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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

By Michael R. Ash

How easy would it have been for a young man in 1830 to write a novel about the ancient Old World and have it stand up to scrutiny nearly two hundred years later? When Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon the best scholars of his day knew little about the ancient world in which the Lehites traveled through southern Arabia. The few bits of information available were generally wrong and almost consistently described Arabia as a barren wasteland. According to some authors, Arabia was so hot that animals were roasted on the plains and birds in midair. The southern coast of Arabia was thought to be dismal and barren –nothing but rocky wall. It was said that not even a blade of grass could be grown along the coastline. If Joseph had written the Book of Mormon with information sponged from his environment, he would have turned to the so-called experts of his day. So inaccurate were the experts of 1830 America, however, that if Joseph has sponged their information he would have produced a book filled with errors.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

After Nephi killed Laban, he donned the governor’s robes and went to the treasury disguised as Laban, where he tricked Laban’s servant Zoram into acquiring the brass plates. When Zoram discovered that Nephi was not Laban, Nephi gripped Zoram and swore into his ear, “as the Lord liveth, and as I live” that he would spare Zoram’s life if he would only listen (1 Nephi 4:32). Upon hearing this simple phrase, Zoram followed Nephi without further problems.

Among the desert people, an oath is the one thing which is held as most sacred. Arabs generally will not break an oath, even if their lives are in jeopardy. Nearly all Arabs –whether Nomad or city dweller– believed that oaths were sacred and served as powerful covenants between two parties. The most binding oaths were those sworn by the life of something. As Dr. Hugh Nibley explains, “The only oath more awful than ‘by my life’ is the wa hayat Allah, ‘by the life of God,’ or ‘as the Lord liveth,’ the Arab equivalent of the ancient Hebrew hai Elohim.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

When Nephi and his brothers asked Laban for the brass plates in trade for their silver and gold, Laban tried to kill them and he took away their possessions. After a narrow escape, Laman and Lemuel complained about the impossibility of their task because of Laban and his “fifty”:

“And after the angel had departed, Laman and Lemuel again began to murmur, saying: How is it possible that the Lord will deliver Laban into our hands? Behold, he is a mighty man, and he can command fifty, yea, even he can slay fifty; then why not us?” (1 Nephi 3:31)

To modern readers this sounds like a small army indeed, but to those of the ancient Near East, the size of Laban’s garrison fits neatly into Old World customs. According to Dr. Hugh Nibley, a permanent garrison in a big city of Lehi’s day consisted of thirty to eighty men. In a recently discovered letter of Nebuchadnezzar (a contemporary of Lehi,) the king speaks of a garrison of “fifty”. In Babylonia, a platoon in the army consisted of fifty men. This permanent unit was always called a “fifty” just as Nephi spoke of “Laban with his fifty”.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

The Book of Mormon opens with Lehi prophesying to the unrighteous people at Jerusalem in about 600 BC. Modern research has since demonstrated that the sixth century BC was a time of unusual change and excitement. Some scholars have referred to the general era as an “Axial Period” in world history because it was a pivotal point around which history turns. Some of history’s greatest changes were taking place among the people and Lehi and his followers were right in the center of it. This was unknown, of course, in Joseph Smith’s own day.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

When Christ visited the Book of Mormon people in the ancient New World he gave a discourse that is nearly identical to the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. Critics claim that Joseph Smith simply plagiarized the New Testament sermon, however there are differences between what we find in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. For example, in Matthew 5:22 Christ said: “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”. In 3 Nephi 12:22 Christ said: “But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment”. The astute reader will notice that in 3 Nephi the words “without a cause” are absent. When we examine the earliest Greek copies of the New Testament –documents that were discovered after Joseph Smith had died –we find that the phrase “without a cause” is also generally absent. As Professor John Welch notes, the verse in 3 Nephi discourages all anger whereas the verse in Matthew permits justifiable anger. Some non-LDS scholars believe that “without a cause” was added to Matthew 5:22 during the translation process, while the Book of Mormon more accurately reflects the likely original intention of the passage. The fact that Joseph Smith got it right, when no scholars in his world would have been aware of the later Greek insertion shouldn’t be amazing –but it is.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind – Ether 2:3 in the Book of Mormon

In the Book of Mormon we find that the Jaredite word deseret means “honeybee”. Years ago, Dr. Hugh Nibley observed that the word deseret “or something very close to it, enjoyed a position of ritual prominence” among the early Egyptians and they associated the word with a symbol of the bee. He explained, “We know that the bee sign was not always written down, but in its place the picture of the Red Crown… If we do not know the original name of the bee, we do know the name of this Red Crown –the name it bore when it was substituted for the bee. The name was dsrt (the vowels are not known, but we can be sure they were all short”).

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt.  He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.

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From the Book: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith

by Michael R. Ash

Critics typically contend that Joseph Smith either invented the names in the Book of Mormon or borrowed them from his surroundings. The first name mentioned in the Nephite record is Nephi. We find this name in the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha are part of the Catholic collection of scriptures, but are not included in the Protestant scriptures such as the King James Version Bible. Whether Joseph has access to the Apocrypha in 1829 is unknown.

Sariah was Lehi’s faithful wife who endured so much tribulation during their journey through the Arabian Peninsula. Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick, who holds a PhD in Archaeology and Semitic Languages, believes that a likely Hebrew spelling of Sariah would be s’ryh and would be pronounced something like Sar-yah. The name s’ryh has been found on ancient Aramaic papyri in Egypt, dating to the time of Lehi, which was not discovered until the twentieth century. Although the language of the document is Aramaic, the name, it has been shown, is Hebrew. Non-Mormon scholars have translated this part of the papyri as “Sariah daughter of Hoshea son of Harman”.

Many critics have laughed at the Book of Mormon for using “Alma” as a masculine personal name. In the United States, Alma is typically a female name of Latin origin. Alma-mater, for example, means “nourishing mother” and was used during medieval times to refer to the Virgin Mary. In the late twentieth century, however, it was found that some ancient Near Eastern documents –such as letters from Bar Kokhba and clay tablets from Ebla –contained the male name “Alma”.

With the exception of Alma, the few times that the critics have mentioned Book of Mormon names has been to ridicule them as strange and obviously created by Joseph Smith. One critic wrote: “It required something of a genius, it must be confessed, to manufacture some of the names of the Book of Mormon… names that at least have a certain syllabic jingle, if they have no meaning”. As light is shed on all areas of Book of Mormon studies, however, we gain new support for the names found in the Nephite scripture.

Many Book of Mormon names, we find, have Near Eastern parallels, several of which are Egyptian. Dr. Hugh Nibley wrote: “It should be noted that archaeology has fully demonstrated that the Israelites, then as now, had not the slightest aversion to giving their children non-Jewish names, even when those names smacked of a pagan background. Recently discovered ancient manuscripts who that many Jews in the days of Lehi names their children after Egyptian hero kings of the past.

For a time, Mormon scholars were confused as to why the Book of Mormon does not include a single name containing the element of Baal, which is so common in the Old Testament. The recent discovery of the Elephantine papyrus from Egypt shows that Israelites eliminated all names with Baal elements during Lehi’s day. Of the over four hundred names among the Elephantine manuscripts, not one is compounded of Baal.

“It is no small feat,” writes Nibley, “simply to have picked a lot of strange and original names out of the air. But what shall we say of the man who was able to pick the right ones?”.

Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt. He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.

Julianne Dehlin Hatton  is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.

Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.