With this post, I am beginning a
long, intermittent series that will cover perplexing questions about the Book
of Mormon. I’ve been thinking about this project for about five years now, but
I figured I’d better wait until after I retired to tackle it because some of
the questions I bring up will likely not please the powers that be (and that
were signing my paycheck). Before I start on the questions, however, I need to
explain why I am doing this, where the questions come from, and my rather
unique relationship with the Book of Mormon.
Let me start by saying that I do
feel uniquely qualified to pursue this inquiry, for a variety of reasons.
First, I have always liked the Book of Mormon. It’s a fascinating and complex
book. Second, I have put Moroni’s promise to the test—I have prayed about the Book of Mormon off and on
for almost 50 years now—but
I have never had any sort of spiritual confirmation that it is “true,” whatever
you interpret that word to mean. Nothing. Oddly, the only spiritual feeling I
have ever had about Mormon’s book came a few years ago. I had read a couple of
troubling articles that made a good case in debunking one best arguments that
BoM apologists have come up with for affirming the credibility of the book, and
I was pondering this as I walked the dog one night before going to bed. As I walked
up the dark sidewalk, a wave of peace washed over me along with the thought,
“It’s okay if you don’t believe the Book of Mormon is an accurate record of a
real people.” And that’s the question I have tended to pray about in recent
years. I don’t ask if it’s true. True can mean so many things. Even fiction can
be true. So, I have gotten more specific in my prayers. Is it an accurate
record of a real people in ancient America? Crickets, except for that wave of
peace while walking the dog.
Third, for the past 18 years, up
until I retired this past spring, I worked as editorial director at BYU
Studies. In that capacity, I read a lot (and edited several articles) about the
Book of Mormon. And starting in 2015, when Royal Skousen had a falling out with
the Maxwell Institute and moved his Book of Mormon Critical Text project to BYU
Studies, I had the responsibility of being Royal’s final proofreader for almost
all of volume 3 (eight hefty books), which deals with the history of the text
of the Book of Mormon. This broad topic actually covered a great deal of very
interesting research. After I retired, BYU Studies asked me to write a short
article describing Royal’s critical text project. It will appear sometime early
in 2025, if you’re interested. As I point out in the article, not only did
Royal answer an assortment of questions about the text of the Book of Mormon, many
of which you probably never thought to ask, but he also raised many questions
that are difficult, if not impossible, to answer. Royal’s work is truly
impressive, especially his analysis of what’s actually in the book. Some of it
is highly perplexing. I’ll get into some of that in this series of blog posts.
Fourth, the last time I read the
Book of Mormon cover to cover, I was intentionally looking for theological
clues, and I was marking every verse that stood out. Still, I couldn’t help but
read as who I am. I have been an editor for over 30 years, so I read with a
critical eye. But I am also a novelist, although I haven’t written any new
fiction for quite a while, so I also read with an awareness of things like plot
and characterization. What I found is that by reading as both an editor and a
novelist, I discovered a host of questions that the text raised in my mind. So
instead of marking just theological anomalies, I started marking every verse
that raised red flags for whatever reason, and when I finished the book and
counted up my markings, I found that I averaged about one question for every
page of printed text. That’s where the idea for this series of posts
originated. It also suggests that this series could go on for quite some time.
Fifth, several years ago, I edited
Larry Porter and Susan Easton Black’s biography of Martin Harris. In the
process, I had to dig into the documents surrounding the coming forth of the
Book of Mormon, including the financial arrangement Harris entered into with
Grandin to finance the printing. Although I did have to correct a few errors in
the history and add a few qualifiers here and there, I came away convinced that
the eyewitness accounts regarding the dictation of the text; the appearance of
the angel to Harris, Cowdery, and Whitmer; and the showing of the plates to the
eight witnesses are accurate. It’s too hard to explain these accounts away. Most
of the eleven witnesses turned against Joseph Smith at some point, but none of
them ever denied seeing what they said they saw or handling what they said they
handled. Which makes my task a conundrum of sorts, because what is actually in
the text doesn’t always square with the history encompassing the book’s
appearance in 1829 and 1830.
My purpose in exploring these
questions is not to determine whether the Book of Mormon is “true” or not. My
purpose, rather, is to try to figure out what the Book of Mormon is. The
evidence suggests it is not an exact translation of an ancient record.
Skousen’s incredibly detailed work casts serious doubt on that premise, which
he readily admits. But the evidence arising from the actual text suggests that
this book also did not come from Joseph Smith’s imagination, or the imagination
of any of his contemporaries. It is far too complex. I have good reason to
believe that God was definitely involved in the fact that it exists at all. But
how do we reconcile the textual evidence with the accounts of eyewitnesses or
even the claims the book makes about itself? In a book review I wrote many
years ago, I made the statement that the Book of Mormon is like a million-piece
jigsaw puzzle and that we haven’t even put the border together yet. Royal
Skousen’s work is just the beginning, in so many ways, of understanding what
this book is. I hope my modest stab at asking questions about the book will
move us a few inches further along the path to understanding.
Because some of my questions will
directly undermine the assumption that the Book of Mormon is an accurate
history of a real people, I want any readers of this blog series to understand
exactly where I stand on the central question of Mormonism. To do this, in the
next two posts, I am going to present two different accounts of an experience I
had as a young missionary almost 50 years ago. The first account appeared as an
essay, “Frau Rüster
and the Cure for Cognitive Dissonance,” in volume 40, number 3, of Dialogue:
A Journal of Mormon Thought. That 2007 version was written at the beginning
of my work at BYU Studies, before I had really encountered much of the
complexity of Mormon history and theology. The second account is a third-person
adaptation of the Dialogue essay that I included as a chapter in my
mission memoir that was published eleven years later by BCC Press. By this
time, I was a lot less sure about what this experience with Frau Rüster (cast now as Frau Richter)
actually meant and a lot less willing to make blanket assertions. The mission
memoir explains both why I switched to third person in retelling the tale and how
my work at BYU Studies affected my relationship with the LDS Church and its
doctrine. The title of the memoir gives a clue about the path I walked in the
intervening years between these two accounts: Bruder: The Perplexingly
Spiritual Life and Not Entirely Unexpected Death of a Mormon Missionary. It’s
worth reading, if I may say so myself. And the title of the chapter about Frau
Richter (Rüster) ends with a question mark. In the earlier version, it was a
statement.
Mormonism is a complex religious and cultural phenomenon,
and the Book of Mormon lies near the center of it. I believe most Latter-day
Saints read it rather superficially, with untested assumptions guiding their
understanding of the text. So, what will follow, after my two interpretations
of an experience I had in 1975, is a sporadic and randomly organized look at
the questions I have entertained as I have read the Book of Mormon. Maybe by
the time I run out of questions, I’ll be able to make some sort of assessment
of the book. But maybe not. That’s what I want to find out.
