{"id":40474,"date":"2020-06-11T13:17:04","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T18:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=40474"},"modified":"2020-06-11T13:22:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T18:22:27","slug":"notes-on-book-of-mormon-philology-iiia-nephite-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/notes-on-book-of-mormon-philology-iiia-nephite-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. IIIa. Nephite literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

III. Mormon\u2019s sources<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Sorenson and Brant Gardner have addressed the issue of Mormon\u2019s sources directly. In both cases, their treatments largely recapitulate the textual history Mormon provides and assume that his is the only editorial voice; their account of the development of the text of the Book of Mormon is rooted in the personal biographies of Nephi and Mormon.[1]<\/a> Yet as Sorenson notes, Mormon\u2019s editorial work had to be completed in limited time under difficult conditions, so making use of any prior summaries rather than an undeviating quest ad fontes<\/em> would have vastly sped up his work. Gardner presumes that Moroni, feeling pressed for time, used Mosiah\u2019s previous translation of the existing Jaredite records.[2]<\/a> The same would have been even more true of Mormon and any prior summary of Nephite history.<\/p>\n

Unless someone gets lucky with a spade or a metal detector, the full extent of Mormon\u2019s sources will remain unknown. We can attempt to reconstruct the text\u2019s history based on internal evidence, but even the most ingenious reconstruction will be wrong on more points than it is right. To keep even tentative answers on the side of plausibility rather than fantasy, how we think about Mormon\u2019s sources should be informed by any information we have about Nephite literacy and textual culture.<\/p>\n

IIIa. Nephite literacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

References to reading and writing are not infrequent in the Book of Mormon, including references to the interaction of writing and memory. In early classical Nephite culture, Alma<\/a> wrote the words of Abinadi from memory, and Moroni<\/a> also wrote from memory at its very end. Alma the Younger<\/a> described written records as having \u201cenlarged the memory of this people.\u201d Transmission in writing could be parallel to oral transmission; Helaman<\/a> taught his sons \u201cmany things which are not written, and also many things which are written.\u201d In the context of King Benjamin\u2019s speech, writing is used to extend and amplify<\/a> the human voice. In the same context and elsewhere, writing could serve as a form of general<\/a> publication<\/a>. Epistles used for official communication appear in the books<\/a> of<\/a> Alma<\/a> and 3 Nephi<\/a> (including sealing, or affixing a seal to an epistle). Personal epistles, both from Mormon to Moroni, only appear quite<\/a> late<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All these elements of literacy are reassuringly familiar. Since my assumptions about Nephite textual history are influenced by my experience working with the manuscripts and printed books of medieval and early modern Europe, I have some hope that my mental models aren\u2019t misleading me too badly. Since writing could be used as a means of publication, I assume literacy wasn\u2019t extremely limited, for example to just a few members of a priestly caste. I expect literacy rates ranged from one person per village to perhaps one person per household (including many incompletely literate people), or about what we expect from our knowledge of premodern literacy, much as as Brant Gardener<\/a> suggests.[3]<\/a> It seems quite unlikely literacy rates were much higher than that, as the levels of urbanization, schooling, and knowledge-based work that support and require higher literary rates are very recent developments (and so I disagree with Anita Wells\u2019s argument<\/a> for widespread Nephite literacy).[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00adOn the other hand, Nephite literacy does have a few distinguishing features. Jacob<\/a> contrasts arduous but enduring writing on plates with perishable writing on other media. There are also numerous references to the contrast between secular and sacred writing (perhaps also public rather than private writing) that was handed down in person from one generation to the next (for example, in Alma<\/a>). That\u2019s distinctive enough to suggest caution about applying a model of literacy from another culture to the Nephites, and we can\u2019t immediately say which other culture would provide the best model for Nephite literacy.<\/p>\n

Brant Gardner has argued that Nephi had scribal training, and his analysis of Nephi\u2019s literacy is strongly influenced by Karel Van der Toorn\u2019s Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible<\/em> (2007).[5]<\/a> Michael Austin has also recently identified<\/a> Nephite literacy with scribal culture. The assumption that Israel at the time of the Babylonian conquest provides the best model of Nephite literacy (and culture in general) is common and reasonable, but it’s the kind of assumption that I\u2019m resisting; for one thing, the culture of Mosiah and Alma is centuries later and set in a much different context. It\u2019s also difficult to make a strong case for Nephite literacy as specifically scribal culture rather than a more general manuscript culture simply because there are no scribes in the Book of Mormon. Everyone who needs to write does so for themselves, including mute antichrists, robber chieftains and Lamanite kings. I assume there were scribes among the Nephites because scribes are often useful in a culture dependent on manuscripts, but it\u2019s a big leap from there, on the basis of no evidence, to assume that literacy was dominated by a scribal class.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I.The philological instinct<\/a><\/p>\n

II. What did Mormon know?<\/a><\/p>\n

III. Mormon\u2019s sources<\/strong>
\nIIIa. Nephite literacy<\/strong>
\nIIIb. The material culture of Nephite literacy
\nIIIc. The source structure of the Book of Mormon<\/p>\n

IV. The puzzle of 3 Nephi<\/p>\n

V. The permissibility and utility of philology for studying the Book of Mormon
\nVa. The permissibility of philology
\nVb. The utility of philology
\nVb1. Useful cautions
\nVb2. What did the Nephites know about Nephi?
\nVb3. The overdetermination of Nephite origins
\nVb4. Jacob and Sherem<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Sorenson, \u201cMormon\u2019s Sources,\u201d 4, 5, 10-13; Gardner, Labor Diligently<\/em>, 32, 76.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Gardner, Labor Diligently<\/em>, 29 n. 39.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Brant A. Gardner, \u201cLiteracy and Orality in the Book of Mormon,\u201d Interpreter <\/em>9 (2014): 42-47.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Anita Wells, \u201cBare Record: The Nephite Archivist, The Record of Records, and the Book of Mormon Provenance,\u201d Interpreter <\/em>24 (2017):103-4.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Brant A. Gardner, Labor Diligently<\/em>, 141ff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unless someone gets lucky with a spade or a metal detector, the full extent of Mormon\u2019s sources will remain unknown. To keep even tentative answers on the side of plausibility rather than fantasy, how we think about Mormon\u2019s sources should be informed by any information we have about Nephite literacy and textual culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,390,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-of-mormon","category-liberal-arts","category-mormon-studies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40474"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40479,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40474\/revisions\/40479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}