THE CLAIM THAT THE BOOK OF MORMON IS AN AUTHENTIC ANCIENT SCRIPTURE TRANSLATED FROM GOLD PLATES BY JOSEPH SMITH IS “THE SCANDAL OF MORMONISM,” AS THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST IS THE SCANDAL OF CHRISTIANITY.1
Terryl Givens used this provocative analogy in part one of
the two-part PBS documentary, “The Mormons” that aired on
April 30. Givens is a university professor, author, and
Mormon bishop, who was featured prominently in both episodes
of ‘The Mormons.’ Here’s his full statement:
The kind of revelation that Joseph describes is the scandal of Mormonism in the same way that the resurrection of Christ is the scandal of Christianity. What I mean by that is that on the face of it, that's an affront to sophisticated notions of how the universe works. God doesn't deliver gold plates to farm boys. It's a cause of embarrassment to many intellectuals in the church to continue to insist that Joseph had literal gold plates given to him by a real angel that he translates through the Urim and Thummim [seer stones].
But I also mean that it's a scandal in the sense that it is inseparable from the heart and soul of Mormonism, that one could no sooner divorce the historical claims of the Book of Mormon from the church than one could divorce the story of Christ's resurrection from Christianity and survive with the religion intact. ... 2
As Givens sees it, the main obstacle to accepting the claims of Mormonism is simply a deep philosophical bias against the supernatural, but the same obstacle exists for traditional Christianity, according to Givens. In the case of Mormonism, it’s the claim that the Book of Mormon is an authentically ancient volume of lost scripture which Joseph Smith translated from gold plates. But traditional Christianity is just as implausible to the secular mind, says Givens, for it asks us to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
There are two basic objections to Givens’ argument. First, it’s an improper analogy. As one more clear-headed Mormon author has noted, “the point of comparison with the historicity of the Book of Mormon ought to be the historical reality of the New Testament – not faith in the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection.”3
While of course the Bible contains supernatural claims, its narratives are situated in real history and populated by people, places and events many of which are known to us from other ancient sources (e.g., David, Nebuchadnezzar, Hittites, Babylonian captivity, Herod Agrippa, Pilate, Claudius’ edict driving Jews from Rome, etc.). In addition, the biblical text is organically connected to the present by a rich trail of manuscript evidence that go back to within 50 years of the time of Jesus’ apostles.4 The Bible is authentically ancient.
The situation of the Book of Mormon is starkly different on both these points. It describes a pre-Columbian civilization for which archaeologists and anthropologists say there’s no evidence.5 And there’s no manuscript trail connecting this putatively ancient work to the present – only the gold plates, which Joseph said he was required to give back to the angel.6 The Book of Mormon claims to be the scriptures of an ancient people, but there is no tangible evidence for this claim.7
But there’s a second objection to Givens’ analogy. While the gold plates of the Book of Mormon aren’t available for independent examination, we do have available for examination 11 fragments from several ancient Egyptian papyrus documents that once belonged to Joseph Smith.8 Compelling evidence links them to his putative translation of a less well known volume of Mormon sacred scripture called the Book of Abraham.9 The papyri had been lost to the Mormons for over a hundred years, but turned up in 1967 in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and were subsequently presented to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Three of these papyrus fragments make up a significant portion (if not substantially all) of a scroll that Joseph Smith identified as a lost book of the biblical patriarch Abraham, and from which he claimed to derive the Book of Abraham. As such, these papyri constitute an objective basis for evaluating the Mormon founder as a prophet and a translator of lost scripture, irrespective of the presuppositions of the investigator.10
It’s a shame that the Book of Abraham episode was skipped over by the producers of “The Mormons.” But you can get the story in the award-winning documentary, “The Lost Book of Abraham,” and the book, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus.
Notes
1 Givens has used the analogy elsewhere, but it is not original with him. Mormon historian Richard L. Bushman, makes a similar point in a 2001 article in Brigham Young University Studies (“A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-First Century,” Vol. 40, No. 3, p. 168); see also comments by William J. Hamblin, “Basic Methodological Problems with the Anti-Mormon Approach to the Geography and Archaeology of the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2 (Spring 1993) p. 196, and comments by Van Hale in “Unrealistic Expectations of Book of Mormon Historicity,” paper delivered at the Sunstone Symposium, Salt Lake City, Utah, Sept. 15, 2003.
2 Transcript online at
http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/givens.html. Emphasis
added.
3 Stan Larson, Quest for the Gold Plates (Salt Lake City,
Utah: Freethinker Press, 1996), p. 84 n.148.
4 The earliest New Testament manuscript is the John Rylands
Papyrus, which contains a few verses of the Gospel of John
and dates to ca. AD 125. Among other early New Testament
manuscripts are one of the Chester Beatty papyri, designated
p45, that contains portions of all four Gospels and Acts,
and dates to A.D. 200-250; a second Chester Beatty papyri,
p46, contains all of six epistles of Paul, portions of three
others, plus the Epistle to the Hebrews, and dates to ca.
A.D. 200. See Bruce M. Mtezger, The Text of the New
Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1968), pp. 36ff.
5 See, e.g., statements of Mesoamerican anthropologist
Michael Coe of Yale University -
http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/coe.html.
6 Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith – History, 1:60.
7 E.g., see Thomas J. Finley, “Does the Book of Mormon
Reflect an Ancient Near Eastern Background,” in Francis J.
Beckwith et al, eds., The New Mormon Challenge (Grand
Rapids, Mich., Zondervan, 2002), pp. 337-366; Deanne G.
Matheny, “Does the Shoe Fit? A Critique of the Limited
Tehuantepec Geography,” in Brent Lee Metcalfe, ed., New
Approaches to the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Utah:
Signature Books, 1993), pp. 269-328.
8 Joseph Smith acquired the papyri (along with four Egyptian
mummies) from a traveling antiquities dealer in late June or
early July 1835 in Kirtland, Ohio.
9 The papyri are in the possession of the LDS Church,
however, photographs (the majority in color) are available
in Charles M. Larson, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus
(Institute for Religious Research, 1992).
10 In the first blush of enthusiasm when the papyri were
rediscovered, Mormon scholar-apologist Hugh Nibley
pronounced one of the pieces that was immediately
identifiable as part of Joseph Smith’s Abraham scroll to be
“a tangible link between the worlds.”