Science & Archaeologyhorsesanachronismbook-of-mormonarchaeology

Horses in Ancient America

The Book of Mormon mentions horses in the New World. Isn’t that a fatal anachronism?

Bible

The Bible answers

Bible · 2 Peter 3:16

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

NRSVUE
speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

Bible · Job 39:19

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?

NRSVUE
Do you give the horse its might? Do you clothe its neck with mane?

Book of Mormon

They quote our book

Alma 18:9
The verse they screenshot. Loan-shift or incomplete dirt — not a death blow.
And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding thy horses. Now the king had commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots, and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi;

The Book of Mormon answers

1 Nephi 18:25
And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were beasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men. And we did find all manner of ore, both of gold, and of silver, and of copper.

Ancient witnesses

Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.

Loan-shift and translation of unfamiliar fauna

The Septuagint and other ancient translations regularly map unknown animals onto familiar names. Hebrew re’em becomes “unicorn” in the KJV. The issue is not dishonesty. It is what translators do when the receptor language lacks the exact beast.

If Nephi’s Reformed Egyptian used a term Joseph rendered “horse,” the English word may name an American equid, a tapir-like mount in a loan-shift (a hypothesis, not a dogma), or a real Equus whose American timeline is still debated. Overconfidence on any one of those is unwise. So is the critic’s overconfidence that 1830 archaeology had the last word.

Faithful answers

Scripture Central

Scripture Central KnoWhys

Scripture Central

Horses in the Book of Mormon are rare, never used as charging medieval cavalry in the way critics imagine, and sit inside a translated text. Meanwhile, Equus remains have a New World history, and the timing of extinction is an empirical question that has moved before. This is a live research problem, not a closed coffin.

The Book of Mormon’s horse is a translation issue and an archaeological issue at once. Limited geography, limited role in the text, loan-shift, and ongoing finds all keep the anachronism charge from being the simple kill-shot it is advertised to be.

The text does not have Nephite knights on Arabian stallions. Horses appear in small numbers, often with chariots that in Mesoamerica can mean wheeled elite transport or palanquin-language, depending on the reading.
Joseph left some unknown terms untranslated (cureloms, cumoms, neas, sheum). “Horse” may be a translation choice, not a zoological voucher.
American horses existed. Conventional chronology has them gone by the early Holocene and back with the Spanish. Conventional chronologies have been revised before; some claimed late remains remain disputed. We should not bluff either way.
A genuine difficulty is not the same thing as a demonstrated fraud. Alma 36’s craft and 1 Nephi 16’s Nahom are not erased by one faunal term.

Read the original

Keep going

Rate this answer

Be the first to tell us if this case is strong.