Lately I have been reading quite a bit about religion, in particular the Church of Latter Day Saints. Because of the vast amount of literature I have been perusing as I progress toward completing a thesis for a master’s program, it was only a matter of time before I came across work by LDS scholars. The whole religion is fascinating — if you are into watching the development of myth and the social construction of religion.

As I was reading one well-written and well-sourced article, it occurred to me that all this work is based on hearsay. This article was a thoughtful inquiry into the differences between “biblical” archaeology methods and those of LDS scholars. For those who may not know, the Church of Latter Day Saints is heavily invested in the belief that the Indians of the Americas are descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Allegedly, the tribe was banished about 3,000 years ago by the Assyrians after the Assyrians had conquered what history refers to as the Northern Kingdom. These lost tribes have become the root of an incredible number of conspiracies and the varied sub-groups within the three dominant Ambrahamic religions all have something invested in “the truth” of what happened to these people. The LDS (i.e. Mormons) however, have a noteworthy investment as Mormon doctrine is premised on a set of “truth” claims that involved ancient battles, Indians as descendants of Hebrews, and an appearance in North America by Jesus.

So here is the concern. When comparing biblical “history” to Mormon history, we are comparing apples to oranges — so similar methodology is irrelevant. The books included in the Old Testament are part of the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, and many of them have been discovered to exist in manuscript or “scroll” form dating back to 250 B.C.E. What is relevant to this discussion is that the Hebrew people still exist, in large numbers, as represented by Jewish populations all over the world. There is ongoing scholarly debate as to the historicity of the Tanakh, most notably the dialogue between the “biblical minimalist” camp, who claim that the Tanakh offers very little in the way of reliable history, and the “biblical maximalists,” who lean toward accepting the stories at face value and utilize archaeological methodologies to attempt to “prove” the historicity of events narrated in the Tanakh.

Mormon history, in fairness, does not exist on the same time scale as biblical history. The events which began the saga of the Latter Day Saints occurred only in the last two centuries. Joseph Smith and his group of followers lived in recent times and the artifacts of their journey are, or should be, discoverable. However, the back story of Mormonism, the tales of the Lamanites and Nephites and their tremendous battles on the North American continent, are not still extant as are the Hebrew peoples, nor have there been any archaeological artifacts discovered that would reinforce the claims of the Book of Mormon.

Sunstone Magazine is a forum for LDS intellectuals and scholars to address issues that arise in LDS studies and offers clarifying insight into the struggles of Mormon scholars to utilize modern methodologies and reasoning to understand their faith. It is here that one can find the type of article to which I refer above — intelligent, scholarly, and at times contentious articles that can fully engage the reader in such a way that when the problematic question of ‘what is this based on’ arises, it is hard to mentally back off and remember that this is much ado about what is essentially rumor and innuendo. Joseph Smith claims that these people and their battles were real, but he is the only source. There are no modern-day Lamanites looking for their roots, no archaeologists discovering artifacts that speak to a previously undiscovered people on the American continents, and no original documents from which to extrapolate linguistic clues.

So one is left to wonder how an LDS scholar or an interested reader can possibly credit the story of the Church of Latter Day Saints and justify the resources spent on studying this history. If the first step of critical thinking is to identify the problem, then what problem are these scholars identifying? The honest answer is that they are trying to prove that Joseph Smith was telling the truth. But instead of acknowledging this, many LDS scholars instead pursue this improbable American history as though they were starting from a solid foundation. The skeptic is left to wonder at scholars who disregard the theory of Ockham's Razor, which posits that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible and eliminate all extraneous information that distracts from the basic facts. It makes more sense to critically examine where this information came from, examine that source, and then look at what is already known about the history of the Americas to determine the value of these claims. To do so, however, would require the LDS scholar to be a first a scholar and then a Mormon, meaning that they would have to determine from an historical viewpoint whether in fact there were any unknown populations in ancient America and to honestly question what problem it is that they are attempting to solve. In my readings so far, I have found very few who can do so.

Darcie Hodgkins Langone is a writer and grad student living in Washington State. When she is not at her day job, editing publications for a community college, she can usually be found lecturing her children on developing morality without religion or looking for a place to hide and read a good book.

ISSUE 4 CREDITS

Skepchick-in-Chief
Rebecca Watson

Managing Editor
Diane Perry

News Editor
Chani Overli

Contributing Writers
Darcie Hodgkins Langone, Lynette Davidson, Aj Davis, Risa Beckwith, Matthew Armstrong, Donna Druchunas

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