigenous group who were descendants of the original Jaredite tribe. That is the only reasonable explanation for the population differences, and it answers / solved multiple other issues, as well.
Why isn’t that said in the book itself? It’s not a record of the Lamanites, except when they intersect directly with the Nephites. Like naming women, it simply wasn’t part of the narrative the men felt compelled to share.
That is totally consistent with most histories we have. They mention what is important to those who compiled them and ignore everything else.
I had also read that (purely speculative) Laman and Lemual may have taken additional wives from among the beduin tribes as they traveled through the arabic peninsula. That could account for some of the rapid population growth in addition to the laminite darker skin described in the BoM.
The Lamanites may have also intermingled with indiginous peoples of the American continent.
As far as Adam and Eve and the tower of babel – I like the various creation stories of different peoples. They add meaning to our lives and reinforce our values. In my mind they attempt to answer to following question:
“We are all here – so what does it all mean?”
I don’t see any of the attempts to answer this question as definative, but all hold value.
I have a vague memory of someone telling me once that it is possible Adam and Eve were not the only people created but rather just the first,or something like that, but perhaps i am remembering this wrong. Thoughts???
beccaboo wrote:I have a vague memory of someone telling me once that it is possible Adam and Eve were not the only people created but rather just the first,or something like that, but perhaps i am remembering this wrong.
Thoughts???
We can speculate all we want, the fact is we don’t know.
beccaboo wrote:I have a vague memory of someone telling me once that it is possible Adam and Eve were not the only people created but rather just the first,or something like that, but perhaps i am remembering this wrong.
Thoughts???
yeah, I agree, speculation and opinion abound.
I have thought recently that Adam & Eve were in a long line of hominids(?), but the first of those to have actual spirits in their bodies.
edit: Also, that the whole Adam & Eve narrative could be an allegory, ie: not actually factual or historical. Ideas abound, personally I am not settled on that subject either.
You mean the information I found on Family Search taking my ancestors back to Adam and Eve might be wrong? 
What about going back to Helios and Perse?
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