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The merits of this essay are profound and thought-provoking. Only one better schooled in English than I (e.g., the author) could have so wondrously explored the breadth and depths of the topic. Thank you, Val Larsen.
Also, the comments between him and Martin Evans re: the other-worldly power of language [coming early in this thread] seem of inestimable worth. Thanks to you both.
However, I am a bit miffed that this lengthy Discussion has so much “geographical” commentary. Are Moroni’s travels remotely as important as the Book of Mormon’s message? And, for that matter, is ANY “Book of Mormon geography” important at all?
I’ll step into the question for whether any Book of Mormon geography is important at all. I would vote an emphatic yes, and for the same reason that an understanding of the location and contemporary culture behind the Old or New Testaments is important. It is absolutely true that many can, and have, found value in the text without any understanding of that background. However, for those who have learned the cultural and historical context, the experience with the scriptures takes on new depth.
The same can happen with the Book of Mormon. The trick, of course, is to find the right location. Since the Church does not espouse one, we are free to examine multiple possibilities. Personally, I have only found one where the culture of the time and location illuminate the text. It is one thing to find a narrow neck (every geography does). It is another to have a place where the text of the Book of Mormon becomes more understandable because of the location (and culture, and time period).
The “culturl and historical context” are important, as you state. “The trick, of course, is to find the right location.”
Exactly!
And that “location” has not yet been revealed.
So for some of us students of the Book of Mormon and readers of the non-canonized ‘Interpreter,’ geography is NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH to argue about.
As long as we agree that “not important enough to argue about” is a different issue from being important at all.
Thank you for your kind words. I am pleased that you found the reading of Moroni valuable.
I was at the Garden Tomb in 1972 when President Harold B. Lee organized the Jerusalem Branch. That evening he stated, “There are many places on the face of the earth that are sacred, because of the events that occurred there.” He mentioned Mount Sainai, Adam-ondi-ahman, and the Sacred Grove. Then added, “But this is the most sacred place on the face of the earth, because this is where the greatest event in the history of the world occurred; this is where the bands of death were broken; this is where the Savior was resurrected.”
He counseled us that there is a Spirit of place, and we were to advise others of the sacredness of that location.
There are also many places in America made sacred by the events that occurred here as recorded in the Book of Mormon. It would be wonderful to read 3rd Nephi while standing on the Temple site in Bountiful, or to read King Benjamin’s address from his tower. I believe those locations are here and available to us.
Indeed it would be wonderful to be at the Temple in Bountiful with the Savior, and at the Temple in Zarahemla with King Benjamin, etc., as you intimate.
But until the precise locations of those places are revealed, let all discussion (and dissension) about their geography cease!
Please.
DanB
Mormon purposefully included geographical comments throughout his writings so that we could understand where the events occurred. Geographical evidence for the Book the Book of Mormon is just as interesting and important as linguistic evidence, even though it may not be to you. The Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon were revealed by diligent scholastic study, rather than through the Prophets. The discovery that the Book of Mormon was translated into Early Modern English was not revealed through the Prophets. Likewise, by diligent study of the text of the Book of Mormon the exact locations can undoubtedly be determined. Mormon obviously intended it to be so.
I agree with you that there should not be dissention about the geography, as there should not be dissention about any gospel subject, but to direct that discussion about it cease, is beyond cavalier.
I was not there in 1972. However, there was already a fully authorized and fully functioning Jerusalem Branch (David Galbraith, Branch Pres) in 1969, which met in the Galbraith home every Saturday.
We were meeting as a Group with David as the Group Leader prior to President Lee organizing the Jerusalem Branch on 20th September 1972. David was then called as the Branch president.
With curiosity I contemplate the unusual privilege of commenting on these journal articles. The Interpreter is a tier-one level journal and I esteem it akin to the NEJM or JAMA. Most journals at that level do not allow comments on articles.
I conclude The Interpreter allows comments to increase engagement and facilitate scientific collaboration. These are lofty goals that help the field. Still, I hardly understand having the ability to permanently link a comment with any article from most journals. I assume most journals view comments as a distraction. They also do not want to become a blog.
Despite a doctorate education I have the same proclivities that affect all people. Therefore, I have rules for myself prior to posting. In case you are interested: 1) Understand what the article adds to the theme in the available body of literature. 2) Understand the author’s perspectives on the novel issue and the other issues as they present them. 3) Understand my own question as it relates to what the author seems to care about. 4) Do a brief literature review to see if my comment are already addressed. 5) Understand how my ulterior motives affect my comments (this generally means limit citing my own material). 6) Don’t comment the same day (haste brings confusion and pestilence D&C 63:24). This also allows improvement of the draft and tempers emotions if needed. 7) I try not to comment more than once (i.e. this is not a blog). I know I broke my rules here.
It is important to ensure The Interpreter’s goal of increasing impact doesn’t compromise the journal’s (non-blog) status. But more than that, I found these rules help me retain and improve essential habits. If that wasn’t enough, these rules guarantee someone will read my article(s) and take sincere time to internalize it, understand it, rejoice with me, and add to it (D and C 1:10). Strengthening the author or community is another bonus on the top.
I really care about a lot of the content here. That makes me prone to get carried away and forget my own and other’s interests. I have found hard and fast rules to be essential. I feel they are essentially what any author would use for journal correspondence or letters to the editor. Remember this journal is a journal. That is how I treat it. Our comments should be letters to the editor (are we are doctors?) and we should write our comments in that way. Thank you all. I look forward to reading your future remarks on other journal submissions. I don’t want comments shut down because no author engagement will be possible.
Again, I feel privileged in this case to link my comments to Val Larsen’s discussion about Moroni. Ironically, he discusses in this article Moroni’s growth and preparation as his writing improved. I hope mine follows suite. Subsequently, Val also made me feel a small degree of communion and understanding with Moroni. Thank you.
Brant Gardner: “There are unquestionably elements of EME. There are unquestionably more modern grammatical elements.”
Good grief. Brant hasn’t comparatively studied the English usage of the Book of Mormon enough to know this.
In a few months an essay of mine might appear in Interpreter on some common questions about Book of Mormon English and translation. It is prompted in part because Gardner continues to make inaccurate statements about its English usage, some of which I have already shown in Interpreter papers to be otherwise.
One thing Gardner wrote in another Interpreter comment chain was that the Book of Mormon has a mixture of early and late modern English forms in the same sentence many times, which he thinks provides some evidence that it was Joseph Smith who worded most of the text. He told me elsewhere that he was thinking of things like the “taketh” and “returns” variation in the preface to 1 Nephi (it’s in the fourth sentence of the preface; there is also warns and prophesieth in the second sentence; and the eleventh sentence has “Nephi’s brethren rebelleth”, something that occurred in both Early Modern English and some pseudo-archaic texts). I addressed this particular variation in at least two Interpreter papers, in 2016 and 2017, giving various examples. See pages 189–90 in https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/barlow-on-book-of-mormon-language-an-examination-of-some-strained-grammar/ (2017); and pages 97–98 in https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-case-of-the-th-plural-in-the-earliest-text/ (2016). Here’s an even earlier example of nearby usage of “taketh” and “returns”:
1579, EEBO A02329
The Pope taketh Mirandola, and maketh war upon the duke of Ferrara: The family of Bentivole returns to Bologna:
Anyone can search a Shakespeare corpus (c1590–1615) and quickly see the same inflectional variation.
I am mentioning this specific item to let those interested know how things stand generally in this field of study. Skousen and I have published a large amount of nonbiblical and non-pseudo-archaic early modern examples that correspond with Book of Mormon usage (in Interpreter papers and text-critical volumes), and the data are usually mistreated by Book of Mormon scholars, who have different priorities. Too often, the standard of scholarship is low in this field of inquiry.
Theodore,
The estimated population of urban Cahokia was late (1150 AD), and was not duplicated across the plains. Truly large New World cities such as Teotihuacan in Mexico (1st thru the 5th centuries AD) had a population of around 125,000, which is greater than the walled city of ancient Rome. With intensive agriculture, the population of the Yucatan was around 10 million (until the collapse ca 900 AD). Groups of high caste warriors from Teotihuacan even traveled to the Yucatan and conquered city-states there, recording their actions on stelae — which can be read today. Brant Gardner has even suggested that the Gaddiantons may have been just such Teotihuacano warriors.
When the Conquistadores arrived in Mexico, they observed very large boats being used by Mesoamericans, possibly built with trees near the extensive waterways in Veracruz and Tabasco States — into which the Grijalva River conveniently emptied. Extensive trade routes existed and were heavily used, by both sea and land.
Unnecessary notions about two Cumorahs have no real purchase. There was only one Cumorah, and it was not the morain in Manchester, New York.
While it is true that the notion of “proof” is often no more than a loose sociocultural construct, no such notion is acceptable among scientists. Science demands that evidence be derived from repeatable demonstrations in a lab, with corroboration from multiple sources. Hard evidence from scientific excavations or from crime scene investigations must be tested and retested. The presentation of that evidence before one’s academic peers, or in a court of law must be subject to and survive close scrutiny and challenge.
Religious apologists and their opponents often ignore these bothersome limitations — which leaves the rest of us wading hip deep through the bog of opinion-mongering (our common slough of despond).
Upon reflection you couldn’t be more correct. I think this is where we must turn. If Nephi bothered to prove things in a socially acceptable way (for his day) we should do likewise.
In “Vision of All” Spencer writes that one issue with Israel at Isaiah’s time is that they suppressed the signs given to them (1 Ne 20:6), “will ye not declare them?” I think the question is applicable to us. Inasmuch as we should publish things it should be in a way that is acceptable to the audience.
I am hesitant because of the vastness of the task. There likely are not models for most “proofs” (i.e., the odds of finding an Isaiah variant in the Great Isaiah scroll). But surely we should be vocal about the >400 evidences on evidence central. Robert couldn’t be more right. There is an expected way of presenting to the audience.
Perhaps, instead of proving the Book of Mormon “true” one could find the odds of any unfulfilled predictions NOT coming about. Obviously Kyler has an inspired start.
Surely we have more signs than Korihor (who had had signs enough) and surely we should declare those.
Thanks for all.
Val, reading this article was like reading an engaging primer on close reading. It was very enjoyable! I found your approach and findings to be innovative and well-founded in the text. Thanks for another deeply thought-out and cogently articulated.
Thanks you, Nate, for the kind words and for the close reading you yourself are doing.
Just to be clear, Moroni does not use the word “translate” in Ether 1:2, and it doesn’t make sense for him to make another translation in addition to the one made by Mosiah II. Ancient codices of bark-paper were regularly made, and several of them still exist, over 500 years after the Spanish Conquest.
Nephites regularly used such materials in addition to metal plates (Mosiah 2:7-9, 13:11, 24:4-6). Similarly, the existence of the Brass Plates did not prevent the scribal transmission on paper of the Hebrew Bible down to our own day.
As to BofM geography, the Sidon River flows north, while the Mississippi does not. Moreover, only one locale in the Americas has literacy, along with the large cities and massive populations requisite for the BofM. All that, and use of cement, should cinch the deal.
Robert,
If you had read my referenced article, you would have learned that in Early Modern English, to a seaman, the “head of the river “meant the mouth of the river, and the Sidon was obviously named by a seaman. This and other information from the text of the Book of Mormon reveals that the Sidon flowed from north to south.
Also, during the period of the Book of Mormon, North America east of the Mississippi was covered with an advanced civilization with large cities and over 700 settlements in the lower Mississippi Valley alone. At the archeological site of Moundville in Alabama I have seen the reconstruction of cement houses that were excavated there.
The mouth of a river had different definitions. Most common was origin but it also denoted where the river entered a lake or perhaps the ocean.
More important is that the mouth of the Sidon was at a higher elevation than Zarahenla. That city was both down and north. Physics indicate that the river would flow down and therefore north.
Hi Brant,
I’ve been expecting you. Where do you read in the text that the mouth of the Sidon was higher than Zaraehmla?
This is a question where reading the whole text carefully is required as the text doesn’t state it, it simply assumes that we understand. Start with Alma 43:22 which places the head of the Sidon near Manti. Then you need to see where Manti is in relation to Zarahemla. It is always south, and you go down to Zarahemla from the south. You get a little more information when we see the battle in Alma 23 where Moroni splits his army. He places an army west and east of the Sidon. On the east they are on the south of a hill. On the west they are on the north. Thus, Moroni’s army is hidden as the Lamanites pass the hill (from the south to the north). Then when they cross, now being on the north, they don’t see Lehi’s army on the south of the hill. All of this requires Manti and therefore the head of the Sidon to be south of Zarahemla.
However, as explained in my article, the “Head of the river Sidon” is where Sidon empties into the sea. Therefore, the Sidon runs from n north to south. ( See https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-north-american-book-of-mormon-geography-the-river-sidon/ )
The Moundbuilders never used cement. They never had the vast populations needed to fit the Book of Mormon narratives. They were never literate. On such matters, archeology agrees.
The Book of Mormon was not composed in Early Modern English, but in an ancient Near Eastern language. For example, there is the Sumero-Akkadian concept of pi nārāti killale “mouth of the two rivers” (ÍD.KA.MIN.NA), referring both to the cosmic Apsu (the abyss), as well as to the Shatt al-Arab near ancient Eridu where the Tigris & Euphrates emptied into the Persian Gulf.
That is the context in which I Ne 2:8-9 describes the Red Sea as a “fountain,” with the River Laman running into it, near its “mouth,” which fits the ancient conception of seas as abyssal/deep sources of water. This would apply as well to the Rivers of Eden, whose heads are depicted rising from just such an underground abyss (Gen 2:10-14; Prov 8:27-28; Isa 51:10 = II Ne 8:10). Indeed, I Ne 8:20, 11:25 describe the “head” of the river as the source from which “living waters” flow, which is always down.
From there it is a simple matter of North – South orientation for the BofM, with the land southward and land northward. From that we can see that the Mississippi is upside-down.
Regardless of the original language of the Book of Mormon, it was translated for us into Early Modern English where to a seaman, the “head of the river” was where it emptied into the sea. This is confirmed in the text:
“…a narrow strip of wilderness, which ran from the sea east even to the sea west, and round about on the borders of the seashore, and the borders of the wilderness which was on the north by the land of Zarahemla, through the borders of Manti, by the head of the river Sidon, running from the east towards the west…”
From the above we find:
A. The narrow strip of wilderness ran east and west round about on the edge of the seashore.
B. Zarahemla was north of the seashore and north of Manti (see also Alma 6:7, 17:1).
C. Manti was near the narrow strip of wilderness, that was by the sea.
D. The head of the river Sidon was by the narrow strip of wilderness, that was by the sea.
Conclusion: As rivers run to the sea, the river Sidon ran from Zarahemla south to Manti and through the east-west narrow strip of wilderness to the “head of the river Sidon” near the sea.
Hugh Nibley made note of this. Speaking extemporaneously about the head of the river Sidon mentioned in Alma 22:27 he said, “If that’s the head of the river, I suppose it’s the source of the river. Well, it may be the head of the river where it empties. Sidon goes the other way, I think.” {Hugh Nibley, Teachings of The Book of Mormon–Semester 1: Transcripts of Lectures Presented to an Honors Book of Mormon Class at Brigham Young University, 1988—1990, Provo: FARMS, p.143)
It took hundreds of thousands of man hours to build each mound, one basket full of dirt at a time, and there were thousands s of mounds built during the Hopewwell civilization (100 BC to 400 AD). That alone requires a large population.
I am not sure where “head of the river” meaning the mouth came from. Webster’s 1828 has:
I confirmed this in the Oxford English Dictionary, which also had HEAD as the origin, not the final outflow. This suggests that your entire analysis depends upon an idiosyncratic definition form which your reading of the text flows. Manti lies between the land of Nephi and the Land of Zarahemla. It is always “down” to Zarahemla. This suggests that the intervening city, Manti, is down from Nephi but up from Zarahemla. That is not explicit in the text, but discernible from the various descriptions.
When Alma is traveling south from Gideon too the land of Manti, of course he meets the sons of Mosiah who are coming from the land of Nephi. The major pathway is through the land of Manti. If the “head” of the Sidon were really where it meets the sea, from whence the sons of Mosiah?
Combining all the descriptions, we have Nephi “up,” then a strip of wilderness (not defined so open to interpretation), the a valley, Manti, and Zarahemla. Since the head, or origin (according to both Webster’s 1828 and the Oxford English) is near Manti, it is higher in elevation than Zarahemla. Manti is south of Zarahemla. Fluid dynamics has the Sidon flowing to the north. Creating a whole geographic analysis on an unusual reading of “head” leads to confusion in the rest of the elements of the text.
In Webster’s 1828, “mouth” is where a river empties into a larger body of water, and “head” is the opposite–the origin and not the end.
If you would read the article that I referenced twice, you would know the meaning of the “head of the river” to be where it flows into the sea, comes from the usage in Early Modern English.
( See https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-north-american-book-of-mormon-geography-the-river-sidon/ )
Webster’s and Oxford dictionaries are not relevant, because the Book of Mormon was translated into Early Modern English, into what you refer to as “idiosyncratic.” That is what has confused and misled Book of Mormon geography researchers. That should no longer ben the case.
Manti was near the narrow strip of wilderness that was by the sea. (Alma 22;27). There is no space for the land of Nephi to be directly south of Manti. That is a misconception from misunderstanding the flow of the river and where Manti was located. Thee trail to the land of Nephi waws west of the river Sidon and lead southwest to the land of Nephi (Alma 2:21-27).
Alma probably met the Sons of Mosiah on the river. They would have arrived at the river south of Zarahemla when they came on the trail from the land of Nephi.
Webster’s 1828 is only irrelevant if you subscribe wholly to the EME only hypothesis. I don’t. Skousen had declared in his critical text series that the Book of Mormon is not an EME book. There are unquestionably elements of EME. There are unquestionably more modern grammatical elements.
Regardless, I assure you that the Oxford English Dictionary is entirely relevant as it is based on actual usage, with dates and examples. The earliest meaning of head as source is from 1375. There are entries from 1538, 1541, and 1625–as well as later. This is from the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, p. 746.
As you only generically referenced your definition, and I do not have access to that source (I tried online, but don’t have a university to log in through), I can’t tell why your definition doesn’t conform to what the OE says is the common meaning of the term. Without actual contextual evidence, I must go with the multiple examples in the OE.
All the quotes and references from Early English Books Online are included in the above referenced article. If you don’t believe that the Book of Mormon was translated into Early Modern English, then I can’t help you.
I am ashamed that I didn’t read the next paragraph and so missed what you quoted. Let’s compare your three citations against the OE’s indication that in the Early Modern English period, “head” mean source.
First, it would be interesting to know more of citation number 1, but we know that he is in main and looking for the source of a river. It is logical that he was looking at the Saint Lawrence, which was not only fairly obvious (not needing to be located) but also the subject of the attempts to find a water crossing through North America. In that case, your reading of “head” as source is suspect and not definitive. I note that it is your interpretation “it could only mean,” and not anything explicit in the quotation. The OE reading works just as well, probably better.
Example 2 This one is interesting because you suggest that the “head of the river Plate” must be the outflow or mouth. Yet in the same paragraph, later on, he speaks of the mouth of the river. This means that he either uses both words with the same meaning, or you have applied your definition to one of them.
Example 3. This one is interesting because it deals with a delta. The OE does specifically speak of the head of the delta as the source from which the many rivers/rivulets flow to the sea. So, the OE supports it, but the text and the OE agree that they are speaking of the head of the delta, not the whole river.
Even accepting the EME hypothesis, as you do, the EME meaning according to the OE (remember the dates given) underscores that the primary EME reading for “head” of a river would be the source. Contra their expertise, we have the way that you read certain quotations, none of which require your reading.
Again, I apologize for not reading your citations when I made my previous response.
2
I disagree with your interpretations of the citations.
During the approximately 5,000 years of North American moundbuilding (which ended about 1600 AD), a great many mounds were built. However, “At its maximum about 1150 CE, Cahokia was an urban settlement with 20,000–30,000 people. This population was not exceeded by North American European settlements until after 1800.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Builders . That is not nearly the millions required by the BofM, and which could only be found in Mesoamerica.
As I demonstrated, both the BofM and ancient Near Eastern literature clearly define “head” and “mouth” of a river in ways which do not fit your desired outcome. Odd notions derived from a translation language do not apply.
Mounds, which are referred to in the Book of Mormon as earthen towers, were the primary defensive strategy of the Nephites. They served as resorts for the Nephites when attacked and gave them the military advantage of the high ground of about 5:1. Moroni prepared these earthen strongholds against the coming of their enemies in “EVERY CITY” in all the land” (Alma 50:1-6, emphasis added).
Previously, Moroni had raised his Title of Liberty “upon EFVERY TOWER which was in the land” (Alma 46:36, emphasis added).
In the Cherokee language, “Etowah” means “high tower,” and is the name of an archeological mound site in the state of Georgia. There are over 700 towers (mounds) in the lower Mississippi Valley of Louisiana alone.
https://www.explorelouisiana.com/blog/native-american-indian-mounds-across-louisiana
There are so few earthen towers in Mesoamerica that it fails to meet the requirements of the text.
Robert,
Unless you are knowledgeable about the Nephite word from which “head of the river” was translated into EME, to a seaman it meant where the river enters the sea. This is consistent (as noted above and recognized by Hugh Nibley) with the text in Alma 22:27 where Mormon explains that Manti and the Narrow Strip of Wilderness were by the sea.
As to the population, the Nephites were an agrarian society where about 80 percent of the population were farmers. A city of 20,000 required a hinterland of 80,000 farmers in villages within a radius of one or two day’s travel of the city. It only takes 10 of these cities to equal one million people.
The Mesoamerica-only theory has many inconsistencies with the text in addition to requiring two Cumorahs, the flow of river, and too few earthen towers. Here are a few more:
1. Sorenson’s Sidon, the Grijalva River in Mexico, even if it flowed the right direction (which it does not), is an impassable white-water river with thousand feet high vertical cliff gorges for a hundred miles as it flows from his Zarahemla in the highlands to the sea. Zarahemla was the capital city of the Nephites for 600 years and Mormon tells us that they were a shipping and a ship-building people (Helaman3:14}, which requires shipping access to the sea rather than being land locked. If the river is wrong, everything is wrong.
2. With The Grijalva River as the Sidon, the Mulekites had to travel and carry on their backs all their tents and provisions from their landing for over 200 miles through mountain passes over 7,000 feet high, to arrive and then build their city of Zarahemla. This is untenable.
3. The Nephite and the Jaredite civilizations coexisted for 400 years without interaction or even awareness of each other. That is not plausible in an area only 500 x 200 miles.
4. There is no narrow neck of land “where the sea divides the land” (Ether 10:20)
5. The cardinal directions had to be skewed from what they were when they crossed the Arabian desert.
These few examples demonstrate that the Mesoamerica-only theory is not compatible with the text of the Book of Mormon.
I hesitated to respond because we are far off track from the article. However, having gone this far I feel we should set a few things straight.
1) The EME meaning “to a seaman” is your interpretation. As I noted, the OED indicates that the EME meaning is source, not termination (mouth). Your quotation using both head and mouth in the same paragraph (by the same seaman) contradicts your reading.
2) The evidence of elevation dictates that water must flow downhill from the land of Nephi which was always up from Zarahemla (and Zarahemla always down). Even if we accepted head as ending point, water still could not flow uphill (without unusual circumstances).
3) The archaeology of North America is pretty well established. The people had incipient agriculture, but what they grew could not provide the needed calories and therefore the societies had to continue to hunt and gather. This limits population size. World studies confirm that this type of incipient agriculture cannot support large city populations. It is true that there were a lot of people in North America. That isn’t the issue. It is the size an socio-political complexity of the Book of Mormon that is not seen in any North American location until long after the close of the Book of Mormon. That is what the archaeology says.
4) You suggest, without evidence except your assertion, that it is difficult to see the 400 year overlap between Jaredites and Nephites if there was a small location. That is fascinating, as the Adena populations lived in precisely the same areas as the later Hopewell. Indeed, some archaeologists have wondered if it is misleading to see them as separate cultures since they were sequential in the very same locations, suggesting perhaps just an evolution of the culture rather than any real distinction.
Your arguments against a Mesoamerican location are mostly not new. They have been answered multiple times. Trying to discuss them only takes us further off path.
Robert may reply to you, and you may reply. Then I think for everyone’s sake we should let this rest and stick to the actual topic of the article.
Closing comments:
It appears that the Mesoamerica-only theory is founded upon imaginative assumptions and built with rhetoric substituting for evidence.
There is a viable alternative to the Mesoamerica-only and the Heartland-only theories that connects both of them.
The prosecution rests, and refers the case to the jury.
Reading back through the printed version of the paper, I noticed something that I had not previously noted when writing it. In Moroni’s second ending, first farewell, the negatively tinged call to action has seven independent imperatives. I suspect that is not an accident. It is an appropriate number for an ending and another indication that Moroni had literary talent and conscious literary intensions early on. To be sure, there are other subordinate imperatives attached to those initial independent, mostly negative, imperatives. But if the structure of the text accurately reflects the way Moroni composed it, I believe the seven was intentional and meaningful.
The Heartland/Mesoamerica debate illustrates, I think, the value of Hardy bracketing the question of history. The one thing we know for certain is that we have the Book of Mormon before us, and it is a sophisticated literary work. It is the kind of work that could well be or perhaps presumptively is grounded in an ancient historical setting. And though I take it as an axiom that God will never allow an excavated site to produce incontrovertible evidence that the book was set in the Heartland or Mesoamerica or any other proposed historical setting—because that would make faith irrelevant—research done on possible settings clearly has value. First, in the vein of Austin Ferrer’s comments on the intellectual defense of Christianity, having a plausible setting or settings will help some people take the book more seriously, will help them preserve faith in it, which matters a great deal. Everyone who has thus far commented views faith in the Book of Mormon as a good thing. Second, accurately identifying where the book was set could, on the margins, illuminate some aspects of the text and help us understand it more fully. But as with the Bible, which has a known historical setting, the Book of Mormon’s meaning will always be most discoverable through close, literary reading combined with the ministrations of the Holy Ghost. The believers in the Heartland, Mesoamerica, Baja, Florida, Malaysia and various other settings share the same basic goal: to shore up faith in and deepen understanding of the Book of Mormon. That shared love for the Book of Mormon makes us brothers and sisters and, at bottom, allies in our efforts to understand and promulgate love for the Book of Mormon.
Grant Hardy wisely bracketed both faith and historicity in his deep and powerful analysis of the BofM.
I agree that normative Judeo-Christian theology would assert that God could prevent tangible “proof” of anything which He would want accepted sola fide. However, that is only because that theology makes God the fully sovereign Necessary Being, and all else (including people) merely Contingent.
Latter-day Saint theology does not accept those premises, and even claims that such would negate the existence of God (II Nephi 2:13).
Moreover, faith and reason are not competitors, but simply different and sometimes complementary modes of thought and inquiry. Similarly, no competent historian is going to deny the value of both literary and archeological analysis. Why would we reject the experimental method of Alma 32:26-43? Indeed, faith and praxis work together to produce substantive results (32:36), which we should all proudly agree was the foundation of success for our pioneer ancestors.
Robert,
Let me respond to some of your specific claims. I spoke to the emergence of the Solitary Sovereign God of orthodox Christianity in https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/first-visions-and-last-sermons-affirming-divine-sociality-rejecting-the-greater-apostasy/ and in other Interpreter articles. This concept of God is not the product of “sola fide,” a late, Protestant development. This concept emerged about the time of Lehi and was rooted in sophisticated Jewish philosophical reasoning. It was further developed by philosophically sophisticated Catholics. Both Jew and Catholic theologians have used and continue to use reason masterfully. So do Calvinist thinkers. This change in the understanding of God was an apostasy, but it is not a rejection of reason. They don’t reject it, nor, as you say, do we.
Nonetheless, I’m confident that God will never let us have conclusive proof that the Book of Mormon is historical, not because He devalues reason but because He values agency. As I say at the beginning of this article, God permits us to choose the world in which we live, now and in eternity. The discovery of an archeological site full of plates written in Reformed Egyptian that, in stratum after stratum, conclusively proves the historicity of the Book of Mormon, would deprive people of important choices about the world they live in. Some facts—that Washington, D.C. is a city on the Potomac—are not subject to dispute. All world views must accept and deal with them. Rarely, if ever, does archaeology provide conclusive, dispositive proof of religious claims. That is not something that surviving fragments from the past can do. The ongoing controversy in these comments about the setting of the Book of Mormon, with citations of competing facts, is additional evidence of this truth if more is needed. I’m not saying that setting theories cannot differ in their degree of plausibility. I’m just saying that empirical evidence is unlikely to conclusively settle the matter.
I certainly don’t disagree with your statement that “faith and reason are not competitors, but simply different and sometimes complementary modes of thought and inquiry.” The Lord wants us to use both and has so constructed the world that we must use both to engage with the truth. Faith in the Book of Mormon is the driver of my use of reason, of close reading, to understand its testimony more fully. So I join you in affirming the importance of both reason and faith.
I appreciate the depth of your insights and edifying discussion.
1) In my view the thesis of this article shows Mormon’s geographical explanations are inaccurate today. All BCE descriptions are subject to the changes that occurred at Christ’s death. If one considers the text’s audience (the family or faction of Alma) it suggests the geography is unknown even by them. If I mention in passing to people familiar with a modern Utah that Provo was south of Salt Lake City and Alpine and Highland were in between the two prior to a massive remodeling one may consider that it is no longer the case. Regardless, we should consider why the family of Alma does not know these landmarks (if that is the audience). Val Larsen points out that we need to determine what aspects of the text are written to us and written to contemporaries. Geography is mentioned early in Mormon’s record. I assume all of Mormon’s descriptions are no longer relevant to his contemporary geographical state. That is not to say we cannot figure it out.
2) I fundamentally disagree that proof is not available. I think that misrepresents our relationship with truth, evidence, God, and fellow man. God has infinite power and has given power to Satan (D&C 29) to lead astray all those who want to be led astray (Moses 4:4). Therefore prior to the last day Satan will always have power (infinite?) to deceive. This does not mean there is no proof. Rather, persons must pay a price of admission. This is similar with even secular fields.
I consider the Book of Mormon proven by the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I write there are ~ 10 variants found exclusively in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I would say this is proof even by pretty lax standards. Regardless, EvidenceCentral compilers consider over 400 “proofs”. Certainly by some standards it is proven. It is certainly proven to those that pay the admission. Now if you want to know proof about geography specifically … you must make that a topic that has gospel (not academic) relevance. Consider how Jack Welch found the chiasmus. He recounts on ScriptureCentral episodes that his quest began by trying to understand Alma and his writings. He did not think of how to “prove” the Book of Mormon. Similarly, I show comparisons with 2 Nephi and contemporary legal documents. Initially I never cared about the genre of 2 Nephi. I wanted to know what Nephi was trying to say. Comparing contemporary documents the character of his text became obvious (and I would say a proof).
Would Moses say there was no proof he talked with God in order to preserve agency? No, God wants us all to know the truth in the flesh. Moses wishes all members of Israel could see even God’s face personally. He lived, died and breathed to do so. People just aren’t paying the admission fee (faith). Considering the material culture of Nephi’s day I show that Nephi is trying very hard to prove Christ’s reality (according to his culture’s beliefs). He also proves Israel will be redeemed to his culture. Those proofs were available to those people who bothered to learn Egyptian and read the records. There is a pattern. We ALWAYS get proof that strengthens our faith. That is the very nature of the plan.
So the question you should be debating is: what righteous principles can be strengthened only by knowing about Book of Mormon geography as found in the modern world? If you find that question you can find that proof. God wants us to have proof. The Nephites showed many signs to their audience. My paper essentially depicts two types of people. Prophets (with proof) and others. You all have many proofs. Merely, others can’t see them because of the price of admission. What virtuous ability can be strengthened with the geographical proof? As I understand with Jack Welch he was not seeking literary proof, rather to genuinely know Alma. When Ammon saw the shepherd servants desired something he rejoiced because he knew he would be able to show a sign of his divinity. He would have only known that if this was a pattern. When showing signs it appears prophets ask what people really want. They show a sign that relates to those true desires and connect it to additional gospel concepts (just as Nephi puts fulfilled signs alongside unfulfilled signs).
Appreciate your input, Marin. As to the land changing so that Mormon’s and Moroni’s geographical descriptions do not apply, this ignores the fact that they wrote these descriptions 400 years later and Mormon had traveled over most of it. In my three-year study of these geographical descriptions, I found that once the extreme anchor points of Costa Rica and Cumorah were established, and the Mississippi was identified as the river Sidon, almost every other location mentioned in the text could be identified in its rightful place and satisfied all the requirements of the text.
As to proof, I consider my findings to be good evidence, and leave the confirmation (proof) to the Holy Ghost.
I appreciate your point. While Mormon travelled, presumably his initial audience (who lived at the same time) seem ignorant of the geography. I think we need to account for why his audience didn’t know the geography. Perhaps he wrote majority of the corpus after the Nephites were confined north of Desolation (around Mormon 4). I will need to look up your papers on the topic.
I like to think the geography is applicable to us today in some way.
I am sorry that you will probably only find my Sidon article. Because of the comprehensiveness of the work, I have wanted to publish it a section at a time on this forum for open discussion. Unfortunately, Interpreter has rejected all my subsequent submissions to either the Journal or the Blog, including recently a joint article with Warren Aston on Lehi’s Landing, and one of my own on the Jaredite Journey. I believe it is because they conflict with Sorenson’s Mesoamerica-only theory.
Martin,
While we do not know where the city of Zarahemla was, even in the wake of the destruction at Christ’s Second Coming (what we call the Second Coming will be the Third Coming), Mormon and other Nephites did know. That is why Mormon could quite precisely describe what happened in each place. Mormon knew there was a lagoon where the City of Moroni used to be, for instance. He had a reference point, the City of Bountiful, and directions and distances. Amidst all the many changes, enough remained the same that the Nephites could say what had happened in each place. But certainly, the point you make—that there were massive changes in the geography at Christ’s Second Coming—does complicate any effort we make today to identify the precise setting of the Book of Mormon.
I did not mean to say that proof is not available. I meant to say only that dispositive proof, irresistible proof is not and will never be available. Only a madman would say that there is no city, Washington D.C. on the Potomac today. It is easy to compel belief that the city does exist if some rational person were to deny it—by taking them there. One need not be a madman to deny that the city of Zarahemla ever existed. That is not to say that one cannot come to know that Zarahemla existed. If, as you say, one pays the price, the fee, to obtain that knowledge, one can come to know it is a fact. But the fee includes an initial act of faith. Again, God has so constituted the world that we choose where we want to live, in a world full of miracles where the Book of Mormon is a historical work, or in a world where there is no God, no miracles, and no Book of Mormon history.
So, proof that God exists and miracles exist and that the Book of Mormon is historical is available if one chooses to seek it. But irresistible proof that we can use to compel belief in those who choose to disbelieve is not available, at least in this life. Even our LDS God, unlike the God of orthodox Christianity, is constrained in what he can do. There is a reality external to Him. As Alma makes clear, were he to do certain things not in accord with realities He did not create—e.g., do something that violated the principles of inherent cause and effect that are called justice—He would cease to be God. Our God has all power that any being could have in the universe or universes that actually exist, but He does not have the same unlimited scope for action that is posited by those who believe in the Solitary Sovereign God of orthodox Christianity, contemporary Judaism, and Islam.
You say that you consider the Book of Mormon proven by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the 400 proofs of EvidenceCentral, and other things. But I suspect you would agree that not everyone who reviews the evidence that you take to be proof would reach the same conclusion you have—that the Book of Mormon is historical. Intelligent people can, in good faith, draw different conclusions from the same evidence because they reason from different axioms. And axioms are by their nature something that one embraces as an act of faith. In choosing our axioms, we choose the world in which we will live.
Among the assumptions that undergirded Jack Welch’s approach to the Book of Mormon was the assumption of historicity. Having adopted historicity as an axiom of his thinking, he discovered chiasmus and many other revealing features of the book that are consistent with it being historical. You did something similar when looking at how ancient legal documents were structured and how that bore upon the composition of the Book of Mormon.
Moses and Nephi both talked with God. They had proof that He existed. But they didn’t start their mortal lives standing in God’s presence and knowing He lived. Both made a number of decisions based on faith that led them to the point where they indubitably knew God exists. Neither was compelled during his mortal life to know God exists. Both had contemporaries who did not know, and had Moses and Nephi made choices similar to those who did not know, those two prophets would not have known God lives.
My point, again, is that God does not provide evidence, proof, that compels us to believe in Him or the historicity of the Book of Mormon contrary to our will. It is possible to compel belief—that Washington D.C exists. And belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon could be compelled by some kind of massive archaeological finding that contained strata by strata very specific evidence that what the Book of Mormon says happened did happen. If He chose to do so, God could make that kind of evidence available. My claim is that He will never do so. That is not how ancient civilizations are revealed to us. (We are doomed to have only fragments, which leaves the ancient texts as our best guide to what happened then.) And God is God in part because He honors agency, our right to choose a destiny for ourselves rather than being forced into the path that He knows would be best for us…
Thank you Val Larsen. I couldn’t agree more. Sadly the first time you brought up Washington DC I missed that dispositive-proof concept somehow. I tried to emphasize the onus on us to get our fellowman to get their own proof (I guess we’ll call it subjective proof). Until the Last Day there will be no indisputable proof. This is a mercy to us and creates agency. Whole-hearted agreement. I am curious what an informed unbiased scientist or historian would find after reading the Book of Mormon. But honestly… unbiased people don’t read 500 page books.
To act as witnesses in the meantime we need our own proof. I see our job is to get others to want to get theirs (but it only happens incidentally).
I was reading in Alma 30 how the Chief Judge starts with the assumption that a sign would be harmful. “ Would ye that he should afflict others, to show unto thee a sign?” verse 51.
D and C 35 states “And the time speedily cometh that great things are to be shown forth unto the children of men; …But without faith shall not anything be shown forth except desolations upon Babylon.”
Perhaps the Chief Judge in Alma knew this principle and as Korihor did not have faith he only qualified for a negative sign (proof). Also, presumably because he didn’t express faith another proof (cure) couldn’t happen.
I know we strayed from the paper. I would like to re-emphasize that I am most grateful to see Moroni’s growth depicted in this article. Perhaps that is a type of how we can grow also. The concept of communion and fellowship via prophet’s writings is also beautiful. I look forward to reading your other articles.
“Given our current culture I would think a statistician would need to look at the 400 or so evidences on evidencecentral and determine the odds of each event happening naturally and then combine those odds in a cumulative/Bayesian manner.
Similarly, they would need to build a model for evidences against the book. I am not qualified to determine such odds. Probably no one is.”
It’s true that no one could ever be truly qualified for that task, but I don’t think that should stop us from making the attempt.
I’m not sure if you’ve come across this before, but it represents my humble efforts at creating just such a model:
https://interpreterfoundation.org/estimating-the-evidence-0/
Thanks Kyler,
That is a massive undertaking. I didn’t know about that. I’ll be looking at your links for a while.
I must say your conclusion is a little off. You say it is indeed reasonable to believe in the Book of Mormon and state a probability of ~70 orders of magnitude. Can you imagine concluding a successful trial of antibiotics with ~3 orders of magnitude (albeit frequentist) and stating it is “reasonable” to believe they work?
Honestly it is NOT reasonable to think they don’t work. 70 orders of magnitude in any other field would be accepted. Ergo, it is hard for me to take a person serious if they know of the Book of Mormon and don’t believe in it. They either didn’t actually read or think about it or they are biased. Probably they didn’t read or think about it because it is so much to process.
So really, yes there is proof if you bother looking (i.e. use faith). Having said that… if I concede proof of the Book of Mormon does that help me be more kind or be a better ministering teacher? I don’t think so.
Yet, as certain as I am, mark my words. As surely as God is all powerful Satan has power to genuinely convince me the Book of Mormon is not true if that is what I want.
Val, I believe God DOES offer proof in every culture according to that culture’s concept of proof. He also allows for disproof. He always gives proof to the prophets and it is their burden to get others to find their own proof. Also, the prophets can’t show it. For example, the tablets of the Ten Commandments are not on display but were locked in the ark.
In the short novella “Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr” Unamuno depicts a priest that does not believe in God but preaches there is a God to comfort his community. Ironically Unamuno suggests there was a time when Christ did not believe in God. Yet, Christ continued. Therefore ironically the priest grew in spirituality and came to know and be like Christ more.
For Christ to truly understand an atheist he must also not believe in God. Yet, even when not believing he found his way back to God. That is who Christ is. He can find his home not even believing home exists.
I am amazed at the spiritually of atheists. I generally assume their morality is more inherent than mine.
Val has his work cut-out for him. Showing why God does and doesn’t give proof at certain times. Perhaps it is to prove to one’s detractors (e.g. Job). Or, perhaps it is akin to a hiss that forces a response.
So why this convoluted “proof”? I can only assume the Book of Mormon has this effect: “a great and a marvelous work among the children of men; a work which shall be everlasting, either on the one hand or on the other—either to the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or unto the deliverance of them to the hardness of their hearts.”
There is proof and you have to change yourself to discard the proof. That we live in a world where the Book of Mormon is not acknowledged is more a statement of ourselves rather than God or the existence of proof. No wonder Moroni said we don’t have faith.
The goal isn’t to believe in the Book of Mormon (that is merely one gift of the spirit), the goal is to have charity.
Sorry so long winded! We are all in this together and I appreciate this journal. One might ask… why does God allow some proofs and not others? If you concede there is proof… well then why not archeological proof? God does seem to have sealed that proof. Why not seal all proof? How does God differentiate between what proofs are exposed?
Again I say, if there was a genuine spiritual question that could only be answered by showing Nephite ruins then I assume He would show that. Also, I assume he doesn’t give us a physical proof so we can’t short circuit his plan and show it to others. Definitely looking forward to reading about it.
Kyler,
Thanks for the link to your project. I had no idea it existed and am happy to know it does. I haven’t worked through the whole thing yet, but I’ve read enough to know that your writing is excellent. It makes what could be daunting ideas clear and approachable. And I think it has great value in spreading humility all around. The key point, it seems to me, is that all of us are condemned, as I suggest at the beginning of this article, to choose the world in which we live. That choice will always be based in some large measure on axioms we choose to reason from and that greatly shape our estimates of various probabilities, e.g., on some faith commitment. Being both limited and fallible, our conclusions on whatever side of a question we come down on, will always have an element of uncertainty. So we need to base our decision about what world we will live in on the whole of our experience, not on any one or two or twenty assumed facts that may have grabbed our attention. Your mission experience with the conflicting or apparently conflicting passages of scripture and with the sick baby is an excellent illustration of why major decisions need to be based on an assessment of all our experiences, not on some salient experience in the present moment. Again, I thank you for the link and look forward to reading your analysis. I suppose this article is another data point. What is the probability that Joseph would have had sufficient literary sophistication to show clear evidence of Moroni growing as a writer and a person over the course of his purported life? I think the growth is objectively present in the text. And that makes it, it seems to me, evidence either of extraordinary and astonishing literary acumen, of divinely inspired composition, or of historicity. To be sure, these alternatives are not mutually exclusive.
Kyler,
Again, thinking about it, the same Alma who said we cannot know of a surety of his words told Korihor, “Thou hast had signs enough.” Perhaps he was referring to work such as yours.
Indeed, the people at the time of Christ said, “some things they may have guess right, among so many.” To me that suggests they are referring to odds. They felt the need to attack the odds which must have been in the Christian’s favor.
I would be more vocal there is proof but, I believe our church has an essay that says there isn’t. I will have to double check that.
Your essays (5 down so far) are certainly reminiscent of the Nephite genre proving there is a Christ.
I am a fan of Alma 42:7 that says we need to be cut off from truth to be free. So God’s plan simultaneously uses proof and no proof.
Some (Tyler Griffin) have dubbed Samuel the Lamanite as “Samuel the Specific.” He points out how detailed and precise his prophecies are compared to others. God has many tools in his toolbox.
As you point out we live in a time that more and more evidence is available. Something else to think about.
So grateful for your “Interpreting the Interpreter” articles also.
Thanks Val and Martin! Glad you’re finding some value in those essays.
Martin, you’re right that 70 orders of magnitude should be enough to persuade. But those who don’t agree with me would probably be right to not let a two-digit number in an essay reshape their view of the world. If they see the evidence the same way I do, and yet still deny an authentic BofM, then I’d start to look askew at their reasoning. And if they aren’t taking into account the positive evidence at all (a much more likely outcome), I’d politely ask them to do so. But I have to take seriously the possibility that others simply have a different perspective on the evidence. That, combined with the fact that the evidence itself isn’t the core driver of true faith (as I discuss in my final entry) is why I don’t sell it as hard as you might prefer.
You correctly aver that “Rarely, if ever, does archaeology provide conclusive, dispositive proof of religious claims.” However, at the same time you insist that God would never allow such evidence to be found or displayed, which I take as both a denial of free agency, as well as continuing confusion of faith and reason as competitors (would you likewise call into question Alma 32?).
Just like your brilliant literary analyses, Val, archeology does not seek “proof” of anything, but merely provides facts from which to draw out interpretations — a communal effort among scholars which proceeds to take place over time.
Moreover, even if some sort of “proof” were to be produced, hidebound haters would reject it out of hand (James 2:19, Alma 30:52). That is their wont.
Perhaps I have been unclear. My only claim is that dispositive evidence of Book of Mormon historicity will never be discovered. There will never be evidence that compels belief. And the standard isn’t that no one could deny the proof but rather that no reasonable person could. In effect, I am saying that God will not show the sign from heaven mentioned in Alma 32:17, which would compel belief. There is always some evidence for truth, but to come to fully know a religious truth, one must exercise faith. If, having exercised faith, one seeks for additional evidence, that evidence will be forthcoming, unsurprisingly. If something is true, there will be evidence for it that will be discoverable and will convince genuine seekers of its truth if they persistently seek evidence. But, in spiritual matters, that evidence will never accumulate to the point where it will compel those who choose unbelief to believe or cease to be rational. That is my only claim. God will not show or allow us to discover a sign that will compel belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. As I argue at the beginning of the article, we now must choose the world in which we live. I am asserting that that is how God wants it to be and how it will continue to be.
Val,
I have thought a lot about signs and proof recently. After all, I believe Nephi was effectively making “proof” in the way he wrote. He also stated he delighted in proving God’s word. It is hard to say there is no proof.
However, I believe there is a church essay that resonates with your view. I have also read statements by Elder Oaks that correspond with your view (which is also my view).
But I would say the historicity of the Book of Mormon is already proven many times over. It is merely guarded in a way that others can’t see it. Recall Moses 4:4, it is literally Satan’s job to lead astray those who don’t want to know the truth. Power is given to him from and all-powerful being (D&C 29). Therefore, even when the historicity is “proven” in your standards there will still be the ability to disbelieve that proof. God is all-powerful after all.
About how to get evidence, Alma 32 is great. He states one cannot know of a surety at the beginning. That is the what we need to keep in mind as we show kindness to those who don’t know. There are many things I don’t know that are proven.
Joseph Spencer echoes a lot of what you say about unlocking evidence in the podcast “Come Follow Him” (only episode with him). He discusses Nephi stating the sealed book is a type of evidence. Only the words of the book are available. He says there is effectively a “seal” on all Book of Mormon evidence. The learned will never see the book (evidence) unless they are humble. That is our goal… to help others get their evidence.
But ultimately, to say there is no proof of the historicity of the Book of Mormon is a placation. There is proof, there are also people who choose not to know (i.e. be humble and actually think about it and want to know). (BTW that is the same with any secular topic of study).
I feel I understand the kindness and sentiment behind saying there is no proof but at the end of the day there is proof. Also we need to know that mechanism to use faith. But, really, all we have proven is that we are in a culture that wants to not have faith, or believe and ignores reality.
Hey, that is sounding like Moroni’s excerpt you brought up. He found a way to have charity for those that don’t believe. That is my goal and I think your view is a kindness and helps with that. After all, the mist or darkness is horrible… One truly can’t see even God’s love. The least we can do is show it to them (if we have it ourselves). God, I am sure, like Alma, would concede that we cannot know of a surety at first.
Separate note on agency:
I would agree that God hides the truth to ensure our agency… But really, that just allows us to explore. In the concept of “informed consent” withholding truth does not increase one’s agency, rather it impedes it. As we grow in truth we grow in agency. Therefore (preaching to the choir) God also lets us have the truth when we can handle it. Thus in both ways then he increases our agency (hiding and giving info at the right times).
I remember the words God used in D&C 20.
“Therefore, having so great witnesses, by them shall the world be judged, even as many as shall hereafter come to a knowledge of this work.”
I think we can all agree there is a degree of “proof” of the Book of Mormon. The amount of proof is this: “so great”.
Again, I would ask… if a truly unbiased person knew every pro and anti-Latter-day Saint argument what would they think? I think they would concede there is evidence enough to call proof. Sure there could be more. Do you truly believe that a theoretically unbiased person could understand every fact and argument and say there is no proof? This may be a moot point because even we can’t keep up with Biblical and Book of Mormon literature. So that person can’t exist.
My point is that we live in a world with biased people. There is still “proof”. To say there is no proof is perhaps an attempt at kindness but I think it is misleading. Again, I concede there could be more proof.
Martin,
Thanks for mentioning how Joe Spencer frames the issue. He is consistently an insightful reader of the Book of Mormon. By framing the issue in terms of the sealing of the Book of Mormon, he nicely anchors the analysis in the text, which I always like.
Val,
You and Martin seem intent on throwing the term “proof” around quite loosely.
At the same time, you sound very much like a Calvinist who does not realize that his claims about the sovereignty of God actually negate his own case.
God is limited by natural law (He is not all-powerful) and certainly does not interfere in academic pursuits — except perhaps to occasionally inspire an interesting discovery.
God would never oppose that imagined “dispositive proof” (which you repeatedly mention), He has no such Hobbesian intent.
Perhaps we could cultivate a friendlier epistemology?
Robert,
Thank you. I have been meaning to mention that proof is a cultural construct. For example, as I mention in my article a garment (such as the Joseph’s torn coat) constituted proof in that culture.
The way I am taught to look at proof is by level of evidence. Meta analysis>prospective randomized control trial> case series> case report > expert opinion. Of course there are many limitations with that.
Given our current culture I would think a statistician would need to look at the 400 or so evidences on evidencecentral and determine the odds of each event happening naturally and then combine those odds in a cumulative/Bayesian manner.
Similarly, they would need to build a model for evidences against the book. I am not qualified to determine such odds. Probably no one is.
I am sure proof could be talked about from a different perspective. But it ultimately is a cultural construct. Even causality is a cultural concept (i.e. considering wood floating on water some cultures state the water holds the wood up. Others say the wood holds itself up).
This is what is confusing about Alma. He says he has all things of a witness of God but later he says one can’t initially know what is God’s work. I conjoin these because part of God’s path is to believe he exists.
I’ll get back to Joseph Spencer’s comments. He states that ultimately Nephi takes issue with the Gentile cultural concept of proof. He states as long as we maintain that culture we will be subject to the same limitations they are. We must overcome and change our culture to access more truth. This would necessitate new definitions of proof and such.
I show in my paper that Nephite concept of proof involves having multiple witnesses. Recall the Nephites were shocked when Amulek backed up Alma’s words? This shows God will work with individual cultures and prove things from time to time. The culture will then reject or accept it. But I agree with Val that he will always allow us to access the mists of darkness and believe there is no proof.
Happy for your thoughts. I fear I have reduced everything to a matter of semantics.
Robert,
One need not be a Calvinist or other believer in creation ex nihilo to believe God has the power and will to act in this world. In a comment above, I cited Alma’s statement that God would cease to be God if he abrogated justice. No Calvinist would ever take that view. But to say God is constrained by natural law is not to say that he does not have the power or will to intervene in the world we live in. And I believe—as do you—that he intervenes at times. You mention that he may inspire interesting discoveries. I suspect you believe that he inspired the creation of the Constitution of the United States. He helped Joseph discover the Golden Plates. Those are all examples of him adding something to the body of ideas that shape how we live.
Now let me give an example of him limiting the knowledge horizon to facilitate agency. The veil massively limited our prior knowledge of God and all the experiences we had in our premortal lives. I’m writing an atonement theory article now that discusses how the veil is a manifestation of God’s grace and mercy and is absolutely essential for us to make spiritual progress from what we were before we came to earth to what we can become in the eternities if we are willing and desirous to do so. Now if God can intervene and cause us to forget a massive number of things we knew well during our premortal lives (all without violating any natural law that constrains him), surely he can, with minimal use of his understanding of how natural law works, arrange to preserve on this earth an information horizon that make the exercise of faith both possible and necessary. God intervenes all the time in this world that is full of miracles. And for good reasons, he often chooses not to intervene where we might wish he would. It is a trivial matter for God to arrange archeological evidence in such a way that no dispositive truth of Book of Mormon historicity ever comes to light. Nudging a stream from one path to another, a small earth quate, a mere rockslide would be enough to prevent discoveries that would compel all or virtually all rational and educated people to affirm the historicity of the Book of Mormon as consistently as they affirm the historicity of ancient Rome. To be sure, God may not need to intervene in ways trivial to him that violate no natural law to achieve this effect. It is in the nature of things—a kind of natural law of archaeology—that only fragments of the past are discoverable in the present. I am not claiming that God has needed to intervene in any big way to preserve a knowledge horizon that makes the exercise of faith necessary. But very slight exercises of powers he has that are fully consistent with him being constrained by natural law could have the effect of hiding evidence that would negatively affect agency.
The bottom line is this. As Alma 32 affirms, knowledge can leave us without choice. As the veil makes clear, God does sometimes limit our knowledge to facilitate the exercise of agency. It would certainly be possible for evidence to accumulate of Book of Mormon Historicity that would preclude disbelief if one is informed and rational. I am merely saying I am confident that such evidence will never come to light.
Sounds like it will be a good article. Looking forward to it.
Both the Mesoamerica and the Heartland theories have pros and cons.
There is good evidence for the Book of Mormon from Costa Rica to Cumorah.
Thank you for this well reasoned and very uplifting essay. Reading it was a great end to my day.
I appreciate your expression of appreciation. I don’t know about other authors in the Interpreter, but in my case, apart from the comments an article receives, I have very little indication of whether readers do or don’t find value in my work. So both appreciative and critical comments are helpful feedback.
Val, I just wanted to chime in and say I’ve always enjoyed your writings and thought them to be quite insightful.
Val Larsen makes an excellent case “that Moroni became a better writer and person” over the 36 years between the final battle at Cumorah and the writing of his final ending, “by carefully studying the scriptures.”
Mormon hid all the Nephite scriptures, including the Brass Plates and the 24 Gold Plates of Ether, in the Hill Cumorah (Mormon 6:6). Therefore, notwithstanding Moroni’s wanderings over the years, he had to have returned to Cumorah to translate the Book of Ether and have access to the other scriptures in order to finish the remainder of his writings. The concept that Moroni carried 50 to 100 lbs of plates with him in his years of wanderings, while he was hiding from and evading Lamanites and hunting for food, is untenable and not even implied in the text. That concept was only developed and promoted to support the Two-Cumorah theory.
Thank you for your thank you. And thank you for highlighting the richness of the language topic in the Book of Mormon and, more broadly, in life. Many linguistic questions are raised by your comment. Evidence is strong that ancients viewed language as having mystical properties and powers that modern linguists do not acknowledge. On this point, the modern temple seems to align itself with the ancients more than it does with the linguists. Socrates seems to have shared some of Moroni’s concerns. Since he understood the importance of context, of non-verbal cues, and of observing and responding to the peculiarities of ones conversation partner, Socrates believed writing is incomplete and inherently misleading. He, consequently, refused to write down any of his ideas. Fortunately, Plato didn’t entirely share his views or we would know nothing of Socrates and his wisdom. As befits a man who had experienced multiple ineffable visions of Heaven, Joseph Smith complained about “the little narrow prison almost as it were total darkness of paper pen and ink and a crooked broken scattered and imperfect language.” A scribal language like Reformed Egyptian will always have limitations that a natural, living language does not have. So Moroni faced that problem and faced it, most likely, with much less tutoring in that language than Mormon had. But in the end, as Moroni certainly understood, the Holy Ghost helps us transcend all these limitations of language. And in he end, unlike Socrates, Moroni wrote and wrote very well, much better than he probably supposed. Millions can now testify from personal experience about the power of his words. But again, thank you for highlighting the concerns the Nephites had about the limitations of language.
It would be difficult, at best, and perhaps impossible for Moroni to lug all the various records that Mormon had and used as sources. That is an important point. But one thing, I think, is certain: Moroni, in all his wanderings, carried a set of scriptures with him as he moved from place to place and immersed himself in them over and over. The evidence for that is overwhelming in his writings: he spent many thousands of hours reading what his dead mentors wrote. Their words became his words.
Val,
I am sure that you are correct that Moroni carried some form of some scriptures with him in his wanderings. However, we don’t know how much of his time he spent wandering and searching for food, and how much time he spent back at the Cumorah repository of the records, researching for his writings.
Joseph Smith himself in his official, canonical history does not name the small moraine (drumlin) near Manchester “Hill Cumorah” (JS-H 1:51). If it had been the Hill Cumorah, Joseph would likely have said so then or some other time. Instead, this identification grew over time as a matter of folklore.
Ramah-Cumorah certainly had a cave repository of many records, but no moraine can have a cave because it is just not geologically possible.
Moroni was a powerful man, for whom carrying around a set of plates weighing from 50-60 lbs would have been easy. Our modern SEALS and Special Forces men carry far heavier packs.
North America was not filled with hostile tribes of killers. Indigenous peoples moved freely over vast trade networks, and were well treated by local tribal peoples. We know this not only from anthropology, but also from direct accounts of shipwrecked sailors in the 1500s & 1600s who duplicated the trek of Moroni.
Joseph Smith recorded, “Glad tidings from Cumorah! Moroni, an angel from heaven, declaring the fulfillment of the prophets — the book TO BE revealed” (D&C 128:20, emphasis added). The implication is that Joseph Smith knew the name of Cumorah before he received the plates. This is substantiated by Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, whom the Lord had chosen to be two of the Three Witnesses. They both stated that Moroni told Joseph Smith that the hill near Palmyra was called “Cumorah” by the ancients. Joseph’s mother wrote in her memoirs that Joseph referred to the hill as “Cumorah” before he received the plates. William Phelps lived with the Prophet in Kirtland and was in essence his executive secretary during the Nauvoo period. He wrote,
“An angel came down from the mansions of glory,
And told that a record was hid in Cumorah,
Containing the fulness of Jesus’s gospel;”
(Collection of Sacred Hymns, 1835, Hymn 16, page 22,
We also sing frequently:
“An angel from on high…these gracious words he spoke: Lo! In Cumorah’s lonely hill a sacred record lies concealed.” (Parley P. Pratt, Hymns, #13.
The documentary record is that it was Moroni that told Joseph Smith that Cumorah was the name of the hill near Palmyra.
The limestone bedrock plate that covers the entire area south of Lake Ontario is very shallow. This is what created the drumlins. The glaciers moving across this plate bulldozed the surface material until it came to rises in the bedrock, where it deposited the drumlins. There are several large caves in this plate within 100 miles of Cumorah, and it is probable that there are more beneath some of the drumlins.
Moroni translated the gold plates of Ether about 16 years after his first ending. His subsequent writings also required access to the plates in the Cumorah library. It is theoretically possible for Moroni to lug his plates 3,000 miles, but not possible to also carry his reference plates.
Sorenson posed the Two-Cumorah theory because his Mesoamerica-only theory required it. Sorenson’s students crafted several arguments to support his Two-Cumorah theory, none of which are valid upon close examination. The Two-Cumorah theory is destined to go down in Latter-day Saint history as the biggest Mormon myth.
Mosiah II translated the Jaredite book of Ether. Moroni merely abridged it; so he already had a version in Nephite, and did not have to lug around 24 gold plates. What he had in his backpack would have been the Book of Mormon Plates, the breastplate (with interpreters), and sword of Laban.
The rest is folklore. We have no actual documentary proof that Joseph ever called that drumlin near Manchester “Cumorah.” The later myth developed as such myths generally do, and that should be no surprise.
Science and logic should help us understand potential geographical correlations.
“And I take mine account from the twenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the Book of Ether.” (Ether 1:2)
Moroni didn’t make his abridgement from the Mosiah II translation. He made it directly from the twenty-four gold plates of Ether.
Also, I would not refer to the documented statements of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Lucy Smith, W.W. Phelps and Parley P. Pratt, as “folklore.”
I see no reason for Moroni to translate the 24-Plates again, and take his statement in Ether 1:2 as a reference to the already extant translation of same.
As to folklore, we have the same problem with false claims that that Nephites and 19th century Latter-day Saints ever had the “Urim & Thummim” — a strictly biblical tool. The Brethren did use the term, but only due their enthusiastic ignorance.
Robert, if you were going to translate an ancient scripture written in the language of Adam for a future civilization, and had a Urim and Thummim to ensure accuracy, would you translate it from the original source or from someone else’s translation? If you need to get into Moroni’s head and alter his words to support your premise, perhaps you should rethink your promise.
However, this may be a difference without a distinction. For Mosiah II’s translation to have survived in a humid climate for over 500 years it would have to have been written on metal plates, as was their norm. Either way, Moroni had to return to the Cumorah library to write his abridgement and have access to other records to complete his writings.
One Cumorah does not negate all the good evidence for the Book of Mormon that is found in Mesoamerica. It simply expands our understanding of the vast territory involved in the saga. The Mississippi River as the Sidon explains the connection between Mesoamerica and Cumorah. (Please see my Interpreter Blog article on this from 2016, https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-north-american-book-of-mormon-geography-the-river-sidon/ )
Thank you so much. You show Grant Hardy’s point, reading with the characters in mind unlocks layers of complexity.
I always knew about the numerous farewells. I had never thought to analyze them like this. Moroni’s growth becomes quite apparent and we can consider his growth as a way to model our own.
I have to ask… in Ether 12 Moroni seems to be apologizing for not his weakness but about the Nephite’s ability collectively. He has therefore the same weakness. “when we write we behold our weakness, and stumble because of the placing of our words.” He holds the Jaredite language in high esteem additionally, Nephite spoken language is powerful.
This is not the only time the concept of power and language are together in the Book of Mormon or in other scriptures. Moses 7 we read. “and [Enoch] spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness; and all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch, and so great was the power of the language which God had given him.”
So I don’t view Moroni as self-deprecating so much as aware of linguistic levels of power…one he seems to imply the Nephites (including Mormon) do not have.
This brings to mind the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as depicted in the movie Arrival. Upon learning the alien language one is able to time travel. I don’t mean to sensationalize. Moroni seems to endorse that language has power and simply there are levels to this power. Incidentally he seems to say he is not a great writer and you demonstrate he does indeed grow.
But the point seems to be that language can be edified to the point of moving mountains and such. He seems to place Gentile language in between Nephite written word and Jaredite language. Presumably our language will improve upon accepting the Book of Mormon.
Oops. Martin, I accidentally attached my May 12, 2024, 5:35 pm reply to what you wrote to one of Theodore Brandley’s comments. I hope you understood the comment was a response to your thought provoking remarks and question.
Tracking thanks. I thought as much. I will keep wondering about how to improve language.
Additionally, I read Grant Hardy said part of the motive for going to a system of judges was to obviate the Mulekite’s claim to the throne (ie the Davidic covenant). That seems to correlate with the goals Mormon may have had. Also, it is interesting for me to think Mormon did not know about the pending extinction as he began writing. That changes a whole lot.
I had thought Moroni was emulating the ending in 2 Nephi by mentioning the bar. But it wasn’t too close a correlation. Nephi ends his record with an obvious plaintiff statement (demanding a judgment- see Second Nephi as a Legal Document). Moroni only charges us to do good. I will have to think twice about Amaleki. Moroni must have felt a kinship with him.
I will also have to ponder about the negative rhetoric early on about the Gentiles. One could suppose desire for vengence would have him gladdened at the destruction of the Lamanites. But it seems he took no solace in that. Thanks for helping us see him. Great literature indeed.
The most convincing reason for preferring “pleading bar” over “pleasing bar” is that the former has precedent in English legal parlance, while the latter is entirely novel. Royal Skousen provides copious examples of “pleading bar” in Interpreter 42:31-35.
Thank you for that information on the linguistic lexicon Joseph likely had. It is certainly relevant to the pleasing/pleading bar issue and is a strong point in favor of pleading. Were the only context the one in Moroni 10, I think pleasing would be the better fit. But Brother Skousen provides solid reasoning for all his suggested editorial changes. The difference between the two readings is not trivial. If we stand at the pleasing bar, the focus is on our happiness in being again with God and perhaps on God’s happiness is having us there. If we stand at the pleading bar, the emphasis is on our sins and probably on our advocate at the bar, Christ, who as our attorney pleads our case with the Father. This presumes we have come unto Christ as Moroni calls upon us to do. If Christ is not there as our advocate, we will stand there by ourselves and plead, the Book of Mormon tells us, only that we be permitted to depart the fearful presence of God and go to the hell we have created for ourselves.