Chapter 1 -
The book of
Mormon
When we begin to study the teachings
of the Mormons, a good idea is certainly to start with their holy books which
are, in addition to the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants
and The pearl of great price.
These three books that cannot be found in any other Christian group are the
most important ones to the Mormons, besides the Bible.
In this chapter,
we are going to take a look especially at the Book of Mormon which is the best
known and most significant of these three books. Joseph Smith, the Prophet of
Mormons, made this book especially known. He namely found golden plates from
the ground which contained the story of the Book of Mormon in the reformed
Egyptian language. With these plates, he also found a breastplate and the Urim
and the Thummim which he could use as assistance when translating this book
into English. He received help also from other people when translating.
The Book of
Mormon tells a story about how the ancient tribes of Israel wandered to
America, increased there, and how Jesus, after his death, appeared to them and
established a church amongst them. The present-day native Americans are
believed to be descendants of these ancient Israelites.
However if we
look at the background and contents of the Book of Mormon, there are numerous problems
and contradictions in it. We can mention at least the following:
The reformed Egyptian
language. Firstly, when considering the text on the golden plates,
Smith claimed that it was written in reformed Egyptian. However, why would Jews
have used Egyptian and written in this language when they had their own
language, Hebrew (they could have also used Aramaic). Why would they have,
therefore, used a strange language among themselves which they generally have
not been able to speak? It is unlikely that anything like this were to happen.
On the other
hand, when the text that Joseph Smith copied from the golden plates was
studied, it was observed that this language never existed. This refers to the
possibility of deceit. For example, professor Charles Anthon the same man
whom Smith claims to have been convinced of the genuineness of the hieroglyphic
text explained in his letter dated 17 February1834 to E.D. Howe, who examined
the origins of the Book of Mormon that he deemed the whole reformed Egyptian language
a hoax:
The whole claim that I had
said the Book of Mormon to be reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics is completely
unfounded. I soon came to the conclusion that it was a pure swindle. (
) The
paper included everything else but Egyptian hieroglyphs. (1)
Also Uuras Saarnivaara had an
expert look at a specimen of the text on the golden plates. The expert was not
familiar with this reformed "Egyptian language":
The writer of this sent a copy of the
text (Finnish Mormon magazine Valkeus, May 1956, p. 153) that Smith
claimed to have come from the golden plates to the British Museum of London in
the latter part of the year 1960, so that an expert in the field
of ancient Egypt could study it, and asked if he could get a statement
about whether or not the claims of Joseph Smith about this were right. An
answer dated 9 January 1961 came where the head of the department (Keeper), I.
E. S. Edwards writes, "I can only say that during my 25 years of
experience in the Egyptian language, I have never seen any of these graphic
characters anywhere in Egyptian memorials or papyrus documents. If this text is
what Joseph Smith claimed it to be, "the reformed
Egyptian language", it has been reformed in such a way that there is
no possibility whatsoever to mistake it as being Egyptian.(2)
The Breastplate, the Urim and
the Thummim. When Smith was translating, he believed that he was using the
breastplate and in it the Urim and Thummim as assistance. But we can ask how
could Smith have gotten hold of those objects, since they belonged to the
High Priest of Israel? How could these important objects have ended up in
another continent? In other words, it would have been a huge accident if
someone found these objects several thousand years later from another continent,
in the ground, and more than 10,000 kilometers (6,213.7119224 miles) from
Israel.
- (Exo 28:30) And you shall put in the breastplate of judgment the
Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be on Aarons heart, when he goes in
before the LORD: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel on
his heart before the LORD continually.
The amount of text fitting on
the golden plates. The size of the gold plates and how much text would
fit on them remains a mystery. If the total volume of the golden plates was
about 15 x 18 x 20 cm (5.9 x 7 x 7.8 inches) and from this eventually only a
third formed the text of the Book of Mormon, it is a mystery how the whole text
could fit in such a small pile of plates. Should this not be impossible, since
there are hundreds of pages of dense text in the present Book of Mormon? Uuras
Saarnivaara has explained this mystery and problem:
The question of the weight
and size of the plates of the Book of Mormon is handled in the Finnish Mormon
Magazine (Valkeus, June 1960). According to Smith, the dimensions of the
plate book were about 15 x 20 x 15 cm (5.9 x 7 x 7.8 inches). If the plates
were eight-carat gold, they would have weighed more than 53 kilograms (116.8
pounds): a heavy load even for a man! The Finnish Book of Mormon has 545 pages
and the pages are about 12.5 x 18 cm (4.9 x 7 inches). The English version
contains 522 pages. According to Smith, the Book of Mormon includes about 1/3
from the whole text of the gold plate book. The whole weight of the gold plate
book would have, therefore, been more than 150 kilos (330 pounds). How could
Smith have carried it? And would it have been possible to engrave the text of
the Book of Mormon on a pile of metal plates about 15 cm (5.9 inches) thick?
When printed on paper, this book is almost 2 cm (0.7 inch) thick. When we take
into account the facts that inscribing requires considerably larger characters
and that the metal plates are considerably thicker than paper and do not fit
together so well, it is apparent that inscribing the text of a book this
size even on a pile of metal plates two times thicker is impossible in
practice. (
)
Even though we
cannot say exactly how much space the same text in the Egypt language would
require, it is sure that the text of the Book of Mormon would have needed
about 300400 metal plates. Lifting up a "book" like that would have
called for an elephant! (Let alone the entire book which, according to
Smith, was three times larger, since 2/3 of it was "sealed" and he was
not allowed to translate it).(3)
Seeing the gold plates and
eyewitnesses. Many peculiarities are connected with the gold plates and eyewitnesses.
Revelation. Firstly,
according to Smith, he dug the plates from the ground in 1827 and held them to
himself until the year 1838 when he gave them to a messenger called
Moron. In this respect, it is indeed strange that in 1829, when
Smith had to show the gold plates to the first three eyewitnesses in the
forest, he did not have them with him but instead, they all had to pray in order
to get a revelation about this from God. Does this praying for a revelation not
prove that it was, after all, only a hallucination and that the gold plates
were not real?
Joseph asked the Lord and
then informed these three that if they were to humble themselves, they would
get the right to see the ancient chronicle and have the responsibility to
testify to the world what they had seen.
In the summer of
1829, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer retired to
a forest close to the home of Whitmer in the southern part of the state of New
York. In the bright daylight, they knelt to pray; Joseph prayed first and
others followed him and prayed but even though all of them had prayed, no
answer was received. They repeated their prayers but again without result.
After the second failure, Martin Harris proposed that he should leave the
group, for he thought he was an obstacle to receiving the revelation. With the
consent of Joseph, he left.
The other three
knelt again to pray, and at that very moment they saw a light in the air above
them, and an angel stood before them. He had the plates in his hand, and he
slowly turned the pages before their eyes, so that they could see the engraving
on the plates. Then they heard a voice above them say, "These plates have
been informed by the power of God and they have been translated by the power of
God. The translation which you have seen is right, and I command you to testify
what you now are seeing and hearing." (Gordon B. Hinckley, Mitδ on sanottava
mormoneista?, p.65)
The witnesses left. As comes to the
plates and eyewitnesses, the testimony of Joseph Smith mentions two different
groups of eyewitnesses who signed the testimony. First, there is the account of
the three men and then the account of eight men about seeing the golden plates.
Both of these groups got according to their own statement to testify the
revelation of God and one of the most remarkable events in world history.
But were these
men very strong in their faith? Each one of the first three witnesses walked
away, although two of them returned later; this does not give a very convincing
view of the issue. On top of this, three of the eight witnesses gave up the
church completely and never came back.
Therefore, if
the gold plates were real and were God's revelation, how come the eyewitnesses
sacrificed their own eternity and their hope of salvation because of some small
contradictions? Does this not strike you as odd and should the eyewitnesses
not, instead, have had the strongest faith of them all? This abandonment and
indifference of the key witnesses is a mystery that is connected to the gold
plates, and it is difficult to explain if the plates really were genuine.
Style. Since the Book of
Mormon is supposed to have been written over the course of many centuries and
by separate writers (more than ten of them), the style of several writers
should also be seen in it, as is seen in the Bible. However, we can see a
problem: this is not the case. The Book of Mormon seems to be, in its entirety,
a text which has been written by one and the same author. How could this be
possible if it had come from the pens of several individuals? Why have
each of them used the same style?
Quotes from the King James
translation. Another peculiarity in the Book of Mormon is that it uses the very
same wording as the King James translation of the Bible that was published in
the 1600s. It has been estimated that there are about 25,000 words which
are exactly the same as in the King James version. In addition, there are
direct quotes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt, chapters 5-7/ 3. Nefi,
chapters 12-14) and the charisma catalogue written by Paul (1 Cor 12:8-11 /
Moron 10:8-16).
A good question
is, therefore, how the ancient writers in the continent of America could have
used exactly the same words as Matthew and Paul and which appear in a Bible
translated centuries later? How could they have used exactly the same wording
centuries earlier? Should this not be impossible, since the New Testament did
not come to America until more than a thousand years after these people had
died?
People who have studied the
origins of the Book of Mormon have different opinions regarding the sources
from which the story frame of the book has been received. However, one thing is
sure: the most important source is the Bible. The Book of Mormon contains many
direct quotes from the Bible, and many accounts in the Bible are found also in
the Book of Mormon, only in a modified format. The Book of Mormon translated by
Joseph Smith contains quotes from the English language Bible, the King James
version. It is interesting that men of ancient times, who are claimed to have
written on golden plates in Egyptian, used same expressions that appear in the
King James version hundreds of years later. (
)
In addition to
this, there are hundreds of verses in the Book of Mormon that are almost direct
quotes from the King James version that was in use in the beginning
of the 1600s. Joseph Smith has also included a large variety of theological and
practical matters of the life of a congregation that were common in the 19th
century America . (4)
"Manuscript found". Even though the
Book of Mormon claims that some tribes of Israel once wandered to America and
that the native Americans were their descendants, one should note that a story
like this is not in any way unique: many similar stories date back to the
same time.
For example,
Solomon Spaulding's (17611816) Manuscript Found tells a similar story, in
which he even uses names that also appear in the Book of Mormon such as men
called Lehi, Nefi, and Moron as well as the Lamanites.
On grounds of
the previous and on grounds of these names, people have generally reached the
conclusion that Manuscript Found served as the basis for the Book of
Mormon. At least, the widow of Solomon Spaulding and many of his friends
claimed to remember how Solomon had, at the end of his life, read to them a
manuscript about the very same issues as the current Book of Mormon. Is it,
therefore, possible that Joseph Smith got hold of this piece of writing and
wrote the Book of Mormon based on it? This is always a possibility.
The American Indians. According to the
book of Mormon present-day American Indians are the descendants of Jews
but it is difficult to find any evidence supporting this idea.
Firstly,
anthropologists generally think that the American Indians belong to the Mongol race
and that they have no physical features in common with the Semites. In addition
to their appearance, their customs are very different from the customs of the
Jews. No synagogues or other objects and customs that were common in Judaism
have been found amongst the Indians, nor have any Christian churches been found
amongst them. Therefore, if the claims of the Book of Mormon are true, should
not a great deal of relics like these be found? Why can we not find any, or does it
disprove the book of Mormon?
Jesus in America. One thought that
is brought out in the open by the Book of Mormon is that Jesus preached also in
America after his resurrection, and established a church there he did it
because he did not want to let people know of him only in one country, Israel.
We may ask,
however, why would God in that case have disregarded other continents, Asia,
Africa, Europe, and Australia, and chosen only America as the subject of
his announcement. And did Jesus Himself not say that He was sent only to Israel
and to preach only there? (The doctrine
and covenants that is composed
mainly of the visions of Joseph Smith, also claims that Adam did not live in
the Middle East at all, like the Bible indicates, but in America! Cf. 107:53
and 116:1.) Why would He have changed His own words in this issue?
- (Matt 15:24) But he answered and said, I am not sent but to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Another issue worth noting
is that Christian history does not know of any Christian churches having
been established in any other way than through missionary work carried out by Christians
this has always been the order prescribed by God. In the same way, Jesus gave
His disciples a task to preach the Gospel, and there are no examples of He
himself, after His resurrection, carrying it out. So, the Book of Mormon goes
against how God has generally worked in the world:
- (Mark 16:15) And he said to them, Go you into all the world, and
preach the gospel to every creature.
The names of places. Many excavations
and archaeological findings have confirmed that the places mentioned in the Bible
really existed and that the references to historical events are real.
Instead, it is a different matter
altogether as comes to the Book of Mormon. From the regions where people should
have lived, no names of rivers, towns, lakes, or mountains have been found
which even resembled the names mentioned in the Book of Mormon, even though
names generally remain unchanged for many centuries. Neither have relics of
Christian churches been found, although they too should have been there
according to the Book of Mormon. So, when pointed out, points like this are
powerful evidence against the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon.