The Problem of Reconstructing Ancient Geographies

Wilson first strives to discredit the Book of Mormon by unfavorably comparing the present state of knowledge about ancient Nephite sites with the state of knowledge about biblical sites. He begins his discussion of Book of Mormon geography by proclaiming that "one might expect that determining the geographical setting of the Book of Mormon lands would be a fairly simple undertaking" (2a). He provides no evidence or analysis to indicate why this dubious assumption should be accepted. In fact, quite the opposite is true. There are several notable examples where precise reconstruction of archaic geographies has proven difficult if not impossible.

The Bible itself is a case in point. For example, modern sites for only 55 per cent of the place names mentioned in the Bible have been identified—and this from the most carefully scrutinized and studied book in the world. For example, where is Mt. Sinai? There are over twenty candidates. What is the route taken by the Israelites in the Exodus? Again, there are many different theories. These and many other issues of biblical geography are all hotly disputed. Furthermore, the fact that there is widespread agreement on many questions of geography is simply an indication that scholarly consensus has been achieved but not necessarily that the consensus is correct.

The reconstruction of ancient western Anatolian geography also faces problems. "The geography of western Anatolia in the second millennium B.C. has for long been a subject of considerable dispute." The two major alternatives, as shown in the maps provided by Macqueen, have the same regions and locations over three hundred kilometers apart and are directionally skewed. Furthermore, the region where the province of Arzawa is frequently thought to have been, "so far show[s] no sign at all of settled occupation during the Hittite period." Thus, despite a hundred and twenty years of archaeological and philological investigation, no certain geography for western Anatolia during this period can be determined, and archaeological evidence cannot be fully reconciled with Hittite textual data.

While all scholars now agree that the Norsemen did indeed discover and temporarily colonize North America in the eleventh century, the precise location of the "Vinland" of the sagas is hotly disputed with nearly a dozen candidates ranging between "Hudson Bay and the state of Florida." If precise geographical unanimity cannot be reached by scholars in these and many other areas, why should the analysis of Book of Mormon geography be "a fairly simple matter"?

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The situation in ancient Mesopotamia is precisely the same. "The inscriptions and administrative documents from Presargonic Lagash have left us hundreds of place names and names of watercourses, yet only a small number can be identified with precision. Others can be put in the general vicinity of some known place, but the vast majority remain only vaguely situated at best."

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Thus, discontinuity of toponyms is a common historical occurrence, especially in periods of major cultural, linguistic, and political transformations, similar to those described in the Book of Mormon itself. We can see just this phenomenon in the Book of Mormon, where the Jaredite hill Ramah is later called the hill Cumorah by the Nephites (Ether 15:11; Mormon 6:6).

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The reconstruction of Book of Mormon geography thus faces several difficulties not found in biblical geography. In Mesoamerica there is a discontinuity of toponyms, whereas there is strong continuity in Palestine; inscriptional evidence from Mesoamerica uses symbolic glyphs for cities rather than phonetic transcriptions of the names, whereas inscriptional evidence in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine usually contains a phonetic component; and finally, there is no Pre-Classic onomasticon (place-name list) for Mesoamerica, whereas Palestine has Eusebius's detailed Onomasticon, as well as those of later pilgrims. These items allow historians to create a map grid based both on names and distances between sites for key biblical toponyms. As noted above, a more accurate comparison to Book of Mormon geography is that for Bronze Age western Anatolia, where similar problems of reconstruction exist. Thus, while Wilson's point that biblical geography is better documented than Book of Mormon geography is readily conceded, that point by no means proves that the Book of Mormon is ahistorical, as Wilson concludes.

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The important question is: why do non-Mormon scholars reject the Book of Mormon? The answer is complex, but two points should be emphasized. First, acceptance of the historicity of the Book of Mormon logically necessitates acceptance of Joseph Smith's prophetic claims. Thus, any scholar who eventually came to accept the historicity of the Book of Mormon would be logically compelled to become a Latter-day Saint. He would thereby cease to be a non-Mormon who accepts the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Secondly, and more importantly, most non-Mormons do not take the Book of Mormon seriously enough even to read it, let alone give it the careful study required to make an informed judgment. They simply dismiss it out of hand. This has been the approach taken by anti-Mormons such as Wilson, and it is the reason why Wilson's criticisms can also be dismissed out of hand.