2 of 6
Givens deals at length and even-handedly with the entire range of anti-Mormon literature, and he provides a full analysis of recent investigations into Smith's involvement with magic and divination. Smith was indeed involved in a subculture of money diggers, but Givens reminds us that the modern study of popular culture and the occult has diminished the stigma that used to be attached to such practices. The book offers a detailed exposition of the actual discovery of the plates and their translation, with painstaking attention to concrete, everyday details. Givens credits the testimony of the witnesses who verified the existence of the plates, though he candidly admits that while a number of persons picked up the plates, they were usually wrapped in cloth, except on the occasions when an angel displayed them. The methods of translation and those involved in taking dictation are examined in fascinating detail. Above all, this study makes the early acceptance of the Book of Mormon in the popular imagination plausible. In a land of puzzling Indian mounds, and on a frontier that was beset by uncertainties and dangers on an ever retreating horizon, the Book appealed in powerful and paradoxical ways to American sensibilities. In an age in which archaeology was in its infancy and speculation about Christ's soon return was rife, both the ancient past and the near future seemed unusually open to surprises. Hence, Givens argues, the Book of Mormon functioned more as a sign of larger truths than as a key to contested doctrine: it promised a true restoration and ingathering of Zion in the last days before Christ's return.
The search for a genuine historical foundation for the Book of Mormon has promoted some of the most ambitious expeditionary efforts in American history, efforts that are in some ways reminiscent of the attempts of evangelical Christians to find the remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat. Mormon archaeological expeditions under the leadership of Benjamin Cluff to Colombia in 1900 and Thomas Ferguson to southern Mexico in the 1950s did not produce useful apologetic results, although, Givens claims, the latter attempts shed some light on Mesoamerican studies for the period "both preceding and postdating Nephite history." Givens explores a subtheme of these efforts in the attitudes of church authorities toward the expeditions and the hopes and fears about what might, or might not, be found. He questions the archaeological orthodoxy that all pre-Colombian cultures are traceable to Siberian origins, yet he worries about "casting sacred text as secular history" with all the attendant risks of such a strategy. It is undoubtedly this equivocation that has led him and other Mormon scholars to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon should be studied as a sacred text in the context of other ancient texts, rather than an ancient document in the context of Mesoamerican civilization. Givens writes in a style reminiscent of the highly praised study by Richard Bushman, and like Bushman, in order to make his case, he relies heavily on the internal coherence of the Book of Mormon.
share this page
RSS Feed
