The Book of Mormon: Ancient and True, or Just "Truthy" Fiction?
by Jeff Lindsay
The
Book of Mormon has long been a controversial book to the world, but
we must also recognize that it is increasingly controversial within
the Church.
The
debate over its origins — is it an authentic ancient document
or modern fiction concocted by Joseph Smith? — occurs not just
between Mormons and non-Mormons, or between the faithful and those
losing their faith, but has also extended among the ranks of those
who consider themselves faithful Mormons.
There
are some who respect the Book of Mormon yet feel it is not derived
from an ancient text but somehow stems from Joseph Smith's mind and
his environment. That may seem bizarre to many faithful Mormons, but
especially among academics, there are strong pressures to humanize
the roots of our religion and the "keystone" thereof,
seeing such things from a purely naturalistic perspective.
However
inspiring and "truthy" the Book of Mormon may be, from that
perspective it must ultimately be fiction. It is a perspective I
reject and find inconsistent with my personal experience and with
abundant evidence, beginning with the witnesses of the gold plates
and the extensive evidences from the text itself and beyond.
But
I feel it is vital to understand the debate if only to avoid being
blind-sided and caught off guard when one finds occasional fellow
Mormons teaching something quite surprising.
Two
recent publications give insights into the ongoing debate over the
origins of the Book of Mormon. One of these comes from the Mormon Interpreter,
the publication edited by Daniel Peterson that is a leading source
for scholarly investigation into LDS issues pertaining to our
scriptures.
In
contrast comes a surprising article from BYU's Maxwell Institute,
once the banner carrier for LDS apologetics, which has gone through
significant shape-shifting since casting out Dr. Peterson and
distancing itself from apologetics.
The
first article is "What
Command Syntax Tells Us About Book of Mormon Authorship"
by Stanford Carmack in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture
13 (2015): 175-217. This is a highly technical and challenging
article, but one that adds important new evidence to previous recent
scholarly observations showing that the English language dictated by
Joseph Smith during the translation of the Book of Mormon was not
simply derived from the language of the King James Bible nor the
English of Joseph's day.
Rather,
there is a compelling case that the translation was somehow given in
language predating the KJV by roughly a century or more. I mentioned
this in my previous Nauvoo Times
post, "The
Debate Over Book of Mormon Translation: Loose or Tight?"
Brother
Carmack's latest contribution looks at the complex ways in which the
verb "command" is used in the Book of Mormon, and multiple
issues point to usage patterns that are surprisingly close to English
around 1500, and significantly different from the statistical
patterns of the KJV.
However
this was done and why, it severely undercuts any theory that relies
on Joseph Smith as the source of the translation. Carmack offers
plausible reasons why these long-unnoticed characteristics of the
original English point to a process outside of Joseph's abilities —
in other words, evidence for detailed divine intervention in at least
some aspects of the translation.
The
Maxwell Institute, on the other hand, has just published a
controversial article from an LDS scholar who apparently embraces
Mormonism but appears to be casting at least some doubt on the
historicity of the Book of Mormon.
Dr.
Park, an associate editor of the Maxwell Institute’s Mormon Studies Review
(the successor of the FARMS Review that Dr. Peterson edited from 1988 through June 2012) reviews
David F. Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America
(2011), and Eran Shalev, American Zion: The Old Testament as a Political Text from the Revolution to
the Civil War (2013).
In
his essay, Dr. Park appears to endorse the notion that the Book of
Mormon is a product of Joseph Smith's environment and not a truly
unique and miraculous book, as would seem to be required for any
ancient New World text translated by divine power.
He
approvingly observes that the academic works he reviews help to "chop
away at Mormonism’s distinctive message” and shed the
“shackles” of “Mormon historiography’s
exclusive nature.”
For
a publication coming from BYU's Maxwell Institute, this is
controversial material worthy of debate and response.
Daniel
Peterson briefly summarizes the controversy and challenges Park in
his LDS blog at Patheos in the post, "Recovering,
at long last, from the plague of Mormon exceptionalism."
The comments there help reflect the depth of the controversy and the
divide that can occur among LDS thinkers on both sides of the debate.
What
I'd like to call attention to is the issue of the language of the
Book of Mormon translation, which is an issue raised in Shalev's book
and in Park's review. Here is an excerpt from Park, making reference
to Shalev:
The
book’s third chapter attempts to, as announced in its title,
chart the “cultural origins of the Book of Mormon.” More
particularly, the chapter examines the growth of what Shalev calls
“pseudobiblical literature,” which used Elizabethan
English and a biblical message in order to add a divine grounding to
the nation’s message.
During
the early republic, Shalev explains, a preponderance of texts sought
to imitate the Bible’s language and message while validating
America’s destiny and purpose.
“By
imposing the Bible and its intellectual and cultural landscapes on
America,” American Zion explains, “those texts
placed the United States in a biblical time and frame, describing the
new nation and its history as occurring in a distant, revered, and
mythic dimension” (p. 100). These texts sought to collapse the
distance between past and present — making both the Israelite
story relevant as well as the ancient language accessible.
This
republicanization of the Bible possessed significant implications for
American political culture. Beyond merely expanding their historical
consciousness and placing America within an epic narrative of divine
progress, the Old Testament added a pretext for such actions as those
supposedly provoked by manifest destiny.
Ironically,
the Book of Mormon appeared after the apex of this literary
tradition. By the time Joseph Smith’s scriptural record was
published, texts written in the Elizabethan style were on the
decline, and most works were presented in a more modern, democratic
style.
On
the one hand, this made the Book of Mormon the climax of the
pseudobiblical tradition; on the other hand, the book acts as
something of a puzzle.
Shalev
writes that the text “has been able to survive and flourish for
almost two centuries not because, but in spite of, the literary
ecology of the mid-nineteenth century and after” (p. 104).
While
this may be true — and Shalev is persuasive in showing how the
Book of Mormon appeared at the most opportune time to take advantage
of its linguistic flair — his framework overlooks the continued
potential for creating a sacred time and message through the use of
archaic language.
Not
only did other religious texts replicate King James verbiage
throughout the nineteenth century, but so did varied authors like the
antislavery writer James Branagan, who used antiquated language in
order to provoke careful readings of his political pamphlets.
Yet
despite this potential oversight, Shalev’s use of the
linguistic environment in order to contextualize the Book of Mormon
is an underexplored angle that adds much to our understanding of the
text.
Shalev
is at his best when comparing the Book of Mormon to other
pseudobiblical texts from the period, such as “The First Book
of Chronicles, Chapter the 5th,” which was published in South
Carolina’s Investigator only a few years before the Book of
Mormon, as well as “A Fragment of the Prophecy of Tobias,”
published serially in the American Mercury.
The
latter text is especially fascinating for Book of Mormon scholars, as
the editor claims to have found this work that was hidden away in
past centuries and that required a designated translator to reveal
its important meaning for an American audience.
These
contemporary accounts are not meant to serve as potential sources for
the Book of Mormon’s narrative — indeed, Shalev admits
such an endeavor would be impossible — but they reaffirm the
important lesson that the Book of Mormon is best seen as one of many
examples that embody the same cultural strains and that its
importance for American intellectual historians is best seen as part
of a tapestry of scriptural voices that speak to a culture’s
anxieties, hopes, and fears….
Shalev’s
book offers a new context and asks new questions concerning the Book
of Mormon’s linguistic and political context — issues
that will certainly be taken up by future scholars
The
Elizabethan language of the Book of Mormon is widely assumed by
critics, non-LDS scholars, and some LDS people as evidence of Joseph
Smith's authorship of the text, while those believing in the
authenticity of the book have often defended that language as a
reasonable stylistic choice for the divinely aided translation.
What
is interesting now is that this entire debate may have been based on
a faulty assumption, the assumption that the language Joseph dictated
is KJV Elizabethan.
The
recent work of Carmack, building on Royal Skousen's detailed analysis
of the original text of the Book of Mormon, reveals a surprise that
may turn the tables on the critics and some scholars: it isn't
Elizabethan dating to the 1600s, but Early Modern English from a
century or so before.
Why
would the translation of the Book of Mormon somehow be dialed into an
earlier version of English than that which Joseph knew from the KJV?
I asked this question of Brother Carmack in the comments section at
the Mormon Interpreter, and obtained this interesting response:
The
Book of Mormon contains old, distinctive syntax that is nevertheless
plain to the understanding. In view of Moses 1:39, the Lord wants us
to take the Book of Mormon seriously. Many have begun to doubt the
historicity of the book in part because they have decided that Joseph
Smith is the author of the English-language text.
Ample
syntactic evidence tells us that he could not have been the author. I
am confident that the Lord knew that we would eventually find this
out, and that we would learn about it at a time when we had a strong
need for solid empirical evidence that the book was divinely
translated, which points ineluctably to historicity.
Based
on the distressing turn of events I see at the Maxwell Institute, I'd
say this new evidence about the non-KJV origins of Book of Mormon
English may be coming just in time. The timing, in fact, may be
rather providential.
One
thing I especially agree with in Park's essay and in Carmack's
comments is the need for further scholarship in this area. It is a
puzzling but intriguing vein that needs to be mined much more deeply
using the tools and knowledge we now have that simply was not
available a few years ago.
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.