{"id":1720,"date":"2004-12-08T13:05:03","date_gmt":"2004-12-08T18:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2004-12-08T13:17:24","modified_gmt":"2004-12-08T18:17:24","slug":"swords-and-clubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2004\/12\/swords-and-clubs\/","title":{"rendered":"Swords and Clubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drawing on some existing discussion, Jeff Lindsay suggests that the “swords” of the Book of Mormon may have actually been spiked wooden war clubs<\/a>. This idea seems problematic for several reasons:<\/p>\n

First, the Nephites _had_ at least some old-world style swords. They had the sword of Laban<\/a>. And they made a number of others like it<\/a>. They retained this technology up through and including to King Benjamin’s day<\/a>.
\nSecond, Nephite swords as described did a number of things that war clubs would have difficulty doing. The break by the hilt, and they can cleanly scalp a person while leaving him still alive<\/a>. They “cut.”<\/a> They smite off arms<\/a>. They are drawn<\/a>.
\nThird, Jaredite swords were made of steel and had hilts and blades<\/a>. They behead<\/a>. The Nephites had these swords, and would certainly have tried to copy them.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: The war-club theory sounds like an interesting idea, but seems inconsistent with the Book of Mormon text we now have.<\/p>\n

EDIT: Just to be entirely clear about my own (lack of) expertise here, my knowledge of swords, clubs, and so forth is mostly based on watching The Lord of the Rings a few times. I’ll gladly defer to any actual experts, who may be able to better explain this idea which (for now) doesn’t make it past my own “smell test.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drawing on some existing discussion, Jeff Lindsay suggests that the “swords” of the Book of Mormon may have actually been spiked wooden war clubs. This idea seems problematic for several reasons:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}