Main Page: Anti-Mormonism
Hugh Nibley's Book of Mormon Challenge
"I am quietly tearing my hair over the Book of Mormon again. Those chapters are the ones I have worked over the most and are still the least satisfactory."
- Fawn Brodie, author of No Man Knows My History, to Dale L. Morgan
"Even if it is all made up, to do something like that is really extraordinary... Really, it is. I mean, if it's a work of fiction, nobody has ever done anything like this before."
- Michael Coe, anthropologist
- Fawn Brodie, author of No Man Knows My History, to Dale L. Morgan
"Even if it is all made up, to do something like that is really extraordinary... Really, it is. I mean, if it's a work of fiction, nobody has ever done anything like this before."
- Michael Coe, anthropologist
I don't deny that Joseph Smith was a unique creative genius and that the Book of Mormon is an accomplishment most people couldn't manage. And indeed, nobody has ever done anything quite like it since, though many years ago the LDS scholar Hugh Nibley issued a challenge to his students to do just that:
"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names - hundreds of them - pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details - manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.
"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up - we have our little joke - but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim - they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!
"To date no student has carried out this assignment, which, of course, was not meant seriously. But why not? If anybody could write the Book of Mormon, as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel, let us say, performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."
To this, some guy on Facebook Alan C. Miner once added, "To this I would like to add some additional challenges, though it shouldn't be hard, living as we do in the computer world of the internet: Because your story is supposed to be a religious record, include in your paper more than 500 different descriptive titles for deity, all within a proper religious context that will not only explain these titles in relation to what we have in the Bible, but give added meaning and understanding. Because this is supposedly an ancient Hebrew record, give numerous and multiple examples of ancient Parallelistic Hebrew literary forms. Have whole pages, even chapters and larger sections written in Parallelistic (chiastic) patterns. Weave in an underlying theme of covenants with the Lord, both culturally and scripturally. In fact, it would be a good idea to make every part of your narrative not only covenant-related, but Christ-related as well.
"Dictate your story to a scribe. Confirm spelling of proper names so they correctly reflect the language found in the ancient setting of your story. Leave your script as you dictate it, and never ask your scribe to tell you where you left off after lunch or the end of a day. On his own, your scribe can adjust capitalization, punctuation, the spelling of traditional words, and some simple grammar, but that is all. Dictate parts of your story in non-chronological order. Be sure to credit these parts of your story to different writers, varying your manner of using words and phrases so that a distinct separation of language style can be detected by modern word print analysis. These requirements demonstrate that Joseph Smith was quoting from a previously written script (the Gold Plates) rather than making it up as he went along. Add twelve witnesses who verified that in the case of Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon, all the above requirements were met."
"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names - hundreds of them - pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details - manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.
"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up - we have our little joke - but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim - they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!
"To date no student has carried out this assignment, which, of course, was not meant seriously. But why not? If anybody could write the Book of Mormon, as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel, let us say, performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."
To this, some guy on Facebook Alan C. Miner once added, "To this I would like to add some additional challenges, though it shouldn't be hard, living as we do in the computer world of the internet: Because your story is supposed to be a religious record, include in your paper more than 500 different descriptive titles for deity, all within a proper religious context that will not only explain these titles in relation to what we have in the Bible, but give added meaning and understanding. Because this is supposedly an ancient Hebrew record, give numerous and multiple examples of ancient Parallelistic Hebrew literary forms. Have whole pages, even chapters and larger sections written in Parallelistic (chiastic) patterns. Weave in an underlying theme of covenants with the Lord, both culturally and scripturally. In fact, it would be a good idea to make every part of your narrative not only covenant-related, but Christ-related as well.
"Dictate your story to a scribe. Confirm spelling of proper names so they correctly reflect the language found in the ancient setting of your story. Leave your script as you dictate it, and never ask your scribe to tell you where you left off after lunch or the end of a day. On his own, your scribe can adjust capitalization, punctuation, the spelling of traditional words, and some simple grammar, but that is all. Dictate parts of your story in non-chronological order. Be sure to credit these parts of your story to different writers, varying your manner of using words and phrases so that a distinct separation of language style can be detected by modern word print analysis. These requirements demonstrate that Joseph Smith was quoting from a previously written script (the Gold Plates) rather than making it up as he went along. Add twelve witnesses who verified that in the case of Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon, all the above requirements were met."
The Problems with the Book of Mormon Challenge
Critics do go too far if they assert that "anybody could write the Book of Mormon." On the other hand, nobody could write the Book of Mormon according to the parameters of this challenge, some of which are misleading or simply wrong. Nibley claims that a semester is "more time than he would have had," referring to the oft-cited claim that Joseph Smith translated the book in 85 days. However, Smith claimed that Moroni first told him about the Book of Mormon on the night of September 21, 1823, giving him at least five and a half years to brainstorm the story before he even started the alleged translation (and probably longer, since it's unlikely he first came up with the idea that very night). His mother later wrote of this period in her autobiography: "During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelings, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life among them." (Brigham Young tried to have every copy of this book destroyed.) Smith even got a bit of a practice run when he dictated the original 116 pages and didn't reproduce them after Martin Harris lost them, as he would have been able to do if he'd actually received them by revelation. Furthermore, he was able to work on the Book of Mormon full-time during those 85 days - at one point subsidized with food and paper by Joseph Knight Sr. - and depending on how slowly Oliver Cowdery wrote, the word count only required between three and six hours a day. In contrast, I assume Nibley's students had other classes, homework, and jobs.
Nibley sets the Book of Mormon up to be more impressive than it actually is. He neglects to inform his students that, like Joseph Smith, they can copy up to 15% of their book from the King James Bible with minor changes. He asserts that their offering must "cover a thousand years without any large gaps," even though the Book of Mormon doesn't do that. The books of Enos, Jarom, Omni, and Words of Mormon cover more than three hundred years in nine pages. The book of 4th Nephi covers two hundred eighty-six years in four pages. He refers to the "religious controversy and philosophical discussion" without mentioning that all of this controversy and discussion came from early nineteenth-century Christianity, not the setting where the Book of Mormon supposedly takes place. Alexander Campbell wrote in 1832, "This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi, in his Book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years. He decided all the great controversies: -- infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the questions of free masonry, republican government and the rights of man." LDS scholar Richard Bushman has said "that there is phrasing everywhere - long phrases that if you google them you will find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology, and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament."
Nibley says, "Above all, do not ever contradict yourself!" But the Book of Mormon does. Nephi knows Jesus' name, but King Benjamin doesn't. Nephi knows exactly when Jesus will come, but Alma doesn't. Nephi knows the Lamanites won't annihilate the Nephites until 400 years after Jesus, but Captain Moroni doesn't. (These contradictions obviously arose because, after the loss of the 116 pages, Smith finished the rest of the story before he went back and dictated the first two books.) Jacob's parable switches from an olive tree to a vineyard halfway through with no explanation because it plagiarizes from two entirely different biblical passages (Isaiah 5:1-7 and Romans 11:16-24). Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1 in the first edition both refer to "King Benjamin" even though the king at the time was Mosiah; later editions fixed this. The narrative in Alma 56 abruptly switches from first to third person and back again just as fast. (The footnote to Alma 56:52, added much later, claims "Mormon here abridges some of the material in the letter of Helaman.") That's not even getting into the contradictions between the Book of Mormon's generic Protestant theology and the distinctive LDS doctrines that Smith introduced after its publication, which, in fairness, are beyond the scope of this challenge.
Nibley says that "you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely." He seems to choose his words carefully here, implying without actually claiming that the Book of Mormon has withstood scholarly criticism. It hasn't. Virtually no scholar outside one of the few churches that accepts it as scripture takes it seriously as an ancient record. Its "manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions," lavishly detailed though they be, are not accurate enough in light of current knowledge to convince any skeptical outsider that the book is a real history of indigenous Americans. Most scholars who know anything about the Book of Mormon regard it as a work of fiction, just as they would regard any submission to the Book of Mormon challenge.
Nibley sets the Book of Mormon up to be more impressive than it actually is. He neglects to inform his students that, like Joseph Smith, they can copy up to 15% of their book from the King James Bible with minor changes. He asserts that their offering must "cover a thousand years without any large gaps," even though the Book of Mormon doesn't do that. The books of Enos, Jarom, Omni, and Words of Mormon cover more than three hundred years in nine pages. The book of 4th Nephi covers two hundred eighty-six years in four pages. He refers to the "religious controversy and philosophical discussion" without mentioning that all of this controversy and discussion came from early nineteenth-century Christianity, not the setting where the Book of Mormon supposedly takes place. Alexander Campbell wrote in 1832, "This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi, in his Book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years. He decided all the great controversies: -- infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the questions of free masonry, republican government and the rights of man." LDS scholar Richard Bushman has said "that there is phrasing everywhere - long phrases that if you google them you will find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology, and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament."
Nibley says, "Above all, do not ever contradict yourself!" But the Book of Mormon does. Nephi knows Jesus' name, but King Benjamin doesn't. Nephi knows exactly when Jesus will come, but Alma doesn't. Nephi knows the Lamanites won't annihilate the Nephites until 400 years after Jesus, but Captain Moroni doesn't. (These contradictions obviously arose because, after the loss of the 116 pages, Smith finished the rest of the story before he went back and dictated the first two books.) Jacob's parable switches from an olive tree to a vineyard halfway through with no explanation because it plagiarizes from two entirely different biblical passages (Isaiah 5:1-7 and Romans 11:16-24). Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1 in the first edition both refer to "King Benjamin" even though the king at the time was Mosiah; later editions fixed this. The narrative in Alma 56 abruptly switches from first to third person and back again just as fast. (The footnote to Alma 56:52, added much later, claims "Mormon here abridges some of the material in the letter of Helaman.") That's not even getting into the contradictions between the Book of Mormon's generic Protestant theology and the distinctive LDS doctrines that Smith introduced after its publication, which, in fairness, are beyond the scope of this challenge.
Nibley says that "you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely." He seems to choose his words carefully here, implying without actually claiming that the Book of Mormon has withstood scholarly criticism. It hasn't. Virtually no scholar outside one of the few churches that accepts it as scripture takes it seriously as an ancient record. Its "manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions," lavishly detailed though they be, are not accurate enough in light of current knowledge to convince any skeptical outsider that the book is a real history of indigenous Americans. Most scholars who know anything about the Book of Mormon regard it as a work of fiction, just as they would regard any submission to the Book of Mormon challenge.
Main Page: Anti-Mormonism
