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❓ Logistical Problems

Estimated time to read: 20 minutes

Anachronisms

. . . I spoke with a good friend, not a member of the Church. He said he had a list of 50 anachronisms in the Book of Mormon that demonstrated the book was a nineteenth-century invention. An anachronism refers to something that is chronologically out of place, a bit like saying Julius Caesar drove his SUV into Rome. Well, I told my friend that he was too late, for I had received a witness of the truth of the Book of Mormon. But I said to him, “Give me your list, and I will keep it.” I did keep that list, and over the years, as more research was done by various academics, one item after another dropped off the list.

A few years ago when I was speaking to a group at Cornell University, I mentioned my list and noted that, after these many years, only one item remained. After my presentation a distinguished professor said to me, “You can remove your last item, for our studies indicate that it is not an anachronism.”

— The Quest for Spiritual Knowledge, Elder Robert S. Wood of the Seventy, Ensign June 2007

And that good friend's name? Albert Einstein. Then everyone stood up and clapped. I'll take "things that never happened" for 500, Alex!

We can take cheap shots at how preposterous this story is, but the point I want to focus on is this: A member of the seventy published in the church's official magazine that 50 anachronisms in the Book of Mormon have been debunked and disproven by a nameless "distinguished professor" at Cornell. That's a bold claim. It is measurable and demonstrable. One might even call it falsifiable.

Show us the list, then! If this story happened, wouldn't the church proudly present the counter-arguments that disprove the claims of those critics? The last paragraph of that excerpt suggests to me that Elder Wood addressed 49 out of 50, and the last one was studied by this "distinguished professor" enough for him to dismiss it. Elder Wood, you are making provable claims. Prove them.

We reportedly have concrete information that proves critics wrong, thereby demonstrating that the Book of Mormon is historical and by divine providence. This would be enough to draw public attention worldwide! What are the anachronisms, and what are the counterpoints that convince nameless faces at Cornell that this scripture is not a "19th century invention"?

Nothing? Was it Too Sacred to Share? We just gotta work it out through faith? Why did you tell us this story, then?

 

Specifics

In case you were raised in the same technological environment I was, you may have a strong aversion to using Wikipedia as a source for anything. If you like, you can read about its vetting process and quality control measures. Its arguments citing primary sources is good enough for me. And since this compendium of notes is hardly material for making academic claims or assertions, I won't feel bad about pointing readers to Wikipedia for a summary of anachronisms with links to primary sources to back up those observations.

I'll present here a bullet list of those anachronisms with some of my own comments:

  • Horses: Went extinct in the American continent well before the Jaredites would have arrived, let alone during Nephi's time; reintroduced by Spaniards around 1500 CE. But around 590 BCE, Nephi saw horses standing around ~2,800 years before they arrived. I've read the rationalization that Nephi didn't actually mean horse when he said horse—it was actually a tapir. You know, the animal with a reputation and capacity for pulling chariots! (1, 2)
  • Elephants: Described in Ether, went extinct well before Ether's timeline
  • Cattle and cows: If the most correct book on earth, written for our day, is to be taken at face value, "cows" refer to "cows." They were seen by Nephi and were also introduced by Europeans in 16th century. If cows actually means Bison, then they wouldn't fit Nephi's description of being "for the use of man." If cows actually means mountain goats or llamas then what the fuck are we talking about
  • Sheep: Appear numerous times in the text, including use of "lamb-skin." No evidence of domesticated sheep before Columbus. Before we argue that the text refers to non-domesticated sheep, check the search results and tell me if the uses sound like wild animals. (sheep before shearers, numbereth his sheep, "I know my sheep, and they are numbered", sheep of the good shepherd, etc)
  • Goats: Differentiating between goats and wild goats raises some questions. What makes the wild ones different? Are the non-wild ones domesticated? By whom? Does this mean Nephi saw domesticated goats standing around, waiting for humanity to drop by? Are we going to be satisfied with this differentiation, but "horses" might not actually mean horses, and cows weren't cows?
  • Swine: Depending on where you draw the line between swine and other pig-like ungulates, swine might not have existed in pre-Columbian America. If you can rationalize that swine really meant peccaries, then I guess you win—those are down in Brazil, which is on the right continent.
  • Barley and wheat: Both grains were introduced by European contact. Were not present before 1492.
  • Silk: Depending on where you draw the line between silk and other fine cloth, this is dubious. What we, today, call silk is spun into fabric, and what ancient Aztecs did was cut and piece together nests from a species of moth. Which would you rather cover your body with?
  • Chariots or wheeled vehicles: No evidence of wheels in pre-Columbian America.
  • Iron and steel: I've got some notes on iron and steel elsewhere; suffice it to say, evidence that they existed in pre-Columbian America isn't looking good.
  • Cimeters: "Did you see those warriors from Hammerfell? They've got curved swords! Curved swords!" If pre-Columbian America didn't have iron or steel, they didn't have metal swords—curved nor straight.
  • System of exchange based on measures of grain using precious metals as a standard: Pre-Columbian America didn't use currency like what the BoM describes.
  • Knowledge of Hebrew and Egyptian languages: I intend to get into text & literacy in ancient America, but suffice it to say that when Moroni rationalizes writing in Reformed Egyptian over Hebrew, we should expect to find signs of ancient America being literate in both of those languages. Evidence shows no literacy in any written language.
  • Systems of measuring time (calendars): I haven't looked into this one enough to make meaningful remarks on it

 

I, being a dumbass with a computer, can't really speak from experience concerning archaeology or how those educated folks arrive at their conclusions. Much like how a lay person doesn't worry themselves too much about OSI model of network layers, DNS lookups, HTTP handshakes & sessions, web application dependency management or browser rendering; most folks know that when they tap the blue "F" icon on their smartphone, Facebook shows up. It may as well be magic. I could dig a hole in New Mexico, find a pottery shard, and think "huh, how about that." Someone with the right education could extrapolate a lot more information than I could from that hypothetical encounter.

What I do know, though, is if I find a video describing how the real reason behind the Europe's bubonic plague was mismanagement in microchip manufacturing plants in South Korea, I will be very skeptical of that claim. So it is with the Book of Mormon anachronisms. If I read that an Israeli family from 600 BC mastered metallurgy and seafaring in an isolated breakthrough of technology, leaving absolutely no trace and never reproducing those creations, I will be comparably skeptical.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don't believe that "pray about it" is going to qualify as evidence.

 

Scriptural

The Plates of Brass are a critical component (or a Document MacGuffin) to the theological development in the Book of Mormon. (1, 2, 3, 4) They contain the Pentateuch (or Torah,) "a record of the Jews from the beginning," "[a]nd also the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning," "and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah[,]" and also a genealogy of Lehi's fathers. It's just got pretty much everything you could want in there.

And so Lehi's family has access to Genesis through Deuteronomy, parts of Jeremiah, and... definitely some large chunks of Isaiah. We have precedence that scriptural records are important. ... Isn't that just really convenient that Laban happened to have a written record of fucking everything? Why did Laban have that record? He didn't seem to be using it for theological guidance. Come to think of it, I don't think there's any mention of the Plates of Brass, not their contents, after 2 Nephi. 🤔

This is especially noteworthy given that, as the Articles of Faith remind us, the Bible isn't always translated correctly. The Book of Isaiah was not written solely by the titular prophet named Isaiah; some of its content is pseudopigraphal, meaning other authors wrote under another name—or, in this case, simply anonymous.

 

It is absolutely worth pointing out the times when Book of Mormon characters quote Bible passages that, according to the Book of Mormon timeline, didn't exist yet. The temporal discrepancies prevent the stories from making sense. Here are a few examples:

 

And it’s not just Bible quotes. The Book of Mormon has historical incidents that appear to have been derived from New Testament stories, even though they allegedly happened centuries earlier, the most obvious being Ether 8:9-14 which is clearly derived from the story of the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:1-12, Mark 6:22-28).

Jacob 5, the Allegory of the Olive Tree, allegedly written prior to 600 BC, derives material from Luke 13:6-9 and Romans 11.

 

Apostasy

How there could be an apostasy (no priesthood on the earth) if the 3 Nephites and John were still alive? Presumably they’re still around; what have they been doing for 1800 years? Those four were priesthood holders, right?

I suppose they didn't have the "office" of priesthood to qualify? 🤷 I guess Jesus dropped the ball on that one whoops lmao

 

Animals

What does the Church's website say about animals in the Book of Mormon? Not much.

Animals indigenous to the Americas Animals not indigenous to Americas
• Black bears
• Brown bears
• Jaguar
• Bald Eagle
• Llamas
• Cougars
• Coyotes
• Bison
• Anaconda
• Alligator
• Tapir		 • Horses (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
• Lions (1, 2)
• Elephants
• Leopards
• Cows & Oxen
• Domestic Sheep
• Swine (maybe) (1, 2)
• Dragons (1, 2)

 

Take a guess which lists’ animals appear in the Book of Mormon, of ancient Americas?

 

Technology

Steel

Iron production began in Anatolia about 2000 bc, and the Iron Age was well established by 1000 bc. The technology of iron making then spread widely; by 500 bc it had reached the western limits of Europe, and by 400 bc it had reached China. Iron ores are widely distributed, and the other raw material, charcoal, was readily available. The iron was produced in small shaft furnaces as solid lumps, called blooms, and these were then hot forged into bars of wrought iron, a malleable material containing bits of slag and charcoal.

. . .

When the carbon content of steel is above 0.3 percent, the material will become very hard and brittle if it is quenched in water from a temperature of about 850° to 900° C (1,550° to 1,650° F). The brittleness can be decreased by reheating the steel within the range of 350° to 500° C (660° to 930° F), in a process known as tempering. This type of heat treatment was known to the Egyptians by 900 bc, as can be judged by the microstructure of remaining artifacts, and formed the basis of a steel industry for producing a material that was ideally suited to the fabrication of swords and knives.

— Britannica: Technology > Industry > Steel

I don’t think this strictly precludes Jaredites having steel, but it does look like they’re around 1500 years too early to claim they had steel as we know it today. Very likely they had iron.

One could argue that they’re calling it steel, and we’d call it iron today.

Either this is the most correct book on the planet, or it’s not.

 

Steel swords

Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor, and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.

— Ether 7:9

 

And again, they have brought swords, the hilts thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no one in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates. Therefore I said unto thee: Canst thou translate?

— Mosiah 8:11

Where are all of the iron slag piles from this iron/steel swords that were made in the New world during the Book of Mormon times? That byproduct would be very hard to miss. Primitive America probably didn't have a way to ecologically dispose of it, to hide it from us today.

 

Paper

And they brought their wives and children together, and whosoever believed or had been taught to believe in the word of God they caused that they should be cast into the fire; and they also brought forth their records which contained the holy scriptures, and cast them into the fire also, that they might be burned and destroyed by fire.

— Alma 14:8

Burning their records? This isn't explicitly stated as being written on paper, but... brass plates aren't going to burn so easily. I'm quite certain that printing presses didn't exist, so presumably this was written by hand. On... papyrus? Did they have that technology? Honest question, I don't have an answer for this one.

I've read that paper itself is an old technology, dating to China's Eastern Han period.

Papermaking can be traced to about [105 CE], when Ts’ai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court of China, created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste. In its slow travel westward, the art of papermaking reached Samarkand, in Central Asia, in 751; and in 793 the first paper was made in Baghdad during the time of Hārūn ar-Rashīd, with the golden age of Islāmic culture that brought papermaking to the frontiers of Europe.

— Papermaking, Britannica

Well... does this verify that paper was also a well-established industry to provide multiple copies of printed scriptures to burn by the year 82 BCE in ancient America, as described in Alma 14? Because identifying the origin of the technology to approximately 105 CE lands us in a tough spot to explain this.

Literacy in ancient America is a separate issue entirely. Text recorded on paper isn't useful if lay people are illiterate. In order for this story in Alma 14 to make sense (to me) we need enough lay people to be literate in order warrant enough economical demand for paper copies of scripture in the first place. Not only will these people need to be able to read and understand the text, but they need to see enough value in it that they will want their own personal copy— another logistical problem without a printing press.

Maybe I'm looking too deep into one interpretation. "[T]heir records which contained the holy scriptures" isn't strictly required to be paper. If they were not recorded on paper, then they must have been etched onto metal plates, much like our pals Mormon & Moroni gained a reputation for doing. Putting etched metal sheets into a fire might char them, but much like a contentious discourse about the temperature of jet fuel being enough to melt certain structural materials, I question if "their records which contained the holy scriptures" were thrown into a crucible to be molten back into a raw material?

Either way, I see a logistical problem. We should see evidence of these industries being widespread enough to permit all of these records that are being thrown into a fire. Even if it's multiple small forges to manufacture metal sheets, rather than one big industrial factory, that's something archaeologists would have spotted by now. If they were paper mills, I imagine we'd see evidence of that, too. In either case, we'd see signs of literacy being prevalent in ancient America. I have yet to encounter compelling evidence of any of these three things that would make burning scriptures make any goddamned sense.

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