Book of Mormon Questions That My Teacher . . . Never Asked (Introduction 1)

 

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.