=1. Diversity of Literary Style in the Book of Mormon.=--"There
is a marked difference in the literary style of Nephi and some of
the other earlier prophets from that of Mormon and Moroni. Mormon
and his son are more direct and take fewer words to express their
ideas than did the earlier writers; at least their manner is, to
most readers, the more pleasing. Amos, the son of Jacob, has also
a style peculiar to himself. There is another noticeable fact
that when original records or discourses, such as the record of
Limhi, the sermons of Alma, Amulek, etc., the epistles of
Helaman, and others, are introduced into Mormon's abridgment,
words and expressions are used that appear nowhere else in the
Book of Mormon. This diversity of style, expression, and wording
is a very pleasing incidental testimony to the truth of the claim
made for the Book of Mormon,--that it is a compilation of the
work of many writers."--From Lectures on the Book of Mormon, by
Elder George Reynolds.
=2. Mexican Date of the Deluge.=--In speaking of the time of the
Deluge as given by the Mexican author, Ixtilxochitl, Elder George
Reynolds says:--There is a remarkable agreement between this
writer's statements and the Book of Genesis. The time from the
Fall to the Flood only differs sixty, possibly only five years,
if the following statement in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants
(cvii, 49) regarding Enoch lengthens the chronology: "And he saw
the Lord, and he walked with him, and was before his face
continually; and he walked with God 365 years, making him 430
years old when he was translated." The same statement is made in
the Pearl of Great Price, Moses vii, 67.--From lecture on
_External Evidences of the Book of Mormon_, by Elder George
Reynolds.
=3. Ancient Civilization in America.=--"That a civilization once
flourished in these regions [Central America and Mexico] much
higher than any the Spanish conquerors found upon their arrival,
there can be no doubt. By far the most important work that has
been done among the remains of the old Maya civilization has been
carried on by the Peabody Museum of Harvard College, through a
series of expeditions it has sent to the buried city now called
Copan, in Spanish Honduras. In a beautiful valley near the
borderland of Guatemala, surrounded by steep mountains and
watered by a winding river, the hoary city lies wrapped in the
sleep of ages. The ruins at Copan, although in a more advanced
state of destruction than those of the Maya cities of Yucatan,
have a general similarity to the latter in the design of the
buildings, and in the sculptures, while the characters in the
inscriptions are essentially the same. It would seem, therefore,
that Copan was a city of the Mayas; but if so it must have been
one of their most ancient settlements, fallen into decay long
before the cities of Yucatan reached their prime. The Maya
civilization was totally distinct from the Aztec or Mexican; it
was an older and also a much higher civilization."--Henry C.
Walsh, in article, _Copan--a City of the Dead_, Harper's Weekly,
October, 1897.
Baldwin in his valuable work "Ancient America" incorporates the
conclusions announced by Bradford in regard to the ancient
occupants of North America, as follows:--
"That they were all of the same origin, branches of the same
race, and possessed of similar customs and institutions.
"That they were populous, and occupied a great extent of
territory.
"That they had arrived at a considerable degree of civilization,
were associated in large communities, and lived in extensive
cities.
"That they possessed the use of many of the metals, such as lead,
copper, gold, and silver, and probably the art of working in
them.
"That they sculptured in stone, and sometimes used that material
in the construction of their edifices.
"That they had the knowledge of the arch of receding steps; of
the art of pottery, producing urns and utensils formed with
taste, and constructed upon the principles of chemical
composition; and the art of brick-making.
"That they worked the salt springs, and manufactured salt.
"That they were an agricultural people, living under the
influence and protection of regular forms of governments.
"That they possessed a decided system of religion, and a
mythology connected with astronomy, which, with its sister
science, geometry, was in the hands of the priesthood.
"That they were skilled in the art of fortification.
"That the epoch of their original settlement in the United States
is of great antiquity; and that the only indications of their
origin to be gathered from the locality of their ruined
monuments, point toward Mexico."--Baldwin, _Ancient America_, p.
56.
=4. American Traditions concerning the Deluge.=--"Don Francisco
Munoz de la Vega, the Bishop of that diocese (Chiapas), certifies
in the prologue to his 'Diocesan Constitutions,' declaring that
an ancient manuscript of the primitive Indians of that province,
who had learned the art of writing, was in his record office, who
retained the constant tradition that the father and founder of
their nation was named Teponahuale, which signifies lord of the
hollow piece of wood; and that he was present at the building of
the Great Wall, for so they named the Tower of Babel; and beheld
with his own eyes the confusion of language; after which event,
God, the Creator, commanded him to come to these extensive
regions, and to divide them amongst mankind."--Lord Kingsborough,
_Mexican Antiquities_, vol. viii, p. 25.
"It is found in the histories of the Toltecs that this age and
first world, as they call it, lasted 1,716 years: that men were
destroyed by tremendous rains and lightnings from the sky, and
even all the land, without the exception of anything, and the
highest mountains, were covered up and submerged in water fifteen
cubits (caxtolmolatli); and here they added other fables of how
men came to multiply from the few who escaped from this
destruction in a 'toptlipetlocali;' that this word nearly
signifies a close chest; and how, after men had multiplied, they
erected a very high 'zacuali,' which is to-day a tower of great
height, in order to take refuge in it should the second world
(age) be destroyed. Presently their languages were confused, and,
not being able to understand each other, they went to different
parts of the earth."--The same, vol. ix, p. 321.
"The most important among the American traditions are the
Mexican, for they appear to have been definitely fixed by
symbolic and mnemonic paintings before any contact with
Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican
cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain people Teocipactli or
Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal,
in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft made of
cypress-wood (_Cypressus disticha_). Paintings retracing the
deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs,
Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the
latter is still more strikingly in conformity with the story as
we have it in Genesis, and in Chaldean sources. It tells how
Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children,
and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential
to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god
Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a
vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcases with
which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other
birds, of which the humming bird only came back, with a leafy
branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country began to
vegetate, left his bark on the mountain of
Colhuacan."--Donnelly's _Atlantis_, p. 99.
The tradition of a Deluge "was the received notion, under some
form or other, of the most civilized people in the Old World, and
of the barbarians of the New. The Aztecs combined with this some
particular circumstances of a more arbitrary character,
resembling the accounts of the east. They believed that two
persons survived the Deluge, a man named Coxcox and his wife.
Their heads are represented in ancient painting, together with a
boat floating on the waters at the foot of a mountain. A dove is
also depicted, with a hieroglyphical emblem of language in his
mouth, which he is distributing to the children of Coxcox, who
were born dumb. The neighboring people of Michoacan, inhabiting
the same high plains of the Andes, had a still further tradition,
that the boat in which Tegpi, their Noah, escaped, was filled
with various kinds of animals and birds. After some time a
vulture was sent out from it, but remained feeding on the dead
bodies of the giants which had been left on the earth as the
waters subsided. The little humming bird, _huitzitzilin_, was
then sent forth, and returned with a twig in his mouth. The
coincidence of both these accounts with the Hebrew and Chaldean
narratives is obvious."--Prescott, _Conquest of Mexico_, pp.
463-64.
=5. Mexican Tradition concerning the Savior.=--"The story of the
life of the Mexican divinity, Quetzalcoatl, closely resembles
that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no
other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same
being. But the history of the former has been handed down to us
through an impure Lamanitish source, which has sadly disfigured
and perverted the original incidents and teachings of the
Savior's life and ministry. Regarding this god, Humboldt writes,
'How truly surprising is it to find that the Mexicans, who seem
to have been unacquainted with the doctrine of the migration of
the soul and the Metempsychosis _should have believed in the
incarnation of the only Son of the supreme God, Tomacateuctli_.
For Mexican mythology, speaking of no other Son of God except
Quetzalcoatl, who was born of Chimelman, the virgin of Tula
(without man), by His breath alone, by which may be signified His
word or will, when it was announced to Chimelman, by the
celestial messenger whom He despatched to inform her that she
should conceive a son, it must be presumed this was Quetzalcoatl,
who was the only son. Other authors might be adduced to show that
the Mexicans believe that this Quetzalcoatl was both God and man;
that He had, previously to His incarnation, existed from
eternity, and that He had been the Creator both of the world and
man; and that He had descended to reform the world by endurance,
and being King of Tula, was crucified for the sins of mankind,
etc., as is plainly declared in the tradition of Yucatan, and
mysteriously represented in the Mexican paintings.'"--Pres. John
Taylor, _Mediation and Atonement_, p. 201.
=7. Survival of the Hebrew Language among American Tribes.=--"It
is claimed that such survivals are numerous in the religious
songs and ceremonies of many of the tribes. A number of writers
who visited or resided among the tribes of the northern
continent, assert that the words Yehovah, Yah, Ale, and
Hallelujah, could be distinctly heard in these exercises. Laet
and Escarbotus assure us that they often heard the South American
Indians repeat the sacred word Hallelujah."--Elder George
Reynolds, _The Language of the Book of Mormon_.
=8. "The Origin of the Pre-Columbian Civilization of
America."=--Under this title an instructive article by G. Elliot
Smith appeared in _Science_ vol. xliv, pp. 190-195 (August 11,
1916). As to the interest accorded to the subject, the author
says: "In the whole range of ethnological discussion perhaps no
theme has evoked livelier controversies and excited more
widespread interest than the problems involved in the mysteries
of the wonderful civilization that revealed itself to the
astonished Spaniards on their first arrival in America.
"During the last century, which can be regarded as covering the
whole period of scientific investigation in anthropology, the
opinions of those who have devoted attention to such inquiries
have undergone the strangest fluctuations. If one delves into the
anthropological journals of forty or fifty years ago they will be
found to abound in careful studies on the part of many of the
leading ethnologists of the time, demonstrating, apparently in a
convincing and unquestionable manner, the spread of curious
customs or beliefs from the Old World to the New." The writer
decries the fallacy of assuming that similarities in customs and
culture of widely separated peoples can be explained on any other
basis than that of a common origin, and proceeds as follows: "Why
then, it will be asked, in the face of the overwhelming mass of
definite and well-authenticated evidence clearly pointing to the
sources in the Old World from which American civilization sprung,
do so many ethnologists refuse to accept the clear and obvious
meaning of the facts and resort to such childish subterfuges as I
have mentioned? Putting aside the influence of Darwin's work, the
misunderstanding of which, as Huxley remarked, 'led shallow
persons to talk nonsense in the name of anthropological science,'
the main factor in blinding so many investigators to appreciate
the significance of the data they themselves so laboriously
collect results from a defect incidental to the nature of their
researches.... The failure to recognize the fact, recently
demonstrated so convincingly by Dr. Rivers, that useful arts are
often lost is another, and perhaps the chief, difficulty that has
stood in the way of an adequate appreciation of the history of
the spread of civilization." Dr. Smith presents an impressive
array of evidence pointing to the Old World and specifically to
Egypt, as the source of many of the customs by which the American
aborigines are distinguished. The article is accompanied by a map
showing probable routes of travel from the Old World to the New,
and two landing places on the west coast, one in Mexico and
another near the boundary common to Peru and Chile, from which
places the immigrants spread.