The Book of Mormon: A Minimal Statement

Title

The Book of Mormon: A Minimal Statement

Book Title

Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless

Publication Type

Book Chapter

Chapter

7

Year of Publication

2004

Authors

Nibley, Hugh W. (Primary)

Edition

2

Pagination

163-168

Publisher

Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University

City

Provo, UT

Terms of use

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Bibliographic Citation

Abstract

The following statement was written on request for a journal that is published in eight languages and therefore insists on conciseness and brevity. Teaching a Book of Mormon Sunday School class ten years later, I am impressed more than anything by something I completely over­looked until now; namely, the immense skill with which the editors of the book put the thing together. The long book of Alma, for example, is fol­lowed through with a smooth and logical sequence in which an incredi­ble amount of detailed and widely varying material is handled in the most lucid and apparently effortless manner. Whether Alma is address­ing a king and his court, a throng of ragged paupers sitting on the ground, or his own three sons, each a distinctly different character, his eloquence is always suited to his audience and he goes unfailingly to the peculiar problems of each hearer.

Throughout this big and complex volume, we are aware of much shuffling and winnowing of documents, and informed from time to time of the method used by an editor distilling the contents of a large library into edifying lessons for the dedicated and pious minority among the people. The overall picture reflects before all a limited geographical and cultural point of view—small localized operations, with only occasional flights and expeditions into the wilderness; one might almost be moving in the cultural circuit of the Hopi villages. The focusing of the whole ac­count on religious themes, as well as the limited cultural scope, leaves all the rest of the stage clear for any other activities that might have been going on in the vast reaches of the New World, including the hypothetical Norsemen, Celts, Phoenicians, Libyans, or prehistoric infiltrations via the Bering Straits. Indeed, the more varied the ancient American scene becomes, as newly discovered artifacts and even inscriptions hint at local populations of Near Eastern, Far Eastern, and European origin, the more hospitable it is to the activities of one tragically short-lived religious civilization that once flourished in Mesoamerica and then van­ished towards the Northeast in the course of a series of confused tribal wars that was one long, drawn-out retreat into oblivion. Such consider­ations would now have to be included in any "minimal statement" this reader would make about the Book of Mormon.

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Mesoamerica
Ancient America
Historicity
Scripture Study
Book of Mormon Geography - Limited Geography Theory

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