http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=975
The Book of Mormon and the Ancient Evidence
Mormonism
began in 1820, when Joseph Smith, Jr. purportedly received a vision of
two heavenly beings claiming that all churches had become corrupted and
that their creeds were abominations. Smith’s divinely ordained duty was
to restore the one true church. He claimed three years later an angel,
named Moroni, paid him a visit, showing him the location of gold plates
containing the true, eternal gospel. Written in “reformed Egyptian”
hieroglyphs, this golden book contained the
Book of Mormon,
which Smith translated with a pair of magic spectacles. Seven years
later in 1830, the Mormon church became a recognized entity for the
first time.
The Mormons are a growing group which many people have labeled a
“Christian denomination.” This is the longstanding position of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), and continues to be
promoted today (Hickenbotham, 1995, p. 5). Unfortunately, Mormonism
bears the hallmarks of a manmade religion, one of which is the
reinvention and reinterpretation of an existing religion. Mormonism
takes Christianity and reinterprets it. Mormonism’s divergences from
true Christianity include: Jesus being Lucifer’s spiritual brother, the
denial of the Trinity, and the belief that the faithful will one day
become gods. The God of Mormonism is not the one true god of the
Universe, but merely one god among many.
Smith once called the
Book of Mormon “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion” (Smith, 1902, 4:461). In the introduction of the
Book of Mormon,
Smith states that it is “the record of God’s dealings with the ancient
inhabitants of the Americas,” which also contains “the fullness of the
everlasting gospel.” Any religion centered on a scriptural foundation
stands or falls on the accuracy of its sacred text. While the Bible has a
wealth of evidence supporting its historical, chronological, and
geographical accuracy, the
Book of Mormon has been heavily criticized for its inaccuracies. Is the
Book of Mormon divine revelation, or is it simply the invention of a gifted storyteller?
One of the problems that plagues the Mormon scriptures is the
anachronistic portrayal of various animals in the New World. The most
problematic is the portrayal of horses in the Americas in the
Book of Mormon,
where they appear frequently prior to the age of exploration (1 Nephi
18:25, et al.). Anthropologists are in near-universal agreement that
horses had become extinct in the Americas until European explorers
reintroduced them to the continent. Scientists have found evidence of
horses in the Americas prior to and after the period of time covered by
the
Book of Mormon, but not during. In addition to a lack of
fossil evidence, Bruce MacFaden says, "Their extinction is…suggested by
the fact that no horses are known to have been depicted in pre-Columbian
art…. Horses were reintroduced into the New World by the Spanish
explorers during the sixteenth century" (MacFaden, 1992, p. 3). Janey
Dohner notes that the horse was reintroduced to North America by
Columbus on his second voyage, while Hernando de Soto reintroduced them
to South America in 1539 (Dohner, 2001, p. 313).
Mormon author Diane Wirth dismisses this criticism and points to what
she considers evidence of the presence of horses, although her best
examples consist of a handful of poorly executed relief carvings and
petroglyphs (Wirth, 1986, pp. 52-55). Wirth defends her point by drawing
a parallel between the lack of evidence, particularly bone evidence, of
horses in the Americas with the lack of evidence of lions in Palestine.
She notes: “Today there are no so-called archaeological remains of
lions in the land of Israel. Apparently not a bone has been left.
Therefore, a lack of skeletal remains of an animal in a particular area
does not necessarily mean that the animal was never there” (p. 56).
Wirth is correct. If one were to rely purely on skeletal evidence, the
existence of lions in Palestine would be nearly impossible to prove. But
archaeologists have also discovered numerous reliefs depicting kings
hunting lions, lion-shaped artifacts, and numerous references to lions
in ancient texts. There is a wealth of evidence attesting to the
existence of lions in ancient Israel. There is absolutely no parallel
for the existence of horses in America prior to European exploration.
This is not to say that the
Book of Mormon is wrong because of a
lack of evidence--which would be an argument from silence. Rather, it
is simply to note that there is an inexplicable lack of evidence where
it would be
reasonably expected.
The lack of evidence of horses has prompted a shift in tactics on the
part of Mormon apologists, who claim that the settlers in the New World
would have called some other animal a “horse,” most likely the tapir.
Tapirs have toes rather than hoofs and are pig-like in appearance,
including a short, thick neck and stubby tail. They are also smaller
than horses. It is highly unlikely that one could have been mistaken for
the other--and if the
Book of Mormon was inspired, such mistakes would not have been made.
Steel was also unknown in the New World prior to the arrival of European explorers, yet the
Book of Mormon
mentions the use of both iron and steel (2 Nephi 5:15; Ether 7:9). A
particularly noteworthy reference concerns a military leader named
Laban, who is described as having a steel sword with a gold hilt (1
Nephi 4:9). While New World peoples did have metallurgy, it lagged
behind the technological developments in the ancient Near East. Studying
evidence from South America, Purdue University archaeologist Kevin J.
Vaughn notes: “Even though ancient Andean people smelted some metals,
such as copper, they never smelted iron like they did in the Old
World.... Metals were used for a variety of tools in the Old World, such
as weapons, while in the Americas, metals were used as prestige goods
for the wealthy elite” (Purdue University, 2008). People in the New
World did make use of copper and precious metals like gold and silver,
but scientists believe ironworking did not emerge until about A.D. 800.
Moroni supposedly showed Smith the location of gold plates, upon which were written the text of the
Book of Mormon.
Smith claimed it was written in “Reformed Egyptian.” The only problem
here is that this language does not exist. “Reformed Egyptian” is not a
language found in the ancient world. Ancient Egyptian had numerous
dialects (Archaic, Old, Middle, Late, Demotic, and Coptic), but a
“reformed” dialect was not one of them. Smith may have chosen Egyptian
as his text because he was unaware that French scholar Jean Francois
Champollion had recently deciphered the language (the first translation
of the Rosetta Stone was not published until 1822). Until that time,
hieroglyphs were mysterious and unknown. Although it is speculative to
say, Smith may have thought that the language was unreadable and would
remain so, and therefore believed his grand story would never be proven
false.
Modern Egyptology has discredited Mormon scriptures such as the
Book of Abraham,
which depicts the patriarch’s journey to Egypt. His travels include
nearly being sacrificed by an evil priest and later being honored by the
pharaoh. The book was published with three facsimiles taken from an
ancient papyrus, which was lost. Far from being inspired scripture, the
Book of Abraham
was shown to be a fraud years later when the papyrus was rediscovered.
The book is based on a funerary papyrus depicting several scenes from
the Egyptian
Book of the Dead. In Facsimiles Nos. 1 and 3,
Smith misidentifies virtually everything depicted in these scenes,
demonstrating his attempts were nothing more than uneducated guesswork.
He had virtually no familiarity with Hebrew or Egyptian names, and
seemed to have made up names that sounded sufficiently biblical to be
believable (although many of his spellings are impossible in biblical
Hebrew, which exposes them as inventions as well). He guessed at the
names of the pagan deities, getting every one of them incorrect. For
instance, in Facsimile 1 he misidentified the deities on the canopic
jars (which held the internal organs of the deceased) in the scene (from
left to right) as Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, and Korash. The gods
should have been identified as Qebesenuef, Duamutef, Hapi, and Imseti.
It is not likely that he even knew that the objects depicted were
canopic jars. He likely thought of them as idols, since he misidentified
the scene as sacrificial rather than funerary in nature.
Why do so many Mormons maintain belief in these scriptures when they
are so obviously false? As Charles Larson notes in his book
…By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri,
“[M]any Mormons are relatively uninformed of any controversy concerning
the validity of the Book of Abraham; or if they become aware
controversy exists, will tend to fall back on the trust they have in
their system, and avoid further investigation” (Larsen, 1985, p. 161).
The real problem is that the Mormon faith stresses belief even in the
face of contradictory evidence. Some have advised their fellow Mormons
to simply fall back on their faith. This is a key part of the Mormon
belief system: believe in the Mormon scriptures and you will know them
to be true–the sheep will recognize the voice of the shepherd. [NOTE: Of
course, such an anti-logic stance contradicts the nature of God; see
Miller, 2011.]
In addition to linguistic and historical evidence, the sciences have
not been kind to Mormon beliefs. From the field of archaeology, nothing
in the
Book of Mormon has ever been discovered, though Smith
painted a picture of vast civilizations with major urban centers and
populations ranging in the millions (the Jaredites are a people group
who lost two million soldiers in one war). At one point, some members of
the LDS church claimed that the Smithsonian Institute had used the
Book of Mormon
as a scientific guide for locating archaeological sites. The
Smithsonian adamantly denied this was the case in 1986. The National
Geographic Society did the same in 1982. Similar claims issued by the
LDS church prompted Mormon anthropologist Dee Green to say, “The first
myth we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists,”
even conceding that 20 years of research “left us empty-handed” (Green,
1969, pp. 77-78).
Another area of concern is the origin story of the Native American
Indians, who are claimed to be descendants of the Lamanites. According
to Mormon doctrine, these Jewish migrants supposedly traveled to the
Americas in ancient times. These travelers “are the principal ancestors
of the American Indians,” according to the introduction to the
Book of Mormon. In an essay titled, “Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy, and Genetics,” anthropologist Thomas Murphy challenges this idea, stating:
So far, DNA research lends no support to the traditional Mormon
beliefs about the origins of Native Americans. Instead, genetic data
have confirmed that migrations from Asia are the primary source of
American Indian origins. This research has substantiated
already-existing archaeological, cultural, linguistic, and biological
evidence (Murphy, 2002, p. 48).
Murphy was nearly excommunicated in 2003 by the president of the
Lynwood LDS Stake for his work [NOTE: a stake is the rough equivalent of
a diocese in the Roman Catholic Church.] Only popular support for
Murphy prevented Latimer from following through with the excommunication
(Kennedy, 2003). Latimer postponed the disciplinary hearing
indefinitely, in part, for fear of negative publicity.
Murphy is not alone. Two Mormon biologists, D. Jeffrey Meldrum and
Trent D. Stephens of Idaho State University, agree with Murphy’s
conclusions. In the
Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, both men agreed in the article “Who are the Children of Lehi?” that
the data accumulated to date indicate that 99.6 percent of Native
American genetic markers studied so far exhibit Siberian connections….
There has been little if any evidence seriously considered by the
mainstream, scientific community that would indicate a Middle East
origin, or any other source of origin, for the majority of contemporary
Native Americans (Meldrum and Stephens, 2003, p. 41).
In an issue of
Dialogue, the oldest independent journal for
Mormon studies (that is, not owned or operated by the LDS Church), Yale
anthropologist Michael D. Coe, who specializes in pre-Columbian
Mesoamerica studies, summarizes some of the most troubling issues:
There is an inherent improbability in specific items that are
mentioned in the Book of Mormon as having been brought to the New World
by Jaredites and/or Nephites. Among these are the horse...the chariot,
wheat, barley, and metallurgy (true metallurgy based upon smelting and
casting being no earlier in Mesoamerica than about 800 A.D.). The
picture of this hemisphere between 2,000 B.C. and A.D. 421 presented in
the book has little to do with the early Indian cultures as we know
them, in spite of much wishful thinking.
There is also little doubt in the minds of non-Mormon scholars that
Joseph Smith had no ability whatsoever to read “Reformed Egyptian” or
any other kind of hieroglyphs. The papyri translated as the Book of
Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price are, in the opinion of qualified
Egyptologists, a series of fragments of the Egyptian “Book of the Dead,”
something which Smith could not have known since Champollion’s
decipherment of the Egyptian script had not yet been published (Coe,
1973, p. 42).
These are just a few problems besetting the Mormon church. If the
Book of Mormon
is the “most correct” book ever written, why does it contain so many
mistakes? Why so many contradictions with history, archaeology, and
ancient languages? Scientists, historians, archaeologists, and linguists
have exposed the Mormon scriptures as the invention of a marvelously
fertile imagination. So marvelous, in fact, that it has taken a century
and a half to prove it conclusively false. Convincing though it was to
Smith’s contemporaries, this grand old story has proven to be no match
for scientific investigation. [For additional analysis of the
Book of Mormon, see Miller, 2009.]
REFERENCES
Coe, Michael D. (1973), “Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View,”
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 8[2]:40-48, Summer.
Dohner, Janet Vorwald (2001),
The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Green, Dee F. (1969), “Book of Mormon Archaeology: The Myths and the Alternatives,”
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 8[2]:77-78, Summer.
Hickenbotham, Michael W. (1995),
Answering Challenging Mormon Questions (Bountiful, UT: Horizons).
Kennedy, John W. (2003), “Mormon Scholar Under Fire,”
Christianity Today, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/march/14.24.html.
Larsen, Charles M. (1985),
…By his Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri (Grand Rapids, MI: Institute for Religious Research).
MacFaden, Bruce J. (1992),
Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Meldrum, D. Jeffrey and Trent D. Stephens (2003), “Who are the Children of Lehi?”
Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 12[1]:38-51.
Miller, Dave (2009), "Is
The Book of Mormon From God? Parts I and II,"
Reason & Revelation, 29[9]:66-71,73-79, http://www.apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=617.
Miller, Dave (2011), "Is Christianity Logical? (Part I),"
Reason & Revelation, 31[6]:50-59, http://www.apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=977.
Murphy, Thomas W. (2002), “Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy, and Genetics” in
American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, ed. Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books), pp. 47-77.
Purdue University (2008), “Archaeologist ‘Strikes Gold’ with Finds of
Ancient Nasca Iron Ore Mine in Peru,” February 3,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080129125405.htm.
Smith, Joseph, Jr. (1902),
History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B.H. Roberts (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), second edition.
Wirth, Diane E. (1986),
A Challenge to the Critics: Scholarly Evidences of the Book of Mormon (Bountiful, UT: Horizons).
