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Since Cumorah (Collected Works of Hugh Nibley)

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The ridicule of the Book of Mormon began before it was even published. Its critics have howled about various things in the book that have been perceived as flaws by one generation or another. It is interesting how the criticism have changed since 1830. To the first critics it seemed that there was too much common vernacular in the book (Jonathanisms). They didn't like a man claiming to talk with God face to face (many still don't). They found many of the claims about how these ancient inhabitants of the Americas lived.

This wonderful book by Hugh Nibley discusses many of the criticisms of the Book of Mormon by its critics over the decades and how discoveries subsequent to the publishing of the book make life harder for the critics. Remember, if the book is a fake, nothing in reality should tend to confirm the book. Reality should continue to move away from the claims of the book rather than the other way around.

As always, Nibley relies more on connecting any physical evidences to spiritual truths. For Nibley, proving the book to unbelievers is never important because they can never be convinced. Instead, he tries to help believers connect more vividly to the spiritual purposes of the Book of Mormon.

There are many pictures and the writing is delightful and witty.

Nibley examines the Book of Mormon and places it in the sublimnity it deserves. The language in the scripture is brought to light as being of ancient origin and akin to archaic hebrew. The phraseology might seem strange in English, however for Hebrew it is commonplace. Specific writing styles of ancient Hebrew, which were not discovered till this century, are uncovered in the Book of Mormon by Nibley. Ostensibly, he demonstrates validity and truth in the Book of Mormon that cannot be refuted, albeit the best way to find out is by reading it yourself.

Hugh Nibley has done it again. This book is an in-depth study of things mentioned in the Book of Mormon which were unknowable at the time the Book of Mormon was published, as well as a look at technical structure which would have been impossible to fake. "Since Cumorah" compares BM descriptions and ideas with recent finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Too many bulls eyes for random shooting. Nibley is again asking for scholarly review knowing that the book will withstand all challenges.

Like other books by Hugh Nibley, "Since Cumorah" is brimming with faulty logic. On pages 6, Nibley says some Book of Mormon verses were changed to "avoid confusion" (a phrase used twice on one page). But on page 8, he says that the Book of Mormon's "meaning is always clear."

Nibley says that the name "Benjamin" was changed to "Mosiah," and asks if this was really necessary. He does not say that the name was changed in two places and that Joseph Smith himself made the change.

Nibley's language also appeals to emotion rather than reason. Describing the Book of Mormon, he says it is full of "inexhaustible invention combined with such unerring accuracy and consistency....the artist must not only balance a bowl of goldfish and three lighted candles on the end of a broomstick while fighting off a swarm of gadflies, but he must at the same time be carving an immortal piece of statuary from a lump of solid diorite" (page 159).

Wow! Talk about hyperbole! But rather than going on and on in this manner, Nibley should have explained the 4,000 changes in the Book of Mormon (marked in an original edition of the Book of Mormon and published by Jerold and Sandra Tanner. See: "3,913 Changes in the Book of Mormon."

Good scholarship requires that you cite the critic's books and respond to their arguments. Nibley doesn't do this.

Nibley also asks how a "twenty-three-year-old backwoodsman in 1829" could make up a description of "an ancient coronation ceremony."

First, Nibley was aware, of course, that Joseph Smith lived on Palmyra's Main Street as boy and then only two miles away on a farm. The Palmyra area was not in any sense the "backwoods." Rather, it was a settled farming region with bookstores and newspapers in every town. It had not been the frontier since the 1790s and the end of the Eastern Indian wars.

The Grandin Book store was only two level miles from the Smith's front door, and some 200 wagons roamed the US selling books to farmers (the bookstore came to the farm). Produce was exchanged for books, and books could even be purchased with "clean rags."

Further, the connection of the Smith family to the town was strong. They lived there five years and had a "beer and cake" shop. After moving only two level miles from town, their son Alvin died. Alvin was buried only a 100 yards from the Grandin Bookstore. According to Mrs. Smith, a "vast concourse" of people attended Alvin's funeral.

Second, the Bible in II Kings (11-12) and I Kings (1:43-46) describes session, crowning, anointing, proclaiming, sacrifice, and procession.

The fundamental error of Nibley's writing concerns his citations of ancient sources at the same time failing to mention the Bible (an ancient source available to Joseph Smith, a Bible reader).

Sometimes Nibley's rhetoric gets ahead of his common sense. Of the words in the Book of Mormon, he asks, "...what American would dream of cooking up such combinations as "aa" or "kh"? Hello, how about Aaron? There are many words and names in the Bible with the "kh" sound--"molech," "meshach," and others that can easily be found. Also, in I Chronicles (11:37), there is "Naarai" and "Paari" (II Sam. 23:35).

Again and again, Nibley ignores the Bible. In any discussion of gold plates, the gold plate in Exodus (28:36) should be mentioned, and it had writing on it--"Holiness to the Lord."

Word games impress the uniformed, and Nibley was a master at them.

On pages 62-63, Nibley writes about the famous copper scroll containing the Book of Isaiah.

"The business of writing on such plates was hard and distasteful work....Writing on plates requires a cramped and abbreviated script, Moroni explains...and Allegro also notes the writing on copper plates actually produces a new kind of writing that is particularly difficult to read, characterized by mixing forms of letters, ignoring the proper spacing between words, "running-over from one line to the next in the middle of a word," and general neglect of the vowels.

"A greater deficiency lies in ourselves," Allegro concludes, "we simply do not possess a sufficiently comprehensive technical Hebrew vocabulary to deal with a text of this kind." This should have a sobering effect on those people who fondly suppose the if we could only discover some Nephite plates, the translation could be left to them: this sort of things needs an Urim and Thummin, indeed."

Now, read the following and ask yourself if Nibley was honest with his source?

His source is "The Treasure of the Copper Scroll," by John Marco Allegro (an expert).

A. Allegro says that the scroll is in Hebrew and readable (though with some overlapping of words, pp. 27-28). In fact, Allegro provided a facsimile of the entire scroll. On one page is the scroll, and the opposite page is Hebrew writing with the English translation next to it. ALLEGRO DID NOT SAY THAT WRITING ON PLATES PRODUCES A NEW KIND OF WRITING. In fact, he says, "A comparable fault in modern uneducated writing might be the mixing of small and capital letters, although there the differnce would not be so marked as, for instance, when our scribe writs a cursive `aleph" for the normal square-shaped. (letter).

B. FACT: The copper scroll was translated by normal means by people who were experts in Hebrew.

C. Allegro writes (following Nibley's selected quotes) that: "Happily in our scroll there are no true verbs, where alone vowelling might make a crucial difference to the interpretation. Whilst, therefore, we need not be unduly concerned about the lack of vowel signs in our text...Again, once aware of this failing (or device) on the part of our scribe, we can still recognize the word for what it is. A greater deficiency lies in ourselves....(Note, this sentence quoted by Nibley).

D. Nibley has implied that an Urim and Thummin would be needed to translate the scroll, and he has totally distorted the sense of what Allegro was saying.

It is also worth noting that if what Nibley says is true about a "cramped and abbreviated style of writing," then it is highly unlikely that any chiastic structures would survive a translation. Some Mormons have claimed that the Book of Mormon has ancient "chiasmus" in it. Chiamus, parallel sentence structure, was actually well-known in Joseph Smith's day.

Nevertheless, there is no intentional chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith was a repetitous speaker and even produced a chiasmus in his introduction to the Book of Mormon (now dropped). Joseph Smith didn't know when to stop talking. His prayer for the opening of the Kirkland Temple took some two hours. Such a man could compose an historical novel.



See my reviews of other books by Mormon writers and my non-Mormon "Listmania."

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