Tues. 8/21 Good morning Brandon, How do you tell the difference between food poisoning and a heart attack? I am sharing a hidden secret with you. I have wondered if I have had minor heart attacks or twinges for the last few years. Besides fighting depression and allergies, heartburn from overeating at night and perhaps gall bladder squeaks, this fear of heart attacks burdens me. @ I have been dragging my but for weeks. By hopping in the car and getting to FS at 9 am I have avoided trying to figure out how to start each day while feeling depressed. So many things seem to overwhelm me. I was supposed to drive over to Harrisburg Estates to pick up a tank and fish from Pam, Amber’s Petsmart client. I vented my anxiety into changing the water in my 3 biggest tanks and then knew that sitting down in the house would just discourage me further. I went out to my hammock and prayed and sang and told HF why I was there. It worked. In 10 minutes I had the courage to get ready and drive to the north side of Quail Creek reservoir where you may find Harrisburg estates. I drove home, arranged the fish and napped the rest of the day. I felt like food poisoning from the 2 chicken thighs I had cooked and eaten Friday night. I prayed about it Saturday night and recognized I felt sick enough to miss church. I felt a little better Sunday morning and eventually got ready for church. Monday I was sick again. No FS either Saturday nor Monday. I stopped watering my back bermuda grass lawn a couple of months ago. Little did I realize that my huge sycamore tree could dry up and die! My yard is covered with sycamore leaves and it is only August! How stupid! My 2 big goals yesterday were to rake the leaves from the back lawn and bike to FS. I water the back lawn overnight to let the water penetrate and the sprayers aren’t fast. I watered it all night last night. Horray! And I biked to FS this morning! Horray. I have let my physical fitness go downhill. By biking and walking to FS I should improve. I have taken my first step. @ I have listened to the whole BoM up to 3N this last week. So although depressed, I have used my sitting around time. I repeat chapters when I miss something. I have never done it this fast before. Over and over again the bad kings and judges accuse the prophet of blasphemy for saying Christ would be born and come down and live among men! So fascinating. @ The cities and lands and towns are better known to me than ever before. When they say north and south and east and west I can imagine which city they will come to next, almost. John Sorenson’s books have blessed me. @ I have felt like giving up on my goal of a million. Too boring!
Reviewing is so boring! @ When EHChenney was here last week I was able to find out how to get our stake leader the foreign language report from the church! That was a big accomplishment. @ Live and learn. Trust and try. Onward and upward. See you later. 3:09pm My good author John L Sorenson says: Archaeological evidence from all New World areas where the early Nephites and Lamanites could have lived makes clear that peoples who descended from the Jaredite era also lived during the time of Lehi’s descendants. Given Laman and Lemuel’s ambition to rule, perhaps they or their descendants ruled over and absorbed such “natives.” Nephite record keepers perhaps did not know the details of that process, but that is the best explanation that I know of for the remarkable growth in the number of Lamanites.@SEPTEMBER 1992 I HAVE HEARD THAT THE SIZES OF THE NEPHITE AND LAMANITE POPULATIONS INDICATED IN THE BOOK OF MORMON DO NOT MAKE SENSE. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THEIR NUMBERS?
John L. Sorenson, professor of anthropology, emeritus, Brigham Young University, and Gospel Doctrine teacher, Edgemont Seventh Ward, Provo Utah Edgemont South Stake. Discussions of this topic tend to one extreme or the other. Some people have made invalid assumptions about possible rates of natural increase among Lehi’s descendants. For example, growth rates derived from modern population studies are useless if they refer to conditions unlike those prevailing in Book of Mormon times. We have no way of knowing whether the newcomers had trouble adapting to the climate and new foods. Nor do we know what diseases afflicted the people at that time. On the other hand, we get nowhere by speculating on unknowable things like a doubling of population every generation among the early immigrants.
Although the Book of Mormon is silent on population growth and decline as such, it does provide glimpses of how the numbers were growing. For example, the data on armies and battle casualties indicate quite consistent growth.
An obvious puzzle is how the Lamanites could have become so much more numerous than the Nephites. The early Lamanites are pictured as being dependent on hunting; the Nephites, on farming. (See 2 Ne. 5:11, 24.) Although it is a certain rule in population studies that hunting groups cannot support nearly as many people as can farmers, more than two hundred years later the Nephite record says the Lamanites were “exceedingly more numerous” (Jarom 1:6) than the Nephites, and that pattern continues all along. Simple natural increase by births cannot account for this difference.
The same problem surfaces in Alma 43:14 where we learn that the Amulonites were “as numerous, nearly, as were the Nephites.” And yet the Amulonites had begun less than seventy years earlier when Noah’s priests carried off Lamanite women to be their wives. (See Mosiah 20.)
The answers to such puzzles must lie in situations beyond normal population growth. In this regard, the case of the early Nephites is helpful. Mosiah, father of Benjamin, fled the land of Nephi sometime before 200 B.C. with “as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord.” (Omni 1:13.) The record implies that only a part of the Nephites existing at that time went with Mosiah to Zarahemla.
Jarom 1:13 had already mentioned dissensions from the Nephites, no later than 360 B.C. The dissenters, like later ones, could have settled among the Lamanites, swelling their numbers while reducing the size of the Nephite group. Also, after Mosiah’s refugees went to Zarahemla, some of the Nephites left behind may have joined the Lamanites, for no further mention is made of them (unless they became the Amalekites, referred to in Alma 43:13 as dissenters but having an unexplained origin).
Archaeological evidence from all New World areas where the early Nephites and Lamanites could have lived makes clear that peoples who descended from the Jaredite era also lived during the time of Lehi’s descendants. Given Laman and Lemuel’s ambition to rule, perhaps they or their descendants ruled over and absorbed such “natives.” Nephite record keepers perhaps did not know the details of that process, but that is the best explanation that I know of for the remarkable growth in the number of Lamanites.
The case of the numerous Amulonites can be explained on similar grounds—taking control over a resident population.
An interesting note is that some such natives might have lived with or near the early Nephites. Notice that when Sherem “came … among the people of Nephi” (within the lifetime of Jacob, Lehi’s son), he “sought much opportunity” to meet Jacob. (See Jacob 7:1–3.) Yet, the entire population descended from the original Nephites could not have exceeded a hundred adults by that time. In such a tiny tribe, why had Sherem not already met Jacob—unless he was from a foreign group that had come under the rule of the Nephite king?[Wow, great point!-v]
These cases teach us that there is simply not enough information in the scriptural record to construct a clear picture of Nephite and Lamanite population sizes over time. Nor can we estimate with surety how war, famine, dissensions, contentions, and other factors affected population growth. In short, our presently limited record discourages any attempt to interpret Nephite or Lamanite population history.
Yet there is no reason to question the population numbers in the Book of Mormon. They are all believable once we recognize some of the historical and biological factors that could have been involved. @@@Here’s another set of interesting paragraphs from: www.fairmormon.org
Another benefit of economic prosperity is that there is often a large net immigration. When the Romans conquered the southern part of Great Britain, they brought with them both their rule of law and adequate technology to spark economic growth. As a result, the population of that part of the island skyrocketed, as not only Romans joined the native Britons in search of opportunity, barbarians from non-Roman parts of Britain immigrated and mingled with the local population. As Roman power declined, they withdrew from that island, and thus, the population fell there, as both Roman law and markets were lost.37
The United States of America, the wealthiest nation ever to exist in human history,38 has been the world’s number one recipient of immigrants throughout its history.39 During each decade from 1850 through 1910, about ten percent of the recorded population of the United States had immigrated during the previous decade.40 As late as 1930, more than ten percent of the people were foreign born.41 Up to three-fourths of the American people during that era were either immigrants or the children of immigrants.42 [What? No kidding? That sounds impossible!]Thus, it is not unreasonable that 25% of the combined Nephite and Lamanite populations would have been born outside of areas controlled by these two powers, and there is no reason to exclude other immigrant populations, as www.josephlied.com does.43 The economic opportunity that the Book of Mormon ascribes to both the Nephites and Lamanites tends to draw large numbers of immigrants into their societies.
The Book of Mormon gives ample room to suppose that the Nephites absorbed other groups into their civilization. First of all, contrary to the implication at www.josephlied.com,44 there were other Jaredite survivors besides Coriantumr;45 the Prophet Ether survived those wars.46 Secondly, the Nephite record certainly allows for other groups immigrating under direction of the Lord,47 and explicitly states that the Nephites will be mixed with other peoples.48 The latter may suffice to explain why Jewish-type DNA is so rare among indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere.49 With a steady stream of immigrants arriving in Nephite and Lamanite territory in search of the economic opportunity afforded by the Israelite-type legal system, other races could easily overwhelm the Israelites in the general population, even though Israelites might remain the governing class. In this sense, Lehi could still be said to be the “principal ancestor” of the ancient American peoples. It also appears that while the civilizations were destroyed, not necessarily all of the people died.50
Considering that (conservatively) twenty-five percent of the population were either “foreign born” or children of immigrants, it is reasonable that more than 490,000 people were living in the Nephite and Lamanite areas by 150 B.C. (more than enough to accommodate the thousands of dead mentioned in Mosiah 9:18-19).51 It is also plausible that more than seven million people were alive at the time of Jesus Christ’s mortal ministry.52 Even assuming only a “tithe” of survivors (more than 700,000) of the catastrophes described in 3 Nephi 8-11, a population of up to 100 million by AD 350 is not beyond reason. This figure is more than sufficient to sustain the hundreds of thousands of Nephite dead during the “Battle of Cumorah.”53
Thus, the mingling of healthy and wealthy Israelite blood with indigenous and other immigrant peoples makes the “multitudes” claimed by the Book of Mormon quite appropriate. amor@@ I have been keeping track of some of the numbers. Nephi and Lehi converted tens of thousands of Lamanites! What? Where did they all come from? Answer: absorption. Fascinating!
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