The Drawing in Relation to LDS Interests in Stela 5

Stewart Brewer discusses in this issue the fascinating history of M. Wells Jakeman’s claim that the scene on Stela 5 represents the prophet Lehi’s dream or vision of the tree of life. Over the past 45 years many LDS people have accepted Jakeman’s assertion that “This Tree of Life carving at Izapa is nothing less than an ancient portrayal in stone of the very episode of the Tree of Life found recorded in the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 8.”4

It is obvious that a more accurate drawing of Stela 5 should interest Latter-day Saints who accept the Jakeman interpretation. Equally, those who may be unaware of his view or who have hesitated to accept it will want to arrive at the most truthful resolution of the issues it raises by seeing the latest representation.

The NWAF project to draw the Izapa monuments has produced results relevant to an evaluation of Jakeman’s views, but such an evaluation was not one of the objectives of the project. Our aim, as explained above, was to produce the most accurate rendering possible. Any connection between the production of the new drawing and any interpretation, LDS or non-LDS, of what the monument shows is purely incidental. Nevertheless, as a service to those who feel the need to evaluate Jakeman’s theory, I raise below what appear to me to be relevant questions about reconciling his view with the new drawing.

. . .

Actually there is not even an allusion in the Book of Mormon that can be construed as evidence for a Nephite population in a coastal-plain location like Izapa by the time Stela 5 was produced. Lamanite inhabitation of the Izapa area may be a different matter, however. That ethnic, cultural, or political category in the Nephite record is so vague that one could claim that Lamanites might have been at Izapa. But for that to be true they—those “Lamanites” who warred against the Nephites—would have had to increase their population quite miraculously. If there is room in the Book of Mormon world for “other peoples,” the inhabitants of Izapa and the ones who produced the art there would get my vote.

. . .

Evaluation of Jakeman’s Argument

In the 48 years since Jakeman first concluded that Stela 5 represents Lehi’s dream of the tree of life, major advancements have come about in the study of Mesoamerican art. Hundreds more monuments have been discovered and many of them have been analyzed in a detail that was impossible in the 1950s. It should not be surprising that these later studies would require changes in his interpretation as well as the interpretations of other scholars treating the material. His argument depended on interpreting the iconography of Stela 5. But this was seriously hampered by lack of a good pictorial representation of the scene on the stone. Major details were omitted or misdrawn in the rendering Jakeman used. A poor drawing is the equivalent of bad data. There is no way to arrive at a “correct” analysis using bad data. Unfortunately, because of the poor drawing, Jakeman saw things on the stone that are not there and missed many other features that are. In this he had company, for the same thing can be said of every interpretation of Stela 5 thus far.

Without belaboring the point, it is clear that many of Jakeman’s identifications of the monument’s features were forced to fit what he wanted to find. This applies to parallels he claimed between features on the stone and both Near Eastern art and references to the Book of Mormon text. In regard to the scriptural parallels, most of the several dozen elements that he thought linked the stela and Lehi’s dream are only hypothetical. For example, the account in 1 Nephi tells us nothing of the circumstances when Lehi recounted the event to his family; all that is said is “he spake unto us” (1 Nephi 8:2). We are not told who was present and who was not, nor whether incense was burned or not. Again, most of the purported parallels to Old World art are based on Jakeman’s speculations.