In addition to agreeing on the importance of taking an extremist approach to Iraq in our latest Bloggingheads, Matt and I are awfully hard on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And it occurred to me afterward that, unlettered rube that I am, I've never read a comprehensive defense/explanation, by a smart Mormon, of their church's (seemingly-fantastic) beliefs about the prehistory of the Americas. Such a thing must exist, and so I'm hoping that someone - maybe Russell Arben Fox, maybe the larger gang at Times and Seasons - can point me in the right direction.
« The Lead-Crime Connection | Main | The Case For Deterrence » What Mormons Believe13 Jul 2007 10:59 am Comments (193)
I commented on your Mormon comments over at Bloggingheads. I have to say that I'm a bit surprised. I really enjoy your commentary, even if I don't always agree with it. If we start getting into all this personal religion stuff there will be no reason to stop before we get to what some people believe are the more "reasonable" orthodox Christian beliefs. Nothing would please the Chris Hitchens' of the world more. For example, why should there be a distinction between the Mormon belief in the Book of Mormon and the Catholic belief in Transubstantiation? The latter occurs, after all, at each and every Mass. So which religion teaches the more recent miracles, and which in principle are more easily disproved? As far as Mormon's not being Christian, why aren't they? Like I posted over at Bloggingheads, what makes a religion Christian is teaching that Jesus was the son of God and that he was crucified for the sins of the world and was resurrected and all that. The definitions, both common and technical, don't place fine print at the end of the definition which would disqualify any religion which moves outside of orthodox bounds. Mormons teach all the necessary stuff about Jesus to make them Christian. Whether or not they're orthodox is a different matter, and one that Mormons are not likely to care about. 
"And it occurred to me afterward that, unlettered rube that I am, I've never read a comprehensive defense/explanation, by a smart Mormon, of their church's (seemingly-fantastic) beliefs about the prehistory of the Americas. Such a thing must exist..." Oh really? I'm not so sure such a thing exists at all. I suspect no comprehensive defense / explanation has been written, either by a "smart Mormon", which is a contradiction in terms; or by a non-LDS person, because they can't keep a straight face while doing so.
I found your bloggingheads on Mormonism to be fascinating. Are you arguing that if the doctrines of a religious institution make historical claims that are plainly false that that is evidence of the religion's illegitimacy? So how do you feel about that whole Noah's Ark thing, you know with the dinosaurs and the flood?
Well, I'm one of the Times and Seasons gang (not sure if I quality as a "smart Mormon" however) but Book of Mormon historicity isn't my area of expertise. Mormon apologetics is alive and well and there is plenty of information out there if you'd like it; here's a good place to start: http://www.fairlds.org/apol/ai024.html Several commenters have already brought up what is, to me, the larger issue: every faith tradition has elements that are not the kind of thing one could expect to be independently verified by science and/or reason. Mormonism's story strikes one as "seemingly fantastic" not because it is different in kind, but merely because it is unfamiliar.
I have two suggestions for where to go to get a good summary of LDS beliefs: 1. First, the LDS Church has set up a "Basic Beliefs" website here: http://www.mormon.org/mormonorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=b4f4055b23710110VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=eda16db0580a1110VgnVCM100000176f620a____ This website is intended assist folks, such as yourself, who are interested in learning about what we believe. 2. Another good primer on our beliefs would be the "Gospel Principles Manual." It goes into even greater detail than the above-linked website. This is the manual used to help new members of our church grasp the fundamental concepts of our faith. Here's the link: http://www.lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.b7723f4adab435807398f2f6e44916a0/?vgnextoid=d7561b08f338c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=ea697befabc20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____ Or, if you have any questions, you could me (I'm LDS) and I would answer any questions as best as I can. Thanks, Spencer
Hello, I'll weigh in as well, as one of the infamous T&S gang. I apologize for the brief nature of this comment -- I'm meeting with a student in an hour, then off to teach summer school for the afternoon, so this will be short. Your best source for discussion and explanation is going to be Terryl Givens, By The Hand of Mormon (Oxford UP, 2002). Professor Givens (who teaches religion and literature at University of Richmond) discusses the role of the Book of Mormon (including its claims about Mesoamerican history) in development of church beliefs. You're right, of course, that the Book of Mormon seems to make relatively broad statements about the provenance of Native Americans. These sorts of statements were generally accepted (and sometimes even expanded upon) by early church leaders and members. Even today, many rank-and-file members ascribe to relatively straightforward application of scripture-as-history. That said, many scholars and some church leaders and members have discussed more sophisticated scriptural-historical approaches. The most well-known and well-developed is an idea called the limited geography model, which situates Book of Mormon events in a relatively small area in Central America. That divide brings us to interesting questions about how to define Mormonism. Do we look to scholarly ideas, or lay beliefs? Similar questions of course would apply to Christianity at large: E.g., if scholars are relatively sure that Paul didn't write Hebrews, but your average member in the pew is unaware of this idea -- do we consider that Christians have an uninformed belief system? That more sophisticated discussion is outside the interest or grasp of many members? I've really got to run now. Apologies for the short and hasty comment. I'll try to weigh in again later today, if I survive class. Meanwhile, I'd recommend tracking down a copy of Givens' book, which is relatively widely available.
There are plenty of 'smart' Mormons. I can't claim to be near the level of a great many. But I do know that the vast majority of issues leveled 'against' our beliefs are founded themselves on misunderstandings of what we believe. Since the assumptions at the base of the conclusions are faulty it's easy to see why the conclusions are what they are. I have some videos on my utube site that discuss some of the more recent claims Vis-à-vis DNA and LDS Historical claims. I can't vouch for their production quality but I've yet to have anyone demonstrate where my methodology is wrong.
Terryl L Given's book "By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion" contains a good presentation of the Book as it's generally viewed today, it also points out some of the more recent defenses and criticisms.
Mormons are polytheists. They believe God was incarnate in Jesus Christ in this world, but there are many other worlds with many other divinities. These beliefs follow of necessity from their basic understanding of the nature of God, who is corporeal, created, finite, limited, anthropomorphic in the real sense. He is manifestly not the God of Jewish-Christian belief, who, though intimately involved in the life of the world, is wholly separate from the world--omnipotent, omniscient, utterly simple, one. A moment's familiarity with basic Mormon theology will prove this. I can't understand why Mormon's aren't more candid about this. Mormons may be wonderful people. There may be many sharp Mormons. They may be model people in virtually every way. I have no desire to think or show otherwise. But simply intellectual honesty requires one to acknowledge that Mormons think non-Christianly about the nature of God. And this is to say nothing of the nature of Scripture, the Church, salvation history, etc., etc. etc.
I'm disturbed by the fact that you and MY both seem to think that the alternative to cities is the suburbs, and vice versa. But the rural areas that dominated this country for 150 years are really unlike both. The rural communities that predated the suburbs were both dominated by individual ownership, as the suburbs are, and also often tightly laid out, as current urban areas are. You don't have to forgo a house and a yard and a driveway for a walkable, tightly-knit community. It just takes planning and resisting the urge to sprawl a development over many miles, cut off from services and retail.
As another of the gang at Times & Seasons, I would second Kaimi's recommendation of Givens's book if you wish to understand contemporary discussions within and without Mormonism about the Book of Mormon. I would point out that Givens' book is what is generally referred to as "a reception study," namely a study of how people have read and understood the book. It is not a defense of the historicity of the Book of Mormon per se. It will give you a good idea, however, of the structure of the discussion among Mormon scholars and intellectuals, which is considerably more nuanced than what one would probably find among rank and file Mormons or in press accounts of Mormonism. I take it, however, that your objections to Mormonism and self-confessed ignorance about it goes not only to the issue of the Book of Mormon but also to questions of Mormon theology. Here, I am sorry to tell you, the discussion will be very difficult in that there is no creedal tradition within Mormonism, no specially trained theologians, and few works of systematic theology. Rather, what we have are a bundle of sacred texts which in some sense are pre-theological. They make all sorts of claims about the divine, but do not contain a systematic theology. Then you have 150+ years of statements by Church leaders, almost all of which are in the form of sermons that generally take the form of homilies rather than formal doctrinal exposition. Finally, there are a scattering of official declarations issued by the highest councils of the Church. The most theologically important of these is probably "The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve," which was issued in 1916 and sought to regularize LDS ideas on the nature of God in the face of contradictory teachings by 19th century church leaders. There is, however, nothing in Mormonism comparable to the Summa Theologica, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or Calvin's Institutes. This may be because of the inherent intellectual limitations that we Mormons suffer under. I tend to ascribe it to the relative youth of the religion and a number of beliefs -- most notably the idea of continuing revelation and personal revelation -- that make systematic theology inherently problematic. All of this is a way of saying that when you are Father Neuhaus talk confidently about "the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself" you are walking into a somewhat complicated issue. I compliment you on acknowledging after such decided opining your failure to actually read anything by Mormons on these issues. The admission speaks well of you, particularly as punditry is not a field much given to such things.
Thanks for the compliment, Ross. The long comment I made in response to your inquiry has been trapped by your spammer, I rewrote it as a blog post, here. I hope you find it helpful. And Julie, Kaimi, Nate--thanks for chiming in.
"you OR Father Neuhaus" apologies...
This is incredible! You mean that you have written all this incredibly anti-Mormon stuff without even checking into the facts about them? And you had innocent readers who may have believed what you wrote? Wow. That is quite an admission. If you're really interested in learning what they believe as opposed to what others say they believe, try http://www.fairlds.org.
I concur with the recommendation to read Givens, "By the Hand of Mormon." Unfortunately, the stereotypes that MOrmons are either naive, brainwashed hacks or unprincipled apologetic hacks (notice, we're hacks either way) continues to persist. It's obviously quite impossible to provide a summary of our beliefs in a single post--after all, I know of one floor of our library devoted to Mormon Studies. An accessible place to begin might be with the "articles of faith," the New Testament, definitely the BOM (after reading this, folks actually begin to understand that we believe Christ to be the Savior of the World--shocker!), and perhaps a work by one of the apostles, "Our Search for Happiness." There are myriad more, but those function well for starters.
Re: For example, why should there be a distinction between the Mormon belief in the Book of Mormon and the Catholic belief in Transubstantiation? This is apples to oranges. Transubstantiation is a very specific metaphysical belief, while the Book of Mormon is a rather large tome which makes all sorts of historical and theological claims. Those historical claims are, in principle at least, falsifiable, and have been falsified by an archaeology, genetics and linguistics. Transubstantiation on the other hand does not depend on empirically falsifiable data and so cannot be falsified scientifically, but only by metaphysical means.
First of all, the obvious point has already been made: ALL religions make implausible claims. Transubstantiation is an example of one that Catholics make. Others include the resurrection, miracles (and remember, Catholics believe that miracles are still occurring and people are being cured through prayer), the biblical flood and Noah's Ark, the Genesis creation stories, feeding all those people with a small amount of bread and fishes, and turning water into wine. The only reasons that Mormons' claims seem more ridiculous to some is because (1) they are not accepted by a majority and often repeated and thus seem "weird", and (2) because they are of more recent provenance so it is easier to establish the messy early history of the LDS church. (I should add, though, that it is entirely clear that the early Christian churches had a messy history too and we owe a lot of modern doctrine to what Roman officials and power-hungry church officials did 300 years after Jesus' time to consolidate authority.) The other thing I would note is that by any sensible definition, Mormons are Christians, believing in a divine Christ who died on the cross and was resurrected. But I detect that many orthodox Christians can't stand that a church with such different beliefs has impinged on their "trademark" by calling itself a Church of Christ. The desire to refuse to call them Christians is a result of fear and envy at a growing, heretical Christian denomination.
Those historical claims are, in principle at least, falsifiable, and have been falsified by an archaeology, genetics and linguistics. Transubstantiation on the other hand does not depend on empirically falsifiable data and so cannot be falsified scientifically, but only by metaphysical means. bingo. i'm an atheist and this is exactly what i would have said. to be clear: the beliefs of "major world religions" in their non-fundamentalist incarnations presuppose ludicrous assumptions far upstream of what mormonism does. it seems that mormonism's historical claims are falsifiable on the face of it. some points can be understood with some nuance, but there is simply a whole constellation of ideas which suggest that the person generating the mormon narrative was drawing upon the primitive sources of early 19th century antiquarian tradition than anything else. there is something to be said for the fact that mormonism is unfamiliar and so its beliefs seem more bizarre to most people, but then the proper point of comparison is between mormons and fundamentalist biblical literalist christians. not between mormons and all religionists, since most sophisticated believers tend to admit to allegorical or metaphorical readings when they conflict with consensus scholarship (this goes far back in christian history as well). But I detect that many orthodox Christians can't stand that a church with such different beliefs has impinged on their "trademark" by calling itself a Church of Christ. The desire to refuse to call them Christians is a result of fear and envy at a growing, heretical Christian denomination. broadly speaking mormons are christians of course. but, broadly speaking they are not monotheists. there are hindus who may even believe in the supernatural narrative of jesus, and may even believe that jesus is the personal manifestation of the divine to whom they direct their devotions to.
The main apologetics journal for defending Mormonism's historical claims is here: http://farms.byu.edu/publications/jbmsmain.php
btw, re: the limited geography reading. peoples can disappear, but whole cultural toolkits do not. see the fact that chicken was introduced into the new world from polynesia: i've read the BoM, and the fact that an old world cultural toolkit is described struck me. the spread of old world diseases, domesticated animals and crops is nearly inevitable, even if the cultures and peoples are absorbed or exterminated (one could construct a mathematical model based around the probability of cultural expansion for each trait being an independent trial). of course, i suppose mormon apologists could argue that horses really mean llamas, old world crops are really just mistranslations of new world crops, etc. one could scoff at metaphorical readings of the hebrew bible in such a fashion, but, it must be admitted that it does sketch out a real world with independent points of verification from the extant archeology and history.
Razib, Well, yes and no. Yes, cultural toolkits generally stick around. Chickens spread from Southeast Asia to China to Polynesia. Nobody gets un-chickened along the way. At the same time, though, there are also recorded instances of technological and agricultural regression. Polynesian settlers on some islands lost important parts of their technological knowledge, like the ability to make or use bows and arrows, for instance. And the dark ages in Europe also saw the loss of lots of skill and knowledge. I agree that the general trend is and has been forward movement of technology and culture. But that trend isn't without exceptions.
Razib, Well, yes and no. Yes, cultural toolkits generally stick around. Chickens spread from Southeast Asia to China to Polynesia. Nobody gets un-chickened along the way. At the same time, though, there are also recorded instances of technological and agricultural regression. Polynesian settlers on some islands lost important parts of their technological knowledge, like the ability to make or use bows and arrows, for instance. And the dark ages in Europe also saw the loss of lots of skill and knowledge. I agree that the general trend is and has been forward movement of technology and culture. But that trend isn't without exceptions.
"an old world cultural toolkit is described" This is true, and indeed it is this observation that has galvanized and organized the new Book of Mormon apologetics. It is argued that the Book of Mormon transmits a whole panoply of ancient Near Eastern cultural and textual traits, demonstrating an historical specificity beyond what would have been available to Joseph Smith via the Bible or other sources. "mormon apologists could argue that horses really mean llamas, old world crops are really just mistranslations of new world crops, etc." This is indeed one of the approaches adopted when confronted with historical puzzles like these. By the text's own account, it is a redaction of hundreds' of years of historical records by a much later editor, the titular Mormon, which was then rendered in English by Joseph Smith---affording textual opportunity for cross-cultural loanshifts and other linguistic slippage.
"Those historical claims are, in principle at least, falsifiable, and have been falsified by an archaeology, genetics and linguistics. Transubstantiation on the other hand does not depend on empirically falsifiable data and so cannot be falsified scientifically, but only by metaphysical means. "bingo. i'm an atheist and this is exactly what i would have said. to be clear: the beliefs of 'major world religions' in their non-fundamentalist incarnations presuppose ludicrous assumptions far upstream of what mormonism does." No, razib. This may be true of a belief like transsubstantiation, but how about the resurrection itself? If someone claimed that, say, Jerry Falwell came back to life, there would be DNA testing, and all sorts of scientific methods available to verify that claim. But 2000 years ago, those methods didn't exist, and now, all the evidence is gone. (Indeed, there is very little direct evidence that Jesus even existed, though I presume he must have in some form due to all the narratives of his life.) The Biblical flood is another example. It's pretty clear from DNA evidence and the fossil record that it didn't happen as described. Now, we can't be quite as sure as we can be about events that happened less than 200 years ago, but still, the fact of the matter is that the Judeo-Christian tradition that a majority of Americans profess to believe makes a bunch of historical claims that are total whoppers just like the Mormons do. One more example is the creation stories in Genesis. It simply didn't happen that way. Again, can we be quite as sure as we can be about events 200 years ago? No. I might add, though, that the same scientific techniques that lead us to know that the stories of Native American tribes in the Book of Mormon are questionable are the ones that show us that the biblical flood and Genesis creation narratives are false, i.e., examination of the fossil record.
Concerning the Old World toolkit: (1) A lot depends on the size of the group. Lots of diseases wouldn't be present in two extended families. And diseases mutate fast enough that I'm not actually sure that we know a lot about the disease environment of the Middle East c. 600 B.C. and how some minor exposure to a random portion of that environment would be detectable in the Americas in AD 2007 considering that the two disease environments have been massively joined for centuries. Has much archaeological work been done on gut fauna? (2) The spread of crops would depend on how adapted they were to their local environment. If they weren't useful, they wouldn't spread. (3) Domesticated animals seem like they'd be useful anywhere. But given a small enough group of starting animals, accidents at the beginning can make a big difference about what happens. But the Book of Mormon doesn't actually claim that its Middle Eastern migrants brought domesticated animals with them. It says 'provisions and seeds': http://scriptures.lds.org/en/1_ne/18 (4) We actually have an example of Old World settlement that doesn't seem to have introduced much of a toolkit in the Vinland settlements. Cultures have a lot of momentum that can overwhelm isolated migrants.
At the same time, though, there are also recorded instances of technological and agricultural regression. Polynesian settlers on some islands lost important parts of their technological knowledge, like the ability to make or use bows and arrows, for instance. And the dark ages in Europe also saw the loss of lots of skill and knowledge. this is an interesting point. the most extreme case is in tasmania. but your island example is illustrative: loss of culture tends to occur due to physical isolation. in continental societies with multiple foci of 'civilization' there tends to be average loss when a culture zone goes through a 'dark age,' but redundancy and relatively easy communication prevents extinction of the toolkit. the ancient eastern mediterranean between the 12th and 8th centuries BCE is a good example of this, greece and anatolia regressed into total barbarism, but the crescent from egypt to anatolia managed to perpetuate enough cultural traditions for the re-expansion of civilization later (the spread of literacy to europe and india was from the same source, the western levant). as for europe, there was regression in metrics like literacy or coinage. roughly, "high culture" which could be sustained by economic surplus and coordination & specialization. but, europe did not regress back to a pre-agriculture or pre-iron age toolkit, it did not lose horses. in other words, different aspects of culture are variantly "sticky." food stuffs and other biologicals are those elements that are least likely to be lost because they are relevant to the typical peasant. to give you an example, 250 years ago the sweet potato made it into the highlands of new guinea from the new world via east china (with europeans as the obvious mediators). it transformed highland agriculture and resulted in a population boom. when europeans stumbled upon the highlands of new guinea they found a stone age pre-literate world divided between small clans. that goes to show you the relative viscosity of some aspects of a cultural toolkit without the necessary preconditions. but, as i note sweet potato had transformed their society. similarly, dingos showed up in australia around 7,000 years ago. this was a society that was extremely "primitive," but this biological made the transition and changed the continent (the extinction of the tasmanian wolf). in short, if you posit that the hebrews landed on the continent of the americas you are met with a serious plausibility problem. languages, literacy, religions, etc., can all disappear quickly. but biologicals generally do not because their appeal to neighbors is broad. additionally, the eurasian disease cauldron is very powerful and specific. you don't even need intermarriage for these to spread. we should see signatures of selection for some of the eurasian diseases in the genomes of american peoples because they can sweep far ahead of population movements (flu, smallpox, etc., tended to spread ahead of european contact).
JonF, All we would have to do to verify or falsify the doctrine of transubstantiation is to collect some of the bread and wine, after it was blessed by a priest for Mass. Then we could test it to see if it had the constitution of bread and wine or flesh and blood. I'm not holding my breath for the possibility of the church allowing that to happen, but in principle, the doctrine of transubstantiation is not falsifiable only by metaphysical means. It is falsifiable by empirical means. The Mass is very central to Catholic practice. Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity are what you could call "sacramental" religions which place the Eucharist very high, practically central, to their religious practice. To Catholics, at least orthodox (small "o") believers, the Eucharist not only symbolizes the body and blood of Jesus but is literally transfigured into the body and blood of Jesus. The fact that we will never be able to test whether or not this is true should not earn the Catholics any extra points. It's something that is supposed to happen in each Mass, which is happening all the time. As far as the BoM's theological claims, I doubt that those are falsifiable any more than your run of the mill beliefs about God are. And for LDS claims that are falsifiable, fine, I really don't find it all that interesting to be honest. I'm not LDS, I just think the LDS church is critiqued in a way that your larger, more historical religions aren't. We should at least be consistent. But I think most people would balk if they had to consistently apply the same scrutiny to every belief that the apply to Mormon beliefs. For the reasons outlined above, I think the doctrine of Transubstantiation is a good example of what I mean.
A lot depends on the size of the group. Lots of diseases wouldn't be present in two extended families. And diseases mutate fast enough that I'm not actually sure that we know a lot about the disease environment of the Middle East c. 600 B.C. and how some minor exposure to a random portion of that environment would be detectable in the Americas in AD 2007 considering that the two disease environments have been massively joined for centuries. Has much archaeological work been done on gut fauna? google "MHC" and "adaptive immune system." many of the diseases that new world people suffer from old world people barely notice. the genetic signatures of all new world peoples tend to be very precise here and suggest almost no exposure to old world diseases before european contact (we can detect evidence of selection for particular genes via intermarriage across generations today). (2) The spread of crops would depend on how adapted they were to their local environment. If they weren't useful, they wouldn't spread. the columbian exchange from new to old and old to new suggests that crops spread very fast when the climate is suitable. depends on the size of the kit and the climate of the landing region. We actually have an example of Old World settlement that doesn't seem to have introduced much of a toolkit in the Vinland settlements. Cultures have a lot of momentum that can overwhelm isolated migrants. this is a good comparison, because you have a big contrast: the vinland settlement lasted for a few generations. from what i recall the nephites lasted for hundreds of years (nearly 1,000?). if you multiply out the probability the likelihood of extinction of all cultural traits over such a long period of time when they are maintained is pretty low. if you want to believe in it of course you can accept the likelihood of such a low probability event, but as you can see you won't convince those who don't share your religious priors.
One more example is the creation stories in Genesis. It simply didn't happen that way. Again, can we be quite as sure as we can be about events 200 years ago? No. actually, i think we can be pretty sure. e.g., what's the difference between 99.99% sure and 99.9999% sure? I might add, though, that the same scientific techniques that lead us to know that the stories of Native American tribes in the Book of Mormon are questionable are the ones that show us that the biblical flood and Genesis creation narratives are false, i.e., examination of the fossil record. i stated in my previous comment that the proper point of comparison is between mormons and fundamentalist christians (though the less literalist mormons here are changing my opinions regarding that issue). ross is not a literalist, and christians as early as st. augustine have opined that it is possible or likely that genesis is an allegory appropriate for a primitive people. please read what i post before responding.
Jay J.,
But 2000 years ago, those methods didn't exist, and now, all the evidence is gone. (Indeed, there is very little direct evidence that Jesus even existed, though I presume he must have in some form due to all the narratives of his life.) i weight the lack of evidence differently than evidence which contradicts. inductively we know that resurrection does not occur. deductively assuming materialist priors we know it does not occur. a straightforward reading of the BoM seems to me a plain case of falsification without any necessary prior cognitive scaffolding. now, i can cede that some mormons can reinterpret the BoM to be very difficult to falsify. e.g., simply assume that the BoM describes events on one of the smaller antilles. this would get around some of the theoretical objections regarding cultural and biological diffusion i made above (though a thousand years of isolation for a relatively advanced society as described in the BoM is implausible to me, but so be it). to falsify it you would have to go and excavate all the islands, and even then one could argue one had missed something.
As far as the BoM's theological claims, I doubt that those are falsifiable any more than your run of the mill beliefs about God are. if it is true that mormons believe god inhabits a planet in this universe and possesses and corporeal form then theoretically it is more falsifiable. the god of the philosophers which "higher religions" usually promote is a tricky beast that over the generations has been reverse engineered to withstand scrutiny. his face is hidden from the world.
Some Mormons aren't literalists, either, Razib. They think that the Book of Mormon is something like a divine fiction, belief in its historicity being necessary to the unenlightened minds of the 19th Century in order to persuade them that the Indians were their brothers and that Christ was concerned not just with the Old World but with the New. So what? Ross literally believes in the Resurrection, which is a fantastic belief that is far more contrary to science and everyday experience than the thought that a small group of Jews lived somewhere in the Americas for awhile as proto-Christians. Mormons share this belief, but yet you and Ross don't seem to think that disqualifies us from being taken seriously. Do you believe in the Resurrection, Razib? Do you think its reasonable to believe that it literally occurred? That a Mediterranean Jew turned water into wine, walked on water, somehow multiplied bread and fishes, cured all sorts of diseases by touch, brought a couple of dead people back to life, literally talked to Elijah and Moses, went for 40 days without bread and water in the desert, was killed and came back to life later and then flew through the air into the sky? Mormons believe all this, which I guess makes us unreasonable in your book. But Ross D. believes all this too.
Quoting Jay J: "If we start getting into all this personal religion stuff there will be no reason to stop before we get to what some people believe are the more 'reasonable' orthodox Christian beliefs. Nothing would please the Chris Hitchens' of the world more." Good thinking, if I was still saddled with task of defending Christian mythology I'd opt for collusion as well. And I greatly appreciate your admission that this is all "personal religious stuff"; I'm sure from now on you won't be making any mythology-inspired *public* policy arguments, which is of course probably the best thing for you and your beliefs. The heat in the kitchen and such.
You can't simultaneously condemn people for holding beliefs that contradict empirical evidence and get peeved at them for "reverse-engineering" their beliefs to comply with the empirical evidence. One or the other, but not both.
Do you think its reasonable to believe that it literally occurred? That a Mediterranean Jew turned water into wine, walked on water, somehow multiplied bread and fishes, cured all sorts of diseases by touch, brought a couple of dead people back to life, literally talked to Elijah and Moses, went for 40 days without bread and water in the desert, was killed and came back to life later and then flew through the air into the sky? the key is on "reason." reason presupposes axioms. the axioms which ross holds to be true makes this reasonable to him. i disagree with those axioms, and those disagreements are in my mind not just based on theoretical disputes but those derived from the facts of the world which we know them at the current time. that being said, the problems with a more literal interpretation of mormonism is that the disagreements are not just of reason, but of fact. for example, ross believes that a jewish man did some really bizarre things 2,000 years ago which i think are nonsensical. now, if ross told me that a jewish man was resurrected right outside my door 2 minutes ago, and so on, i would judge that even more nonsensical. i have immediate sense impression that this is just not so, not only is it an unreasonable assertion: it is empirically false on the face. now, the more literal assertions of mormons regarding their beliefs are not in the second category, nor do i believe they are int he first category. rather, they are quantitative in between. i don't know for a fact that j. smith forged the BoM because i saw it with my own eyes, but j. smith is a historical figure who lived during a time where we have a lot more documentary evidence. similarly, there are things about history and science that we know that make a particular interpretation of the BoM (a more 'literal' one) highly unlikely because of the material consequences are not born out by the world in which we live and can sense.
Adam, I understand that Catholics wouldn't expect the host to bleed if pricked. They do however, believe that they are literally eating the body and blood of Jesus, in spite of the fact that the incidental characteristics remain like bread and wine. But how reasonable is it to believe that you are eating the body and blood of Jesus when it's just fricking bread and wine!! I'm actually sorry to point this out, as I have nothing against Catholics, but here we have one talking about how Catholics have beliefs that are based on things from a long time ago, and that Mormonism is at a disadvantage since it's claims are more falsifiable. Well, as just about everyone seems to agree, any test done on the bread and wine will reveal it to be...bread and wine. I really don't care what people believe about what they're eating, but when they say they're consuming the flesh and blood of Jesus, I say they live in a glass house when it come to religion, and therefore shouldn't throw stones. This, from the Catholic encyclopedia: "...eating and drinking are to be understood of the actual partaking of Christ in person, hence literally." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm#3 I understand that they don't expect to taste flesh and blood when they go to Mass, but they still see it as literally consuming the flesh and blood of Jesus. And we can easily demonstrate to them that they aren't. Therefore, what reason do they have to believe that they are eating the body and blood of Jesus when we can easily show them that the constituency of the bread and wine precludes that explanation? Pure Faith.
You can't simultaneously condemn people for holding beliefs that contradict empirical evidence and get peeved at them for "reverse-engineering" their beliefs to comply with the empirical evidence. One or the other, but not both. yes you can. read some philosophy of science. if the paradigm does not fit, you must quit.
Razib,
this is a good comparison, because you have a big contrast: the vinland settlement lasted for a few generations. from what i recall the nephites lasted for hundreds of years (nearly 1,000?). The contrast is the other way. The vinland settlements had more people and repeated Old World contact, yet they didn't introduce much of a tool kit. The Nephite settlement was a one time, two-family thing. They survived but, I would imagine, in a highly assimilated form. if you multiply out the probability the likelihood of extinction of all cultural traits over such a long period of time when they are maintained is pretty low. if you want to believe in it of course you can accept the likelihood of such a low probability event, but as you can see you won't convince those who don't share your religious priors. This is an excellent point. What we're trying to argue here is that the historical record does not make our belief an unreasonably low probability, given our religious priors.
I don't think there's a real distinction in Razib's 4:26 either. If you believe that the resurrection and all those other events in Jesus' life happened as historical facts, then the only things that save you from ridicule are (1) that they happened so long ago that they are more difficult to disprove than the beliefs of the Mormons, and (2) they are more widely accepted. Again, I would also note that what we DO know about early Christianity makes it look quite similar to Mormonism. What made it into the Bible and orthodox Christian belief was the result of a successful attempt to impose authority over Christian doctrine in the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, many believes and doctrines and gospels that had wide adherence during the first centuries of Christianity were stamped out as heretical. Knowing what we know about the process that resulted in the creation of the modern Catholic New Testament, why would anyone believe that it accurately records the word of God? And why is the faith of one who does any less subject to criticism than the faith of a Mormon who believes in LDS scripture?
Jay J: Most Catholics do not believe that what they are eating is the literal flesh of Jesus Christ. And most of those who do believe this are misusing the word "literal." You would find very few Catholics, for example, who would believe that there is any physical, observable scientific difference between a consecrated and non-consecrated host.
If anything, from your atheistic standpoint I'd think you'd say that there was a larger chance that there actually was some Middle-Eastern pre-Columbian contact than that Jesus was resurrected or performed miracles. yes. 1) via both induction and deduction from the world around us i don't accept jesus' resurrection. we have no real evidence he was resurrected (i don't count josh mcdowell style apologetics as 'evidence that demands a verdict'). there is a possibility that he did not exist. all we can do is make inferences based on our general model of the world. 2) regarding a more literal interpretation of the BoM i also have to rely on induction and deduction. but, these models are subject to a much greater input of direct empirical evidence. i can (i believe) falsify or render implausible "facts" asserted in the BoM in a more direct fashion than with the resurrection of jesus christ. the BoM models can generate testable inferences. e.g., we know that if there was contact it had to be attenuated, the low heterozygosity of amerindian MHC loci (genetic diversity of the adaptive immune system) is simply implausible if there was exposure to the eurasian pathogen complex (as are the historically attested mass die offs do to strains of the flu as well to corroborate this). so what i'm saying is that the BoM offers a suite of inferences amenable to scientific scrutiny. the way mainstream christianity has repositioned its truth claims makes it difficult for science to "test" them (see transubstantiation). And I don't think chanting 'philosophy of science' allows contradiction. if you are a working scientist you know very well that science is filled with contradictions and confusions. it isn't a system of logic, though it depends on mathematics. though the term 'paradigm shift' is overused it is what i am alluding to when i say that the reverse engineering which is characteristic of higher religion isn't something i find plausible. i don't think that religion is attractive and ubiquitous because of its valid truth claims. people won't stop believing in god because it doesn't exhibit instrumental utility (it offers no explanatory value after centuries of reverse engineering). i think there are strong psychological reasons why people will continue to believe in religion. one of the main ones is that human cognition is modularized in a way that contradiction is totally normal and conventional (not just in religion). this means that as a matter of modal psychology the philosophical objections to jesus' resurrection which do rely on formal logical chains of propositions and generalized induction will never be highly persuasive to most people (most humans are pretty stupid anyhow, but intelligent ones like ross still often have very powerful psychological biases which you won't be able to overcome through argumentation). so the question for me is not whether people will be religion, they usually will be, but rather which religion. a literal reading of the BoM offers a set of facts which are easily testable without recourse toward logical thought, just an assertion and a contradiction or verification. so psychologically religions are selected away from ones that are so easily falsifiable. i suspect over time mormonism which shift away totally from a literalist take on BoM so as to be more appealing to their own elites. which leads me to the assumptions about mormons. it would be nice to have a survey which fleshes out their views regarding their 'doctrines' so that we can characterize the distribution of belief. i grew up around mormons and my own impression is that most of the adherents are more literalist than the people who are showing up on this thread, but that's just my impression.
vune, First, I would never have even gotten on this topic were it not for Ross's diavlog over at Bloggingheads. Second, the real issue here is what the church teaches, not what most Catholics believe. When the Catholic church uses the word "literal" when they assert that Jesus' "Real Presence" is somehow injected into the bread and wine after the Priest blesses it, they are making a claim. The fact that Catholics may say, "Well, it's more than symbolism, but you won't be able to find it emperically," doesn't make the idea more believable. We could do a test of the bread and wine to show that, unlike church teaching, more than just the appearance of bread and wine is present, but the constituency of bread and wine are present. My 4:26 post addresses most of this...
The vinland settlements had more people and repeated Old World contact, yet they didn't introduce much of a tool kit. The Nephite settlement was a one time, two-family thing. They survived but, I would imagine, in a highly assimilated form. there are plenty of theoretical models out there (see joe heinrich at emory) in regards to cultural diffusion, islands, etc. we can pop in parameters and test them. the vinland settlement was larger, but my understanding is that regular contact was less than 100 years. in any case, the probability of the spread of particular alleles (genetic variants) and diseases can be modeled given particular selective constraints and population numbers. we can generate a distribution of likelihoods in such a manner. i'm a bit piqued and might actually attempt this at some point inf the future for the BoM (though i'll have to familiarize myself with the literature more, i've only read the BoM itself, not what others think of it).
my own impression is that most of the adherents are more literalist than the people who are showing up on this thread Probably true.
to be precise, with a specific number of individuals and assumptions about demographic history (rate of outmarriage, etc.) we can be very mathematically precise about what might happen in regards to genes and diseases.
Although 'literalist' isn't probably the right word. Much of the evidence for the limited geography model is from the text of the Book of Mormon.
Razib, You're right, that agricultural diffusion is relatively likely in many contexts. On the other hand, the limited availablility of agricultural diffusion out of Central America has been suggested by a lot of people, most of whom aren't Mormons. It's one of the central themes of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, after all (and also referenced in The Third Chimpanzee). Diamond points out that all sorts of pieces of the cultural and agricultural toolkit didn't make it across the isthmus. Llamas. Peppers. The wheel, for crying out loud. America is not Eurasia, and North-South diffusion is significantly more difficult than East-West (which is pretty much the central theme of Guns, Germs, and Steel). So, if the Nephites (or some other particular civilization) existed in Central America, would there nececssarily have been much agricultural diffusion in either direction? You don't have to ask a Mormon apologist to get a negative answer.
Jay J: Sorry if I'm taking it off subject, I'm new to the thread & haven't read the whole discussion. My intention was simply to give an explanation as to why Catholics with their silly beliefs can be so critical of the silly beliefs of others. Mostly, I'm just posting cuz I'm bored, so feel free to disregard this. But since I already wasted the time, I might as well post what I typed in between my post & your response: (1) that they happened so long ago that they are more difficult to disprove than the beliefs of the Mormons, and (2) they are more widely accepted. This is pretty much what Mormons have going against them. Mormon beliefs are "weird" because of 2, and mistakes/lies of the founders of the Mormon church are harder to justify as metaphors because of 1. For example, it is a fact that Joseph Smith's interpretation of the facsimiles in the Pearl of Great Price are incorrect. This means one of three things: A. Joesph Smith was lying Most Mormons never look into this stuff, as it is completely irrelevant to how they live their lives. Those who look into it are usually content to accept answer #3. Logical gaps like this may exist in other religions, but they're a lot harder to find, and to argue to the fullest, usually require fluency is a dead language. I'm not saying it's right... Just the way it is.
Mormons are definitely not monotheistic. It's worth noting, however, that most non-Christians do not view Christians as being monotheists, either.
I'm just going to address the Mormon belief that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and the common non-Mormon belief that he was an "obvious fraud." We can talk livestock, archeology, and genetics as evidence of Joseph's "fraud." Another comment Ross made was how the Book of Mormon contains "mistranslations" of the King James Bible and asserts them as the original biblical verse. Do these discrepancies invalidate Joseph Smith's alleged divine calling? I think it depends on what you expect of a prophet. Traditional Christians should keep in mind that they have not had to deal with the messiness of continuing revelation since the death of the original apostles, and perhaps earlier. How is God's will transmitted to His children? And what happens to the message when God chooses to use mere mortals to convey that message? Traditional Christianity tends to believe in the absolute integrity of the written word. No questions asked, what is in the Bible is what God meant, in the exact wording He wanted, without addition or distortion. I would note that Mormons tend to believe this as well. Myself, I'm doubtful that this is really what scripture is. My reasons appeal to the fundamental nature of the men who wrote the scripture. Now, Moses, I'm sure, was a stand-up guy. But is anyone here ready to claim he was perfect? Is it possible that Moses, upon hearing God's word in... say... the burning bush just maybe got it a bit wrong on the way to the press? Perhaps he altered wording a little? Maybe he just forgot a few things? Maybe a few of his own biases crept into the document as he wrote it? Or maybe he wasn't a great writer to begin with and just didn't use the written language to express himself as well as he might have? In the end, Moses was just a man. And isn't it a bit silly to expect perfect scripture from him, no matter whether it came from God or not? And let's look at other common methods of receiving God's word. Dreams, visions (or hallucinations if you prefer), direct conversation with heavenly messengers. Aside from the Ten Commandments, which were written by God personally on the rocks, what guarantee do we really have of a flawless embodiment of scripture in the Bible. And we haven't even gotten to issues of how Moses original writings would have to be transcribed, and re-transcribed down through the ages. Much of it might well have even been transmitted orally for hundreds of years before anyone wrote it down. And that's assuming that those writing and preserving the records had pure motives. What if a particular scribe simply didn't like a particular doctrine and left it out? What if another scribe thought that Moses really worded that particular passage poorly and decided to "improve" it? What if a political ruler or political elite wanted the record to support their own agenda? It seems almost incredible that, given the time span of the Bible, that the word of God survived intact at all. Yet we believe that, to some degree, it did. Here's the problem where traditional Christians have a hard time connecting with Mormonism. You haven't had to deal with real-time live updates from God for thousands of years. You frankly, have no idea what it's like, or how messy of a process it can be. Your revelations happened ages past, and there's been plenty of time to tidy up the house. Aberrant or odd things Paul, Peter, Moses, Elijah, etc may have once said have been long since been either edited out, or surrounded with such extensive philosophical, theological, historical, and linguistic defenses that they are now well nigh unassailable. You have, I'll be blunt, whitewashed your prophets. Not totally of course. But human nature being what it is, how could you not have? As a believing Mormon, I'm telling you. If you were to time-warp back to when the revelations were being handed down, you'd get a very messy process. A process where the general shabbiness of the messenger often turned the people off to the message. A process where flawed men, often regarded as dangerous fanatics or lunatics, preached from the fire of their souls. A process where prophets and seers tried to convey the message God had entrusted them with, and inevitably failed to convey it perfectly. In short, you'd have Joseph Smith. I don't say this to prove Joseph's divine mission. I merely want to point out that Mormons haven't had even a fraction as much time as Lutherans or Catholics have had to tidy up their theological houses. If you want a living religion, you have to expect it to be messy. Because revelation and prophesy, like life, is messy.
Roger, I think the proper term is "henotheistic," not "polytheistic."
Read "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling" by Richard Bushman who is both an emeritus professor of history at Columbia and a practicing Mormon. You can also read works by Hugh Nibley, who was a world renowned bible scholar. Also, www.fairlds.com is a good site to visit. You can go to http://www.famousmormons.net/ to see who some famous Mormons in our culture are in many different fields. Also, you ought to read the Book of Mormon before you make comments about the Mormons. It's actually a pretty interesting book that covers several thousand years and discusses the rise and fall of two civilizations. There is actually a lot of geographical and archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon and its history in Central America - Not that geography could ever "prove" that one religion is correct or not (for example even people who were there with Christ didn't believe Him), but it seems to be an issue for some people.
I think the proper term is "henotheistic," not "polytheistic." 1) i think that there is still debate in the air in muslim & jewish circles whether christians are monotheists. i know that some ashkenazi rabbis have accepted that christians are monotheists, but i don't think this was authoritative. 2) if the trinity is tritheism, then christians are polytheists. but they are not henotheists insofar as they worship the only gods they believe exists. henotheists believe in a multiplicity but worship a subset of those gods.
let me illustrate my distinction between aspects of mormon history vs. christian supernaturalism. imagine two people. one believes in the christian god. another believes that sai baba is god. as a matter of logic i reject the validity of both beliefs with equal certitude, but, i can empirically investigate sai baba's godhood in a direct and immediate manner. i can reject sai baba's godhood scientifically (assuming particular inferences one can make from a 'god'). there are people who do believe that a god-man with magical powers existed 2,000 years ago. there are people who do believe that a god-man with magical powers exists today, in india. logically both these are equally fallacious in my eye, but, i do make a distinction in the psychology of individuals who have these beliefs. both are delusions in my eye, but not of equal magnitude or concern. similarly, a geocentrist catholic (they exist) and a liberal catholic accept absolutely false beliefs about transubstantiation and the bodily resurrection. but, i tend to judge the two groups a bit differently because geocentrism is a rejection of immediate reality on a totally different order of magnitude. now, to be concrete. i know that mitt romney believes in evolution. i do not know his beliefs about mormon history. i may very well be that he has a subtle take. i know many mormons do not (knowing them personally and discussing their beliefs).
Personally, I think Mormonism is pretty firmly henotheistic, and traditional Christianity is arguably so.
King James v. Book of Mormon: the problem in microcosm
However, the Book also corrects a errors made by the KJV. It also contains Hebrew poetry and geographic references to the Middle East that were unknown in Smith's day. To Mormons, this shows that the BoM is an authentic product of 400 A.D. The issue illustrates the essential problem in microcosm. Ultimately, no intellectual arguement will prove that the BoM is fraudulent or 'true'--there will always be intelligent people on both sides who think their point of view is clearly correct. The only way to address the truth of the Book of Mormon is to pray about it and ask God if it is true. And even this will yield nothing more than faith, or not. The latest volley in the KJV/BoM debate: The text of the Book of Mormon, attractively presented. ---- I'm a contract attorney practicing at a large international law firm. I'm not a genius, but I'm not the gullible hick people imagine would be a Mormon. I sincerely believe the Book of Mormon is true, because it makes such a difference in my life, in the life of many others, and because of the kind, gentle Mormon community (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) that depends on it for inspiration. I've read several thousand pages of skeptical literature, and hundreds of pages of pro-Mormon literature. But at the end of the day, when I read the BoM my doubts are soothed and I am warmed by God's Spirit. That's why I believe. God Bless.
tim, i can't argue with your sort of fideism. i don't agree with it, but it is fundamentally orthogonal to any approach i might make except the one at the root.
vune, I'm not LDS, and I'm not here to defend Mormonsim, but the list of things Catholics believe which I would find, err, implausible, would probably be just as impressive. Those who hold views which test the credulity of the human mind beyond its bounds, but then go around critiquing other faiths, to me are engaging in a distasteful exercise. This is why I didn't say anything about what Matthew Yglesias said in the diavlog, since he seems like he's, at most, a lapsed member of Reform Judaism. I agree with you on your account of how things are, and I wold prefer to critique neither Mormonism or Catholicism unless and until they push policies I don't agree with based on the premises of their faith. I honestly believe that if aliens came down and had no knowledge of our history of what the majority of people believed, they would find Mormonism to be about as strange as Catholicism.
they would find Mormonism to be about as strange as Catholicism. i think they would find mormonism less strange than catholicism, because it is grounded in a much more common sense theology (mormons on occasion make this point). in other words, catholicism would be more absurd. mormonism less. but because of their lack of absurdity and sense, it would also be easier to prove demonstrably false. how's that for a back handed compliment? ;-)
Thomas Nelson (way back a zillion comments ago)--I suspect you are thinking of Bruce R. McConkie's _Mormon Doctrine_. With a title like that, you would think it was an officially sanctioned work, but it most emphatically was not. The history of the book (which, I'm told, is finally going out of print this year) is actually an interesting case study in why it's so hard to figure out what Mormons believe. Part of what people so disliked about McConkie's book was its move towards something like a systematic theology. That systematizing impulse goes strongly against the grain of earlier Mormonism. Mormonism was founded, in part, because of Joseph Smith's distaste for the competing creeds of the Methodists, Presbyterians, and assorted Calvinist-flavored revivalists who frequented Palmyra in search of converts. He was a minimalist in terms of required beliefs, and that tradition persists within Mormonism. There are 13 Articles of Faith derived from a letter Joseph Smith wrote to a newspaper editor who wanted to print the beliefs of Mormons, but they do not form a creed in any sense that would be recognizable--they are not recited (except occasionally by young children learning them in Sunday School), nor is anyone ever asked to formally assent to them either before or after being baptized into the church. I suspect that a fair number of Mormons could not list the major points of all of them. Plenty of scholars of Mormonism have noted that this doctrinal "flexibility" (to use the most complimentary term) is part of what has allowed Mormonism to grow so rapidly. Tests of "Mormon-ness" have generally relied on personal loyalty to the group, and to its leaders, and, more importantly, to compliance with distinctive practices. Polygamy was the obvious defining practice of several generations of Mormons. After it was discontinued, other practices became normative and took on greater importance in terms of boundary-maintenance. Probably the most notable of these practices is compliance with what's called "The Word of Wisdom"--which includes instruction to abstain from tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. In the late 20th century, a strong emphasis on families and traditional gender roles became important identifying practices, although these are more contested within Mormonism. In any case, you can't hang out with Mormons who fancy themselves intellectuals for very long before they start butchering Greek-derived endings talking about whether Mormonism requires any orthodoxy at all, or merely orthopraxis. Despite the ridiculous length of this comment, I believe that is the shortest possible answer to the question of why no intelligent Mormon has produced a single volume that represents either an official or a comprehensive view of Mormon theology. There's no such thing.
Kristine, Kaimi, Adam and others have all made some great comments; thanks. Vune, "For example, it is a fact that Joseph Smith's interpretation of the facsimiles in the Pearl of Great Price are incorrect." I'm not learned in nor particularly caught up by the spiritual claims and importance of the Pear of Great Price, and truth be told, I strongly suspect such a position is also held by a majority of church members. But in case, let's remember that Ross's argument was focused on Mesoamerican history and the Book of Mormon, and rightly so: it, unlike the Pearl of Great Price and all its various claims, is the real make-or-break text that must be examined if Joseph Smith is to be taken seriously.
Watching the webcast of Matt and Ross, I was struck by the lack of their source knowledge. It was obvious from the first word of criticism that they were cliff note reviewers. Sad but not uncommon. The Times and Season gang, which is about as smart as they come, inside or outside mormonism, has presented the thinking persons plausibility argument for mormonism or pointed to sources in which such arguments can be read. But I am not holding my breath for Ross or Matt or anyone else who shoots first and asks for guilt or innocence later to rush and read those sources. Nor do I hold out hope for them to come back and report that, despite their ongoing doctrinal or philosophical differences with mormonism, their uneducated statements in the webcast were unfounded. No -- when someone commits to a position that ridicules another group, retraction requires a christ-like act that few are able to muster. I must admit that the irony in the christian right's approach to this presidential election is a wonder to behold.
Sure, Razib, fair enough. My mild fideism is informed by epistomological realism (cynicism, maybe), born of my experiences as an attorney. I smile when I hear epistomologically niave people who think they can prove the Book of Mormon true or false. My considered view is that the truth of the Book of Mormon is almost impossible to ascertain by intellectual means. Certainly there's nothing irrational about believing in the BoM. For instance, horses. The Book of Mormon mentions horses, but there is only very modest evidence to support their existence in America prior to the Spanish. Yet, there are no extant horse bones to prove that the Mongols rode horses, either, even though the historical evidence that they did is overwhelming. (S. Bokonyi, History of Domestic Mammals in Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1974), 267.) (I haven't read the source cited--I'm relying on someone else's review.) Again, it is impossible to prove by intellectual means that the Book of Mormon is true or false. Epistomological realism, even more than fideism, informs my viewpoint. When I read the Book of Mormon, I feel a palpable glow. I believe it's the word of God. --- Thank you for your excellent gnxp websites. I read them regularly.
"I'm not learned in nor particularly caught up by the spiritual claims and importance of the Pear of Great Price" I'm so relieved to hear that, Russell. A PEAR of Great Price would be *really* weird!
I'd second Peter Jay's recommendation of the work of Richard Lyman Bushman, one of America's most perceptive historians of religion - better known, frankly, for his work on the formation of identity in colonial Connecticut than for his work on the LDS Church. But if I'm reading you correctly, "Rough Stone Rolling" isn't the way to go. Instead, I'd suggest a collection of his essays on history and faith: "Believing History: Latter Day Saints Essays." It's not a narrative exploration, an apologia, or a work of theology. You can look elsewhere for those, but I doubt an individual of your skeptical and probing disposition would find such works satisfying, anyway. Believing History is, instead, a collection of essays by a man who knows as much about the religious history of this country and the context from which Joseph Smith sprang as any living scholar - and who struggles to reconcile his faith and his knowledge. That is the quintessential struggle of all believers in this modern age, and Bushman's work offers me as much insight into my own struggles as a Jew as it does into his as a Mormon.
insightful comments all! my own exp. with mormons were my friends in high school, and their own views of their religion were rather somewhat less "sophisticated" (if i may use that loaded term) than what is on display here. let me end with this: i think that naked of all prior assumptions above mormonism as an empirical fact the likelihood of pre-columbian near eastern contacts is rather low. many of you point out the low likelihood of transmission of any one x cultural character or trait from a "colony" culture through the americas. this is fair enough. but the main issue that i have is that it seems we have a large number of points of evidence in the BoM which do not find validation. therefore, it doesn't seem that there is any extant evidence to support this hypothesis.... on the other hand, if you are a mormon who believes that the BoM captures a genuine revolution the priors change. if you presuppose the the genuine core of mormon belief one could construct a scenario where such a contact could occur so that the extant remains would be difficult to discern. as i noted above, one of the antilles is a good candidate. recall that mammoth survived off the siberia coast on an isolated island until 4,000 years ago. if you decrease the founding population you decrease the chance of genetic lineages surviving to the present. if you decrease cultural contact by distance you remove the possibility of diffusion. so depending on the parameters you can make a plausible case in the light of your priors. my own general interest though in regards to religion is not what the elites believe, but the modal attitudes of the typical religionist. so i am now curious as to possible sources to ascertain what typical mormons believe. i went to high school with many mormons, they were half of the school, and because of my lifestyle choices (no drugs or alcohol) these were the friends i tended to spend the most time with. i suspect that many non-mormons whose only exposure to the religion is the BoM (which i've read) and the typical mormon is going to be having the same confusions as matt & ross.
"on the other hand, if you are a mormon who believes that the BoM captures a genuine revolution the priors change. if you presuppose the the genuine core of mormon belief one could construct a scenario where such a contact could occur so that the extant remains would be difficult to discern. . . so depending on the parameters you can make a plausible case in the light of your priors." I think this needs to be stated more than once. The answer to why Mormons believe as they do can be traced to what Tim Bulter said, "When I read the Book of Mormon, I feel a palpable glow. I believe it's the word of God." This is a unsophisticated description of the spiritual witness, but a good example of the Mormon priority of religious understanding over apologetics. For Mormons, their experience with God is the ultimate proof they have of Mormon claims. It is a personal and not an academic exercise. To quote Richard L. Bushman, the current go to person: "Mormonism has always been an embarrassment to Christianity. It goes back to the 1830s when, on their own left, Christians had to face the Deists, who said the Christian miracles were ridiculous. To defend themselves, Christians had to find some kind of rational support. William Paley, of course, is the archetypical character, but there were scores of books written trying to mobilize evidence that you could believe the resurrection, that those witnesses were authentic. While they were fighting that battle, the Mormons on the right came up with these ridiculous stories of angels and gold plates and claimed the same right to believe in miracles, mobilizing the same kind of evidence that Christians used for the resurrection. This required Christians to repel Mormons to prevent the Deists from grouping them with the lunatic fringe. Christian groups have been as forceful as any in trying to put down the Mormons, I think, partly to protect their position as respectable philosophically. I once in a meeting asked a group of evangelical Christians – a small group; Mark Noll was there, Richard Mouw, various other distinguished people – why don't we join forces in making a case that there are grounds for believing in the existence of God simply because the spiritual life confirms it? People believe there is a God because it's manifest to them spiritually. They really didn't want any of that. They wanted to maintain their philosophical, rational claims, defending their miracles on sort of a quasi-scientific basis. They did not want to get in bed with the Mormons and their strictly subjective view of things. So there is kind of a gap intellectually. Mormonism has never embraced philosophy; it is not particularly interested in philosophy. I would say our most natural ally among the philosophers, frankly, is William James whose view of God is very close to the Mormon view of God. . . Because the emphasis is on experience and belief in a God" This isn't to say there isn't any "comprehensive defense/explanation" of Mormonism. There is a surprising amount of such if you will actually take the time to look. And these are just from amateur (although there is that) writers trying to be persuasive, but Phd's in fields from Law to Anthropology. Almost none of the articles they write will ever be in peer reviewed journals, but that is the nature of any religious apologist work. What is sad is that there is such a large volume of relatively good quality apologia that is virtually ignored. Even those who should engage it don't as if it doesn't exist. And here is where Ross Douthat and others miss the boat entirely. They seem to argue against Mormonism without having at least a cursory understanding of Mormonism and its contemporary defenders. What is amazing is all this talk about Mormons as "literalists" is only partly true. Unlike the most hardened Bible believers, Mormon theology about Prophets, Scriptures, History, and etc. is extremly flexable and nuanced. For instance, the whole talk above about how "The Pearl of Great Price" doesn't match with the current "Book of the Dead" we clearly have is not very troubling to Mormons who understand their own theology. It brings uncomfortable questions, but ultimately doesn't put "The Pearl of Great Price" into question so much as the process and meaning of Revelation itself. Too many people (even LDS members themselves) try to shoehorn Mormonism into the same category as Scriptural Inerrantists, when that is actually not the case. This is one example of too many where outside perceptions of the way Mormons think and believe are thrust upon them out of caricature rather than reality. That is the real tragedy here. Arguments against Mormonism from the Right and the Left have been, from the point of view of Mormons, mostly strawmen bolstered by centuries of tradition that Mormons half-heartedly care about participating in because of fashion.
I meant above: And these are NOT just from amateur (although there is that) writers trying to be persuasive, but Phd's in fields from Law to Anthropology. . .
Just a pet peeve of mine that has come up a few times in the discussion: empirical observation (science) can never definitively prove a metaphysical claim to be true or false. Many religious claims are metaphysical (e.g., transubstantiation, whether so and so is a God) and can't be disproven by science. You can disqualify such beliefs by adopting certain epistomologies, but so far, nobody has proven any epistomology to be indisputably true.
I think there is inevitably a difference in what "lay" members believe and what is believed by people who spend more time in this kind of discussion. Inasmuch as an average mormon belief system exists, I think a good place to look would be "The Mormon Experience" by Arrington, or some of Jan Shipps writings for a non LDS perspective that doesn't smack of misrepresentation to insiders (I am one). I have noted in many posts above, that there is a criticism of Mormon (and general religious) belief based on assumed prior probablity. The argument, applied to a concrete case, seems to go as follows: I've never seen anyone rise from the dead. No one I know has either. Doctors tell me it can't happen. There are very limited records of it happening. Therefore, I must conclude that the records are wrong, and that no one, Jesus included, has ever risen from the dead. I know that is a bit of a caricature (no disrespect iintended), but the basic flow is there. Post at 8:59 p.m. applies this argument to the Book of Mormon: "let me end with this: i think that naked of all prior assumptions above mormonism as an empirical fact the likelihood of pre-columbian near eastern contacts is rather low." While I respect those drawing conclusions from that argument, I don't believe it is sufficient to provide a criticism of (Mormon)belief. That would require a more direct falsification, such as finding, for example, correspondence outlining a conspiracy to fabricate the Book of Mormon story. The argument fails to be ultimately convincing because nearly all history is driven by events perceived to be unlikely, as well as our near total inablity to estimate probabilities. For example, even though data showing that the stock morket's value is largely determined by only a few days large movements over the scale of decades has been available for a long time, nobel prize winning economists lost billions of dollars by assuming that large deviations are improbable (LTCM, over the russian currency crisis in the late 90's). The one lesson history shows again and again is that the unexpected happens, and happened. There are astonishing internal evidences of the Book of Mormon, just as there are glaring holes in the archeological record, per expectations one would have from the Book of Mormon. Most purported evidence against the Book of Mormon is evidence from absence. I find that much less convincing than the internal evidence contained within the text (Again, Given's book is an excellent source without polemics). My own study has indicated that the emperical evidence is insufficient to convince on either side, though it leans toward truth. In the end, faith is driven by experiencing the Divine. Those of us who believe do not discard reason, we merely accept the limits of our empirical knowledge. We embrace that our further conclusions come from a source outside of ourselves. I think we can at least agree with those who do not believe on the limitations of our empirical knowledge.
Arguments against Mormonism from the Right and the Left have been, from the point of view of Mormons, mostly strawmen bolstered by centuries of tradition that Mormons half-heartedly care about participating in because of fashion. i grant that the individuals who have shown up on this thread acquitted themselves well and showed that they do not believe in naked absurdity. that being said, i won't dismiss ross & matt's perception that mormons believe in the ludicrous when my own impression is that the average mormon doesn't exhibit any nuance or subtly in their viewpoints. from page 308 of r. numbers the creationists: i am skeptical of the sophistication of such a population. i know there is variation amongst mormons regarding evolution (e.g., romney and orson scott card have no problems with it, to name two prominent mormons), but it seems that mormon socio-political biases have resulted in an absorption of some the norms of biblical inerrantism common in the fundamentalist protestant subculture.
Re: The spread of crops would depend on how adapted they were to their local environment. If they weren't useful, they wouldn't spread. We happen to know from our ownpost 1492 experience how adaptable European crops tothe Americas. The answer is: very adaptable, else you would not see wheat fields in the Dakotas, and could not buy locally grown onions, lettuce, peas etc at your local farmers market. Re: We actually have an example of Old World settlement that doesn't seem to have introduced much of a toolkit in the Vinland settlements. Vinland was never actually settled permanently, it was just an occasional stopping off point, a sort of fishing camp. Also, there seems to have been virtually no intercatrion between the Norse visitorsand the local inhabitants (who were nomadic hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists like the natives farther south). Re: Then we could test it to see if it had the constitution of bread and wine or flesh and blood. Um no. The doctrine never claims that it becomes physically/chemically flesh and blood -- its "accidents" are unchanged. Rather its metpahysical "essence" is what changes. There is no scientific test available for "essences" only for "accidents".
"but it seems that mormon socio-political biases have resulted in an absorption of some the norms of biblical inerrantism common in the fundamentalist protestant subculture." Yes, and no. I am very skeptical of the quote you give in the context of Mormon ideas about the Creation even among average members. It is true that most Mormons do not believe that humans evolved from apes, so to speak. However, Romney and OSC actually represent the average Mormon on the subject more than that simple survey actually says. The view of man in the Creation is only a part of the complete understanding Mormons have of the issue. It is a complicated subject for Mormonism that cannot be easily compared to the "socio-political biases" of inerrantism just because a few numbers seem to go that way. And that shows yet another problem with "own impression" when it is based on books rather than actual interpersonal contact and discussion. If that is not the case, razib, I will amend my level of skepticism you actually know how Mormons think. Just remember, however, that even traditional Christian apologists don't represent more than a handful of dedicated religionists.
I didn't really understand transubstantiation either, until I read some Aristotle, and then it made some sense. See this for a better explanation: ""Substance" here means what something is in itself. (For more on the philosophical concept, see Substance theory.) A hat's shape is not the hat itself, nor is its colour the hat, nor is its size, nor its softness to the touch, nor anything else about it perceptible to the senses. The hat itself (the "substance") has the shape, the colour, the size, the softness and the other appearances, but is distinct from them. While the appearances, which are referred to by the philosophical term accidents, are perceptible to the senses, the substance is not. When at his Last Supper Jesus said: "This is my body", what he held in his hands still had all the appearances of bread: these "accidents" remained unchanged. However, the Roman Catholic Church believes that, when Jesus made that declaration,[1] the underlying reality (the "substance") of the bread was converted to that of his body. In other words, it actually was his body, while all the appearances open to the senses or to scientific investigation were still those of bread, exactly as before. The Church holds that the same change of the substance of the bread and of the wine occurs at the consecration of the Eucharist.[2]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation
razib wrote, "i grant that the individuals who have shown up on this thread acquitted themselves well and showed that they do not believe in naked absurdity. that being said, i won't dismiss ross & matt's perception that mormons believe in the ludicrous when my own impression is that the average mormon doesn't exhibit any nuance or subtly in their viewpoints." That statement could be true of any group in America, from Christians, to atheists, to Democrats, to iPod fans. Not everyone can be an expert in everything. There will always be a small "elite" (sounds awfully pretentious doesn't it?) group with a more sophisticated grasp of the facts, theories and data than the general population. The majority of any given population will always have a more basic and rudimentary understanding. In fact, most will simply take their own views as a matter of faith. Say I'm libertarian and I oppose universal government-sponsored health care. I might have sophisticated economic arguments for that, I might be tuned into the Cato Institute, etc. But if so, I'm one of only a few libertarians in that boat. Most libertarians, I'd imagine, have jobs that don't involve thinking about these things. They got lots of commitments and simply don't have time to really "engage the debate." They are willing to let the people at the Cato Institute worry about sophisticated defenses, vote their own instincts, and carry on with life. Mormons are like this. Many feel like an ongoing concern with apologetics and academic justifications of belief are simply not worth their time. They've got kids to raise, jobs to perform, households to manage, and occasional recreation thrown in as well. Religious participation enriches and enhances these day-to-day realities. And that's good enough for them. Most Mormons have a vague notion that there are attacks on their faith floating around out there. They are also vaguely aware that Mormon apologists and academics are out there putting up some good defenses. For most, that's all they need to know about the subject. Why worry? I would also note that inerrancy isn't as common a viewpoint in average Mormon circles as you might think. On a superficial level, Mormons in Utah seem to highly resemble their sister populations among the Christian Right. But Mormons, once you dig a little, actually exhibit much more nuanced views on a whole range of topics. Mormonism is not, I think, inherently ideological and dogmatic. It can be made that way, but the religion really encourages its members not to get too wedded to dogma. Especially when that dogma can only be had by adding to the plain language of scripture and prophetic utterance.
Razib, Interesting numbers. I'd be particularly interested in seeing how they look, now. The selection of 1973 as an endpoint in your data raises all sorts of yellow flags for me. In 1973, the church had recently been led by Joseph Fielding Smith, who was a very vocal creationist. No church leader since then has spent nearly the time or energy on the creationism issue. Church members often pick up cues from church leaders. And evolution has not been something that most church leaders have much talked about in the past 20 years. Thus, I would be _very_ surprised if modern numbers are the same as 1973. I don't have that data myself, and I don't deny the possibility that it's the same. (Google was relatively unhelpful). But the fact that your source ends the discussion in 1973 (in a book published 20 years later) smells problematic. Instead of accurately portraying a trend, that quote may be highlighting a few statistically anomalous years.
"They are also vaguely aware that Mormon apologists and academics are out there putting up some good defenses. For most, that's all they need to know about the subject. Why worry?" If I believed that I had access to special knowledge about history and the nature of the universe, I would worry about it a great deal. This doesn't say much for the "ordinary believer."
I am concerned with the specificity of Henry's statement above: "If I believed that I had access to special knowledge about history and the nature of the universe, I would worry about it a great deal. This doesn't say much for the 'ordinary believer.' " Everyone I know, perhaps especially in my life as an academic scientist, believes they have "special knowledge" about the universe that is not adequately examined. Such inadequately examined beliefs are a property of humanity, not religious believers alone. They reflect the need of people to have some framework with which to make decisions as they live their lives, working, raising children, etc. However, nearly all Mormons would claim that their beliefs are born of religious experience through prayer. While one may fairly state that they believe such religious experiences are merely in the heads of believers, that is no more an empirical fact than the opposite. Given that the more academically inclined posters on this thread, especially those with substantial expertise on Mormon issues, seem to conclude that an empirical confirmation or falsification of Mormon belief is hardly available, this actually seems to me to be a reasonable approach. Actually, it seems to me substantially more rigorous than concluding the Book of Mormon is not true, even though the evidence is unconclusive, because it clashes with one's naturalistic worldview. Makes the average Mormon look pretty good to me. One last comment on evolution. I doubt the 1973 statistics are still sound. A state legislature bill endorsing the teaching of intelligent design in Utah was soundly defeated several months back. No one cried very loud. Also, evolutionary biology had a renaissance at BYU in the 70's.
I understand that this post is seeking more knowledge after some admittedly uninformed comments on Bloggingheads... but I'm perplexed you don't apply the apparent religious test you put forth as being relevant to Romney (e.g., How could he believe this stuff?) in a more "bipartisan" way. Would it interest you to know that Harry Reid has, sitting on his desk in the Majority Leader's office of the U.S. Senate, a statute of the "obvious charlatan" Joseph Smith (who put forth the "crude and obvious forgery" that is the Book of Mormon? I'm not a huge fan of Romney's policies, but his faith, even if you don't subscribe to it, is defensible and certainly not written off as easy an "obvious forgery." Whether or not Romney is rejected as the Republican candidate based solely on his religious beliefs instead of his political positions is, in my view, a test for the Republican party. Democrats, with Reid, have shown they have no religious litmus test for leadership.
The primary question ought not to be the historicity of Mormon claims about Mesoamerica, as important as such questions are. The question is whether they espouse a Christian doctrine of God. The question is whether they affirm the classical creeds of Christian faith. Are they Trinitarians? No, they are not. But that is not the end of it either. Neither do they believe in the classical attributes of the biblical God--his oneness, simplicity, omnipotence, complete separateness from the created world, etc. Their central theological doctrines are effectively pagan and not Hebraic. These issues are the central ones, and not squabbling over history. When disputes overlook the theological marrow of the debate, the conversation borders on pointlessness. Ask a Mormon to expound clearly their doctrine of God, especially with respect to the foundational Christian claims made in the Nicean and Chalcedonian creeds. You will see that they do not--indeed cannot--come close to affirming them in a way consistent with orthodox Christian belief.
"The primary question ought not to be the historicity of Mormon claims about Mesoamerica, as important as such questions are. The question is whether they espouse a Christian doctrine of God....When disputes overlook the theological marrow of the debate, the conversation borders on pointlessness." Why, Thomas? I mean, surely the question of whether or not we Mormons espouse a "Christian doctrine of God"--and the related question(s) as to whether such a doctrine is summed up in the "foundational...claims made in the Nicean and Chalcedonian creeds," and whether the label "Christianity" is necessarily tied to one's doctrine of God and thereby to those creeds, and how much flexibility regarding those creeds actually exists amongst the whole breadth of historical Christianity, etc., etc., etc.--is pretty important. But is it the only important thing? Really, every other debate is pointless? Demonstrating the plausibility of the Book of Mormon would be theologically meaningless? It would have no relevance for any religious debates of any kind, anywhere? I find that very hard to believe. Religion--including creedal Christianity--is a multifaceted thing, and numerous arguments can intersect with one's faith life and affect if one believes, and how one believes, in the divine in numerous different ways. The way you present yourself here, one might think that you believe that the famous passage "every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess" actually refers to a theological affirmation arising from a position taken on a disbute which has lasted for nearly 2000 years of Christian history. Given that Jesus has said he will save the weak and foolish, I somehow doubt that a resolution in favor of specific doctrinal positions is going to matter all that much to the Lord. I'm sure it'll matter to some; people that God has blessed with religious knowledge, say. But will it be the one issue that will matter over every other? I sincerely doubt it.
Thanks to Mr. Fox for his response. The central questions are, at bottom, the theological questions: "Who and what is God? What is God like? What has he revealed about himself? What is the nature of God?" It is not until human intelligence has applied itself to beliefs--faith seeking understanding--that we have a real theological conversation. We can talk about history till we are blue in the face. But when claims become rationally formulated theologically--then, and only then, can the real dialog begin. My assertions (they were not more than that) still stand. Mormons are cagey about stating clearly their doctrine of God. I repeat, for Mormons "God" is finite, corporeal, limited, not one, not simple, etc. In conceiving of "God" in this manner they overturn--decisively repudiate--the Jewish-Christian doctrine of the biblical God. I note that Mr. Fox did not dispute my statements. Mormons may be wonderful people. Mormons may be models of piety, etc. Mormonism may even be true. It just so happens that Mormonism is through and through pagan. It has little more in common with Abrahamic monotheism than any primitive or pagan polytheistic or henotheistic religion.
Thomas, You may want to read this book that compares Mormon belief to Evangelical belief. How Wide the Divide, by Craig Blomberg and Stephen Robinson (InterVarsity Press), is a dialogue between a Mormon scholar and an Evangelical scholar, about the nature of God, the Trinity, and other beliefs.
Are you suggesting that a doctrine which asserts that some ethereal quality of the bread and wine are changed because a man in a robe said some words over it is reasonable? If not, then perhaps you can appreciate the context in which this discussion started. This conservation didn't start because anyone decided to arbitrarily critique Catholocism. This conversation started because a Catholic critiqued the LDS religion, not only on orthodox religious grounds, but on rational, or empirical grounds as well. If all the doctrine is is that some untestable substance is somehow injected into the bread and wine cuz some dude says some words over it, that doesn't exactly make it a more reasonable belief. I get that the church would say that the doctrine doesn't assert that a detectable change takes place. That doesn't stop us from testing it BTW, it just makes such a test superfluous, since we all agree that no detectable change takes place, which was my main point to begin with. But if no detectable change takes place, why believe that a change has taken place because of some blessing? They could always just take Jesus' original words about the bread and wine as symbolic and go the route the Protestants do, but they didn't. Forgive me for not having a precise understanding of Catholic doctrine, but it really isn't easy when the church makes statements that in every day life would count for an empirical statements. They can have thousands of years to clarify what they mean when they say only the "appearance" of the bread and wine remains. In everyday life, the word appearance doesn't mean the entire constitution of a thing. But anyway, it really doesn't matter, since the Catholic Church relies on miraculous thinking to justify how it is that a priest can create this spiritual change at each and every Mass. I really have no problem with that, but it strikes me as odd that someone who does believe that would take a position critiquing the credulity of other people's beliefs. It strikes me as very Superman vs. Mighty Mouse, and it's really splitting hairs.
Oops, times like these I wish we had an edit option. the last post was by me, Jay J. I had Jon F on the brain when I posted it, so it should have started, JonF, and shown that it was posted by Jay J
"It has little more in common with Abrahamic monotheism than any primitive or pagan polytheistic or henotheistic religion." Here is one way of understanding why Mormon cageyness of this subjects is not intellectually deceptive: On Mormon henotheism: (1) The Mormon doctrine of the Godhead is clearly henotheistic in the sense of seeing it as composed of three distinct persons who are not homoousious. (2) Salvation consists in "inheriting all that God has," and thus in some sense consists of becoming a god, although in what sense is not clear. (3) Some Mormons believe that there are other gods in precisely the same sense that God the Father is god. Likewise, they believe that it is possible at least in theory for humans to become gods in the same sense. I take it that 1 and 2 are normative for all Mormons. 3 is permissible, but has been questioned by many, including leaders at the very highest levels of the Church. Furthermore, while 1 is a constant object of teaching within the contemporary church and 2 an occasional teaching within the church, 3 is virtually never taught in authoritative contexts these days. Hence, while I think that most Mormons would refuse to label 3 outside of the bounds of belief, most are also not willing to identify it as authoritative doctrine. Hence, while I think that they are willing to fess up to the henotheism in 1, they are cagier about the henotheism in 2. Now, it may be the case that 1 is sufficient to boot Mormons out of "Christianity" in some books. I think this is mistaken, but I can understand the logic of it. It may also be that the toleration of 3 as a non-authoritative possiblity is also enough. I think this is mistaken, but I can understand the logic of it. On the other hand, I do think that the interaction of 1, 2, and 3 within current LDS thought is such that to suggest that Mormonism has no more to do with Christianity than does, say, belief in the Greek Pantheon, is rather silly. MORMON FINITISM While they do not conceptualize God's finitude in the same way that Mormons do, it is worth pointing out that through out history there have been Christian theologians who have subscribed to some notion of God's finitude. For example, I take it that Anselm's soteriology implies a finite God, since in it God's power to fogive is limited by God's honor and holiness, concepts that seem to exceed the notion of logical contradiction. Accordingly, whatever our other theological heresies, I don't think that belief in a finite God simpliciter means that we are utterly foreign to the Christianity of the Gospels and the New Testament.
Jay J: My point was that the question of transubstantiation is a metaphysical question as someone earlier said. Whether Native Americans are the descendants of Jews is an empirical question--one that can be verified through DNA testing (which has shown that they are in fact most related to tribes in modern day Mongolia); linguistic evidence (which shows that Indian languages are not semitic); and archaeological evidence (which shows a pattern of settlement indicating that the Bering strait theory is our best hypothesis).
Actually David, DNA testing is probably currently incapable of proving whether the Book of Mormon peoples actually existed or not. This isn't an episode of CSI. Genetically tracking intercontinental ethnic groups is incredibly complex and requires a lot more than swabbing a crime scene victim and looking for matches. Follow the link Julie Smith provided way at the top of this thread. One of the first topics that website addresses is how DNA attacks on Mormonism are largely bogus.
Jay: Mormon apologists may say what they like. But there does seem to at least be data behind what I said about DNA: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1377773
And what pray tell were these anthropologists doing studying the possibility of a small group of Israelites traveling to the Americas. How did they find funding?
Just because they are "apologists" doesn't mean they're wrong. I take it you aren't going to follow the link then because your mind is made up? Geneticists haven't even managed to establish that recognized Jewish communities are genetically Jewish. Also realize that many Mormon scholars are advocating a more limited geographical model for the Book of Mormon - something probably smaller than present-day California. This presents even greater problems for genetically disproving the Book of Mormon. This isn't a recent development. Such scholars have been advocating this geographic model for a long time now. Well before genetic challenges to the Book of Mormon arose. And incidentally one of the earlier peoples mentioned in the Book of Mormon - the Jaredites - are believed by some Mormon scholars to have been Asiatic in origin. I accept the studies finding Asiatic DNA in Amerindians as true. But the presence of such DNA traces doesn't prove anything for this question.
Re: tracking intercontinental ethnic groups is incredibly complex and requires a lot more than swabbing a crime scene victim and looking for matches. And yet it can certainly be done. I refer you to the fairly detailed genetic profiling of the world's population by Cavalli-Sforza.
I was going to add something to this discussion of intellectual substance, since I have sat in theological discussions of many these very topics at the Harvard Divinity School (just a cheap attempt to establish some cred), but, frankly, it would be rather pointless. The original request was for sources and input from "smart Mormons"; sources and input has been provided; some continue to ignore those sources and that input - then spit out simplistic complaints that are addressed very well in the sources and input, with obviously no attempt to try to understand. I'm not naive enough to think that anything a Mormon contributor provides here is going to "convert" anyone else, but that wasn't the intent of the request - nor has it been the intent of any of the contributors. The original request simply asked for intelligent input. That has been provided. Frankly, I am disappointed that an opportunity like this to create mutual understanding, despite theological differences, has been exploited by some to manufacture a fight. All I can say, from studying and teaching religion for over 20 years, is that I know of no better source or input than that which has been provided by those who have commented before me. If someone reads those sources and wants to ask about specific quotes from those sources, I might consider contributing to this discussion. Otherwise, I'll pass.
Thanks to Mr. Oman for his straightforward response. I would disagree--and strenuously--that Anselm's understanding of God in any way parallels what Mormons teach about the finitude of God. I am encouraged by what Mr. Oman has said about the possible marginalizing of certain points of Mormon doctrine. If Mormon claims were limited to #1 we might have a profoundly serious Christian heresy, but it would be an identifiably Christian heresy. And yet the fact that the claims are not simply an interpretation of Christian scripture, but Mormon scripture, means the disagreements are wider than may appear.
Some fellow named President Hinckley suggests that biological markers should be present in a great many of the natives of Ecuador: "It has been a very interesting thing to see the descendants of Father Lehi in the congregations that have gathered in the temple," Hinckley said at an August 1999 temple dedication in Ecuador. "So very many of these people have the blood of Lehi in their veins, and it is just an intriguing thing to see their tremendous response and their tremendous interest." Perhaps the 'Smart Mormons' believe his statements to be inaccurate.
Might I suggest: "A Marvelous Work and a Wonder" by Le Grand Richards. Another (more dry), would be: "Articles of Faith" by James E. Talmage Those are probably the standards in general apologetics, though a few portions are dated, they make a good start. A more basic introduction to Mormon theology would be "Our Search for Happiness" by M. Russel Ballard Details on more specific theological issues can be found, probably the best place to find good references is at FARMS. For the best understanding of Mormon theology regarding Jesus Christ, the best book is hands down "Jesus the Christ" by James E. Talmage. Probably the most popular of all Mormon theology works.
Geneticists haven't even managed to establish that recognized Jewish communities are genetically Jewish. Wouldn't the obvious answer be that those communities AREN'T genetically Jewish? It is a matter of historical record that over the years many groups of gentiles adopted Judaism (including Khazars, Greeks, and Romans). The existence of blonde blue-eyed Ashkenazi also strongly suggest that genetic input from outside the faith has been a fairly common occurence over the generations. "Genetically Jewish" is very probably a meaningless statement.
Precisely. And why wouldn't the same mixing of genetic data apply to North and South America? There has never been a study yet that was designed to test the Book of Mormon claims. All they've done so far is find an "Asian link." That doesn't rule out other sources of genetic material at all. It only identifies one source. Most Mormon scholars believe that the people of the Book of Mormon probably mixed with other existing people on the North and South American continents. You're going to have a devil of a time sorting all that out.
I submitted a comment a couple times that didn't appear. One of the posters at Times & Seasons suggested that it was because of its length and recommended that I post it there and offer its link here. So, here's the link:
We happen to know from our ownpost 1492 experience how adaptable European crops tothe Americas. The answer is: very adaptable, else you would not see wheat fields in the Dakotas, and could not buy locally grown onions, lettuce, peas etc at your local farmers market. Are there wheat fields in the Amazon? Do they grow lettuce in the Andes? Somehow I fail to see that centuries of massive contact between two hemispherical continental systems means that a 600 BC family loading seeds into a ship that eventually ended up somewhere in the New World (whether the seeds made it or not is uncertain) must therefore have necessarily instituted an agricultural revolution. Vinland was never actually settled permanently, it was just an occasional stopping off point, a sort of fishing camp. Also, there seems to have been virtually no interaction between the Norse visitors and the local inhabitants (who were nomadic hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists like the natives farther south). Which goes to show that the mere fact of some kind of Old World intrusion into the New, however minor, should not be taken as the occasion for full introduction of the 'Old World toolkit.'
Adam, Again, these issues are peripheral. The issue at hand is, to repeat myself, monotheism. Quite frankly, the other issues are of no interest to Jews and Christians.
Not really Thomas. Did you read the original post? You do know why we're having this discussion right? The statement in question is that Mormonism is an "obvious fraud" based on a "crude forgery." Mr. Douthat asked Mormons to come here and give some defense as to why their religion should not be viewed as contemptible and ridiculous. Monotheism (while interesting) is really beside the point to this particular debate.
"Monotheism (while interesting) is really beside the point to this particular debate." I think you have summed up things well. I believe the original debate was about prejudice against Mormonism. The debate hung upon whether or not it was reasonable to do so. I do not believe it is reasonable to be prejudicial toward people of many faiths. Catholicism, Judaism, atheism--while they cannot all be true, they are at least somewhat coherent, and are reasonable positions to hold. I do not think the same about Mormonism, and the unwillingness to state dogmatic claims clearly is proof of that. Having said that, all Mormons should be treated with civility and respect.
Ryan Bell has a post up at the Romney Experience. http://www.romneyexperience.com/2007/07/17/has-mormonism-already-been-proven-false-a-response-to-yglesias-and-douthat/ In my experience his last paragraph accurately sums up the state of the debate on Book of Mormon historicity, though there are no debate-ending arguments on either side. *If I had to offer my own underinformed evaluation of where the battle stands at present, I would say that regarding internal evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon (language structure, linguistic studies, cultural factors, authorship issues, etc.), the Mormons are ahead of their opponents. As for the battle over external evidences (archeology, anthropology, genetics), the critics of Mormonism have the lead, at least as far as the site where the great majority of the Book of Mormon takes place- the still unknown site on the American continents. The “external evidences” arena of the contest has a subset, though– evidence regarding the departure points of the Book of Mormon peoples on the Arabian peninsula. Regarding that minor but crucial Book of Mormon setting, LDS apologists appear to have taken a respectable lead.
One does not know how to respond to such claims considering that virtually no non-Mormon has any interest in studying these things. When a single serious book about Mormon history or theology is being discussed in one of our best universities, then (maybe) we will know the the "debate" has become worthwhile. But right now it is very mickey mouse, as they say.
Works on Mormon history are rather regularlly included in syllabi at American universities for classes dealing with American religious history or religious studies. For example, Richard Bushman's work on Joseph Smith is used at Princeton. (This was the first Google hit that came up.)
Here is a class at the University of Florida that requires students to read Sarah B. Gordon's The Mormon Question, which certainly qualifies as a "serious book about Mormon history."
Sorry, one last post. Please. Of course Mormonism will be studied in history classes and comparative religion courses. Mormons number in the millions, which alone makes it worthy of some attention. I mean that Mormon thought will not be studied as a "live option" in philosophy, religion and theology departments. Its constructive arguments, such as they are, do not presently warrant serious attention in our nation's academies. Part of that, of course, is that it is a very new religion. We all await the Mormon Origen. Since I like to read philosophy and theology, I most certainly do. and I'm sure you do too.
And here's a recent graduate seminar at Michigan State University that read Kathleen Flake's excellent book on the Reed Smoot hearings. Perhaps Thomas Nelson's uninformed comments should be characterized as Mickey Mouse.
I see now how much we are arguing past one another. Mormons want to begin with historical claims about events found in their scriptures. They want to focus on the reasonableness of holding that these things occurred as told. This puts them in the intellectual tradition of evangelical Christians of a certain sort. Christians of the non-fundamentalist type will be more inclined to find this starting point odd and not promising. They will want to see Mormon faith articulated in a mature body of thought. I am asking for claims about this kind and mostly receiving claims of the first kind. I find Mormonism unreasonable because I do not see that it is capable of moving from the first to the second.
Ah, so Mr. Nelson inadvertently dropped the word "history" into his previous comment. What he meant to say is that "When a single serious book about Mormon theology is being discussed in one of our best universities" then he will reconsider his admitted prejudice against Mormons. As Nate Oman pointed out above (and as Dan Peterson has noted elsewhere) Mormons just don't "do" theology. What we have is not "an unwillingness to state dogmatic claims," but rather a very different sort of religious experience than Mr. Nelson is familiar with. I am at a loss as to why Mr. Nelson sees this difference as evidence of "unreasonableness" and adequate justification for prejudice. Let's be clear: this discussion is taking place in the context of making a decision as to whether a Mormon should be trusted to run the executive branch of the federal government. The overarching insinuation is that Mormons simply don't have the critical thinking skill required for such a task--otherwise they wouldn't be Mormons. At other sites it has been seriously suggested that Mormons should not be allowed to teach in the public schools for this very reason. I hope that the prejudice Mr. Nelson espouses means something else. I am encouraged that he feels Mormons should be treated with civility and respect. I hope he is also willing to recognize that intelligent, capable people can adhere to a religious movement that doesn't yet have "a mature body of [theological?] [philosophical?] thought."
Historical-critical work on Mormon scriptures is not a topic of serious discussion at our best universities. That kind of work simply isn't done. "Mormons just don't "do" theology. What we have is not "an unwillingness to state dogmatic claims," but rather a very different sort of religious experience than Mr. Nelson is familiar with..." Human reason will eventually require that such a thing be undertaken. Since I like to read about religion, I look forward to this.
Thomas Nelson: Again, you are revealing something of your ignorance here. The sort of work you are intersted in, while certainly a minor part of Mormon discussions, has been done off and on for about a century. I suggest that you look at B.H. Roberts, The Mormon Doctrine of Diety, Sterling McMurrin, The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion, Truman Madsen, Eternal Man, and more recently Blake Ostler's Exploring Mormon Thought books. You might also be interested in The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. I would point out that you are once again making very strong statements about what Mormonism is or is not capable of based on very little apparent research or understanding.
Re: Which goes to show that the mere fact of some kind of Old World intrusion into the New, however minor, should not be taken as the occasion for full introduction of the 'Old World toolkit The Book of Mormon does not tell a tale about a handful of Jewish explorers. It tells of a whole major civilization lasting centuries, at least as extensive as ancient Israel and Judea themselves. I'm sorry, but that level of "intrusion" is going to spread the tooklkit it brought with it. Moroever, when was this civilization relocated to Mesoamerrica? I believe that it was supposed to have existed in Missouri, based on the remains of the Mound-Builder proto-civilization which Smith et al interpretted as the ruins from their peripatetic Israelite emigres.
Dear Nate Oman, I am familiar with the works. This is where I get my ideas. The ideas presented resonate deeply with pagan thought at all times and places, though they appear to be a bizarre hodge podge of various notions adopted from a variety of sources. NB: I don't mean pagan pejoratively.
My last comment sounded more pointed than necessary. Christians often need to be reminded that they were scoffed at by pagans for centuries too.
"Human reason will eventually require that such a thing be undertaken. Since I like to read about religion, I look forward to this." I'm not so sure that we're talking "human reason" Thomas, so much as Hellenistic reason. Modern Christianity, and to a lesser extent, Islam and Judaism have been somewhat infiltrated by Athens, with its own native notions of logos. The thinking of Athens is largely static, contemplative, and passive. It contrasts sharply with both the traditional Jewish concept of religion and with Christ's own approach to religious teaching. Jewish thought, and the religion Christ taught is largely unconcerned with the metaphysical mind-games that characterize creedal Christianity. The overwhelming emphasis is on orthopraxy (right practice), not orthodoxy (right thought). There is also heavy use of parables, and a healthy sense of history as well. Speculation about the exact nature of deity, or the hereafter is not really much of a concern. In this sense, Mormonism more closely resembles early Judaism than Protestantism. As frustrating as this may be to the philosophers and theologians of traditional Christianity, Mormons, by and large, just don't seem to care much about philosophy and theology. You try to speculate much about such matters as the true nature of deity, the particulars of human destiny and general cosmology in a typical Mormon religious gathering, and you're likely to be quickly told by the attending Mormons that such things are purely "speculative" and are best not dwelt upon. The conversation will quickly return to discussions of ethical behavior and action. Likewise, if you ask a typical Jewish rabbi (is there such a thing anymore?) about these things, he'll likely tell you that you're wasting your time, and would do better to focus on loving your neighbor, serving your family, etc. Mormons are largely about applied practical religion. And who's to say this isn't actually the proper approach?
JonF, I swear on my Great Grandfather's grave that you are correct.
Some Scientific Questions 8 "Forever Tentative . . . " Science in a Vacuum From the first, both Mormons and their opponents recognized the possibility of testing the Book of Mormon in a scientific way. The book described certain aspects of civilizations purported to have existed in the New World in ancient times. Very well, where were the remains? A vast amount of time, energy, and patience has been expended in arguing about the interpretations of the scanty evidence that is available, but very little has been devoted to the systematic search for more. Of course, almost any object could conceivably have some connection with the Book of Mormon but nothing short of an inscription which could be read and roughly dated could bridge the gap between what might be called a preactualistic archaeology and contact with the realities of Nephite civilization. The possibility that a great nation or empire that once dominated vast areas of land and flourished for centuries could actually get lost and stay lost, in spite of every effort of men to discover its traces, has been demonstrated many times since Schliemann found the real world of the Mycenaeans. In our own generation the first scraps of physical evidence for the existence of certain great civilizations have come to light, though scholars have studied the literary and historical records of those same civilizations for centuries without possessing so much as a button or bead that could be definitely assigned to them. fn Indeed, until actual remains were found, it was quite possible and respectable to regard some of those civilizations as the invention of poetic fancy or legend. So it is with the Nephites. All that we have to go on to date is a written history. That does not mean that our Nephites are necessarily mythical, since the case of those Old World civilizations has taught us by now that the existence of written records which no one claims the credit of having invented is in itself good if not the very best evidence that a people really did exist. But as things stand we are still in the pre-archaeological and pre-anthropological stages of Book of Mormon study. Which means that there is nothing whatever that an anthropologist or archaeologist as such can say about the Book of Mormon. Nephite civilization was urban in nature, like the civilization of Athens or Babylon, and was far more confined in space and time than either of them. It could just as easily and completely vanish from sight as did the worlds of Ugarit, Ur, or Cnossos; and until some physical remnant of it, no matter how trivial, has been identified beyond question, what can any student of physical remains possibly have to say about it? Everything written so far by anthropologists or archaeologists—even real archaeologists—about the Book of Mormon must be discounted, for the same reason that we must discount studies of the lost Atlantis: not because it did not exist, but because it has not yet been found. The Bering Strait Theory The normal way of dealing with the Book of Mormon "scientifically" has been first to attribute to the Book of Mormon something it did not say, and then to refute the claim by scientific statements that have not been proven. A good example of this is the constant attempt to blast the Book of Mormon by assuming that it allows only one possible origin for the blood of the Indians (a perfectly false assumption), and then pointing out that the real origin is a migration via the Alaskan land-bridge or Bering Straits—a still unproven hypothesis. This is presented as the confrontation of crude 19th-century superstition with the latest fruits of modern science. And that, too, is misleading. For the theory of settlement by the Alaska land bridge, which has been accepted by North American anthropologists to this day, even though their colleagues in Europe and South America may shake their heads in wonder at such naive and single-minded devotion to a one-shot explanation of everything, has not been proven. Yes, there has been testing, but few people realize what dismally meager results have rewarded the vast expenditure of time and cash that has gone into the project. "Thus far," wrote Carleton Beals, summing up the situation in 1961, "nothing has been discovered to indicate human presence on or near the Bering Straits prior to 5000 years ago." fn It is still a problem, and very much alive, but the solution rests exactly where it has for many years: on a common-sense interpretation of the map. The Race Question To clinch the Bering Straits argument, it is usual to point out that the Indians are Mongoloid and therefore cannot possibly be of the racial stock of Lehi. Again an unproven hypothesis is set against a false interpretation of the Book of Mormon. As to the hypothesis, it is fairly well known by now that the predominant blood-type among the Mongols is B, a type which is extremely rare among the Indians, whose dominant blood-type is O, that being found among 91.3 percent of the pure-blooded North American Indians. "Here is a mystery," writes Beals commenting on the disturbing phenomenon, "that requires much pondering and investigation." fn But if we are to take the Book of Mormon to task for its ethnological teachings, it might be well at first to learn what those teachings are. They turn out on investigation to be surprisingly complicated. There is no mention in the Book of Mormon of red skins versus white; indeed, there is no mention of red skin at all. What we find is a more or less steady process over long periods of time of mixing and separating of many closely related but not identical ethnic groups. The Book of Mormon is careful to specify that the terms Lamanite and Nephite are used in a loose and general sense to designate not racial but political (e.g., Mormon 1:9), military (Alma 43:4), religious (4 Nephi 1:38), and cultural (Alma 53:10, 15; 3:10-11) divisions and groupings of people. The Lamanite and Nephite division was tribal rather than racial, each of the main groups representing an amalgamation of tribes that retained their identity (Alma 43:13; 4 Nephi 1:36-37). Our text frequently goes out of its way to specify that such and such a group is only called Nephite or Lamanite (2 Nephi 5:14; Jacob 1:2; Mosiah 25:12; Alma 3:10;30:59; Helaman 3:16; 3 Nephi 3:24;10:18; 4 Nephi 1:36-38, 43; Mormon 1:9). For the situation was often very mobile, with large numbers of Nephites going over to the Lamanites (Words of Mormon 1:16; 4 Nephi 1:20; Mormon 6:15; Alma 47:35-36), or Lamanites to the Nephites (Alma 27:27; Mosiah 25:12; Alma 55:4), or members of the mixed Mulekite people, such as their Zoramite offshoot, going over either to the Lamanites (Alma 43:4) or to the Nephites (Alma 35:9—not really to the Nephites, but to the Ammonites who were Lamanites who had earlier become Nephites!); or at times the Lamanites and Nephites would freely intermingle (Helaman 6:7-8), while at other times the Nephite society would be heavily infiltrated by Lamanites and by robbers of dubious background (Mormon 2:8). Such robbers were fond of kidnapping Nephite women and children (Helaman 11:33). The dark skin is mentioned as the mark of a general way of life; it is a Gypsy or Bedouin type of darkness, "black" and "white" being used in their Oriental sense (as in Egyptian), black and loathsome being contrasted to white and delightsome (2 Nephi 5:21-22). We are told that when "their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes" they shall become "a white and delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:6; "a pure and delightsome people,"edition), and at the same time the Jews "shall also become a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7). Darkness and filthiness go together as part of a way of life (Jacob 3:5, 9); we never hear of the Lamanites becoming whiter, no matter how righteous they were, except when they adopted the Nephite way of life (3 Nephi 2:14-15), while the Lamanites could, by becoming more savage in their ways than their brother Lamanites, actually become darker, "a dark, filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that which ever hath been . . . among the Lamanites" (Mormon 5:15). The dark skin is but one of the marks that God places upon the Lamanites, and these marks go together; people who joined the Lamanites were marked like them (Alma 3:10); they were naked and their skins were dark (Alma 3:5-6); when "they set the mark upon themselves; . . . the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God," when he said, "I will set a mark on them. . . . I will set a mark upon him that mingleth his seed with thy brethren. . . . I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee [Nephi] and thy seed" (Alma 3:13-18). "Even so," says Alma "doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation" (Alma 3:19). By their own deliberate act they both marked their foreheads and turned their bodies dark. Though ever alert to miraculous manifestations, the authors of the Book of Mormon never refer to the transformation of Lamanites into "white and delightsome" Nephites or Nephites into "dark and loathsome" Lamanites as in any way miraculous or marvelous. When they became savage "because of their cursing" (2 Nephi 5:24), their skins became dark and they also became "loathsome" to the Nephites (2 Nephi 5:21-22). But there is nothing loathsome about dark skin, which most people consider very attractive: the darkness, like the loathsomeness, was part of the general picture (Jacob 3:9); Mormon prays "that they may once again be a delightsome people" (Words of Mormon 1:8; Mormon 5:17), but then the Jews are also to become "a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:7)—are they black? At the time of the Lord's visit, there were "neither . . . Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites," (4 Nephi 1:17;see also 3 Nephi 2:14) so that when the old titles of Lamanite and Nephite were later revived by parties deliberately seeking to stir up old hatreds, they designated religious affiliation rather than race (4 Nephi 1:38-39). From this it would seem that at that time it was impossible to distinguish a person of Nephite blood from one of Lamanite blood by appearance. Moreover, there were no pure-blooded Lamanites or Nephites after the early period, for Nephi, Jacob Joseph, and Sam were all promised that their seed would survive mingled with that of their elder brethren (2 Nephi 3:2, 23; 9:53; 10:10, 19-20; 29:13; 3 Nephi 26:8; Mormon 7:1). Since the Nephites were always aware of that mingling, which they could nearly always perceive in the steady flow of Nephite dissenters to one side and Lamanite converts to the other, it is understandable why they do not think of the terms Nephite and Lamanite as indicating race. The Mulekites, who outnumbered the Nephites better than two to one (Mosiah 25:2-4), were a mixed Near Eastern rabble who had brought no written records with them and had never observed the Law of Moses and did not speak Nephite (Omni 1:18); yet after Mosiah became their king, they "were numbered with the Nephites, and this because the kingdom had been conferred upon none but those who were descendants of Nephi" (Mosiah 25:13). From time to time large numbers of people disappear beyond the Book of Mormon frontiers to vanish in the wilderness or on the sea, taking their traditions and even written records with them (Helaman 3:3-13). What shall we call these people—Nephites or Lamanites? And just as the Book of Mormon offers no objections whatever to the free movement of whatever tribes and families choose to depart into regions beyond its ken, so it presents no obstacles to the arrival of whatever other bands may have occupied the hemisphere without its knowledge; for hundreds of years the Nephites shared the continent with the far more numerous Jaredites, of whose existence they were totally unaware. fn Strictly speaking, the Book of Mormon is the history of a group of sectaries preoccupied with their own religious affairs, who only notice the presence of other groups when such have reason to mingle with them or collide with them. Just as the desert tribes through whose territories Lehi's people moved in the Old World are mentioned only casually and indirectly, though quite unmistakably (1 Nephi 17:33), so the idea of other migrations to the New World is taken so completely for granted that the story of the Mulekites is dismissed in a few verses (Omni 1:14-17). Indeed, the Lord reminds the Nephites that there are all sorts of migrations of which they know nothing, and that their history is only a small segment of the big picture (2 Nephi 10:21). There is nothing whatever in the Book of Mormon to indicate that everything that is found in the New World before Columbus must be either Nephite or Lamanite. On the contrary, when Mormon boasts, "I am Mormon and a pure descendant of Lehi" (3 Nephi 5:20), we are given to understand that being a direct descendant of Lehi, as all true Nephites and Lamanites were, was really something special. We think of Zarahemla as a great Nephite capital and its civilization as the Nephite civilization at its peak; yet Zarahemla was not a Nephite city at all: its inhabitants called themselves Nephites, as we have seen, because their ruling family were Nephites who had immigrated from the south. There were times when the Nephites, like the Jaredites, broke up into small bands, including robber bands and secret combinations, each fending for itself (3 Nephi 7:2-3). And when all semblance of centralized control disappeared, "and it was one complete revolution throughout all the face of the land" (Mormon 2:8), who is to say how far how many of these scattered groups went in their wanderings, with whom they fought, and with whom they joined? After the battle of Cumorah, the Lamanites, who had been joined by large numbers of Nephite defectors during the war, were well launched on a career of fierce tribal wars "among themselves" (Moroni 1:2). It would be as impossible to distinguish any one race among them as it would be to distinguish two; there may have been marked "racial" types, as there are now among the Indians (for example, the striking contrast of Navaho and Hopi), but the Book of Mormon makes it clear that those Nephites who went over to live with Lamanites soon came to look like Lamanites. An anthropologist would have been driven wild trying to detect a clear racial pattern among the survivors of Cumorah. So let us not oversimplify and take the Book of Mormon to task for naive conclusions and images that are really our own. The Plates It is hard for us to realize today that for many years the idea of writing a sacred record on gold plates was considered just too funny for words and that the mere mention of the "Golden Bible" was enough to shock and scandalize the world. Today at least a hundred examples of ancient writing on metal plates are available, the latest discoveries being three gold plaques found in 1964 near an ancient shrine on the coast of Italy; they are covered with Punic and Etruscan writing and date from about 500 B.C. Punic, it will be recalled, is Phoenician, a language and script that flourished in Lehi's day a few miles from Jerusalem. fn It was also in 1964 that the writings on a thin gold plate from Sicily was identified as Hebrew; though the plate has been known since 1876, Hebrew was the last thing anybody expected. fn The golden plates of Darius, discovered in 1938, which in their form and the manner of their preservation so strikingly resemble the plates described by Joseph Smith, were augmented by new findings in the 1950s; the contents of the latter plates, a pious mixture of religious declamation and history, are as suggestive of the Book of Mormon as their outward appearance is of the plates. fn We have already spoken of the Copper Scrolls, riveted metal sheets, and noted how the purpose and spirit as well as the method of their production and concealment matches the record-keeping practices of the Nephites in every particular. Especially interesting is the provision that treasures "must be hidden away," that such treasures "would never be desecrated by profane use," since "to use such goods for nonreligious purposes was a heinous sin," and it was "dangerous for any but priests to handle." fn For this is a lesson that Samuel the Lamanite drives home: "For I will, saith the Lord, that they shall hide up their treasures unto me; and cursed be they who hide not up their treasures unto me; for none hideth up their treasures unto me save it be the righteous; and he that hideth not up his treasures unto me, cursed is he, and also the treasure, and none shall redeem it because of the curse of the land. . . . [I] will hide up their treasures when they shall flee before their enemies; because they will not hide them up unto me, cursed be they and also their treasure" (Helaman 13:19-20). Steel and Cement Through the years critics of the Book of Mormon have constantly called attention to the mention of steel in that book as a gross anachronism. But now we are being reminded that one cannot be dogmatic in dating the appearance of steel, since there is more than one kind of steel with "a whole series of variants in the combination of iron and steel components" in ancient times; and when a particularly fine combination was hit upon, it would be kept secret in "individual workshops" and "passed on from father to son for many generations." fn Hence it is not too surprising to learn that "even in early European times" there is evidence for the production of steel "of very high quality" and extreme hardness. fn Further east, steel is attested even earlier. The mention of cement in the Book of Mormon (Helaman 3:7-11) has been considered as great an anachronism as that of steel. But within the last ten years or so much has been made of the surprising extent to which the ancient Americans used cement, concrete, and gypsum in their building operations. It is now suggested that the overlavish detail, the extremely high relief, and the tendency to round off all angles in the heavy and serpentine profusion of line that is so characteristic of some early American architectural adornment are the direct heritage of a time when the builders worked in the yielding and plastic medium of cement. fn Money We still get lots of letters, especially from churchmen, protesting that the mention of money in the Book of Mormon is another crude anachronism. They all point out that coinage was first invented by the Lydians in the eighth century B.C. That would make coinage available to Lehi, but the Book of Mormon says nothing about coins, but only money, which is a different thing. The Egyptians and Babylonians had real money from a very early time—metal pieces of conventional shape and size whose exact value could always be determined by weighing and which often bore an official stamp or inscription. fn This old-fashioned kind of money was favored by the Jews in Egypt even after the new modern coinage had been introduced. The "money," writes Prof. E.G. Kraeling, " . . . involved pieces of metal of certain weight which had an officially recognized value. . . . In many areas, even after the establishment of coinage, people continued to weigh out pieces of metal." fn Now when Alma compares the value of different metals, he uses the expression "equal to": thus "a senum of silver was equal to a senine of gold" and they both equaled a measure of barley, though of course they did not weigh the same (Alma 11:7), and "an antion of gold is equal to three shiblons" (Alma 11:19), shiblons being a silver measure (Alma 11:15). But when he compares the value of the silver pieces among themselves, he uses a different expression: "And an amnor of silver was as great as two senums. And an ezrom of silver was as great as four senums. And an onti was as great as them all" (Alma 11:11-13). Here he is referring not to value, but "greatness," i.e., weight. Naturally a senum of silver, a senine of gold, and a measure of barley would not all weigh the same, but are equal in value; whereas the comparative values of pieces of the same metal would be exactly proportional to their greatness or weight. From which it would appear that the Nephites used the old-fashioned type of money. But what is most remarkable about the system described by Alma is its mathematical sophistication. Alma explains that the Nephite monetary system was not based on any conventional Old World scale, "for they did not reckon after the manner of the Jews; . . . but they altered their reckoning and their measure, according to the minds and the circumstances of the people, in every generation (Alma 11:4). Thus their system had been worked over and improved through the years until they thought they had the most efficient system possible. And it was just that. Professor Richard Smith has shown that "the Nephite system was a peculiarly efficient one. The selection of 1, 2, 4, 7 for the values of the larger coins seems particularly wise." Comparing it with other possible combinations, Prof. Smith finds that "in every case it turns out that the '1-2-4-7' system has an edge over the other systems from the standpoint of number of coins required for a purchase." fn This is thus another of those cases where Joseph Smith promises much—and delivers. It is one thing for a simple rustic to say that his Nephites possessed the best monetary system their ingenuity could devise; but it is a very different thing to produce on demand an actual system that answers such a description. The Animal Kingdom The mention in the Book of Mormon of certain domesticated animals not found in the New World at the time of Columbus has always been taken as irrefutable proof of Smith's folly. Elephants head the list. What happened to the elephants? The Jaredites used them, we are told, but there is no mention of the Nephites having them. They disappear in between the two cultures. When? The Book of Mormon does not say, and the guesses of scientists range all the way from hundreds of thousands to mere hundreds of years ago. Elephants have strange ways of disappearing. If it were not for the written accounts of unquestionable authenticity, no one would ever have guessed that the Pharaohs of the XVIII Dynasty hunted elephants in Syria—where are their remains? Prof. Mallowan says that the wonderful Birs Nimrud ivories which he discovered were made from the tusks of a now-extinct breed of elephant that was being hunted in Mesopotamia as recently as the eighth century B.C. Who would have guessed that ten years ago? Extensive studies on the domestication of the horse (and the presence of a pre-Columbian horse in America is still being argued pro and con) have established that the horse was not domesticated at just one time and place but independently in various times and places. It would appear that horses were used to pull wagons in some places long before anybody thought of riding upon their backs, though to us the reverse would be the natural course of evolution. "Multiple origins of New World domesticates," both plant and animal, would seem to be the rule today. fn The denizens of the barnyard come and go, and change their breed and their appearance in sometimes extreme and surprising ways. The Book of Mormon wisely leaves the names of certain animals untranslated, since there is probably no word in the language today that would accurately designate them. It is for scientists and specialists, however, to deal with such matters. In trespassing on scientific grounds, or rather in timidly peeping over the fence, we are only seeking enlightenment. We have heard so often that "science" has disproved, nay "disemboweled," the Book of Mormon that we are naturally curious to have a look at some of the more spectacular havoc. Where is it? We have tiptoed into the archaeology museum and there found nothing that could not be interpreted many ways. We have entered the house of the anthropologists, and there found all in confusion—and the confusion is growing. We have consulted with the more exact or authentic scientists and found them surprisingly hesitant to commit themselves on the Book of Mormon. A definitive refutation must rest on definitive conclusions, and of such conclusions scientists are becoming increasingly wary. "Observation and experiment cannot establish anything finally," writes Karl Popper. "Essentially, they help us to eliminate the weaker theories," and thus they "lend support, though only for the time being, to the surviving theory." Hence "the method of critical discussion does not establish anything. Its verdict is always 'not proven.' " fn And the most hopeless task of all is to prove a negative. Footnotes 1. Thirteen such civilizations are discussed by Edward Bacon, ed., Vanished Civilizations of the Ancient World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963). 2. Carleton Beals, Nomads and Empire Builders (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1961), 76. 3. Ibid., 78-79. 4. The bones of the last Jaredites were still lying in the open in a state of fair preservation circa 120 b.c (Mosiah 8:8-9). 5. Giovanni Colonna, "The Sanctuary at Pyrgi in Etruria,'' Archaeology 19 (1966): 21, pictures of two gold plates appear on pages 22-23. 6. Ulrich Schmoll, "Die hebräische Inschrift des Goldplättchens von Comiso,'' Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 113 (1964): 512-14 and plates. 7. Herbert H. Paper has translated the text of the new plates in "An Old Persian Text of Darius II (D2Ha),'' JAOS 72 (1953): 169-70. 8. John M. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (Garden City: Doubleday, 1960), 61-62. 9. Radomir Pleiner, "Rediscovering the Techniques of Early European Blacksmiths," Archaeology 16 (1963): 242. 10. Ibid., 239. 11. Discussed in Tatiana Proskouriakoff, An Album of Maya Architecture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), xv-xvi. 12. Eduard Meyer, Geschischte des Altertums (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1909), vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 517. Meyer states that a "money economy was fully developed,'' using silver bars and rings as mediums of exchange. 13. Emil G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Aramaic Papyri: New Documents of the Fifth Century b.c. from the Jewish Colony at Elephantine ((New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 38. 14. Richard P. Smith, "The Nephite Monetary System,'' IE 57 (1954): 316-17. 15. See R. S. MacNeish, "The Origins of American Agriculture,'' Antiquity 39 (1965): 87-94, on the origins of the American culture; quotation is from 93. 16. Karl R. Popper, "Science: Problems, Aims, Responsibilities,'' Federation Proceedings of the American Societies for Experimental Biology 22 (1963): 964, 970.
The Real Background of the Book of Mormon 9 Some Fairly Foolproof Tests Checking the Background To the trained eye, every document of considerable length is bound to betray the real setting in which it was produced. This can be illustrated by something Martin Luther wrote two days before his death: "No one can understand the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil who has not been a herdsman or a farmer for at least five years. And no one can understand Cicero's letters, I maintain, who has not been concerned with significant affairs of state for twenty years. And no one can get an adequate feeling for the Scriptures who has not guided religious communities by the prophets for a hundred years." fn What is the world of experiences and ideas that one finds behind the Book of Mormon? What is its real Sitz im Leben? We can start with actual experiences, not merely ideas but things of a strictly objective and therefore testable nature; for example, the book describes in considerable detail what is supposed to be a great earthquake somewhere in Central America, and another time it sets forth the particulars of ancient olive culture. Here are things we can check up on; but to do so we must go to sources made available by scholars long since the days of Joseph Smith. Where he could have learned all about major Central American earthquakes or the fine points of Mediterranean olive culture remains a question. But the first question is, how well does he describe them? The Great Earthquake. Since Cumorah the earth has done a great deal of quaking, and seismology has become a science. Today it is possible to check step-by-step every phenomenon described in the account of the great destructions reported in 9 and to discover that what passed for many years as the most lurid, extravagant, and hence impossible part of the Book of Mormon is actually a very sober and factual account of a first-class earthquake. It was a terror—about XI on the Wood-Neuman scale—but at that it is probably not the worst quake on record, since we are expressly told that the damage was not total—"And there were some cities which remained" (3 Nephi 8:15); whereas in the great Assam earthquake of 1950 the damage was total over a large area. fn Take the Book of Mormon events in order: First "there arose a great storm . . . and . . . also a great and terrible tempest," from which it would appear that the storm developed into a hurricane (3 Nephi 8:5-6). Major earthquakes are so often accompanied by "heavy rains, thunder and hailstorms, violent tempests," etc., that some specialists insist that "there is some evidence that certain weather conditions may 'trigger' an earthquake," fn as in the Japanese earthquake of 1923, of which some Japanese seismologists maintain that "the low barometric pressure was the trigger force which set off the earthquake." fn At any rate, great earthquakes are preceded by great storms often enough to cause speculation. Next there was a lot of noise, "terrible thunder, insomuch that it did shake the whole earth as if it was about to divide asunder" (3 Nephi 8:6). Note that the thunder was thought to cause the shaking, obviously preceding it. This is another strange thing about earthquakes: "In accounts of earthquakes we always hear of the frightful noise which they produce. . . . But in addition, it seems that sometimes the earthquake can be heard before it is felt," which is "difficult to explain. . . . One should feel the shock before hearing it." fn The thunder seems to shake the earth, since "the sound always appears to come from the ground beneath the observer." fn In the Assam earthquake of 1950 "one thing is stressed in all the reports: the awful rumble that heralded the outbreak of the quake, . . . a deafening roar, louder than anything any of the witnesses had ever heard before." fn The Book of Mormon aptly describes the continuous sounds as "the dreadful groanings . . . and . . . tumultuous noises" (3 Nephi 10:9). "And there were exceedingly sharp lightnings" (3 Nephi 8:7). According to an eyewitness account, the great earthquake that completely destroyed the old capital of Guatemala on September 11, 1541, was preceded by "the fury of the wind, the incessant, appalling lightning and dreadful thunder" that were "indescribable" in their violence. fn One of the still unexplained phenomena of earthquakes is that "all types of lights are reported seen. . . . There are flashes, balls of fire, and streamers." fn The terrible wind at Guatemala City is matched in the Book of Mormon by high winds with occasional whirlwinds that even carried some people away (3 Nephi 8:12, 16; 10:13-14). In the Japanese earthquake of 1923 the wind reached a velocity of 50 m.p.h., and "the fires, in turn, set up minor tornadoes"; and in the Assam earthquake "strong winds raised the dust until visibility was reduced to a few feet." fn "And the city of Zarahemla did take fire" (3 Nephi 8:8). It would appear from the account of the Nephite disaster that the main cause of the destruction was fire in the cities (3 Nephi 9:8-11), which agrees with all the major statistics through the centuries; for "earthquakes are largely a city problem," mainly because the first heavy shock invariably sets fires all over town: in the Japanese experience "wind-driven flames were shown to be more dangerous than the greatest earthquake." fn "And the city of Moroni did sink into the depths of the sea" (3 Nephi 8:9). The tsunami or sea wave "is the most spectacular and . . . appalling of all earthquake phenomena" and almost invariably follows a major shakeup on the coast. fn Along with this, however, we have in the Book of Mormon record what seems to be a permanent submergence of coastal areas when "the waters . . . [come] up in the stead thereof" and remain (3 Nephi 9:7). Such a submergence happened on a spectacular scale in the Chilean earthquake of 1960: "We would have taken these flooded stretches—permanently flooded—for coastal lagoons," a geologist reports, "if here and there we had not seen roads that ran straight toward them and into them. . . . roads that vanished, or sometimes showed under the stagnant water, branching into what had been the streets of a town." fn In the New Madrid, Missouri, earthquake of 1811, two vast tracts of land were covered with fresh water both by the damming of streams and the bursting out of numerous earthquake blows or fountains, flooding the newly submerged areas. fn "And the earth was carried up upon the city of Moronihah, that in the place of the city there became a great mountain" (3 Nephi 8:10). In September 1538 during a tremendous storm and tidal wave a volcanic mountain suddenly appeared and covered a town near Puzzuoli on the Bay of Naples; ever since, the mountain has been known as Monte Nuove, or New Mountain. fn The carrying up of the earth upon the city suggests the overwhelming of Pompeii by vast heaps of volcanic ash or the deep burial of Herculaneum under lava in 79 A.D. fn On the other hand, other cities were "sunk, and the inhabitants thereof . . . buried up in the depths of the earth" (3 Nephi 9:6). This could have been an actual engulfment: in the great earthquake of 1755, which was felt all over Europe, the "quay [at Lisbon] sank, with all the people on it, into a fissure, and no trace of quay or people was seen again." fn It was a fine new breakwater, and a sizable number of the town's inhabitants had fled to it to escape from the fire and falling houses of the city. "The quakings . . . did last for about the space of three hours" (3 Nephi 8:19), though the aftershocks, correctly described as the tremblings and groanings, continued for three days (3 Nephi 10:9), during which time the afflicted people carried on in hysterical fashion with frightful howling and lamentation. This too is a normal part of the picture, since "the incessant recurrence of aftershocks after a great earthquake is most unnerving to the populace." fn "There was thick darkness . . . the inhabitants . . . could feel the vapor of darkness; . . . neither could there be fire kindled . . . so great were the mists of darkness" (3 Nephi 8:20-22). This, like much else in the account (e.g., that God "did send down fire and destroy them," 3 Nephi 9:11), suggests nearby volcanic activity. And indeed, in many cases earthquakes are the preparation for the volcano that follows, as in the Chilean 1960 quake, which triggered the activity of long-dormant volcanoes in the area. fn Most of the victims of the great catastrophes of Pompeii, St. Pierre (Martinique, 1902), and Mt. Pelee (1906) died of suffocation when earthquake dust, volcanic ash, steam, and hot gasses (mostly sulfureted hydrogen gas) took the place of air. In some areas, the Book of Mormon reports, people were "overpowered by the vapor of smoke and of darkness," and so lost their lives (3 Nephi 10:13). Even without volcanic accompaniments, however, major earthquakes kick up a terrible dust and, according to Sieberg, are accompanied by phenomenal vapors and astonishingly thick air. fn In the Assam earthquake such contamination "reduced [visibility] to a few feet and made breathing a nightmare." fn According to 3 Nephi 8:20-21 the "vapor of darkness" was not only tangible to the survivors, but defeated every attempt to light candles or torches for illumination. At present, intensive studies are being made of the destruction of the Greek island of Thera (today Santorini) in 1400 B.C. This catastrophe, well within historic times, is thought to have been eight times as violent as Krakatoa (!) and is described in terms exactly paralleling the account in 3 Nephi. Among other things it is pointed out that the overpowering thickness of the air must have extinguished all lamps. fn The Book of Mormon also mentions the rising and sinking of the land, forming new "hills and valleys" (3 Nephi 9:5-8)—with no mention of major mountain ranges! In the New Madrid earthquake of 1811, "over an area of 30,000 square miles the land surface was lowered by amounts of 6 to 15 feet and over a much smaller area was raised by similar amounts." fn Hydrographic surveys after the Japanese quake of 1923 showed that over an area of 500 square miles some "areas were . . . lowered as much as 689 feet and other . . . areas raised 820 feet"—a difference of over 1,500 feet. fn In the Nephite catastrophe, some cities escaped total destruction, since they did not lie at the center of the earthquake zone but were south of it (3 Nephi 8:15, 12). As is well known, "Central America lies in the heavy earthquake belt," fn as well as being both a coastal and a volcanic area—a perfect setup for all the disasters which the Book of Mormon describes so succinctly and so well. That everything looked strangely changed after the debacle, with seams and cracks everywhere and "highways . . . broken up, and the level roads . . . spoiled, and many smooth places became rough" (3 Nephi 8:13, 17-18), needs no commentary, since such are the most common of all earthquake phenomena. The remarkable thing about such statements is their moderation. Here was a chance for the author of the Book of Mormon to let his imagination run wild (as too many of his followers have done), with whole continents displaced, signs in the heavens, and monsters emerging from the deep. Instead, we get level roads spoiled and smooth places made rough! We must bear in mind that what the Book of Mormon reports are the happenings as the people experienced them rather than as instruments would record them. Most earthquake data are of this very human nature, and exactly match the account in 3 Nephi. The Book of Mormon description emphasizes the fact that it was not any one particular thing but the combination of horrors that made the experience so terrible. As N.H. Heck puts it, what makes a major earthquake so devastating is "the combination of forces . . . into an almost irresistible source of disaster." fn The picture of cumulating disaster at the destruction of Guatemala City in 1541 strikingly parallels the story in the eighth chapter of 3 Nephi "It had rained incessantly and with great violence. . . . The fury of the wind, the incessant, appalling lightning and dreadful thunder were indescribable. The general terror was increased by eruptions from the volcano to such a degree that . . . the inhabitants imagined the final destruction of the world was at hand. . . . [The following morning] the vibrations of the earth were so violent that the people were unable to stand; the shocks were accompanied by a terrible subterranean noise which spread universal dismay." fn We have then in the Book of Mormon a factual and sober account of a major upheaval in which by comparison with other such accounts nothing seems exaggerated. However wildly others may have chosen to interpret the Book of Mormon record, so far is it from bearing the marks of fantasy or wild imagination that it actually furnishes convincing evidence that the person who wrote it must have had personal experience of a major Meso-American quake or else have had access to authentic accounts of such. Olive Culture. A more tranquil theme is the story of the olive tree. As we shall see below, some Book of Mormon writers were greatly concerned with the imagery of the olive tree. In setting forth its symbolism, they found it necessary to go into a description of olive culture in some detail. Now as far as the Book of Mormon is concerned, there is no sign of any cultivation of olives in the New World; the story of the olive tree as given in the Book of Mormon is supposed to be quoted from the writings of an ancient prophet who lived in Palestine long before Lehi left the place—he is wholly concerned with describing ancient Palestinian or Mediterranean olive culture; there is no other kind mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Jacob's (or rather Zenos') treatise on ancient olive culture (6) is accurate in every detail: Olive trees do have to be pruned and cultivated diligently; the top branches are indeed the first to wither, and the new shoots do come right out of the trunk; the olive is indeed the most plastic of trees, surpassing even the willow in its power to survive the most drastic whacking and burning; a good olive tree is greatly cherished, and no end of pains are taken to preserve it even through many centuries, for really superior fruit is very rare and difficult to obtain and perpetuate; the ancient way of strengthening the old trees (especially in Greece) was to graft in the shoots of the oleaster or wild olive; also, shoots from valuable old trees were transplanted to keep the stock alive after the parent tree should perish; to a surprising degree the olive prefers poor and rocky ground, whereas rich soil produces inferior fruit; too much grafting produces a nondescript and cluttered yield of fruit; the top branches if allowed to grow as in Spain and France, while producing a good shade tree, will indeed sap the strength of the tree and give a poor crop; fertilizing with dung is very important, in spite of the preference for rocky ground, and has been practiced since ancient times; the thing to be most guarded against is bitterness in the fruit. fn All these points, taken from a treatise on ancient olive culture, are duly, though quite casually, noted in Zenos's Parable of the Olive Tree. The Axial Period. Even more difficult to fake than an accurate description of how things really were done in a practical way is the spiritual and cultural image of an age. For the setting and color of life in Jerusalem in 600 B.C. the author of the Book of Mormon could have borrowed from the Bible. Only he goes far beyond the Bible in describing the world of Lehi. We have discussed this picture at some length and pointed out that the author of the Book of Mormon could have picked no better time or place in all history for the launching of a new civilization, and no better qualified parties to lead the enterprise, than the time, place, and characters he chose. fn This is by no means a rationalization of our own. Over a century ago the French scholar Lasaul noted what many have since confirmed, that the years around 600 B.C. are the "Axial Period" of world history, that is, the pivotal point or axis around which that whole history turns. At that time "a strange movement of the spirit passed through all civilized peoples." fn And what historian does not recognize as a basic fact of "Geopolitics" that the pivotal region of world history, ancient, Medieval, and modern, is that point where three continents come together and where the sea reaches farthest into the great central land-mass, i.e., Palestine? The great shift of the Axial period was from the old sacral monarchies to more free and popular forms of government, and from a religious or "mantic" orientation of thought to a scientific or "sophic" one. The swing took place quickly all over the Near East and around the Mediterranean, but mid scenes of great confusion and revolution. There is something to be said for both ways of thinking, and the great debate between them—political, religious, economic, intellectual—has been going on ever since. That debate is nowhere more clearly set forth than in the pages of the Book of Mormon. It begins with furious heat and passion, right in the household of Lehi, where the issue is clearly drawn between the defenders of the prosperous, respectable, pharisaical "Jews at Jerusalem" and the refugee father, who has turned his back on wealth and respectability to live as a righteous outcast in the desert; and the controversy continues right on down through all of Nephite history as a long line of clever and sophisticated professional preachers take issue with a long line of prophets. No Greek dramatist or philosopher ever set forth the issues with greater vigor and clarity than they are presented in the pages of the Book of Mormon. One of the most interesting features of the Book of Mormon is the inclusion in it of long speeches by false prophets. These men are skilled Sophists who use all the stock arguments against the gospel with practiced skill and great success. It is hard for a philosopher today to find anything to add to the arguments of Sherem, Korihor, Zeezrom, or Nehor. But are not such arguments typical of a later age, that of the schoolmen in the days when Greek thought had pervaded the East? Indeed they are, but their history goes clear back to the beginning. The split between rationalists and believers, which runs right through the Book of Mormon from the first page to the last, is what Goodenough calls the perennial conflict in Judaism between the "horizontal" and the "vertical" types of religion, that is, between the comfortable and conventional religion of forms and observances as opposed to a religion of revelations, dreams, visions, and constant awareness of the reality of the other world and the poverty of this one. fn We have called this the conflict between the "sophic" and the "mantic," and it goes back to the earliest records of Greece and the Levant; fn but was brought to its sharpest focus in the period just after 600 B.C. The conflict between these two views of life and religion flared up at the time when the old sacral order of society, weakened by corruption, wars, and migrations, was attacked by a new skepticism and rationalism which suddenly became bold and outspoken. This controversy was fanned to fever-heat in the political and moral crisis of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, and was carried to the New World in the baggage of Lehi and Mulek. It begins with Laman and Lemuel, the perfect exponents of the smug "horizontal religion" with its careful concern for outward observances of the law and its utter contempt for visionary prophets of doom: "And thou art like unto our father, led away by the foolish imaginations of his heart; . . . "And we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people; and our father hath judged them" (1 Nephi 17:20, 22). The issue is clearly drawn and has continued to this day, as we shall see when we consider the case of Korihor. Some Strange Customs The Book of Mormon mentions a number of strange customs and usages not found in the Bible and only discovered in other sources in recent years. 1. The most notorious of these is temple building. Ministers and other Bible students gleefully pounced on what they thought an outrageous gaffe when they caught Nephi telling how he and the more religious part of the people went apart from the main body after they had been a while in the New World, and founded their own religiously oriented community, setting about to make a temple after the manner of Solomon's Temple only not so splendid (2 Nephi 5:16). In 1895 began the discovery of the writings of another group of refugees from Jerusalem, who left about Lehi's time, settling far up the Nile at Elephantine. The most surprising discovery to come out of this archive was that these Jews also erected a temple in their new home, and when it was destroyed by the hostility of a local governor, they applied to the directors of the temple at Jerusalem for permission to rebuild it—which permission was granted. fn 2. The Order of Battle. The so-called Battle Scroll from Qumran throws a flood of light on peculiar military practices described in the Book of Mormon especially those of Moroni his improvised banner with its high-sounding patriotic inscription, and his dedicating of the enemy's land to destruction we have discussed elsewhere. fn But we failed to take sufficient note of his consultation with a prophet before the battle to learn by divine revelation the enemy's disposition and what his own movements should be. This is standard practice in the Book of Mormon (Alma 43:23-24), and we now learn on the evidence especially of the Battle Scroll that it was also the regular practice in ancient Israel. fn In confronting the enemy, Moroni reminds his people that they are the poor and the outcasts of the world, fittingly following a banner which was his own rent coat, representing the torn garment of their ancestor Joseph, the outcast and suffering servant (Alma 46:18-23). Again, the Battle Scroll described the hosts of the Children of Light as the poor and outcast of the earth, despised and now threatened with extermination by the haughty gentiles. fn 3. Following the example of Moroni all the people who were willing to enter his army and take the covenant rent their garments as he had his, only they went further and proceeded to tread upon their garments, saying as they did so, "We covenant with God, that . . . he may cast us at the feet of our enemies, even as we have cast our garments at thy feet to be trodden under foot, if we shall fall into transgression" (Alma 46:22). In a very recent study J.Z. Smith considers under the title of "Treading upon the Garments" an ancient ritual practice attested in the newly discovered early Christian Coptic texts in which a person upon becoming a member of the church would take off his garment and trample on it "in token" of having cast away an old way of life and as a symbol of trampling his old sins underfoot, with "curses placed on the inciter" to sin. fn Heretofore the custom has been traced to Hellenistic sources, but it now appears from the newly found documents that it is an original and very old Jewish rite "probably to be traced back to Jewish exegesis of Genesis 3:21." fn It has all the marks of being archaic and shows that peculiar blend of ritual and real-life behavior which at first made the understanding of the Battle Scroll so difficult and which puts such a distinctive stamp upon some of the historical events in the Book of Mormon. fn Before the battle "when he had poured out his soul to God," Moroni "named all the land which was south of the land Desolation, . . . and . . . all the land, both on the north and on the south—a chosen land" (Alma 46:17). Whether we punctuate this to mean that he named the enemy land Desolation and the rest "Chosen," or that he named the "chosen land" and let the rest keep its ill-omened title, the point is that we have here the practice, now attested by the Battle Scroll, of formally blessing the hosts of Israel and cursing the land of their enemy before the battle. fn 4. The rite of the Rameumptom is as strange as the name: For they had a place built up in the center of their synagogue, a place for standing, which was high above the head, and the top thereof would only admit one person. Therefore, whosoever desired to worship must go forth and stand upon the top thereof, and stretch forth his hands towards heaven, and cry with a loud voice, . . . [a long prayer follows]; . . . every man did go forth and offer up the same prayers. Now the place was called by them Rameumptom, which, being interpreted, is the holy stand (Alma 31:13-21). The fact that the term had to be translated into Nephite indicates that these people had their own strange dialect. And indeed they were not Nephites but Zoramites, a people who preferred the old customs of the Mulekites to the discipline of the Nephites. The Mulekites, it will be recalled, were a mixed crowd of Near Eastern emigrants who took little stock in the rites and customs of the Jews. Recently Leipoldt has shown that the pillar-sitting monks of Syria, who caused such a sensation in early Christian times, were actually carrying on an ancient pagan tradition in the land, by which a man would mount on a high pillar at some important ceremonial center and from the top of it pray for the people. fn The performance of the Christian stylites consisted of endless gyrations atop a high pillar. A large number of related Greek words describe the idea: Remb-, ramp-, rhamph- imply wild ecstatic circling motions, especially in the air. The word has been traced back to a Phoenician original, raba- (Hebrew rab), applied to a kind of missile launcher. Could we be here on the trail of our word Rameumptom? fn 5. There is a peculiar rite of execution described in the Book of Mormon whose ancient background is clearly attested. When a notorious debunker of religion was convicted of murder, "they carried him upon the top of the hill Manti, and there he was caused, or rather did acknowledge, between the heavens and the earth, that what he had taught to the people was contrary to the word of God; and there he suffered an ignominious death" (Alma 1:15). A like fate was suffered centuries later by the traitor Zemnarihah. This goes back to a very old tradition indeed, that of the first false preachers, Harut and Marut (fallen angels), who first corrupted the word of God and as a result hang to this day between heaven and earth confessing their sin. Their counterpart in Jewish tradition is the angel Shamhozai, who "repented, and by way of penance hung himself up between heaven and earth." fn These may be only old legends, but they were legends that certain ancient people took very seriously, and the peculiar and symbolic punishment they describe is known to the author of the Book of Mormon. 6. We have said a good deal about the hiding up of sacred records, but have not noted that according to the Book of Mormon it was a prescribed practice to "hide up treasures to the Lord." The prophet Samuel the Lamanite condemns the Nephites not for hiding up treasures, but specifically for not hiding them up to the Lord: I will, saith the Lord, that they shall hide up their treasures unto me; and cursed be they who hide not up their treasures unto me; . . . [I] will hide up their treasure when they shall flee before their enemies; because they will not hide them up unto me, cursed be they and also their treasures (Helaman 13:19-20). When they flee before their enemies, the faithful are expected to hide up their treasures to the Lord. This is exactly the lesson of the Copper Scroll, which was "intended to tell the Jewish survivors of the war . . . where this sacred material lay buried, so that . . . it would never be desecrated by profane use." fn 7. The Dancing Maidens are a picturesque touch in the Book of Mormon Now there was a place in Shemlon where the daughters of the Lamanites did gather themselves together to sing, and to dance, and to make themselves merry (Mosiah 20:1). The refugee priests of Noah discovered them "having tarried in the wilderness." The custom is not Nephite but Lamanite-Zoramite, that is, not necessarily of Israelitish origin. Such a rite flourished in the same cultural complex that seems to have produced the Rameumptom, for the Sabaean women in December used to celebrate a dance and feast to Venus and the water-nymphs at some pleasant place outside the city of Harran; they would bring fruit, and flowers as offerings, and camp out in the country, and of course no men were allowed. fn In Israel also the maidens would dance on the day of Atonement. fn Asiatic legends are full of such ladies ritually disporting themselves in the woods. fn The thing proves nothing in the Book of Mormon but it is an authentic little touch just the same. 8. Perhaps the most formidable challenge of the Book of Mormon to scholarship today is the long description of a coronation ceremony included in it. Of all the possible ties between the Book of Mormon and the Old World, by far the most impressive in our opinion is the exact and full matching up of the long coronation rite described in the book of Mosiah with the "standard" Near Eastern coronation ceremonies as they have been worked out through the years by the "patternists" of Cambridge. Imagine a twenty-three-year-old backwoodsman in 1829 giving his version of what an ancient coronation ceremony would be like—what would be done and said, how, and by whom? Put the question to any college senior or dean of humanities today and see what you get. To the recent pronouncements of the "Cambridge school" that conform so beautifully to the long description of Mosiah's enthronement, we may add another interesting bit of confirmation. In the tenth century A.D., Nathan, a Jewish scholar living in Babylon, witnessed the enthronement of the Prince of the Captivity, carried out by the Jews in exile as a reminder of the glories of their lost kingdom. Since no regular coronation is described in the Bible, and since the rites here depicted conform to the normal pattern of a Near Eastern coronation, we have here a pretty good picture of what a coronation in Israel would be like in Lehi's day. fn The new king is set aside by the elders on the Thursday preceding his coronation. The elders are also in charge in the Book of Mormon though they do not figure in the pre-coronation arrangements in the book of Mosiah because this was an unusual case in which the old king was still living—it is he who designates and crowns his successor. All the people "great and small" are then summoned to the royal presence, each being required to bring the most precious gift his means can afford. In return the Prince of the Captivity entertains them all at a great feast of abundance. The day before the coronation a high wooden tower (migdol) had been built. This was covered with precious hangings, and concealed within it was a trained choir of noble youths which under the direction of a precentor led the congregation in hymns and antiphonals preparing for the new king's appearance. This explains how at the coronation of Mosiah all the people would respond to the king in a single voice—it was the practiced and familiar acclamatio of the ancient world. Thus the conductor would say, "The breath of all the living . . . ," whereupon the choir would answer, "shall bless thy name," and continue until they reached the passage known as the Kedusha, when the entire multitude would join in the familiar words. After this all the people sat down. When the preliminaries were over, the king, who until then had remained invisible, appeared dramatically on the top of the tower, which until then held only three empty thrones; at the sight of him all the people stood up and remained standing while he seated himself, to be followed after a few moments by the head of the Academy of Sura, who sat on a throne to his right, though separated from him by an interval, and a little later by the head of the Academy of Pumbeditha, who sat on the king's left. This, of course, is the image of the "three men" who represent God on earth—a Book of Mormon concept, as we have noted above. Over the king's head alone, however, was the splendid baldachin, or royal tent—for as in the Book of Mormon the coronation rite is essentially a camp ceremony. The precentor, who has been the master of ceremonies from the first, then goes under the tent and imparts royal blessings on the new king. In the Book of Mormon the old king, who is still alive, does all this and has general charge of the meeting. Because the blessing cannot be heard by the vast multitude, the chorus of youths standing beneath the throne shout out a loud "Amen!" at the end of it to signify the universal approval. Then comes the time for the great royal speech, the new king deferring to the head of the Academy of Sura, who in turn courteously defers to the head of the Academy of Pumbeditha, "thus showing deference to one another" and indicating their perfect oneness of mind and purpose. The speech is delivered in the manner of a message from heaven, the speaker "expounding with awe, closing his eyes, and wrapping himself up with his tallith." The people stood wrapped in silence and overwhelmed by the occasion: "There was not in the congregation one that opened his mouth, or chirped, or uttered a sound. If he [the speaker] became aware that any one spoke, he would open his eyes, and fear and terror would fall upon the congregation." The royal speech was immediately followed by a question period, in which the king would put questions to the people, who would answer him in the person of a venerable old man "of wisdom, understanding, and experience." Then the precentor (Benjamin) would pronounce a blessing on the people with the special words, "During the life of our prince the exilarch, and during your life, and during the life of all the house of Israel." This is the typical New Year and birthday formula that always goes with a coronation. Then the precentor blesses the king and then his two counselors and makes a formal roll call of the people. This is the formal registry of the people described in Mosiah and while the people are still standing the precentor hands the book of the Law to the new king, who reads to the people the covenant they are entering. When the book of the Law is returned to the ark, all sit down and are regaled by learned discourses on the Law, beginning with one by the king himself. After this the precentor again "blessed the exilarch by the Book of the Law," and all said amen. After a final prayer all the people departed to their homes. The reader can see for himself how closely these rites conform to the substance and spirit of the coronation of Mosiah. But the most remarkable feature of the whole thing is the nature of the royal discourse on government. In the Book of Mormon Benjamin clearly alludes to the Old World coronation rites in which the king is treated like God on earth, receiving the rich offerings and awed acclamations reserved for divinity; and he also emphasizes the royal obligation to assure victory and prosperity for the land. While he recognizes the value of these things, Benjamin's whole speech is devoted to giving them a special twist—the homage and the offerings are very well, but they are for the heavenly King, not for Benjamin, who is only a man; victory and prosperity will surely follow, but they come not from him but from God. fn In a study entitled "The Refusal of the Kingship as a Characteristic of Royal Authority in the Old Testament," K.H. Bernhardt has shown at great length that part of the nomadic desert heritage of the Jews was the idea that kingship is an "unauthorized infringement of God's majesty." While in post-exilic times, Bernhardt explains, the king was no longer expected formally to disclaim his right to rule, in the days of Jeremiah and the Rechabites (Lehi's half-nomadic contemporaries) he was still felt to be something of a usurper. Thus while the Jews shared the common props and protocol of the coronation rites with other Near Eastern peoples, their King's formal renunciation of absolute power put the whole thing on a different footing. fn This is exactly what we have at the enthronement of Mosiah. Bernhardt gets most of his evidence from the Old Testament, of course; yet it took the perspicacity of a modern scholar to discover, in 1961, the institution and the idea which are so clearly set forth in the Book of Mormon. 9. The Liahona. fn We have in the Book of Mormon a most interesting apparatus called the Liahona. Now the chances of finding a genuine Liahona are, to say the least, remote; but what if something just like it showed up in the hands of Lehi's relatives? That should certainly come as a surprise, and even provoke some thought. The Liahona has given rise to endless merriment and mockery among critics of the Book of Mormon only the shining stones of the Jaredites can equal it as a laugh-getter. Even the present writer, for all his curiosity about Book of Mormon oddities, has always passed it by in an abashed silence—it was like nothing he ever heard or read of—until the year 1959. For it was in that year that an Arabic scholar by the name of T. Fahd published the hitherto scattered, scanty, and inaccessible evidence that makes it possible for the first time to say something significant about the Liahona. But before we consider his report, let us see what the Book of Mormon has to say on the subject. This is what the first edition tells about the Liahona: "And it came to pass that as my father arose in the morning, and went forth to the tent door, to his great astonishment, he beheld upon the ground a round ball, of curious workmanship; and it was of fine brass. And within the ball were two spindles; and the one pointed the way whither we should go into the wilderness" (p. 39, 1 Nephi 16:10). "And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the pointers which were in the ball, that they did work according to the faith, and diligence, and heed, which we did give unto them. And there was also written upon them, a new writing, which was plain to be read, which did give us understanding concerning the ways of the Lord; and it was written and changed from time to time, according to the faith and diligence which we gave unto it: And thus we see, that by small means, the Lord can bring about great things. "And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did go forth up into the top of the mountain, according to the directions which were given upon the ball. And it came to pass that I did slay wild beasts, insomuch, that I did obtain food for our families" (pp. 40-41, 1 Nephi 16:28-31). "And moreover, he also gave him charge concerning . . . the ball or director, which led our fathers through the wilderness, which was prepared by the hand of the Lord, that thereby they might be led, every one according to the heed and diligence which they gave unto him. Therefore, as they were unfaithful, they did not prosper nor progress in their journey" (p. 155, Mosiah 1:16-17). "And now my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the thing which our fathers call a ball, or director; or our fathers called it liahona, which is, being interpreted, a compass; and the Lord prepared it. And behold, there cannot any man work after the manner of so curious a workmanship. And behold, it was prepared to shew unto our fathers the course which they should travel in the wilderness; and it did work for them according to their faith in God; therefore if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go, behold, it was done; therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God, day by day; nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means, nevertheless it did shew unto them marvelous works. They were slothful, and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence, and then those marvellous works ceased, and they did not progress in their journey; therefore, they tarried in the wilderness, or did not travel a direct course, and were afflicted with hunger and thirst, because of their transgressions. "And now my son, I would that ye should understand that these things are not without a shadow; for as our fathers were slothful to give heed to this compass, (now these things were temporal,) they did not prosper; even so it is with things which are spiritual. For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would point unto them a straight course to the promised land. And now I say, Is there not a type in this thing? . . . "O my son, do not let us be slothful, because of the easiness of the way; for so it was with our fathers; for so it was prepared for them, that if they would look, they might live; even so it is with us. The way is prepared, and if we will look, we may live forever" (pp. 329-30, Alma 37:38-46). "And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, did cease to work; wherefore, they knew not whither they should steer the ship. . . . And it came to pass that after they had loosed me, behold, I took the compass, and it did work whither I desired it" (pp. 48-49, 1 Nephi 18:12-13, 21). Listing the salient features of the report we get the following: 1. The Liahona was a gift of God, the manner of its delivery causing great astonishment. 2. It was neither mechanical nor self-operating, but worked solely by the power of God. 3. It functioned only in response to the faith, diligence, and heed of those who followed it. 4. And yet there was something ordinary and familiar about it. The thing itself was the "small means" through which God worked; it was not a mysterious or untouchable object but strictly a "temporal thing." It was so ordinary that the constant tendency of Lehi's people was to take it for granted—in fact, they spent most of their time ignoring it: hence, according to Alma their needless, years-long wanderings in the desert. 5. The working parts of the device were two spindles or pointers. 6. On these a special writing would appear from time to time, clarifying and amplifying the message of the pointers. 7. The specific purpose of the traversing indicators was "to point the way they should go." 8. The two pointers were mounted in a brass or bronze sphere whose marvelous workmanship excited great wonder and admiration. Special instructions sometimes appeared on this ball. 9. The device was referred to descriptively as a ball, functionally as a director, and in both senses as a "compass," or Liahona. 10. On occasion, it saved Lehi's people from perishing by land and sea—"if they would look they might live" (Alma 37:46). 11. It was preserved "for a wise purpose" (Alma 37:2, 14, 18) long after it had ceased to function, having been prepared specifically to guide Lehi's party to the promised land. It was a "type and shadow" of man's relationship to God during his earthly journey. We should not pass by Alma's description without noting a most remarkable peculiarity of verses 40 and 41 (chap. 37). Let us read these verses without punctuation, as the ancients did; and as the Book of Mormon manuscript is written: "Therefore they had this miracle and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God day by day nevertheless because those miracles were worked by small means nevertheless it did shew unto them marvellous works they were slothful and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence and then those marvellous works ceased." The meaning is perfectly clear: though Lehi's people enjoyed daily demonstrations of God's power, the device by which that power operated seemed so ordinary (Alma included it among "small and simple things . . . very small means" Alma 37:6-7) that in spite of the "marvellous works" it showed them they tended to neglect it. We could punctuate the passage accordingly: "Therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles, wrought by the power of God day by day. Nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means (albeit it did show unto them marvellous works), they were slothful and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence." A comparison of various editions of the Book of Mormon will show that others have tried their hand at punctuating these phrases. fn But it is time to turn to Mr. Fahd's study of belomancy in the ancient Near East. Belomancy is the practice of divination by shooting, tossing, shaking, or otherwise manipulating rods, darts, pointers, or other sticks, all originally derived from arrows. Over ten years ago the present writer made a fairly exhaustive study of ancient arrow-divination, and some years later presented in the pages of the Era a long discourse on the ritual use of sticks and rods, especially in ancient Israel. fn Yet it was not until he saw Fahd's study, the first full-length treatment of old Semitic arrow-divination, that it dawned upon him that these old practices might have some connection with the Liahona. For the most common use of divination arrows, and probably their original purpose, was, according to the forgotten evidence unearthed by the diligent Fahd, the direction of travelers in the desert. Fahd begins by pointing out that the "arrows" used in divination, called qidh or zalam, were devoid of heads and feathers, being mere shafts or pointers. fn Since Lane has given a fuller description of these objects from the sources, we can do no better than quote his quotations: "Zalam, plural azlam [divining—] arrows by means of which the Arabs in the Time of Ignorance [i.e, before Islam] sought to know what was allotted to them: they were arrows upon which the Arabs in the Time of Ignorance wrote 'Command' and 'Prohibition'; or upon some of which was written 'My Lord hath commanded me'; and upon some, 'My Lord hath forbidden me'; or they were three arrows; upon one of which was written 'My Lord hath commanded me'; [etc.] . . . and the third was blank; and they put them in a receptacle, and took forth an arrow; and if the arrow upon which was 'Command' came forth, he went to accomplish the purpose; but if that upon which was 'Prohibition' came forth, he refrained; and if the blank came forth, they shuffled them a second time. . . . The azlam [were arrows that] belonged to Kureysh, in the Time of Ignorance, upon which were written 'He hath commanded,' and 'He hath forbidden,' and 'Do thou' and 'Do thou not'; they had been well shaped and made even, and placed in the Kaabeh [the holy shrine of Meccah] . . . and when a man desired to go on a journey, or to marry, he came to the minister, and said, 'Take thou forth for me a zalam'; and thereupon he would take it forth and look at it. . . . There were seven of the arrows thus called with the minister of the Kaabeh, having marks upon them, and used for this purpose: and sometimes there were with the man two such arrows, which he put into his sword-case; and when he desired to seek the knowledge of what was allotted to him, he took forth one of them." fn But why arrows? Because, as we have shown elsewhere, the shooting of arrows is a universal form of divination, "as is evident in the prayers that the legendary heroes of the steppe—Finnish, Norse, Russian, Kazakh, Turkish, and Yakut—address to their three enchanted arrows before releasing them, and for instance, in the arrow-prayers of the Indian and Beduin, all eloquently expressing the humility of men about to entrust their lives and their fate to a power beyond their control." fn The consultation of the arrows by one about to marry was, according to Gaster, also an old Jewish custom; the parties concerned would throw rods into the air, "reading their message by the manner of their fall; this, Gaster observes, is 'tantamount' to the shooting of arrows." fn Other substitutes for shooting were shaking or drawing from a bag or quiver, "balancing on the finger, or spinning on a pivot." fn In the New World "the antetype . . . possibly of all the Indian dice games" is one in which the "arrows or darts are tossed . . . or shot . . . at an arrow tossed or shot to the ground so that they fall one across the other." More often than not, the arrows in question were mere sticks or pointers. fn In Arabic, sahamahu means both to shoot arrows with another and to draw lots or practice sortilege with one. There was no more popular form of divination among the magic-minded Babylonians than arrow-lottery, and Meissner suggest that "casting lots" in Babylonian (salú sha puni) refers to an original shaking or shooting of arrows. fn All this shaking, tossing, and shooting emphasizes the divinatory office of arrows as pointers, fn but along with that they also conveyed their message, as the passages from Lane demonstrate, by the writing that was upon them. Fahd notes that "on the arrows words were inscribed determining the object of the cleromantic consultation." fn Whenever divination arrows are described, they are invariably found to have writing on them, like the Zuni "word-painted arrows of destiny." fn The Arabic proverb for "Know thyself!" is absir wasma qidhika, literally, "Examine the mark on thy divination-arrow!" fn It has even been maintained that writing originated with the marking of arrows, fn but whether this be so or not, it is certain that men from the earliest times have sought guidance by consulting the pointings and the inscriptions of headless and tailless arrows. The word for "divination-arrow" in the above proverb was qidh, defined in Lane as one of the "two arrows used in sortilege." The original and natural number of arrows used in divination seems to have been two. Even when the "magic three" were used, the third was a dud, the manih, which is a blank "to which no lot is assigned." fn It is the other two that do the work. On the same day on which the king of Persia shook out the divining-sticks (the baresma), the Jews would draw three boxwood lots to choose the scapegoat; but the Talmud says there were only two lots and they were of boxwood or gold. fn The reason for the two basic staves is apparent from their normal designation as "Command" and "Prohibition." To this the priests at some shrines added a third arrow called the "Expectative"—"Wait and see!" fn But the original arrangement was that two arrows designated the advisability or inadvisability of a journey; they were designated as "the safr [Go ahead!] and the khadr [Stay where you are!]" fn From passages in Lane it is clear that the regular consultants of the arrows were those faced with travel-problems—all others are secondary. The patron of the caravans of the Hejaz from time immemorial was the archer-god Abgal, "the lord of omens," in his capacity of the master of the arrows of divination. fn The inscriptions on the arrows themselves give top priority to travel: typical examples from the various systems, which employ from two all the way to ten arrows, are "Go slow!" (bata'), "Speed Up!" (sari;kc), "Water!" "Stay where you are!" "Get moving!" "You are in the clear," etc. fn It would be an obtuse reader indeed who needed one to spell out for him the resemblance between ancient arrow-divination and the Liahona: two "spindles or pointers" bearing written instructions provide superhuman guidance for travelers in the desert. What more could you want? But what is the relationship between them? On this the Book of Mormon is remarkably specific. Both Nephi and Alma go out of their way to insist that the Liahona did not work itself, i.e., was not a magic thing, but worked only by the power of God and only for appointed persons who had faith in that power. Moreover, while both men marvel at the wonderful workmanship of the brass ball in which the pointers were mounted, they refer to the operation of those pointers as "a very small thing," so familiar to Lehi's people that they hardly gave it a second glance. So contemptuous were they of the "small means" by which "those miracles were worked" for their guidance and preservation that they constantly "forgot to exercise their faith," so that the compass would work. This suggests that aside from the workmanship of the mounting, there was nothing particularly strange or mystifying about the apparatus, which Alma specifies as a "temporal" thing. Here we have an instructive parallel in the ship and the bow that Nephi made. Without divine intervention those indispensable aids to survival would never have come to the rescue of Lehi's company—their possession was a miracle. Yet what were they after all? An ordinary ship and an ordinary bow. Just so, the Liahona was "a very small thing" for all its marvelous provenience, having much the same relationship to other directing arrows that the ship and the bow did to other ships and bows. We must not forget that the ancients looked upon even ordinary azlam as a means of communication with the divine: "In view of the importance of religious sentiment in every aspect of the activity of the ancient Arab and of the Semite in general," writes Fahd, "I do not believe that one can separate these practices [i.e., of arrow-divination] from their character as a consultation of divinity. . . . They always believed, however vaguely, in a direct and constant intervention in human affairs." fn Like the wonderful staff of Moses in Jewish history, these things suggest remote times and occasions when, according to popular belief, God communicates more directly with men than he does now. Tha'labi knows of a Hebrew tradition that Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness with the aid of a double arrow mounted on the end of his staff. fn Such a device seems to be represented as a very ancient cult object in Egypt, going back to the earliest migrations. fn This is certainly implied in the status of the ritual arrows or marked sticks among the American Indians, regarding which Culin writes: "Behind both ceremonies and games there existed some widespread myth from which both derived their impulse," though what this mysterious tradition is he does not know. fn Consistent with their holiness, "the consulting of the mantic arrows," according to one Ibn Ishaq, "seems to have been reserved to questions of general public concern and to solemn occasions of life" and death. fn Which again reminds us of the Liahona, "that if they would look, they might live" (Alma 37:46). Was the Liahona, then, just old magic? No, it is precisely here that Nephi and Alma are most emphatic—unlike magic things, these pointers worked solely by the power of God, and then, too, for only those designated to use them. Anybody about to make a journey could consult the mantic arrows at the shrines, and to this day throughout the world mantic arrows are still being consulted. But it is clear from Alma's words that in his day the Liahona had been out of operation for centuries, having functioned only for a true man of God and only for one special journey. Another man of God, Lehi's great contemporary, Ezekiel showed a remarkable interest in divinatory sticks and rods, as we have pointed out elsewhere, and he describes how the fate of certain wicked cities is sealed as God "shakes out the arrows," each one being marked with the name of a condemned city. fn Where, then, does one draw the line between the sacred and the profane? Religion becomes magic when the power by which things operate is transferred from God to the things themselves. As Fahd notes, the Arabs were extremely vague about the powers with which they dealt, as "primitive" people are everywhere. When men lack revelation they commonly come to think of power as residing in things. Did the staff of Moses make water come from the rock or cause the Red Sea to part? Of course not; yet in time the miraculous powers which were displayed through its agency came to be attributed by men to the staff itself. It became a magic thing, like Solomon's seal, which possessed in itself the wonder-working powers which gave Solomon his ascendancy over men and beasts. In time the Bible became a magic book in men's eyes, conveying all knowledge by its own power, without the aid of revelation. So also after a fierce controversy on the matter, priesthood itself acquired the status of a thing that automatically bestows power and grace, regardless of the spiritual or moral qualifications of its possessor—it became a magic thing. Strangest of all, science has consistently supplanted religion by magic when dealing with final causes. When Sir Charles Sherrington, for example, after describing the incredibly complex and perfect workings of the body, insists that it is the cells themselves that agree to cooperate in following an indescribably complex plan of development, he is simply appealing to the old doctrine of the magicians, that things in themselves possess wondrous powers of performance: "It is as if an immanent principle inspired each cell with knowledge for the carrying out of a design." fn Hunters and medicine men throughout the world who use arrows to bring them luck pray to their arrows, blow on them, and talk to them, as gamblers do to dice and cards—for at an early date "the use of the divination arrows drifted down into the vulgarisation of gaming cards," i.e., the practice quickly degenerated to magic. fn That is why it is so important to understand, and why the Book of Mormon is at such pains to make perfectly clear, that the Liahona was not magic. It did not work itself, like other divination arrows, in any sense or to any degree. And yet it seems to have been an ordinary and familiar object, a "temporal thing," which could also serve as "a type and a shadow," teaching us how God uses "small things" to bring about great purposes. Here we have an implement which, far from being the invention of a brainsick imagination, was not without its ancient counterparts. If we were to stop here, this would probably be the only article ever written about the Liahona that did not attempt to explain the meaning of the name. Fortunately the Book of Mormon has already given us the answer: "Our fathers called it Liahona, which is, being interpreted, a compass" (Alma 37:38). Liahona is here clearly designated as an Old World word from the forgotten language of the fathers, which must be interpreted to present readers. But what is a compass? According to the Oxford Dictionary, the derivation of the word remains a mystery; it has two basic meanings, but which has priority nobody knows: the one is "to pass or step together," referring always to a pair of things in motion; the other refers to the nature of that motion in a circle, "to pass or step completely," to complete a "circumference, circle, round," to embrace or enclose completely. Thus whether it refers to the ball or the arrows, "compass" is the best possible word to describe the device, though generations of Book of Mormon critics have laughed their heads off at the occurrence of the modern word in what purports to be an ancient book. fn Footnotes 1. Heinrich Bornkamm, Grundriss zum Studium der Kirchengeschichte (Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1949), 13. 2. Werner Knop, "The Day the Earth Exploded,'' Saturday Evening Post 227 (March 20, 1954): 25. 3. G. A. Eiby, About Earthquakes (New York: Harper, 1957), 25, cf. 107. 4. Nicholas H. Heck, Earthquakes (New York: Hafner, 1936; reprinted 1965), 118. 5. John H. Hodgeson, Earthquakes and Earth Structures (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1964), 48-49; cf. Eiby, About Earthquakes, 25; Heck, Earthquakes, 28; Perry Byerly, Seismology (New York: Prentice Hall, 1942), 73-75. 6. John Milne, Earthquakes and Other Earth Movements, 7th ed. (Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1939), 15. 7. Knop, "The Day the Earth Exploded,'' 25, 114. 8. Juarros, cited by Herbert J. Spinden, "Shattered Capitals of Central America,'' National Geographic 36 (1919): 202. 9. Byerly, Seismology, 76. 10. Heck, Earthquakes, 115; Knop, "The Day the Earth Exploded,'' 114. 11. Ibid., 118. 12. Ibid., 26. 13. Haroun Tazieff, When the Earth Trembles (New York: Harcourt, 1964), 34. On a winter night of 373/2 b.c. the great city of Helice in Greece disappeared beneath the sea: "Not a single soul survived.'' Spyridon N. Marinatos, "Helice: A Submerged Town of Classical Greece," Archaeology 13 (1960): 186. 14. Heck, Earthquakes, 17, 24; Byerly, Seismology, 67-69. 15. August H. Seiberg, Handbuch der Erdbebenkunde (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1904), 104-5. 16. The photographs in Spinden, "Shattered Capitals of Central America,'' 187-92, for cases of the earth being carried up over the land. 17. Milne, Earthquakes and Other Earth Movements, 29, giving other instances also. 18. Byerly, Seismology, 78. 19. Hodgeson, Earthquakes and Earth Structures, 41. 20. Down to the present generation, "old Indians still fix their ages and other events in relation to 'La Oscuridad Grande'-The Great Darkness'' that accompanied a great eruption and earthquake in Nicaragua in 1835; Spinden, "Shattered Capitals,'' 211. August H. Sieberg, Handbuch der Erdbebenkunde (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1904), 123: "auffallender Nebel and wundersame dicke Luften.'' 21. Knop, "The Day the Earth Exploded,'' 114. 22. John Lear, "The Volcano that Shaped the Western World,'' Saturday Review (Nov. 5, 1966): 57-66. He mentions the quenching of the lamps, 60, 63. 23. Heck, Earthquakes, 17. 24. Ibid., 116. 25. Byerly, Seismology, 82. 26. Heck, Earthquakes, 118. 27. Spinden, "Shattered Capitals,'' 202. 28. See entries under "Olive'' in any good encyclopedia. We are following the article "Olive'' in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 vols. (New York: Allen, 1889), 17:761-63. 29. Hugh W. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1957), chs. 3-7, in CWHN 6:33-92. 30. The problem is discussed by Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 8. 31. Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols. (New York: Pantheon, 1953-68), 1:17-19. 32. Old Babylonian literature offers a good illustration of the traditional and scribal conventions as opposed to reform movements; W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), 8, 10-14; see 16 for the mantic theme or divine revelation. 33. For recent treatments of this much-treated subject, Emil G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Aramaic Papyri: New Documents of the Fifth Century B.C. from the Jewish Colony at Elephantine (New York: Yale University Press, 1953), 41, 44-46, 95; cf. Bezalel Porten, "The Structure and Orientation of the Jewish District," JAOS 81 (1961): 38-42; cf. Arthur E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), pl. XX points out that although they appealed to the High Priest of Jerusalem, he "disregarded" it. 34. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon ch. 17; in CWHN 6:209-21. 35. Yigael Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 6, cf. 15, 215, and 1QM 19. 36. Ibid., 310-12, 322-23. 37. Jonathan Z. Smith, "The Garments of Shame,'' History of Religions 5 (1965-66): 224-33; quotation is from 229. 38. Ibid., 230-33. It has special reference to the skin garment of Adam. The quote is from 231. 39. See our discussion in Hugh W. Nibley, "Old World Ritual in the New World,'' An Approach to the Book of Mormon, ch. 23; in CWHN 6:295-310. 40. Yadin, Scroll of the War, 15, 215, 223-25, and 1QM 17-19. 41. Johannes Leipoldt, "Frühes Christentum im Orient (bis 451),'' in Religionsgeschichte des Orients in der Zeit der Weltreligionen, B. Spuler, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1961), 10. 42. For various possible forms of the word, see the old Henrico Stephano, Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, 9 vols. (reprint Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1954), 7:2337-38. 43. See George Sale's commentary in his translation of The Koran, 2 vols. (London: Gilbert, 1836), 1:17, n. 102; 2 Enoch 7:1-4; Thaclabi, Kitab Qisas al-Anbiyya (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi wa-Awladuhu, A. H. 1345), 36-37. 44. John M. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (Garden City: Doubleday, 1960), 62. 45. J. B. Segal, "The Sabian Mysteries: The Planet Cult of Ancient Harran,'' in Edward Bacon, ed., Vanished Civilizations of the Ancient World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 216. 46. Raphael Patai,"`The Dancing Maidens on the Day of Atonement,'' Edoth 1 (1946): 55 (Hebrew). 47. F. Anton von Schiefner, Tibetan Tales (London: Kegan Paul, 1906), 54. 48. Nathan Ha-Babli, "The Installation of an Exilarch,'' in B. Halper, Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1921, reprinted 1946), 2:46-68; the Hebrew text in 1:37-40, under the same title. On "patternism" and the Book of Mormon, see Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, ch. 23; in CWHN 6:295-310. 49. See Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon (1957), 260-66; (1964), 247-53; in CWHN 6:300-306. 50. Karl-Heinz Bernhardt, Das Problem der altorientalischen Königs 51. This material first appeared in Hugh Nibley, "The Liahona's Cousins,'' IE 64 (February 1961): 87-89, 104, 106. 52. In the magazine version, the following explanation was added: "The point of this pedantic little digression is that there is an odd incongruity in finding perfectly intelligible phrases so punctuated that their meaning is destroyed. Yet this strange anomaly occurs often in the Book of Mormon requiring many of the 'Two Thousand Changes' in the book over which Lamoni Call and generations of anti-Mormon writers have used as 'proof' that the book was not inspired. Actually it proves that no man or men sat down and composed the thing as ordinary books are written. 53. Hugh W. Nibley, "The Stick of Judah and the Stick of Joseph,'' IE 56 (January 1953 to May 1953). 54. T. Fahd, 'Une pratique cléromantique à la Ka'ba préislamique,'' Semitica 8 (1958): 61. 55. Edward W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon 2 vols. (London: Williams, 1867) 1:1247, s.v. zalam. 56. Hugh W. Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State,'' WPQ 2 (1949): 329-30. 57. Ibid., 334, citing M. Gaster, Hasting's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics 4:810. 58. Thus the priests at Jerusalem used to practice divination "by tossing their writing-pens,'' Julius Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums (Berlin: Reimer, 1897; reprinted Berlin: de Gruyter, 1961), 133, citing Sur. 3:39. Georg Jacob Altarabisches Beduinenleben (Berlin: Mayer, 1897), 110, n. 2, comments on the resemblance between the shaking of Arab divination arrows and "the tossing of runen-staves'' by our own northern ancestors. In all Celtic languages divination by rods is called "throw[ing] the wood,'' according to G. Dottin, "Divination,'' in Hastings Enyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 13 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1908-26), 4:788. For cases of balancing and spinning, Kustaa F. Karjalainen, Die Religion der Jugra-V;auolker, 3 vols., in Folklore Fellows Communications 63 (Helsinki, 1927), 322-23. 59. Stewart Culin, Games of the North American Indians; Bureau of American Ethnology 24th Annual Report, 1902-3 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), 45, cf. 33, 383. 60. Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1925), 2:65, 275, citing Ezekiel 21:21. 61. Abaris, the missionary who brought the cult of Apollo to Greece from the far North in prehistoric times, was guided in his travels by his patron's mantic arrow, just as later the traveling mystic Pythagoras had a special arrow "that showed him the way to go, and supplied him with substitutes for food and drink'' in his wanderings; see Roscher's Ausführliches Lexicon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie (Leipzig: Teubner, 1886-90), 1:2815-17, 2822; E. Bethe, "Abaris,'' in RE 1:16-17. Instances of the magic arrow that shows where to find the princess, build the shrine, locate lost treasure, etc., may be found in Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, 6 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1932-36), D. 1653, 2:170; H. Bächtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutchen Aberglaubens, 10 vols. (Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1927-42), 6:1597-98; Paul Sébillot, Le Folk-Lore de France, 4 vols. (Paris: Imago, 1907; reprinted 1983), 4:116. 62. Fahd, "Une pratique céromantique,'' 66. 63. This phenomenon is discussed at length by Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State,'' 329-39; quotation is from 332. 64. See wasm, in Ibn Manzur, Lisan al-Arab (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1951), 12:635-36. 65. This was Hilprecht's theory. Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State,'' 337-38. 66. Throughout the East, three is the usual number of arrows used in divination; Wellhausen, Reste arabisches Heidentums, 46-47. Jacob Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 110. F. Hommel, Ethnologie und Geographie des alten Orients (Munich: Beck, 1926), 717, 733-34, speculates on the possible identity of the oracular arrow of Apollo, cf. Lewis R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 5 vols. (Chicago: Aegean, 1971) 4:191. The oracular gods of the Aztecs carried three divination arrows and an atlatl stick, or four arrows of punishment. Edward G. Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen Sprach und Alterthumskunde, 3 vols. (Berlin: vols. 1 and 2, Asher, 1902, 1904; vol. 3 Behrend, 1908), 3:341. 67. TB, Yoma, 37a; Leviticus 16:8. 68. Fahd, "Une pratique cl;aaeromantique,'' 67-68. 69. Ibid., 68. 70. Ibid., 75. 71. Ibid., 68-70. 72. Ibid., 71-72. 73. Thaclabi, Kitab Qisas al-Anbiyya, 123. For a further discussion of arrow-divination, see Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State,'' 328-44. 74. Èmile Massoulard, Préhistoire et Protohistoire d'Égypte (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1949), 489. The symbol both of Min of Coptos and the lady Nieth was two arrows crossed, sometimes mounted on the top of a pole. Can this refer to the prehistoric migration over which these archaic deities prescribed? 75. The Indians would learn their fortunes for the coming year by consulting divination arrows. In victory-divination ceremonies, seven arrows were used in relation to a sacred pole; Alice C. Fletcher and F. La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe,'' U.S. Bureau of Ethnology 27 (1905-6): 242, 247 and 228 for the sacred pack of seven arrows. Francis La Flesche notes, "Omaha Bow and Arrow Makers,'' Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1926): 493-94, that "each . . . of the seven principal gentes [of the Omaha] is represented by one of these mystic arrows, which are used to foretell what will happen, good or evil, to each gens during the year following the ceremony,'' and also that the Indians to whom were entrusted the sacred arrows could give their sons a name which "refers to the mysterious characters of the divining arrows." A sacred arrow-bundle, the most prized possession of the Cheyennes, is compared by Gerard Fowke, "Stone Art," Bureau of Ethnology 13 (1891-92): 116, to the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant, which also contained divination rods; see Nibley, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State," 336, and "The Stick of Judah and the Stick of Joseph," 91. 76. Fahd, "Une pratique céromantique,'' 71. 77. Ezekiel 21:21, discussed by Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien 2:275. Jerome, an expert in Jewish customs, says these staves bore 'cut or painted upon them the names of individuals,'' (cited by Wellhausen, Reste, 133). Fahd, "Une pratique cléromantique,'' 73, notes that the original meaning of the Hebrew word qesem, "divination,'' is 'to consult the arrows.'' Actually it means to cut the arrows, being the exact equivalent of the Old Norse skera or upp. 78. Charles Sherrington, Man on His Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), ch. 4, "The Wisdom of the Body,'' esp. 94. 79. W. M. Flinders Petrie, Scarabs and Cylinders with Names (Warminster: Aris, 1917), 4. 80. The magazine version of this section, "The Liahona's Cousins,'' IE 64 (February 1961): 89, 104, concluded with the following additional information: "The usual practice in explaining the word Liahona is to consult dictionaries of Hebrew and cognate languages, searching out words that begin with li-, aho-, hona-, etc., and to speculate on the most likely combinations. It is a pleasant game that anyone can play, and since there are well over a hundred possible combinations which, if we allow for simple and well-known sound-shifts, can be run into thousands, there is plenty of fun for everybody-provided we don't get the idea that our guesses are significant. When we are dealing with possible meanings of possible syllable combinations, there is such latitude that rigorous demonstration is out of the question. It is only when the Book of Mormon is both peculiar and specific-in such names as Paanchi, and such tales as the story of Joseph's two garments-that parallels become significant. Our own preference has always been for le-yah-hon-na, literally, 'to God is our commanding,' i.e. 'God is our guide,' since hon hwn, is the common Egyptian word for 'lead, guide, take command.' This might be supported by the oldest and commonest of all known inscriptions in divination arrows: 'My Lord hath commanded me,' but as long as scores of other explanations are possible. it is nothing but the purest guesswork.
If this post is representative of the state of Mormon scientific inquiry, I can see why Utah and Idaho are in the top 3 states reflecting the highest approval ratings for Pres. Bush. btw, most of the sources listed in the footnotes are from the 1960's or earlier. Big G., why don't you tear yourself away from 'Hannity's America' this weekend and update the claims made in this scientific examination of portions of the BoM?
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"Big G., why don't you tear yourself away from 'Hannity's America' this weekend and update the claims made in this scientific examination of portions of the BoM?" Come on now, act like a big boy.
Maybe you ought to actually read the research afore mentioned. If its true then it still is now.
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omfg big G u write to much
Okay, one major issue of LDS belief: We are not polytheist. We believe in an Infinite and Eternal God, His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. God is not anthropomorphic, rather, we are "deiomorphic," as God made us in His image. I am directly replying to a post near the beginning:
Mormons are polytheists. They believe God was incarnate in Jesus Christ in this world, but there are many other worlds with many other divinities. These beliefs follow of necessity from their basic understanding of the nature of God, who is corporeal, created, finite, limited, anthropomorphic in the real sense. He is manifestly not the God of Jewish-Christian belief, who, though intimately involved in the life of the world, is wholly separate from the world--omnipotent, omniscient, utterly simple, one.
To all of you who may have been confused by this article: Mormons are Christian. We believe in Christ, our Savior; We believe in Christ's Father, our Father; and we believe in the Holy Spirit. The author of the quoted post has said that we "think non-Christianly about the nature of God." This is simply false, and I cannot emphasize enough what I am about to share again: We believe in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If that's not Christian, what is?
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Cool site. Thank you!!!
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Nice site. Thanks.
Nice site. Thank you!!!
Very good site. Thank you:-)
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There was a big, fat book summarizing the "theology" of LDS published a generation ago. It is still in wide circulation. Written by a Mormon, but criticized by the church--for, I believe, stating their positions a bit too candidly.
Somebody help me remember the title and author?
Posted by Thomas Nelson | July 13, 2007 11:26 AM