Earlier this year, I took a lot of flak on Twitter (now known as X) for agreeing to speak at the FIRM Foundation conference in April. It’s funny to me how many people thought got paid for my appearance (I didn’t) or that by my very appearance there, I was explicitly endorsing the Heartland Theory. Make no mistake. I have a lot of friends who are Heartlanders, but I am not a Heartlander. To go further, I opened up my presentation by playing clips from previous interviews of Ugo Perego, Simon Southerton, and Thomas Murphy explaining why the Heartlander explanations for DNA just weren’t credible.
I also discussed different theories in the Middle East and how Lehi crossed the oceans. Was it an Atlantic or Pacific Ocean crossing to come to the Promised Land? We’ll talk about Philip Beale, the man who did the voyage in a 600 BC ship, and discuss possible routes of the Jaredites!
And finally, I’ve added some new theories of the Book of Mormon (thanks to KC Kern!) The most exotic are Malay, Sri Lanka, and Africa, but I covered some of the older ones like Baja, Mesoamerica, Heartland, Delmarva Peninsula, and even my least favorite one, Joseph made it up. What’s your favorite? Tell me in the comments! And even if you think Joseph made it up, tell me your second favorite one (even if you think it is outlandish.)
Wheat & Tares 
I am in the “Joseph made it up” camp now. None of these other theories fits the history of native Americans, their languages, DNA and archaeology. All the anachronisms of the Book of Mormon make kind of sense for a book written in NY in 1830 by a white US man. Logically it fits the evidence the best even though this took me 45 years to come to this conclusion.
Emotionally this was a hard position to get to because it meant letting go of the sureness that the church was true and that Joseph was a prophet and so I totally understand how interesting some of these theories were to me as a believing member with a PhD in plant breeding and evolutionary biology. Because as they tried to make the evidence fit those assumptions in different ways thinking about them helped me hold on to those assumptions longer.
My second favorite theory is of course the Malaysian hypothesis or that the Book of Mormon was actually in Africa. Why? Because they are just fun.
Even if Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon the book warrants consideration for what it teaches about God and Christianity and what it informs about human sociology. You can assume the Book of Mormon geography is as real as Narnia (C. S. Lewis) and you can still find great meaning in the Book of Mormon. And of course, the fiction of Narnia that C. S. Lewis created does not diminish the message of those books.
Yet unlike Narnia, the Book of Mormon claims to be real history of real people. To what extent must we prove that claim? The Book of Mormon itself says the geography and people are important. Where the Jaredites and Nephites settled is deemed to be a blessed land and one highly favored of God. Great promises and warnings are placed on that land. The Nephites themselves are said to be of the Tribes of Israel with the later settlers of America identified as Gentiles. If this is all an allegory what is the message? I think there would still be meaning but it would be abstract and more personal.
However, if the Book of Mormon geography and people described are real that yields a bold perspective. The message shifts from the abstract to the literal.I can see why some would shy away from this view. But should we?
The only one that fits all the evidence and matches with things Joseph Smith said is the “Joseph made it all up” theory. Other than that, the others are looking to explain how the BoM could still be real history, but ignoring that Joseph said it was the American continent, and the prophecies in the BoM itself about the discovery of the American continent by Europeans. And the BoM talks like there is nobody else there with them, so that kind of kills the DNA explanations by apologist as well as kind of eliminates Africa and Malaysia.
However I understand why that would be a least favorite theory to many believers. And the other theories can be fun to try to match up geography, guess what those untranslated animals might have been, and explain what “horses” was mistranslated from and what “chariots” were, and what was meant by “steel”. But it is really just a game of matching up the geography of Middle Earth to our earth. It is fun to try to match up the geography, find rivers that flow the same direction, find a narrow neck of land, find Jewish DNA in Africa and Malaysia. So, carry on with the game.
Me, I vote for Malaysia (if we can’t use “Joseph made it up”) because they had domesticated elephants, horses, steel, Jewish DNA, and even a geography match up. Only problem being that Joseph said that the American Indians were descendants of the Lamanites and there were already people there. Africa has the same two strikes, and I don’t know if they used domesticated elephants or horses. But interbreeding between natives and Lamanites would explain the dark skin of the Lamanites, and the Jewish DNA group is black. And I have not seen the geographic match up for Africa so I can’t comment on it. So, Africa and Malaysia have the most matches, and only two strikes. While the American continent strikes out on DNA, Elephants, horses, steel, chariots, as well as people being here already. The American continent has at least three strikes, while Africa and Malaysia have only two.
Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge the lack of academically-accepted archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon in the Americas…but this is exactly what makes all the different theories so much fun.
Philip Beale cruising around the world in a Phoenician ship is pretty great. Whether it’s relevant to the BoM or not, the fact that it was technologically plausible to travel like that in 600 BC is amazing. I think we often don’t give enough credit to the engineering feats of the ancient world.
I really like the theories in India and Malaysia – they intuitively seem more logical than many American theories IMO. Reimagining the BoM taking place in India or Southeast Asia gives it a whole dynamic. Let’s not forget that there are supposedly three immortal Nephites running around the globe giving archaeologists a headache…maybe one hitched a ride to L’Anse aux Meadows 1000 years ago with some Vikings and took along some gold plates 😉.
Maybe one day we’ll find a big sign that says “Welcome to Zarahemla, population 96,000.” Maybe we’ll discover evidence that it was a Sidney Rigdon work of fiction. For now, however, it’s fun to imagine it in the different historical settings of each different theory.
I had seen the original video in YouTube prior to the post here. I enjoyed The Pirate Priest’s comment in that it summed up the ideas presented. There is quite a lot of similar things happening in the realm of biblical archeology as well. There is a thought that I heard in the radio years ago. I cannot remember the gentleman’s name and I may not be completely accurate but I am trying to get at the gist of what he was saying. He argued that much of the history found in the pages of the Old Testament cannot be corroborated, but the real history found in the OT is the history of the relationship of a people with their God. I immediately thought of the Book of Mormon when he made his argument. That idea has allowed me to begin to read the Book of Mormon in ways that you will never hear in a typical Sunday school class. I enjoy reading that book more as a result.
My theory is that Book of Mormon geography is based on Joseph Smith’s observations of the environment around him in upstate New York and New England and geographic descriptions that he found in the KJV. The book is completely fictional taking copious, often verbatim passages from the KJV and integrating them into a story of pre-Columbian Israelites developing Christianity independently (and before the emergence of Christianity in the Near East) in the Americas. The Book curiously proposes a passage to the Americas from Jerusalem across two oceans, the Indian and Pacific, departing from the southern Arabian Peninsula (even possibly traversing the untraversable Empty Quarter in northern Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia). Such a feat of crossing two oceans to reach the Americas from Yemen or Oman has never been shown to have been accomplished before the 1500s. Sea crossings from northern Asia to the Americas hugging the coastline were possibly accomplished 16,000 years ago when there was a land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska. DNA evidence shows that Polynesians may have crossed the Pacific to visit the Americas about 800 years. But I’ve never seen any evidence of anyone navigating both the Indian and Pacific Oceans to reach the Americas before the rise of the Spanish Empire.
“Such a feat of crossing two oceans to reach the Americas from Yemen or Oman has never been shown to have been accomplished before the 1500s.”
I’ve got to correct you here Brad. First of all, it is evident you didn’t watch my video. Philip Beale didn’t cross 2 oceans, but he did circumnavigate Africa in 2009 using a 600 BC Phoenician ship. In the process, he came within 300 miles of Florida and easily would have ended up there if he hadn’t turned his ship around back towards Africa. Beale did this feat the same year pirates from Somalia captured that US Tanker that Tom Hanks played in the movie “Captain Phillips.” I talked to Philip Beale in this interview and he turned me from skeptic to believer that such a trip is possible: https://youtu.be/E2e1JAAA8Lc
So no, one doesn’t have to cross 2 oceans, the Atlantic around Africa will work just fine. Philip came from the Suez Canal and circumnavigated Africa, before repeating the feat in 2019 going from Syria through the Mediterranean and following Columbus’s route to America. To my surprise, government officials in Morocco and North Africa who believe the ancient Phoenicians (yes from 600 BC) did sail to America are working with the Heartland Folks to find evidence of these voyages. These officials know nothing of the Book of Mormon, but honestly believe much of the copper from America was returned to Africa for trading. I’m shocked at the conversations I’m seeing. Apparently the ancient Phoenicians were the best sailors in the world at the time until Rome sacked Carthage in 149 BC.
Furthermore, the Vikings did reach Canada in 1021 AD across the North Atlantic. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58996186
Thor Hyerdahl is famous for demonstrating that one could travel from South America to Polynesia, and it is likely that South Americans introduced the sweet potato to Polynesia centuries before Columbus. There is some talk that the Chinese may have come to the Americas via boat long before Columbus, but those claims are weaker.
So, I don’t think you should be quite so confident in your assertions. You need to watch part 2 above to get more details and/or my interview with Beale.
I’m not sure you read my entire comment. I do accept that pre-Columbians crossed the Pacific from Asia and Polynesia to reach the Americas, even as early as 16,000 years ago. The Vikings clearly reached Newfoundland. But all of this was crossing only one ocean, not two. Crossing the Indian and Pacific, or Indian and Atlantic oceans in one journey is quite a feat for groups from Jerusalem in 600 BC.
Philip Beale is impressive, but still seems irrelevant. He already knew the geography of planet earth and its wind patterns. Something the ancient Phoenicians wouldn’t have known.
You say that the claims of the Chinese reaching the Americans before Columbus are “weaker.” In fact I would say that they are stronger than the idea of the Phoenicians reaching the Americas. Yes, the Phoenicians reached Spain. Very impressive indeed. But I see no strong evidence for a Phoenician voyage to the Americas.
Re: A Disciple and Book of Mormon and Narnia
There are a lot of fictional books that have a lot of meaning and inspiration for me as well. None of them claim to be a true history. I highly recommend:
1. Left hand of darkness by Ursula LeGuin. A scifi story of an human ambassador on the planet winter attempting first contact.
2. To say nothing of the dog by Connie Willis. A funny love story and time travel book written as an homage to Jerome K Jerome’s Three men in a boat.
3. The Chosen by Chaim Potok about two unlikely friends fromHasidic and an orthodox Jewish school at the end of WWII.
4. The Plague by Albert Camus. About living with and surviving an outbreak of the plague in Algiers.
Don’t forget mine! The BOM either takes place in an alternate-history timeline, or in the far future, like the Planet of the Apes.
Brad D: “Crossing the Indian and Pacific, or Indian and Atlantic oceans in one journey is quite a feat for groups from Jerusalem in 600 BC.”
Fortunately, they had a liahona to navigate by. I figure it must have worked like Capt. Jack Sparrow’s compass–always pointing to whatever he wants most.
Brian G
An excellent list of books. To say nothing of the dog is Fun and very wodehousian. But since you made mention of a plague, I would recommend Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Tonally it is 180 degrees from To say nothing of the dog (and I adore cats), but Doomsday Book is one of the best historical novels I have read.(and boo, the cat dies of a horrible disease)
And since I read shoddy scifi, perhaps the Book of Mormon takes place in another dimension where because of technobabble,technobabble, time is wibbly wobbly and peoples beliefs create reality.
I’m convinced JS made it up. Too many anachronisms, it’s not great writing, too much stuff just lifted directly out of the Bible (these are often the exact same stories), too many things that were important to 19th C Americans specifically (like justifying the white settler narrative). Aside from those points, I am always most entertained by the Malay theory, and others that are not on the American continents. But I honestly don’t care about this. It’s just not very interesting to me. Even when I was on my mission, I would encounter people who were intrigued by this or that theory; they were often the most educated people we met (who would talk to missionaries at least), but these flights of fancy always struck me as conspiracy theories and interesting only in the same way.
I just got back from French Polynesia, and our guide in Tahiti was pretty adamant that Polynesians, at least in the Society Islands, originated in Chile, migrating west from there. However, he seemed skeptical (or maybe it was another tourist?) about Asians crossing the Behring Strait. The guide pointed to foods and customs that Tahitians have in common with Chileans. For example, there is evidence that polynesians introduced chickens to South America. It’s also noteworthy that both Maori and Egyptians refer to one of their gods as Ra (both sun gods). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-polynesia/study-shows-ancient-contact-between-polynesian-and-south-american-peoples-idUSKBN2492EU
Coincidentally, I have been to the Thor Hyerdahl museum in Guimar, Tenerife which I found interesting (you can see a replica of the Ra II, a polynesian style ship he constructed and used in a long voyage, not as long as his Kon-Tiki voyage). Outside the museum, there are reconstructed “pyramids” you can walk around that Thor theorized were ancient, religious, and similar to Mesoamerican structures, providing evidence of shared technology between ancient Egypt and the New World. The exhibits show that the structures lined up with the solstice. Many locals scoffed and said “These are planting terraces. Locals have planted crops this way forever!” I found the locals more persuasive on this point, and subsequent finds point to these structures having been originally built in the 19th C: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramids_of_G%C3%BC%C3%ADmar
One more comment about seafaring. It is a difficult craft that is extremely risky and resulted in the deaths of a very high percentage of those who tried it in the past. It involves much more than just being able to build a sturdy vessel. It requires knowledge of food storage, fishing, food gathering, wind patterns, ocean patterns, astronomy, land sighting, docking, trading, military craft, etc. Such knowledge was acquired historically only by generations of trial and error by specific groups over centuries.
Consider the fact that the most advanced cultures of the early bronze age, Egypt and Mesopotamia, never developed a strong seafaring craft. Even with Egypt developing the ship, an enhanced version of the boat. Egyptian seacraft did not go much beyond the Nile and Eastern Mediterranean. Mesopotamians did not venture too far beyond the Persian Gulf. The Egyptians did not develop colonies throughout the Mediterranean, and the Sumerians and Akkadians did not build colonies throughout the Persian Gulf or Southern Arabia. At least nothing like Phoenician Carthage or Greek Marseilles. Only particular groups developed enough to be seafaring colonists who left widespread material and written traces of their adventures.
Ancient Israelites simply weren’t large seafarers. They had colonies throughout Ptolemaic and Seleucid Greece after the 3rd century BC, but that really seems to be the extent of their voyages. We have material and written evidence outside the Hebrew Bible that corroborates the existence of Jewish/Israelite communities in Mesopotamia and Upper Egypt as early as the 5th century BC. Interestingly, the Jewish community on Elephantine Island did not practice Judaism as we know it in the Torah, nor did they appear to be aware of the Torah. The Babylonian community did, however, develop their own Talmudic tradition (Babylonian Gemara).
The Lapita Culture (the ancestors of the Polynesians) developed their knowledge of seacraft over centuries. They understood the rhythms of the ocean swells and had an understanding of the map of the stars. That was how they navigated. But I know of no other culture who mastered the Pacific Ocean the way the Polynesians did. By 500 AD they managed to take their craft to the Indian Ocean all the way to Madagascar. By 900 AD they were in Hawaii. And they probably ventured to the Americas in 1200 AD, although they did not leave as strong of an imprint there as they did other places.
Still, given all we do know about the ancient Israelites and the select few cultures who once dominated the seas, I see no convincing evidence that Israelites were seafarers in 600 BC (let alone 2200 BC, the Jaredites being from then) or that they would have made their ways down to the southern Arabian Peninsula to launch sea expeditions.
So we’re talking theories here…plausible ideas based on general principles. I have a hard time with “it’s not real” being thrown around regarding religious texts when talking hypotheticals.
The Bible has had many of the world’s greatest scholars, historians, and religious leaders combing through it for thousands of years…Even if we give margin for the miraculous bits, it’s still loaded with anachronisms and things that don’t hold up to modern academic scrutiny…New Testament included.
—There were no Chaldeans on the planet when Abraham was supposedly roaming about.
—Mentions of ironwork in Genesis don’t make any more archaeological sense than mentions of steel in the BoM.
—The Romans never made people travel to their ancestral home for the census.
—The trial of Jesus doesn’t line up with Jewish legal practices of the time.
—The Book of Esther has no references to known historical events and is thought by many scholars to be a work of fiction.
—The Romans sent an entire battalion to arrest Jesus? Someone the Roman government would have considered a nuisance hippie? Not a chance.
—We argue about 8 references to horses in the BoM. There are camels all over the bible where they don’t belong…in Genesis, Abraham gets ~20 mentions of having camels, but domesticated camels didn’t show up to the region until at least 600 years later. (“but wait…couldn’t it just mean mules, or donkeys, or something else?!” …sound familiar?)
The difference with the BoM is that it’s recent enough for us to know about where it started, and civilization is now much better at keeping track of that sort of thing. Maybe another 4000 years will give future Mormons a pass on some of the historical funny business too.
So back to theories, and things we do know (or at least seem to have good evidence for):
—We’ve got Austronesians navigating oceans so well that they spread across ~50% of the watery side of Earth. All the way from Easter Island to Madagascar (the long way), and from Taiwan to New Zealand.
—Phoenicians had boat technology in 600 BC that could hypothetically make the trip and there’s evidence of voyages around Africa to Spain and France.
—We’ve got Philip Beale playing “Phoenician sailor” and accidentally ending up within spitting distance of Florida.
Now throw in those miraculous bits we ignored earlier (e.g. Nephi getting his ship blueprints direct from God along with a golden GPS ball). Combine them with the historical stuff, and sure…one family could have sailed away from Jerusalem in 600 BC using a Phoenician ship and ended up somewhere that’s now covered in jungle and/or dirt. How is this less believable than literally the entire story of Moses or Abraham?
The official LDS stance is that you can’t prove its historicity, but you also can’t disprove it…and here’s a friendly man named Ugo Perego to fight any geneticists out there. That’ll have to do for now for both believers and skeptics alike.
Don’t take all this the wrong way either – I’m no apologist, and I generally don’t interpret scriptures literally. Scripture is all about telling stories relevant to the people of a particular place or time to give a sense of spiritual meaning and moral guidance. So maybe there’s a lost Nephite city waiting to be discovered by some intrepid archaeologist. Maybe the BoM was written by JS with a target audience of 19th-century upstate New York…if so, he still did essentially the same thing as whoever wrote Genesis and the Book of Esther.
Either way, theories are still fun.
So we’re talking theories here…plausible ideas based on general principles. I have a hard time with “it’s not real” being thrown around regarding religious texts when talking hypotheticals.
The Bible has had many of the world’s greatest scholars, historians, and religious leaders combing through it for thousands of years…Even if we give margin for the miraculous bits, it’s still loaded with anachronisms and things that don’t hold up to modern academic scrutiny…New Testament included.
—There were no Chaldeans on the planet when Abraham was supposedly roaming about.
—Mentions of ironwork in Genesis don’t make any more archaeological sense than mentions of steel in the BoM.
—The Romans never made people travel to their ancestral home for the census.
—The trial of Jesus doesn’t line up with Jewish legal practices of the time.
—The Book of Esther has no references to known historical events and is thought by many scholars to be a work of fiction.
—The Romans sent an entire battalion to arrest Jesus? Someone the Roman government would have considered a nuisance hippie? Not a chance.
—We argue about the 8 references to horses in the Bom. There are camels all over the bible where they don’t belong…in Genesis, Abraham gets ~20 mentions of having camels, but domesticated camels didn’t show up to the region until at least 600 years later. (“but wait…couldn’t it just mean mules, or donkeys, or something else?” …sound familiar?)
The difference with the BoM is that it’s recent enough for us to know about where it started, and civilization is now much better at keeping track of that sort of thing. Maybe another 4000 years will give future Mormons a pass on some of the historical funny business.
So back to theories, and things we do know (or at least seem to have good evidence for):
—We’ve got Austronesians navigating oceans so well that they spread across ~50% of the watery side of Earth. All the way from Easter Island to Madagascar (the long way), and from Taiwan to New Zealand.
—Phoenicians had boat technology in 600 BC that could hypothetically make the trip and evidence of voyages around Africa to Spain and France.
—We’ve got Philip Beale playing “Phoenician sailor” and accidentally ending up within spitting distance of Florida.
Now throw in those miraculous bits we ignored earlier (e.g. Nephi getting his ship blueprints direct from God along with a golden GPS ball). Combine them with the historical stuff, and sure…one family could have sailed away from Jerusalem in 600 BC using a Phoenician ship and ended up somewhere that’s now covered in jungle and/or dirt. How is this less believable than literally the entire story of Moses or Abraham?
The official LDS stance is that you can’t prove its historicity, but you also can’t disprove it…and here’s a friendly man named Ugo Perego to fight any geneticists out there. That’ll have to do for now for believers and skeptics alike.
Don’t take all this the wrong way either – I’m no apologist, and I generally don’t interpret scriptures literally. Scripture is all about telling stories relevant to the people of a particular place or time to give a sense of spiritual meaning and moral guidance. So maybe there’s a lost Nephite city waiting to be discovered by some intrepid archaeologist. Maybe the BoM was written by JS with a target audience of 19th-century upstate New York…if so, he still did essentially the same thing as whoever wrote Genesis and the Book of Esther.
Either way, theories are fun.
Speaking of geographic inaccuracies, I made one myself: Nobody sails away from Jerusalem. I meant to type “One family from Jerusalem could have sailed away…”
Brad D
Thanks for the bit of maritime history. For most of human history (and prehistory) everyone stuck pretty much close to shore.
People have rowed across the Atlantic. Helps to know where the currents are. I really don’t think anyone who’s never rowed is going to successfully row. Let alone build a rowboat and know where to row. There’s a reason nautical charts were so valuable.
Since we don’t have a blueprint to Nephi’s ship, I find it logical to conclude he had a boiler.
The Pirate Priest
I consider the bible to be mostly fiction. Very few consider Job historical, yet the book is consider one of the great works of ancient times.
People argue when parts of the bible were written and complied based on things like camels.(and who the target audience was) It may be fiction but there is still a Egypt, still a Babylon, still a Jerusalem and still a Roman Empire whose physical remains can be found over a million square miles.
I think theories are fun, because humans are storytellers (exempting the AMPTP) The Cosmic Hunt is thought to be over 15,000 years old. And some make the case for the Seven Sisters to be over !00,000.
Pirate Priest: “The Romans sent an entire battalion to arrest Jesus? Someone the Roman government would have considered a nuisance hippie?”
Okay, “battalion” is probably hyperbole, but Jesus was more than a “nuisance hippie.” He was executed for rebellion against Rome. Sure, Christian tradition insists that this was all a big misunderstanding, but Jesus led a band of possibly-armed followers (including at least one Zealot), proclaimed himself to be some kind of king (the Triumphal Entry), attracted crowds (always dangerous in those days), and–if the gospels are to be believed–attacked money-changers with a whip. (What would happen to me if *I* attacked bank tellers? What *should* happen?) Also, all this was happening during Passover, always a volatile time (like the Hajj in Mecca). You’d better believe Pilate would take this seriously.
Pirate Priest: to your lack of evidence for Bible stuff, I will add something I’ve mentioned before. Throughout Egypt, there is exactly one mention of any captives that could possibly have been Israelites, and that evidence is about on par with NHM evidence for the BOM in the Sinai peninsula, so your point is well taken. The mention I refer to is on the Merneptah Stele in the Cairo museum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele
As to Jesus’ existence, there is also not a whole lot of it out there aside from the endurance of the Christian religion and its accompanying texts. But archaeological stuff? Nobody has found Jesus’ diary yet, and contemporary documents don’t contain any evidence of his life.
Like so many others here, I think that Joseph made it up, so I find spending any time trying to place the stories into some real world setting puzzling. On the other hand, I do think wrestling with the religious ideas and characters that Joseph created worthwhile. Why does Joseph try to justify murder (Nephi killing Laban) , but then makes some of his characters all lay down their arms and allow themselves to be slaughtered? It’s easy to see how much Joseph loved warrior/generals and his beliefs that they made great leaders, but why did he also value the Jacobs of the world? And make his favorite general Moroni make an terrible blunder with calling out Paharon? While a lot of the writing is bad, some of the situations are quite interesting and worth using as moral dilemma to discuss ethics, in the same way that various OT stories are. It would be interesting to have a writing contest where writers unfamiliar with the BoM were given some of the same situations to see alternatives plots and characters they might write.
Pirate Priest, I often hear the argument, “well, the Bible has anachronisms too and can’t be proven historical either” argument either in defense of Book of Mormon historicity or as a minimization towards the problems of BOM historicity. A few simple remarks in refutation of such an argument:
1) The geographical setting of the Bible is well established and accepted. Such cannot be said for the Book of Mormon.
2) Many of the events described in the Bible that affected the Israelites, such as the Assyrian siege on Jerusalem, Babylonian Captivity, reign of King David, Cyrus the Great allowing the Jews to return, can be ascertained and corroborated from overwhelming non-Biblical archaeological and written evidence. No surrounding events described in the Book of Mormon can be ascertained by external evidence as having occurred in the Americas.
3) The Bible reflects a combination of bronze age and iron age cultural knowledge of Israelites. No one disputes that. By contrast, it has not been established that the Book of Mormon is a reflection of pre-Columbian American cultural knowledge anywhere in the Americas.
4) Biblical anachronisms are post-exilic (516 BC-70 AD) impositions on and insertions into a pre-exilic tradition. They are phenomena that eventually would appear in Judea and Samaria eventually by at least Greek, Hasmonean, and Roman periods, if not earlier. Contrast this with the Book of Mormon anachronisms which describe plants, animals, and inventions which have never been found in the pre-Columbian Americas.
5) The editors and finalizers of the Biblical Hebrew text (sometime between 450 and 140 BC) clearly consulted earlier written and oral tradition passed down over generations to construct the Hebrew Bible. The fact that it was written in Hebrew, which was not in spoken usage in the post-exilic period, is a testament to the Bible stories’ pre-exilic origins. There is zero evidence that any oral or written tradition existed in the Americas existed before Joseph Smith among the Native American populations that would have informed the Book of Mormon text.
6) In sum, it doesn’t matter whether the Bible stories are true or not. The framework for the emergence of those stories has deep ancient origins and is historical. The major question about the Book of Mormon’s historicity isn’t so much over whether or not the stories are true, but whether the actual framework for the construction of those stories is historical. Critics have never cared about the historicity of Ammon chopping off Lamanite arms or the myriad miraculous stories in it. Scholars value all sorts of ancient literature with fantastic, miraculous stories without getting tripped up on the question of whether or not those stories actually happened. The stories’ historical accuracy is beyond the point. It is the framework within which those stories were constructed that matters. The archaeological evidence for the historical framework of the Bible is overwhelming. The same cannot be said at all for the Book of Mormon.
@Zla’od: I was definitely using a bit of hyperbole myself 🙂. But yeah, the Roman equivalent of a battalion was like 420 soldiers.
@Angela: That’s a good one too. If the Israelites did actually come out of Egypt, it couldn’t have happened until like 13th century BC based on any evidence we can find.
As for Jesus, I read a scholar who bluntly said something like, “peasants don’t usually leave an archaeological trail.” That’s not meant as blasphemy or to diminish Jesus’s significance in any way, but emphasizes how difficult archaeology can be…and this is possibly the single most influential figure in human history. To me this makes Jesus’s lasting impact on humanity even more incredible.
A lot of religious stories were never intended to be literal historical records – they’re intentionally interwoven with symbolism and multiple layers of meaning. Does this make them less powerful?
Objective scientific reasoning is critically important. So are passion, imagination, and wonder. These things aren’t antithetical to each other – they’re two sides of the same coin. Humanity is diminished without both.
This is why I love exploring these theories – it’s the magical space between where both sides can come out to play.
Fairly off topic. Angela C., Sea People by Christina Thompson is an absolutely fascinating look at the Polynesian settlement of the Pacific, as well as modern attempts to recreate their skills.
We limit our imaginations too much with all current theories of Book of Mormon geography, I think. All of these theories seem wrong to me, and thus I don’t find it surprising (though I do find it sad) that many people now think that Joseph just made it up.
Rather than think that something is wrong or false about Joseph, I would rather believe that something is wrong with our understanding of The Book of Mormon, including our assumptions about where the Promised Land really is.
While other geographical theories that take the Promised Land out of America are a step in the right direction, they don’t go far enough in my view. Rather, my own view is that the Promised Land is nowhere that is currently on this Earth. Thus, when the Lehites (and the Jaredites before them) sail across Many Waters to a new land that has been kept separate from all other nations, they are really describing ‘sailing’ away in outer space and away from this Earth entirely, landing on a world that remains separated and hidden from our knowledge today.
The implications for many other things in the Book of Mormon if you accept this view are fairly significant, obviously, and kind of fun to explore for those disenchanted with traditional interpretations.