For many months now I have been working on a project involving the Book of Mormon with Daniel Bartholomew, which we will be unveiling in the near future. As part of that project, I have compiled an outline of the textual structure of the Book of Mormon. I looked for an existing outline, but couldn’t find anything extensive enough for my needs. I am making it available here for anyone interested (as a PDF document):
I compiled the outline as a way to help me understand the Book of Mormon better by identifying some of the organizational boundaries, voices, and structure of the text.
Many people more qualified than I have commented on why the war in Iraq has been such a hard slog. I know honest people who believe that the war was at best a terrible mistake and at worst an evil conspiracy. However, I do not believe that the war was a mistake. I still think it was the right course of action. I was in favor of the war before it began and I had no illusions at that time that it would be easy, short, or wildly successful.
Aside from the debate over the motivation and justification for the war, there has been plenty of criticism about how the war has been conducted. Certainly there have been plenty of mistakes and bad decisions. However, realistically there is no such thing as a strategy or plan that can guarantee victory from the outset. Enemies are not automatons whose reactions can be perfectly calculated, anticipated, and prepared for. They are intelligent, creative people who are unexpectedly inventive and cleaver.
Winning a war is in some ways like writing a computer program. No matter how well you think you know the parameters from the outset, it is an ongoing iterative process of constant adjustment, learning, refactoring, rethinking—and it usually takes longer than you expect.
I’ve been re-reading Richard Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling , and I just finished the chapter on the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon. When reading about the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, I recognized an interesting parallel to the early Norse and Anglo-Saxon origins of English Common Law that I had not noticed previously and thought I’d write a little about it.
The Classicist bent of our modern American education system often focuses on the real, but overemphasized contribution of the Greek and Roman civilizations to our modern legal system and government while unduly minimizing or ignoring the contribution from the medieval legal traditions of the Norse and Germanic cultures from which English Common law, and subsequently American law, developed. As a result, a number people have at least a cursory familiarity with the Athenian forum while far fewer are familiar with the Norse Thing or the Anglo-Saxon Folkmoot, or the later British Witenagemot.
The Anglo-Saxon folkmoot, like the Norse Thing, was a governing assembly consisting of the free members of the community or district. The folkmoot protected the people against anarchy and tribal feuding by mediating disputes and grievances according to the Common Law (Old English folcriht, literally “right of the people”) and in theory provided each free man a single vote, though like modern democracies it was often dominated by the more powerful, influential members of the community. Some assemblies had the power to elect chieftains and kings based on who they considered best for the community, regardless of blood relation to any current monarch.
The Folkmoot and Thing are the early precursors to our modern legislative assemblies and trials by jury. Later, the folkmoots developed into hundred courts, borough courts, and shire courts.
Lawsuits were heard before the folkmoot. The procedure was for a number of “oath-helpers” to testify of the innocence of the defendant, who himself made an oath of innocence. The word “Juror” comes from the Latin iurature, which means “swearer” or “oath maker.” The defendant had to secure a certain number of oath-helpers to establish his innocence . The number of oath-helpers was traditionally twelve, a number that has carried through to our modern juries. If he failed to secure enough oath-helpers, the defendant was judged guilty.
So, returning to my original thought, Richard Bushman’s biography shows that, understandably, there was enormous pressure on Joseph Smith to show the Gold Plates, which contained the ancient text that was being translated as The Book of Mormon, to others and prove their existence. Joseph was under strict heavenly command to show them to no one. As the translation of the Book of Mormon neared completion, however, he was permitted to show the plates to a few individuals who are known as the three witnesses and the eight witnesses. It occurred to me that the testimony of Joseph Smith plus those of the three witnesses and then the eight witnesses made a total of twelve testimonies to the real existence of the plates. In a sense Joseph plus the other eleven witnesses filled the ancient role of the twelve Anglo-Saxon oath-helpers needed to establish the fact of their existence. In this way the witnesses of the Book of Mormon fit into a deep rooted cultural tradition that still wields power in our society.
(Unrelated trivia for The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fans: The Entmoot attended by Merry and Pippin with Treebeard in “The Two Towers” is based on the Anglo-Saxon Folkmoot; the Wizengamot, or high court of wizards of which Albus Dumbledore is the head in the Harry Potter books, is based upon the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot—Old English witan means “wise man”)
