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| Can Archaeology Prove the Book of Mormon? |
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One of my favorite games is gomoku. The object of the game is to be the first of the two opponents to place five stones in a row on a board with a grid. It is deceptively complicated for a game with few rules. However, one of the aspects of the game is that the person placing the first stone has a tremendous advantage. The person on defense scrambles like mad, and has to be very good to withstand the onslaught. Critical studies of the Book of Mormon follow the same pattern. Those of us who would defend the Book of Mormon are always playing the second stone. The reason is quite simple. For a book such as the Book of Mormon it can be possible to prove that is not an ancient document. It is not, however, possible to prove that it is a translation of an ancient document. Let me illustrate. Before the geography now known as the "Limited Tehuantepec theory", the attempts to place the Book of Mormon on the map were subject to simple potshots from anyone with a passing knowledge of New World archaeology. Most of the geographical arguments were so simplistic that it took very little knowledge to dismiss them entirely. The availability of reasoned material using a Limited Tehuantepec theory now offers us a plausible Book of Mormon location, where none previously existed. There are clearly problems remaining with the identification of the Book of Mormon and a real world setting, but let us assume for a moment that there were none. If we take all of those problems and magically erase them (perhaps sitting at Mormon's shoulder and having him excise material that was going to prove difficult later on) we are still left with the fundamental problem. Nothing we have or can do with Book of Mormon archaeology will prove the Book of Mormon correct. The only thing that would really stand as proof is a written text corroborating names, and even that would be subject to severe debate. No matter the evidence, we are still placing the second stone, and always will be. Against a tough opponent, I am happy with a draw if I am playing second. Now that we know we can't win, what can we do? We can continue to change our comprehension of the Book of Mormon from the mystical explainer of all native populations in the Americas to something closer to what a real document might be. I distinctly remember sitting in a elementary school class and feeling quite smug when my teacher talked about migrations over the land bridge - because I knew how the Americas were really populated! I have since tried hard to teach my children (and anyone else who would listen - did I just imply that my children listen?) a more realistic interpretation of Book of Mormon history to save them from a similar embarrassment. One of the inexorable processes of good historical research is that it alters our view of the past. In the case of all of the early brethren who were the source of my juvenile understanding, the best work now shows the Book of Mormon to be demonstrably different, more complex, and more human than we have mythologized it to be. To argue that the Book of Mormon is not historical because our mythologies are flawed condemns us, and not the Book. To argue that Joseph had vast stores of revealed knowledge about every hill and blanched bone he found gives him too little humanity. Based on what we know, we all extrapolate a world which fits with our concepts. Joseph was no different. The issue, of course, is how much of that is underneath the Book of Mormon, and how much did Joseph himself (starkly himself - without revelatory assistance) put in it? Since I am placing the second stone, I won't answer. We all have to fight out that answer. Returning to my opening thesis, that we need to lay some ground rules, let's look at the world of the possible, rather than the impossible. If we are to expect that the Book of Mormon is a representation of an ancient document (and we all differ on how it represents an ancient document) it must still hold to certain guidelines. The first is that we must understand what we can expect from dirt archaeology. The best model for the this relationship between text and archaeology is the Bible. Archaeology and the Bible are, and have been, strange bedfellows. While the Bible clearly implies an important and complex people, the rest of the world found Israel a backwater more interesting for its strategic position than anything else. If the Bible were the only text we had from that part of the world, we would be hard-pressed to reconstruct the history of Egypt based on the Bible's discussion of the Israelites in Egypt. From the documentary evidence available for Egypt, we are unable to even document Israel's presence in Egypt. The archaeology can find nothing that clearly corroborates it. From Egypt's standpoint, this most significant event of Israelite history is non-existent. There is no material culture which would distinguish the Israelites from their neighbors, so we are in a bind archeologically when we try to make too many correlations. We are also in a bind because the ancient book is not necessarily accurate history. Israel really never intended it to pass historical-critical methodologies, and it won't. The Bible describes events in a small part of the world surrounded by more powerful neighbors. In spite of that, it presents an overinflated picture of the importance of that people. Just as I remember being wrong about the Book of Mormon populations explaining all of the New World, I distinctly remember being wrong about the Bible and its explanation of the entire world. My current understanding is rooted in much more evidence, and complicated by numerous issues, but the Bible is still and ancient text, and still has a message for me, despite its contradictions. With the Book of Mormon, the situation is even more complicated. In the Old World we can rely on continuous history to locate many sites, so the location of Jericho (for instance) is clearly known. The issue of the knowable becomes critical for relating the Book of Mormon to anything found in the dirt in the New World. One of the problems of dirt archaeology is that we typically find the major structures and the trash (and only the imperishable trash). To describe the problem of archaeology of a religious group, imagine this scenario. Some cataclysm buries any one of our cities. All of our books rot away, and maybe no one can read our language for years. On the basis of what is in one's house that is imperishable, what absolutely distinguishes the household of the most ardent Mormon from his most ardent atheist neighbor? I daresay we drive the same model cars (no Mormon vehicle that I am aware of). We all would be seen to "worship" this box with a glass front, based on its prominent position and the fact that living space is oriented toward it. We would cook with very similar metal pots. If someone were in on the joke, they would know us from the plastic grapes - but then only if it was the home from that interesting RS period - and they were excavating the attic or basement.... The problem with archaeology is that we have some problems with identification from time to time. Biblical archaeology has some of the very same problems. Even though we know where Jerusalem has been for a while, there is no pottery tradition that marks Israel from its neighbors. The ate off the same ware. They built their buildings in the same way. Things become even more difficult when attempting to identify a religion archaeologically. The process is necessarily a reconstruction, frequently depends heavily on tracing back known symbols. For instance, we find Christian burials because of the prominence of the cross. We might discover a Jewish location by being lucky and finding a star of David. Suppose, however, that we had a historical disconnect with Christian religious art. If we leave out the cross for a moment, what would some future archaeologist suppose if he found a location with art work depicting lambs, doves, and a man with keys? If one knows the symbolic association of those items, they can be identified as Christian. If the symbolic associations are not known, we might see people who worship lambs and doves, and lock them up in zoo veneration. The more I study the Book of Mormon, the more it looks like the Bible to me. It is a distorted view of a likely small population in the New World. I suspect that they, too, shared so fully in the cultural context of the times that we will never obviously find them in the dirt. I suspect that there is a tremendous amount of editing going on in the Book of Mormon, not to mention a thick filter through Joseph Smith's vocabulary and ideas. When we play this game, we examine each stone as it is placed. Some positions are strong, some are weak. Eventually the board fills, and the ability to see patterns where others see only stones marks the good player from the average. I still wouldn't recommend getting into an argument with my wife. |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
The debate about the
Book of Mormon and archaeology is like herding cats or arguing with my wife. Both are very frustrating experiences,
and I know much more about the latter. We need to get some underlying ground rules more clearly defined so we can
proceed.
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