Official Statement on Book of Mormon Geography and its Implications

Two observations. First, I actually love this line: ““Indigenous peoples occupy an interesting space in the LDS Church in which we are a fallen and promised people simultaneously.” I don’t want to demean or belittle the unique challenges that indigenous groups have faced and continue to face, but I feel this is descriptive of all of God’s children and is a theme seen throughout the scriptures. Adam and Eve were at the same time both fallen and promised. The Old Testament is largely a chronicle of the Israelites journey along the spectrum of fallen and promised. The Latter-day Saint doctrine of the Great Apostasy follows much of the same theme. Indeed, the Atonement of Christ is necessary because we are all fallen, and effective because we are all promised.

Second, DNA and ancestry are interesting concepts that people have a tendency to over-simplify. Some clickbait-listicle-worthy facts illustrate. It is estimated that 1 in 200 people on earth are direct descendants of Atilla the Hun. It is highly unlikely that any two people in the United States are further apart than 16th cousins. Basically, the reach of any persons ancestors reaches surprisingly far geographically when you go back only a few hundred years. It gets pretty wild when you go back a thousand or more. [Disclaimer: Please feel free to fact check this, as I’m pulling this from the “I read somewhere” part of my brain.] Supposing the Book of Mormon tells of actual people and events (which I believe), it would not be surprising to discover that the descendants of these populations were spread out across the continent by the time Europeans arrived a thousand years after the close of the Book of Mormon.

I’m with Dave. B. I think what we’ll see over the next 10 – 20 years will be a gradual moving away from the historical model, making it untenable. I, too, think that in a couple of decades, we’ll get an admission of the B of M’s lack of historicity and then we’re likely to get gaslighted with something like, “We never said the B of M was historical,” which, of course, isn’t true. It’ll be interesting to see how the church dances around this. And does anyone else find it strange that a church that places so much emphasis on faith seems obsessed with “proving” or at least claiming the “truth” of its history? I mean for Pete’s sake, Joseph Smith didn’t even use the plates to “translate” the Book of Mormon, so given that significant absence in the narrative of the B of M’s origin, why do we go about insisting that the historical “facts” are absolutely true even though we have literally no evidence to support them? If we just went around saying “hey, even though we don’t have evidence to support our beliefs, we believe in certain things and we also believe that those things could help you be happier,” we’d be a lot more successful at reaching people, I think. Our origin story is so strange, it simply begs for documentary evidence to support it. And we don’t have any.

It would be interesting to track trends, if any, for declarations of Manasseh lineage in patriarchal blessings – particularly among Pacific Islanders.

“Hey, even though we don’t have evidence to support our beliefs, we believe in certain things and we also believe that those things could help you be happier”

How does that differ from the church’s current approach?

Seems the church is pointedly eschewing evidence with their “take no position” stances and relying completely on belief.

“I have a feeling that as science progresses that we will find the BofM to be less and less likely…”

The only people to believe the BofM to be historically likely are already believing Mormons who continued to believe in spite of the emergence of all sorts of DNA studies that showed no signs of Middle Eastern ancestry.

I doubt that whatever scientific studies that emerge in the future that show the BofM to be even less likely are going to have much effect of the rank-and-file members. It seems however that the rise of the “nones” (those who claim no affiliation with organized religion) will continue to erode faithfulness of the younger generation.

Stephen, the Church backed off of polygamy, and that was once so core that Church leaders pretty much universally practiced it, taught that it was superior to the wicked world’s preference for monogamy, and were willing to go to prison or into hiding rather than give it up. Yet they eventually did. I think you could be right that the GAs won’t soon back off on BoM historicity, but it’s not like major core foundational ideas haven’t been discarded before.

I am another one who sees it like Dave B. It is just a matter of time.

I’m with Stephen. If the church ever admits that the Book of Abraham is anything but a literal translation of what was written on the papyrus, I am out of here.

Stephen, I am among those who foresee a day when Church leaders back away from BoM historicity in earnest, but today, tomorrow and next week are not that day. You are correct that President Nelson and many leaders loudly proclaim the reality if Nephi, Mormon, and the rest. But I find it peculiar that this “pruning” of which you speak happened only in the aftermath of DNA studies (which may or may not tell the whole story), serious arachaelogical expeditions, and linguitistic research into native languages. Yes, a few previous leaders have cautioned us about making conclusions about Native American ancestry and BoM geography, but those cautions were largely drowned out by sweeping assertions about the history and destiny of the native peoples of North and South America that were accepted as fact by faithful members.

My point is not to complain about leaders deciding to do the pruning, it’s that they only collectively agreed to do the pruning after someone else came along with a machete and hacked most of the branches off.

“Something often overlooked in these Book of Mormon geography debates are the implications for those who have been told the Book of Mormon is the story of their ancestors.”

This is so important, and I’m glad Mary Ann’s OP progresses to what I think is the most important question here. To people like Stephen, what is the point of logging so many hours into questions surrounding the ancient peoples of the Book of Mormon if you don’t also consider the equally difficult (and perhaps more worthwhile) questions surrounding those peoples’ contemporary heirs?

Until the dudes (someone should write about the womanless world that is Mormon apologetics) at Interpreter, Book of Mormon Central, or FAIR conferences can learn to look at the bigger picture and disrupt the images of cureloms and cimiters and chiasmus and precolumbian horses running in an endless loop through their minds, I’ll continue to view them as a group of high-strung obsessives incapable of asking (and much less answering) some of the more pressing spiritual and intellectual questions that arise from the Book of Mormon’s contents.

What percentage of active members even care about this? When was the last time a talk like this was given https://www.lds.org/ensign/1971/07/of-royal-blood?lang=eng

I am going to do an unofficial poll this Sunday and ask 10 random people in my ward if they believe in the heartland model, mesoamerican model, or the hemispheric model. I am betting that none of them will even know what I am talking about and when I describe them it will be split 50/50 with the hemispheric and mesoamerican.

I agree that the church is not going to back away from a historic BOM. Can you imagine the fall out of such a move? It would be cool if another one of the records of Christ’s visits to some other group of scattered sheep came forth (3 Nephi 16), but this time was found by archeologists. That would make a lot of exmos pretty nervous. I understand conservative members angst with “progmos”, but I for one love all the changes that have been made and this progmo community has more power than they are given credit.

This is a really fascinating discussion. I’glad for both perspectives as well. Stephen brings up a lot of great points, but my money is on the Church moving further and further away from anything that is easier to prove false than true. People are leaving the church in droves. The church has seen its smallest years for growth in its entire history. It’s a numbers game at a certain point and the church will do what it needs to do to grow and thrive. Polygamy was a foundational doctrine, still is. Section 132 is very clear about the fact that Polygamy is I’ve of the things restored by Joseph Smith and is necessary for entrance into the highest celestial Glory. This was taught as a foundational doctrine for decades. Until this doctrine threatened the growth and security of the church. Then polygamy was no longer a requirement for salvation and was no longer a core doctrine (except it’s still in the scriptures, we just skip over the polygamy verses in lessons on the new and everlasting covenant). The internet makes it incredibly easy to get a good picture of how the Book of Mormon came about. And more and more historical research is done every year with fantastic sources. As it gets harder and harder to defend the Book of Mormon as a historical document and more and more people leave because of “feeling lied to and betrayed” I can see Book of Mormon historicity becoming less of a core doctrine. Mormons 100 years from now will say “oh those Mormons that thought the book fo Mormon was true were just a product of their time. Then the internet happened.”

A lot of unsupported assumptions in these comments.

First, that this statement is substantively new. As has already been pointed out, this statement reflects statements going back as far as George Q. Cannon in 1890.

Second, that these kinds of statements are in response to DNA evidence. In 1984, years before the Human Genome Project even started, John Sorensen said, “One problem some Latter-day Saint writers and lecturers have had is confusing the actual text of the Book of Mormon with the traditional interpretation of it. For example, a commonly heard statement is that the Book of Mormon is “the history of the American Indians.” This statement contains a number of unexamined assumptions—that the scripture is a history in the common sense—a systematic, chronological account of the main events in the past of a nation or territory; that “the” American Indians are a unitary population; and that the approximately one hundred pages of text containing historical and cultural material in the scripture could conceivably tell the entire history of a hemisphere. When unexamined assumptions like these are made, critics respond in kind, criticizing not the ancient text itself, but the assumptions we have made about it.”

Third, that a limited geography model implies that Native Americans are not descended from Lehi. As Simon Southerton, one of the leading critics of the Book of Mormon based on DNA, put it: “In 600 BC there were probably several million American Indians living in the Americas. If a small group of Israelites entered such a massive native population it would be very, very hard to detect their genes 200, 2000 or even 20,000 years later.” [This statement was followed by a juvenile quip.] See the FAIRMormon article on the subject for more information as well as some interesting quotes from population researchers on the notion that if anyone living 2000 years ago has any living descendants, then we are virtually all descendants of that person (assuming contact between ancestral populations).

This is not good for Book of Mormon (BoM) literalists. The keystone is cracking.

Main stream orthodox Mormons* are to continue to be taught Joseph Smith got the doctrines of the BoM right and that BoM people literally existed in history somewhere in the Americas.

All accounts of Joseph Smith telling his associates of any location in the Northern States where they lived are former BoM lands are not to be discussed in church.

All accounts of academic studies done by the best and brightest amongst us, even at our leading university BYU, that bolster plausibility of BoM events as actual history but in Mesoamerica (or elsewhere in the Americas) are not to be discussed in church.

Hmm. Either Joseph Smith got the doctrine and geography right, or he got the doctrine right but not the geography. However, we are not going to talk about it. Does this not suggest to the inquiring mind that maybe he got them both wrong? (Not allowed to be discussed in church either.) Why did Joseph Smith spin so many yarns to so many people with great confidence that turn out to be at best unfit for discussion in church or at worst flat-out wrong? How could the best work of our top academic minds in this field be unfit for church? Because collectively it doesn’t make sense in the final analysis?

I suppose this was inevitable. A wiki article on the topic lists about as many different geographies as the number of known plural wives of Joseph Smith (over 30). If none of these geographies is compelling and convincing enough to discount the others, then perhaps none of them are correct. And sooner believe Joseph was a monogamist than believe any of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Book_of_Mormon_geographical_setting.

***

How do we define the boundaries between doctrine, history and geography in the BoM? Why was so much of the BoM narrative laboriously engraved upon golden plates and preserved for centuries to be miraculously translated as the keystone of a new religion and is no longer worthy of discussion in church?

This Mormon boy (oops) really can’t get beyond 2 Nephi 1 when considering these last questions. How could nearly all our trusted and beloved church leaders for over a century get this chapter so wrong? Can this passage and many others like unto it even be read out loud in church? I guess I am just going to have to skip this chapter. Ignoring, befuddling and obfuscating disturbing information is a root cause of the so called faith crisis which is really a truth crisis. But let’s not talk about that either.

Let’s definitely not tell our Lamanite members that they might not be Lamanites. How many tens and hundreds of thousands of missionaries for how many decades were wrong about that as we spread our gospel message across Latin America and Oceania? That message resulted in the conversion of 50 to 60% of the peoples of Samoa and Tonga, highest % anywhere any time on a national scale. And it was taught to the Japanese people in the early 1970’s by myself and hundreds of other missionaries. (We had kotochrome slides, no video, strikingly similar message on a Nixon-era tape as Tim’s video above.) Let the name Hagoth become as obscure as the name of Abinadom among us. There is no other way.

*Please chant with me three times for absolution “victory for Satan” in place of “Mormon” in each instance above, except of course when “Mormon” is preceded by the couplet “Book of”.

Dsc, you appear to be painting a picture of a Church whose leadership never really bought into the hemispherical model. If true, I strongly disagree with your assertion. No one disputes that the limited geography model has been around for over a century (at least), but that does not mean it was ever widely accepted by most leaders and faithful members or held out as the prevailing theory on Book of Mormon geography.

Also, it’s a bit disingenuous to say that no changes were made in response to DNA research. We don’t have the behind-the-scenes discussion and decision-making, but the statement about Lamanites as the prinicpal ancestors of the American Indians in the introduction to the Book of Mormon was inserted in 1981 and not removed until 2006. If leadership truly subscribed to the limited geography theory as you suggest, why did that statement ever make it into the introduction? It’s certainly possible DNA and the change to the introduction were 100% unrelated, but I have faith (not doubt!) that it wasn’t just a coincidence.

Not a Cougar,

I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that the Church as a whole and leaders of the Church didn’t wholeheartedly believe in a hemispheric model. I think its clear that President Kimball believed that Native Americans up and down the Americas were descended from Lehi to the exclusion of all others (although I think “to the exclusion of all others” is the only part of that belief that the Church no longer takes seriously). What I am suggesting is that people have questioned those assumptions for a long time, and that even in the height of common acceptance of the hemispheric model, the Church shied away from officially proclaiming it. Further, those assumptions are not based in the text of the Book of Mormon or any other canonized source, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we as Latter-day Saints collectively shift our assumptions based on new information and better analysis.

Also, I don’t think that DNA wasn’t at least a factor in the 2006 revision of the Book of Mormon introduction, but I don’t think it was the primary motivation. As noted in the Duffy article cited by Mary Ann, “While the DNA controversy is a contributing factor, I argue that other considerations play a role as well, including changing attitudes toward race and new administrative challenges created by the Church’s international growth. Indeed, the shift away from Lamanite identification in Church leaders’ discourse predates the DNA controversy. This pattern suggests that the future of LDS discourse about Lamanites may be affected, but will probably not be determined, by discussions regarding genetics and geography.”

Mary Ann,

“It’s that assumption (contact between ancestral populations) that can be called into question.” I don’t quite follow. It’s pretty well established that Pre-Columbian Americans had extensive trade routes that connected people from modern-day Chile to southern Canada. If Lehi and his family settled in an already-populated continent, his descendants would likely have reached out as far as people had contact with each other over the course of 2000 years, and due to the nature of population dynamics, all or nearly all of those people would be his descendants, even if they are also the descendants of totally unrelated people. (Again, the FAIRMormon article on the topic goes into more detail).

Although I can see the relevance of things like geographic models to the strength of the connection between the peoples of the Book of Mormon and modern populations, narrowing the geography weakens the argument that Lehi and his family were the exclusive ancestors of modern Native Americans, not that he is an ancestor of modern Native Americans. That, however, has long been a self-evident reality Hispanic Latter-day Saints whose ancestry is largely also European. In other words, it affects the dubious concept of “pure-blood”, which is a concept worth dropping for a whole host of non-DNA-related reasons.

As an over-60 member of the church, and having seen many many changes just in my lifetime in the church, I am wondering where this particular conversation will go in the future. Like Tim above, I spent dozens if not hundreds of hours showing the ancient america speaks filmstrip (complete with my 1970’s portable projector and cassette player bought from the mission office) produced by the church. The point was to try and convince prospective converts that this was where the Book of Mormon events took place and that the BoM was an historical document. They did try to cover their bases a little, in that it was caveat’d by Dr. Cheesman when showing a “pool” that he asked, “could this be an acient baptismal font?” However, the implication is clear that he was saying that this civilation of hundreds of thousands were the nephites/lamanites. All the discussion of “Queztlecoatl” was leading to the BoM appearance of Jesus. However, all the archealogical evidence gathered then and now even 40 years later does not support the “nephite” or “lamanite” culture described in the BoM. The title page of the BoM was changed from the “….principle ancestors” to “….among the ancestors…”. Someone in the church was hoping that someday, somewhere, evidence would be found, but none has come forward, and in fact, the evidence (DNA for example)that has come forward has basically proved to the contrary. Think about it, when JS sent missionaries to the “lamanites” in the early days of the church, did he send them to Mexico/South America or just to the western frontier of the US, not too many miles from where they were?

The problem is that you can go to the old world and actually see the cities and artifacts that discussed in the bible. There is a way to historically at least prove the people lived there. Whether the historical record is accurate is a slightly different story, but I can at least say this where this place was and that was where that place was. There are also places talked about in the Bible that are also unknown to modern scholars, which at least starts the question of the veracity of all stories.

I have also seen the narrative change on the “translation” of the BoM significantly. I was clearly taught in the 60’s and 70’s that JS used the Urim and Thummim to translate with. I may have heard a passing reference at some point to the seer stone, but that was never even close to the main dialogue. Now, we talk of the seer stone being primarily used and that the plates were not even used or in the same room to actually “translate”.

My point is that while I don’t see the church totally backing away from historicity of the BoM, I do see them soft-selling it more, where the gospel content is important (as it probably should be), not the historical nature of it. However, in a church that leans so heavily on history as part of its truth claim, it is getting more difficult to do with the BoM. While a lot of the content of the BoM is based in teaching, a greater majority is a story of some people that lived here….somewhere….we don’t know where…that lived 19th century christianity….but it’s all true!

I see many things trying to be sent down the “memory hole” by the church by just less and less emphasis and discussion. As older people like myself die off, the new narrative takes it’s place, and with no discussion of past teachings, it all becomes the new norm. The good news is that the internet helps in the church not being able to try and tell a new story and claim that it was always the story.

Mary Ann, Thanks for your work on this. I haven’t noticed that anyone thinks that “pointing to 1890 statements of neutrality somehow absolves leaders and members of any responsibility for telling people they were descendants of Nephites and Lamanites.” Who is it that thinks that someone expressing opinions as authoritative truth is somehow not responsible for doing so?

I would have thought the recent official statement merely an attempt to quell portraying the heartland, hemispheric, or mesoamerican, etc. theories as officially church-sanctioned and the resulting disputes among members when people do that. Perhaps it was motivated by growing awareness of adamant proponents of one or another of those theories claiming authority and using Church facilities to promote their theories in firesides. All in all, not so different from the following reminder:

“The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution, or changes to species’ inherited traits over time, is a matter for scientific study. Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution.” https://www.lds.org/new-era/2016/10/to-the-point/what-does-the-church-believe-about-evolution?lang=eng

It seems to me the hallmark of a bad argument is to ignore the evidence, or twist and contort facts into something more convenient. Tobacco is healthy and OJ is innocent. But I guess a winning argument is better than a good one.
To my uneducated mind, it seems clear to me from the Doctrine and Covenants who the Lamanites are.
And what it means to those who claim a Lamanite identity, is not for me to say.

In about 1955, Thomas Ferguson, a co-founder (with Milton R. Hunter of the first Council of the Seventy) of the New World Archaeological Foundation received five years of funding from the LDS Church and began to dig throughout Mesoamerica for evidence of the veracity of the Book of Mormon claims. Howard W. Hunter, an apostle, served on the board of trustees. I think it was in 1964 when Deseret Book published Milton R. Hunter’s “Archaeology and the Book of Mormon.” At least those of us then in high school/seminary and our teachers took that book very seriously, however simplistically, as a summary and illustration of Mesoamerican archaeological evidence of the truth of the Book of Mormon.

“There seem to be two logical and true conclusions at which we can arrive: first, the Lamanites were the progenitors of the American Indians; second, after the close of The Book of Mormon period, people from various other parts of the world came to the New World and intermingled their posterity with those of the Nephite-Lamanites. The result of this mixture of races is the American Indian of today.” (Pg. 214)

With a 70 pushing those conclusions, Church funding of the archaeological research, the Church sponsorship and use of the video Tim and others noted above, and the anonymous (but published by the Church) 1981 addition to the BoM intro claiming that Lamanites were the “principal ancestors of the American Indians”, it would naturally seem to some that the current Official Statement retreats to the George Q. Cannon’s position of 1890, but not that the Church’s position has remained the same from at least 1890 until now.

Today I’m more intrigued with “The Malay Theory. This theory says it would have been much easier for Nephi to travel a 4000 mile journey to the Malay Peninsula than a 16000 mile journey in open seas to the Americas. The author notes better language similarities, better DNA evidence, and other evidences to support his ideas, while clearly noting that he is not sure how the plates got to NY.”
https://mormonheretic.org/2009/04/09/a-radically-different-book-of-mormon-geography-theory/

But then my grandson has also got me intrigued with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 😊

Having spent the majority of my professional career in Marketing, Branding, Market Research and Advertising, I’m personally convinced that the leadership of the LDS Church is actively (and yes, very carefully – over time) re-branding it’s doctrines and beliefs. I perceive that some of these folks are pretty savvy from a corporate point of view and are certainly playing a “long game”. The “short-game” has little to no upside benefits – even if they are slowly, but surely losing members as they move along. The flow of those leaving (I believe) would turn into a flood if the changes we’re discussing today – were to happen right away. I believe President Nelson is an active participant in the re-branding as noted in his comment below:

Russell M. Nelson:

“There are some things the Book of Mormon is not,” President Nelson said. “It is not a textbook of history, although some history is found within its pages. It is not a definitive work on ancient American agriculture or politics. It is not a record of all former inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, but only of particular groups of people.”

Secondly, I believe that anyone who is actively debating (either publicly or privately) the “location” of the Book of Mormon characters should watch the following program; which aired late last year. The results and outcomes of this study (so far) are -in my mind – pretty stunning. And honestly, have brought some comfort to my mind as to what is real and what is not.

“The First Face in America” – PBS

SCIENCE

On an unlucky day 13,000 years ago, a slightly built, malnourished teenager missed her footing and tumbled to the bottom of a 100-foot pit deep inside a cave in Mexico’s Yucatan. Rising seas flooded the cave and, until recently, cut it off from the outside world. Then a team of divers chanced upon her nearly complete and astonishingly well-preserved skeleton alongside fossils of extinct Ice Age beasts such as giant sloths and saber-tooth tigers. NOVA takes you on a spectacular and risky underwater expedition to recover her bones and explores one of science’s most controversial riddles: the origins of the First Americans. Intricate detective work reveals that the young woman’s bones are among the earliest known human remains in the Americas. What drove her to venture nearly a mile underground in the vast cave? Where did her people come from, and why does she look so distinct from today’s Native Americans? From the stunning Mexico cave to the wilderness of the Yukon, from the genetics lab to the latest in forensics, NOVA pursues tantalizing new clues that are rewriting the story of the forgotten first people of the Americas.

To quote a great philosopher “just remember, it is not a lie if you believe it” George Costanza

I don’t think early leaders were purposefully leading people astray. They truly believed it and the Holy Ghost confirmed that belief.

Moroni is the dude I blame. All those conversations with Joseph Smith and he never once bothered to mention any details.

Doug, your post got me thinking about Moroni dedicating the site of the Manti Temple:

“Brigham Young announced the temple site 25 June 1875 and dedicated the site on 25 April 1877. Earlier that same morning, he had taken Warren S. Snow with him to the southeast corner of the temple site and told him, “Here is the spot where the Prophet Moroni stood and dedicated this piece of land for a Temple site, and that is the reason why the location is made here, and we can’t move it from this spot.”

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1978/03/the-manti-temple?lang=eng

For now, the church does have one specific geographic location tied to an ancient Nephite.

“Native Americans were heirs to the covenant God made with the people described in the Book of Mormon, in much the same way people emphasize connections between modern Jews and ancient Israelites, despite the fact that most (all?) modern Jews have many non-Israelite ancestors.”

I guess I don’t understand this. In what sense is there something for Native Americans to inherit that every other person on the face of the planet who is baptized into the LDS church doesn’t inherit? What do modern Israelites inherit in a gospel sense for that matter?

This thread has generated good discussions. One observation we can tease out is there seems to be a different view of the church’s focus on the Book of Mormon setting that correlates to the ages of commenters. This appears to reveal changes in how and what the church emphasized over time. It would be interesting to have a post dedicated to this subject by someone who may know more about the topic.

The dialogue between Tim and Dsc bears out this observation. Tim posted a video that was standard fare in the 70’s (as a film, not video), but Dsc writes “I’m too young to have had experience with the video you posted”. Consequently, when the younger folks see the George Q. Cannon 1890 statement they may assume the church has maintained such an antiseptic stand-off approach for the next one hundred years. This isn’t the correct context to understand what it was like for members in the 40’s through the 90’s.

Some people might be surprised that Hugh Nibley wrote a Church sponsored study guide for Priesthood Quorums. It was titled “An Approach to the Book of Mormon: Course of Study for the Melchizedek Priesthood Quorums of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (published by the Council of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – 1957). In it he wrote:

“But what of the mighty ruins of Central America? It is for those who know them to speak of them, not for us. It is our conviction that proof of the Book of Mormon DOES lie in Central America, but until the people who study that area can come to some agreement among themselves as to what they have found, the rest of us cannot very well start drawing conclusions.”

In the preface to the 1964 edition he wrote “The work is a new approach to the Book of Mormon and for that reason demands careful reading and study of every member of the priesthood classes using it. In this work the Book of Mormon is seen in a new perspective: we see it in a world setting, not in a mere local one. It takes its place naturally alongside the Bible and other great works of antiquity and becomes one of them.”

His statements are in complete harmony with George Q. Cannon’s, but they show discussion of the Book of Mormon in its world setting was not off the table for church instruction. We were taught that “”Mormonism” includes all truth” (Brigham Young) and we lived it. Back then, the church did not make distinctions between “scientific truth” and other truth. The expectation was the Book of Mormon and church doctrines would be found compatible or even validated by truths uncovered by science. This is the church context my generation grew up with but it does not seem like the context my kids and grand-kids are experiencing. As Bryant stated “… I don’t see the church totally backing away from historicity of the BoM, I do see them soft-selling it more, where the gospel content is important.” Maybe that’s the direction it needs to go, but understand why some of us in the older generation are having cognizant dissonance over the implications of that shift.

Suzanne Neilsen writes:
“So a,b.c is not literal. How ’bout e,f,g and then h,i,j? At what point do you stop. Gonna hold a firm line at x?”

This is a really great summary of what I think about the course of events described in this discussion, fleshed out by Dave C. above.

With one caveat-. the alphabet is linear and each letter is only next to 2 other letters. But these issues that the letters represent are not linear. They are inter-related in complex ways. If you knock over f it will not just jeopardize g but also m and q and y. My weakness in not adequately describing these interrelations does not invalidate them. Think about it..

For example::

” a relatively small group of people migrated from northeast Asia to the Americas by way of a land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska.4 These people, scientists say, spread rapidly to fill North and South America”

(Boyd Packer rolling in his grave). Not compatible with a recent literal world wide flood. Because there isn’t enough time in a literal chronology for this to happen even under ideal circumstances. Jaredites are too close in time to the flood in the literal story. And stone age populations of humans have a doubling time measured in the many hundreds to thousands of years. The problems multiply, not the population.

Not taking a literal interpretation of Noah’s flood destroys Joseph Smith’s complex eschatology. Not only did he get BOM geography wrong, he gets the geography of the end of times wrong. A literal flood world wide makes this statement quoted above impossible.A literal flood is required for the prophets Adam to Noah to be in Missouri.haiving them come back at the end of times doesn’t make sense if theywere never there in the first place. Dispensationalism at the end is questioned.

The Lamanites are only placed in the midwest in the DC a few times. We only have to ignore/change a few verses in the DC (and a whole lot of historic documents) to make it acceptable for Sunday school discussions . Are we prepared to extract whole sections of the DC (sections in the 50’s mostly) and many other verses to get the eschatology compatible with the geography of no flood to divide ante-diluvial history in Missouri from post-diluvian history in Palestine? Or do we keep the literal flood and eschatology and disregard DNA problems? Oops, that horse is already out of the barn and over the hills.

Joseph Smith telling people to stay and fight and die in Missouri and he got the geography of Missouri wrong? Is Christ going to return to Jackson county to a complex of temples we are to build ? Is that doctrine? Or was that just wrong opinion? Do we expect His return any more? I was told it would be around year 2000 in high school seminary and even bet a seminary teacher $500 if it didn’t happen by 2010. I didn’t collect that bet.

Would you like for me to discuss several other topics that would be represented by later letters of the alphabet and how problems with one domino into problems with others??

It would be one thing if Joseph Smith said maybe or made it clear when he was likely spewing wrong opinions and when he was speaking the words of the Lord. He seems himself to not be able to tell the difference. He had to be aware that his devoted followers believed almost his every word. I cannot tell when he is speaking as a man and when he is speaking for the Lord, when he is teaching divine doctrine and when he thinks he is and it is wrong. This loss of his credibility calls everything into question.

Every unlikely genetic dilution or drift or whatever (multiple unrelated events) to explain the complete lack of any DNA evidence has to happen twice because there are two migrations described in the BoM. The BoM story requires not one implausible genetic chain of events but two. This is hard science and hard to get around. It is no wonder it forces us budge off our previous positions. Why we are trying to accommodate the DNA evidence which destroys so much and yet we cling to a few relatively trivial literalisms? Which will be even harder to defend than battles already lost. Suzanne is right, we are already there; historicity is dropped or we are right back in the quicksand of Joseph’s unreliability.

We cannot hold firm at line at x. because by the time we get there, (we already are pretty close) it isn’t just u v w that we have to slow down but rather more like an avalanche that is already 100 yards wide and is wiping out the buildings and cars in a parking lot. (Anybody at Alta for the avalanche of ’73?) Or “…well might a man stretch forth his puny arm and stop the mighty Missouri river in its decreed course.. ” Or was that the Nile river? Maybe we can find out by reinterpreting Fascimile # 2 again. While buried in snow and suffocating. Spiritually of course, not literally.

I have neglected to mention that I see bailing out of these problems by focusing on Christ as a cop-out currently.

I have herein described before- my current fate on Sunday morning. My wife attends an evangelical church . We compromise and do not let church divide us any more than it already does. We attend sacrament meeting and then her service together. Over the years I have attended hundreds of evangelical meetings. I have many issues with their doctrine which are rarely even mentioned, but not with their teachings and worship of Christ in general. They do far better than we do. They have been doing it for decades in my personal experience and probably for centuries. Which is easier to ignore? The trinity or geography. Sort of denies the essence of a Restoration. Just saying…

The problem with the BoM is that its many historical problems (and the other problems of its author) are so embedded that they be very distracting to the message of the gospel of Christ. We can get that cleaner and better from the New Testament and from any number of carefully selected other sources composed over the centuries. There is nothing unique about the doctrines of Christ within the BoM. There is nothing new under the sun.

Roger, re symbolic art: Both Josh Rossi and John Zamudio, the latter from Peru, have produced artwork picturing Christ at Machu Picchu. Zamudio also has one of Christ in Xpuhil (a Mayan ruin in Mexico). But for a truly hemispheric, but clearly symbolic, depictionl, look at Minerva Teichert’s Christ in the Americas! Except for Teichert’s approach, I don’t know what can be done effectively to teach symbolism rather than historicity in art. Many seemed to have entirely missed, e.g., what Arnold Friberg wanted to convey by making his Nephites “larger than life.” While I won’t quibble with your last sentence. It doesn’t seem to me there is any significant connection between it and the prints in a “nearby LDS church”.

It is true that art and illustration have an impact. I’d be happy if we got rid of a lot of it including Rossi and Zamudio and the use of Friberg as unexplained illustration and a lot of Harry Anderson and those paintings of JS translating the BoM with his finger tracing characters on gold plates. But “Illustrations should not give a false impression. Period.” seems like a vote to get rid of all religious art. Maybe we should also get rid of the inverted pentagrams on the Nauvoo temple — to a good number of people the inverted pentagram is a satanic symbol, though it wasn’t when the first Nauvoo temple was built. I don’t have much hope for success in teaching people visual symbolism or linguistic symbolism and their cultural ambiguities, but I’m not sure we should stop trying either. Of course, it could help a great deal if Church publications would start trying — or do so more consistently. What if all illustration were limited to abstract or cartoon styles? Would that help?

The moment of clarity when I realized that the Book of Mormon had to be fictional was during a listening of the audiobook for Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. He was discussing the development of writing and gave a fairly brief overview of the earliest writings discovered from four peoples: Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Mayan.

And I thought of how literate the Book of Mormon people were. I remembered reading a FARMS article about the high level of literacy among BofM peoples (https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/volume-10-number-3-2009/internal-evidence-widespread-literacy-book-mormon).

And it hit me. There is no example in human history of a literate people, tracking their gods and their debts and their ancestors and so forth in writing losing that ability. And it is not credible to claim that all examples have been lost as we find evidence of ancient literacy in every climate and setting, from shards of pottery to inscribed stone to scrapings on turtle shells etc.

While it is certain that a new city or temple will be uncovered in the jungles or under the plains tomorrow, it is impossible that we have overlooked a multimillion population civilization that was literate. Not a chance. For example, for 200 years after Christ’s visit to the Nephites, they are living in peace primarily engaged in studying and teaching the gospel in the form of the words of Isaiah and Samuel and Christ himself. Remember how he tells them to make sure they write this stuff down as its so important. It is not credible to turn around and think that all evidence of such a literate civilization had disappeared and all subsequent use of writing ceased–as if all of a sudden tax records were better maintained via an oral tradition and ancestors kept track of better by word of mouth or scripture better remembered through oral tradition. Insanity.

As a thought experiment, I often think what would be different should irrefutable evidence be found establishing that the gold plates are exactly as represented? My conclusion is that little to nothing would change as to the Church or the world’s indifference to its claims.

In contrast, what would be different if irrefutable evidence was found establishing that the gold plates have no historical basis? That is a more complex analysis as far as the Church is concerned.

I am certain of one thing — at some point, one or these two scenarios will play out.