KNOWLEDGE BASE: WHAT DID JOSEPH SMITH KNOW?

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To write a history of ancient Hebrew people who immigrated to the New World, an uneducated person living on the edge of the American frontier would, among many, many other things, need to have known the English Bible (and the Hebrew culture it represents); its many kinds of stylistic parallelisms and poetic forms; its various cultures; its economic system; its characters, images, and symbols; its religious rites and customs; and its legal system.

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Given the hardscrabble nature of Joseph Smith's life prior to the publication of the Book of Mormon, would he have had time to immerse himself so completely in the Hebrew scriptures as to have mastered its literary styles and cultural complexities? When Bloom states that Smith imaginatively recaptured "crucial elements in the archaic Jewish religion" (which had evaded both "normative Judaism and. . .[the Christian] Church after it"51), he leaves unexplained how someone of Joseph Smith's naivete and lack of exposure to such ancient and arcane material could have been capable of such a feat.

There are many other such examples. Joseph Smith would also have had to have a thorough knowledge of olive horticulture, the detailed information contained in Jacob's parable of the olive tree (1 Ne. 10 & 15, Jacob 5). How likely does that seem? Someone raised on an American farm would have surely known about wheat and beans, but he wouldn't have known beans about olives.52

Joseph Smith would also have had to have knowledge of ancient travel routes taken by Lehi and his family. As Gene England has summarized, "For Joseph Smith to have so well succeeded in producing over twenty unique details in the description of an ancient travel route through one of the least-known areas of the world, all of which have been subsequently verified, requires extraordinary, unreasonable faith in his natural genius or his ability to guess right in direct opposition to the prevailing knowledge of his time."53 In other words, the unlearned and untraveled American prophet would have had to know how to guide his characters through the Arabian Desert.

We now know that the use of Baal and El names was out of favor during Lehi's time but not during the time of the Jaradites.54 I would guess that even if Joseph Smith understood the significance of such names, he'd have had no idea as to when it had and hadn't been appropriate to use them, again keeping in mind that he was dictating the book orally without text or notes.

And then there are matters of literary style. Chiasmus is an ancient poetic form and mnemonic device. It strains credulity that Joseph Smith could compose numerous examples, some of them extremely complex, by dictating them spontaneously. As John W. Welch points out, the Book of Mormon, "especially in its most literary portions, is replete with precise and extensive chiastic compositions." After citing an example of chiasmus in Mosiah 5:10-12, Welch states, "Again, the repetition here is precise, extensive and meaningful. It simply strains reason to imagine that such structure in this oration occurred accidentally." Later he concludes, "The use of chiasmus is. . .a conscious creation of an imaginative and mature artist. . . .No one seriously contends that Joseph Smith or anyone associated with him knew or could have known of chiasmus or had the training to discover this principle for himself. The evidence is overwhelming against such a claim."55 This is not external, but internal evidence. That is, the chiasms (at least some of those so identified) are clearly there; they are not the invention of modern readers. No naturalist critic of whom I am aware has seriously answered the question as to their origin.56 And as Mark Thomas says in "A Rhetorical Approach to the Book of Mormon," "Letting the text speak requires attention, sincerity, and integrity."

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Those who assisted Joseph in the translation of the Book of Mormon testified that he dictated the narrative of the people of Lehi at times for hours on end, day after day, without any reference materials, and that he would pick up the dictation the following day at the very place where he left off, with no prompting to tell him where the narrative was to continue. Had he been “free-composing” his narrative, rather than translating as he claimed, he would have had to keep in his consciousness not only the various threads of his narration, but the structure and intricate pattern of the history he was inventing, the array of characters who peopled that history, the cultural and religious traditions that informed their actions, and the various forms of their literary style. Consider the magnitude of such a feat. In all of literary history there is not a single example to match such an accomplishment. The only thing to approach it is the theorized ancient oral spinning of epic tales, but that was done only by poets who had spent years memorizing vast “word hoards” of narrative formulas and images which they would then weave into constantly changing epic poems. If Joseph Smith composed the Book of Mormon out of his imagination and in the manner in which his scribes said he did (and we have no reason to disbelieve them), he is the only writer in human history to have accomplished such a feat. I contend that Joseph Smith’s critics have never satisfactorily demonstrated how he could have done this.

SOPHISTICATION

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In his insightful new study of the Book of Mormon narratives, Digging in Cumorah: Reclaiming Book of Mormon Narratives, Mark Thomas describes the book as "complex, "subtle," "unique," and "artful." It has, he says, "enormous variety" and "great subtlety," and uses the Bible in "diverse and intricate ways." Then he adds, "It would be difficult to find a more original religious text."66 Thomas speaks of its use of symbol systems, image patterns, shadows, figures, repetitive triads, and narrative linkings. His study illustrates what David S. Reynolds says of a text: "The distinguishing quality of the literary text is not radical subversiveness, but unique suggestiveness and great reconstructive power."67

Another distinguishing mark of a sophisticated mind is the conscious use of irony. While this subject deserves a fuller treatment than can be given here,68 it is sufficient to note that the Book of Mormon is replete with examples of verbal and dramatic irony. . . .

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CONCLUSION

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I have tried to demonstrate that Joseph Smith did not possess the literary imagination or talent, the authorial maturity, the education, the knowledge base or the sophistication necessary to write the Book of Mormon; nor, had he possessed all of these things, was the time in which the book was produced sufficient to compose such a lengthy and elaborate narrative.

Could any of Joseph Smith's more illustrious contemporary authors have written the book? I don't believe that Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, and Whitman, colossal writers that they were, together could have written the Book of Mormon. Further, I don't believe that, if all the scholars in the world in the mid-1820s had gathered in a large room with access to every extant book and manuscript and a decade to work on it, they could have written such a book. That is my considered, scholarly opinion. There is simply too much the book points to that no one in nineteenth century America knew or could have known.

This belief is both intellectual and spiritual. As a scholar I believe that the best and most inclusive objective evidence, the most persuasive empirical evidence leads to the conclusion that no one living in the world of the 1820s, let alone an untutored, inglorious farmer, could have produced the Book of Mormon. And yet it bears the unmistakable imprint of Joseph Smith's own nineteenth-century mind and heart.

The Book of Mormon speaks to my heart as well as my mind, and I have come to trust both experiences as real and valid. I am challenged by the book to be a better Christian. I find my understanding of God broadened and my understanding of Jesus Christ deepened by the words of this book. I have written before that the Book of Mormon "has opened my heart wider to experience [God's] love."871 rejoice in a book that has such an expression as Moroni's final invitation: "Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him. . . .And. . .if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, . . .then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot" (Moroni 10:32-33).