{"id":40485,"date":"2020-06-15T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=40485"},"modified":"2020-06-14T21:16:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T02:16:05","slug":"notes-on-book-of-mormon-philology-iiib-the-material-culture-of-nephite-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/notes-on-book-of-mormon-philology-iiib-the-material-culture-of-nephite-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Book of Mormon Philology. IIIb. The material culture of Nephite literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The physical form a text takes has implications for how it can be used, and so it also tells us something about a society\u2019s assumptions about how texts should<\/em> be used. Broadsides were printed on just one side, for example, so they could be posted and perused by multiple readers. Books for personal use adopt a size that could be held in one hand, and letter or type sizes that were legible at arm\u2019s length under typical lighting conditions.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the material culture of Nephite literacy is the one aspect of Nephite civilization about which we have any kind of historical evidence in the form of nineteenth-century eyewitness accounts<\/a> of the Golden Plates.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t expect that all or even more than a fraction of Nephite records were kept on metal plates simply because of the expense and difficulty of preparing and using a metallic writing surface. Even cultures that write nearly exclusively on paper or parchment have known the concept of writing on metal tablets for uniquely noteworthy documents. But the Golden Plates are nevertheless our one piece of evidence of what form a typical Nephite book may have taken. When Mormon needed to compile his records, he did so with metal rings binding the plates together, and I assume this approach to constructing a physical book was based on how other documents he knew were constructed.<\/p>\n

For our purposes here, the importance of the Golden Plates is neither the gold nor the plates, but the rings that bound them, and what those rings would allow you to do. If you\u2019re a Nephite, and your idea of a \u201cbook\u201d is a collection of individual plates bound with rings, then it\u2019s relatively straightforward to open the rings, add or remove plates, and reclose the rings (by bending them, twisting them, using some form of clasp, or hammering them back together if needed). You can even combine two collections of plates of similar format into one book, as Mormon seems to have done with the small plates of Nephi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This physical fact has implications for how we think about the nature of Nephite records. Based on what we can presume based on their physical form, the Nephite records Mormon knew and read were open\u2014in both a physical and psychological sense\u2014to supplementation, revision, and other processes of textual adaptation. A manuscript whose blank leaves can be filled with equal authority, or to which additional quires can be added, is open, while a modern printed book, which is not directly extendable by its owners or readers, is a much more closed form. A parchment decree to which a royal seal has been attached is by its nature closed, while the journal to which you add a new entry each week is clearly open. It’s in this sense that I suspect that Nephite records, Mormon\u2019s sources, were open: open to addition, deletion, restructuring and recombination. This is another reason I think the text historical processes I\u2019m familiar with from medieval and early modern Europe aren’t alien or anachronistic when discussing the Book of Mormon, because I suspect these processes emerge naturally in textual cultures that use writing surfaces that are realtively valuable or difficult to obtain or manufacture (like parchment, high-quality paper, and metal plates), and where documents are in some sense open.<\/p>\n

There is at least one case of supplementation documented by the text of the Book of Mormon itself, as a prophecy of Samuel the Lamanite was famously omitted<\/a> from the Nephite record. The omitted material now comprises<\/a> Helaman 14:25<\/a>.[2]<\/a> Mormon\u2019s abridgment was also open (in both senses) to additions by Moroni. John Sorenson assumes that new plates could be inserted, and Brant Gardner contemplates the rings being opened and plates being inserted or removed as needed.[3]<\/a> But the openness of Nephite records also implies that Mormon\u2019s sources were not fixed in permanent form, but subject to updating and revision over time.<\/p>\n

The martyrdom by fire<\/a> of the believers in Ammonihah along with the \u201crecords which contained the holy scriptures\u201d is a revealing if unfortunate incident in the history of Nephite literacy and material culture. Some Nephite writing, including sacred writing, used a medium other than metal plates, perhaps thin wooden sheets<\/a> of the type known from medieval Scandinavia or the beaten bark paper<\/a> known from Central America. The perishability of these scriptures reinforces the suggestion that literacy and written texts were accessible to somewhat normal people rather than restricted or arcane knowledge. But multiple manuscript copies of scriptural records also implies, inevitably, that there were multiple versions of both scripture and other records, with each copy able to be emended, compiled with other texts, or extended in all the other ways that are known from the study of manuscripts.<\/p>\n

This is also why I suppose that Mormon\u2019s sources were more like a library containing single copies of more widely distributed works than a carefully-tended archive of unique and authoritative records. Instead of having the complete Nephite Royal Archive at his disposal, I suspect Mormon had access to something more like the remnants of the Nephite State Library.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

So far, I think my notes and observations, although not the only possible interpretation, have been pretty defensible. These notes and observations have implications for the possible ways we might read the Book of Mormon, but the implications of suppositions are only going to be plausible at best, even if I think that these implications need to be taken more seriously.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

III. Mormon\u2019s sources<\/a>
\nIIIa. Nephite literacy<\/a>
\nIIIb. The material culture of Nephite literacy<\/strong>
\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

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Kirk B. Henrichsen, \u201cHow Witnesses Described the Gold Plates,\u201d Journal of Book of Mormon Studies<\/em> 10.1 (2001): 16-21, 78.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> D. Lynn Johnson surmised that the missing text was added as interlinear or marginal annotation: \u201cThe Missing Scripture,\u201d Journal of Book of Mormon Studies<\/em> 3.2 (1994): 88.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Sorenson, \u201cMormon\u2019s Sources,\u201d 5; Gardner, Labor Diligently<\/em>, 39-40 n. 64.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The material culture of Nephite literacy is the one aspect of Nephite civilization about which we have any kind of historical evidence.<\/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":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40485","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=40485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40486,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40485\/revisions\/40486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}