Evidence# 464 | September 25, 2024
Book of Mormon Evidence: Ancient Glass
Post contributed by
Scripture Central
Abstract
The book of Ether discusses sixteen small stones that were molten out of rock and compared to “transparent glass.” Glass and glasslike objects were known in a variety of locations throughout the ancient world.Evidence Summary
In his abridgment of the Jaredite record, Moroni described how the brother of Jared “did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass” (Ether 3:1). Some have seen this reference to glass, as well as to “windows” assumed to be made of glass, as an obvious anachronism (Ether 2:23). As Origen Bachelor confidently argued in 1838, this was “ages before glass was invented.”1
Scholars are currently uncertain as to when the first glass was made, but several kinds of glass were known from an early time in Egypt and Mesopotamia. “Archaeologists have found glass beads dating to as early as the third millennium BCE. Glazes based on the same materials and technology date earlier still.”2 Examples of translucent Egyptian glass dating from the Bronze Age display various colors, including red, green, yellow, and several shades of blue.3
Obsidian, a form of volcanic glass, played a crucial role in Mesoamerican ritual and economy.4 According to Helen Haines and Michael Glascock, “Obsidian is a naturally occurring glass created through pyroclastic volcanic activity.”5 Betty Meggers has noted that Ecuadorian blades made from obsidian were “as transparent as window glass.”6 Although most obsidian is a very dark color, it provides a conceptual basis for transparent or translucent stones.
Mesoamerican cultures also valued “glass-like shards” of quartz crystal for both its practical and divinatory value.7 Some samples could easily be described as “white,” “clear,” and “transparent”—descriptors all used for the stones in the book of Ether. When speaking to Mexican informants in the sixteenth century, the Catholic historian Bernardino de Sahagún was told about crystal, which was described to him as follows: “It is translucent, very transparent, clear. It is clear, very clear, exceedingly clear.”8
Conclusion
It should be noted that Moroni did not state the brother of Jared created glass. Rather, he indicated that the stones touched by the finger of the Lord resembled glass in their clearness and transparency. Although once considered problematic by some readers, current evidence supports the conclusion that forms of glass may have been known to the Jaredites at the time they departed their homeland in ancient Mesopotamia. Moreover, stone objects which had the appearance of white or translucent glass were also known in ancient Mesoamerica from an early time.
Wade E. Miller, “Steel and Glass in the Book of Mormon,” in Science and the Book of Mormon: Cureloms, Cumoms, Horses & More (KCT & Associates, 2009), 12–13.
Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert / The World of the Jaredites / There Were Jaredites (Deseret Book, 1988), 216–219.
- 1. Origen Bachelor, Mormonism Exposed, Internally and Externally (New York, NY, 1838), 27. Note that Bachelor, like other readers, prematurely assumed that the mention of “windows” in Ether 2:23 necessarily implied glass windows. See also William Harris, Mormonism Portrayed (Warsaw, IL, 1841), 13. The text never specifies precisely what the windows were made of or how they functioned.
- 2. Carolyn Wilke, “A Brief Scientific History of Glass,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 24, 2021.
- 3. Bruce Bower, “Glassmaking May Have Begun in Egypt, Not Mesopotamia,” Science News, November 22, 2016; Jeanette Varberg, “Between Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Scandinavia: Late Bronze Age Glass Beads Found in Denmark,” Journal of Archaeological Science 54 (February 2015): 168–181; Katherine T. Faber et al., “Looking Back, Looking Forward: Materials Science in Art, Archaeology, and Art Conservation,” Annual Review of Materials Research 51 (2021): 435–460; Dan Klein and Ward Lloyd, The History of Glass (Orbis, 1984), 9–10. Wilke observes that environmental conditions in Mesopotamia may obscure evidence for ancient glass. “Near Eastern glass … from the tombs on Mesopotamian floodplains, more frequently faced attacks by water, which can leach out stabilizing compounds and turn glass to flakey powder. This deteriorated glass is difficult to identify and impossible to display, meaning lots of Near East glass may be missed.” According to Andrew Shorthand, “I think a lot of the glass has effectively disappeared.” Wilke, “A Brief Scientific History of Glass.”
- 4. Marc N. Levine and David M. Carballo, eds., Obsidian Reflections: Symbolic Dimensions of Obsidian in Mesoamerica (University Press of Colorado, 2014).
- 5. Helen R. Haines and Michael D. Glascock, “A Glass Menagerie of Meaning: Obsidian Exchange in Mesoamerica,” in The Maya in a Mesoamerican Context: Comparative Approaches to Maya Studies, ed. Christophe Helmke and Jesper Nielson (Verlag Anton Saurwein, 2013), 198.
- 6. Betty J. Meggers, Ecuador (Thames & Hudson, 1966), 56.
- 7. John J. McGraw, “Stones of Light: The Use of Crystals in Maya Divination,” in Manufactured Light: Mirrors in the Mesoamerican Realm, ed. Emiliano Gallaga and Marc G. Blainey (University Press of Colorado, 2016), 207–208.
- 8. McGraw, “Stones of Light,” 208–209.