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|link=Forgeries related to Mormonism/Artifacts | |link=Forgeries related to Mormonism/Artifacts | ||
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|sublink1=Question: What is the Bat Creek Stone and is it related to Mormonism? | |sublink1=Question: What is the Bat Creek Stone and is it related to Mormonism? |
A forged item can tell us nothing about ancient America in general, or the Book of Mormon in particular. Any current source that uses the Bat Creek Stone as evidence should be treated with caution; its author(s) are not using the most up-to-date information. At the very least, it is premature to rely on the Bat Creek Stone as evidence of anything related to ancient America.
The Bat Creek Stone is an artifact excavated in 1889 by the Smithsonian Institution [see Figure 1], and was also found with brass bracelets.
The stone was described in a 1894 publication by the same group. [1] The author of the report, Cyrus Thomas, claimed that the marks were Cherokee. A review of Thomas' subsequent publications demonstrates that he likely concluded that the items were forged, but he did not make a more public point of this because he and the Smithsonian "had placed themselves in a position such that they really could not afford to pronounce the Bat Creek stone a forgery after publishing it." [2]
After Thomas, little attention was paid to the Bat Creek stone until 1970--as noted above, Thomas had probably recognized that it was fraudulent by 1898. In 1970, Cyrus Gordon of Brandeis university argued that the stone had been oriented improperly in the original publication. [3] If it was inverted, Gordon claimed, it became clear that the text was Paleo-Hebrew, and read "for the Jews." [4] Other scholars joined the debate, and the positions are well summarized by Mainfort and Kwas:
Although there were questions about the Bat Creek stone's origins, these were strengthened by a 2004 paper by Mainfort and Kwas. In it, they demonstrate that the text for the stone was copied from an 1870 book on Freemasonry: Robert Macoy, General History, Cyclopedia, and Dictionary of Freemasonry (New York, Masonic Publishing Co., 1870), 169. [See Figure 2.] The Masonic use of the inscription comes from a Jewish coin, reading "Holiness to the Lord," or "Holy to Yahweh." [6]
The man who discovered the Bat Creek Stone did so alone, and was not a professional archaeologist in the modern sense. He also seems to have "discovered" other artifacts that are clearly forgeries. [7] His problems with alcohol led to him being fired for a period; political pressure was necessary for him to regain his job, and his forgery may have been motivated by a desire to ensure his continued employment. [8] Others have argued that the evidence is not as air-tight as these authors believe. [9]
The Bat Creek Stone was also found with two bracelets, but these were dated to the eighteenth or nineteenth century. [10] This heightens the evidence of fraud still further.
McCulloch has replied to this analysis, arguing that the characteristics of the stone itself suggest many years of weathering, and argues that the inscription is not identical to the Masonic encyclopedia. [11]
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The Burrows Cave collection is a group of "artifacts" supposedly found in a cave in Illinois, named after Russell Burrows, the person who initially found the cave. To this day, Burrows Cave enthusiasts have never demonstrated the existence of the cave. The artifacts contain many obvious hallmarks of modern manufacture, including the so-called "mystic symbol" found on artifacts in the Michigan artifacts collection. This is offered as evidence that the hoaxers deliberately meant to associate these artifacts with the Michigan collection. Some LDS people have fallen prey to those who push these artifacts as genuine.
As one author notes, there are no known caves in the proper area of Illinois--the geology isn't right:
In the May 2012 issue of Public Archaeology, Joseph Wilson, a University of New Haven anthropologist, describes it as a phantasmagorical cave in southern Illinois that contains “life-sized solid-gold statues and a series of gigantic black stone statues in Egyptian and Carthaginian dress, solid gold sarcophagi and coffins containing mummies, stone sarcophagi, pagan idols, arsenals of bronze weapons, suits of armor ...” It goes on, but you get the idea.
Why haven’t you read about this amazing discovery in National Geographic? Burrows Cave has been largely ignored by archaeologists because there is no evidence to back up any of the extravagant claims made about the site.
In fact, Wilson observes that “there is no geological evidence of any caves” in that part of Illinois. Not surprisingly, the guy who claims to have discovered Burrows Cave has never allowed anyone else to see it. [1]
If we cannot confirm that a cave exists, and experts cannot even visit the cave, we ought to put no trust in its claims until they can be publicly demonstrated.
Tablets that reportedly come from the cave are also not plausible:
Wilson says that thousands of inscribed stone tablets that were supposedly taken from the cave have been sold to “hopeful collectors and sympathetic research institutions such as the Midwestern Epigraphic Society in Ohio.”
Wilson says the tablets are obvious fakes. They include a weird mix of styles representing cultures separated by thousands of years. For example, one tablet has an image of an apparently Phoenician ship that is a carelessly copied, ridiculous mash up of two entirely different kinds of vessel — one end is the front of a warship with a ram, and the other is the front of a merchant ship with a carved animal-head at the prow. [2]
The Burrows Cave claims and artifacts should not be used as evidence of the Book of Mormon's account or of other aspects of ancient history.
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