By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

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By revelation from God, Joseph Smith professed knowledge about people apparently inhabiting the moon. Just as there has been no good evidence ever supporting such a claim, archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon peoples has remained practically non-existent despite many dubious claims.

At the time Joseph Smith established the Mormon Church, many people believed that the moon was a habitable globe. Adam Clark, a Protestant writer, stated: “There is scarcely any doubt now remaining in the philosophical world that the moon is a habitable globe” (Clark’s Commentary, vol. 1, page 36). Josiah Priest made this statement:

It is believed and asserted by astronomers as their opinion, obtained from telescopic observation, that the moon, . . . is a globe in ruins, or if not so, it at least is frequently much convulsed by the operations of volcanic fires. Its surface, as seen through the glasses, is found extremely mountainous, . . . a great number of rivers, creeks, lakes and small seas must divide the land of this globe into a vast number of tracts of country, which are doubtless filled with animals,—consequently with rational beings in the form of men, as ourselves, for we can conceive of none other, as fitted to preside over its animals. The same we believe of all the stars of heaven. (American Antiquities and Discoveries in the West, Albany, N.Y., 1835, page 396)

[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]

Although we know that Joseph Smith was influenced by the views of his time, he claimed to receive his information directly from heaven. Oliver B. Huntington, who was a member of the Mormon Church in Joseph Smith’s time, claimed that Smith gave the following information concerning the inhabitants of the moon:

INHABITANTS OF THE MOON

“The inhabitants of the moon are more of a uniform size than the inhabitants of the earth, being about 6 feet in height.

“They dress very much like the quaker style and are quite general in style, or the fashion of dress.

“They live to be very old; coming generally, near a thousand years.”

This is the description of them as given by Joseph The Seer, and he could “see” whatever he asked the father in the name of Jesus to see. (Journal of Oliver B. Huntington, vol. 2, page 166 of typed copy at the Utah State Historical Society)

Brigham Young, the second President of the Mormon Church, also seemed to believe that the moon was inhabited (see Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, page 271, or Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? page 89) but it is doubtful that many Mormons today can accept Joseph Smith’s statement about the “inhabitants of the moon,” especially in light of the fact that men have now landed on the moon.

Joseph Smith’s statement concerning the “inhabitants of the moon,” however, raises a very important question: Could it be possible that Joseph Smith’s revelations—the revelations which are accepted as scripture by the Mormon people—are the product of his own imagination, influenced by the thinking of his time, rather than revelations from God?

Nephites

We feel that the works of Josiah Priest had a real influence on Joseph Smith’s thinking. Joseph Smith was probably very familiar with Priest’s American Antiquities (which speaks of the moon being a habitable globe), for he quotes from this book in the Times and Seasons, vol. 3, pages 813-814.

In 1825—five years before the Book of Mormon was published—Josiah Priest wrote a book entitled, The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed. In the Salt Lake City Messenger, issue No. 22, we presented evidence that seems to show that Joseph Smith used material from this book when he wrote the Book of Mormon. Priest’s book contained “Proofs that the Indians of North America are lineally descended from the ancient Hebrews” (The Wonders of Nature and Providence Displayed, Albany, N.Y., 1825, page 297). The Book of Mormon also teaches that the Indians are the descendants of a group of Hebrews who came to America.

However this may be, the Mormon people accept the Book of Mormon as scripture. Some members of the Church have made some fantastic claims about archaeologists using the Book of Mormon. For instance, we are informed that a letter which was written to Ernest L. English on May 3, 1936, was duplicated and “distributed to LDS church members by leaders (local) in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1959.” We quote the following from this letter:

. . . it was 1920 before the Smithsonian Institute officially recognized the Book of Mormon as a record of value. All discoveries up to this time were found to fit the Book of Mormon accounts and so the heads of the Archaeological Department decided to make an effort to discover some of the large cities described in the Book of Mormon records.

All members of the department were required to study the account and make rough-maps of the various populated centers. When I visited the Smithsonian Institute Library in 1933 I noticed that there were over thirty copies of the Book of Mormon on file . . . it is true that the Book of Mormon has been the guide to almost all of the major discoveries.

When Col. Lindbergh flew to South America five years ago, he was able to sight heretofore undiscovered cities which the archaeologists at the Institute had mapped out according to the locations described in the Book of Mormon. This record is now quoted by the members of the Institute as an authority and is recognized by all advanced students in the field.

Because of many false statements, such as the one printed above, the Smithsonian Institute has been forced to publish a statement concerning these matters. In this statement we find the following:

1. The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archeologists see no connection between the archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the Book.

[Click here to see the Smithsonian letter.]

We have recently completed a 64-page book entitled, Archaeology and the Book of Mormon. In this book we show that archaeology does not support the Book of Mormon, and that the Nephites mentioned in the Book of Mormon never really existed. In fact, all evidence seems to show that the Nephites were as mythical as Joseph Smith’s description of the “inhabitants of the moon.”

One of the subjects which we cover is the “Lehi Tree-of-Life Stone.” We devote 18 pages to this matter in the new book. The following is a sample of some of the information we give on this subject.

In 1965 the Mormon-owned Deseret News announced that the El Paso Times had published an article which seemed to show that the Book of Mormon had been proven by archaeologists. The article had appeared in the El Paso Times on July 4, 1965. In this article we find the following statements:

The Book of Mormon, . . . is purported to be an ecclesiastical and historical record of the American continent . . .

Archaeologists have conceded the possible existence of such a record, and a recent archaeological find in Mexico has been interpreted of relevance to its authenticity.

A large carving unearthed in Chiapas, Mexico, has been interpreted and offers the first sound evidence of the near-eastern origin of its carvers—an origin set in the Book of Mormon. . . .

Three name glyphs on the carving have been translated as “Lehi,” “Sariah,” and “Nephi,” prominent names in the Book of Mormon, and the study shows a detailed symbolization of a crucial scene in the book termed “Lehi’s Vision of the Tree of Life.” It may be one of the most important finds in the history of archeology, some think. (El Paso Times, July 4, 1965)

At first sight this article appears to be very impressive, but careful research shows it to be nothing but old Mormon propaganda rewritten. In the book, Archaeology and the Book of Mormon, we show that this is a rehash of material which appeared in a sheet entitled, “Near East Type Ancient Carving Found in Mexico,” which was published in Safford, Arizona, a few years before. When we wrote to the El Paso Times for information regarding this article, we were informed that it was submitted to the newspaper by “missionaries” from the Mormon Church:

The material, in somewhat elongated form, was submitted to our religion desk by Robert Elder and Vaughn Byington, missionaries of the Church of Christ of Latter-Day Saints assigned to El Paso wards.

The information was written by Mr. Byington, who said his sources were articles obtained at the Department of Archaeology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. (Letter from Joseph Rice, Religion Editor, El Paso Times, dated November 3, 1965)

A photograph of this letter is found in our book Archaeology and the Book of Mormon.

Notice that the article in the El Paso Times stated: “Three name glyphs on the craving have been translated as ‘Lehi,’ ‘Sariah,’ and ‘Nephi,’ prominent names in the Book of Mormon. . . .” Dr. M. Wells Jakeman, of Brigham Young University, is responsible for the idea that these names appear on this stone. In our book, Archaeology and the Book of Mormon, we show that this claim is not based on facts, and that Dr. Jakeman has not read a single Book of Mormon name on this carving.

We sent a copy of the clipping from the El Paso Times to the Mormon Egyptologist Dee Jay Nelson. After examining this clipping, Mr. Nelson made the following statement:

Thank you for the kind letter and the newspaper clipping. I never take much stock in newspaper articles which do not carry bylines. I think someone is talking through his hat when he claims that the names “Lihi, Sariah and Nephi” are written upon the Tree of-Life stella. I have studied the features of that stella very carefully . . . I found nothing which transliterated into the three names. . . .

Believe me when I say that nothing would delight me more than to learn that I am wrong and that the Tree-of-Life Stella was made to commemorate Lehi’s dream and that the names had been found and identified. I must be honest with myself though. I don’t buy the story. (Letter from Dee Jay Nelson, dated December 16, 1968)

Dee Jay Nelson’s statement is especially interesting in light of the fact that he is probably the most qualified Egyptologist in the Mormon Church and has also studied Mayan glyphs. Furthermore, he wishes to prove the Book of Mormon true, but he will not accept evidence which he knows to be false.

Mr. Nelson is certainly not the only Mormon who has questioned the identification of Lehi and his family on the carving. Dr. John L. Sorenson has served as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brigham Young University and was editor of the University Archaeological Society Newsletter from August 15, 1951, to July 1, 1952. Writing in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Dr. Sorenson stated:

. . . the uncontrolled use of trait comparison leads to absurd conclusions. Particularly, it leads to overambitious interpretations of shared meaning and historical relationship, as in Jakeman’s previous pseudo-identifications of “Lehi” (and other characters from the Book of Mormon) on an Izapan monument. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1966, page 148)

Dr. Hugh Nibley does not seem to accept Dr. Jakeman’s work on the “Lehi Tree-of-Life Stone.” In fact, Dr. Nibley frankly admits that there is no definite archaeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon:

Of course, almost any object could conceivably have some connection with the Book of Mormon, but nothing short of an inscription which could be read and roughly dated could bridge the gap between what might be called a pre-actualistic archaeology and contact with the realities of Nephite civilization.

The possibility that a great nation or empire that once dominated vast areas of land and flourished for centuries could actually get lost and stay lost in spite of every effort of men to discover its traces, has been demonstrated many times since Schliemann found the real world of the Mycenaeans. . . .

So it is with the Nephites. All that we have to go on to date is a written history. That does not mean that our Nephites are necessarily mythical, . . . as things stand we are still in the pre-archaeological and pre-anthropological stages of Book of Mormon study. Which means that there is nothing whatever that an anthropologist or archaeologist as such can say about the Book of Mormon. Nephite civilization was urban in nature, . . . It could just as easily and completely vanish from sight as did the worlds of Ugarit, Ur, or Cnossos; and until some physical remnant of it, no matter how trivial, has been identified beyond question, what can any student of physical remains possibly have to say about it? Everything written so far by anthropologists or archaeologists—even real archaeologists—about the Book of Mormon must be discounted, for the same reason that we must discount studies of the lost Atlantis: not because it did not exist, but because it has not yet been found. (Since Cumorah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1967, pages 243-244)

In 1843 some brass plates were reported to have been found near Kinderhook, Illinois. The Mormon used these plates as evidence for the Book of Mormon (see Times and Seasons, vol. 5, page 406), but it later turned out that they were forgeries that were made to trap Joseph Smith. On June 30, 1879, W. Fugate wrote a letter to James T. Cobb. In this letter we find these statements:

I received your letter in regard to those plates and will say that they are a humbug, gotten up by Robert Wiley, Bridge Whitton and myself. . . .

We read in Pratt’s prophecy that “Truth is yet to spring out of the earth.” We concluded to prove the prophecy by way of a joke. We soon made our plans and executed them. Bridge Whitton cut them out of some pieces of copper; Wiley and I made the hieroglyphics by making impressions on beeswax and filling them with acid and putting it on the plates. (The Kinderhook Plates, by Welby W. Ricks, reprinted from Improvement Era, September 1962)

Evidently Joseph Smith was not aware of the fact that the plates were made to trick him, for Charlotte Haven stated that he “said that the figures or writing on them was similar to that in which the Book of Mormon was written, . . . he thought that by the help of revelation he would be able to translate them” (Letter dated May 2, 1843, as printed in Overland Monthly, December 1890, page 630).

Under the date of May 1, 1843, this statement appeared in Joseph Smith’s History:

I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth. (History of the Church, vol. 5, page 372)

After Joseph Smith’s death the Kinderhook plates were lost. Fortunately however, one of the plates has recently been found in the Chicago Historical Society Museum. In 1962 Welby W. Ricks wrote an article for the Improvement Era in which he told about the plate in Chicago and claimed that the discovery “reaffirms“ Joseph Smith’s “prophetic calling.” Mr. Ricks claimed that there were discrepancies in Fugate’s account of how the plates were made, but he furnished no evidence to show that they were genuine relics of antiquity.

During the summer of 1965 George M. Lawrence, a Mormon physicist, was given permission to examine and make “some non-destructive physical studies of the surviving plate.” In the Summary to his study, we find this statement:

The plate is not pure copper. It may be a low zinc brass or a bronze. The dimensions, tolerances, composition and workmanship are consistent with the facilities of an 1843 blacksmith shop and with the fraud stories of the original participants. (“Report of a Physical Study of the Kinderhook Plate Number 5,” by George M. Lawrence)

• The Book of Mormon in light of archaeological findings in the New World
• The disagreement between Dr. Nibley and Dr. Jakeman over archaeology and the Book of Mormon
• Nephite coins
• The Anthon transcript
• Mayan glyphs
• Parahyba text
• Kinderhook plates
• Newark stones
• Lehi Tree-of-Life Stone
• Problems of Book of Mormon geography

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