Is
the Book of Mormon a Mesoamerican Chronicle?
By V. Garth Norman
The Ancient America Foundation
(AAF) is pleased to present AAF Notes: a series of research articles
by scholars of Book of Mormon culture and history and reviewed
by AAF editors. Visit our website.
This Research Note is an excerpt from Norman’s forthcoming publication,
“Book of Mormon ― Mesoamerican Historic Geography; a Study
Map with a Comprehensive Annotated Scriptural Gazetteer.”
The Book of Mormon, like the Bible,
is a historic religious record from antiquity written by prophet
scribes that chronicles religious history, doctrine, and covenant
teachings with Jehovah-Christ. It spans about 3,000 years,
covering the rise and fall of two ancient American civilizations,
the Jaredites and the Nephites, from about 2500 B.C. to A.D. 400
with ancestral roots in the Middle East.
Like the Bible, it contains lengthy
religious texts along with historic events that illustrate religious
teachings. That it is a significant history, is stated in
Mormon’s abridgement taken from the Large Plates of Nephi
(1 Nephi 1: 16-17; 9:2-4; 19:1), which were “occupied mostly by
a secular history of the peoples concerned” (see Book of Mormon
Introduction).
The more detailed history contained
in the books of Mosiah, Alma, and Helaman covers half the Book
of Mormon volume during a 125-year period before Christ.
The histories of wars and other movements in these three books
have extensive geographic details related to real places that
should be identifiable when all of the data are brought together
and examined in the right locations.
The Book of Mormon genuineness as
a Mesoamerican chronicle can be compared to the Popol Vuh,
sacred book of the Quiche Maya of Guatemala. Scholars for
a long time thought the Popol Vuh was partly fiction from
Colonial period influences of the Bible, especially in its creation
account, but it is widely accepted today as an authentic pre-Columbian
text. Its historic claims coincide with known geography,
archaeology, and ethnohistory.
Roots of some of its religious myths
have been found in pictographic hieroglyphic writing on ancient
Maya vessels and on Izapa stone sculptures dating back before
Christ, and most recently in a Late Preclassic (ca 100 B.C.) Maya
temple mural uncovered in the jungle ruins of San Bartolo, Guatemala.
Similar successes are developing
from Book of Mormon research yet to be recognized. The Book
of Mormon itself reported to be a complex historic record deserves
serious investigation, as much as the Popol Vuh,
especially considering its claimed historic reality from ancient
America and its foundational belief by the rapidly growing Mormon
world religion. World wide distribution of the Book
of Mormon has exceeded 115,000,000.
The need for more serious attention
to Book of Mormon history is also reflected in growing public
interest on the world stage in special editions of the Book of
Mormon being published in 2003 by the University of Chicago press,
and in 2004 by Doubleday. Mormon Studies academic programs
are developing at several universities, including the Claremont
Graduate School, University of Arizona, and University of Utah.
Oxford’s 2002 landmark publication,
By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched
a new World Religion, by Terry L. Givens is another major
contribution. Alfred A. Knopf’s 2005 publication, Joseph Smith;
Rough Stone Rolling by Richard L. Bushman is another recent
commendable work.
These publications and numerous other
scholarly studies cited by these authors sustain the legitimacy
of Joseph Smith’s work. Ongoing work by various research
organizations continues to advance cultural history study of the
Book of Mormon, including AAF, FARMS, and the Nephi Project. Research
is progressing beyond the long history of apologetic debates to
serious investigations of the Book of Mormon’s authenticity as
a Mesoamerican chronicle with Middle Eastern roots.
We have studied around, over, and
under the Book of Mormon as history for many years. Progress
now warrants more intensive historicity investigations that rest
on a solid geographic setting that can potentially be confirmed
with scientific research testing.
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