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To: colorcountry; Logophile
The information already gleaned is quite damaging to the LDS claim of Israelite migration to the Americas.

The linguistic evidence is fairly fatal on that score as well, despite claims to the contrary. I am studying Iroquoian and Algonquian languages now, and it's fairly obvious that their grammatical construction is way way different from anything we see in Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) or Indo-European.

If indeed a group of Jews came to North America and their language was so totally transformed in the course of 2000 years so as to have totally no recognizable relation to the original Hebrew, it would be unparalleled with any similar kind of language change ever observed in history.

By contrast, in the same span of 2000 years Latin only moved as far as Italian, French, and Spanish. Proto-Eastern-Algonquian only moved as far as Abenaki, Massachusett, and Delaware.

Factor in the tenacity with which Jews have held on to their liturgical language no matter where they were dispersed in the world, and I think the theory unravels rather quickly.

25 posted on 01/19/2006 9:51:03 AM PST by Claud
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To: Claud
You makes some very interesting points.

I've read another tactic the Church is taking against the DNA evidence. That is to say that the Jaredites, Nephites, and Lamanites were only a smaller number of the population; that they joined an already established population of Amerindians that had migrated across the Bering Straight. This theory goes on to say that the Iraelite genotype was overwhelmed by the genotype of the larger populations of Asiatics.

I really don't think they should take this approach since they've been marketing the Church as the history of the Polynesians and American Indians for over 150 years. I don't know how they continue changing their story and their history and get away with it.
26 posted on 01/19/2006 10:28:25 AM PST by colorcountry (Currently not in the process of becoming a God!)
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To: Claud
The linguistic evidence is fairly fatal on that score as well, despite claims to the contrary. I am studying Iroquoian and Algonquian languages now, and it's fairly obvious that their grammatical construction is way way different from anything we see in Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) or Indo-European.

You are attacking a straw man. That is, no knowledgeable LDS scholar would claim that all or even most Native American languages are derived from Hebrew.

Moreover, most scholars believe that the Book of Mormon lands were in Central America. So if you are looking for evidences of Hebrew in Iroquoian and Algonquian, you are likely looking in the wrong place.

27 posted on 01/19/2006 11:31:45 AM PST by Logophile
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