ExMormon

Original: https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/6jd4fm/budding_apologists_create_book_of_mormon_nahom/

I don't think I have ever seen a beating like this. Maybe the Jenkins v. Hamblin debate. Although this might be worse. What's interesting about this is you've got a guy who clearly isn't an academic, he's not a professional bible scholar or anything like that, but he completely destroys those who are. It cannot be described, only witnessed. Posting to preserve for posterity. I suspect these comments will all disappear.

It all starts with a video posted by Book of Mormon Central, Evidences of the Book of Mormon: Nahom, and then proceeds with a blog post and discussions in multiple comment areas on youtube and the blog.

If you aren't familiar with the Nahom / NHM apologetic argument, I recommend just watching the video in its entirety. Watch it either way, it's hilarious. This is supposed to be indisputable evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Not only that, but the only piece of real physical historical evidence. It's a big deal.

In summary, the claim is that the Book of Mormon gives a detailed description of the route the Nephites took from Jerusalem to Bountiful, identifying places by name, landmarks, compass directions, etc., and that this description fits perfectly with the middle east in a way that would have been unknowable to Joseph Smith or any early 1800s people in America. In particular, Nephi writes that Ishmael was buried in a place called Nahom, and that they have found this exact place, by name, over in the Middle East, along with ancient tombs bearing inscriptions of Book of Mormon names. Impressive.

Lots of commenters are saying it's just a coincidence, or there are so many other anachronisms it doesn't matter, and bringing pretty typical arguments along those lines to dispute the video. Nobody disputes the Nahom finding itself Then out of nowhere this random guy Andrew shows up, claims he speaks Arabic and has traveled to all these locations in the middle east and systematically debunks the whole thing. There is no Nahom, it hasn't been found, all the claims in the video are madeup fiction.

In response to this the apologists start rubbing feces all over themselves. And then it only gets worse from there.

Here's the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOPFob0cjfw

Here's the blog post by Neal Rappleye, where he responds to critics of the Nahom video. Some important characters. Neal Rappleye, Stephen Smoot, and James Cutler. These people are all apologists with Book of Mormon Central.

Neal posts his critique of the critics.

http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/2017/06/responding-to-new-video-on-nahom-as.html

In response Andrew posts:

I did my undergraduate studies in the Middle East. I speak Arabic. I lived in Yemen. I visited several of the the so-called "NHM" sites while I was still an active/believing member, including sites near Marib like the Bar’an temple, Jidran and Ruwaiq mountains, among other ruins in the region and all over the country, as well as sites in Oman like Dhalkuut.

I was excited to visit these places and see them for myself as they constituted what is literally the only piece of supposed evidence for Book of Mormon historicity. What I found was pretty underwhelming, nothing at all like what is described, and somewhat faith shattering. This video grossly misrepresents the NHM “evidence,” to the point of deception, leveraging sensationalism and sound effects to construct pseudoevidence.

Short version, point by point, every single "correlation" in this video is misrepresented.

Nehem is NOT a burial site, it's a vast mountain range. And the ruins referenced in the video are in a completely different location that is NOT in Nehem. Moreover the ruins themselves are not at a specific site, but scattered all over the place, thousands of such sites, all over the country. Going back to Nehem, it doesn't match with the text of the BOM, which describes them as following a path along the coast of the Red Sea. About 140 miles of impassable mountain range separates Nehem from the coast.

To put this in context, this is what the area looks like: http://bit.ly/2s3WAOQ

BOM doesn't say anything about turning east and passing through 140 miles of nasty mountains before getting to Nahom. It says they turned east AFTER getting to Nahom, suggesting it would be near the coast somewhere. I really can't emphasize enough how nasty the Nehem area is. Lehi slept in a tent? Good luck hauling tents over those mountains. Zero sense for a long list of reasons. Go over there and see Nehem for yourself, of all potential places for them to travel to, it is literally the worst! An impossible location.

And then getting into the language, the H and M characters in Nehem the place DO NOT match with the NHM on the altars, nor do they match with the NHM in the hebrew word "nacham" that's being referenced as a potential "word play" with the word "mourn" in the text of the BOM. There are about 4 distinct arabic letters/sounds which get clumsily described as H in English, but in the original language these are distinct letters as different as A and Z. The word "nachom" in hebrew is completely different than "nahom." Just as different as "nazom".

So you have some burial sites, literally thousands of them scattered all over the country, everywhere, found a tombstone at one location (not in Nehem) which bears the 3 characters NHM (which also don’t match the NHM characters used in the place name Nehem), and the Nehem location is completely at odds with the BOM text in terms of terrain and geography, but somehow all this is a correlation?

And then there is the "nearly eastward" business. Pick a spot literally anywhere in the Yemen, and in many parts of Saudi Arabia for that matter, head "eastward" and you'll end up at some coastline. About 1600 miles of coastline to work with. There is nothing special about vaguely saying, go south along the coast, turn east at some unspecified location, and then arrive at some other unspecified location where you can build a boat. This isn't a correlation.

The dating. The NHM altars are irrelevant for the aforementioned reasons, but nonetheless, the dating isn't credible. The altars were not dated through scientific means like radiation, etc. In context, the original dating was literally just a guesstimate based on the expertise of the german archaeologist. And that guy places the stones likely AFTER Nephi. And then the subsequent “researcher,” Aston, who pushed the dates back used even worse methodologies than the original guy. Aston isn’t a credible archaeologist, he writes conspiracy books on UFOs! Can't make this stuff up.

Adding to all this are other things I could say. There are a lot of Jewish ruins in Yemen, symbols all over the place. It is my opinion that the area name Nehem comes from Nehemia the Jewish prophet / historical figure, who was a big deal 5th century BC. See the Book of Nehemia. If Nehem is a reference to Nehemia, which would make a lot of sense, that is after Nephi.