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| Warren, Bruce and Thomas S. Ferguson. The Messiah in Ancient America. Book of Mormon Research Foundation, Provo, UT. 1987 |
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The book owes its existence to the efforts of Thomas S. Ferguson's son, Larry S. Ferguson. As Warren relates in the preface: "After introducing himself, Larry explained that his father had begun to revise his book One Fold and One Shepherd when he suffered a heart attack and passed away.... In the four years since that spring day in 1983 the scope of the book has been modified and extensively updated, so much so that the book is now titled The Messiah in Ancient America. The Ferguson family wanted the new book to be a tribute to Thomas Stuart Ferguson and his abiding testimony of the Book of Mormon and the divinity of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ." (P. xiii). It is possible that one of the reasons for such a tribute was that rumor had circulated that Thomas Stuart Ferguson has lost his testimony of the Book of Mormon. That issue is treated in Stan Larson's Quest for the Gold Plates:Thomas Stuart Ferguson's Archaeological Search for The Book of Mormon (Signature Books). Certainly the revision of Ferguson's classic and seminal book would stand as a counterweight to uphold his "abiding faith." As Warren noted, however, the book underwent significant revisions above and beyond those begun by Ferguson - such extensive revisions (many bearing the marks of Warren rather than Ferguson) that it is quite unclear what Ferguson's editorial intention might have been. This dual authorship supplies the key to understanding this rather enigmatic book. When Ferguson originally wrote One Fold and One Shepherd in 1958 the sophistication of Mesoamerican studies was beginning, but has come a long way since that time. Warren's difficult task was to take a work that was methodologically problematic in the light of modern work, retain enough of it to be a revision, yet update enough that it had a chance to stand in the light of current work. This was no easy task, and was one that produced a compromise text. From a methodological standpoint, the original work suffered from two problems. The first was an uncritical use of sources, and the second was the reliance upon multiple unrelated "connections" between the Old World and the New. Ferguson's sources in the original relied heavily upon secondary sources with the exception of his use of Ixtlilxochitl (one of his personal exciting finds - the subject of much comparison to the Book of Mormon). The problem with Ixtlilxochitl is that while he ought to be a reliable source, he is so heavily influenced by the Spaniards that his material is questionable. It appears to correlate well to the Book of Mormon precisely where the Book of Mormon would correspond to the Bible - and the connections to the Bible in Ixtlilxochitl are so obvious that they are clearly the result of Spanish influence. On this rickety foundation, Warren (a good archaeologist, and a careful interpreter in is own right) had to build a more solid after-building. His first work was a fairly thorough recutting of the chapters and materials from One Fold in the new book. For instance, Ferguson's original chapter 8 "Names and Symbols of the Messiah" becomes the "Notes to Chapter One." Much of the actual material remains, but it is now shifted in importance to a note rather than a separate chapter. In the newer work, the Tree of Life is elevated to the status of a chapter, where the corresponding information is part of the "Names and Symbols of the Messiah" chapter in the original. So it is with most of the work. There is a large amount of Ferguson's original remaining, but recut into different locations and emphases, and in many cases the citations are either updated (in the case of Warren's use of the newer Tedlock translation of the Popol Vuh) or replaced entirely. One of the more telling editorial changes Warren makes is in the chapter on "The Time of the Messiah's Appearance." Warren retains the citations from Lord Kingsborough which describe a crucifixion scene in the codices. What he leaves out is the illustration that accompanies Ferguson's text. While it is unfair to suggest a motivation Warren might have, he nevertheless used many of the other illustrations from the original. Why is this one missing? The Lord Kingsborough text is very definite in discussing crucifixion. The evidence Lord Kingsborough is citing is visual - he is describing the information he sees. The plate shows what he saw, and rather than a man crucified, it is a man tied onto a rack frame, and shot with arrows. It is the arrows that Kingsborough sees as the "Lord of Ancient Mexico" being pierced with a spear while crucified. The resemblance to a crucifixion comes because the arms are outstretched. However, the mode of death is being shot with arrows, not at all similar to the Roman crucifixion. It is hard not to suspect that Warren intentionally removed the illustration that a knowledgeable reader could see did not back the point being made (nor actually do the Kingsborough texts, but those do remain). How well do either of the books support the Book of Mormon? The Messiah in Ancient American has a better chance simply because it has the benefit of a tremendous amount of work that has been done since the publication of One Fold and One Shepherd. Nevertheless, it maintains too much of the loose correspondences that were the methodological problem of the earlier work. It is not enough to show similar pictures in two different parts of the world - time depths and connections must be built. Contextual similarities should be considered. In the case of many of the "proofs" of both books, the reliance is on a shotgun approach rather than a carefully built argument for a particular time and place. How well does the newer book fare in its refocus on The Messiah in Ancient America? Unfortunately, Warren doesn't do enough to correct the uncritical usages of the source material. In one rather disturbing case, the material is very poor indeed. "A story was told to the Spaniards shortly after the conquest in Oaxaca... On the day we call Tecpatl [the Aztec name for the day sign fling knife] a great light came from the northeastern sky. It glowed for four days in the sky, then lowered itself to the rock; the rock can still be seen at Tenochtitlan de Valle in Oaxaca. From the light there came a great, very powerful being, who stood on the very top of the rock and glowed like the sun in the sky. There he stood for all to see, shining day and night. Then he spoke, his voice was like thunder, booming across the valley. Our old men and women, the astronomers and astrologists, could understand him and he could understand them. He (the solar beam) told us how to pray and fixed for us days of fast and days of feasting. He then balanced the "Book of Days" (sacred calendar) and left vowing that he would always watch down upon us his beloved people." (Warren and Ferguson, 1987, 2.) This story is amazing, and is the best example of a parallel between Christ's appearance in the Americas and a remembered tale. It purports to be the record of an early Spaniard. The particularly interesting part of the quotation is the clear indication of a being descending in a beam of light from the sky. This is obviously close to the Book of Mormon description of Christ's arrival, and this quotation is the only example of a report of a being appearing in light, descending from the sky. The story is too good, however, and very suspicious. While the mention of a deity teaching the people fasting and the sacred calendar are Mesoamerican elements, as is the evidence of a miracle being recorded in a rock, the rest of the text has no support in either the native sources nor any of the later Spanish authors. Where does this passage come from? The source is Tony Shearer's Beneath the Moon and Under the Sun. (New Mexico: Sun Publishers, 1975). While the passage is introduced as a translation of a text from one Juan de Córdova, this is an unknown source, and is undocumented in Shearer's work. This is not unusual for Shearer, however. He is not a scholar translating a text, but a poet. His works include Mesoamerican themes, and he is obviously well read in Mesoamerican literature. Shearer reworks that material into poetry or prose. Even Shearer notes that he may be unorthodox in his approach. In his book Lord of the Dawn Shearer makes a comment "To the Reader". He says "If you are a scholar of Pre-Columbian history you are no doubt scratching your head and wondering what I'm up to." (Healdsburg, California: Naturegraph Publishers, 1971, 196). None of his works are footnoted, so where does this citation come from? In Larry S. Ferguson's introduction to Warren and Ferguson's book, he relates an incident told by Shearer, where Shearer indicated that he kept "the Book of Mormon next to my bed and read it almost daily." (Warren and Ferguson, p. viii). Although Shearer is not LDS, he clearly knows the Book of Mormon, and just as clearly used the Book of Mormon as one of his sources for this passage which he attributes to a Spaniard. In the context of Shearer's work, this is well within poetic license. In the context of a scholarly attempt to use the passage as evidence for Christ's appearance in the America's is the most ironic of circular reasoning. In the end, Warren cannot save the sandy foundation of this work. He adds interesting information, but not sufficient to be as good a correlation between recent work and the Book of Mormon. Warren's work is an excellent tribute to Ferguson, but a much weaker one for the Book of Mormon. |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
The Messiah in
Ancient America lists both Bruce Warren and Thomas S. Ferguson as authors. Even though the book is an update
of Ferguson's One Fold and One Shepherd (Olympus Publishing Company, Salt Lake City. 1958,62) the reworking
is extensive, with significant new material by Warren.
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