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The Dictated Text of the Book of Mormon: A Possible Test to Distinguish Early Modern English from New England Dialect

The Dictated Text of the Book of Mormon: A Possible Test to Distinguish Early Modern English from New England Dialect

Executive Summary

I remain impressed with the detailed, data-rich work of Stanford Carmack and Royal Skousen regarding Early Modern English (EModE) influence in the original text of the Book of Mormon. However, I’ve wondered if English dialects that Joseph knew and spoke could account for a significant portion of the observed EModE elements in the BOM. In exploring this issue, I have found a study on the use of the verb “be” in New England dialect showing characteristic non-standard forms that evolved after the EModE among immigrants in the United States. The article is “Invariant Be In New England Folk Speech: Colonial And Postcolonial Evidence” by Adrian Pablé and RadosÅ‚aw Dylewski, American Speech, Vol. 82, No. 2 (2007)151-184 (a full text PDF is available). This suggested a test to consider: Does the original text of the BOM use New England-style patterns of the verb be that distinguishes it from EModE, or are the patterns consistent with Carmack and Skousen’s work?

Given that Joseph Smith lived in New England (Vermont) until age 8 and was raised by New England parents from Vermont and New Hampshire, a fair assumption about his personal dialect is that it was strongly influenced by New England dialects.

My analysis is not yet complete, and I would appreciate input from competent linguists (including Stanford Carmack if time permits!), but so far, after examining every occurrence of be in the Book of Mormon and looking for usages relevant to Pablé and Dylewski’s study, the relevant instances of invariant be appear to be consistent with EModE and do not point to uniquely New England influence.

Note: To best understand the Book of Mormon text as dictated by Joseph Smith, it is vital to use Royal Skousen’s The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), hereafter The Earliest Text.

Background

Much of the non-standard, awkward grammar in the Book of Mormon as dictated by Joseph turns out to be characteristic of Early Modern English (EModE) several decades before the King James Bible was written. This puzzling discovery was first made by Dr. Royal Skousen, the man whose lifetime of work in pursuing the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project has resulted in the Earliest Text of the Book of Mormon, giving us the arguably best available estimate of what Joseph dictated to his scribes.

EModE can be said to begin around 1470 and to extend to perhaps 1670 or so. The KJV, first published in 1611, fits squarely in this period, yet has some distinct differences from the EModE of earlier decades. Finding EModE elements that pre-date KJV English or that do not occur in the KJV was not driven by an apologetic agenda, but was a completely counterintuitive and controversial find that was simply driven by the data. Apologetic arguments have evolved, but the case for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon in no way depends upon them. If the language of the Book of Mormon as dictated by Joseph Smith was standard Yankee dialect or just Joseph’s own bad grammar, as many of us have long assumed, that fits the idea of revelation being given to people in their own tongue and language. It’s quite a paradigm shift to consider that the language Joseph was dictating might not just be his own language loosely draped in KJV verbiage but often reflected some kind of tight linguistic control to yield archaic scriptural language that was surprisingly standard or acceptable in an era slightly before the KJV was translated. Why and how is still a matter for speculation and debate. But the data is there and demands to be considered, explored, and tested.

One man taking up that challenge is a linguist, Dr. Stanford Carmack, who has further explored the strange occurrence of archaic EModE from several angles in great detail. Carmack more fully demonstrates that the Book of Mormon provides extensive and accurate EModE usage and grammar in ways that cannot be explained by copying the KJV. Such laughable blunders as “in them days,” “I had smote,” and “they was yet wroth” turn out to be consistent with EModE patterns. The analysis shows that much of what we thought was bad grammar is quite acceptable EMoDE, sometimes showing a sophisticated mastery of EModE.

The findings are puzzling indeed, but his work is rich with facts and data that again demand attention. The four articles Dr. Carmack has contributed to the Mormon Interpreter are worthy of note. I am especially impressed with the broad information and analysis presented in his “A Look at Some ‘Nonstandard’ Book of Mormon Grammar,” which I just re-read today after doing a two-hour seminar in Shanghai last week on the topic of the subjunctive mood in English grammar (the crazy things I get involved with here!). Digging into some of the mysteries of the English subjunctive prepared me to much better appreciate some of the powerful points Carmack makes in that work. His analysis deserves much more attention and contemplation.

Royal Skousen and Carmack Stanford feel strongly that the abundance of EModE elements in the BOM is evidence of divine tight control in text somehow given to Joseph Smith to dictate, and that it is perhaps a fingerprint of divine origins in the text. However, some skeptics have wondered if it can be explained by residual EModE influence in Joseph’s dialect of English. Some of the “hick language” found in regional dialects preserves elements of English that have long since become obsolete in modern English, so such a thing could be possible to some degree.

I think Carmack and Skousen would argue that the level of EModE is so strong and often so appropriate to the 1500s that it would be hard for so many elements to survive in the United States. But I feel we need more work to analyze regional dialects that could have influenced Joseph Smith to see if the strange characteristics of the language in the earliest text could be explained as a natural result of Joseph naturally expressing revealed concepts in his own language.

A natural language hypothesis can be consistent with either a fabricated text or a divinely transmitted text based on real ancient writings on golden plates. Indeed, a translation process using Joseph’s own language and dialect, complete with bad grammar and other linguistic warts, is what some faithful LDS thinkers have long assumed. But Carmack and Skousen offer a surprisingly different explanation for the flaws in the original text: not bad grammar, but a divinely transmitted English text with heavy dose of reasonably good Early Modern English provided with the consistency, subtlety, variety, sophistication, and naturalness of an native EModE speaker, making the linguistic fingerprint of the Book of Mormon impossible to explain as a derivative of the KJV, though it also draws heavily upon that text. If BOM language is not simply the language of the KJV, could it be in part the language of Joseph’s local dialect, or is something more miraculous required?

There She Be: One Possible Test for New England Dialect

To explore the hypothesis that Joseph’s own regional dialect simply preserved EModE elements in ways that can account for all or much of the original text of the BOM, some additional tests are needed. While the Book of Mormon was dictated in upstate New York, it’s reasonable to assume that New England dialect may have been a strong influence in Joseph’s language. He was born in Vermont and lived there until age 8, and continued to be raised by his thoroughly New Englander parents, with a father from New Hampshire and a mother from Vermont.

In searching for information on New England dialect, I found an interesting study that may be useful in framing a test that can differentiate the influence of New England dialect from EModE on some non-standard elements in the original text of the Book of Mormon. The reference is Adrian Pablé and RadosÅ‚aw Dylewski, “Invariant Be In New England Folk Speech: Colonial And Postcolonial Evidence,” American Speech, Vol. 82, No. 2 (2007)151-184 (a full text PDF is available).

Pablé and Dylewski explore a widely recognized feature of New England dialect, the tendency to use the finite “be” in indicative cases that would normally require conjugated forms like “is” or “are” in standard modern English. For the third person plural, both New England dialect and EModE sometimes use finite be, as in “they be there.” But a distinguishing feature is the use of invariant befor the third person singular indicative, as in “he be here”, a pattern which is well known in New England dialect but not characteristic of EModE. New England dialect also shows first and second person singular invariant be in indicative cases, beginning apparently early in the eighteenth century and unattested in the seventeen century, apparently sprouting up in the United States, diverging from Early Modern English and the English of England:

Based on the evidence at our disposal, we feel justified to claim that by the late seventeenth century, be in colonial varieties of English was diffusing to grammatical contexts typical of postcolonial New England folk speech, but atypical of Early Modern British English, namely to the first- and second-person singular context. It may well be that the questions just cited constitute the earliest “American” attestations of nonsubjunctive be with the singular. The historical dictionaries of American English offer no analogous attestations of be dating back to the seventeenth century. The earliest reference work featuring singular indicative be in a declarative clause is the Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles (1938–44), which quotes from Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, published in 1702: “I been’t afraid! I thank God I been’t afraid!”

Interestingly, the New Englanders using be as a singular indicative form (i.e., Ann Carr-Putnam, the magistrates John Hathorne/Jonathan Corwin, Cotton Mather) were all American-born, which underpins the “domestic origin” hypothesis of singular indicative be.

Postcolonial and Early-twentieth-century New England. While invariant be in colonial American English has not yet been studied in any systematic way, grammarians and dialectologists devoted some attention to it once it had become recurrent in the speech of the “common people” living in a particular area. In fact, a social and regional connotation inherent in be was noticed by contemporary observers already at the end of the eighteenth century—in Noah Webster’s (1789) Dissertations on the English Language, he included be as a typical feature of “the common discourse of the New England yeomanry”: “The verb be, in the indicative, present tense, which Lowth observes is almost obsolete in England, is still used after the ancient manner, I be, we be, you be, they be” (385).

Grammarians writing in the first decades of the nineteenth century also commented on the regional concentration of invariant be usage. Thus, John Pickering wrote in his 1816 Vocabulary that finite be “was formerly much used in New England instead of am and are, in phrases of this kind: Be you ready? Be you going? I be, &c” (46). In his English Grammar, Samuel Kirkham (1834, 206), in a chapter dedicated to “provincialisms,” cited two examples of be supposedly typical of “New England or New York,” with be appearing in independent direct statements (“I be goin”; “the keows be gone”); Kirkham also adduced examples of be as a main verb in direct questions and short answers—as Pickering had done (“Be you from Berkshire?” “I be”)—and cited the negative form (“You bain’t from the Jarseys, be ye?”). In Kirkham’s opinion, the latter three cases represented only “New England” usage.
(pp. 167-168)

The authors also observe that New England dialect tends to rarely use invariant be with the third person plural, though this was part of EModE and surely was part of the early colonists’ dialect. For example,

The collocation there be/they be for ‘there/they is/are’ was not recorded as occurring in the speech of any LANE informants

[LANE is the Linguistic Atlas of New England]. Notably, map 678 of the Atlas investigates the existential clause on the basis of the construction There are a lot of people who think so. As it turns out, Type I informants [less educated descendants of old local families, whose speech might best preserve old forms from New England’s preindustrial era] were reported to have said They’s many folks think(s) so and There’s many folks think(s) so, not They/there be many folks . . . , probably because contraction between the existential and the copula is always possible (i.e., grammatical), irrespective of whether the context is singular or plural (i.e., they’s, they’re, and there’s). Thus, plural existentials in postcolonial nonstandard varieties of English no longer find themselves in syntactically “strong” contexts. (p. 170)

On the whole, however, be in postcolonial New England folk speech does not seem to have been a form associated with the “old” subjunctive of Early Modern English but was primarily an indicative form (i.e., occurring respectively in direct questions and sentence-finally). (p. 172)

In discussing negative forms of be, the authors note the prominence of ain’t as a feature of New England dialect (less commonly, hain’t was also used; see p. 171). In the first half of the nineteenth century (Joseph’s era), two other negative forms were also common in New England dialect: ben’t and bain’t, contractions of be not (p. 171). None of these negative forms are found in the Book of Mormon. None of these negative forms occur in Early Modern English (p. 173).

Based on my understanding of this study, a characteristic trait of New England dialect was the development of invariant be usage beyond the third person plural known in EModE. Finding it in other cases in the dictated text of the Book of Mormon would be one way to differentiate New England dialect from EModE.

Some of those forms began to appear humorous or dated even to New Englanders by the 1930s when the Linguistic Atlas of New England was compiled, as Pablé and Dylewski report:

Atwood (1953, 27) confirms that informants using be as part of their sociolect in LANE belonged exclusively to the “Type I” category, that is, those born in the mid-nineteenth century, which suggests that be had become a relic form, no longer actively used by informants born in the first decades of the twentieth century. In fact, some field-workers of LANE noticed that the expressions How be ye? and . . . than I be were associated with “humorous usage” by younger speakers, which seems to indicate that such phrases were sociolinguistically marked in the 1930s and may have served for stereotyping.

There is no shortage of humorous grammar, at least for modern ears, in the earliest text of the Book of Mormon, much of which has been cleaned up and standardized. Funny-sounding first- and second-person forms of invariant be might just the thing to look for.

I have not found any such forms in the Earliest Text, apart from acceptable subjunctive phrases that are appropriate in EModE and somewhat less often in modern English (e.g., the subjunctive phrase “if it so be” which abound in the Book of Mormon is relatively obsolete today but well attested in EModE). The lack of first- and second-person indicative forms of invariant be is interesting and to some degree weighs against New England dialect as the source of Book of Mormon grammar , but that is not the end of the story.

Though rare, LANE does offer third-person singular examples of invariant be, including “How be it?” “How be it” does occur in the Original Text of the Book of Mormon, which I’ll discuss below. It’s usage is subjunctive, not indicative, though I suggest it is not consistent with EModE usage of that term.

To explore the possible influence of New England dialect on invariant be in the Book of Mormon, we should also consider third-person singular cases.

Relevant BOM Cases of Invariant Be: It Begins with the Title Page

Using my Kindle version of the Earliest Text to search for “be” poses several problems. Searching for “be” also returns hits for “being,” and searches text at the beginning and end of the book that is not part of scripture. Among the roughly 2800 hits for be/being in the Book of Mormon, I estimate that pure “be” occurs about 2500 times. Of those numerous instances, only a handful are noteworthy. If you have better search tools, I welcome your input.

The vast majority are the infinitive “to be” or “be” following a modal verb (can, could, will, shall, shalt, may, might, must and must needs, etc.). There are many subjunctive forms, especially “if it so be”, a phrase not found in the KJV but characteristic of EModE, as Carmack has shown and as you may verify by exploring works of Caxton, for example. A few examples of subjunctive instances will be shown below.

Regarding potential uses invariant be that might reflect New England or other folks dialects, the relevant examples of invariant be to consider begin right on the title page.

Title Page: And now if there be fault, it be the mistake of men.

This sentence is one of the most interesting examples of invariant be in the Book of Mormon, and I wish to address it before looking at the remaining cases of note because it will assist in understanding additional cases.

The title page statement is similar to Mormon 8:17: “If there be faults, they be the faults of a man…” which has finite be in both clauses, but differs in using the plural faults and thus “they be” instead of “it be.”

Is “it be” a case of third-person singular invariant be that might be due influence from New England dialect? I don’t think so, because this sentence can readily be explained as a case of the subjunctive mood. What is interesting, though, is that the subjunctive mood persists in the second clause after being introduced in the first, when modern speakers might prefer the second clause to be in the indicative mood. Indeed, this sentence was awkward enough that Joseph Smith changed in the 1837 edition of the Book of Mormon to what we have today:

And now, if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men;…

Not only has the double subjunctive been dropped, the subjunctive mood has been completely removed (the related sentence in Moroni 8:17 has not been “fixed”). Further, the singular “fault” that seems odd to modern ears must have bothered Joseph’s ear as well and has been replaced with the more standard “faults,” a change we’ll return to in a moment.

For the moment, I’ll use the term “persistent subjunctive” mood or “double subjunctive” to describe a sentence that maintains the subjunctive mood introduced in an early clause. (I’m sure there is a better grammatical term –let me know, please!) This feature, interestingly, is attested in Early Modern English. For example, see William Caxton’s printing of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur (first printed in 1485). In Book 7, Chapter 31, we find:

When Sir Gareth saw that torch-light he cried on high: Whether thou be lord or lady, giant or champion, I take no force so that I may have harbour this night; and if it so be that I must needs fight, spare me not to-morn when I have rested me, for both I and mine horse be weary.

Here a subjunctive mood in “if it so be” seems to be maintained in “I and mine horse be weary.” A few further examples will be shown, but first, note that the spelling has been modernized. The original spelling of this passage, for purposes of comparison, follows:

whan sir Gareth sawe that torche lyghte he cryed on hyhe whether thou be lord or lady gyaunt or champyon I take no force so that I may haue herberowe this nyghte / & yf hit so be that I must nedes fyghte / spare me not to morne when I haue restyd me for bothe I and myn hors ben wery

Other examples from Morte Darthur:

Sir knight, said the page, here be within this castle thirty ladies, and all they be widows, for here is a knight that waiteth daily upon this castle, and his name is the brown knight without pity, and he is the most perilous knight that now liveth. [Original spelling here]

And if so be that he be a wedded man, …

By my head, said Sir Gawaine, if it be so, that the good knight be so sore hurt, it is great damage and pity to all this land

This “persistent subjunctive” sense continues to occur in the Book of Mormon, frequently in cases where today we might prefer to use indicative or a modal verb + be in the second phrase, or even lose the subjunctive mood entirely. Examples:

1 Nephi 19:6 – save it be that I think it be sacred

2 Nephi 2:13 – If ye shall say there is no sin, there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness, there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness, there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not, there is no God.

Note that this verse a sentence with double indicative, followed by two sentence with double subjunctive, and then concludes with a sentence having double indicative again: is + is, be + be, be + be, is + is. (Sort of a chiasmus.)

2 Nephi 5:32 – If my people be pleased with the things of God, they be pleased with mine engravings which are upon these plates.

That sounds awkward to modern ears. The text now has lost the subjunctive mood entirely: And if my people are pleased with the things of God they will be pleased with mine engravings which are upon these plates.

A Little Fault Finding

The awkward singular fault on the title page, now a comfortable plural, actually appears to be attested in early English, as one can find by searching EEBO (Early English Books Online) at https://quod.lib.umich.edu.

Some examples:

  1. … for the others if there be fault in them, let them be sent for, and punished.

Title: A breife narration of the possession, dispossession, and, repossession of William Sommers and of some proceedings against Mr Iohn Dorrell preacher, with aunsweres to such obiections as are made to prove the pretended counterfeiting of the said Sommers. Together with certaine depositions taken at Nottingham concerning the said matter. [LINK] Publication Info: [Amsterdam? : S.n.], Anno M. D. XCVIII [1598]

  1. Concerning rites and ceremonies, there may be fault, either in the kinde, or in the number and multitude of them.

Title: Of the lavves of ecclesiasticall politie eight bookes. By Richard Hooker. [LINK] Author: Hooker, Richard, 1553 or 4-1600.
Publication Info: Printed at London : By Iohn Windet, dwelling at the signe of the Crosse-keyes neare Paules wharffe, and are there to be solde, 1604.
The fourth Booke: Concerning their third assertion, that our forme of Church-politie is corrupted with popish orders, rites and ceremo∣nies, banished out of certaine reformed Churches, whose example therein we ought to haue followed.

Note that sometimes “fault” appears to mean “found” in early English documents, accounting for some of the strange cases you may encounter.

The relevant invariant be example on the title page of the Critical Text sets the stage for what follows. Namely, every case of the “interesting” or “relevant” instances of invariant be (based on searching for “be” used with first, second, or third person cases) turn out to be reasonable subjunctive cases consistent with Early Modern English usage, including the use of the “persistent subjunctive” discussed above, along with specific phrases not found in the KJV but attested in EModE. If there is unique New England influence in Book of Mormon usage of invariant be, I’ve been unable to find any trace of it.

Further Relevant Examples of Invariant Be

As mentioned above, many cases of “be” involve an obvious subjunctive mood. Examples include:

  • 1 Nephi 15:33 – And if they be filthy, ….
  • 1 Nephi 17:46 – cause that rough places be made smooth
  • Numerous examples of the phrase “if it so be”
  • Many instances following save or lest, such as 1 Nephi 19:6 – save it be that I think it be sacred (mentioned above)
  • 1 Nephi 21:5 – though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord

“If it so be” occurs 42 times in the Earliest Text of the Book of Mormon, almost always as “if it so be that.” This phrase is rather common in the Book of Mormon but completely absent from the KJV. Carmack’s work highlights it as an interesting example of EModE influence in the Book of Mormon that cannot be explained by borrowing from the King James Bible. It’s found in many classic sources of EModE, such as Canterbury Tales and in the writings of Thomas More. Though obsolete in modern English, did it survive to be common in Joseph Smith’s dialect? It’s a possibility, but I have not yet found clear evidence of that.

A Twist on If It So Be

After seeing “if it so be” so consistently and frequently in my search results related to be, I was genuinely surprised to stumble across an even more complex variation: If it should so be. This occurs in two places:

Enos 1:13 – that if it should so be that my people the Nephites should fall into transgression … (interestingly, followed by another if it so be that later in the verse).

3 Nephi 26:9 – and if it should so be that they shall believe these things….

This phrase is also found in EModE, such as in the 1562 work of John Jewel, The Apology of the Church of England, originally written in Latin and translated into English in 1564 by the mother of Francis Bacon:

For if it should so be, as they seek to have it, that Christ should be commanded to keep silence…

The phrase without “that” occurs in English much later, including in a 1732 sermon of Jonathan Edward, “Christian Charity,” which uses “if it should so be” as an entire clause that ends a sentence, unlike Book of Mormon usage where it is followed by “that” plus another clause.

More relevant may be an 1824 legal trial in Rhode Island that discusses a will written in 1772 having the phrase: “but if it should so be that my son John Shrieve depart this life, leaving no male heir lawfully begotten…” This certainly raises the possibility that this phrase was known in New England near Joseph’s day and could have seemed natural in formal writing.

Further Cases of Interest:

2 Nephi 10:4 – For should the mighty miracles be wrought among other nations, they would repent and know that he be their God.

“For should” acts as “if” and creates a subjunctive mood that persists with “they would … know that he be their God.”

The next verse, 2 Nephi 10:5, contrasts the unrealized repentance with the future reality, noting that “they at Jerusalem will stiffen their necks against him, that he be crucified.” Though not counterfactual, it is a future event where the indicative would not be as fitting. This is not an artifact of New England dialect.

“How be it,” as previously mentioned, poses more of a challenge.

3 Nephi 23:11 – And Jesus said unto them: How be it that ye have not written this thing?

3 Nephi 27:8 – And how be it my church save it be called in my name?

“How be it” is an interrogatory phrase in the subjunctive mood expressing incredulity or alarm that is not found in the KJV. The phrase “how be it” is common in EModE, though often with a different meaning. That meaning seems to overlap the meaning of the combined word “howbeit” that appears to have evolved from “how be it.” The combined form occurs 64 times in the KJV. One of these verses, Isaiah 11:7, is quoted almost verbatim in 2 Nephi 20:7, using howbeit.

“How be it” with the typical EModE meaning does occur in the Critical Text in Ether 2:25, which is how the Printer’s Manuscript showed it. But when it was typeset, it became “howbeit” in the 1830 Book of Mormon, and then was removed in the 1920 edition and is still gone in our recent editions.

The meaning in Ether 2:25 appears to be similar to “behold” or “verily”:

And behold, I prepare you against these things; for how be it, ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea and the winds which have gone forth and the floods which shall come….

Note also the switch from you to ye in the same sentence, a characteristic often found in EModE, as Carmack has shown.

In William Caxton’s writings and many other EModE sources, “how be it” abounds but not in the sense of “how can it be?” Rather, it seems to have a range of meanings such as nevertheless, in any case, even if, yet, etc. Examples:

Le Morte Darthur, Book 7, Chapter 23:

Notwithstanding I will assay him better, how be it I am most beholding to him of any earthly man, for he hath had great labour for my love, and passed many a dangerous passage.

Le Morte Darthur, Book 7, Chapter 7:

That may be, said the black knight, how be it as ye say that he be no man of worship,…

That last sentence may again illustrate the persistent subjunctive following its introduction via “how be it,” though the subjunctive in the following clause seems fairly natural a quotation of that kind.

An early English use of “how be it that” that might express incredulity and concern is found in John Gough Nichols’ Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire, 1470. I may be wrong on this, for it seems that the usage here could more closely resemble something like “and it came to pass.” The Chronicle opens with this:

First, how be it that our saide souveraigne lorde, as a prince enclined to shew his mercy and pite [pity] to his subgettes [subjects], raither then rigure and straitenesse of his lawes, pardonned of late to his saide rebelles all tresons and felones, trespasses and offences committed and doon by theym ayeinst [against] his highenese afore the fest of Cristenraes last past, trusting that therby he shuld have coraged, caused, and induced theym from that tyme furthe to have been of good, kynd, and lovyng demeaning [loving demeanor] ayeinst his highenesse ; yit [yet] they unnaturally and unkyndly, withoute cause or occacion yeven [given] to theym by our saide soveraigne lorde, falsly compassed, conspired, and ymagened [imagined, perhaps meaning plotted] the final destruccion of his most roiall personne, and of his true subgettes taking parte with him in assisting his highnesse, …

Is he saying, “How could it be that our prince, after forgiving rebellious subjects and showing them great kindness, was the subject of a conspiracy to overthrow him?” I’m not sure. Be that as it may, I still see the two instances of interrogatory “how be it” in the Book of Mormon as more modern English and not from EModE or even from the KJV.

A discussion of “howbeit” is included in a 1997 article by Rfal Molencki on the evolution of “albeit” and may be useful in considering this phrase.

Third-person plural invariant be does occur in the Book of Mormon, as it does in EModE and New England dialect. An example is Alma 7:7: “For behold, I say unto you, there be many things to come.” The KJV also has this in Eccl. 6:11: “there be many things…”

I’ll share further cases as I update this article.

For now, the text for New England influence in the use of “be” in the Book of Mormon is coming up negative. The negative “ain’t” of New England dialect is also a negative for the Book of Mormon, in a positive way: it ain’t there.

There’s much more to say as I update this or add related material, but for now, in light of one proposed test based on the use of “be” in New England dialect and Early Modern English, the puzzling archaic English of the Book of Mormon as dictated by Joseph Smith is not handily explained an appeal to New England dialect nor by influence from the KJV Bible. There is more data to consider and many more tests to be conducted as we try to better understand Book of Mormon language and origins. I look forward to your thoughts and contributions!

By |2017-10-24T05:48:27-07:00September 10th, 2015|0 Comments
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Shame and Anger: A Response to Small Miracles in a World of Big Pain and Evil

Latter-day Saints and many other Christians sometimes share faith-promoting stories of how a prayer was answered or how they experienced a miracle of some kind. These miracles are rarely the big, dramatic ones we might like to see, such as finding a cure to cancer or a peer-reviewed sighting and interview with an angel. Yet small miracles in the lives of individuals can be real and may have significant impact. The sharing of these miracles, however, often brings negative or even hostile responses, frequently draped in stinging sarcasm.

Wo unto the person who shares a story of losing and finding car keys after praying for help. Better that a millstone was attached to those keys and they were tossed into the depths of the sea than to be found with gratefully received divine help. Better that two millstones were attached to a grateful believer’s once lost kitten. And wo, wo, wo unto any member, but especially any allegedly insensitive church leader, who would dare to openly discuss a kindness from God in finding a quarter to buy some food when tired and hungry (see my discussion of Elder J. Devn Cornish’s story in my Mormanity post, “Trivial Miracles and Petty Prayer: How the Accuser Teaches a Man Not to Pray“). Better that the purchased chicken was cast into the sea along with the quarter and the hungry man himself, than to hint that God might miraculously help one person eat while millions starve with no sign of divine aid. Those who dare give public thanks for small miracles are likely to become “a hiss and byword” or, as Deut. 28:37 warns (NIV), “You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples,” especially on the Bloggernacle, where some LDS thinkers are horrified and appalled when others imply that God could be so callous as to care about lost keys and kittens when there are big problems in a world where terrorists rage, disease ravishes, and Congress is in session again.

On the Web, believers soon become trained feel shame at God’s tender little mercies, or even to become angry with those who express gratitude for encounters with God’s love through small miracles. For a faith that urges us to recognize the hand of God in all things (Doctrine & Covenants 59:21), this is unfortunate, in my opinion. Others in the Church and beyond are free to disagree, but I’d like to share some of my thoughts on this issue and also on the complex problem of evil.

Bethlehem, Cana, and the Problem of Evil

The story of Christ in the New Testament begins with His miraculous birth, a small but important miracle for Christians that remains completely unimpressive to skeptics since it surely looked like an ordinary pregnancy and natural birth. That small miracle was accompanied with the horrific massacre of infants in Bethlehem precipitated by Christ’s arrival, thanks to the evil of one jealous king. The life of one infant was spared with a warning from God given through a dream to a parent, a classic small miracle with large consequences, while no timely warning came for the rest as far as we know. We see that God was capable of sparing those lives, but apparently chose not to. We are swiftly introduced to the problem of evil in a world created by a loving God.

The Messiah, whom we worship as the Creator of the world and Master of all, came to earth as a mortal but also as Son of God. Three decades after His miraculous birth, He began His formal ministry. His divine status would be demonstrated with another miracle. If you could ask the Creator for any miracle, what would be on your list? Perhaps the eradication of cancer, malaria, or any of several dozen major diseases? Maybe the end of warfare? The elimination of poverty? The freeing of all slaves? There are so many big issues that our minds might turn to. So what did Christ do for the first big miracle of His ministry? The spotlight turns to tiny Cana and a wedding feast, where the Creator of Heaven and Earth revealed His divine power with a miracle not much more grand than helping someone find their lost keys: He alleviates a relatively trivial beverage supply problem at the wedding party. This is Miracle One in the ministry of the Messiah? Millions were struggling with poverty and undoubtedly starvation in various parts of the globe, and certainly some children were hungry and malnourished in the vicinity of Cana. People were suffering with disease, captivity, and grief of all kinds, yet the first miracle alleviated none of these problems even on a local scale. In the opening pages of the New Testament, the problem of evil can become, for some, a travesty of divine indifference with a God blind to the big problems of the community and the world. The New Testament begins with stories that we can easily ridicule as we question God’s priorities and lack of sensitivity, just as we do with modern small miracles involving car keys or the chance finding of a quarter by a hungry medical student.

We Are All Statistics (Or, What Could Stop the Complaining?)

The complaints about God’s neglect of suffering are legitimate ones that need to be considered in any system espousing the existence of a loving and all-powerful or even just very powerful God. If God is capable of preventing suffering, why is there so much? This world could be vastly better–so why isn’t it?

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine a world in which your list of 50 or so top problems have been addressed. Imagine a God who in your view is vastly more intelligent (that is, He sees things your way) and responds to your demands, reshaping the world, giving us a safer, less painful existence. No more war, no more cancer, no more malaria, no more human trafficking, no more volcanic eruptions or earthquakes, and no more crushing debt incurred by corrupt politicians. Imagine airplanes and cars that never crash, ships that never sink, and trains that never derail, thanks to the infallible safety record provided by legions of unseen angels watching over all of us. Would-be terrorists and murderers are quickly exposed and stopped before they do serious harm. There could still be free agency and challenges to overcome that help us grow, but without all the blood, horror, and senseless pain of innocents that we face now. Let’s imagine such a world and then ask, would there still be cause for doubt and complaints?

Let’s imagine that under this new Omnipotent Care program, everyone is essentially guaranteed a relatively healthy life with a minimum lifespan of 80 years, with fully functioning limbs and eyes, joints that function well, and good teeth that are free of cavities and never need orthodontics. In this more progressive, compassionate system, would there still be cause for complaint?

Part of the horror of the mortal world we live in is that we are all statistics. With a little luck, I might even succeed in officially modifying an LDS hymn to have the catchy title, “We Are All Statistics Till the Conflict Is O’er” (including the refrain, “Random are we! Random are we!”). But the role of chance and randomness in our lives is an important and inevitable one in my opinion, even if God can guide us to find meaning and apparent design in the random things we sometimes experience.

Here’s the point: for every factor imaginable, there is a spectrum of possible outcomes, some better than average and some worse than average (occasionally much worse than average). Lifespan, economic status, IQ, skin quality, height, shoe size–all can have high variability due to combinations of chance, external factors such as the actions of others, and the consequences of our own actions. In a much more fortunate world that never knew and might not even be able to imagine the horrors of the Holocaust or Hiroshima, those on the unlucky end of the spectrum for other factors might still elicit doubt and anger. The fortunate folks in this imagined world might well wonder how could a merciful God allow so many hundreds of people to suffer from alcoholism, rabies, or whatever ailments had not been completely eradicated. They could also ask questions like, “How could a merciful God allow my grandfather to die so early, barely 80 years old, robbing him of decades of life?” “How could a merciful God and an intelligent designer allow so many teenagers to suffer with the shame of acne, and so many senior citizens to suffer the humiliation of incontinence?” Or, with perfect logic, “How could a merciful God allow so many people–nearly 50% of humanity–to be below average economically?”

Whatever our new mortal world has, as long as there is mortality, there will be death and sorrow, imperfection and pain. As long as there is any human freedom of choice, there will be the tragedy of sin and the painful consequences of error, even if great sins are miraculously prevented or mitigated as early as possible to shield many innocents. As long as chance and choice exist, there will be a spectrum of outcomes: some will be lucky, some will be unlucky; some will be perpetrators, and some will be victims. We do not need to know of genocide or mass slaughter from tsunamis to feel that evil actions from humans or unpleasant accidents of nature are senseless and unfair for victims. If the worse we ever learn of involves a few dozen lives or even a few broken bones, we may still find cause to recoil at the randomness of pain and the injustice that reigns in a world where we are all statistics, and some of us are always on the unpleasant side of every statistical distribution. Can even your more sensitive, progressive God escape criticism in your imagined new world?

The Small and Possibly Miraculous Tail

In the distribution of outcomes possible in any real or imagined version of mortality, some people will be extremely unfortunate, perhaps rarely, and also rarely, some will be extremely fortunate. So fortunate that rightly or wrongly we may attribute such fortune to divine intervention.

Some of the miracles humans report may be due to chance: perhaps those car keys found after prayer would have been found anyway (often likely, I would guess), or perhaps the illness that receded after a priesthood blessing would have departed on its own (in many cases, of course). In a true story I reported at Mormanity, perhaps the cookies that a busy mom felt impressed to make (with an unmistakable impression that was specific: chocolate chip cookies, now!) and give to someone she barely knew were just a matter of chance and had nothing to do with the prayer of the depressed, tearful, exasperated recipient earlier that day, uttering, “Dear God, right now I just need . . . I just need some chocolate chip cookies.”

In my own life, perhaps it was nothing but chance that we had a surprise encounter of a needy young LDS woman lost in Hong Kong, just hours after we put her name on the prayer roll of the Temple there, having no idea that she had come to Hong Kong that day on what would have been a disastrous misadventure had we not found her. See the story “Finding Selina” at the Nauvoo Times and also at Mormanity. Those of us involved in that story saw it as a small miracle and dramatic witness of God’s love for a troubled daughter, as pretty much the only people in that huge city who knew her managed to stumble into her “by accident” in a remote part of that huge city shortly before she would lose her chance to get back to China without trauma. Call it blind luck, but it is cause for rejoicing and gratitude, and sharing it as evidence of a loving God is not inappropriate–event though many lost young people have been far less fortunate, and some may revile and justly wonder why God would reach out to Selina while their child was lost.

In nearly all matters in life, there is a spectrum of outcomes, where miracles almost by definition are the exception, the outliers in the vanishingly small tail on the fortunate side of the statistical distribution of which we are all part. The miraculous in that small tail is often the rare and sometimes singular exception. We have no claim on it, though we may hope and pray. We have no cause to be angry with God when our lot is cast somewhere else along the spectrum, unjust as it may seem. May we have the faith and patience to accept the miracles experienced by others in spite of our loss. May we have the faith and patience to bear their fortune without added bitterness or anger for our misfortune.

These rare small tail outcomes may be due to chance, but in the lives of believers, they are sometimes perceived as so abundant and so rich in kindness from a loving God that they are hard to dismiss as accidents. But even if they are just lucky accidents, is not the proper way of receiving them to be with gratitude? In a world where many of us feel that we have great cause to believe in a Divine Creator and a loving God, is it not reasonable to accept both miracles and lucky breaks with gratitude?

If we are grateful for life itself, with all its opportunities and challenges, its pains and sorrows, then should we not lovingly praise our God for the good that we receive, even if it might sometimes just be chance? Let us never attribute blessings and seeming miracles to our righteousness or superiority, but let us gratefully recognize the hand of God in all things when it looks like a fingerprint or two is present, though sometimes the prints are whorls of chance. If a prayer seems answered, praise Him. If that which is lost is found after prayer–a child, a passport, a set of keys, or a kitten, praise Him. Maybe not on the Bloggernacle, and maybe not always in Fast and Testimony meeting, recognizing that we may be misunderstood, but receive these blessings with gratitude and not shame, and do not feel that they may not ever be uttered to others.

In addition to recognizing God’s hand in our lives and being grateful for whatever miracles, large or small, we may experience, let us recognize the pains and suffering of others and do what we can to alleviate and bless. If God has helped you get a good job, wonderful! Now what are you doing to help others with their careers? What are you doing to help the poor in your midst and beyond? And what are you doing to magnify your impact at work to create more opportunities and employment for others?

Our gratitude for miracles and gifts in our lives should make us all the more aware of our statistically good fortune and the painful long tail of less fortunate people among the rest of the spectrum, some of whom we may be in a unique position to help. To see the hand of the Lord in all things is not just to see the gifts that it extends in our direction, but also to see the direction that the same divine hand may point out to us showing where we can go and do good with the blessings we have received.

Ours is a God who tells us that He causes the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust–meaning we all will get some lucky blessings and some unlucky setbacks, yet should not our hearts still remain full of gratitude for the blessings we have? If you have been fasting for rain after drought and it rains at a choice time, praise Him, though surely it was going to rain anyway, one day or another. Meanwhile, should we not yearn for the welfare of others whose needed rain has not yet come? When it rains and your crops need water, praise Him–and think of others.

Defending the Offensive: Small Miracles in a World of Big Problems

In my reading of scripture, the purpose of miracles is clearly not to address our wish list of big things to change about mortality. Yes, sometimes disease will be healed in an individual or sight restored, while illness and physical handicaps remain in force across the earth. Sometimes keys will be found while children remain lost or thousands are taken away into permanent captivity. Miracles are the rare and exceptional tool to facilitate faith of an individual or to facilitate events for some specific purpose. Miracles tend to be small and personal, and always a drop in the bucket compared to the wish list of miracles any of us might have.

Yet these small miracles are real and can be significant. In past blog posts, I’ve shared a few from my own life, or the lives of family members and friends. These include the Miracle of the Cookies, the Miracle of the Pamphlet, the miracle my father experienced in coping with PTSD after the Korean War, a miracle involving a newly repaired cell phone received just in time to allow me to help prevent a suicide, and the Miracle of the Pink Coat. I’ve also discussed the independent confirmations I found for a small miracle reported by President Monson, along with several other miracles and blessings that I dared to share.

My own testimony of God’s reality began with a 6-year-old child’s prayer seeking God’s help to find the precious plastic magnifying glass that Dad had loaned to me. I had looked everywhere without success and needed it. My Dad needed that 5-cent toy for his work, I thought, and I had lost it. After praying as my mother had taught me, pleading for God’s help, I got up off my knees and my eyes seemed to go straight toward a middle drawer in my dresser. I rushed to it, open it, moved something and there it was. The magnifying glass, found! That child felt that God has answered a prayer miraculously, and that was the beginning of many personal experiences in prayer. It was also the beginning of many personal experiences with lost objects where things far more precious and more worthy of prayer were not recovered, including some tragic losses without easy fixes. It would be easy for me to wonder how God could so often not help me find, recover, or repair things much more important than a worthless magnifying glass, but I should instead praise Him for each kindness I have received and do the best I can to cope with all the other times where I suffer a fairly normal distribution of loss and pain in mortality.

In one past post on Mormanity, I shared a story about a mother I know who was staying at a friend’s home when she heard a voice say “Run!” That helped her recognize her bold little toddler was not at her side but in danger. She ran to find a stairway door had been opened by someone else and saw that her wobbly little son, a boy with no respect for gravity, was standing at the top, toes over the edge, ready to plunge forward toward bare wooden stairs leading to a concrete basement floor. She snatched him in time, courtesy of a tender mercy of God. I mentioned that we don’t know when and why these small miracles come, and recognized that life is often filled with pain and sorrow even for the best parents, but when the little miracles come, we should rejoice for those who receive them.

That story was somewhat personal, for we had a related experience with one of our sons, but with no warning that we noticed, and no rescue in time to prevent him from tumbling–we missed him by a fraction of a second and watched him tumble while we were at a friend’s house ourselves. It was traumatic for us and we felt like the worst parents ever. Why did that mother get help but not us? We are truly grateful for the mother who was helped, while still feeling some pain for our different outcome. The pain would have been vastly greater had our son perished or suffered permanent loss.

When I shared that story, I expected to get the response that I have often received when referring to a miracle that someone experiences. Skeptics will point to some of the tragedies that occur and insinuate that that miracles can’t be real, otherwise why would God help someone with something minor when such great sorrows and pains exist in the world? But the response was more painful or bitter than I expected. I should have anticipated some of the pain that might have been stirred up:

  • ..and yet my son died. Am I to assume that I didn’t listen to the Spirit in some way to save him? Or that Heavenly Father just didn’t care enough to send any guidance?
  • Good to know Heavenly Father was more concerned about the possible broken arm
    [for that child] than about my son getting the organ transplant that would have saved his life. . . .
  • Stories like these are equivalent to a slap in the face for all of us who have [unhappy] endings to our fairytales. It’s great that [one child] wasn’t hurt…but surely you can see that what the flipside of it implies???

Ouch! I was so sorry to see these responses, possibly from fellow Latter-day Saints who pray and seek the Spirit and the miracles of God as much as any of us do. The loss of a child is one of the great tragedies of mortality. There are no easy answers, except for the far-off answer that comes through Christ and the hope of resurrection and reunion.

Is it wrong to record and share the exceptional help that led to the sparing of one child, knowing that others were not so lucky? Is it really a slap in the face to many who mourn?

For the many faithful Nephite wives and mothers whose husbands and sons died in battle against the Lamanites, and the many modern wives and mothers who face similar grief in this era of war, is the account of the miraculous sparing of the 2,000-plus teenage warriors, the converted “stripling warriors” of Lamanite ancestry in the Book of Mormon, an insensitive blunder that should be excised from scripture or at least no longer cited? Does that story mean that God did not hear the prayer of Nephite mothers and modern mothers and wives of all who fall in battle? Does it mean that our Christians who fall in battle die for lack of faith in God? Or is the story of the stripling warriors the rare, miraculous exception with lessons for us to consider (parents matter, faith in God matters, God can protect us miraculously, don’t be afraid to take on great challenges, be courageous, etc.), but little reason to expect the same miraculous outcome on demand?

If a child is spared in war miraculously, as my father was several times, give thanks to God, but recognize this as the exception, not something promised to all who believe, or an indictment for those with different results. Even Mormon, the great warrior and prophet of God, would fall in battle, one of the depressing statistics of Nephite destruction. Sooner or later, in one way or another (often many ways), we are all statistics, and somewhere along the way, some of those statistics will look and feel like tragedies.

Do these tragedies, though, negate the reality of small or even large miracles? Can God help someone by answering a prayer, healing an illness, or helping a car to start, when many are about to die from accidents, disease, or terrorism? Is God unjust or unfair because He sometimes reaches down and lets the current course of mortality be stayed for some purpose we cannot understand but that some can and should accept with gratitude?

God’s love is not a zero-sum game. His kindness to one person is not an insult to another whose outcome is less fortunate. His love is not less, His awareness of the others suffering is not diminished, His participation in our sorrow and pain is not diminished, His eternal plans and desires for the sufferer are no less glorious than for the recipient of a temporary little miracle.

Thousands across the earth were blind or going blind 2,000 years ago when Christ touched the eyes of one blind man to give him sight. Did God love the others less than the one rare man who was healed? Thousands, maybe millions, across the earth were hungry or thirsty as He attended a wedding feast in Cana and turned water into wine. If not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without God’s awareness (Matt. 10:29), we must understand that we, His children, are known, noticed, and loved, regardless of what trials we must endure. Shall we be skeptical of God’s love or His miracles because their more outward manifestations are not commonly and uniformly distributed according to our sensibilities? Our lives appear as statistics on numerous spectra, for we are inevitably part of the statistics of mortality, sometimes fortunate, sometimes miraculously blessed, but usually with many reasons to feel disappointment.

Mortality will leave all of us bitter and scarred if we cannot accept the diversity of gifts, blessings, trials, lifespans, ancestries, and genes that God lets us have.

Some Solutions and Insights from LDS Teachings

The problems of pain and evil leave many questions to grapple with, but I am grateful for the richness of LDS teachings in dealing with these issues. The basics are nicely presented and discussed in a speech by David L. Paulsen that I discussed in my previous post at Mormanity. It is a theme that is thoughtfully considered in the first half of Dr. Terryl Givens’ brilliant work, The God Who Weeps. I also have enjoyed the cogitations of C.S. Lewis on this topic in The Problem of Pain.

Here are some points that stand out in my mind regarding the LDS perspective:

  1. We are eternal beings, children of a loving Father in Heaven, who have temporarily departed His presence to come to a painful mortal testing ground. In this fleeting moment of mortality that we agreed to take on, we must all be born and then die.
  2. Death and pain, difficult as they are for us and those we love, are ultimately swallowed up in the victory of Christ. We will all be resurrected. We all have the opportunity to have the full blessings of eternal life in the presence of God with unlimited hope and joy through the power of Christ. There can be lasting pain and sorrow, though, but God seeks to mitigate that by inviting all – everyone who will – to receive His greatest eternal blessings. No matter how bitter our pains here, after this fleeting moment of mortality, Christ can wipe away all tears and bring us joy.
  3. Death and pain are part of the journey. Death is not the ultimate evil, but an essential part of our eternal progress. The journey here is difficult and fraught with challenges and opposition. In many cases, those challenges can have a purpose. In general, opposition in mortality is here for a purpose (2 Nephi 2). Pleasure and pain, sorrow and joy, the bitter and the sweet–it is in coping with these opposites and opposition that we grow and learn. The pains of mortality can have purpose in many cases, though sometimes it seems senseless and beyond purpose.
  4. God not only know our pains, but participates in them. Our Father in Heaven, as we read in the Book of Moses, astonished Enoch when Enoch saw that God wept over the suffering of His children. He is the God who weeps, who cares about our pains and our lasting, eternal welfare more passionately that we can imagine. He sent His son Jesus Christ to take on all our suffering in some way in His infinite Atonement, and Christ, like the father, fully knows how to minister to us through His intensely painful knowledge of what we suffer. His commitment to our lasting, eternal happiness is so great that He personally took on all our pains and all our guilt that He might liberate us from death, sin, and sorrow.
  5. God is a God of mercy. In the end, tears are wiped away, life restored, families reunited, and infinite blessings shared to the degree we have been willing to accept them.
  6. For us to return to God and be more like Him, He necessarily gives us the most wonderful and terrible gift of freedom, free will, the ability to choose Him willingly or to deny Him, curse Him, and destroy His most precious works. This freedom means that sin is possible and victims of sin inevitable.
  7. This is a world filled with chance and randomness, causing righteous and wicked to both suffer. Referring to some Galileans who had been slaughtered by Pilate while seeking to worship God, Jesus said, “Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13: 1-3). And regarding 18 people who died in his area when a tower in Siloam fell, he said, “Think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13: 4-5). Towers fall, children fall, and people die, regardless of who is righteous and who is not. It is not death but rebellion against God that is the real tragedy.
  8. He sometimes alleviates our suffering and our problems miraculously. More generally, though, we are left here in mortality as free agents, whom He calls to be agents for Him to love one another and alleviate suffering. He calls us to mourn with those that mourn, to comfort those in need of comfort, and to follow the example of His son in reaching out to help the sick, the needy, and the hungry. How we respond to the problems of hunger, poverty, illness, and suffering in our midst is intimately tied to our status before Him and the exercise of our faith.
  9. The righteous sometimes experience miracles, but some of the most painful tragedies occur to the most righteous. Righteous Seth was murdered, and loving Adam and Eve grieved over the spiritual loss of Cain. Lehi and Sariah suffered years of sorrow and grief with the rebellion of the oldest sons, and many privations during their difficult journey. Alma and Amulek suffered in prison, and then watched in horror as righteous women and children, their converts, were thrown into the flames to suffer and die. And the converted Lamanites who refused to take up weapons again would die by the hundreds, defenseless, as they were attacked by their brethren, dying in the attitude of praising their God. As they and their loved ones faced certain death, in the midst of this violent and bloody tragedy, their turned their hearts to God with gratitude, not bitterness for their loss nor anger at the injustice in not sparing them. Praising God as the sword (or macahuitl) came down upon them! I weep at this example and doubt that my faith would be this great–yet I have cause every bit as great as theirs to praise God for what He has given me and done for me, in spite of my pains and loss.

If God has blessed you with an awareness of the suffering of others in this painful mortal realm, rather than cursing or denying God, use that knowledge and the talents you are blessed with to help alleviate these problems and be part of the divine solution. In so doing, if you will turn to God and seek His help in doing good, I believe you will begin to experience the small and sometimes big miracles that will help you to do more good than you imagined and will strengthen your faith, giving you reserves to draw upon when it is your turn to be on the painfully unpleasant side of some of the statistical distributions of mortality. We all will have our challenges and moments of senseless pain, but there is One whose all-conquering love can, in the end, give lasting sense to all that we are and have gone through as he wipes away our tears and helps us and those we love become one with Him.

We cannot expect God’s miracles when we want them. We have no basis to demand them by right. But His love is no less, His presence no more remote, for the child that dies than for the one that is spared, for His work is not about keeping us wrapped up in our mortal shells and the little things of earth life, but in our ultimate destiny in His endless presence.

His timetable and plans for each of us take us through wildly different routes in our journeys. Some routes are tragic and seem senselessly painful, especially when the cruelty of man is involved–a consequence of that terrible gift of freedom, without which we could not fully choose goodness and light to become like Him, though some instead choose to become devils. But we are also promised that the Atonement of Christ is sufficient and in the end, as we come into His presence, all tears can be wiped away.

And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.
And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. (Isaiah 25: 7-9)

If we only understood more and saw more clearly, we might recognize the hand of God in numerous things around us and rejoice more fully in the miracles of life, of love, of beauty, and of families. We might recognize small or even great miracles even in the painful trials he allows us to experience, some of which may have been tailored for us in His grace. We may be blind to most of the miracles that make our lives, but that should not makes us doubt or even be bitter when His kindness is more obvious to some.

Praise God for each child spared and for each parent given miraculous guidance. Weep for the larger number who are not spared. Do our best to keep doors to danger closed and children close enough to us that we will not need an angel’s voice to best fulfill our duties. And may we never judge or condemn those who are not the recipients of yearned-for miracles, or begrudge those who are.
Meanwhile, we must not lose our bearings and sail away from God because we journey in a world where oceans of trouble and islands of miracles coexist on a map wildly unlike what we would draw if we were the cartographer. Let us learn to understand the real map for this mortal landscape and understand its relationship to other maps, especially those that God sees including what came before and what comes after this temporary, painful, and sometimes grisly mortal world, which can nonetheless be a place of remarkable beauty, joy, delight, and tender mercies expressed sometimes as rare but real small miracles from God.

This partial response only scratches the surface of the problem of evil and pain in the world, but the eternal perspectives offered through the Church help. That includes knowledge of our premortal existence, the purposes of mortality, the eternal ends for which we and this mortal journey were created, and the endless healing mercy of Christ, whose ministry extends beyond mortality so that the good news of the Gospel and all its blessings are made available to all who have lived.

Update: Further Thoughts

In response to my related post at Mormanity, Jonathan Cavender offered a helpful comment:

I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about this, and I have found that the two most convincing things that I have read on the subject are from C. S. Lewis and from Charles Dickens.

C. S. Lewis points out that God has the capacity to accomplish any and all of His works through naturalistic means — he is the great Architect of mortality and by placing the right people in the right places, His work ultimately becomes complete. Thus He needs perform no miracle to accomplish any task. The wine could have been cheaper (and thus more bought), but instead the Lord turned water into wine.

Lewis argues that because He could accomplish His work without miraculous means, the miracles of God are never about the things getting done. If the Lord cared about us finding our keys, He could have helped us to leave them somewhere we wouldn’t have lost them. Whenever there is a miraculous event, it is to teach us (and only to teach us).

That is why there is no contradiction between the minor miracles — the tender mercies of the Lord — and the absence of the grand miracles. The purpose of the minor miracle is not to accomplish the minor result, but to let us know that He is there and to inspire us to follow Him.

Dickens, on the other hand, spoke of local charity and telescopic charity. He wrote on how some people focus on some distant cause, and devote their charitable impulses there while their families and friends suffer. He wrote that when people become too focused on telescopic charity, they neglect actual charity towards those they can help.

In my experience, the Lord does very little work ‘telescopically.’ He wants to develop a personal relationship with each one of us, and He accomplishes that better by answering prayers about lost keys than answering prayers about world peace. He doesn’t use miracles to change the world, he shows us miracles to teach us about Him and draw us to live like Him, and we are to change our lives and over time that will change the world.

I especially liked the perspective drawn from C.S. Lewis. If the primary or sole purpose of readily detectable miracles is to strengthen a relationship in some way with an individual, then it makes sense that the presence of identifiable miracles would be confined to small realms involving one or just a few individuals at a time.

It’s also important to remember that God’s care for us is not expressed in statistics such as our life span, our wealth, or the number of days without pain. While His loving eternal objectives for us naturally trump all the mortal outcomes we’d like to see, His kindness can still be manifest here in many ways, even in the midst of disaster and grief, as the survivors of the Martin and Willie Handcart Companies attested, and as many survivors of lengthy, tragic ordeals have experienced. Those who didn’t survive so long might have gotten the better deal, actually. Again, death is essential for all of us and is not the ultimate tragedy, nor is the timing of our death a meaningful measure for the value of our life or the love that God has for us.

By |2018-01-14T02:58:27-07:00September 17th, 2014|0 Comments
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Book of Mormon Geography

Understanding Book of Mormon Geography: Controversy, Evidence, and Two Cumorahs

The Book of Mormon is not intended to be a history book or a guide to geography, science, or any other secular topic. It is a book of scripture aimed at teaching people about Christ and how to find happiness through the Gospel. Nevertheless, it frequently makes reference to events in history and to the physical setting where its stories took place. In fact, there are hundreds of references to physical locations and geographical features which must be considered for those wishing to relate the Book of Mormon to the physical reality of its ancient setting. Anyone looking for evidence related to the Book of Mormon should, naturally, look for it in the regions where it took place–if, in fact, it is an authentic ancient record at all.

One of the first steps for evaluating the Book of Mormon and its evidence in any kind of logical, systematic way must be to understand the internal map inherent to the Book of Mormon, and then to determine if there is any place that could plausibly comply with the general demands of its physical setting. If not, the search for evidence may well be over. But if there is a place that broadly fits the geographical parameters inherent to the text, the search for evidence can properly begin.

While there are numerous theories for Book of Mormon geography that have been proposed by Latter-day Saints, many of these begin with a pet theory in search of evidence, followed by finding some apparent matches between the text and the selected territory. Thus, we have wildly conflicting locations that have been touted such as the Heartland model for the Eastern United States, the Baja Peninsula in Mexico, Florida, the whole western hemisphere, and even Malaysia. However, when serious Book of Mormon students first begin with a detailed consideration of the internal map implicit to the Book of Mormon and then search for a plausible location that fits the Book of Mormon’s map, there has consistently been one general result: Mesoamerica, the region of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and adjacent nations, wherein the “narrow neck of land” in the Book of Mormon corresponds to the isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The remarkable thing about Mesoamerica as the primary New World setting of the Book of Mormon is that it not only fits the details of the Book of Mormon’s implicit geography relatively well, but many other aspects besides the geography itself find support in the Mesoamerican setting. For example:

  • The rise of major cultures in Mesoamerica, particularly the ancient Olmec and the later Mayans and related groups, broadly parallels the Book of Mormon description of the Jaredites and the later Nephites and Lamanites.
  • Mesoamerica is the only place in the New World with a long tradition of keeping written records. It offers the presence of ancient large-scale civilization (cities, temples, priests, kings, written law, markets, judges, prisons, etc.) during Book of Mormon times.
  • Mesoamerica offers evidence of significant volcanic activity corresponding to the events in 3 Nephi when there were three days of darkness that could be felt, highly consistent with a major destructive volcanic event.
  • Numerous other issues in Mesoamerica such as patterns of warfare, political systems, economic systems, climate, and so forth find parallels to information in the Book of Mormon. This has been demonstrated with great success and in much detail in works such as John Sorensen’s Mormon’s Codex.

Thus, there is a growing consensus among LDS scholars that Mesoamerica is the place, and the only plausible place that can be considered for the Book of Mormon setting in the Americas. This consensus requires a “limited geography” in which the distances between the Lamanite regions in the south and the Nephite territories in the north are on the scale of a few hundred miles, not thousands of miles.

Mormons unfamiliar with the geographical issues of the Book of Mormon often immediately respond with an objection regarding the Hill Cumorah. “Wait, the famous Hill Cumorah, the scene of the final battles for the Nephite and Jaredite civilizations, and the place where the gold plates were buried and found, is in the state of New York. That’s thousands of miles from Mesoamerica.” This is a great place to begin examining what the Book of Mormon text actually says, after we observe that Joseph Smith never gave a name to the hill where he found the gold plates. Naming it Cumorah was the work of other members of the Church who assumed that it must be the hill mentioned in the test. But in the text, the Hill Cumorah was a large hill with abundant water, capable of giving military advantage to large armies with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. It was notable enough that it was known to distant armies and stood out as significant in two different eras separated by hundreds of years. The tiny 100-foot tall hill that Latter-day Saints assumed was the Hill Cumorah is barely big enough to hold the cast of the Hill Cumorah pageant. It is hardly distinguishable from the hundreds of other similar hills in that region of New York, and when it became significant to Latter-day Saints, did not even have a name. It was a nameless mound, not an impressive hill known to all around. It lacks the access to water mentioned in the text, water that would also be essential for maintaining a great army there for any period of time.

Further, it was, according to Mormon 6, the place where all the Nephite records were preserved, with the exception of the Book of Mormon’s golden plates, which Moroni removed from the hill and took with him as the Book of Mormon closes. In other words, it contained all the Nephite records except the Book of Mormon. The text does not explain how and where Moroni buried the plates, nor how he got to the place he selected. Did he wander for a few years and then bury it? That’s my guess. Or was it moved there by other means, perhaps after his resurrection? We don’t know. But nothing from the scriptures or any statement from Joseph Smith requires us to accept the tiny New York hill as the original Hill Cumorah.

Various LDS scholars and students of the Book of Mormon have found a notable hill in Veracruz state, Mexico, which appears to fulfill the requirements for the Hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon. Cerro Vigia, a significant hill rising over 1,000 feet from the surrounding terrain. You can see photos of it here. David Palmer in his book, In Search of Cumorah, was one of the first to propose this site, which appears to fit 15 criteria Palmer extracts from the Book of Mormon, as noted in a Wikipedia article on the Hill Cumorah:

1. It was near an eastern seacoast (Ether 9:3).

2. It was near a narrow neck of land (Alma 22:29-32,Mormon 2:29,Mormon 3:5) (Alma 43) (Alma 56) (Alma 50:33-34),(Alma 52:9) (Mormon 3:5-7),(Alma 63:5) (Ether 10:22-28).

3. It was on a coastal plain, and possibly near other mountains and valleys (Ether 14:12-15).

4. It was one day’s journey south (east-south-east in modern coordinates) of a large body of water (Ether 15:8-11).

5. It was in an area of many rivers and waters (Mormon 6:4).

6. It was in the presence of fountains (Mormon 6:4).

7. The abundance of water apparently provided a military advantage (Mormon 6:4).

8. There was an escape route to the land (“country”) southward (Mormon 8:2).

9. The hill was large enough to provide a view of hundreds of thousands of bodies (Mormon 6:11).

10. The hill was apparently a significant landmark (Ether 9:3; Mormon 6:6).

11. The hill was apparently free standing so people could camp around it (Mormon 6:2,Mormon 6:11).

12. The climate was apparently temperate with no cold or snow (No record of cold or snow) (Enos 1:20) (Alma 46:40)

13. The hill was located in a volcanic zone susceptible to earthquakes ( 3 Nephi 8:6-23)

While Cerro Vigia has become a popular candidate for Cumorah, there are some weaknesses in the theory, and some LDS researchers have wondered if a better Mesoamerican candidate might be found. Chris Heimerdinger offers a good discussion of some candidates, and notes that Larry Poulsen’s detailed analysis of the geography Mesoamerica has resulted in what appears to be an even better candidate. According to Heimerdinger,

[I]n order to meet the qualifications of the appropriate hill where the final battle between the Nephites and Lamanites, as well as the final battle between factions of the Jaredites, this hill must be east of another hill called Shim where the Prophet Ammaron temporarily hid up the sacred engravings of the Nephites (see Morm. 1:3) and west of a land called Ablom (in Jaredite times) that was near the seashore (see Ether 9:1-3). It must also be north of the Land of Zarahemla and south or west (southwest?) of the waters of Ripliancum (Eth. 15:7-11). Ripliancum appears to be a Jaredite word meaning “large or to exceed all” (Ether 15:8). Cumorah must also be in a land of many waters and rivers and fountains and in the general area where Mormon grew up as a child.

Poulsen’s preferred candidate is Omitepetl hill in Veracruz. The Nahuatl or Aztec meaning of Omitepetl is “bone hill,” which would be a logical name for a hill where great battles of destruction occurred long ago. Very little archaeological work has been done on it so far, so we must wait to learn if there is evidence for ancient warfare on its slopes. However, there is another major hill nearby in the region of Misantla that can serve as a candidate for the hill Shim in the Book of Mormon. This hill, about 10 miles west of Omitepetl, is named Paxil (pronounced pa-sheel), a word from the Totonac language that means “Maize Hill.” In Mayan, the word shim or ixim (pronounced ee-sheem) means maize (interestingly, two other candidates for Cumorah also have hills nearby called Maize or Corn Hill).

Significantly, Omitepetl was recognized by the Spaniards as an unusual place with many waters (fountains, springs, etc., with an impressive hydrological network), as Heimerdinger notes. It is about 200 miles north of the narrow neck of land. More work is needed to determine if this is a viable candidate. But the important thing is that there are potentially plausible candidates in Mesoamerica for Cumorah and the nearby hill Shim. The identity of Cumorah in Mesoamerica remains unclear, but it is rather clear that the Mesoamerican candidates are much better choices than the New York Cumorah.

While many LDS scholars are converging on the idea of Mesoamerica as the focal point for the Book of Mormon in the New World, there is a notable movement calling for New York and the Eastern United States as the place of the Book of Mormon. This “Heartland Model” for Book of Mormon geography downplays the geographical information in the text. Instead of beginning with an analysis of the map inherent to the text itself, the Heartland Model proponents claim that their model is based on revelation from God and that statements from Joseph Smith and other leaders of the Church can be used to establish the basic setting. Once they have the “correct answer,” they can then propose how certain geographical features in the text can be forced onto their map.

There are many serious problems with this approach. Joseph Smith never claimed to have revealed information about the setting of the Book of Mormon. However, when information about Mesoamerican civilization came to light in the early 1840s, he did say that we would do well to compare Book of Mormon civilization with those in Mesoamerica. Thus severely undercuts the claims of the Heartland Model advocates. See “‘War of Words and Tumult of Opinions’: The Battle for Joseph Smith’s Words in Book of Mormon Geography” by Neal Rappleye for The Mormon Interpreter (July 2014), where Rappleye shows that there is compelling evidence that Joseph Smith was responsible for the multiple positive endorsements in the LDS publication Times and Seasons of Mesoamerica as a key place to look for the ancient setting of the Book of Mormon. Rod Meldrum and other proponents of the Heartland Model have tried to argue that Joseph Smith was away in hiding when those statements came out, a claim that has been thoroughly refuted. Further, examination of statements in the Times and Seasons regarding Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon show Joseph’s involvement and implicit approval before, during, and after his tenure as editor. There is no basis to claim that Joseph disagreed with those statements and that he had received revelation for a US-centric geography.

Related resources on Cumorah:

Resources on Book of Mormon geography:

 

By |2017-12-24T07:29:41-07:00July 26th, 2014|Comments Off on Book of Mormon Geography
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Hebrew Wordplays in the Book of Mormon Text: Possible Evidence of Ancient Origins

Hebrew Wordplays in the Book of Mormon Text: Possible Evidence of Ancient Origins

A curious feature of the Book of Mormon  is the existence of apparent Semitic wordplays such as puns or other plays on Hebrew words. Some of these appear to be rather sophisticated. Some have only recently been noted. As far as I know, there presence was not observed in the first few decades of the Church, making it unlikely that they were crafted as some sort of scheme to add bogus evidence to the text that could be exploited to boost sales of the book or spur missionary work.

The latest wordplay discovery I know of was just reported in the Mormon Interpreter by Matthew L. Bowen in his article, “‘And There Wrestled a Man with Him’ (Genesis 32:24): Enos’s Adaptations of the Onomastic Wordplay of Genesis,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 10 (2014): 151-160. Bowen shows how Enos in his little one-chapter-long book appears to be deliberating using Hebrew wordplays that link his struggle with God to Jacob’s wrestling in Genesis, with multiple words linking his story and situation to that of Jacob in ways that add further meaning to the text.

It’s clever, skillful, and deep, IMHO.

There are many other wordplays to consider. As I wrote in Part 2 of my Book of Mormon Evidences section, Semitic roots or other interesting aspects of many Book of Mormon names can be explored in a new resource from BYU, the Book of Mormon Onomasticon. There, for example, you can look at the interesting relationship between the name Antionum, a place associated with wealth and pride, and a Nephite unit of currency, antion, both of which have relationships to Old World terms. (For Antionum and other “anti-” names in the Book of Mormon, also see a discussion of the name Antipus on the QuantumLeap42 blog and an article by Stephen Carr at BMAF.org.)

A related wordplay or metonymy involves the name Zeezrom. A more detailed discussion of the name Zeezrom was is provided by Stephen D. Ricks at MormonInterpreter.com, along with a discussion of Jershon.

Other examples of meaningful entries at the Onomasticon include Alma (more below), Ripliancum, Sheum, Zoram, and many more.

In Part 1 of Book of Mormon Evidences, I point to the apparent wordplay on the name Nahom, which can fit the mourning and murmuring described at the place. There is also a possible Hebraic wordplay involving the place name Sebus in Alma (see p. 3 of the PDF).

Further, there may be a sophisticated Hebrew wordplay in Lehi’s vision. See “A Temple Gone Dark: An Important New Slant on the Themes of Nephi’s Vision and Lehi’s Dream” at Mormanity.

Further recent developments include the discovery of an interesting wordplay on the name Joseph in 2 Nephi 3 identified by Matthew L. Bowen, “He Shall Add”: Wordplay on the Name Joseph and an Early Instance of Gezera Shawa in the Book of Mormon,” Insights, Vol. 30, Issue 2 (2010); see p. 2 of that PDF. That wordplay also involves another intriguing Hebraic literary tool.

A potential wordplay involving the name Zarahemla has also been identified (see page 2 of that PDF). Also see Matthew Bowen’s article at The Interpreter, “‘They Were Moved with Compassion’ (Alma 27:4; 53:13): Toponymic Wordplay on Zarahemla and Jershon” (2016).

Another possible wordplay is at the center of a chiasmus discussed on my page on chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.

Joseph had not studied Hebrew before the Book of Mormon was published, so the presence of apparent Hebraic wordplays in the text adds an interesting element to consider.

The Hebrew Name Alma: A Response to Critics

The discovery of “Alma” as an authentic Jewish male name from around the time of Lehi ought to give the critics food for thought, but this find is generally ignored or casually dismissed. For example, one critic recently e-mailed me the following question: “Why do pro-LDS apologists cite names such as ‘Alma’ as evidence? In Hebrew, vowels are omitted so any ‘new discovery’ is just a coincidence (Alma= LM).”

Critics generally dismiss any evidence as just coincidence, but in this case, as with many others, there is little basis for the dismissal. The critic implies that all we have for the name Alma is two consonants that could just as easily be pronounced Lame-o, Elmo, Alum, Oleomo, Oily Moe, and so forth. This is not the case.

The name in the ancient Jewish document is actually spelled with four letters, beginning with an aleph. The name appears in two forms that differ in the final letter (א

[aleph] or ×” [hey]), but “Alma” fits both.

Transliterated into English, the first form with the terminal aleph (אמלא) is For scholars of Hebrew, there is good evidence that the name should be “Alma,” which is exactly how the non-LDS scholar, Yigael Yadin, transliterated it.

For details, see Paul Hoskisson, “What’s in a Name?,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1998, pp. 72-73 (link is to a PDF file; an HTML file is also available with just the text). That article shows a color photograph of the document that has the name Alma in it twice.

John Tvedtnes also mentioned the name Alma in a well-received presentation to other non-LDS scholars, “Hebrew Names in the Book of Mormon,” where he noted that in addition being found as a male name in one of the Bar Kochba documents, it is also found as a medieval place name in Eretz Israel and as a personal male name from Ebla.

Alma proves to not only be a genuine Semitic name, but is a name of an Hebraic man. While this is well after Lehi’s time, the name Alma has also been found in much more ancient documents (see p. 70 of the PDF document) from tablets from Ebla in modern Syria in 1975, dating to around 2200 B.C. (see Terrence L.Szink, “New Light: Further Evidence of a Semitic Alma,” J. of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999).

Finding the male name Alma in a record about descendants early Hebrews now must be viewed not as a reason for mocking the Book of Mormon, but as a reason to take it seriously.

As is often the case in the Book of Mormon, there’s more than meets the eye of the casual reader. One of the most fascinating things about the purportedly ancient text with Semitic origins is that many elements in it make more sense and gain new layers of meaning when we import information from the ancient world that was not available to Joseph Smith when he whipped out this masterpiece.

Regarding the name “Alma,” the way that name is introduced and used in the text reflects possible Hebraic wordplays on the name. That’s the gist of Matthew Bowen’s recent note at the Maxwell Institute, “‘And He Was a Young Man’: The Literary Preservation of Alma’s Autobiographical Wordplay.”

See also my related post on Mormanity, as well as “Nephites with Jaredite Names” in Hugh Nibley’s classic book, The World of the Jaredites and also Michael Ash’s “Nephite names find a ‘home’ in Middle East.”

Alma, like Nahom, is an example of a name that not only makes sense in light of its Hebrew meaning, but now comes with archaeological evidence to add to its plausibility as a legitimate ancient name. Nahom’s case, as I’ve mentioned here before, is especially impressive, in spite of dedicated critics simply dismissing it as being “without significance.”

By |2017-12-24T08:02:29-07:00June 28th, 2014|0 Comments
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Avoiding Temple Blindness: Tips for Latter-day Saints on Appreciating the Ancient Aspects of the LDS Temple

Avoiding Temple Blindness: Tips for Latter-day Saints on Appreciating the Ancient Aspects of the LDS Temple

Nüwa holding a compass and Fuxi with a square

Ancient Chinese silk showing Nüwa holding a compass and Fuxi holding a square, symbols of order and creation far older than modern Masonry. From the Chinese Wikipedia entry for Nüwa. See the discussion of related figures in Yinyang by Robin Wang (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ Press, 2012), pp. 101-103.

 

I am pained to see Latter-day Saints get carried away in cynicism over the Temple because some elements are linked to modern sources such as Masonry. This is an important theme in some attacks that have gained publicity recently, where it is argued that the Temple is a fraud because it does not contain elements from Solomon’s temple but from modern Masonry. As I explain on my LDSFAQ page on the LDS Temple and Masonry, neither Masonry nor any other modern source explains the ancient majesty of the LDS temple concept, which is completely foreign to the modern world and to Joseph Smith’s world. Numerous aspects of the LDS temple concept such as washings and anointings, baptism for the dead, and the sealing of families have no relationship to Masonry or and/or predate Joseph’s exposure to Masonry, making Masonry a completely inadequate source to explain the content of the Temple. The LDS Temple is much more at home in a very ancient setting and offers strong evidence for an actual Restoration. As for Solomon’s temple, the relationship might be stronger than blind critics could ever see, as I’ll explore below.

The modern charge that the temple was just plagiarized from Masonry didn’t occur to Latter-day Saint Masons in Joseph’s day, including those who left the Church for various reasons. They knew they were dealing with something quite different, though it shared some superficial elements and felt more like a restoration of knowledge than a clumsy copy. Today the sense of restoration versus ripoff has a great deal of intellectual support. For example, as discussed in more detail on my LDSFAQ page, John Tvedtnes has pointed out that there is “a corpus of documents from the second century B.C. through the fifth century A.D. that deal with elements of the endowment as it is taught in LDS temples and which demonstrates the antiquity of the ordinance.” There I further discuss a few specifics and provide links for more detailed information. But for now, rather than getting caught up in minute details such as whether a particular symbol is used in modern Masonry or not, let’s consider some broader issues.

The real issue is not whether the Temple has any elements in common with Masonry or other modern sources. There can be many reasons for shared elements, and they may not be significant. A more meaningful question might be “Can significant aspects of the LDS Temple be viewed as a restoration of ancient concepts?” While the LDS Temple is part of a modern dispensation, adapted for modern participants, there is a strong case that it is part of a Restoration of ancient truths and concepts. Let’s begin with a review of the big picture of what the temple is, beginning with its very existence, and then looking at its role and purpose.

The modern Christian world has given up on temples. The ancient temple is gone and is no longer necessary, it is said. In a religious world that denied the need for and importance of temples, Joseph Smith provided revelations teaching that the temple was to play a central role. Modern scholars in looking at the Bible and other ancient writings now increasingly recognize that the temple and temple concepts were at the heart of not only Judaism but also Christianity. Simply reading the New Testament with an awareness of temple concepts, one can see that Christ was constantly at or near the temple. He defended its sanctity. Though early Christians would be cast out from the temple, at least initially they gathered there often as read in Acts 2:47: “And they

[the followers of Christ], continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.” The temple is where Christ was frequently during his mortal mission. It is where He will return at the Second Coming, according to Malachi 3:1-2. And after His return, the Lord’s temple is where Christians will labor night and day during the grand Millennium (Rev. 7:15). And yet we are supposed to be believe that the temple just doesn’t matter any more? I can understand why the argument of convenience and necessity, for the ancient temple was lost, along with the knowledge and authority required to operate it. But the answer is not to give up on the temple, but to look for and welcome its Restoration.

Scholars like Margaret Barker are now showing us that temple worship and related concepts was central to early Christianity. Her works such as Temple Mysticism argue that one reason why the message of Christ spread so well among the early Jews was that many were aware of the ancient traditions going back to the first temple, before the reforms that would stamp out much of the original temple concept. These traditions made the temple a place of ascent into the presence of God, and taught the ancient Jews that the Divine Council included Jehovah, a son of the Most High God. It was a place of covenants and revelation where angels were involved and where human priests represented divine beings.

Yes, like the ancient temple, the restored LDS temple is a place of covenant making. It restores the ancient primacy of covenants in the relationship between man and God. In fact, it employs a full covenant pattern (the “covenant formulary”) from the ancient Middle East that was not recognized by scholars until the 19th century. This pattern is also found in the Book of Mormon, particularly in King Benjamin’s covenant-making speech given at the Nephite temple (Mosiah 2-4).

The temple teaches an anthropomorphic God and Son of God who created man with the intent of bringing them into their presence where they will participate in their glory and joy. Theosis, becoming like God in some way, is an essential aspect of the LDS temple and one that is strongly attested in ancient sources—evidence of a Restoration.

The temple is based on the concept of sacred teachings that are not publicized but kept unwritten or secret. This flies in the face of religion in Joseph’s day but recently has been strongly confirmed in early Christian worship. Again, this is evidence that the broad concepts of the LDS temple are consistent with a restoration of ancient elements.

The temple also prepares us for the journey back to God’s presence in a series of steps. The Endowment involves three rooms, Telestial, Terrestrial, and Celestial. This is related to a variety of ancient concepts, including the three major sections of Solomon’s Temple.

Kevin Christensen reminds us of this basic concept in “The Temple, the Monarchy, and Wisdom: Lehi’s World and the Scholarship of Margaret Barker” in Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem (Provo, UT: Maxwell Institute, 2004):

The most obvious aspect of the temple in Jerusalem involved the levels of sacredness, increasing from the inner court to the holy place and to the holy of holies. According to Mircea Eliade, the three parts of the temple at Jerusalem correspond to the three cosmic regions. The lower court represents the lower regions (“Sheol,” the abode of the dead), the holy place represents the earth, and the holy of holies represents heaven. The temple is always the meeting point of heaven, earth, and the world of the dead. Lehi’s cosmology saw the world in these three realms (heaven, 1 Nephi 1:8; the earth, 1 Nephi 1:14; and the realm of the dead, 2 Nephi 1:14). King Benjamin, speaking from his temple, also sees the cosmos in terms of heaven, the earth, and the realm of the dead (Mosiah 2:25, 26, 41), with entrance into God’s presence as the ultimate joyous state (Mosiah 2:41). Considering 3 Nephi as a whole, we can also find these three distinct levels of sacredness: (1) darkness/separation (3 Nephi 8–10), (2) preparation/initiation (3 Nephi 11:1–17:23; 18:1–37; 19:13; 20:1–28:12), (3) apotheosis/at-one-ment (3 Nephi 17:24; 18:36–39; 19:14, 25–31; 28:10–18).

Margaret Barker has this to say in “Beyond the Veil of the Temple: The High Priestly Origin of the Apocalypses,” Presidential address to the Society for Old Testament Study, Cambridge, January 1998, published in the Scottish Journal of Theology 51.1 (1998):

Josephus, who was himself a priest (Life 1), says that the tabernacle was a microcosm of the creation, divided into three parts: the outer parts represented the sea and the land but ‘…the third part thereof… to which the priests were not admitted, is, as it were, a heaven peculiar to God’ (Ant. 3.181). Thus the veil which screened the holy of holies was also the boundary between earth and heaven. Josephus was writing at the very end of the second temple period, but texts such as Psalm 11 ‘The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’s throne is in heaven’, suggest that the holy of holies was thought to be heaven at a much earlier period, and the LXX of Isaiah 6, which differs from the Hebrew, implies that the hekhal was the earth3. The Glory of the LORD filled the house in v. 1, and the seraphim sang that the Glory filled the earth , v. 3.

The LDS temple likewise progresses from creation to the fallen world, and then ultimately to the Celestial Room after passing through the veil, consistent with the ancient Jewish temple.

The Ancient Temple: Not Derived from Masonry

Temple themes and subtleties in LDS religion cannot be explained from Joseph’s brief encounter with Masonry because a) Masonry does not contain most of these elements, and b) many temple themes are found in LDS scriptures predating Joseph’s brief exposure to Masonry in 1842.

Examples of ancient elements in the LDS temple not derivable from Masonry or other sources accessible to Joseph Smith include:

  • The covenant formulary: a detailed pattern used in ancient Middle Eastern covenants that is fully present in the LDS temple. The steps of this pattern were not recognized by scholars until the 20th century.
  • The prayer circle, which has ancient roots. According to non-LDS scholar E. Louis Backman, “If you are inducted into the Christian mysteries, then you must perform a ring-dance round the altar . . . not only with the other novitiates but also with the angels! For they are present and participate in the mystery.”, Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine, trans. E. Classen (1952; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), 19; see also Hugh W. Nibley, “The Early Christian Prayer Circle,” in Mormonism and Early Christianity, 45-99, originally published in BYU Studies, vol. 19 (1978).
  • Baptism for the dead, a practice that does have roots in early Christianity—certainly not Masonry. Numerous documents since Joseph’s day strengthen the case for baptism for the dead as an authentic practice of at least some early Christians. This practice clearly has no relationship to Masonry and is clearly at odds with the religious environment Joseph grew up in. It cannot be explained as a product of his environment. See also “The Harrowing of Hell: Salvation for the Dead in Early Christianity (PDF)” from Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19/1 by Roger D. Cook, David L. Paulsen, and Kendel J. Christensen; “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity” (PDF) from Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19/2 by David L. Paulsen, and Brock M. Mason; and “Redeeming the Dead: Tender Mercies, Turning of Hearts, and Restoration of Authority” (PDF) from Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20/1 by David L. Paulsen, Kendel J. Christensen, and Martin Pulido.

Some of the symbols commonly ascribed to Masonry such as the square and the compass are ancient and may have common origins with Masonry. For example, both of these symbols are found together in a ritual context on Facsimile 2 (figure 7) of the Book of Abraham, on an Egyptian drawing involving the passage of man into the afterlife dating back roughly 2,000 years. Many other ancient sources provide support for these symbols as ancient, meaningful symbols that have been imbued with at least some of the meanings and applications found in the LDS temple. Since I am in China as I write this, I wish to also mention that ancient China offers further evidence for the antiquity of the square and compass symbols in the LDS temple, where the very common and ancient word for order and rules (especially those of a community or organization) is guiju （规矩）, which literally means compass and square (the carpenter’s square is depicted in right side of the ju character: 矩, which also an important element in many other characters). In the Third International Handbook of Mathematics Education by M. A. Clements et al., p. 527, we read:

In ancient Chinese mythology, there were demigods Nuwai and Fuxi who were the progenitors of mankind and shapers of human society. Legends say that Nuwa and Fuxi invented gui (compasses) and ju (set-square) to shape the world. On an ancient stone carving found inside a tomb from the East Han dynasty (25 to 220 CE) there is an intertwined image of Nuwa and Fuxi with Nuwa holding a gui and Fuxi holding a ju. For the ancient Chinese, the basic concept of the world was “heaven is round, earth is square” and there was an ancient motto that “without guiju [rules], there are no square and circle.” This geometrical intuition about the physical world became metaphoric in the human world. The connotative usage of the word guiju refers to orderliness according to underlying rules, and even applies to human affairs. Hence for the Chinese, circle and square were elemental shapes and rules of the universe and they were embodied and symbolized by the tools that produced them.

See also “Nüwa and Fuxi in Chinese Mythology: Compass & Square” at TempleStudy.com. Note that the compass and square have meaning in the context of Creation as well as in establishing order for humans, reminding them of rules and boundaries for behavior. This is a good fit for the LDS concept and points to ancient roots for these symbols and their usage in the LDS temple.

Much of the evidence for the LDS temple as a restoration of at least some ancient elements comes from documents from antiquity that Joseph typically would not have read (often because the documents weren’t discovered or available until years later). On the other hand, some of the most important evidence is in plain sight in the Bible, yet long overlooked or denied by modern Christians. The single verse mentioning baptism for the dead is of that variety. That verse is certainly not enough material to guide Joseph in creating that majestic doctrine and the vibrant concept of family history work that blesses so many lives today, yet that verse stands as one of several important strands of evidence that some early Christians did have this practice in some form. Likewise, the book of Revelation in the Bible is infused with temple themes that many overlook.

Ancient and Restored Temple Themes in the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is rich with references to concepts related to temple worship. For example, it makes reference to esoteric teachings or mysteries that are not made public as we read in Alma 12:9-11. Nephi refers to the Savior as the keeper of the gate in 2 Nephi 9:41, the gate that is at the end of the path that leads to the Savior, and where there is no other way but by the gate to reach the Lord. As keeper of the gate, “he employeth no servant there” (a possible reference, though, to the use of servants along the path prior to the gate). A test of some kind at the gate is also implied with the statement that the Lord as keeper of the gate “cannot be deceived.” Then in verse 42, “whose knocketh, to him will he open.” King Benjamin’s discourse at the temple is infused with covenant making themes and imagery. The Lord’s Sermon at the Temple in 3 Nephi is also rich in temple themes, as John Welch has demonstrated in his book, The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount: A Latter-Day Saint Approach (2010).

However, some of the most temple-centric aspects of the Book of Mormon have been attacked as being evidence of fraud. Since 1831 when Alexander Campbell published “Delusions” attacking the Book of Mormon, critics have charged that it is pathetically anachronistic in depicting early Hebrews who worshipped Christ. Campbell was particularly outraged that the Nephites would engage in temple worship outside of Jerusalem (“contrary to every precept of the law”), and rely on a priesthood other than the Levitical priesthood. Such arguments lost some of their sting with the revelations from the Dead Sea Scrolls, where we find pre-Christian Hebrews in what has been called a church of anticipation, engaging in practices that were once thought to be uniquely Christian. Other documents confirmed that Jews outside of Israel such as those in Elephantine, Egypt had no trouble in building their own temples patterned after Solomon’s temple, as did the Nephites. More recently, Barker’s work helps us appreciate the ancient significance of the Melchizedek Priesthood and the primacy of early temple concepts in preexilic Jewish religion, remarkable consistent with the flavor of religion Lehi brought to the New World. What looked like silly anachronisms in 1830 now appear as impressive evidences that the Book of Mormon is an authentic ancient text, and that temple-related concepts in it and in the LDS temple are fruits of a Restoration, not just ignorant blunders.

Further scholarship continues to shed temple-related insights into the Book of Mormon in ways that further confirm not only its authenticity as an ancient Semitic record. For example, subtle Hebraic wordplay on the structure of Solomon’s temple even appears to play an important role in Lehi’s vision in a way that Joseph Smith surely could not have fabricated, as I discuss at Mormanity and the Nauvoo Times. D. John Butler in his ebook, Plain and Precious Things: The Temple Religion of the Book of Mormon’s Visionary Men provides a new way of looking at Lehi’s vision. Lehi describes a journey that begins in a “dark and dreary wilderness” that joins a “large and spacious field, as if it had been a world” (1 Nephi 8:20). The Hebrew word ulam for the first part of the temple is very close, almost identical in sound, to olam, a word that means “world.” In Butler’s view, there is a Hebrew play on words linking the great and spacious field, “a world,” to the Temple’s ulam. It’s one of many clues that we are on a Temple trip—but not the happy place of light and joy we normally associate with the Temple. In Lehi’s dream, it’s a temple gone dark. Dark and dreary, filled with wicked priests representing the corrupt religions establishment of his day.

After the ulam comes the hekal, the “great building.” Recall Lehi’s words of what he saw after the field/world/ulam:

a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth. And it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit. (1Nephi 8:26-27)

The word “fine” is used repeatedly in the Old Testament to describe the clothing of the priests in the temple, not secular clothing. The people with the fine clothing in the great and spacious building include the priests of the temple in a sinister hekal, part of Lehi’s dark temple experience. Butler also compares the fumes of incense that are part of the hekal with the mists of darkness that lead people astray. The waters of life that are part of many temple scenarios in ancient literature are replaced with filthy waters that lead people astray.

Only those who resist the corrupt religious establishment of his day and the temptations and pressures of the adversary, clinging to the word of God (the iron rod) can make it past the dark ulam and sinister hekal and arrive safely to debir and the tree of life, rich in temple imagery also. Thus, Lehi’s dream also appears to use Semitic wordplay to refer to the 3 parts of Solomon’s temple, with a twist highlighting the forces of apostasy that he was opposing. Its references to a tree of life, waters of life, the Son of God, and so forth are consistent with Barker’s reconstruction of early temple theology prior to the Exile–again, evidence of a Restoration.

Clothed Upon: The Ancient Nature of Temple Clothing

Critics enjoying making fun of LDS temple clothing and LDS garments, the special clothing given to those who get their Endowment in the temple. However, these unusual items have profound ancient roots and ancient parallels that add depth to the claim of a Restoration of ancient religion. For a fascinating introduction to this topic, see Blake Ostler’s scholarly survey of this theme in “Clothed Upon: A Unique Aspect of Christian Antiquity,” BYU Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 1981. Most LDS people reading this are going to be highly surprised. Meanwhile, the Church has released a helpful video on the nature of the LDS garment, which I share and discuss in a post at Mormanity.

For more on the ancient Jewish and Christian roots of some particular issues related to LDS temple clothing, also see John W. Welch and Claire Foley, “Gammadia on Early Jewish and Christian Garments,” BYU Studies, Volume 36:3 (1996–97).

Temple Themes in Other LDS Scriptures Prior to 1842

The Book of Moses, published in 1831, contains many elements relevant to the LDS Temple. It begins with a classic heavenly ascent scene, which is related to the core concept of bringing man into the presence of God. Instead of taking place in a temple, this “Endowment” takes place in the natural substitute for a formal temple, a high mountain. There Moses sees God “face to face” and is able to “endure his presence” (v. 2). He is shown the world that God has created and learns more of God’s works, and is told he has been created in the image of the Son. After God departs, Satan comes telling Moses to worship him, and Moses casts him out in the name of the Son, whereupon Satan departs, ranting and shaking the earth (v. 12-22). God then visits Moses again, showing him more details of the Creation, including the first man, “Adam, which is many” (v. 34). Moses is commanded to write what he has learned and also writes the detailed Creation story.

The Book of Moses contains other elements that are integral to the LDS Endowment ceremony, including information about Satan’s rebellion and the premortal existence, and Adam’s faithfulness in offering sacrifices that were a similitude of the sacrifice of the Son of God.

Much more can be said about temple themes in the Book of Moses. There is an entire book on the subject, Jeffrey Bradshaw’s Temples Themes in the Book of Moses. Highly recommended reading (see George L. Mitton’s review at Mormon Interpreter).

The Book of Abraham, translated in 1835 but not officially published until 1842, contains related temple themes. Abraham desires priesthood blessings. He is rescued from a human sacrifice and encounters God, and later has God appear to him (2: 6). In this second encounter God offers the Abrahamic covenant (2:8-11). He appears another time (2:19) and makes further promises. God reveals to Abraham details of the creation via preserved records from the fathers (1: 31) and also via vision aided by the Urim and Thummim (3:1-2), and he also shares the story of the Creation and also of the premortal existence. In Facsimile 2, Joseph’s comments regarding some of the figures make mention of concepts such as “Key-words of the Priesthood” revealed to Adam in the Garden of Eden (see comments on Fig. 3 and 7), an interpretation published at about the same time Joseph was initiated in Masonry but which he had already made no later than May 1841 when he discussed that concept and Facs. 2 with a non-LDS visitor, William I. Appleby, as recorded in his journal entry of May 5, 1841 (see discussion by Matthew Brown). In Fac. 2, Fig. 8’s comment refers to hidden teachings to be found in the Holy Temple of God.

The Doctrine and Covenants, the compilation of canonized revelations primarily received by Joseph Smith, also contains language that anticipates some of the important elements of the Endowment and the Nauvoo Temple. Section 84:19-25 given in 1832 says the Melchizedek priesthood holds “the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God” (v. 19) and then explains that in the ordinances of the priesthood “the power of godliness is manifest … [f]or without this, no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live” (vv. 20-22). Verses 23-24 then explain that Moses was seeking to bring Israel into the presence of God and into his rest. This is the fundamental theme of the temple, to prepare people to enter into God’s presence. It is also a key purpose of the original Jewish temple, according to the recent scholarship of Margaret Barker.

Section 124 of the Doctrine and Covenants also makes allusions to temple themes. In verse 39, for example, there are references to washings, anointings, baptism for the dead, and an “endowment” of  those in Zion to be had in the temple they are to build. In the commands given regarding the construction of the temple in this section, we learn that this is where the fulness of the priesthood will be restored (v. 28), including the keys of the priesthood (v. 34), with further ordinances to be revealed (v. 40). This was written in January 1841.

There is so much more to say on this topic, including much more from early Christianity. The LDS temple and related topics are worth a lifetime of study. The temple and its teachings go deep into antiquity and bring together many of the most interesting aspects of the Gospel and of ancient religion. Read Eliade, read Levenson, read Barker, and read the many LDS scholars who have furthered our understanding of the ancient world, of early Christianity and Judaism, of the scriptures, of the modern Restoration, and of the ancient and restored Temple. Anachronisms and blunders are becoming subtleties and evidences for plausibility. Our ability to learn from the Temple and intellectually appreciate its majesty is greater than ever. There is no need to be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this era, though the Temple is further than ever from the dark comfort zone of the world and its fine-clothed intellectuals.

Further resources:

By |2017-12-17T05:52:48-07:00May 10th, 2014|0 Comments
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