SC Taysom continues his guest stint at BCC. Earlier post here.
This post asks lots of questions. I am trying to tap the collective knowledge of the BCC readership. A colleague of mine, a professionally trained historian, once posed an interesting question to me about the Book of Mormon. After having read the book, he asked me “What must this guy Mormon’s archive have looked like?” This question was clearly a criticism imbedded in an ironically framed statement of incredulity. He was expressing his disbelief in the book because of his reaction to fact that the compilers and editors of the Book of Mormon, of whom he took Mormon to be representative, offer word for word reconstructions of conversations, they quote from letters, reproduce proclamations, and even tell us what certain characters in the stories were thinking and feeling. Much of this material, he pointed out, is centuries removed from the editor’s time. I want to ask my friend’s question again, this time with the acerbic skepticism of a disbeliever replaced by the sincerity of the converted. What must have Mormon’s archive looked like? We know that a collection of sacred written records passed through many hands, but we don’t know how wide-ranging these records were. Was a copy of King Benjamin’s address included? What about the epistles exchanged by Captain Moroni and Pahoran or Gidgiddoni and Giddianhi? Do we assume that everything Mormon wrote about was drawn from documents produced at the time of the events? Is it more likely that many elements that eventually made it into the narrative existed for a time (decades? centuries?) as oral tradition, as is the case with the New Testament Gospels? To what extent do we assume that Mormon and the other compilers relied upon revelation to provide information on words and events that would be beyond the natural ability of the historian to reconstruct? Does, or should, the historiographical model used by Mormon influence our reading of the book?
July 25, 2007 at 8:33 am
Actually, this reminds me of what I’ve been reading preparing for my SS lesson on Acts this week: in Acts, Luke reproduces a number of speeches, very artfully, many of which he wasn’t present for. So he constructs them. I’m not sure what Mormon’s archive looked like, although there’s no reason that there were non-metallic records that had been kept; maybe he did clippings of his favorite articles, keeping them in his filing cabinet?
July 25, 2007 at 8:36 am
There are a couple of good places to start. Offhand, (away from my books) I can suggest:
John Gee’s “Limhi in the Library” in JBMS 1.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=4
John Tvedtnes, “Mormon’s Editorial Promises.” In Sorenson and Thorne, eds., Rediscovering the Book of Mormon.
S. Kent Brown, “Lehi’s Personal Record:
Quest for a Missing Source,” BYU Studies 24/1 (1984)
Also:
“Paper Studies Characteristics of Oral Culture in the Book of Mormon
A recent fascinating study by William Eggington of the BYU English Department suggests that, by and large, Book of Mormon peoples functioned as an oral culture. Although the Lehite community had access to print as a technology, Eggington believes that they wrote only to accomplish narrow (i.e., religious) goals and that their writings retained many features of a nonprint culture. His evidence comes from certain indicators and memory-aiding devices within the text of the Book of Mormon, including repetitious patterns, balanced patterns, formulaic expressions, and parallelisms.
Eggington’s research into the problems of communication between oral and literate cultures in Australia leads him to believe that the members of such cultures can understand each other only when they understand the nature of communication in the other culture. Therefore, he believes that understanding the characteristics of oral culture amongst the Book of Mormon peoples will help modern readers go beyond their own cultural values and the high linguistic expectations of a literate culture and appreciate better the intent of each speaker and writer in the Book of Mormon.”
William Eggington, “‘Our Weakness in Writing:’ Oral and Literate Cultures in the Book of Mormon.” 23 pages.
Collectively, such studies (and others) depict evidences that the authors and editors of the Book of Mormon regularly and consistently use plausible sources, and explicitly depicts the editors and authors as referring to the kinds of sources they have available.
Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA
July 25, 2007 at 8:38 am
Kevin,
Thanks for the references. I have seen Eggington’s work, and I agree with him that the most plausible way to understand Book of Mormon transmission is through an oral model. I wonder how widespread this notion is among Mormons?
July 25, 2007 at 8:40 am
Sam,
I agree with you and I have always assumed that non-metallic records were part of the archive. There are places in the Book of Mormon itself where it indicates that copies of certain documents were made and circulated, certainly on some paper-like product.
July 25, 2007 at 9:05 am
Oh, you asked the question literally. And I thought this post was gonna go all Derrida and Foucault all over the place.
July 25, 2007 at 9:09 am
Sorry, JKC. It’s still July. I can’t talk about those guys until September when classes get back in session.
July 25, 2007 at 9:13 am
as other ancient historians often did (likely including luke), mormon could have also reconstructed (the details of) things like speeches without any written or oral sources.
July 25, 2007 at 9:20 am
If he is a professionally trained historian, word-for-word conversations in the text shouldn’t bother him. See my post here.
July 25, 2007 at 9:22 am
what if Mormon were like Thomas Monson? Isn’t he famous for having a photographic memory? What if Mormon had to memorize everything ever? And then he wrote it all down in the cave in that picture we have. Then poor Moroni, who did not inherit his father’s mind, tries to do the rest (this explains his complaint in Ether). Then what if Thomas Monson was a literal descendant of Mormon and thus the good memory genes? I’m just sayin’, it could happen.
It’s oral tradition, only cooler.
July 25, 2007 at 9:27 am
#7 Your’re right. Ancient (and modern) historians often simply made things up. That leads me to the final question I posed in the original post about what that means to us as readers of the narrative.
#8 Trust me, he is a professionally trained historian :)
July 25, 2007 at 11:09 am
I was tempted to jokingly refer to the “place of records” model from the Legacy Theater movie “The Testaments” but I’ll abstain.
The leap-frog issue that has to be addressed is if the plates were translated by “the gift and power of God”, an omniscient guide could fill in the missing pieces after the fact. Which really makes you wonder why the archiving a sacred (and mundane) records was such an important theme if the Book of Mormon.
I’m inclined to think that a majority of the records were in a “national archive” which Mormon had access to in his early years, but in later years he opted to take the “top 100″ records with him on his flight north. I am lead to believe that this “top 100″ archive is at/near the hill Cumorah of Mormon’s time (not the hill where Joseph retrieved the plates).
July 25, 2007 at 12:29 pm
The point several here have correctly made, to the effect that ancient historians simply composed speeches and letters based on the logic of the situation and not based on any actual source, is a part of the reason why I reject the whole industry of trying to use wordprints as evidence for the authenticity of the BoM. Words that are carefully assigned to 20 or 30 different speakers may in fact largely be Mormon’s own invention.
In terms of an “archive,” there is also the issue of “Cumorah’s Cave.”
July 25, 2007 at 12:40 pm
“what if Mormon were like Thomas Monson? Isn’t he famous for having a photographic memory?”
This is a bit of a myth. President Monson has very good recall of narratives, but changes the phrasing each time he retells the story. You can tell this is the case by comparing his talks, as recorded, to the written versions of the same talks that are submitted and then reprinted in the Ensign. President Monson basically paraphrases himself.
July 25, 2007 at 12:48 pm
For what it’s worth, Alma 14:8 seems to indicate relatively clearly that the scriptures and of course other writings were written on non-metallic, “burnable” artifacts.
July 25, 2007 at 1:10 pm
People in primitive cultures tend to have better memory since they had to. Especially those functioning in quasi-legal settings. We have it easy with writing and all and can dedicate our mind to other things. (Interesting I’ve noticed pre-calculator folks can do math in their heads much better than more recent people)
Having said that though even with a good memory it’s still more reconstruction rather than reproduction. In any case until the last 100 years all histories tended to create dialog.
What does this mean theologically? I think it means the words are fuzzier than we sometimes take them. That is they get the point across but we shouldn’t take them as legal documents the way so many do.
July 25, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I think that Clark and Kevin have hit on an important issue here, which is that, while we often fall back on the idea that ancients did not share modern historiographical sensibilities, we abandon that stance when we deal with the actual Book of Mormon material. This is true of wordprint studies as well as a variety of other analyses that rely on fine-grained reading of the texts.
July 25, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Kevin, I was wondering if we were going to escape any mention of the good old cave filled with gleaming gold records. Thanks! :)
July 25, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I’m not sure word print studies ignore this. I think they’d say that if I’m paraphrasing someone it will still have a different word print than if I’m speaking as myself.
July 25, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Clark,
If it’s paraphrasing, then you are probably right. But what I am thinking of, and what Kevin specifically mentioned, are cases in which the editor is constructing his material without a source to paraphrase.
July 25, 2007 at 2:41 pm
#9:
If Mormon was like Thomas Monson, The Book of Mormon would consist entirely of less than ten stories, repeated again and again, with occasional quotations of Wordsworth.
Oh…and everything would be in passive voice. “Cureloms…were found. Cumoms…were discovered. Elephants were shared by all.”
July 25, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I was trying to find the painting with Mormon in the cave/tent/shelter (don’t remember what) with all kinds of records around him. I think most members used to think that was accurate.
As a total aside, I did find this.
July 25, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Here he is in his archive!
July 25, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Blake Ostler once wrote an article about how the Book of Mormon could be a 19th century expansion of an ancient source. I would suggest that the Book of Mormon may be a 4th and 5th century expansion of more ancient sources.
It makes sense to me that Mormon probably wrote much of his section of the Book of Mormon based on his understanding of oral traditions and limited written records. He could have elaborated on these sources to make whatever point he wanted. Think about how many times Mormon interjects to say “Now I Mormon have somewhat to say . . .” There may be countless other unidentified places where Mormon is imposing his own doctrinal views and historical details throughout the narrative.
This could account for many of the seemingly anachronistic doctrines and quotations used in earlier parts of the book. For example, Benjamin’s and Alma’s fully-developed Christology could reflect Mormon’s Christian Era knowledge. And it seems more feasible for Mormon to have access to New Testament writings than for Nephi or Alma to have them.
By way of analogy, 19th century church leaders wrote parts of Joseph Smith’s history many years after his death, and they wrote as if it were Joseph speaking in first person. I see no reason why we should assume that Mormon followed more strict historical standards than these fairly modern leaders.
B.H. Roberts seemed concerned that some stories–like the 2,000 stripling warriors–seemed to be attributable to the imagination of one young mind. That the young man may have been Mormon, not Joseph Smith.
July 25, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Re 18/19 – These are classic wordprint problems, actually.
There is some current research being done that strips out the actual “content” and focuses on structure — to compare authors, etc., under the belief that paraphrasing retains some notion of a person’s style.
July 25, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Two more articles on this subject are
Plates and Records in the Book of Mormon by Hardy and Parsons (online at the BYU Maxwell Institute site)
A Theory of Evolutionary Development for the Structure of the Book of Mormon by Quinn Brewster (see especially his Plan 4).
This is a simple chart showing source plates for the Book of Mormon.
The Book of Mormon itself provides internal corroboration that these records were in written form–see, for example King Benjamin’s speech.
Can anyone find any suggestion from the Book of Mormon itself that the records were passed down in oral rather than written form?
July 25, 2007 at 5:42 pm
BIV,
I think we all basically agree that some, perhaps most, of the records were written, and as you note the book itself is pretty clear about the final distillations of the various records onto sets ofplates. In antiquity though, most historical narratives existed in oral form before they found their way into writing. So Mormon may have had a document that was written when he got it, but existed as oral lore for decades after the event itself.
July 25, 2007 at 10:45 pm
I was fascinated in a recent encounter to hear restored an older argument in defense of Biblical narratives. Why couldn’t God have revealed the true details to evangelists writing 40-100 years after events they did not personally observe?
Not a position I personally find particularly compelling, but fascinating to think about people assuming precisely the kind of revelatory pseudepigraphica that we attribute to Joseph Smith.
As far as Cumorah Cave, wasn’t that Miner’s Hill? Smith’s love of records is really quite fascinating to me.
Thanks for the intriguing questions, sct.
July 26, 2007 at 6:56 am
Regarding Ostler’s 1987 essay (which I admire, but also see as 20 years old), his more recent view on pre-Christian anachronism is this:
“As new evidence surfaces indicating that primary ideas previously thought to be Christian were in fact excised from the preexilic text, the content of the plates rather than Joseph Smith’s midrashic expansion should grow. In my original article, I suggested, for example, that the phraseology of secret societies in the Book of Mormon seemed to be nineteenth century—it turns out that a lot of what I suggested was nineteenth century may well be explainable in terms of ancient counterparts.”
(See http://www.farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=534, citing personal correspondence 20 October 2002)
For an essay that provides some of the evidence for the changing view, see my 2004 essay here on “The Deuteronomist De-christianizing of the Old Testament” here:
http://www.farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=547
FWIW,
Kevin Christensen
Pittsburgh, PA