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Datum: Mittwoch, den 28. Februar 2001, um 8:39 Uhr
Betrifft: Fazit meinerseits

Nur noch ein paar Worte zu dem Fazit von Alex:

Die Aussage, daß an der BYU arbeitende Wissenschaftler nicht anders können, als für das Buch Mormon zu argumentieren, ist wirklich lahm! Erstens: John L. Sorenson ist inzwischen emeritiert und somit in keinster weise von der BYU oder der Kirche "abhängig". Zweitens: vielleicht wollen diese Wissenschaftler ja gerade an der BYU arbeiten, weil sie dort bei ihren wissenschaftlichen Studien zum Buch Mormon ernst genommen werden.

Wenn für Dich eine ernsthafte Auseinandersetzung mit den Problemen des von Dir selber aufgeworfenen Themas (Archäologie und das Buch Mormon) als "schwammige Versuche, das eine oder andere zu relativieren" bezeichnest, dann stimmt mich das traurig. Gerade aufgrund meiner akademischen Ausbildung wurde ich darauf geschult, mir gestellte Themen erstmal in ihrer Komplexität zu verstehen, bevor ich mich daransetze, sie zu bearbeiten. Das mag für die Kritiker hier zu viel verlangt sein. Es kommt ja hier anscheinend nur darauf an, das Buch Mormon möglichst schnell abschreiben und dem Bereich der Fantasie zuzuweisen. Eine fundierte Meinung hat sich allerdings hier noch keiner gebildet, der sich nur mit den Argumenten der "Kritiker der Kirche" auseinadergesetzt hat.

Alex schreibt:

Es gab
>allein in den vergangenen Postings zu diesem Thema mehr als 5 Argumente dagegen (Historische Funde, Sprache, Mettalurgie, Flora und Fauna, DNS-Analysen etc ) und es ist Dir nicht gelungen auch nur eines davon einigermassen ins Wanken zu bringen<

Hättest Du meine Postings mit einem offenen Herzen gelesen, wie ich es am Anfang der Diskussion erbeten habe, und nicht mit einer vorgefassten Meinung, dann hättest Du diese Aussage nicht so gemacht. Ich hatte, nachdem ich aufgrund der vielen Postings seitens der "Kritiker" in meinem ursprünglichen Eindruck hinsichtlich der Sinnlosigkeit dieser Diskussion bestätigt wurde, schlicht keine Lust mehr, jeden Punkt im einzelnen abzuhandeln. Aber, zu Deiner Information, jeder von ihnen läßt sich beantworten. Zu den historischen Funden habe ich selber schon genug geschrieben. Ich will die Fragen aber nicht offen lassen, sondern noch einzelne Hinweise durch Abdruck entsprechender Informationen liefern:

>Zur Metallurgie:<

Was Stahl betrifft folgende Antwort:

Steel in ancient America? Isn’t that an anachronism that disproves the Book of Mormon?

Anti-Mormon writers who condemn the Book of Mormon for its mention of steel rarely point out that the Bible mentions steel in equally ancient times (the same is true of brass). Examples of "steel" being mentioned in the Old Testament include 2 Sam. 22:35 (which refers to a steel bow, perhaps similar to the one Nephi had), Psalms 18:34, Job 20:24, and Jeremiah 15:12. Was "steel" in the King James Version really steel? Hugh Nibley has pointed out that scholars are uncertain about the meaning of "steel" in several ancient texts from the Old World. Steel is mentioned in the Old Testament under conditions where it seems out of place - perhaps the King James translators should have used the word "bronze" instead of "steel" in those places. Job 20:24, however, also clearly refers to iron weapons at the same time in one of the most ancient parts of the Bible: "He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through." Jeremiah 15:12 also mentions steel in the context of iron. The New English Bible, a 20th century translation which incorporates several modern advances in learning, uses bronze in all those passages except for Jeremiah 15:12: "Can iron break steel from the north?" - a passage dating from the time of Lehi.  John Sorenson writes of the difficulty in understanding apparent references to steel in ancient texts (An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, p. 286):

     "Even experts have a problem, as suggested by a recent technical article entitled "Steel in Antiquity: A Problem in Terminology" [Lenore O. Keene Congdon, "Steel in Antiquity: A Problem in Terminology," in Studies Presented to George M. A. Hanfmann, ed. David G. Mitten et al., Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum Monographs in Art and Archaeology, vol. 2 (Mainz, West Germany: Verlag Philipp Von Zabern, 1971), pp. 17-27]. In Mexico we face similar obscurity. The native chronicler Tezozomoc reported that the Tarascans (Mesoamerica’s most noted metallurgists at the time of the Spanish conquest) wore "steel" helmets [Bancroft, The Native Races, vol. 2, p. 407]. Since we know so little about either our Nephite text or the materials and processes in use in prehispanic Mesoamerica, we all would do well not to jump to conclusions about the accuracy or inaccuracy of such a statement. In a recent dispute about the use of tin in the early Near East, J. D. Muhly and T. E. Wertime emphasized that documents that refer to the unexpected use of a Metal are more persuasive as positive evidence than the failure of archaeologists to come up with specimens is acceptable as negative evidence ["Evidence for the Sources and Use of Tin During the Bronze Age of the Near East: A Reply to J. E. Dayton," World Archaeology, vol. 5 (1973): 116]. Caley and Easby make the identical argument regarding pre-Columbian tin in Mexico. After demonstrating that specimens of the metal were there all the time despite the doubts of archaeologists, who had failed to examine the evidence, they end by observing, "The results also show that it is not prudent always to discount or ignore historical accounts as possible sources of technical information; some of the 16th century chroniclers apparently were wiser and more observant in such matters than many of their
critics" [Caley and Easby, "New Evidence of Tin," p. 515]. Perhaps the Jaredite historian who talked of steel (Ether 7:9) and Tezozomoc with his steel helmets on the Tarascans both knew something that archaeologists will yet document."

Actually, a material that could be called steel was available in Mesoamerica, namely meteoric nickel-iron alloys. Robert J. Forbes in Metallurgy in Antiquity: A Notebook for Archaeologists and Technologists (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1950, p. 402, as cited by John L. Sorenson, "A New Evaluation of the Smithsonian Institution ’Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon,’" FARMS Paper SOR-93, Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1993, p. 17) lists it as "a type of steel" and its presence in Mesoamerica is well known (3 references given by Sorenson, 1993, p. 18). I verified this recently while at the Georgia Tech library, where I found the Handbook of Iron Meteorites (2 vols.) by Dr. Vagn F. Buchwald, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975. Nickel-iron alloys appear very common in meteorites. Further, I found several examples of meteoric metals that the author compared to man-made steel listed in Volume 2, including haxonite from Canyon Diablo in Arizona (p. 393), a face-centered cubic carbide related to tool steels and stainless steels; kamacite from Tucson, with similarities to hypo-eutectoid steels (p. 1243); and metal from the Kamkas mass (South Africa, I believe) whose structure "is reminiscent of commercial ferritic stainless steel" (p. 1387). The point is that at least some meteoric metals can be called steel with technical accuracy, and could certainly be called steel by ancient peoples or modern translators, who might easily call a broad range of iron alloys "steel."

Thus, the word "steel" may refer to meteoric alloys, to naturally or accidentally carbonized iron, or to other metals altogether than the "steel" we think of in the 20th century (and don’t forget that the anachronistic word "steel" occurs in the King James version of the Old Testament - but probably refers to bronze or copper).

>Zu den Spuren der nephitischen Sprachen in den heutigen Sprachen der Indianer folgendes Interwiew mit einem Spezialisten auf diesem Gebiete von der College of Eastern Utah (die nicht der Kirche gehört):<

Was There Hebrew Language in Ancient America? An Interview with Brian Stubbs
A long-standing question of interest for students of the Book of Mormon is whether traces of Semitic or Egyptian language are preserved in New World languages. The following observations on this complex question are by Brian Stubbs, a specialist in Near Eastern and Native American languages who was interviewed by JBMS editor John L. Sorenson.
(JBMS 9 (2000) Nr. 2, S. 54-63)

How did you come to study the question of the connection between American and Near Eastern languages?
Serving a Navajo-speaking mission sparked my interest in Native American origins and languages. In light of the Book of Mormon, I began studying Near Eastern languages, in addition to briefer looks at some in East Asia and scores of Native American languages throughout North and South America. Language similarities between the Americas and the Near East did not seem obvious, though I did find some language families that offered promising leads. I later earned an M.A. from the University of Utah in linguistics. That school had one of the strongest programs in the nation for Uto-Aztecan [hereafter UA] studies when Professors Wick Miller and Ray Freeze were there. UA was one of the language fami-lies in which I had noted what looked like possible Near Eastern ties. As I learned linguistic method-ology and became better acquainted with both Near Eastern languages and UA linguistics, additional parallels emerged.

Your study has concentrated on the UA languages, but at the same time you have been studying lan-guages of the Middle East, including Hebrew, Arabic, and Egyptian. Did you begin by assuming that these Old World and New World language groups are related to each other?
The Book of Mormon certainly made me curious to know whether traces or evidences of Near Eastern languages might be discernible among New World languages. On the other hand, I was also aware of the possibility that all such evidence could have been obliterated. For example, outside of the British Isles, the Celtic languages that once domi- nated much of continental Europe have nearly disap-peared, except in some loanwords surviving in other European languages, even though Celtic ancestry and genes would be well represented in the mix that con-stitutes western European peoples today. So I did not assume anything in particular, but surmised that some Amerindian tongues might be recognizable as partly descended from or influenced by Near Eastern elements in fragmented, mixed, or diluted forms.

If Book of Mormon people spoke and wrote in a language related to Hebrew or Egyptian, where would you look for the descendants of those people?
I began the search without any preconceived notion of most likely places, but looked at dozens of language families from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. The Book of Mormon describes populous peoples inhabiting numerous cities. Wherever the Nephites were centered, they would likely have exerted impor-tant influence on surrounding communities. I also kept in mind that diffusions and offshoots into remote or less populated areas sometimes allow bet-ter preservation of a language than might be allowed by the heavier modification that can occur in highly populated areas. An example is Icelandic, which because of its isolation preserved Old Norse better than modern Norwegian did. In any case, there ought to be surviving indications of a former high level of civilization in the languages spoken by later peoples. Most of my research has focused on the languages in the family called Uto-Aztecan [see map on next page], for I have discovered that these lan-guages contain data that show viable linguistic evi-dence of Hebrew/Near Eastern influences. Yet, as I look into other languages, I am increasingly convinced that Semitic influence has affected and permeated many groups besides UA speech communities.  

Our readers may be generally familiar with the Semitic language family, which includes Arabic and Hebrew. But please describe the Uto-Aztecan family better.
Uto-Aztecan is a family of about 30 languages that linguists have demonstrated to be related because they descended from a common parent language. The par-ent is now referred to as Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA), much like Latin is the common parent language of Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian. Two broad internal groupings are Northern and Southern UA, each containing four branches. In the north, Hopi in Arizona and Tubatulabal in California are single-lan-guage branches; the other two northern branches are Takic, in southern California, and Numic, which spread from southern California throughout the Great Basin and includes the Ute and Paiute lan-guages in Utah. Southern UA includes (from north to south) the Tepiman branch, consisting of Pima and Papago or O’odham in Arizona and others in Mexico. The Sonoran branch is spread along the coast and mountains of western Mexico, as are Cora and Huichol, which form the Corachol branch. The vari-ous Nahuatl or Aztecan dialects in central Mexico constitute the southernmost branch of UA.

How does a linguist decide if two languages are related?
Any two languages can have a few similar words by pure chance. What is called the comparative method is the linguist’s tool for eliminating chance similarities and determining with confidence whether two languages are historically-that is, genetically- related. This method consists of testing for three cri-teria. First, consistent sound correspondences must be established, for linguists have found that sounds change in consistent patterns in related languages; for example, German tag and English day are cognates (related words), as well as German tür and English door. So one rule about sound change in this case is that German initial t corresponds to English initial d. 1 Some general rules of sound change that occur in family after family help the linguist feel more confi-dent about reconstructing original forms from the descendant words or cognates, although a certain amount of guesswork is always involved. Second, related languages show parallels in spe-cific structures of grammar and morphology, that is, in rules that govern sentence and word formation. 2 Third, a sizable lexicon (vocabulary list) should demonstrate these sound correspondences and grammatical parallels. When consistent parallels of these sorts are extensively demonstrated, we can be confident that there was a sister-sister connection between the two tongues at some earlier time. Divisions or branches within a family can be identified when a subset of languages show shared innovations that are independent of other branches in the language family. When enough parallels have been demonstrated, a family tree can be drawn. How-ever, the parallels are not necessarily obvious. But the similarities will prove systematic, and language fea-tures that seem different on the surface may, in fact, be found to display compelling similarities.

How many similarities are necessary to prove a genetic connection between languages?
It would be nice if the large number of parallels typical of Latin’s descendant tongues was the rule, as Uto-Aztecan Languages most of the vocabulary of Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian comes from Latin. However, most linguistic relationships are not as obvious as those in the Romance languages. When two lan-guages share more than 10 percent of their lexicon, and the parallel words show systematic sound corre-spondences, that pair of tongues should catch a lin-guist’s attention as serious contenders to have descended from a common ancestral language.

Some people believe that linguists have already shown that some American Indian languages are derived from Hebrew. Is that so? Have linguists already done a lot of the kind of research you are talking about?
Not really. Amateur efforts (mainly in the 19th century) led to some claims of connections between Amerindian and Semitic languages, but none of those speculations have proved acceptable, or even of interest, to qualified linguists. In fact, the lack of lin-guistic methodology in those early efforts had the opposite effect, callousing linguists against any pro-posals for connections between distant languages. The mere mention of a possible Hebrew-Amerindian tie would likely evoke a "roll of the eyes" or a "not-another- one-of-these" response from most profes-sional linguists. No, no one has yet succeeded in demonstrating any Amerindian-Semitic connection to the satisfaction of the linguistic community. Fur-thermore, anyone trying to connect New World peoples and civilizations with the Old World risks accusations that he or she is a religious fanatic, pseudo-scientist, or racist who wants to downgrade the independent genius of American Indians. For those concerned about professional reputation, tak-ing up an unpopular cause can definitely hurt their careers. Besides the desire to avoid such negative labels, there are other reasons that conventional linguists have not dealt with the issue of interhemispheric language connections. First of all, there are not that many trained linguists actively doing historical research. Many earn their degree and then do some-thing else for a living. Second, even among active researchers, a high percentage focus on or specialize in other aspects of linguistics-grammatical theory, language acquisition and teaching, psycholinguistic research, or sociolinguistics-instead of historical linguistics, which deals with relationships between languages. Third, of the few active historical lin-guists in the world, most concentrate on a single language family or area; very few acquire sufficient familiarity with language families on different conti-nents to be in a position to undertake interhemi-spheric research.

Is it a reasonable scientific hypothesis, then, to posit the conection you are investigating?
Yes -when the evidence becomes strong enough. Science requires that we go where the facts take us. Two hundred years ago, it was shocking for the aver-age person to be told that English was part of the same language family as Sanskrit of India. But re-searchers accumulated so many strong parallels that it became clear that an Indo-European family of lan-guages had once stretched halfway around the world. Migration across an ocean poses bigger prob-lems, of course, but science offers stunning surprises in every field. If the data provide solid results, we pursue them further. Bad ideas hit dead ends. Yet this UA-Near East case is becoming more convinc-ing with each year of investigation.

From a lexical point of view, what is the best evi-dence you have found for Semitic influence on UA?
The following word pairs are a sample. (An asterisk signifies a hypothetical form in the parent language, a form that has been linguistically recon-structed from forms in the descendant languages.) Hebrew/Semitic UA baraq ’lightning’ berok (derived from *pïrok) ’lightning’ ?kem /..ikm - ’shoulder’ *sikum/sïka ’shoulder’ kilyah/kolyah ’kidney’ *kali ’kidney’ mayim/meem ’water’ meme-t ’ocean’ The meanings are clearly the same, or near to it, while the sounds are recognizably similar and appear in the same order. However, the real strength of this case is not in a handful of words, but in the fact that perhaps a thousand comparable similarities have been identified, in accordance with phonologi-cal rules not easily explained in a short article for general audiences. The lexical evidence is fairly extensive but not enough to suggest that Hebrew was the sole ancestor of UA. The Near Eastern element in the UA lexicon may constitute 30 percent to 40 percent, which is signifi-cant, well above the 10 percent lower limit mentioned earlier, but not as high as Latin’s descendants show.

So you are saying that in these word parallels you find evidence for consistent sound changes of the type linguists demand?
Yes. A substantial number of primary sound correspondences are presented in my article in vol-ume 5 of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. 3 Questions remain, of course, but that is the case for every established language family. Even in the great Indo-European family, which includes most Euro-pean languages and whose basic sound changes were figured out long ago, many exceptions to the major rules existed. Many of the exceptions were later ex-plained by discoveries of secondary phonological rules applying to special conditions or phonological environments. Nonetheless, anomalies still plague analysts looking at any language family.

What confirmation do you have of a UA-Semitic tie from patterns of grammar and word formation in the two families?
First of all, Semitic grammar and UA grammar are very different from each other. Certain grammat-ical structures in Semitic are usually found as "fos-silized," or frozen, artifacts in UA. Nevertheless, many inactive traces of Semitic grammar are apparent in UA. Here are some interesting examples: Hebrew ya-....amiin-o ’he believes him/it’ has three morphemes that align perfectly with UA *yawamino ’to believe him/it’, which also accords with the sound corre-spondences (Hebrew aleph [...] becomes UA w); and Hebrew makte..’grinding stone’, -¡’grind’ (imper-fect), and kata ?kitte ¡’grind’ (perfect) align with UA *ma...ta ’grinding stone’,*tus ’grind’ (with loss of k in a consonant cluster), and Yq kitte ’grind flour’ and Yq kittasu ’make into pieces’. 4 But the processes of change that produced these UA terms are "fossilized" in the sense that no new UA terms are being formed along the same lines as once was the case. Pronouns are important in establishing language ties because they are core, conservative elements of grammar. The whole system of reconstructed UA pronouns shows considerable correspondence in sound and structure to Semitic systems. Of the six standard pronominal slots (singular and plural of first, second, and third person), recognizably Hebrew-like forms occupy five of the six slots in UA lan-guages. The only pronoun slot totally unknown to Semitic is UA first-person plural *tami ’we’.Even though Semitic morphology may be fossilized (non-productive) in UA, it is still possible to see a variety of Semitic morphological forms in UA words. 5

How does all this compare with what linguists have established in the way of language relation-ships in other language families?
It compares very well, and in fact this evidence is much stronger than for many ties that linguists have accepted. For instance, the Zuni language is considered connected with the Penutian family, and that link has found its way into most encyclopedias on the basis of much slimmer evidence than this UA-Semitic tie. The evidence for the UA-Semitic link is still in the rough. But the data exist for producing a solid, professional treatment. Many details remain to be worked out, yet the evidence for a Semitic element in UA includes all the standard requirements of com-parative or historical linguistic research: sound corre-spondences or consistent sound shifts, morphological correspondences, and a substantial lexicon of as many as 1,000 words that exemplify those correspondences. Though I have not yet written a full linguistic treatment of the proposed UA-Semitic tie, my work strictly in UA has been substantive enough to make me one of the most active contributors to historical linguistic research in that family. To garner that kind of professional standing is essential if my propositions are to be taken seriously by other lin-guists. Besides publishing a half dozen articles on UA in professional journals 6 and presenting well-received papers at conferences, I am nearing com-pletion of the largest book ever published on the UA language family.

Tell us about how linguists look at genetic, or mother-to-daughter, descent of languages and how that is different from language mixing.
Genetic descent means that a single language, over time, develops into areal dialects; then with fur-ther time and decreased contact, those dialects even-tually become distinct languages. Different patterns of change in different areas allow multiple languages to evolve directly from one common earlier lan-guage. For example, English, German, Dutch, Swe-dish, Danish, and Norwegian all have roots in Old Germanic, which is a branch of Indo-European. Those genetic roots can be seen in vocabulary, sound changes, and grammar. Also common to language change is the borrow-ing of words (called "loanwords") from surrounding tongues. For example, an original Germanic *sk had changed to sh in Old English but remained sk in North Germanic Scandinavian languages. Because English borrowed some of those words from North Germanic, modern English has pairs such as shirt and skirt, ship and skipper. The sound correspondences reveal the source from which the terms came. Words genetically descended from Old English show sh, while those borrowed from North Germanic show sk. 7 Though modern English has borrowed heavily from North Germanic, French, Latin, and Greek, its proper genetic descent is through West Germanic. Beyond borrowing and beyond genetic descent, sometimes two speech communities merge in some sort of constant contact that requires, if they are going to communicate, a special speech medium with characteristics of both languages. Sometimes one or the other language may dominate the mixed relationship. Or a creole, or distinct hybrid, language may emerge, containing more or less equal contribu-tions from both languages. English has been so heav-ily influenced by Latin languages, mainly Latin and Norman French, that some consider English a mixed language, although others do not. Whether called "mixed" or not, modern English has kept only 15 percent of the Old English vocabulary; the other 85 percent was lost primarily because new rival terms came in from neighboring languages. 8 While most of our basic words derive from Old English, about half the vocabulary in modern written English is Latin based, and perhaps 90 percent of the words in an unabridged dictionary would be from sources other than the original ancestor, Old English. Some of the clearest examples of creole lan-guages developed in colonial times when, for exam-ple, French rule was imposed on speakers of some native languages. In each situation, parts of the French were absorbed into the hybrid language. Sometimes the mixing can be said to have created a new language, called a creole (for example, in Haiti). I believe such a process may explain the combi-nation of Semitic and non-Semitic elements appar-ent in UA. Whether these differing elements are the result of the sudden rise of a distinct creole language or of gradual heavy influences over time, or both, I am not yet sure. But I do see language mixing as a huge factor in the prehistory of Amerindian lan-guages. I believe this widespread multidimensional mixing has made Amerindian languages difficult to sort out genetically. It may also partially explain the variety of views and hypotheses offered to explain their relationships.

Das Interview geht im folgenden Posting weiter!!!!

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