I've been in or around Mormonism my whole life. Mormons have so much to offer the world. My dear friend Bob Langston, with whom I share a friendship of 45 years, is a really nice guy, a really sensible guy and a really Mormon guy. "If the church were proven false, I would live my life by these principles anyway," Bob told me. There you go!
About
2007 I went to some summer classes at BYU in Provo, Utah. I was walking off of campus, saw a sign for the department of archaeology, and walked in on impulse. At the desk I found
three bright-looking, good-looking people under 35 who told me they were graduate students of that department. It was a late afternoon in August, so no secretaries, no
profs, just three bright young minds of the next generation. “What,”
I asked them, “can we say about the Book of Mormon and
archaeology?” They glanced at each other and the one in the middle said, “We
haven't found archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon peoples.”
“Wow,”
I said, pausing to look at him and the other two. They nodded
agreement.
It's
that simple, they said. None. Well, archaeology is always finding new things and it just hasn't found the B
of M yet.
One day I was doing that dangerous thing--thinking--and thought, "Book of Mormon author/compiler Moroni is translated by Joseph Smith as saying: This is a record--a book--running hundreds of pages, from ancient America. If that's really where it came from, why aren't there any others?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know of any other book-like text from ancient America. Well, the Popol Vuh might qualify, but later for that. If it qualifies, then we have the question, how can a civilization produce only two books? That's about the same as one, at least found so far? Aren't the chances of that zero? You got a people that could write well for more than 1000 years, and we've only found one or two of their books? So B of M is an American Beowulf? I also suspect we can prove by quick looking that the B of Mormon and the Popol Vuh are from different peoples.
Joseph Smith said he possessed, on loan from the non-winged angel Moroni, many other metallic-plate engravings--many other books--that chronicled the civilization and its belief, or lack of it, in God, and the wonders God had worked among them. But these "golden plates" were taken back by Moroni and haven't been found, either. Now note that before he gave them back, he showed them to a dozen other men who wrote an affidavit that they had seen and handled them. Pretty sobering list of witnesses, but from only about three families. Not the ideal range of witnesses to an implausible thing.
Joseph Smith said he possessed, on loan from the non-winged angel Moroni, many other metallic-plate engravings--many other books--that chronicled the civilization and its belief, or lack of it, in God, and the wonders God had worked among them. But these "golden plates" were taken back by Moroni and haven't been found, either. Now note that before he gave them back, he showed them to a dozen other men who wrote an affidavit that they had seen and handled them. Pretty sobering list of witnesses, but from only about three families. Not the ideal range of witnesses to an implausible thing.
Mark
Twain in Roughing
It gives
a literary man's 19th-century reaction to the B of M:
he calls it chloroform in print. He's interested in different things than I am, for I find it endlessly fascinating from various angles.
The Book of Mormon declares itself to be
an ancient sacred history of peoples migrated from the Old World, in
at least three separate crossings and settlings, starting over 2000 years before Christ. It tells us of 2600 years of continuous occupation by people
who had scholars and writers and prophets. This is a longer period
of literary history than the one stretching from Christ and Cesear to
the present, and so far it's only cranked out the two books?.
Joseph found the plates in the Finger Lake district of Upstate New York. What if any evidence of writing and
manuscripts before Columbus do we have within, oh, 1000 miles of
the Hill Cumorah in upstate NY? I'll have to check but I'll snitch to you ahead of time that it's a short list. The Book of Mormon peoples
had writing and manuscripts from about 4000 years ago to 1600 years
ago; Joseph and a dozen others saw piles of metallic records. The B. of M. ancients also had a
copy of what would have amounted to the Old Testament as it existed
around 600 BC, and they brought that copy to the Americas. Anybody fish out any fragments of Exodus or Isaiah in Meso-American digging? Not even one? Hmmmm.
Wouldn't this grand literary
tradition have shown us hundreds of evidences of writing by now?
Instead we have evidences of many people who do not have writing from
this period in the Americas--tribe after tribe after tribe, and a few people who had a type of
writing unrelated to that of Moroni and his sacred book.
Then
you have the issue that the horse, cow, elephant, and sheep were with these Boof--that was a typo, but I like the sound of "Boof of Mormon"--Book of Mormon peoples. Once again, no evidence of these animals in the Americas between 3000 BC and arrival of Columbus.
Final Thought: If one ancient Native American can write a book, where is the evidence of that level of literacy over the centuries? A Mormon prophet has called the Book of Mormon, something like "the most accurate book ever written?" Marilyn Arnold, an ex-BYU English professor, a sensitive and refined thinker, says it has given her educated mind and believing heart more than any other book possibly could. Why can't research produce any other similar text from the same cultural sources?
I think this is a question Mormons have to answer to keep any credibility for their sacred Book as arising from ancient America. I have to say on this--put up or shut up. They won't, but it's a solid point.
I think this is a question Mormons have to answer to keep any credibility for their sacred Book as arising from ancient America. I have to say on this--put up or shut up. They won't, but it's a solid point.
