Evidence of the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon
[Conflicts between two Cultures]
[Formal Rules of War]
48 I made a list of sixteen points of evidence—any one of which would be enough to write a book about. What on earth does anyone today know about what was happening in the New World 2000 years ago? You can find remnants from which you might reconstruct this, or that, or the other, but we have no written record, no names. You dig, and then you compare what you have found here with what you have dug up somewhere else. They you argue about how to account for the resemblances. You just dig and you guess. They haven’t got very far.
49 The only purpose of religion is to answer one question. It’s called the terrible question that nobody could answer. The question is: Is this all there is? If this is the whole show then your life is going to be arranged differently, isn’t it? When a man dies it that the end of it? Remember Korihor teaches that they could sin all they wanted to; there would be no reckoning or anything like that. They were glad of that teaching. Well [the answer] to that question will pretty well determine your behavior, won’t it?
50 How do you explain the plates and the angel? Well, they were a hallucination. That’s what the great Eduard Meyer said, and he had more respect for Joseph Smith than any of them. It makes all the difference where he got the book if he really saw an angel. Angels’ visits always mean rejoicing. It’s a breakthrough, you see. But now the angel comes, a real angel. It makes all the difference if he really saw it. That means we are living under wholly different circumstances from the “lives of quiet desperation” that we normally live, and nobody can escape it. The mere reality of the Book of Mormon puts everything in a different light.
51 Let’s turn to this list. We were talking about the list of sixteen [evidences], and I’m not including the remarkable resemblance to our own time and the remarkable relevance to our own situation with which this chapter begins. Remember the post-war boom, the arrogance of the people that divided them, and this cultural difference here. The main issue in the Book of Mormon is not between the Nephites and the Lamanites at all. That’s not the fight, and this is an important thing. This is our first point in this cultural thing. It’s between totally different ways of life that began already in Jerusalem. You notice that Alma is like Lehi, Nephi, Ammon, Abinadi and the rest. We talked about the Rechabites who want to live the old law in its purity. In this wicked and sophisticated civilization you can’t do it, so there is always this conflict. Alma is over strict. He is a prude really. He gets on your nerves. No wonder he caused his son Alma to revolt. But these people have to be. Remember, it tells us in the short books like Enos, unless our laws were extremely strict and severe that’s the only way we could keep things under control at all. Like the Puritan settlements in New England, they had to be extra severe. It’s the conflict between them and the more permissive way of life that the Nehors immediately introduced. That became the state religion. The righteous, the people of the Church, were always a small minority, except for two hundred years, throughout the Book of Mormon. They were the minority, and they were in constant conflict with these others like Korihor, Nehor, Zeezrom, etc. Leaders were always able to get a big following if they protested against this overly strict religious society in which they were living. They lived the old strict law of the prophets. It was austere living. It was a life of the mind. And every time there was a break, they would take to the wilderness. It happens very often here. .
51,52 We mentioned the confusion of the Dead Sea Scrolls people last time. They did the same thing. They left Jerusalem because Jerusalem was corrupt. The scrolls are full of this. They were waiting there for the prophets. They were waiting for God. As it tells us in Isaiah, we have gone into the desert to prepare the way for the Lord to come, and we can only do that by preparing ourselves that we might have visitations by angels. They were looking forth to that sort of thing. [We discussed] the confusion of the people of Qumran and all up and down the Dead Sea. It wasn’t just Qumran. This was the standard religion of Lehi’s day, and it was lost. That’s why it’s not popular today. That’s why they have suppressed the scrolls actually. It’s very natural to confuse them with the Essenes because the Essenes were another such body of people that were [escaping] from the world., This is the whole Hermetic tradition. They formed these conventiclers, these groups. That would include Pythagoras, the Platonic schools of teaching, and everyone who wanted to live a pure life. They wanted to get away from the corruption of the world which always follows the same routine, the four things that Nephi talks about: money, power, popularity, and the lusts of the flesh. Those are the things we all want to enjoy. This is repeated a number of times in the Book of Mormon, and Nephi makes it very clear [1 Nephi 22:23]. So we have this theme that runs through the Book of Mormon which is very solidly backed up now by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
52 Then in contrast to this, the other culture is that of Amalickiah. Now that’s a giveaway. Now we are getting to a possible piece of evidence. A second point here is the name Amalickiah. He is the leader. He sets himself up, and they all follow. His name Amalickiah is “my king is Jehovah.” Amalickiah was a Mulekite. We forget that Zarahemla wasn’t a Nephite city at all; it was a Mulekite city. The Mulekites were a mixed band, much larger than Lehi’s group, who came over when Jerusalem fell. We know now from the Lachish Letters that the youngest member of the royal family did escape. He would be Mulek, the “little king.” Possibly, they call themselves the Mulekites because he led their particular group. He [Amalickiah] represents the Mulekite reaction against the strict teachings of Lehi and Nephi’s descendants. The Mulekites were never that way. They not only built the big city of Zarahemla, but they [included] almost all the dissenters. Ammon was a Mulekite, a pure descendant of Zeniff. This was a mixed batch. They had no objections to accepting the foreign Mosiah as king. He was a Nephite and became their king. Then Mosiah and Alma take over and they practically rule the state. They lay down the law, and they are very strict, both of them. But you notice the second Mosiah keeps the law of Benjamin, which was the liberal [part] of the old law of Moses—namely, as it tells us in Alma 30, absolute freedom of speech and of religion. Alma’s own son deliberately started making all sorts of trouble, but they didn’t lock him up, though [Alma] was head of the Church. Mosiah’s four sons joined him, and they made as much trouble as they could. They represented this easy-going, more popular religion. You’d think, well why don’t these two men crack down and put them in jail. It says because there was a law against [persecuting a man for his belief]. I’ll read it to you because it is a very important law. They were free to do this, so you are going to have these two societies, two cultures, two ideals side by side here
52 Alma 30:7, 9. “Now there was no law against a man’s belief; for it was strictly contrary to the commands of God that there should be a law which should bring men on to unequal grounds.” With pressure groups you’d come under pressure if you believed with a minority or something. “Now if a man desired to serve God, it was his privilege; or rather, if he believed in God it was his privilege to serve him; but if he did not believe in him there was no law to punish him.” It was not a crime not to believe in God. Atheism had as much right as anything else. Otherwise it would have been unequal, it says. “For there was a law that men should be judged according to their crimes [that’s an overt action]. Nevertheless, there was no law against a man’s belief; therefore, a man was punished only for the crimes which he had done; therefore all men were on equal grounds.” No pressures could be brought in that case
52,53 This Korihor had been raising hell, as you know. But they didn’t imprison him. He was killed by the intolerant Zoramites. A Zoramite mob killed him, but among the Nephites he was free to circulate. He went about and you know what he preached. The law could have no hold on him. He “began to preach unto the people that there should be no Christ.” He said it is a foolish and vain hope to yoke yourselves with such foolish things. He said, this is not intellectual; this is foolishness. It’s not intellectually sound. Notice, these were the intellectuals, the rationalists, the positivists, etc. These foolish old traditions, these old myths, have kept you down. Alma 30:27: “And thus ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, and according to your own desires; and ye keep them down, even as it were in bondage, that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands, that they durst not look up with boldness, and that they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges. [He was allowed to preach all this?] Yea, they durst not make use of that which is their own.”
53 They had to pay taxes and things like that. It was a sacral state. This [preaching] was allowed. You see these two cultures side by side, and this conflict is the one that hits you all the way through the Book of Mormon. We are so naive and so simplistic in the Church. We say, “Well, there were the good guys; naturally, they were the Nephites who were white. Then there were the dark people who were the Lamanites.” It isn’t that way at all. This is the real issue all throughout the book, and it’s the issue in our world. Our war is not with the Lamanites today. And along with this, you notice, they are bound to resent Nephi, Lehi, and Alma and Mosiah’s complete rule. Why should they be in charge? It was all right to make Mosiah king because he was a great man. But when he joined Alma and gave Alma plenary power in the Church, people started objecting. Then there was this rebellion that became very popular. The Church from then on is a small minority; they don’t hold their own at all.
53 Along with this there are frequent indications we will see in the Book of Mormon of ancient and exotic peoples in the background, for example, when Alma went to visit the Zoramites on a mission. They dissented, as you know, and went out. They had only been away from the central culture for a short period. He says they [Alma and his group] were utterly dumbfounded. They were so amazed they didn’t know what to think of it. It absolutely stunned them. They [the Zoramites] had a totally different religion of very exotic things in which they built high towers and stairways and all this sort of thing to have prayers. They loaded themselves with all sorts of costly and lavish apparel, and the priests were parading around. Well, immediately we come into a world with which we are familiar from the murals, vases, and the reliefs of Central and South America—this lavish, strange religion which was there before. The Zoramites took it up obviously. Almost overnight they had this whole different culture. [Alma and his brethren] were completely amazed by what they found, how they had changed everything. They kept some of the old religion and adopted this, that, and the other. But who would give them this idea? You don’t just invent a religion whole cloth that way. They came out and picked this up
53,54 Then there is the Sebus game [Alma 17:26], for example. This is a worldwide thing. Well, we won’t go into these things, but that’s another of these exotic things. We find constant hints. For example, they talk about the whole central country which was barren of trees because of the inhabitants. Well, [some say] you can’t make a desert that way, but you can. We know now that’s what started the Sahara going. People do create deserts. They do deforest countries entirely. In fact, Plato talked about that. He said that half the Peloponnesians are now just desert because people have cut down the trees. Well, this happened in the Book of Mormon here. Who were these people? It’s not talking about the roving Jaredites in the north country. We’re talking about something else here. Anyway this is an important thing. These contacts are mentioned only when necessary, and this is why. The Book of Mormon is very carefully edited to focus attention intentionally on the small minority of believers who remain true and faithful. It’s a history of the Church. It is handed down genealogically from father to son. It deals with the affairs of the Church. So throughout the Book of Mormon we find intense hostility between these two ways of life. One is strict and upright, and the other is glorying in displays of wealth, fine apparel (notice the language; it uses lavish terms) and proud nobility. We saw that last time. It’s the very sort of thing we find so strikingly illustrated in the murals, vase paintings—the tasteless profusion of the jewelry and feathers, the parading of priests, and the pride of these things. The buildings and exceedingly high towers play an important part in the Book of Mormon—how they are built and who builds them under enforced labor. This is a striking point, and it comes out in this chapter very clearly.
55 Now this doctrine of desolation is very important. When Israel went to war, the people were rallied by such inscriptions on the banners. The banner was called the NES, which the lexicon will tell you means “a pole, a standard, a signal, an assignment.” Title is the best translation you could give that. This emphasis on land is very important. We asked Yadin “What is your religion? What do you believe. Remember, he {Yadin] was an enlightened modern Jew. He said “My religion is the land.” That was his religion, the Holy Land. It’s an obsession with the land. It’s repeated again and again way back here. They still are. It’s the same thing here: “Blessings upon the land.” Alma talked about “the promised land” and “to give us a title upon the land.”
56 Yadin makes a lot of the close resemblances between the Roman rules of war and the Hebrew ones. That’s not accidental because, as you know, armies do imitate each other. They have to. You have to compete. If they have a superior uniform for camouflage, you adopt the gray or the green. If they have a helmet that gives better protection, the other side adopts the helmet. After a war has been going on for a while, two armies begin to look awfully much alike. You can’t allow another person to have an advantage indefinitely, so you do what he does if it’s working better than yours. So the armies look alike.
56 Alma 46:18 In verse 18 we get the contrast. The cultural contrast is nowhere more clear than in this characterization by Moroni of his own people as “we who are despised.” Well, the Battle Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls starts out by saying this, “The sons of Levi and the sons of Judah are exiles in the wilderness.” It isn’t just captivity, but they are exiles. They are outcasts in the wilderness. That’s the GALUTH. “They fight against them with all their troops when the exiles of the Son of Light return from the wilderness to encamp in the wilderness of Jerusalem.” They are still in the wilderness all the time, but they are exiles. They are driven out; they are homeless. It becomes more explicit later on. Describing their condition, it always refers to them in these terms. They are the EVYONIM/Ebionites, the outcasts, the poor of God.
57 Alma 46:18 This goes into your cosmological, cabalistic doctrine that was rejected by the rabbis after the fall of the temple. The Book of Mormon is full of it.. That’s what he’s talking about when [Moroni] says, “Surely God shall not suffer that we, who are despised because we take upon us the name of Christ ...” They think of themselves as the despised ones, and it’s the same thing here. Notice, he is saying this while he is waving the banner.
57 Needless to say, the Messiah passages are the ones the Jews don’t like. As I said, the Dead Sea Scrolls are in bad repute both with Christians and Jews because there is too much Christianity in them. The Jews say, “They are anticipating Christianity; we don’t like that.” The Christians say, “This robs us of our originality by having those things there when they shouldn’t have them.”
58 Do you know the word plan isn’t found in the King James Bible? It’s an amazing thing. We think in terms of plan all the time. That has been picked up by most churches today. They use plan a great deal. They didn’t before. They thought that was one of the follies of Mormonism.