Continued Correspondence with Kevin : XV - XXVIII

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Gutsick Gibbon on Cross Disciplinarity Outlawed in Academia, Heat Problem, Gate-Keeping · Gutsick Gibbon's Five Points Answered, I, Heat Problem and Extra on Absence of Solutions As Criterium · Gutsick Gibbon on Overturning Paradigms and Castile Formation · Geologic Column : Absent from Land Vertebrate Palaeontology · Continuing with Kevin · Creation vs. Evolution : Could Guy Berthault Conduct a New Experiment, Please? · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Correspondence with Gutsick Gibbon (Erika) and with Kevin R. Henke · Continued Correspondence with Kevin : XV - XXVIII

XV

Kevin R. Henke to me

2/18/2022 at 1:29 AM

Re: Here is, first, the debate

No, Hans, you've going off on pedantic trivia that is totally irrelevant and totally missing the important lesson. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever if any of Gilbert's, Hoffmann's, Spaulding's great, .... great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, 3rd cousins twice removed or other relatives became Mormons are not. The point is that a con-man and false prophet named Joseph Smith took works of fiction, speculatory histories about the Native Americans and just made up stories about fictional characters, battles and entire cities that supposedly existed thousands of years ago in the Americas and convinced a lot of people, including illiterate people that did not know anything about Spaulding, etc. that the stories were true. Then, there are millions more that are just born into Mormonism. They believe the lies because their parents did. Today millions believe these lies in the Mormon churches and spread them through their evangelism projects. In other cases, people like Reagan confused movie plots and novels and thought that they were history, and there's a lot of Americans that still admire Reagan and believe what is in his speeches. There are millions of Americans that actually believe that Columbus proved that the Earth was round and that he landed in what is now the United States. There are people that believe that "The Force" exists. They knew nothing about Eastern religions until they saw Star Wars. We have millions of Americans that believe that false prophets like Kat Kerr regularly go to Heaven and see Jesus and theme parks there. There is a large portion of the population that are gullible and believe almost anything. Our societies are full of urban myths and disinformation, and it's always been that way. People tell stories and some of the gullible believe they're real and the lies spread. People don't need to know anything about ancient American history to become a Mormon by birth or through the actions of a charismatic con-artist like Joseph Smith. Not surprisingly, con-artists always manage to find and exploit the gullible.

In the comment section of Erika's video, I said that Romulus was probably a legend. It's possible that someone named Romulus was a founder of Rome, but it's not necessarily true. It could be a total fiction made up by a Roman leader or priest either for entertainment or power. We don't know, but once people were born into the story or were educated to believe it, it was believed. People always want to think that the founding of their cities and nations were special.

There are partial copies of Genesis in the Dead Sea scrolls, but the bottom line is that we don't know who wrote Genesis 3 or when. It's very possible that the writer sincerely thought that Genesis 3 was an inspiration from God about events that occurred thousands of years ago from the author's time. However, that does not make it history any more than the ramblings of Joseph Smith about supposed events that occurred in the Americas thousands of years ago before him or the delusions or lies of Kat Kerr about "Christmas Town" in Heaven. It does not take very long for a charismatic con-man to form a religion and get millions to believe fiction and half-truths - Mohammad or Joseph Smith. Any blood relationships of Mormons to 18th and 19th century novelists doesn't matter at all. The point is that there are millions of people believing that fiction was actually ancient history.

Best,

Kevin

XVI

Me to Kevin R. Henke

2/18/2022 at 1:37 PM

Re: Here is, first, the debate

Mormonism doesn't qualify, because all Mormons know perfectly well that this "true" history isn't part of their normal historic collective memory as Europeans, nor a heritage from actually speaking to Indians, but a revelation or "lost manuscript refound". This is not "pedantic trivia" but absolutely essential to my case.

"There are millions of Americans that actually believe that Columbus proved that the Earth was round and that he landed in what is now the United States."

Which is not about non-events, just a distorted account of actual events.

He and Magellan did prove you could sail around the Earth, against people who predicted that too far West storms would make that impossible, or that they could not sail all the way from Spain to Japan on provisions a caravell could take along and didn't know there was a landmass in between. And he did come to the Americas, there is just a confusion between the Americas and the US which is colloquially named "America".

"There are people that believe that "The Force" exists. They knew nothing about Eastern religions until they saw Star Wars."

They don't take Luke Skywalker's childhood on Tatooine as history, which is a case in my point. There is a vast difference between changing outlook due to a work of fiction and believing the work of fiction as history.

"We have millions of Americans that believe that false prophets like Kat Kerr regularly go to Heaven and see Jesus and theme parks there."

That is not properly speaking historical. It's allegedly prophetical. I have no clue who Kat Kerr is and therefore not whether he is a true or false prophet, but suspect the latter. Please note, the one series of events in Genesis we have from prophecy rather than history is the Six Day account.

"There is a large portion of the population that are gullible and believe almost anything."

Yeah, like Evolution. But even you don't believe the latter part of Homo erectus kept track when Neanderthals and Denisovans and Homo sapiens appeared and left us with an account. Scientific reconstruction is exactly the same level of non-historicity as prophecy - it's believing something about the past because of other factors than accounts left from the past.

"Our societies are full of urban myths and disinformation, and it's always been that way. People tell stories and some of the gullible believe they're real and the lies spread."

It's not a question between "told story" and believing sth "real" it is a question between made up entertainment and believing it is historic. It is also not a question about lies about history and believing the lies are true, it's, once again, between made up fictions and believing they are actual history. And the sample of urban legends I saw don't qualify as historic statements. Whether true or false.

"In the comment section of Erika's video, I said that Romulus was probably a legend. It's possible that someone named Romulus was a founder of Rome, but it's not necessarily true. It could be a total fiction made up by a Roman leader or priest either for entertainment or power"

No, it couldn't. Romulus' father was not "son of Jove and god of war" and Romulus was not received among the gods when disappearing. But neither of these are historic statements anyway, they are metahistoric.

The problem is, why would Rome forget its real founder? What you are saying is about as credible (apart from the real history being more recent and therefore better documented) as pretending Cuomo found virgin terrain in what is now New York City and Adriaen Block and Cornelis Jacobsz a fiction invented by some Calvinist pastor who wanted to get some Calvinist connexion with the city he settled in.

"We don't know, but once people were born into the story or were educated to believe it, it was believed. People always want to think that the founding of their cities and nations were special."

A founding of a city or a nation always is special. It's special enough to recall who did it and therefore to not replace him with characters of fiction.

"There are partial copies of Genesis in the Dead Sea scrolls, but the bottom line is that we don't know who wrote Genesis 3 or when."

There is a Xth C. manuscript of Caesar in Carolingian France. Are you saying we don't know Caesar wrote the Commentarii de Bello Gallico? This is exactly where I as a Classicist can give you the context you lack of what comparative evidence is needed in comparative cases. You said you have studied YEC for 40 + years. But I have studied a lot of other things, which have helped to prepare me for that debate during the same 40 + years.

"It's very possible that the writer sincerely thought that Genesis 3 was an inspiration from God about events that occurred thousands of years ago from the author's time."

Not the least. What he sincerely thought about Genesis 3 is what he sincerely thought about Genesis 50 : that it was part of a history handed down to him. That's the kind of fake you don't make with con-men. Sure "past history" is a thing they can and do fake, as freemasons and Joseph Smith prove. But no Mormon grows up thinking II Nephi was a chronicle Joseph Smith came across at the local library. The "information bottleneck" shows. Namely, by his belief that this "history" was first lost and then recovered by an angelic being showing Joseph Smith some golden plates with a funny writing on them.

What has traditionally been ascribed to "revelation" was the Six Days account, which is tradionally ascribed to Moses receiving it on Mount Sinai. The rest is history. As history, not revealed by vision or audition from heaven.

You are handicapped in this field, because you concentrated on YEC controversy and you explain "we don't have independent accounts for Genesis 3" without asking how many independent accounts we have for Hannibal, "we don't have a contemporary text" without asking how much contemporary text there is left for Hannibal, "we don't have a manuscript by Moses, since Dead Sea scrolls is more than 1000 years later" without asking why we accept Caesar, whose writings also are in a manuscript 1000 years after he wrote it.

Get an idea of what is acceptable evidence in Ancient History before you pretend to judge the one for Genesis 3 inacceptable.

I have the Classical Education that you so far sorely lack.

Hans Georg Lundahl

XVII

Kevin R. Henke to me

2/19/2022 at 2:06 AM

Re: Here is, first, the debate

Hi Hans,

Again, your statements are totally irrelevant and don't support your invalid case to move the Talking Snake from the group of myths along with the Cyclops, Tiamat, and the sirens and into the history group with President Abraham Lincoln and Alexander the Great. You're not doing history, but instead you're trying to make an illegitimate exception for a Talking Snake story simply because you want to believe it and not because you actually have any evidence. Who cares what the "normal historic collective memory as Europeans" is? The only important issue is that Joseph Smith took ideas from early 19th century American society and deceived millions into believing that his stories were history. L. Ron Hubbard made similar myths in Scientology. Mohammad as well. Religious con-artists were common over history and that make up stories and gullible people believed it. As for Caesar, Hannibal and evolution, you'll have to wait. I'll deal with that later.

Best,

Kevin

XVIII

Me to Kevin R. Henke

2/19/2022 at 3:23 PM

Re: Here is, first, the debate

You show a total incompetence in figuring out what is relevant when it comes to history.

Here is what we agree on : Joseph Smith was a con-man, and somehow (we disagree on how) we know Caesar and Hannibal were historic.

What we disagree on is where on these issues two other things are best sorted : 1) Genesis 2 - 14? - 50? with Snorre / Saxo and Livy book I; 2) Millions and billions of years "geology".

If you want to wait discussing on how we know Hannibal crossed the Alps, we can wait with the rest as well. Because how we know is crucial.

"Who cares what the "normal historic collective memory as Europeans" is?"

Apparently you do insofar as you are prepared to defend Hannibal's existence. I certainly do, because II Nephi is not normal historic collective memory of Mormons, it is paranormally reconstructed and recovered collective memory of a population only known of by the exact same paranormal recovery of it. Every Mormon who believes II Nephi ipso facto also believes Joseph Smith recovered this lost book on golden plates. In other words, while it is to him accepted as "historic fact" it is still not "normal historic collective memory" to him.

" to move the Talking Snake from the group of myths along with the Cyclops, Tiamat, and the sirens"

You have no Classic Education. Hence, you do not know why you place the sirens and the cyclops in "the same group" as Tiamat. Oh, if it's only because of paranormal and perhaps supernatural biology, that's not what myths are traditionally defined by.

Before we can fruitfully discuss where to place an item, we must discuss what constitutes the limit between the two groups.

Since 12 I have known a historically existant "mythology" (Babylonian, Greek, Celtic, Norse) can be dissected into two categories : "divine myths" (Tiamat, Kronos puking up the five offpsring he had swallowed, Lugos being god of the sun, Odin with two brothers treating Ymer as Enlil treated Tiamat); vs "heroic legend" (Gilgamesh and Sargon of Akkad, Hercules killing the Nemean lion with bare hands, Cuchullain killing his own son come to visit him with the Gae Bolg, Sigurd / Siegfried getting killed with complicity of his brother in law Gunnar / Günther before he in turn gets killed by his second brother in law Attila the Hun).

And since I studied Latin and Greek Epics and Tragedies at university, but also Livy, I have known that "heroic legend" has far closer ties to "history" than to "divine myths".

You seem unwilling to discuss this, you seem to take your own division between two groups for granted. As I said, you don't have a Classic Education, and it is sorely showing.

So, as you are so concentrated on con-men, I'll pose you two questions:

1) how do we know NYC started out as Nieuw Amsterdam in the 17th C. with Adriaen Block and Cornelis Jacobsz, that this story is not made up by a con-man?
2) if only one account and that one not contemporary survived and no artefacts survived in accessible form, would we still know it, or would it ipso facto become more reasonable to consider Adriaen Block and Cornelis Jacobsz as come from the composite imaginations of some conman?

Hans Georg Lundahl

XIX

Kevin R. Henke to me

2/20/2022 at 1:09 AM

Re: Here is, first, the debate

Hi Hans

Again, I know exactly what you're trying to do and you're totally failing to convert the Talking Snake myth into history. You can put Tiamat, the Cyclops, Thor and the Talking Snake into any academic categories you want. They're all from the imaginations of human beings without any supporting historical evidence. Your diversions and tangents don't work. You need to spend more time on science and real history rather than Norse, Roman, Greek and Hebrew mythology.

People lie and make up stories all the time. According to these stories, Joseph Smith saw magical beings. Eve supposedly saw a magic being too, a Talking Snake. Supposedly, both Joseph Smith and Eve saw God. At least the 1830 U.S. Federal census and contemporary tax records show that Joseph Smith and other Mormons were real people. There's no evidence that Eve ever existed.

You seem to think that the accounts in Genesis 3 amazingly came down through totally unaltered oral and/or written traditions from Adam to Moses. Others might speculate that Moses saw Genesis 3 in a vision. Neither of you have a shred of evidence for your speculations - None. Now, the Mormons claim to have a number of eyewitnesses that saw the golden plates. I think that they're all liars. But at least the Mormons claim to have something that the Talking Snake story doesn't have; namely actual human beings with a supposed chain of custody. Joseph Smith and other Mormons are easily found in the 1830 U.S. Federal census and their tax records are available. Of course, the Mormons are big on tracing their ancestries. I'll deal more with the Talking Snake story when I discuss Alexander the Great in March.

Now you want to add yet another diversion away from the Talking Snake story and discuss the history of New Amsterdam., Fine. Add that to the list for 2023 and I'll discuss the evidence for some of my Dutch ancestors having been born and lived there.

Best,

Kevin

XX

Me to Kevin R. Henke

2/20/2022 at 1:34 PM

Re: Here is, first, the debate

You are very eloquent as why you deny historicity to Genesis 3 or the Odyssey. Mormons believe II Nephi is historically true.

You are far less eloquent on why you believe Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander. After all, a few more people, but still people, believe these historically true.

You are also getting quite offensive with your "You need to spend more time" ... plus it's badly argued.

... "on science" - is irrelevant for history ... "and real history" - is my expertise, not yours ... "rather than Norse, Roman, Greek and Hebrew mythology" - and I have better expertise than you to know the difference. Or similarity.

You have so far shown prejudice and ignorance, and nothing but that./HGL

XXI

Me to Kevin R. Henke

2/20/2022 at 1:45 PM

Missed your Dutch Ancestry

You consider they were born in Nieuw Amsterdam, some of them.

Moses considered Adam as ancestry, as per Genesis 5, 11, patriarchal genealogies from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob to Levi, Caath, Amram and himself.

How come you know your ancestry better than he knew his?

Knowing science confers some kind of superman status on you?/HGL

XXII

Me to Kevin R. Henke

2/20/2022 at 1:51 PM

And I missed the 1830 Tax Record

You are sabotaging the debate by using language calculated to make me angry, for nothing.

Here is another argument I missed in my haste:

"Joseph Smith and other Mormons are easily found in the 1830 U.S. Federal census and their tax records are available."

Good luck showing similmar records for Caesar, Alexander or Hannibal.

Yeah, that's exactly where Weibull is tolerably great for recent, but totally useless for ancient history./HGL

XXIII

Kevin R. Henke to me

2/21/2022 at 1:03 AM

Re: And I missed the 1830 Tax Record

Hi Hans

Wow. Three emails in 16 minutes full of diversions and tangents. Despite your claims of expertise, you still have not given me a shred of evidence for a Talking Snake. Nevertheless, I really do appreciate your enthusiasm. But you need to show some discipline and patience. When you raise new unsolicited topics, like New Amsterdam, you show your frustration and indicate that you really can't defend Genesis 3. So, you attempt to defend Genesis 3 by trying to demonstrate that other topics in actual history, such as Hannibal or New Amsterdam, supposedly have no better support or also have great uncertainties. This is the illegitimate "your claims are just as bad as mine" defense. That won't work. You remind me of the young-Earth creationist that I debated by email from 2007-2017;. He was a nice individual, but he kept moving from topic to topic once he was unable to answer my questions. So, just keep a list and in time (maybe during 2022-2026) we'll get to the various topics that you and I have brought up. I really do like you. You're brilliant, but you need to show more self-discipline and patience.

Nevertheless, I'll briefly respond to what you have said in the past three emails. If you have more arguments dealing directly with the Talking Snake, feel free to email me at any time. Otherwise, I want to concentrate on Alexander the Great and not deal with more diversions and distractions from you. You can then respond to Alexander the Great in March and we'll go from there.

No. I don't expect to find the tax or census records for Caesar, Alexander or Hannibal. The type of available contemporary evidence will obviously vary with the culture, the century and the technology. But, you should know that a great variety of contemporary evidence could exist for powerful people in the past that supplement or support much later written histories as I have mentioned. Rather than tax and census records for the ancient Greeks and Romans, there are clay tablets, inscriptions, various public records, etc. So depending on when and where the individual lived from the present to thousands of years ago that evidence might range from Hawaian birth records for President Obama, Joseph Smith's tax records to artifacts mentioning Alexander the Great. Certainly, not every person in history will have one from each category of the available types of contemporary evidence, but the key is to find as much contemporary evidence as possible to confirm any later written histories that may exist. We'll talk more about that with Alexander the Great.

You talk as though Moses and Adam actually existed and have valid genealogies. You'll eventually have to provide the evidence for that as well. Perhaps in 2025 or so. Add that to your list. Unlike Moses, I have DNA analyses from a total of 20,000+ 1st-8th cousins to supplement the claims from our family trees, birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, tax records, tombstones, real estate records, wills, census records, etc. So, contrary to your beliefs, science is very relevant for verifying history. Certainly, there are huge gaps in my Dad's ancestry and my mom's ancestry can only be traced back so far. Also self-contradicting and groundless genealogies exist at genealogy websites and are not limited to the Bible. The ages in these internet genealogies, especially for individuals living 200 to 1000 years ago, are sometimes so ridiculous that parents were supposedly born after children or individuals had kids at very old ages or people lived well over 120 years. These genealogies have to be carefully checked for consistency and accuracy with diverse and independent public records and DNA evidence (science!). Nevertheless, it turns out that the records for my mom's Dutch ancestry going back to New Amsterdam are very complete and confirmed with diverse evidence. My cousins and I on this limb of our family trees have traced and documented our ancestors generation by generation back to New Amsterdam and I'll discuss that in more detail later. So, the science of DNA can either confirm or fail to support the various links in our family trees. The DNA of my relevant Dutch ancestors are located on my #2, 4 and 12 chromosomes. Moses, if he even existed, obviously never had access to this kind of information .More later. So, add the existence of New Amsterdam and the genealogy of Adam to Moses to your list.

So, unless you have some new evidence for the Talking Snake, please let me concentrate on my research on Alexander the Great. In time, we can get to the other topics that concern you.

Best as always

Kevin

XXIV

Me to Kevin R. Henke

2/21/2022 at 12:35 PM

Re: And I missed the 1830 Tax Record

I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Or not.

Meanwhile, your claim to lead both what I can come along with and what you can come along with and your inability to get anywhere near fairness in the process is definitely annoying.

XXV

Me to Gutsick Gibbon (Erika)

2/21/2022 at 12:44 PM

Fw: Re: And I missed the 1830 Tax Record - Henke is seriously "pénible" - awkward

He can't see the prolegomenon as a prolegomenon, he wants to jump straight at the question he's not ready for and he takes any attempt to prepare him for it as "diversions".

Once when I was 12, 13, perhaps even 14, I asked my French teacher why "bok" is "livre" when Latin has "fagus" - she told me "fagus" is the tree (beech) and not the artefact (book) and I refused to believe her, because I had a hard time getting around that not all languages have the same or very similar (das Buch, die Buche) for beech and book.

That is about Henke's level in the ToK of history./HGL

XXVI

Me to Kevin R. Henke

to Gutsick Gibbon (Erika)

Cc David Phillips: Ph.D., Classical Studies, University of Michigan, 2000.

2/21/2022 at 1:34 PM

a proposal : get in a qualified person in the field of Ancient History

My own field was primarily Latin, after that Greek, not AH per se at all.

And I haven't got a MA, I studied up to phil. cand. level in Latin, never took the final exam, and continued to spread out.

Here is by contrast a really qualified guy:

David Phillips: Ph.D., Classical Studies, University of Michigan, 2000.

Shall we ask him to make the dialogue a trialogue (yeah, word doesn't exist, I know) either with him or with one of his present wellqualified students?

Hans Georg Lundahl

XXVII

Me to Kevin R. Henke

to Gutsick Gibbon (Erika)

Cc David Phillips: Ph.D., Classical Studies, University of Michigan, 2000.

2/21/2022 at 2:53 PM

a proposal 2 : withdraw Hannibal from my case, I was unaware of Polybius

I am somewhat confused to my studies history right now, why I have (as per my Academic papers in 2003 and following) "50 p." (Swedish system), namely 1 year and half of one term, when I was back at Classical Institution the years 90 - 91, 91 - 92 and part of 92 - 93 (half of Autumn term 92), and studied Greek and took just one year and half a term Greek. I certainly took German as well, but that was parallel to first year Greek, and if in second year I had only taken 10 points, I would have not gained access to study loan for the beginning third year. Perhaps simply so much remaining Latin exams to catch up on ... or perhaps, some exams were validated during second year and later withdrawn after I had lost the study loan in 93.

But the fact is, the course which would have included Polybius was not among those I took.

It is an excuse, but absolutely no justification of my previous statement that our first source for Hannibal is Livy.

A better case would be Pyrrhus or Brennus. Our first source to Pyrrhic war but also Battle of Allia is Polybius. He can't have become aware of Roman history prior to 171 BC and the battle of Allia was in 390 BC. 219 years is as if I were right now writing down the first history preserved to some hypothetic future about events in the Napoleonic wars, like in 1803.

By contrast, if I counted correctly, Polybius was 17 when Hannibal died, purportedly at least by suicide.

Hans Georg Lundahl

XXVIII

Me to Kevin R. Henke

2/21/2022 at 3:44 PM

Re: And I missed the 1830 Tax Record

You do not teach discipline and patience to a man who has got too much sugar before going to bed, woke up before 4:20, did not catch up sufficient sleep before 8:30. You stop saying things that annoy the person, like being over patronising. And by misrepresenting the logic of things.

"So, you attempt to defend Genesis 3 by trying to demonstrate that other topics in actual history, such as Hannibal or New Amsterdam, supposedly have no better support or also have great uncertainties."

Not what I actually said, as to great uncertainties.

"This is the illegitimate 'your claims are just as bad as mine' defense."

No, it's not. First, I take New Amsterdam (now with Hannibal) and - no longer Hannibal, but Pyrrhus or Brennus - as a thing we reasonably are certain of. Then I state two more things:

1) this certainty depends on things which we have more of now than we would have if the history were ancient; and even now on narrative from sources we can no longer cross examine - in this case dead relatives of yours;
2) and to some examples, this narrows down to only narrative by non-contemporaries, as said, Hannibal struck from this specific list, replaced by Pyrrhus and Brennus, and Alexander still there.

My point is, even so the reasonable certainty is still there.

"He was a nice individual, but he kept moving from topic to topic once he was unable to answer my questions."

He did not keep a record of your exchange, neither did you, at least not shown on your site. I suspect he tried to give parallel cases to some of the questionings of his case that you brought up.

"No. I don't expect to find the tax or census records for Caesar, Alexander or Hannibal. The type of available contemporary evidence will obviously vary with the culture, the century and the technology."

And for some, the evidence that is contemporary survives only in copies and citations and resumés that are later. P R E C I S E L Y my point.

"artifacts mentioning Alexander the Great."

Coins are contemporary (as far as I checked), but coins are not specific enough in narrative to even evaluate whether it was a man or a fake god. As they overlap in his case (as reasonably known) I should formulate the opposition as a man or just a fake god.

The statue we have is a marble copy from c. 100 BC (from not so fresh memory) and the mosaic (from memory directly to our debate) is from c. 100 BC.

This leaves us with the narrative, and this narrative as it survives to us being second hand and in a text that is not contemporary (Diodorus Siculus, since narratives by his generals are stated as lost).

And here is the parallel. We have no free standing text by Adam, and yet that is the arguable source for Moses, via Abraham. Moses, like Diodorus for Alexander, like Polybius for Brennus, like Homer for Troy and return of Ulysses, is giving the earliest version surviving to us.

"You talk as though Moses and Adam actually existed and have valid genealogies. You'll eventually have to provide the evidence for that as well"

The earliest known audience did not take them for fiction.

That is the characteristic differentiating them from The Golden Ass, Satyricon, Menaechmi. Or Spiderman.

It is also about things which, if true, could have been handed down, and had no even purported need for a special revelation to get known. That distinguishes them from Tiamat (or for that matter the Six Days) and from II Nephi, where the historic continuity is clearly broken between Book of Moroni ... "the last of the books that make up the Book of Mormon. According to the text it was written by the prophet Moroni sometime between 400 and 421." ... and the purported or for all I care even real (but if so demonic) golden plates.

"Certainly, there are huge gaps in my Dad's ancestry and my mom's ancestry can only be traced back so far."

But the idea that one of his ancestors not only was born in what is now New York but also while this was New Amsterdam is based on narrative from back then, and unless you took a look at parish records or such (which is technically possibly since Early Modern times in European countries and dependences, you could have done that), depends on lore in your family.

Like Polybius depended on Roman families for Pyrrhic war and even more for Brennus.

"Nevertheless, it turns out that the records for my mom's Dutch ancestry going back to New Amsterdam are very complete and confirmed with diverse evidence. My cousins and I on this limb of our family trees have traced and documented our ancestors generation by generation back to New Amsterdam and I'll discuss that in more detail later."

Fine. Probably by records of the named type. Not available for Ancient History.

"So, the science of DNA can either confirm or fail to support the various links in our family trees. The DNA of my relevant Dutch ancestors are located on my #2, 4 and 12 chromosomes. Moses, if he even existed, obviously never had access to this kind of information"

Dutch genes exist independently on whether New Amsterdam existed or not. Your genealogy was known before your chromosomes were.

"The ages in these internet genealogies, especially for individuals living 200 to 1000 years ago, are sometimes so ridiculous that parents were supposedly born after children or individuals had kids at very old ages or people lived well over 120 years."

I'm not sure where you find them - perhaps on Mormon's site, since they place Odin at c. 200 AD. Adding "of Asgard" - he should be placed in 1st C. BC as per Snorre. But if one goes to wikipedian articles of historic people, they are usually accurate in genealogic information as far as I have so far found.

The observation doesn't make genealogy a non-certainty up to the existence of modern means.

Hans Georg Lundahl