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Jenkins 22: Credible and Plausible?

Jenkins 22: Credible and Plausible?

Last updated on: July 22, 2015 at 8:00 am by William Hamblin

Jenkins 22: Credible and Plausible? 2015-07-22T08:00:34-07:00 William Hamblin

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Here’s something new from Jenkins. I’m providing two comments here in blue.

1- From the beginning of this discussion I have insisted that the fundamental problems are epistemological, hermeneutical and methodological, not evidentiary. The problems center around interpretation of evidence, not the evidence per se. Jenkins seems unable to grasp this fundamental point. He insists that we provide “credible and plausible” evidence. This is progress of a sort. At least tacitly, he seems to have agreed that there is evidence for the BOM of a sort. His problem now is that he doesn’t find it “credible and plausible.” Note, this is an subjective interpretation on his part. The real question is, as it has always been: What makes evidence “credible and plausible”? The truth of the matter is–and this is true of all those who reject the historicity of the BOM whom I have encountered–since Jenkins a priori rejects the historicity of the BOM, any other interpretation of the evidence is inherently more “credible and plausible” to him than the interpretation that something might be evidence for the historicity of the BOM. This is purely a subjective and prejudicial opinion of a man, who is admittedly not an expert in the field, who has rejected the historicity of the BOM without having read the text with any degree of seriousness, and who resolutely refuses to read any book or article presenting evidence and arguments supporting the historicity of the BOM if they were written by LDS scholars. And we are supposed to think that Jenkins’ opinions are objective and empirical? Really?

2- From the beginning of this discussion I have insisted that the Mesoamerican Maya inscriptions are problematic because of the difficulties of script, phonetic interpretation, and dialectical and chronological change. This renders knowing ancient pronunciation of Maya proper names of places and people extremly uncertain. I am not giving my interpretation of the phonetics here. Maya specialists disagree among themselves, and change their mind. That’s the nature of the evidence. Certainty in this field is impossible. Yet Jenkins insists that Mesoamerican inscriptional data is objective and empirical. Really?

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Oh my. I actually asked for credible and plausible evidence, which did not begin to apply (for instance) to your offerings concerning the alleged entrada of the 370s, Akish, the homonyms, etc. In each case, I pointed out why your explanations were silly and or groundless, and that you should be embarrassed to proffer such weak evidence.

And let’s look at those shall we? You WITHDREW Akish yourself when you were told that the name could not have sounded like that – yet here it is?

You write,

1- I asked if a BOM king name appeared in Maya texts would you accept it as “objective evidence.” You said you would. I provided the evidence. You immediately changed the rules and demanded a different type king name. The fact that the name, date, and royal function of Akish in the BOM matches the name, date and function of U-Kix in the Maya tradition means nothing–mere coincidence.

Then you write this,

NOTE: My friend Mark Wright, a professional Maya scholar and linguist, just informed me that recent phonetic interpretations of the glyph traditionally rendered as “kix/kish” below are now thought to read “kokan.” If the new interpretation is correct, then this argument is rendered moot.

Consistency, anyone? Do you have short term memory issues?

And you freely admitted that your homonyms were all so speculative. – yet here it is?

I have already trashed Nahom beyond repair. Read my NAHOM FOLLIES again, if you like.

So that Rule of One thing is still applying. Good luck.

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