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examiningmormonism · 6 years ago

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Critically Examining the Case for Book of Mormon Historicity

Preface: This started as a YouTube comment and turned into a much more extended essay, as I had meant to work on such an essay for some time. In case you're inclined to ask why I bothered to write all of this, here's why: for different reasons, I find the ancient Near East, the Bible, ancient Mesoamerica, and Mormon origins to be profoundly interesting, and these subjects converge in discussing with LDS scholars the origins of the Book of Mormon. I've never been LDS and my interest in Mormonism is largely academic, though as a believing Christian I have an interest in engaging Mormonism from an orthodox Christian perspective. For those who are interested in reading through this, I hope it both stimulates your own consideration of these issues and sharpens up your ability to engage credibly with LDS family and friends who use such arguments. This essay considers seventeen arguments made by Dr. John Clark, a well-regarded archaeologist of ancient Mesoamerica.

As a non-Mormon and an interested reader of LDS scholarship (which I enjoy reading in the midst of deep disagreements) , I think that this video provides a good encapsulation of where defenses of Book of Mormon historicity tend to go wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkF4hlddGfw

The basic model of these arguments for Book of Mormon historicity are that there is a feature of the Book of Mormon text which was unknown or absurd in Joseph's day but which is now confirmed by historians of the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica in our own day. In order to evaluate these arguments, I want to spell out what I take to be important methodological points:

1. The two models we are comparing are a) the Book of Mormon as an ancient Mesoamerican codex engraved by authors of roughly Near Eastern extraction and b) the Book of Mormon as a production of the 19th century, written by author(s) familiar with the then popular ideas about the "Mound Builders." These mounds no longer occasion much interest because most of them have been removed or have been built over. But to persons of Joseph Smith's time and place, the Indian Mounds dotted the landscape and provided observers with much material upon which to speculate. Dan Vogel's "Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon" provides a clear and well-argued defense of this model of Book of Mormon origins.

2. This means that we are not looking at what scholars of ancient America thought in Joseph Smith's day. Then, as today, what academics thought and what was ingrained in the popular understanding were very different things. As LDS scholars often point out, Joseph Smith was relatively unlearned. We would therefore expect a production by Smith or someone associated with him to reflect popular understandings of ancient American civilization rather than academic understandings of that civilization. Hence, to compare what **academics** thought of ancient America in the 19th century with the Book of Mormon is a false trail. Nobody is suggesting that a 19th century scholar of ancient America composed the Book of Mormon.

3. We are not comparing 19th century conceptions of Mesoamerica with 21st century conceptions of Mesoamerica, as nonbelieving accounts for the production of the Book of Mormon do not set its narrative in Central America. Rather, as just described above, the setting of the Book of Mormon according to those who reject its historical authenticity is generally in the North American Heartland, including upstate New York.

These considerations lead us to the most important principle in evaluating claims of Book of Mormon authenticity. If a feature of the Book of Mormon text is found **both** in the ancient world **and** in the popular understanding of Joseph Smith's time and place, then the feature of the text **provides no argument for its authenticity or for its non-authenticity.** Both skeptics and believers of the Book can fall into this trap. In the same vein, we must understand that American culture in the 19th century was far from a monolith. What was believable and normal in 1830 Palmyra might be laughable to a scholar of that period or to a layperson in another area of the country. Thus, that critics once laughed at a feature of the Book of Mormon which has since been found in the ancient world is only significant if the feature was laughable and unexpected in the precise cultural context which enveloped Joseph Smith himself.

Each of the arguments made by Dr. Clark is a point which concerns two worlds. While Dr. Clark is an eminent expert in one of these worlds, in the other, he is merely a layman. The former is Mesoamerica, the latter is 19th century upstate New York. This point must be emphasized, because in several instances Dr. Clark explicitly makes a claim about what was conceivable for "19th century Yankees", with similar claims implied for his other arguments. My argument is that the major failure of his argument turns not on a misunderstanding of Central America (Clark is too much of a scholar to simply have "misconceptions" about Central America), but on a series of failures to grapple with Joseph Smith's own cultural context. Because of the paramount importance of a well-crafted methodology in approaching the question of Book of Mormon historicity, I will be returning to this point again and again in relation to the specific arguments presented by Dr. Clark.

With these points in mind, let's turn to the specific arguments.

1. Metal plates in stone boxes.

The first concerns metal plates sealed in stone boxes. We are told that this claim was thought to be ludicrous in Joseph's time but has since been shown to be authentically ancient. The engraved gold plates of Darius, sealed in a stone box, probably provide the closest analogue to the Book of Mormon plates. But there are serious issues with using this as an argument for the Book's authenticity. First, while engraved metal plates have been found in the ancient world, there has never been a text of the size of the Book of Mormon found- not even close. That a local aristocrat such as Laban had much of the Old Testament translated into Egyptian and engraved on brass plates indicates that the engraving of large records, comprising multiple scrolls, must have been somewhat common in the 6th century BC. The plates that have been discovered provide only a moderate parallel to the description found in the Book of Mormon.

Still, were there no analogue of similar precision found in Joseph Smith's own time and place, this would be a remarkable parallel. However, there are such analogues. The first comes from the surviving Spalding Manuscript, which I use only as an example of what was current in Joseph Smith's background, not as an argument for the Spalding-Rigdon model of BoM authorship. The Spalding Manuscript describes a colony of Roman Christians from the 4th century AD, blown ashore to the American continent accidentally. The internal narrative of the story is that Fabius, the leader of the colony, recorded the history of his people on a document and then sealed it away in a stone box, placing that box inside a cave. Fabius does so in order that the record might come forth and be translated by future Europeans so that they might know the history of Fabius' people. The plates of the Book of Mormon are similarly supposed to record the history of an ancient civilization extracted from the Old World, sealed away in a box with the intention that they should later come forth and be translated so that the later inhabitants of the American continent might know its history. Moreover, testimony from Brigham Young and Oliver Cowdery suggests that the stone box was thought to be hidden away inside a cave filled with records. I am not suggesting literary dependence. Rather, I am pointing out that analogues, even relatively close ones, were indeed present to Joseph Smith in 1830, and that the currency of these ideas indicates that the Book of Mormon's internal account of its sealing in a stone box does not need to be explained in terms of the ancient world: ultimately, it would be a wash.

But what about metal plates? Fabius' account is not engraved on plates of metal. Was this laughable in Smith's context? No, it wasn't. Fawn Brodie (whatever one thinks of her reconstruction of Smith, I refer to her book because of its citation of primary texts) notes that "a Palmyra paper in 1821 had reported that diggers on the Erie Canal had unearthed 'several brass plates' along with skeletons and fragments of pottery." (No Man Knows My History, 35) So, we find that in the cultural world immersing the young Joseph Smith, there are already ideas of records sealed up in stone boxes as well as engraved metal plates, and that these ideas were linked with the Indians, particularly the Mound Builders which forms the setting of the Book of Mormon according to nonbelievers.

So this, at best, is a wash. At worst, the immediacy of the parallel to Joseph's own context and the lack of precise analogues in the Near East (given the length of the record) provides a slight advantage to nonbelieving models for BoM origins. An argument could be made for either, but this is miles away from the slam dunk suggested by Dr. Clark.

2. Ancient American writing

Dr. Clark argues that the Book's description of writing and books in ancient America are exceptionally prescient, given what was then thought of ancient America.

The above examples suffice to show that it was hardly inconceivable in Joseph Smith's world that ancient Americans had writing systems. After all, the fundamental idea undergirding popular ideas about the Mound Builders was that the Mound Builders represented a lost civilization of basically Old World extraction, having all the sophistication known from the Old World, but wiped out by the ancestors of the American Indians known in the 19th century. The Book of Mormon provides a particular spin on this narrative, but it is recognizable as a form of the narrative. So, given the Book's situation in this narrative world (according to those of us who don't believe the Book is historically authentic), it is entirely reasonable that writing systems should be described. And since nobody is alleging that Joseph produced the Book based on an academic understanding of Mesoamerica current in his day, Clark's comparison of the BoM with the scholarly knowledge in 1830 is a false one. However ludicrous ancient American writing might have been to the scholars of 1830, Joseph Smith wasn't acquainted with their ideas, but with the ideas of those for whom ancient American writing was to be expected.

There is thus a close analogue in both the world of Joseph Smith and in ancient Mesoamerica, if one is simply considering the presence of written language. Given that the writing systems of ancient Mesoamerica are not presently related to any Old World writing system, the parallel to the Book of Mormon is quite vague, as the latter describes writing systems derived from Hebrew and Egyptian. So the parallel is merely in the concept of written texts- hardly precise enough to be striking.

3. Ancient American Warfare

Dr. Clark describes the notion of warfare in ancient America as having been "ridiculed" in the Book of Mormon until about twenty years ago. But as before, the question concerns the source of that ridicule. Would a person in Joseph's environment ridicule the idea of wars of extermination among the ancient inhabitants of the Americas? Certainly not. This was the basis for the mythos of the Mound Builders- that the creators of the advanced civilizations of ancient America were savagely wiped out by the ancestors of the Native Americans known to Joseph and his contemporaries. These immense wars of genocide were then seen to explain the ubiquity of the mounds heaped up with the remains of ancient inhabitants of the continent. The Book of Mormon contains a number of passages suggesting its origin, in part, as an etiology of these mounds, where the bones were visibly heaped up almost immediately under the surface:

Alma 16:11: "Nevertheless, after many days their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering."

Alma 28:11: "And the bodies of many thousands are laid low in the earth, while the bodies of many thousands are moldering in heaps upon the face of the earth; yea, and many thousands are mourning for the loss of their kindred, because they have reason to fear, according to the promises of the Lord, that they are consigned to a state of endless wo."

Mormon 2:15: "And it came to pass that my sorrow did return unto me again, and I saw that the day of grace was passed with them, both temporally and spiritually; for I saw thousands of them hewn down in open rebellion against their God, and heaped up as dung upon the face of the land. And thus three hundred and forty and four years had passed away."

Ether 11:6: "And there was great calamity in all the land, for they had testified that a great curse should come upon the land, and also upon the people, and that there should be a great destruction among them, such an one as never had been upon the face of the earth, and their bones should become as heaps of earth upon the face of the land except they should repent of their wickedness."

Even apart from the link between the Mound Builder mythos and the Book of Mormon, bloody wars with Native Americans were a matter of living memory and direct knowledge for contemporaries of Joseph Smith's. This is one place where I am genuinely mystified by Dr. Clark's assertion. Why would anybody in Joseph Smith's environment be surprised that he describes ancient Americans as fighting wars?

4. Nature of Civilization

Dr. Clark states that the account of ancient American civilization differs markedly from what Joseph would have expected from his own knowledge of the American Indians and their culture, But this misses the point in a crucially important way. The Mound Builder mythos itself arose as an explanation for an apparent discontinuity for the high civilization evident from the mounds and the perceived low culture of the Native Americans of the 19th century. As wrong as Rodney Meldrum is, he and his compatriots have played a helpful role in reminding everyone that there is evidence of civilization in North America, with highways, fortifications, and the like. In their efforts to demonstrate that "Joseph knew" the setting of the Book of Mormon in the Heartland of North America, they have also provided extremely helpful documentation showing that this evidence of civilization was known to Joseph and his contemporaries.The important point is that these features were immediately apparent in Joseph Smith's own day, as the mounds which have now been eradicated or built over were visible to the naked eye and well-known as a feature of the landscape.

[As a minor footnote, even if these things were not known to Joseph and his contemporaries, anyone describing an ancient civilization of Old World extraction would draw features known from Old World cultures, which is particularly predictable for a narrative like the Book of Mormon, anchored in the detailed information given about ancient Israelite civilization.]

According to the Mount Builder mythos, the architects of the great civilization evident in the Mounds were wiped out by the ancestors of the Indians known to 19th century Americans. In the Book of Mormon, this position is neatly filled by the Lamanites, cursed with a red skin (which is at the very least the strong prima facie evidence of the BoM text) and identified as the forefathers of the Indians. 2 Nephi 5:24 serves as an etiology for the perceived low culture of these Indians:

2 Nephi 5:24: "And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey."

Enos 1:20 provides an even clearer example:

Enos 1:20: "And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. But our labors were vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a bloodthirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us."

And see also:

Mormon 6:9: "And it came to pass that they did fall upon my people with the sword, and with the bow, and with the arrow, and with the ax, and with all manner of weapons of war."

The red-skinned Lamanites are noted for their association with the bow and the axe- both well known associates of Native Americans known to Smith, whose favorite weapons were the bow and the tomahawk axe. I'm not sure when the teepee became a stereotype for Native Americans in general, but if it was present in Smith's day (I'm working to confirm or deny its presence), then the notation about the tents provides another specific convergence to Smith's background and context. The reference to the shaven heads likewise hits the mark for the Native Americans known to Smith, for whom a partially or entirely shaved head was a common hairstyle. And the reference to loincloths is easily accounted for in terms of the "breechcloth" which was common to most Native American tribes and would have been immediately known to Smith and his contemporaries. Thus, while the Nephites (and righteous Lamanites who are turned white- thus suggesting a path of redemption for the Natives known to Smith) are described in terms of civilization familiar to the Old World, the Lamanites who are the ancestors of the American Indians known to Smith (in the unbelieving model of Book of Mormon origins) are described in a way which immediately rings true with what was thought in the 19th century. I don't write this to attack Smith or his contemporaries for believing this, but simply to note that the Book of Mormon resembles almost precisely what one would expect from a text drawing on the Mound Builder mythos.

5. Weapons and Armor

Dr. Clark then states that the description of Book of Mormon weapons and armor converge unexpectedly and specifically with ancient Mesoamerica. As evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon, this point cannot prove very much, since the weapons described are easily explained as a result of a) a biblical history of ancient America mirroring biblical warfare, where all of the mentioned weapons and armor are described and b) knowledge of weapons used by Indians of the 19th century and found in Indian Mounds. The latter accounts for the peculiar prominence of the axe (tomahawk) and bow in relation to the Lamanites, who are linked with the Native Americans of the 19th century on the non-historical model of Book of Mormon authorship.

5a. Excursus on Metals in Mesoamerica

By itself, then, the presence of these weapons is neither an argument for or against the Book of Mormon, as their textual presence can be explained both as an authentic Mesoamerican history and as a projection of biblical warfare. However, when further detail is considered, the weapons described point away from Book of Mormon historicity and towards a 19th century origin. First, as mentioned above, the weapons associated with the Lamanites are suggestive of a 19th century cultural background. Second, and more seriously, while most references to Book of Mormon weapons and armor are nondescript concerning their makeup, those details which do exist each point towards a metallic origin. No reader of the Book of Mormon without knowledge of ancient America would have any reason to suppose that they were made of anything else- on "bloodstains" see below. Evidence of metallurgy in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times is slim to nonexistent. It is important to distinguish metallurgy from the use of metal. John Sorenson has plausibly noted linguistic and some archaeological evidence for the use of metals in Central America during Book of Mormon times.

However, as Deanne Matheny points out:

"It is important to distinguish between metalworking, 'the act or process of shaping things out of metal' and metallurgy, the 'science and technology of metals' which may involve such processes as smelting, casting, and alloying." ("Does the Shoe Fit" in "New Approaches to the Book of Mormon", p. 283)

The Book of Mormon is very clear that the Lehites and the Jaredites possessed advanced metallurgical technology. Not only does the text describe tools (such as swords fashioned after Laban's model) which can only be produced by metallurgy, it makes explicit references to metallurgy. "Dross" is used as a metaphor in both Alma 32:3 and 34:29. The latter is placed in the mouth of Alma himself, preaching to the people and saying "if ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth) and is trodden under foot of men." This comment is immensely significant in evaluating the presence of metallurgy in the Book of Mormon, because its use as a metaphor indicates that it must have been common enough for the average person to understand. Hence, in the society described, metallurgists would play an important economic and civic role, and given the intelligibility of the metaphor, it would be strange if Book of Mormon civilizations did not use their knowledge of advanced metallurgy to produce metal weapons and armor, as such implements would provide a decisive advantage in war with those cities which did not use metallurgical technology.

Helaman 6:11 explicitly describes the extent of metallurgy at this point in Book of Mormon history: "And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich."

Helaman 6:9 describes the geographical extent of this knowledge: "And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceeding plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north."

Thus, in the first century before Christ, advanced metallurgy is known among both Nephites and Lamanites and is prominent throughout the entirety of the lands described in the text. Given the vast extent of this knowledge- in both land northward and land southward, among both Nephites and Lamanites, among both rich and common (as evident in its intelligible metaphorical application)- it would be totally unexpected for this knowledge to simply pass away, as some Book of Mormon scholars have suggested occurred. Metallurgy is an important enough technology that once it is established on a large scale, it will not be forgotten by accident.

2 Nephi 5:14-15: And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people. And I did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance.

The close textual conjunction of the making of swords like Laban's sword and the description of metallurgy strongly mitigates against an interpretation which suggests that the swords were like Laban's in form but not in their metallic constitution. 1 Nephi 17:10-11 describes the process of Nephi's metallurgical knowledge, where ore is mined, refined through the use of bellows as smelting tools. The emphasis placed on the working of various metals suggests that they must have been of supreme importance in Book of Mormon societies. Indeed, the use of metal seems to be a literary motif that runs throughout the Book, as signified in its engraving on a book of metal plates.

Jarom 1:8: And we multiplied exceedingly, and spread upon the face of the land, and became exceedingly rich in gold, and in silver, and in precious things, and in fine workmanship of wood, in buildings, and in machinery, and also in iron and copper, and brass and steel, making all manner of tools of every kind to till the ground, and weapons of war -- yea, the sharp pointed arrow, and the quiver, and the dart, and the javelin, and all preparations for war.

The text here links the use of metallurgical "machinery" with the making of both agricultural tools and weapons of war. Such would be expected from a projection of Old World civilization as known from the Bible, but would be manifestly unexpected as a description of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization.

Ether 7:9: Wherefore, he came to the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them with swords he returned to the city Nehor and gave battle unto his brother Corihor, by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib.

Here, almost at the earliest point in Book of Mormon history, we are told of metal swords being produced by metallurgy in ancient America.

Ether 10:23-27: And they did work in all manner of ore, and they did make gold, and silver, and iron, and brass, and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper. And they did work all manner of fine work. And they did have silks, and fine-twined linen; and they did work all manner of cloth, that they might clothe themselves from their nakedness. And they did make all manner of tools to till the earth, both to plow and to sow, to reap and to hoe, and also to thrash. And they did make all manner of tools with which they did work their beasts. And they did make all manner of weapons of war. And they did work all manner of work of exceedingly curious workmanship.

Several centuries later (during the time of Kish and Lib) in Jaredite history, metal is a central feature of Jaredite civilization, and the mining of ore and its refining into metal is described in the context of agricultural tools and weapons of war. The phrase "exceedingly curious workmanship" is also generally used of metallic implements in the Book of Mormon.

At the very latest point in Book of Mormon chronology, Moroni indicates that metallurgical knowledge was available to him in Mormon 8:5: "Behold, my father hath made this record, and he hath written the intent thereof. And behold, I would write it also if I had room upon the plates, but I have not; and ore I have none, for I am alone."

If ore were available, the text clearly implies, Moroni had the skills necessary to extract the necessary metals and make additional plates. Thus, metallurgy is in evidence from almost the beginning of the Jaredite history to the exact end of the Lehite history. Moreover, it is not presented as an ancillary feature of Book of Mormon civilizations. Rather, metallurgy is presented as central to the economies of both Nephite and Jaredite peoples. It is described in conjunction with the creation of agricultural and military implements during both the Jaredite and Lehite periods. War and food are twin pillars of any ancient society, including ancient America. It was known at the beginning, middle, and end of the Lehite period, with its use spanning the entirety of Book of Mormon lands and both Nephite and Lamanite branches of the nation.

Evidence for metallurgy during this period in Central America is basically absent. I say "basically" only to leave open the possibility that I have missed the publication of marginal evidence for metallurgy during the appropriate period. However, as far as I know, the first evidence for metallurgy in Mesoamerica comes around 700 AD. Before this period, the only evidence for pre-Columbian metallurgy is in ancient Peru, which is not relevant to Book of Mormon lands on the standard Mesoamerican geography. What is remarkable is the absence of the evidence in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times when its presence is clearly known in Central American archaeology from 700 onwards, especially in light of the centrality of metallurgy to Book of Mormon civilizations.

While it is always possible that evidence for metallurgy will be forthcoming in the future, as long as one is speaking of the present state of the evidence, one is faced with the complete absence of archaeological evidence for one of the most central features of Book of Mormon civilizations for the entirety of its timeline of two and a half millennia. Given the appearance of such evidence several centuries after Mormon's death, this is evidence that one would expect to see if the Book of Mormon were truly an ancient Mesoamerican codex. But it is missing.

Back to Weapons and Armor

I spent so much space discussing the issue of metallurgy because of the centrality of warfare to Book of Mormon history and the importance placed on the convergence between Book of Mormon history and ancient America in this respect by Dr. Clark and other LDS scholars. Below I will return to the issue of specific weapons and the nature of the convergence with Mesoamerican evidence.

5b. Breastplates:

Breastplates are described several times in the Book of Mormon, and are known from ancient America. However, the one time that the makeup of a breastplate is identified, we are told that it is of brass and copper, referring to Jaredite armor brought to King Mosiah:

Mosiah 8:10: And behold, also, they have brought breastplates, which are large, and they are of brass and of copper, and are perfectly sound.

5c. Swords:

1 Nephi 4:9: And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

2 Nephi 5:14: And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people.

Mosiah 8:11: And again, they have brought swords, the hilts thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no one in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates. Therefore I said unto thee: Canst thou translate?

Thus, when it comes to swords, the only textual evidence for the composition of swords in the text of the Book of Mormon is that they are metal. Dr. Clark, however, argues that there is evidence for non-metal swords in Alma 24, where the swords are described as having the ability to be stained with blood.The first thing to point out is that the text describes the swords, after having been cleansed, becoming "bright", an adjective which makes far more sense in reference to a clean metal sword which shines in the sunlight than it does to a wooden sword. Second, the use of "bloodstained" in reference to swords provides little evidence that the swords were anything other than metal, as "bloodstained" is used of metal swords in the parlance of Joseph Smith's day.

To give just one example (searching Google Books produces a good number of examples) from 1825, Augustin Thierry's "History of the Conquest of England" (p. 127) describes a "bloodstained sword." Language of staining with blood is frequently metaphorical- one says that one has bloodstained hands if one is guilty of murder, not because the skin on one's hand has reddened permanently. Given, then, that this phrase was attested in Joseph Smith's day when speaking of metal swords, one cannot take this as evidence that the swords are anything other than metal. Of course, it's possible, given the constraints of the text, that some of the swords described could be made of something other than metal. But there are a number of passages which clearly describe metal swords, and there are no passages which clearly describe a non-metal sword. There are no hermeneutical grounds for assuming that every sword in the text refers to a non-metal sword unless it specifically states otherwise. Such an interpretation must be brought to the text on the basis of Mesoamerican archaeology, in which case the strength of an independent convergence between the text and the evidence disappears.

Evidence for metallurgy in the appropriate time periods is presently lacking, and the Book of Mormon text needs to be supplemented by conjecture to bring it into line with the archaeological evidence. Thus, the picture that Clark paints of a specific convergence between the Book of Mormon text and Mesoamerican civilization of the appropriate time period is exaggerated at best. At a deeper level, however, this point reveals the profound discordance presently existing between Mesoamerican archaeology and the Book of Mormon. Throughout the text, metallurgy is presented as widely known and centrally important for agriculture, warfare, and trade. With regard to the specific issue of weapons, the convergence suggested by Dr. Clark is actually a substantial discordance, for the weapons known from ancient Mesoamerica are not made of metal, while the only indications provided in the text are for metal weapons and armor, along with a substantial metallurgical industry. This must be regarded as a substantial argument against the historicity of the Book of Mormon- a major textual feature permeating the whole narrative which is entirely absent from the appropriate time and place.

5d. Cotton Armor

Dr. Clark briefly mentions cotton armor as a convergence between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. Such a convergence, as something not present in the Bible nor (to the best of my knowledge) to the Indians of Joseph Smith's day, would be exactly the kind of convergence which is striking. But it is not present, as Dr. Clark suggests, in the Book of Mormon text. On screen, Alma 43:19 is cited, which refers to the "thick clothing" of the Nephite armies. At most, this is a vague convergence rather than a specific one as cotton is not mentioned. However, a better textual explanation for this feature can be found. I discussed above the description of Lamanites as wearing loincloths and its connection with the "breechcloths" widely known among the Indians of Joseph Smith's day. This is described in the text as one of the features differentiating the civilization of the early Nephites with the wildness of the Lamanites, who are nearly naked, live in tents, and subsist on uncooked meat. Here, in Alma 43, we see Nephite and Lamanite soldiers clashing, and the differences between the two cultures (the stereotypical contrasts present in the Mound Builder mythos) is drawn into focus. In Alma 43:20, we are told about the Lamanites who see the Nephites with their armor and "thick clothing":

"Now the army of Zerahemnah was not prepared with any such thing; they had only their swords and their cimeters, their bows and their arrows, their stones and their slings; and they were naked, save it were a skin which was girded about their loins; yea, all were naked, save it were the Zoramites and the Amalekites"

This text is very similar to the above-cited text concerning the initial wildness of Laman's people. We are told of their typical weapons of warfare and their near-nakedness except the "skin which was girded about their loins." The meeting of these armies thus provides a glimpse at the sharp difference between the civilized Nephites and the wild Lamanites who explain the perceived savagery of 19th century Native Americans. The reference to "thick garments" then, is explained best as a contrast between the near-nakedness of the Lamanite army with the sophistication and civilization of the Nephite army. While it is possible, given the constraints of the text, that it refers to cotton armor, the literary contrast is sufficient to explain why "thick garments" are described, so that absent any additional evidence (which is not, as far as I can see, present), it is an unjustified leap to identify characteristically Mesoamerican cotton armor in the Book of Mormon text.

To sum up this most important section, there is nothing that I can see in the textual description of Book of Mormon implements of war that is convergent with ancient Mesoamerica in a way that is discordant with Joseph's own context. On the other hand, there are major discordances between present knowledge of Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon- discordances which are convergent with Joseph's own context.

6. The Use of Severed Arms as War Tribute to the King

Dr. Clark next turns to the story of Ammon and the presentation of severed arms to King Lamoni as evidence of a convergence with ancient Mesoamerican war practice, which is said to include the presentation of severed arms as a traditional feature of warfare. However, the documentation provided about ancient America is too vague to make this a strong convergence. This article cites the specific sources underlying this argument:

https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/why-did-the-servants-present-lamoni-with-the-arms-of-his-enemies

In this case, two sets of parallels are cited. The first set comes from the ancient Near East, but the parallel concerns merely the severing of any body part as a war trophy, including heads, arms, hands, or legs. This practice is attested in the Bible, obviously available to Joseph Smith, and does not apparently include the ritual presentation of the severed body parts to the king. From ancient America, Izapa Stela 25 is cited, which is mythological in nature. It shows two heroic twins in a fight with Seven Macaw. When one attempts to grab Seven Macaw, Seven Macaw tears off his arm and hangs it over a fire. Here, the only parallel is in the tearing off of an arm, hardly specific enough to require situating the Book of Mormon in the ancient world. And while the authors state that the story "likely reflects actual Maya attitudes and practices in war and conflict", no specific evidence for this practice is described. The other example cited comes over a thousand years after the close of the Book of Mormon and refers to the Aztecs throwing severed limbs of Spanish soldiers at the Spaniards to taunt them. In addition to the chronological gap, there is no evidence that this was an established ritual among Mesoamerican civilizations, and the severed limbs are used to taunt enemy soldiers and strike terror into them rather than being ritually presented to the king.

Ultimately, then, there is no specific evidence that the practice described (once) in the Book of Mormon was a ritual practice in ancient Mesoamerica. Alma 17 describes Ammon's enemies "lifting their clubs" against Ammon, who cuts their arms off. The image which one is supposed to derive from this is of a number of soldiers attacking Ammon all at once, who is so skillful in battle that as soon as one raises an arm against him, he slices the arm off, and within moments, he swiftly maneuvers to cut another arm off in the same way. Thus, the severed arms are significant in that they particularly reflect Ammon's valor and skill in warfare and his ability to decisively win an engagement in which he is significantly outnumbered. The peculiarities of the text are explained in terms of the literary purpose of the story. As above, this does not rule out ancient Mesoamerican context, but absent more specific evidence, hypothesizing such a context is unnecessary to explain the text's production and thus does not indicate an anomaly in a model of 19th century authorship requiring the Book's ancient authenticity as an explanation.

7. Towers as a Place of Final Surrender

Dr. Clark then turns to the scene described in Moroni 9, where Mormon narrates the Lamanites' taking prisoners from the tower of Sherrizah. This, he argues, reflects the ancient Mesoamerican practice of fleeing to the tower/pyramid (the two are used interchangeably in the Bible and thus reasonably so in the Book of Mormon) as places of last defense and surrender. While he may have additional evidence for this practice, the only evidence he cites is the fact that broken or burning pyramids are a symbol of a city's conquest in Mesoamerican art and iconography, which is vaguer than the specific convergence being cited. More importantly, however, the notion of the tower as a place of last refuge is present in the Bible and thus directly available to Joseph Smith:

(Judges 9:50-52) Then Abimelech went to Thebez and encamped against Thebez and captured it. But there was a strong tower within the city, and all the men and women and all the leaders of the city fled to it and shut themselves in, and they went up to the roof of the tower. And Abimelech came to the tower and fought against it and drew near to the door of the tower to burn it with fire.

While Abimelech is then unexpectedly killed, the story closely resembles the story in Moroni 9, where women and children had apparently fled to a tower at which they were defeated and captured. Since this textual feature was available to Joseph Smith, it cannot provide evidence for an unexpected convergence with Mesoamerican civilization at a point which diverges from Joseph's time and place.

8. Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism

Clark briefly mentions human sacrifice and cannibalism as a convergence between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. This is true, but both were also present among the North American Indians with whom Joseph and his contemporaries were familiar. North American Indians were often especially reviled because of the exquisite ritual torture exacted by some tribes upon captured European settlers. Likewise, while the evidence for cannibalism among North American Indians has been controversial, there is no question that Europeans who encountered them believed them to have practiced cannibalism, as is documented among early Jesuit encounters with the Iroquois. As above, then, since the feature is present both in ancient Mesoamerica and in Joseph Smith's world, it cannot provide an argument for either as the source of the Book of Mormon.

9. Large Troop Numbers

Both the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica featured large battles, but such large battles were also believed necessary to explain the heaps of human bones found throughout North America, so the presence of large armies in the Book of Mormon provides no specific evidence for either time period as the Book's production context.

10. Large Structures Such as Temples and Palaces

This was discussed in #4 above. Far from being "foreign to the gossip along the Erie Canal" as Dr. Clark suggests, the known presence of an advanced civilization in ancient North America was the foundation for popular speculation about the Mound Builders which forms the nonbelieving production model for the Book of Mormon.

11. Cement Buildings in the Land Northward

Here, Dr. Clark refers to the presence of cement buildings mentioned once in Helaman and states that the notion of cement buildings was "considered ridiculous" in 1830. Actually, cement plaster had been discovered in the aforementioned North American mounds and thus forms a part of the most pertinent background for the production model of a non-historical Book of Mormon. The Spalding manuscript (which I again present only as an example of what was present in Joseph Smith's cultural world, not as a literary source for the Book of Mormon) also refers to the working of stone to build walls and other stone implements.

The description in Helaman 3 is the only place where cement is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, and the specific content of the reference is highly problematic. First, it states that the use of cement to build houses came about because of the lack of timber in the land, suggesting it was a novelty. However, in Mesoamerica, the use of cement was relatively common before the time of Helaman 3. Second, Teotihuacan did suffer from deforestation, but the deforestation occurred as a result of the use of cement, which requires the burning of timber. To attribute the rise of cement buildings to a lack of timber reverses the order of causation and makes little sense in itself.

Brant Gardner suggests that Mormon has unintentionally anachronized his abridgment and has projected the deforestation he knew onto Helaman's time. If one were already persuaded of Book of Mormon historicity, then this is a potential explanatory route, but for the person who is not persuaded, the fact that this kind of textual massaging is necessary appears to undermine the utility of the parallel as an argument for the Book's authenticity. Moreover, the text reports that Mormon was working with far more extended sources, so that if he were making a specific explanatory connection, one would assume that it had a basis in the sources he was abridging.

As a general parallel, then, cement appears in both the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica. But since its presence was known among the Mound Builders, it cannot be used as an argument for an ancient Mesoamerican setting over and against a modern setting in the genre of Mound Builder myths. Moreover, the specifics of the parallel are problematic for an ancient Mesoamerican setting, suggesting a 19th century Mound Builder origin as a cleaner and simpler model, at least in this respect.

12. Kings

Dr. Clark suggests that Joseph's own context provides no basis for inferring kings among ancient American tribes. This is another instance where I find his claim mystifying. Kings among Native Americans were known from the historical memory of European settlers, who remembered "King Philip's War" and the "Four Mohawk Kings" to pick two examples almost at random. The Spalding Manuscript (again, just as an example of what was circulating at the time, not a literary source) also has Fabius immediately encounter a Native American king. It would be more surprising if the Book of Mormon did not mention Native American kings than if it did, and this is certainly not an argument for an ancient Mesoamerican production context.

13. Coriantumr's Stone

Here, I'm willing to grant a slight advantage to the proponents of historicity. The text in Omni 1 describing Coriantumr's stone fits very well with Mesoamerican royal stelas where the history of a particular king or dynasty was engraved iconographically on a large stone. Given other considerations, this argument is relatively minor, but this is a good match.

Nevertheless, one can find enough analogues to plausibly situate this in Joseph Smith's context. The Spalding Manuscript (above qualifications holding) describes engravings and art on stones among the Native peoples encountered by Fabius. Petroglyphs of North American Indians were also known (to the best of my knowledge) in Joseph Smith's day. A closer analogue is perhaps the stone box in which the record is sealed, which as described in #1, was a feature of Joseph's cultural background. This also fits with the overall literary themes of the Book of Mormon. Additionally, the idea of writing on stones is analogous to writing appearing on seerstones, which is directly described in King Mosiah's translation of this very stela and of course is present to Joseph Smith in his use of a seerstone. Writing appearing on the Liahona runs in the same vein. As a nonbeliever in BoM historicity, I find the link between Mosiah reading the translation in stones and Coriantumr engraving his record in stones to be the probable explanation for this textual feature. That the stone is "large" likely relates to Coriantumr and the Jaredites being "large."

14. King Benjamin's Labors

Clark states that a king "laboring with his own hands" as is recorded of Benjamin was a remarkable thing to claim. I'm not sure what the argument is, since Clark doesn't cite a Mesoamerican parallel, though perhaps he meant to. But the remarkable nature of this work is part of the point of King Benjamin's speech- that he was not a king who lorded his power over his subjects. Additionally, this is part of the larger literary theme in the Book of Mormon which presents relative economic egalitarianism as the ideal to which societies should confirm. This was a common theme in Restorationist movements of Joseph Smith's time, and one which the early Latter-day Saints attempted to put into practice with the "United Order", where all things were held in common. The inspiration for this is in Acts, where the apostolic Church is said to have "held all things in common." So this motif was directly available to Smith in his own world.

15. Riplakish's Throne and Olmec Thrones

Dr. Clark suggests that the Book of Mormon's description of Riplakish's "exceedingly beautiful throne" in Ether 10 presents a remarkable convergence with what is known of Olmec culture, which produced elaborate stone thrones. Remember that the key in determining Book of Mormon authenticity is to present features of the Book of Mormon text which would be unexpected to someone like Joseph Smith but are confirmed in ancient Mesoamerica. However, in this case, biblical parallelism is sufficient to explain the presence of the throne of Riplakish. As described in the methodological discussion above, the description of the building of the throne is concordant with what is known of the Olmec, but it is also perfectly concordant with what one would expect to see from a biblically-based narrative of a covenant civilization in America. As such, the throne is consistent with both models but alone points in neither direction.

Moreover, the parallel is not specific enough to alone indicate a connection with the Olmec people, and the story of Riplakish is linked in a number of respects with the story of King Noah, who is polygamous, gathers up precious metals, and erects a beautiful throne. King Noah comes long after the end of Olmec civilization, and while one might suggest that he represents a remnant of Jaredite culture, the presence of these features in his story as well decreases the specificity of a proposed link with Olmec culture. Along these same lines, were this derived from Olmec civilization, one might expect the "exceedingly beautiful throne" to be a staple of the Jaredite history rather than something mentioned only in connection with one king. This is, of course, intelligible in light of the fact that Ether is identified as an abridgment of a very extensive history, but it reduces the value of the throne as a specific parallel which would stand out as a sign of connection with Olmec peoples. All we are told of the throne is that it is "exceedingly beautiful", a description which could be applied to most royal thrones. Thus, the convergence with Olmec civilization is simply that Riplakish constructs a throne as the Olmec constructed thrones. This is consistent with Book of Mormon historicity but is far too vague to be indicative of it.

Can one find a more specific explanation for the presence of the throne in the narratives of Kings Riplakish and Noah in Joseph Smith's background? I believe we can, in 1 Kings. All commentators on the Book of Mormon, believing or not, agree that the KJV Bible was available to Joseph Smith, known prominently in his time, and formed an influence upon the text. To be clear, I do not think typological resemblances are arguments against historicity, a fallacious argument made by a number of critics of the Book of Mormon. What we seek is a model which is sufficient to explain the specific features of the Book of Mormon text. The specific links with the story of King Solomon are not incompatible with historicity, but they seriously weaken the usefulness of the "throne" as an argument for the setting of the Book of Mormon in ancient Mesoamerica. Both ancient and modern authorship are sufficient to explain the presence of this textual feature, and it cannot be used to advantage one model over the other. Joseph (or Solomon Spalding, or Sidney Rigdon, or whoever) could be creating a fictional narrative based on the biblical Solomon just as easily as Mormon and Moroni could be telling the stories of Kings Noah and Riplakish in such a way as to echo the biblical Solomon narrative.

Note the multiple connections with the story of King Solomon. Riplakish has many wives and concubines, as does Solomon:

(Ether 10:5) And it came to pass that Riplakish did not do that which was right in the sight of the Lord, for he did have many wives and concubines...

(1 Kings 11:3) He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

Riplakish taxes the people heavily and uses the funds to build great buildings, as Solomon:

(Ether 10:5) ...and did lay that upon men's shoulders which was grievous to be borne; yea, he did tax them with heavy taxes; and with the taxes he did build many spacious buildings.

(1 Kings 9:15-19) And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the house of the Lord and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer (Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it with fire, and had killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and had given it as dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife; so Solomon rebuilt Gezer) and Lower Beth-horon and Baalath and Tamar in the wilderness, in the land of Judah, and all the store cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion.

Riplakish is especially interested in precious metals, which are similarly abundant in the time of Solomon:

(Ether 10:7) Wherefore he did obtain all his fine work, yea, even his fine gold he did cause to be refined in prison, and all manner of fine workmanship he did cause to be wrought in prison. And it came to pass that he did afflict the people with his whoredoms and abominations.

(1 Kings 10:21) All King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. None were of silver; silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon.

And after a reign of about forty years (42 in the case of Riplakish, 40 in the case of Solomon) the heavy draft of forced labor causes a rebellion which tears apart the kingdom and instigates a civil war:

(Ether 10:8) And when he had reigned for the space of forty and two years the people did rise up in rebellion against him; and there began to be war again in the land, insomuch that Riplakish was killed, and his descendants were driven out of the land.

(1 Kings 12:1-4) Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. And as soon as Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from Egypt. And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, "Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you."

(1 Kings 15:6) Now there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life.

Given the multiple links between the story of Solomon and the story of Riplakish which exist already, it is reasonable to look for the source of the "exceedingly beautiful throne" in this context. And indeed, it is in the immediate context of all of these parallels that one finds the most detailed description of any human throne in the Bible:

(1 Kings 10:18-20) The king also made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with the finest gold. The throne had six steps, and at the back of the throne was a calf's head, and on each side of the seat were armrests and two lions standing beside the armrests, while twelve lions stood there, one on each end of a step on the six steps. The like of it was never made in any kingdom.

As a sidenote, additional links with this story are found in Morianton, who is the eventual successor of Riplakish. Morianton is said to have gained power over all the land by easing the burdens of the Jaredite people (Ether 10:9) so that the people themselves anoint him as king (Ether 10:10). This matches quite closely the story of Jeroboam, who gains power over all the tribes except Judah after he promises to ease their burden of forced labor. Like Morianton, the people themselves gather and crown Jeroboam as king (1 Kings 12:20). Morianton, like Jeroboam, is said to be faithful in easing the burdens of the people but unfaithful to the Lord. This additional set of textual links reinforces the argument made above that the biblical story is sufficient to explain the distinctive features of the Book of Mormon text.

16. Trees Growing from Hearts

Next, Dr. Clark points to the metaphor of a tree growing from the heart in Alma 32, comparing it to an image from the Dresden Codex of a tree growing out of the heart of the Maize God. Perhaps a closer connection, though not mentioned here, is in Piedras Negras Stela 11, where a plant is seen growing from the heart of a sacrificial victim. Alma 32:28 describes a seed as a symbol of "the word" of God. The growth of this seed into a tree is likened to the growth of faith in the believer. Is there a reasonable explanation from Joseph Smith's context? Yes- as with much of the above, the KJV Bible provides a sufficient source for the language of the Book of Mormon.

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the sower, where the sower sows seed upon different sorts of soil so that the seed grows with different strengths. Jesus, like Alma, identifies the seed as a symbol of the word of God. The soil symbolizes the heart of the hearer. In Matthew 13:19, Jesus describes the seed as having been "sown in the heart." In the same context (Matthew 13:31-32), Jesus likens the kingdom of God to a "mustard seed" which then "becometh a tree." The literary dependence of Alma 32 on Matthew 13 is also indicated by the phrase "good seed" in Alma 32:28 and Matthew 13:24 and the comparison of an unprepared recipient of the word with barren ground in Alma 32:39 and Matthew 13:5. Additionally, given the literary link between the mustard seed-tree relation in Matthew 13 and Alma 32, it is notable that in Matthew 17 the mustard seed is itself the symbol of faith, the growth of which is the principal subject of the parable of Alma 32.

In ancient Mesoamerica, by contrast, the tree growing out of the heart is an image of human sacrifice, which is patterned after the cosmic offering of the gods to give life to the world. In the Dresden Codex cited by Clark, the heart depicted belongs to the Maize God, whose sacrificial death gives birth to the renewal of the agricultural year, symbolized by a tree growing from his heart, the focal point of Mesoamerican sacrifice. In the Piedras Negras Stela 11 which I cited above as a potentially closer parallel, the tree grows from the heart for basically the same reason: human sacrifice, focused on the heart, is what sustains the world in existence and secures a good harvest, the primary concern of all agrarian societies.

Thus, the interpretive matrix wherein the parable of Alma 32 is intelligible is found in what is perhaps the most well-known parable of Jesus, which is present to Joseph Smith in KJV Matthew 13. Matthew 13 alone describes a seed representing "the word" sown in "the heart", unable to grow in barren soil, and growing into an enormous tree. An innertextual echo from Matthew 17 links the seed with faith, thus accounting for each of the symbols in Alma's parable. By contrast, the Mesoamerican images of a tree growing from man's heart, while superficially resembling Alma 32, is intelligible in a symbolic matrix unrelated to Alma 32 except in a marginal way- the proponent of the BoM as a Mesoamerican codex might link the human sacrifice with the heart of faith by reading the former through the sacrifice of Jesus in which one is called to believe. But these connections are extraneous to the actual text of Alma 32. While such a connection might provide new light on the text for a person who is convinced of the Book of Mormon's ancient pedigree on other grounds, the imagery of Alma 32 itself provides no argument for situating the Book of Mormon in an ancient Mesoamerican setting.

In light of the methodology described at the beginning, the features of Alma 32 are sufficiently explained from Joseph Smith's own background and do not require anything else. While they do not rule out a Mesoamerican background, the sufficiency of Joseph's background undermines this image as an argument for an ancient production context.

17. 400 Years as a Significant Block of Time

Dr. Clark notes that 400 years was a Mesoamerican "baktun", one of the most important blocks of time on the Mesoamerican calendar. He connects this to the repeated prophecy of Nephite destruction "four hundred years" from the coming of Christ. The difficulty is that there is no evidence (at least not here or that I've seen) for the use of twenty as a base number or the use of four hundred as a number which is intrinsically significant. What explains the 400 year prophecy? First, note that the 400 year prophecy is mentioned three times: Alma 45, Helaman 13, and Mormon 8. The first two are prophetic, the last records the year when the 400 year prophecy is fulfilled. But equally significant to the Book of Mormon is the 600 year prophecy, marking the time from Lehi's exodus to the coming of Christ. This is mentioned four times: 1 Nephi 10, 1 Nephi 19, 2 Nephi 25, and 3 Nephi 1. The first three are prophetic, the last records the year when the 600 year timeline is completed.

Even though the 600 year prophecy is mentioned once more (and we can say that it's about equally significant to the Book of Mormon's prophetic calendar), Dr. Clark doesn't mention it, because it is not a specially significant number in the Mesoamerican calendar, and even if it was, the prophecy originated in a Near Eastern context. What about the 400, then? Why 400? If Joseph was to make up a text, why not 300 years, or 500 years? The answer seems to me to be simple. The roughly 600 year timespan between Lehi and Christ is fixed by the date of the exile at around 600 BC and the coming of Christ at around 1 AD. So the 600 year prophecy is locked in, as it were. Then, a millennium is one of the most significant timespans in biblical prophecy, especially in a millennarian environment, in which Joseph moved. So if Lehi leaves Jerusalem on the eve of its destruction and the whole story is to take place over a millennium, 400 years is the consequence.

While I doubt that the following passage was a literary source for the 400 year prophecy in the Book of Mormon, it is useful to show how a 400 year prophecy exists biblically in a context uncorrelated with the Mesoamerican calendar:

(Genesis 15:13-14) Then the Lord said to Abram, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

This is cited in Acts 7:6 as well. If one wanted to suggest a literary parallel, the 400 year timespan in both Genesis 15 and the Book of Mormon is completed with a cataclysmic national judgment. But I'm not suggesting a literary parallel.

Since a 400 year timespan is only used in these three instances in the Book of Mormon, and since it can be neatly explained in terms of the necessary result of a millennium long history combined with the known historical date of the exile in relation to Christ's birth, this cannot be considered a remarkable connection between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerican calendrical cycles.

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For those who have read this, thanks a lot. I initially meant this to be a relatively brief comment only touching on one or two of the issues raised in the video. However, after I accidentally hit the back button and deleted the entire thing, I decided to turn it into an extended essay. Dr. Clark is a good scholar, certainly not a hack. He thus provides a good test case to see how well the best defenses of setting the Book of Mormon's production in ancient Mesoamerica can hold up. My intent has not been to pick holes here and there with Dr. Clark's arguments. Rather, it has been to demonstrate a series of systemic failures which explain what I take to be the failure of LDS defenses of the Book more generally. The flaws are fundamentally joined to each other in that they seek convergences between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica without really engaging with a detailed portrait of Joseph Smith's own time and place. My intent has been to show that the Book of Mormon is better explained in terms of the 19th century Mound Builder mythos than as an ancient Mesoamerican document. Far from being "crazy" or "unheard of", again and again, specific features and details of the Book of Mormon narrative are exactly what one would expect to somebody like Joseph Smith, who was immersed in that world. Were it a Mesoamerican scholar of 1830 producing the Book of Mormon, I would not expect the text that we have. But nobody thinks that a Mesoamerican scholar of 1830 produced the Book of Mormon. Instead of comparing the expectations of such a scholar to the text of the Book and modern archaeological knowledge, one should compare the expectations of someone like Joseph Smith to the text. While the narrative diverges from an academic understanding of ancient America as it was conceived in 1830, it strongly converges with a popular understanding of the North American Heartland in 1830. While the connections with Mesoamerican civilization are at times tenuous, where those connections do exist, they almost always simultaneously exist in Joseph Smith's background, and so cannot be used as an argument for or against either model. What differentiates the two models is those instances (which I would argue are frequent) where the text converges with the 19th century and diverges from ancient Mesoamerica. I have focused on the former in this piece, but I have also touched on the latter.

Thanks again for reading!

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