Richard Packham has shown his true colours with the following post:
One example of JT's academic dishonesty was a video which showed several apologists deffendiing BoM against critics. JT took on the claim that the BoM spoke of horses when there were no horses in America at BoM times. He read the passage in 2 Nephi that said the people had horses. Then he pointed out that the passage was simply a quote from Isaiah, and OF COURSE the people he was talking about had horses, but that was in the Old World! QED! Implied: the BoM does not mention American horses.
Of course he did not deal with the other half dozen BoM passages mentioning horses that clearly refer to Nephites and Jaredites.
This is not an example of Tvedtnes' dishonesty, but Packham's. The Living Hope Ministries' video attempted to portray the Book of Mormon as speaking of horses and chariots as being abundant. That is the context of Tvedtnes discussing the fact that they were using Nephi's quotation of Isaiah out of context. Tvedtnes was more than familiar with the issue of horses elsewhere in the Book of Mormon among both the Jaredites and Nephites (see the section, “A Horse is a Horse, of Course” in his paper, The Mistakes of Men: Can the Scriptures be Error-Free?
Here is the video clip Packham is speaking of:
Watching the clip, it becomes clear that Tvedtnes's statement pertains to chariots, not horses per se, and that it was in the Old World, not New, that the Book of Mormon (though the Isaiah texts) speaks of many chariots as well as horses.
This clip comes from FAIR (now FairMormon's) full-length refutation of Living Hope Ministries' The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon which can be viewed at:
Packham is just proving himself to be disingenuous.
It should also be noted that the “horse” may not be an anachronism in the Book of Mormon anymore. For a full discussion, see Wade E. Miller and Matthew Roper, Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Perspectives, BYU Studies 56/4. For a summary, see the article from Book of Mormon Central, New Evidence for Horses in America.
I also recall Tvedtnes explaining why some of Joseph Smith's prophecies failed to come true: they had not yet been "canonized" (a term he kept from his Catholic upbringing).
"Canonised" is not a uniquely Catholic term. It is used in theology (not just Catholic) to refer to works accepted as a collection of authoritative texts (further, how it is popularly used in Catholic theology and piety often refers to the recognition of someone being in heaven and it being proper to pray to/through them to seek their heavenly intercession).
With respect to prophecies, Tvedtnes' response to Dick Baer's listing of 52 purportedly false prophecies can be found here:
Tvedtnes engages in historical analysis and exegesis in this 1985 paper, so I find it hard to believe that Packham's recollection of his exchange with Tvedtnes on this point is correct.
At 84 years of age, Packham himself will soon be meeting his maker, and unlike Tvedtnes has a one-way ticket to hell (cf. Rev 21:8). One does hope and pray he will repent before it is too late.
