Talk:Book of Mormon

NPOV tag

I've placed an {npov} tag because this article does not clearly present the mainstream view of the Book of Mormon, beginning with what it is and who wrote it. It should say that the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith in the early 19th century. Instead, that fact is quite buried, in the line In the twenty-first century, leading naturalistic interpretations of Book of Mormon origins hold that Smith authored it himself, whether consciously or subconsciously, and simultaneously sincerely believed the Book of Mormon was an authentic sacred history. Even that sentence is inappropriately qualified ... "leading naturalistic interpretations" is the mainstream view, also known as "the truth." "Joseph Smith authored the Book of Mormon" should be in the lead, and it should be the first view given in the "Origins" section. Before I go about rewriting it, does anybody disagree with this? Levivich (talk) 17:38, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

• Agreed. Switched the order of the lede's first two sentences. starship.paint (RUN) 13:16, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• Agreed, NPOV is non-negotiable and we should not be presenting fringe views as superior to or the equal of normal ones. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:06, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

  When you categorize a religious belief held by millions of people as "fringe", and your own beliefs as "normal", I would argue that you are not on NPOV ground. Any belief held by millions of people is notable enough for an encyclopedia, even if it is not factual.

  But I honestly think this article's bigger problem is that it spends far too many words on the question of historicity, especially in the introduction. Contrast, for example, the article on the Torah, another religious text that most scholars do not regard as a historically accurate document, but which many Jews and Christians regard as historical anyway. The Torah article spends virtually no time debating evidence for or against its historical correctness! Instead, its sections are primarily focused on the themes, symbolism, and religious significance of the book.

  Right now, most of the Book of Mormon article's introduction, as well as two major sections ("Origins" and "Views on Historical Authenticity") focus heavily on historicity. That seems excessive to me. I think one section and 2-3 sentences in the introduction would be sufficient. The more space we spend on the historicity issues debate, the greater the temptation for people to insert non-NPOV language.

  TLDR: Religion is not fringe, but I agree this article has problems, and I might have used a Debate or Review cleanup tag instead of NPOV. Statesman 88 (talk) 22:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  Fringe doesn't mean people don't believe it, it means that qualified experts don't believe it. Something can be believed by the majority of people on the planet and still be fringe as wikipedia considers it (take for instance LGBTQ medical issues where the medical consensus is at odds with most of the world's opinions). Not everything religious is fringe, but much that is fringe is religious. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 06:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

• Yeah. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:09, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah [you're right]., Yeah [I disagree with this]., or Yeah [though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me].? Levivich (talk) 18:24, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• Agreed on the need for NPOV tag, and on Starship.paint's sentence switch. However I'm struggling to see how "it is patently obvious..." can be considered NPOV, it's a mocking tone rather than "nonjudgmental" and "impartial". It's also inaccurate: if it was "patently obvious that Smith had authored the Book by himself" then neither the plagiarism hypotheses nor the rumours about Smith having help from a third party would ever have gained traction. Pastychomper (talk) 15:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  I agree. I just switched out "patently obvious" for "more widely accepted view", aiming for NPOV. I hope people like that language, but I'm open to continued revision. Statesman 88 (talk) 22:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

It looks like someone spent a lot of time scrubbing this article of anything that wasn’t LDS approved. :( 2600:1700:F90:6950:ACF9:19B6:8CC1:724B (talk) 01:35, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to move we remove this POV tag now. All the directly POV phrasing has been scrubbed that I can see. Also, I've spent some time breaking out the subsections on Historicity and hopefully making it crystal clear what the mainstream consensus is. Also by increasing its length and relative prominence, that should help with issues of imbalance. That said, since this is an article about a fundamentally religious topic, I think it's perfectly appropriate (and NPOV) for other sections to have a more religious bent, discussing religious significance, content, etc. Trevdna (talk) 21:34, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I placed the NPOV tag but have not had a chance to review the article lately, though I am aware that there's been a lot of editing to fix the NPOV concerns. So if other editors who have reviewed the article think the NPOV concerns have been taken care of and the tag is no longer necessary then there's no objection to removing it from me. If I see issues in the future I'm happy to bring them up again, in the meantime I don't want to hold anything up due to my lack of time. Levivich (talk) 22:53, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I would support removing the tag, though I grant I'm also someone who contributed to some of the recent revision (not as much as Trevdna; I just found an academic source for the sentence about there being no samples of reformed Egyptian). I think Trevdna did a good job with the views on historicity section. I remember overhauling the section a couple years ago after an editor tried to add a bunch of citations to apologetics. That entailed changing what was a bullet pointed list of anachronisms into body text paragraphs summarizing the mainstream assessment, adding the Isaiah intertext matter, etc. Trevdna meanwhile has taken the section across a finish line by taking the long paragraphs I left and organizing them into more legible subsections. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:34, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I'll remove it for now, but @Levivich, if upon further review you believe your concerns have not been fully addressed, feel free to put it back and let us know why. Thanks all. Trevdna (talk) 16:30, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Weird sentence removed

"The book is also a critique of Western society, condemning immorality, individualism, social inequality, ethnic injustice, nationalism, and the rejection of God, revelation, and miraculous religion."

I don't see a clear explanation that everyone agrees this claim is true. How does it critique "Western society"? How does it condemn "immorality", "social inequality", "ethnic injustice", and "nationalism" (and how does it define these)? Where is "atheism" mentioned in the Book of Mormon? In short, this sentence is just a Mormon POV. A reading of the book does not lead to these conclusions unless you're in the cult, I suspect. jps (talk) 14:45, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Strike your last sentence, which violates the BLP policy in the way it describes Nathan O. Hatch, Jonathan Sudholt, Charles L. Cohen, and Richard Bushman—the scholars whose work to which that content, summarized in the lead, is cited to in the body—and all living persons.

If you read the article, you will notice that that sentence of the lead summarizes Book_of_Mormon#Critique_of_the_United_States, cited to content published in journals (including The American Historical Review The Journal of American History), a university press book (from Yale University Press), and a book published by a respected mainstream publisher (Alfred A. Knopf). Only Bushman is a Latter-day Saint, and he's also Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, and unless you have evidence he (along with Hatch, Sudholt, and Cohen) has hoodwinked Columbia University, Alfred A. Knopf, and The American Historical Review The Journal of American History, saying that these readings are impossible for someone who isn't a 'cultist' constitutes unsourced contentious material about living persons.

You should also revert your last edit to Book of Mormon, as you are violating WP:NPOV by substituting your personal interpretation of the topic over and against academic sources.

Finally, your edit summary—accusing me of writing an Unintelligible edit summary—is a personal attack. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:16, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

This is all personalizing and is very silly. Stop being silly. There is a simple point which is the Book of Mormon is not inarguably "a critique of Western society, condemning immorality, individualism, social inequality, ethnic injustice, nationalism, and the rejection of God, revelation, and miraculous religion." Some people may think that is what it is doing, but Wikipedia should not be WP:ASSERTing that is what it is doing when, in fact, it is just 19th century religious fan fiction. jps (talk) 01:39, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Stop being silly: Policy recommends telling letting another editor know how their edit made you feel, so I will let you know that your decision to diminish my concerns about policy and guideline breaches, and to accuse me of being the one personalizing things when you have called my contribution "unintelligble", makes me feel hurt and diminished. I invite you to be more civil.

I also invite you to consider that your personal interpretation of the Book of Mormon may well vary from the way religious studies scholars, historians, and other trained academics in the humanities assess it and its context. Calling the Book of Mormon fan fiction is a popular joke about it, but Wikipedia favors the WP:BESTSOURCES for topics, particularly academic sources. When historian Nathan O. Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity (called by Gordon S. Wood "the best book on religion in the early Republic that has ever been written"), calls the Book of Mormon "a document of profound social protest" (116) against American society, that is a much more reliable and consensus assessment than descriptions of the topic circulated in Reddit threads and social media posts. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:38, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

You haven't responded to the substance of my complaint still. jps (talk) 15:26, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I have; see the paragraph starting I also invite you to consider, which addresses the substance of your complaint by pointing out that the sentence you call weird summarizes assessments from academic sources. Meanwhile, you haven't responded to my concerns about incivility and contentious content about living persons in comments you have posted other than dismissing them as silly. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:36, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

My complaint was not over whether the sentence "summarized assessments". Try again. jps (talk) 18:01, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

How do we get from a social protest against American society (what is apparently in the source) to a critique of Western society (what was written in the article)? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:38, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

That's helpful to point out. The expansion from American society to Western society may have been prompted by "What's New in Mormon History" (cited in Book of Mormon), an article from The Journal of American History (vol. 94, no. 2, September 2007), which states the Book of Mormon was thundering no to the state of the world in Joseph Smith's time and that it condemned social inequalities, moral abominations, rejection of revelations and miracles, disrespect for Israel (including the Jews), subjection of the Indians, and the abuse of the continent by interloping European migrants . However, while this may imply "Western society", it's probably simpler, more focused on the topic's immediate context, and more consensus (matching Nathan O. Hatch's assessment of the book as well) to summarize it as having been at the time of publication a critique of simply American society. Thanks for pointing this out, Horse Eye's Back. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:49, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Given the context of that particular article it should likely be attributed to Bushman, the full name is "What's New in Mormon History: A Response to Jan Shipps" and is a response to a review of his book Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling in that same journal by Shipps[1]. I don't have access to that source on this device, can you pull larger quotes for some more context? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:03, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the idea that the Book of Mormon is "critiquing" anything is all that important a point. Others don't seem too taken with such points. Why are we letting our own article become so obsessed with this kind of inside baseball minutiae? jps (talk) 18:06, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Who are these 'others'? There seem to be you and an IP (174.212.225.61). Meanwhile, User:ChristensenMJ restored the sentence, as did I. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:11, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm referring to sources that discuss the ontology of the Book of Mormon. Few seem to categorize it as a "critique" of anything. Most classify it either as a religious treatise or a "forgery" in a more old-fashioned sense of the term. jps (talk) 18:15, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Nomination for worst sentence

"Meanwhile, some Americans thought antebellum disestablishment and denominational proliferation undermined religious authority through ubiquity, producing sectarian confusion that only obfuscated the path to spiritual security."

You've got to be kidding me. Anyone think this is a reasonable sentence?

jps (talk) 01:44, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

What is unreasonable about the sentence? It is meant to summarize Charles L. Cohen's description of the Antebellum religious context of Joseph Smith. From his article: states cast off their establishments (except in Puritanism's ancient bastions), revivals fired up, and preachers—whether belonging to a denomination or proclaiming their own singular gospels—proliferated. This homiletic hubbub was good news if you were Thomas Jefferson, for it evinced the flourishing of religious liberty based on the rights of individuals to worship as their conscidneces alone dictated, but bad news if you were a young man sifting the ashes of a burned-over district for the gold of absolute truth resulting in a situation that opened a spiritual abyss under someone who would take the welter of contesting doctrines as evidence not that all churches offered a version of the gospel, but that they afforded none at all. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:26, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I think if a person already knows all those words, then it's sensible and accurate, but it's not fun to read. I don't think it's a great sentence for an encyclopedia that's trying to be inclusive of all readers, including ones that come to English from other languages. A more accessible sentence, something like "Meanwhile, the rapidly growing number of religious denominations and sects in the young nation seemed to offer too many religious choices, leaving some Americans with the impression that no legitimate path to salvation existed at all", might be more appropriate. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 07:11, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

@Indignant Flamingo I think that's a fine edit and would support it as a replacement. jps (talk) 15:25, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Yup. Long words bad. Short words good. AndyTheGrump (talk)

A thank you to Indignant Flamingo for this constructive, civil, and collaborative approach to improving the page. I agree that the revision simplifies and improves the language. Since multiple editors support it, I've replaced the sentence with Indignant Flamingo's revision. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:40, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Overreliance on Bushman

Hey, I get it. There is this approach going around in the Book of Mormon obsessed world that tries to read a lot of context into the work. That's cool and interesting, but we aren't here to go out on limbs. So I removed a paragraph that is cited almost entirely to one interesting but parochial source (and the text is not properly attributed to the authors though it should have been). [2]

Predictably, it was reinserted for... less than edifying reasons, AFAIC.

jps (talk) 18:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

What is parochial about content published in The Journal of American History and by Alfred A. Knopf? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:08, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

How many citations does this work have? What is its impact factor? jps (talk) 18:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

A GoogleScholar search indicates the Knopf-published book, Rough Stone Rolling, has been cited 787 times. At the January 2011 annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Laurie Maffly-Kipp (the Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis), called the book clearly the work of a judicious and seasoned scholar who has a thorough command of his sources and an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. I can’t begin to count the number of times in the last five years that I have returned to consult Rough Stone Rolling as the definitive account. (text of her full AHA remarks printed pages 29–36, quotation here is 29, of Dialogue vol. 44, no. 3 [Fall 2011]).

As for "What's New in Mormon History", GoogleScholar indicates 21 citations. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC) Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not too thrilled with the walled garden nature of those citations (and, let's be honest, none of the first 20 references to the book was talking about the content of this paragraph). Impact factor is pretty low from what I'm seeing. Doesn't look like it deserves this kind of emphasis. jps (talk) 18:21, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

What is the "walled garden" you refer to? Do you mean to consider the American Historical Association a walled garden? Or Harvard University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Columbia University Press, and Princeton University Press, the publishers of the four first results I see? (I'm not 100% sure if we'll see identical results or if they're somehow tailored algorithmically}

I'll add that Jan Shipps's review in The Journal of American History (September 2007) called Rough Stone Rolling's treatment of the topic a brilliant explication of the Book of Mormon, which challenges Terryl Givens' study of the Mormon scripture as the best currently in print.

Are there sources about and assessments of the topic with superior impact factors that establish your interpretations, stated on this page, as academically consensus? When I searched "Book of Mormon" AND "fanfiction", the first hit was a Reddit thread. On GoogleScholar, the hits were studies of fanfiction about conventional media written by Mormons. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:36, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that we have an overreliance on Bushman... And the walled garden in general as it were. But I think we should be looking more broadly at the sourcing, for example we probably shouldn't be using BYU Studies Quarterly in this context and I'm not sure what use Sudholt is to us either as it seems to be pretty out there in the opposite direction from the walled garden "This article reads The Book of Mormon as an attack on the incoherence of American nationalism – as, specifically, a book about the inevitability of its own irrelevance." and is unless I'm missing something more thought expiriment than historical exercise. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:53, 26 June 2024 (UTC)