You know the place. It’s where John Dutton and his tough as nails crew of kids and cowboys live, work, and kill various interlopers and troublemakers practically every week. It’s a fictional ranch somewhere in Montana. It’s also a real ranch a few miles south of Darby, Montana. Driving up to Seattle last week, I took the scenic route up US 93 and stopped to take a picture of the front ranch gate (see above). Squint a little and you’ll see the name. So let’s talk about fictional narratives set in real places, sometimes with made up names. (Some of you can guess where this is going.)
There are, of course, fictional narratives set in entirely fictional places. Epic tales of Valhalla and Asgard. The planet Vulcan. Middle Earth. Erewhon. Even fictional places bear resemblance to actual earthly places, written as they are by humans who have lived their life in actual earthly places. It’s almost impossible for a writer not to inject a lot of their own experience into the narrative, including a make believe world created just for the narrative.
Then there are fictional narratives set in real places, possibly with a real historical character or two thrown in. One of my favorites is Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith, set in Moscow but Smith never visited Moscow — all the details were drawn from maps and descriptions of buildings and landmarks. Add your own favorites. Last of the Mohicans. Call of the Wild. Movies emphasize the real-world footprint of these fictional narratives because they do a lot of filming on location, an actual location. That holds not just for fictional narratives set in real locations. If you go to New Zealand you can visit Hobbiton and the Green Dragon Inn, I’m told. When I visited New Zealand, it was just New Zealand. Now it’s Middle Earth.
Here’s the point: Finding a real-world location that matches a scene in a fictional narrative, or finding a real-world geographical setting for a fictional narrative, does nothing to establish the veracity of the fictional narrative. Obviously, if a book is sold as a mystery novel or the title includes the words “a novel” then most people aren’t going to leap to the false conclusion that the fictional narrative is actually a historical narrative. It’s dodgy narratives that make a claim to be true accounts in order to boost sales or lend an air of mystery to the narrative — or straight up literary frauds that try to pass the narrative off as something that it is not for some ulterior motive of the author — that raise the issue and are the real problem. Most people can see through these literary devices and clever associations with real-world locations, but not all. Let’s face it, in the Age of Trump it has become obvious that there are some people who will believe anything, however unsupported by facts. Perhaps there are children dragged along on a New Zealand vacation who fly home thinking they have actually seen the Shire. We expect better from adults, but don’t aim too high. Remember the guy who burst into an actual pizza place near Washington, DC, looking for the (fictional, Trumpish propaganda) child abuse ring run by Hillary Clinton? Sure, the joke’s on him, but it is strong evidence in favor of the claim that some people will believe anything.
So let’s talk about Book of Mormon geography. Apologists and interested (sometimes obsessed) lay Mormons spend a lot of time trying to connect locations in the narrative with real-world locations in the Americas and beyond. There may be some personal satisfaction that comes to such sleuths if they can point to a map and say with sincere conviction, “There, that’s where Zarahemla was,” or “look, that has to be the narrow neck of land.” But my suspicion is that such endeavours are powered by the belief that connecting a place in the narrative with a real-world location establishes the veracity of the narrative as historical. I suspect they think the claim “There, that’s where Zarahemla was” strongly or even incontrovertibly supports the conclusion that there really was a Zarahemla or, in Mormonspeak, “the Book of Mormon is true!” As if Joseph couldn’t have looked at a map to draw the rather general descriptions of Book of Mormon locations and their relative proximity to each other, using made up or even slightly modified names when needed. I like the resemblance between Jacobsburg, Ohio (established 1815) and the strange Jacob-Ugath in the Book of Mormon. It’s also just a little humorous that the land of Desolation, north of the narrow neck of land, seems to correspond to Canada.
But let me restate my earlier point specifically applied to Book of Mormon geography: Finding real-world locations that match scenes and locations described in the Book of Mormon does nothing to establish the veracity or historicity of the Book of Mormon narrative. If this were widely recognized, I suspect a lot of the energy that goes into Book of Mormon geography and even archeology work would soon dissipate. I’m sure there is a technical name for the class of logical fallacies of believing a point proven or established based on insufficient evidence or faulty reasoning. Book of Mormon geography sleuths seem to be working under that faulty belief.
So here are some relevant questions from the post that readers can expand on in the comments.
- Has anyone actually gone past the front gate of the Yellowstone Ranch (aka the Chief Joseph Ranch) and seen the large ranch house and stables? Maybe seen a dead body or two lying around?
- Has anyone visited Hobbiton and the Shire in Middle Earth (aka New Zealand)? I’d like to go back someday.
- Has anyone (or a close relative) taken a Book of Mormon tour in Central America? Do Heartlanders run similar travel tours?
- Do you take Book or Mormon geography seriously, or do you think it’s just a waste of time, effort, and money?
- If you take Book of Mormon geography seriously as an important topic, please comment on the fact that modern LDS General Authorities stay as far away from the topic as possible, avoiding all public comment on any aspect of Book of Mormon geography except to claim the events in the narrative actually, certainly, most assuredly, did in fact happen somewhere in the world, we just don’t know where.
Wheat & Tares 
Yes Book of Mormon geography has been full of theories and claims that come up short of actually fitting the narrative of the Book of Mormon. Most of them have to twist the story or make claims of directions that don’t actually fit North, South, East and West. They will also have physical features that just don’t fit into the Book of Mormon. Narrow necks of land that are not narrow, etc.
But there is one Book of Mormon geography that actually fits all the descriptions in the scriptures, plus the fact that locations of this model all actually match archaeological location from the same time period of the Book of Mormon. As scientists have learned to read the archaeological monuments and documents from these people they even find that they describe people and places which exactly match the time period and events from the Book of Mormon.
The General authorities such as Howard W. Hunter and others have been involved in trying to determine the lands of the Book of Mormon and been burned in the process. So of course the brethren stay away from that topic now. But that doesn’t mean that they have to stay away. It is possible to now locate Book of Mormon lands and places.
Knowing the physical location of these places can enhance our understanding of the the story and events in the Book of Mormon.
Hi Dave,
I think that you’ve grabbed the wrong end of the stick here. I’m am sure that you could find some people motivated to study BoM geography in hopes that it could serve to bolster it’s historical claims, but consider the hypothetical world where everyone accepted the BoM as a historical record.
Your thesis would imply that in such a world no one would be concerned about BoM geography. I don’t see it. Instead, I imagine that in such a world, BoM geography and archaeology would be a serious academic field. If you were an archaeologist in that world and could make a persuasive case for your BoM geography model, you would be able to get grants supporting digs, etc.
I think that for people interested in BoM geography, they live in such a world, a world where it is just accepted history. And just like any puzzle, or any human intellectual pursuit, they want to figure it out.
I’ve been to Adam-ondi-Ahman, and also to other farmland in northern Missouri. People see what they want to see.
I remember Dr. Gene Sessions, a Professor of History at Weber State, smiling at a Book of Mormon critic who was also an Evangelical Christian. She had gone on the attack saying there was no evidence of the Book of Mormon peoples and events in the New World. He wittily replied there was also no evidence of the events in the Pentateuch in the Old World. I’m not so sure there is much evidence for the historicity of any of the ancient works of sacred literature from around the world. Sure we can engage in conjecture and provide some sort of explanatory or partly historical setting. But full empirical confirmation of any of these is impossible.
What is amazing (and I recognize it in myself) is that these pieces of literature not only provided the foundation for cultures and civilizations but possess the power to move us moderns today. While I can’t provide a sliver of physical evidence confirming the historical veracity of the Book of Mormon, I find that the teachings of the Book of Mormon (which I read repeatedly as a teenager) cling to me and inform my politics and worldview. I find that class systems and the current worship of wealth as repugnant as the Book of Mormon prophets did. Third Nephi so aptly blends the views of the Gospel authors (I am thinking of Matthew and John) that the Jesus of the Book of Mormon reflects influenced my own view of the Savior. The theological and moralistic elements of that book force me critique current LDS practices and culture. When I scowl at my fellow LDS, it is not in spite of LDS scripture, it is because of of it. But be forewarned, I also appreciate and admire much of the richness and teachings of the Quran, Bhagavad Gita and Tao Te Ching. So perhaps I am just susceptible to religion.
Every time I read in the news about a new discovery of something ancient I wonder why we never seem to discover anything related to the BOM. Actually I don’t wonder.
Dave, to answer your first three questions, no, I haven’t. As to your fourth and fifth questions, I don’t take Book of Mormon geography seriously. While apologists might try to point to the idea that a large majority of New World ruins have yet to be uncovered,, to date, there is nothing I have read or heard to suggest that the narrative told in the Book of Mormon is historical. I have a relative who likes to dabble in that stuff and has tried to point out some apologetic connections (“the Nephites were the mound builders!”), but it all just sounds really amateurish and conspiracy theory-adjacent to me. And yet I still attend church faithfully every week. Go figure.
Interesting post. I also tend to think most members in these searches already accept it and just want to figure it out, if for no other reason than fascination, but I doubt providing “proof” doesn’t at least make a small motivator.
I watched one of my evangelical friends participate in an LDS message board discussion in which someone brought up a hypothetical situation where archeologists discovered a buried city and a long fallen city gate. On the gate archeologists find a word that translates roughly to “Zarahemla.” The post then asked if that would be enough to sway an unbeliever. To my surprise, my evangelical friend said yes, justifying the change by saying he was a Christian first and an evangelical second. The intellectual nudge would be all he needed to immerse himself in the spiritual claims inherent to Mormonism. I found that interesting. Although spiritual, I always thought my friend was very defensive and slow to actually test the Church’s claims through prayer and the Holy Ghost. But if that would be the nudge he needed to be open for a spiritual witness, I wouldn’t stand in the way, but I would worry about those who would join without seeing the need for a spiritual witness.
Incidentally, related to my first point, I think that’s part of why you don’t see benefactors pouring millions or billions of dollars into these archeological endeavors. If I had a billion dollars, would I invest in such an undertaking? It would be tempting, if for no other reason than for fascination and a fun hobby, but would I really want to pour money into something I already know to be true and that others could know to be true when that money could be used for so many more worthwhile endeavors? In truth, I’d probably donate a few thousand dollars, at most.
No to the first three questions, although I might be interested in a Heartland tour intertwined with Church History, since I’d be interested in a formal tour for that. Rod Meldrum and Wayne May have given similar tours in the past.
I haven’t been to any of the locations listed in the OP. But one time, several years ago, my wife and I went on a day hike in Malibu Creek State Park to see the former filming location of the M*A*S*H TV series, as we were both longtime fans. Many of the familiar building footprints still remain, and the landscape looks much as it did on TV, though perhaps a bit smaller in real life. One could climb up to the “helicopter pad” and view the entire former set below, and it is pretty easy to imagine where all the familiar buildings and tents of the show were located. It happened to be a very hot summer day, and we both remarked to each other how it must have been challenging to film in that heat, in addition to the logistical challenge of getting the cast, crew, equipment, setpieces and vintage military vehicles out to that remote location every day.
The experience of visiting that site was enjoyable, but it didn’t shatter any illusions for us about M*A*S*H (which we always knew to be a fictional TV show), the Korean War (which we always knew to be an actual historical event, which occurred in a different part of the world that probably looked nothing like southern California). If anything, it enhanced our shared love of the series.
The Book of Mormon is a different matter. I was told my whole life that it is a historical record, and that it’s value lies in the chronicling of actual events of the ancient Americas, the high point being the appearance of the resurrected Christ. I eventually came to the conclusion that the narrative does not represent actual history for many reasons (not the least of which is the book’s dubious origins). M*A*S*H never pretended to represent the “truth” of what really happened in the Korean War, but simply used the war as a backdrop for a relevant comedy-drama series, interwoven with thinly veiled commentary about contemporary issues. I see a similar potential value in the Book of Mormon, if we as a Church could only divorce ourselves from being so heavily invested in the assumption that it all actually happened to real people.
For those reasons, I consider the pursuit of Book of Mormon locations to be foolish, and a colossal waste of time and money. Like most apologetics, it is founded in the assumption that “its all true, we just need to find out where it happened” which is intellectually dishonest. I’ll be happy to change my mind if someone someday uncovers some ancient Nephite coins, chariots, steel swords or other verifiable forms of evidence.
I just got into a longwinded discussion with some apologists on another blog wherein I claimed repeatedly that the mainstream apologists had never managed to convince the outside world, lay and professional, that Christians and Jews existed in the pre-Columbian Americas (which would be one of the most groundbreaking historical discoveries in the past few decades), and that therefore their actions were a failure. Their responses:
1) I was painting apologists with a broad brush for there were all sorts of different types of apologists
2) The apologists weren’t ever really trying to prove the historicity of the Book of Mormon
3) The apologists were the only experts on the Book of Mormon + their respective disciplines, therefore they were the only ones who could make the determination whether the Book of Mormon was historical or not (how foolish was I as a believer testifying of the words of the prophets and the apostles as the bedrock of truth, I should have been testifying of the words of the apologists as truth, I testify of Dan Peterson as above the prophet and the utmost determiner of truth, I guess).
I also pointed out how it is odd that apologists tend to invoke relativism in defense of a very absolutist and non-relativist religion that maintains itself to be the one and only true church. Their responses:
1) Joseph Smith WAS a relativist
2) The church doesn’t actually teach that it is the one and only true church
They also pointed out Michael Coe and relished in how he spoke of there not being any iron helmets in the pre-Columbian Americas when in fact the Book of Mormon doesn’t speak of iron helmets and therefore Coe doesn’t understand the Book of Mormon, so neener neener. All the while, missing the point of how Coe was saying that the Book of Mormon describes a vast material culture upon which ancient American living was founded most of which we can find little trace of through archaeological research of the ancient Americas, which is true.
Also, lots of fawning over LiDAR technology revealing a much larger Mayan civilization than previously understood. When I pointed out that the LiDAR findings didn’t confirm anything about BOM historicity, their response was: “oh yeah, well it shows just how much we don’t know yet about the ancient Americas.” When I pointed out how the lack of knowledge about many aspects of ancient American history counts against Book of Mormon historicity since it is a little fishy that Joseph Smith would just find this amazing book listing all these names and places and methods of living and governance in the ancient Americas when archaeological research turns up few to no names and places, let alone written records, well their response was that I didn’t know as much as them.
It really is like playing chess with pigeons with these folks. You try to play by the rules and they just knock over pieces and poop on the board. Apologetics really has become such an obvious joke that fools no one except for the already believing.
“I remember Dr. Gene Sessions, a Professor of History at Weber State, smiling at a Book of Mormon critic who was also an Evangelical Christian. She had gone on the attack saying there was no evidence of the Book of Mormon peoples and events in the New World. He wittily replied there was also no evidence of the events in the Pentateuch in the Old World.”
This is actually a common apologist whataboutism when anyone asks them for evidence of BOM historicity or criticizes the BOM for not having any historical evidence. The idea is that when someone challenges the BOM as highly unlikely as a historical text and therefore extremely weird to believe in, to point out how there is no evidence for much of what’s said in the Bible and yet it is normal to treat the Bible as somewhat historical. This is an extremely disingenuous and misleading argument. I suggest that Gene Sessions read the Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, for they show through modern secular reasoning (not belief-centered reasoning, but as actual non-believers in the historicity of the Bible) just how much of the Old Testament can be shown to be historical. The peoples it describes, the cultural practices, the geography, the plants and animals, etc. Heck, even King David has been corroborated as historical by the Tel Dan inscription. The Bible is so overwhelmingly rooted in ancient culture and there is so much evidence of that, even if there is no evidence of Moses or any of the things he did. The same goes for the Vedas, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and many other religious text. These are clearly ancient in origin, even if their historicity can’t be dated as far back as what the original authors and editors of these texts claim to be describing. By contrast, there is nothing of what we know about the ancient Americas that confirms the idea that the Book of Mormon was remotely rooted in the culture of the ancient Americas 2200 BC-400 AD. It overwhelmingly appears to be much more connected with the culture of early nineteenth century upstate New York with lots of obvious dollops of verbatim KJV and Apocrypha text. If you look up disingenuous in the dictionary, there really needs to be a picture of a Mormon apologist by the entry. The equivalence between Bible historicity and BOM historicity is really one of the most ridiculous and intellectually dishonest arguments I have ever heard coming from the apologists.
John W,
You are misjudging Gene Sessions. He is a professional historian, not a BoM apologist, and his comment was off-the-cuff. You had to extend your criticism of Sessions’ statement to include the entire Old Testament to make your case. Not cool. King David is obviously not in the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch (and the rest of the Old Testament) does possess some serious historical anachronisms. If memory serves, Bible Unearthed actually discusses some of these. I hope that in your zeal you are not extending your criticisms to all believers. It is actually quite possible to accept the book as inspired and not engage in the mental machinations that you described.
John W: you said that you’ve been told by at least one Church apologist that the Church does not claim to be the “one and only true Church”.
Let’s pretend that this is accurate. For the sake of this exercise, I’m going to gaslight myself and imagine that the Brethren have never said that and I’ll pretend like my Internet is broken so I can’t go find out in 30 seconds. If this was indeed accurate and if we weren’t hearing these kinds of messages (RMN’s “sad heaven” talk for example), I might consider going back. I miss my LDS ward friends. I miss the community. Heck, I missed the Easter Service we didn’t attend last Sunday.
But we all know that this hypothetical scenario I just described doesn’t exist because the Church claims what it claims.
John, I’m with Old Man on this one, and I think you misunderstood what Brother Sessions meant by his statement. In essence, he’s saying that the same historicity arguments made about the Book of Mormon can be made about much of the Bible. All Christian denominations are vulnerable (though perhaps to greater or lesser degrees) to the test of historicity, and you’re aware of that having been exposed to Finkelstein and Silberman (Bill Dever is great too). It’s not that no one mentioned in the Bible existed, but rather, what we know about their true history doesn’t jive with how the Bible describes it (the myth of the United Kingdom for instance, since you mentioned David). An even more damning example is that there is no archaeological evidence for the Exodus, Judaism’s most important event (and funny enough, the Egyptians forgot to write about it if did happen).
Absent in ALL the comments so far is any indication that the writers, including the usually astute Dave B, are aware of the OLD World findings of recent decades in relation to the origins of the Book of Mormon. Why are the comments totally restricted to the admittedly much less clear New World situation?
Should the fact that Nephi’s account describes places, directions, terrain, distances in great detail, and even specifics such as a place name (Nahom) archaeologically attested and undisputed in its age and could not have been known by anyone in 1830, not give us pause? They’ve all been published and are readily available. Why are these findings totally ignored?
Old Man and Not a Cougar,
Sessions is mostly a historian, yes. But he has presented at FAIR. He has donned an apologist hat before. And in the abovementioned instance, he made a false equivalence between the issue of Pentateuch historicity and BOM historicity that is common in apologist circles. You’re right, he did limit this issue to the Pentateuch. I was reacting to a larger equivalence made by other apologists. But even on the Pentateuch, here is what Finkelstein and Silberman have to say: “As we shall see in the coming chapters, archaeology has provided enough evidence to support a new contention that the historical core of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History was substantially shaped in the seventh century BCE. We will therefore put the spotlight on late eighth and seventh century BCE Judah, when this literary process began in earnest, and shall argue that much of the Pentateuch is a late monarchic creation, advocating the ideology and needs of the kingdom of Judah, and as such is intimately connected to the Deuteronomistic History. And we shall side with the scholars who argue that the Deuteronomistic History was compiled, in the main, in the time of King Josiah, aiming to provide an ideological validation for particular political ambitions and religious reforms.” So yes, Finkelstein and Silberman are contending that Pentateuch historicity cannot be fully verified before the 7th century BC. But this 100-150 years before what is considered to be post-exilic Israel about 538-420 BC. It can at least be shown that the Pentateuch’s final editors were indeed referring to actual history that predated them. By contrast, there doesn’t appear to be anything that can be verified about the Book of Mormon having occurred before Joseph Smith other than what appears to be lifted and tooled with from the KJV. The final editors of the Pentateuch were relying on earlier writings and oral histories of their culture to construct the text. As for the Book of Mormon, what earlier texts or oral histories other than the KJV and Apocrypha does it rely on?
On Exodus, here is Finkelstein and Silberman:
“So where does this leave us? Can we say that the Exodus, the wandering, and—most important of all—the giving of the Law on Sinai do not possess even a kernel of truth? So many historical and geographical elements from so many periods may have been embedded in the Exodus story that it is hard to decide on a single unique period in which something like it might have occurred. There is the timeless rhythm of migrations to Egypt in antiquity. There is the specific incident of the Hyksos domination of the delta in the Middle Bronze Age. There are the suggestive parallels to elements of the Ramesside era relating to Egypt—together with the first mention of Israel (in Canaan, not Egypt). Many of the place-names in the book of Exodus, such as the Red Sea (in Hebrew Yam Suph), the river Shihor in the eastern delta (Joshua 13:3), and the Israelites’ stopping place at Pi-ha-hiroth, seem to have Egyptian etymologies. They are all related to the geography of the Exodus, but they give no clear indication that they belong to a specific period in Egyptian history. The historical vagueness of the Exodus story includes the fact that there is no mention by name of any specific Egyptian New Kingdom monarch (while later biblical materials do mention pharaohs by their names, for example Shishak and Necho). The identification of Ramesses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus came as the result of modern scholarly assumptions based on the identification of the place-name Pi-Ramesses with Raamses (Exodus 1:11; 12:37). But there are few indisputable links to the seventh century BCE. Beyond a vague reference to the Israelites’ fear of taking the coastal route, there is no mention of the Egyptian forts in northern Sinai or their strongholds in Canaan. The Bible may reflect New Kingdom reality, but it might just as well reflect later conditions in the Iron Age, closer to the time when the Exodus narrative was put in writing. And that is precisely what the Egyptologist Donald Redford has suggested. The most evocative and consistent geographical details of the Exodus story come from the seventh century BCE, during the great era of prosperity of the kingdom of Judah—six centuries after the events of the Exodus were supposed to have taken place. Redford has shown just how many details in the Exodus narrative can be explained in this setting, which was also Egypt’s last period of imperial power, under the rulers of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.”
There are pieces of evidence that surround the stories of the Pentateuch, even if there is no evidence of the stories themselves having taken place. The book is a valuable window into Levantine Bronze Age thinking, without dispute, among academics and scholars of many different disciplines and backgrounds. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, is not valued at all by any non-Mormon scholars as a window into ancient thinking in the pre-Columbian Americas.
Lastly, consider the fact that the Pentateuch emerged in an environment where there was a deep tradition of writing. Having a long written text emerge from the Bronze Age Near East makes perfect sense and fits all the major cultural patterns we know of in that region at that time. It is truly astounding just how much Bronze Age writing has been discovered and recovered from the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Having a long scriptural text emerge in the Americas 2200 BC-400 AD really makes zero sense, and doesn’t fit any patterns of material culture that we know about. Beyond inscriptions, there hasn’t appeared any writing of the sort anywhere in the Americas during that time frame, let alone on metal plates in poetic and prosaic fashion.
So my reaction to Sessions still stands: it is a really bad comparison and shows a lack of understanding of just how much of the Pentateuch can from a secular standpoint said to have historical nature.
References:
Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts (p. 14). Free Press. Kindle Edition.
Ibid., 65.
I just don’t think historicity is very relevant to religion. They get at separate domains of knowledge/understanding/ways of being.
There are worse hobbies than trying to connect the two, I suppose.
And I get that for some, including lots of religious leaders, truth claims/fact claims are the sine qua non of religion. I’m just not into it. I don’t come to religion to understand what empiricism is far better equipped to do.
Religion for me is about how to be, and if I’m lucky, an environment that optimizes my capacity for being.
Thank you Margie for your contribution to this discussion. It reinforces the conclusion that I have long ago reached: religion, and belief in God generally, exists on one plane (I call it Religion), and the observable, physical, logical world that I see all around me exists on a different plane (I call it Reality). We can contemplate/study/observe/dissect those two planes, one at a time, to our complete satisfaction, but i don’t see the logic – or even the possibility – of definitively tying the two planes together. If I try, I soon get tied into mental/emotional knots.
Raymond,
I agree. I separate the realms into the “sacred” and the “profane”. Mircea Eliade used those terms, and even though I don’t follow his definitions precisely, I think they add to the discussion. Quite bluntly, it doesn’t matter much to me what level of historicity we grant sacred texts, because so much of those texts is fictionalized history (or historicized fiction?) anyway. The purpose of these works (ancient or modern) is not to teach history or science. These are attempts at conveying real messages through sacred literature. We moderns, trapped in a materialistic worldview, try to read them from the historic or scientific perspective and in doing so do much violence to the meaning.
So John W and the militant apologists are actually quite similar. They are both looking at sacred texts through modern, materialistic lenses and forcing those texts to confirm to their worldviews. John W wants to strip the BoM of its sacrality because it lacks evidence of historicity, while the apologists are willing to violate the historical process because they believe that historicity somehow grants sacrality. In my opinion, they are both wrong.
My daughter and her husband spent 2 1/2 years in New Zealand working on the first season of The Rings of Power. We went and visited them last July, it’s an absolutely gorgeous place. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any Elves, Hobbits or Orcs (at least any real ones).
I encourage you to go visit, just be aware that the 15 hour flight is a long one.
Sacred texts are useful, at least in part, because they are old. Enough people found them useful for a long enough time that the writings made it to us. Any book can be useful of course, but I do think it matters a lot whether the BoM is catalogue of the things a civilization found useful over a thousand year period, or if it’s just 19th century fiction. Lots of 19th century fiction is meaningful and important, arguably much more meaningful that the BoM. The BoMs claim of authentic ancient origin is really all it has going for it. If JS and his buddies wrote it, well, I’d rather read Mark Twain, Jules Verne, or Mary Shelley.
I agree with Margie, Raymond, and Old Man that sacred books are meaningful regardless of historicity. But, is the Book of Mormon a sacred book? There are many 19th century novels with religious themes. What makes the BoM different is it’s claim to ancient origin. Without that, I don’t think it can be called sacred (yet. Maybe in 300-500 years?)
If I had tons of disposable cash, I’d like to finance a dig at the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, New York–but I would need permission from the property owners, and they have enough money to finance a dig but don’t seem at all interested in digging themselves or allowing anyone else to dig. Didn’t Brigham Young say that it was under that hill where all the old Nephite metal records were buried in a cave? Given what we know and don’t know today, I wouldn’t finance a dig anywhere else. I turn my ears off as soon as someone starts to tell me where things in the BoM happened, because I’m satisfied that they can’t know, absent an angel telling them.
John, you’re making my point. The Bible’s narrative up through at least 1-2 Samuel (and well after – Ruth’s story just didn’t happen, for example) isn’t accurate (and most of it not even in the parking lot of the ballpark) something that I am sure the Evangelical woman in the story you referenced would disagree with vehemently. Is the historicity problem with the Book of Mormon more severe than that of the Bible? Sure, and I made a reference to that in my response, but someone tearing down the Book of Mormon for lack of historicity while holding up the Old Testament as solidly historical is simply throwing rocks in glass houses. Whatever Brother Sessions may have said at other times, I think that’s the only real point he was making to the Evangelical woman, which is not a significantly debatable point, at least in academic circles.
I agree with Dave B, Old Man and Margie. The validity of a Religion or Faith must rest on a foundation that is independent of secular proof. A Faith that is dependent on facts is captive to the defense of those facts. For example, if my trust of the Book of Mormon is reliant on whether it can be proved the Nephites had horses than my confidence is at the mercy of the evidence for and against that argument.
A believer has two approaches to handling ancient texts like the Book of Mormon. They can assume the Book of Mormon is literal history regardless of the contradictions with contemporary understanding of the world. Or they can accept the Book of Mormon story as a true parable – the message is true – but the characters and places and circumstances may not be literally real.
I accept the message of the Book of Mormon as true and meaningful to my understanding of God. Coincidences that support the “facts” of the Book of Mormon are nice but they are not necessary.
The same is true of belief in the New Testament, of which we have no doubt of the geography. It is nice to have a map of Paul’s missionary travels. But my confidence in what Paul preached is independent of those facts, although my understanding is enriched by the awareness that the world Paul traveled literally existed.
The church has a Why Should I Listen To You problem. For a long time, the church’s answer to the question of Why Should I Listen to You has been, “Because Joseph Smith spoke with God face to face and the supernatural origin of the BoM proves that!” As the evidence continues to consolidate, though, the origin of the BoM looks less and less supernatural and the church is moving the goal posts. Now the BoM is a revelation rather than a literal translation and they don’t stress the historicity much anymore. However, this doesn’t fix the Why Should I Listen to You problem.
So if you love the BoM and find value in its pages and don’t care if it’s historical, I’m happy for you. But if it isn’t historical, it also means you don’t have to do what the Q15 tells you. That’s why the historicity matters—because if Nephites never existed then you don’t need to go the temple to be exalted. You don’t need to pay tithing. You don’t need to snub your gay child’s wedding. You can pray to Heavenly Mother.
And don’t try to gaslight me that the doctrine is otherwise. I’ve got a trove of GBH quotes and an entire PMG manual ready to deploy.
Old Man, I believe you can derive moral lessons from the Book of Mormon and use it to enhance your life, I don’t have a problem with that. I think Grant Hardy’s approach to the Book of Mormon, treating it as literature, is commendable and worthy of recommendation. My problem is with people thinking that historical analyses of the Book of Mormon are on par with mainstream historical analyses of the Bible. Most apologists of Book of Mormon historicity are under a delusion. Granted, the evangelicals who try to establish the historicity of the Pentateuch stories are similarly delusional. However, many scholars have tried to establish the historicity of the Pentateuch’s and larger OT’s setting make valid points and do good work.
Not a Cougar, I’m not sure I quite understood your response. My main point is that parts of the framework within which the Pentateuch and other OT stories emerged can be shown to be historical. That cannot be said of the Book of Mormon.
John, my point is that there are significant historicity problems with both the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Are those problems more significant with the Book of Mormon? Yes, absolutely. Do the problems with the Book of Mormon somehow mean that Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses and the stories about them are any more historical than Nephi, Abinadi, and Moroni and the stories about them? No. Ahistorical stories written down in the Iron Age and ahistorical stories written down in 1829 are both still ahistorical.
Not a Cougar, if I say, “according to ancient Israelite wisdom…” and then cite a story in the Torah, you wouldn’t just from that phrase whether I believe the historicity of the Torah or not. I could be completely secular and say that. It is not a bold statement to say that. The wisdom is ancient and no one would disagree. If I say, “according to ancient Nephite wisdom…” then just by saying that I’m already placing the Book of Mormon in a pre-1800s context and claiming acceptance that pre-Columbian Christians (Nephites) did exist. In the academic world, that phrase alone is a rather bold stand for BOM historicity.
On the historicity debates between the BOM and Pentateuch, the differences are night and day.
In previous years when visiting the US we have visited the pyramids ect. in Mexico. And on a more recent visit saw mounds near the mississippi, because we have a ward member who is sold on that theory.
I have been repairing a Mercedes GLS. The top of the range GLS is a Maybach. Maybach is mercedes luxury brand. I had my GLS painted two tone in maybach colours. I bought maybach badges on ebay, but when I went to fit them they are actually produced by mercedes. So my wife was very amused when I told her the badges were authentic so the car must now be a maybach. In Australia a Maybach GLS costs twice as much new, as a Mercedes GLS.
John, actually yeah, I would conclude from your example statement that you find the Torah to be historical. Given that the Torah as we know it is a post-Exilic document, I’d have to know what you mean by “ancient.” Antiquity is absolutely ancient, but the historical kingdom of Israel is even more so, and what we’ve come to learn about it suggests that they wouldn’t recognize the “ancient Israelite wisdom” of which you hypothetically speak given that they were a thoroughly polytheistic society whose customs, beliefs, and traditions are surprisingly hard to distinguish from their surrounding neighbors. So, respectfully, no, it’s not matter of night and day, it’s a matter of degree.
“I would conclude from your example statement that you find the Torah to be historical.”
You’re being obtuse here.
What’s ancient? The 600s BC are ancient, the 1800s AD are not. I can’t imagine anyone disputing that.
Again, the final editors of the Torah, in the earliest extant form that is still available to us, were clearly informing their narrative from earlier oral and written traditions dating back to the seventh century BC, more than 200 years before them. That’s pretty significant. There is no evidence whatsoever that the final editors of the Book of Mormon (really mainly Joseph Smith) were reflecting earlier oral and written traditions of Native Americans 200+ years before them, let alone even 1 year before them or even during their time.
The Torah derives its cultural knowledge from some surrounding cultures, yes. But let’s make no mistake, so much of it is uniquely Israelite.
Sorry, but the historicity questions surrounding the Book of Mormon are just so incredibly different from the Torah. The Torah has long been and will always be of significant value to secularist and religious scholars, from all different religious backgrounds, from many different academic disciplines for its historical insight into the Bronze Age Levantine thought and culture. The Book of Mormon has never been and will never be of any value to non-Mormon scholars for its historical insight into pre-Columbian American thought and culture. Literary value? Sure. But not pre-Columbian historical value.
One more thing. I think the general idea from apologists about the equivalence between historicity of the Torah and that of the BOM, and that Not a Cougar is trying to make, is that the final editors of the Torah (who composed it, it is estimated, between 450 and 165 BC) were kind of like a group of Joseph Smiths in that they were describing what they believed to be past events that dated back thousands of years before them. And much like we can’t verify through historical research the veracity of those past events described in the Torah, we can’t verify through historical research the past events described in the BOM. We just have to accept it on faith. We know that the editors existed, just like we know Joseph Smith existed. But we have only small fragments that might point to historicity (at least according to apologists, since virtually no non-Mormon scholars accept that there are any fragments that would with significance point to BOM historicity). Therefore the Bible, in particular the Torah, is like the Book of Mormon. Granted, Not a Cougar is claiming that the historicity problems of the BOM are greater than those of the Torah. But the argument is in a similar vein.
Again, with the Torah we can maintain through archaeological digs and peer-reviewed research that events that occurred in the 600s BC informed a text whose final format emerged sometime between 450 and 165 BC. That’s huge. It goes to show the power of memory and oral and written transmission in the Iron Age and early Classical periods in the Eastern Mediterranean. Transmission of cultural knowledge in ancient Greece follows a similar pattern. Bronze Age Mycenaean cultural thought (1450-1100 BC) mapped its way onto the Homeric poems in the Iron Age Archaic Period (800-500 BC), which spawned increasingly sophisticated thinking about nature and the world during the same time. The new Archaic Period thinking then found its way through written and oral transmission to the Classical Period texts (479-336 BC). We know only about Anaximander and Thales, the earliest Greek philosophers who lived circa 600 BC, because of oral and written transmission which made its way up to Herodotus, who wrote Histories 450-430 BC. Now contrast this with the Book of Mormon. Can we say that it describes any cultural knowledge practices anywhere in the Americas that predate Joseph Smith, let alone by hundreds of years? No. Torah vs. BOM vis-a-vis historicity questions is a highly misleading and nonsensical comparison.
I don’t understand why geography is even an item of study here. If somebody ever finds reformed Egyptian writings then we’ll know where it happened. Unfortunately… we won’t. There is no such thing as reformed Egyptian. No writing that could be described as reformed Egyptian have ever been discovered. Joseph probably copied and/or embellished the characters from a mix of characters he found in the Adam Clarke bible commentary based on Dr. Anthon’s description of the characters. Dan Vogel’s video on the characters document which we have is devastating and the way Joseph turned a single character into entire paragraphs with the book of Abraham along with the Zelph the white Lamanite story tells us everything we need to know about what really happened. Joseph placed the Nephites all the way from Central America to eastern Canada but no ancient reformed Egyptian writings have ever been found.