CONTINUED 3

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At this point Stephen Smoot chimes in, the speaker in the video. Here is his comment in quotes with Andrew’s responses.

Stephen,

Thanks for the response. Let’s see how this goes.

“Go ahead and tell that to S. Kent Brown and Warren Aston with a straight face.”

Happy to. Actually, I’d love to get more details. The way it comes across to me is some weekend warriors wandered into Yemen like tourists, took a shuttle to some ruin sites, following some terp around, and out puked all this b.s. It has Tim Mahoney and Ken Ham written all over it.

“So on the one hand, Latter-day Saint scholars, when they don’t publish in non-Mormon journals, are dismissed as “apologists” who don’t dare expose their theories to peer review. But when they do, then suddenly it means “literally nothing” and is it’s just an ad hominem fallacy to make mention of it.”

I think you may be confusing me with someone else, because who are you talking to? When did I say anything about LDS apologists needing to publish?

Since you’ve brought this up though, I am not personally of the opinion that peer review is a holy grail. It can be a great thing when done right, but it can also work in the opposite direction. The devil is in those details, like who’s doing the peer review for starters.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but all this NHM business is published only in LDS apologetic journals, no? Or pay to play kind of journals? The Journal of Arabian Studies that Neal cites, which Aston is published in, isn’t that a pay to play journal? It’s not reputable. And this is further demonstrated by Aston’s citation index. Literally the only people who cite his publications are LDS apologists.

“We are now officially through the looking glass.”

Ain’t it great when your own crap gets flung back at you?

“For the 8,000th time: the tribal name is derived from the region that tribe resided in.”

For the 8,001st time: I’m supposed to just take your word on that? The name’s do not match. And, ahem, the burial site also isn’t in Nehem!

You do realize the NHM radicals go with a lot of words? Like flamingos. Perhaps the NHM reference is about a tribe that lived in a little fishing village that was the home to flamingos. You can find flamingos all over Yemen and Oman, and also further north in Saudi Arabia. They are on both the west coast with the red sea and the southern coast of the arabian peninsula.

This brings up another point too. Why turn east at all? Why wouldn’t Nephi be directed to Al Hudeidah? It would cut their journey in half. This is the historical shipbuilding capital of the arabian peninsula.

And what about Sinai? I’m going to have to go back to the BOM and really read the directions they give. Why do we assume they went along the coast of Saudi Arabia instead of on the other side of the red sea in Egypt? Maybe Nahom is in Eritrea and Bountiful is in Somalia? Out of curiosity I just did a quick search and you won’t believe it. There is an Eritrean singer named Nahom Yohannes! This can’t be a coincidence.

*“If I were to call myself Stephen the Provoite, what might we suppose about where the name comes from?” *

Well, we might suppose that you’re related to Étienne Provost, perhaps you’re from Quebec.

“Is that a tribal name or a geographical name?”

Tribal, that’s how arabic names work. Like Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. House of Saud is quite large. A whole country named after them, and the people are spread all over the world. As it happens there is a city in Yemen named Sauda. If all you found was SAD on a tombstone it might get really confusing trying to trace that person to a location. But it would work in your favor as a “word play” pun.

“Frankly, it is hard for me to escape the conclusion that the only reason why you are claiming “it’s not known that this tribal name matches with the Nehem place name” is because you don’t want it to match. Literally every single authority on this I have encountered, both Mormon and non-Mormon, conclude that the Nihm tribe and the Nehem/Nehhm region noted in later Islamic and post-Islamic sources are one and the same.”

Well you’re really going out of your way to be disagreeable and distract from your inability to link the two, aren’t you?

The fact still is that the NHM on that stone doesn’t match with the Nehem characters in arabic. Repeating myself, I’m still failing to understand the significance of this point though, because the burial location isn’t in Nehem to begin with.

Off hand I’m thinking of some people we could consult though. A company in Saudi Arabia called Naham Tech, owned by the Al-Naham family. I wonder if they have any relatives buried in Saudi Arabia? Could take this research in all kinds of new directions. And then there is the Al-Naham restaurant in Doha. You know, come to think of it, that’s pretty interesting. Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Nephites didn’t follow the coast along the red sea, they followed the coast along the arabian sea, but to them it looked “red” in the fleeting light! And then they turned eastward into Qatar. Northern end of the peninsula you’ll find some hidden gems with enough wood to build at least one or a couple ships.

“The burden of proof (there is it) rests on you to dispute the dating of the inscriptions. Until you give me a good reason to believe otherwise, I’m going to stick with Vogt and subsequent scholars who safely date the inscriptions to the time indicated in the video.”

Oh now this is really getting fun.

I’m happy to accept Vogt’s dating, and this is what I’ve said, several times. You guys are the ones that threw him under the bus for Aston. My argument is, nope, I want Vogt back. The date you cite in the video comes from Aston, aka the Ufologist. And the reason you side with Aston is because Vogt dated the stones AFTER the time of Nephi.

But you’re glossing over several of my points. One, what does the date matter to begin with when the stone is not found in Nehem? Two, while I’m accepting Vogt’s dating I’m also putting in context what he actually did. All he did was offer his OPINION, pulled out of his educated arse, that the stones probably dated to 6th century BC. He didn’t shine some laser beams on the rock and Siri answered back, 551 BC! How a conclusion was arrived at is very important for readers to understand.

"It’s really funny, Andrew, how you came strutting in here with your opening salvo about your illustrious experience with Arabic and traveling in Yemen. Not to diminish your experience by any means, but when Neal pointed out a handful of authorities who contradict your bombastic rhetoric and sweeping claims, you suddenly accused him of appealing to authority. "

I didn’t accuse anything. I pointed out what he did. He ignored effectively everything I said, motioned to some other dudes with “they’re right because they said it.” Funny is an understatement.

“What kind of madness is this? Either experience and academic chops matter or they don’t. You can’t have it both ways.”

You’ve spun me around so many times I’m confused myself. Are you saying they do or don’t matter? It kind of sounds like you’re defending an appeal to authority…

“But you know what? In the end, I agree with you. This is matter of who to trust. Should I trust “Andrew,” an Internet blog commenter whom I basically have to just take on his word has the experience he claims to have? Or should I trust the combined academic chops of several seasoned Near Eastern linguists and archaeologists, and other experts who have published in peer reviewed journals on this matter, and upon whom the research team at Book of Mormon Central drew when producing this video?”

Well that’s quite a display of self flagellation. So your not just defending it, that’s the hill you’re choosing to die on. Ok.

Just to recap. You’re making multilevel marketing videos that pimp a product you’ve never tried for yourself, and that you admit total ignorance about, which may not actually even exist, all based on the pay to play “peer reviewed” publications of a UFO conspiracy theorist and other acolytes of his.