“Kib Reigned in His Stead”

Brant Gardner

Linguistic: Bruce Warren (although Bruce Warren is only one of three authors, his background compared to the others strongly indicates that he is the source of this particular set of parallels) suggests that several Jaredite names have been retained in Mesoamerica:

Jaredite Names Used in Mesoamerica Today

Personal Names

Kib    Name of the sixth month in the Yucatec Maya calendar.

Shule    Name of the sixteenth day of the 260-day calendar in Yucatec.

Akish    Close parallel to the Quiche Maya kaqix (Caquix) of the Popol Vuh. The name combines kaq “red” and qix “feather” and means the scarlet macaw parrot. (Tedlock 1996, 237). (The x is pronounced as sh in English in Mesoamerican words and names.)

Com    Tzotzil Maya for “log stool” or “armadillo” (Laughlin 1975, 104).

Kish Two meanings for this word are available: (1) “kix” in Yucatec and Chol Maya, meaning “spine,” “thorn,” and maybe “stingray spine” (Stross 1998, e-mail) and (2) “kix” in the Palenque hieroglyphs “feather” (Kelley 1965, 112, 114, Figures 23, 34, 49-53)…

Shiblon    The Shib or Xib part of the name is very common in Yucatec Maya-for example, Chak-Xib-Chak, Ek­Xib-Chak, Sak-Xib-Chak, Kan-Xib-Chak, etc. (Blaine M. Yorgason, Bruce W. Warren, and Harold Brown. New Evidences of Christ in Ancient America. Book of Mormon Research Foundation, Stratford Books, 1999, p. 18).

The problem with each of these is not that they don’t appear to be similar to Maya, because they do. The problem is that they appear similar to a language that was not around at the time of the earliest Jaredites, and was never in that region of the country. The time depth for the Olmec language and the historical distribution of that language, tells us that the language would have been Mixe-Zoque. (Campbell, Lyle and Terrence Kaufman. “A Linguistic Look at the Olmecs.” American Antiquity. Vol. 41, 1976, pp. 80-89). The suggested parallels are something like finding words in modern German that look like something that we think came from ancient Rome. There might be load words because there was cultural connections, but the languages are distinct in time and place. Until historical reconstruction is done that shows each of these words to be related to Mixe-Zoquean (and reconstructed to the earlier time periods) then we should be ignore such superficial linguistic speculation. Even if we presume that the later Mosiah or Moroni “translated” the names, the most likely language of the Nephites after coming to Zarahemla would be Zoquean, not Maya. Zoquean is a daughter language of Mixe Zoque, so little change would be expected. At present, it is best to ignore these particular “proofs.”

Chronology: The king-list chronology would place the reign of Kib at 1090-1060 B.C.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

References