Discovery in the Book of Mormon

ROUGH DRAFT--SEVERAL PAGES LACKING

Immersed in Robert Alter's books, which explore literary themes in the Hebrew Bible, I wrote the following little essay in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. I reproduce the sea-battered draft here, with some cosmetic changes. A second version(s), boasting new sails, and perhaps bettered, will appear in other posts.

Discovery and devastation march through the pages of the Book of Mormon. The graphic descriptions of the annihilation of entire cultures in the book remind the reader that for the Nephites, America, “the land of promise, choice above all other lands,” ever remained a mystery and a terror. To enter America was to be swallowed up in a labyrinth where, wanderers, “our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, in a strange land.” To discover America is to be separated, as it were in dream, from one’s own proper identity, lost, and, horribly enough, eventually forgotten, as in the case of the people of Zarahemla (or Mulekites), “whose language had become corrupted” and culture shivered and forgotten. In this state approaching disintegration, the Mulekites were ”discovered” by an isolated band of Nephites, themselves lost in the breadth and the sweep of the continent, fleeing the destruction of their own homes in the land southward. The secret of America lay to the north; northward coursed the dawn of discovery.

Amaleki, the Nephite record keeper, recounts how Mosiah, fleeing north with his refugee group “discovered a people who were called the people of Zarahemla. Now, there was great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla; and also Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly, because the Lord had sent the people of Mosiah with the plates of brass which contained the record of the Jews.

As we continue to read, Mosiah further “discovered that the people of Zarahemla came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon."

"At the time that Mosiah discovered them, they had become exceedingly numerous. Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serious contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them.

And it came to pass in the days of Mosiah, there was a large stone brought unto him with engravings on it; and he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God. And they gave an account of one Coriantumr, and the slain of his people. And Coriantumr was discovered by the people of Zarahemla; and he dwelt with them for the space of nine moons.  . .

And his first parents came out from the tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people; and the severity of the Lord fell upon them according to his judgments, which are just; and their bones lay scattered in the land northward."

In the Amaleki certain key terms, motifs, and themes appear, which also resurface later in the artfully constructed narratives of Mosiah, Alma, and Mormon. Martin Buber defines a key-word (Leitwort) as:

"A word or word-root that recurs significantly in a text, in a continuum of texts, or in a configuration of texts: by following these repetitions, one is able to decipher or grasp a meaning of the text, or at any rate, the meaning will be revealed more strikingly. The repetition, as we have said, need not be merely of the word itself but also of the word-root in fact, the very difference of words can often intensify the dynamic action of the repetition."


The Book of Mormon narrative is also rich in motif. Robert Alter describes a motif as:

"A concrete image, sensory quality, action, or object" that "recurs through a particular narrative," but "has no meaning in itself without the defining context of the narrative; it may be incipiently symbolic or instead primarily a means of giving formal coherence to a narrtive."

Motifs help to bind disparate, even unrelated, events in the narrative to a common theme. Amaleki emphasizes plates, records, swords, bones--all these, hard, cold, ringing, lifeless objects which survive man's own brief flowering, symbolized by the nine moons which terminate the existence of an entire culture. Plates, stones, towers; all reflect coldly, moonlike, lurid. The sun, itself extinguished, hides his faces from "a lost and a fallen people" caught in the chill void on the dark side of the earth.

The key words of language and discovery, then, inform Amaleki's concise historical narrative, and indeed are strengthened by the use of two important verbs, to interpret and to confound language. Interpretation of ancient records, like that found upon the "large stone," provides additional waves of discovery to shock and to terrify the Nephite explorers, being the "account of one Coriantumr and the slain of his people." "One Coriantumr"--only one, a certain strange fellow named Coriantumr, king no longer, kingdom defunct.

The theme of discovery plays itself out to envelop the picture as follows: The sense of joy and brotherhood shared by Nephites and the people of Zarahemla accompanies a recital of sorrows, for the people discovered by Mosiah is an illiterate people, atheistic, corrupt, and decimated by internecine war. Mosiah recovers this lost people through a program of education, focusing on written language and the study of ancient records.

Now another discovery is made. An ancient record that nobody can read is brought to the king, who learns that it too speaks of a confounding of languages, a journey to America, and to another people caught in the American labyrinth and ground to powder. The very appearance of the stone reveals that much. Yet Mosiah. . .

[temporary gap--draft only--Standing water, proceed with caution. . . 

according to Amaleki's pattern of crediting discovery by a descending rule of ethnocentricity, was discovered by the people of Zarahemla. This discovery of a single man represents the final moment of a people never to be recovered--beyond discovery--by a genius like Mosiah; an ultimate gestation period that bears only bones, ashes, and stones.

"One Coriantumr," to be sure, has fathers and first parents, but no progeny, for as Amaleki explains, "the severity of the Lord fell upon them, according to his judgments which are just." And then, a final statement which reveals the deepest level of discovery, one of wrenching sorrow: "and their bones lay scattered in the land northward."

Coriantumr knows nine silent months with a people fresh to a brave new world--one that had wonderful people in it, but now "their bones lay scattered," and that is all. The Amaleki calls to mind Psalm 53: "The is none that doeth good, no not one." "There were they in great fear." "God hath scattered the bones." "God hath despised them."

In the story of Mosiah discovery spells desolation. Desolation, in fact, is the name given in the Book of Mormon to the land far to the north of Zarahemla, "the land which had been peopled and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken [a grim phrase], which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla, it being the place of their first landing [they got out quick]. Far from being a pristine and a virgin country in 600 B.C., the newcomers found the scene so terrifying that they plunged quickly southward--southward into cultural annihilation. Southward, away from stones, plates, records, and the still warm bones. (The narrative recalls the Viking discovery of a shipwreck, even as they were in the act of "discovering" America.)

Amaleki completes the record of the small plates of Nephi,  (which represents the end of an epoch in Nephite history--a wipeout), by speaking of an expedition sent from Zarahemla to recover, or rediscover, the lost Nephite homeland in Lehi-Nephi in the deep southward:

"Wherefore, they went up into the wilderness. And their leader being a strong and might man, and a stiffnecked man [like "one Coriantumr"?], wherefore he caused a contention among them; and they were all slain, save fifty, in the wilderness [the labyrinth], and they returned again to the land of Zarahemla. And it came to pass that they also took others to a considerable number, and took their journey again[!] into the wilderness. And I, Amaleki, had a brother, who also went with them; and I have not since known concerning them. And I am about to lie down in my grave."

As this mini-episode indicates, the first 400 years of Nephite history terminates on a sad note. Fifty bloodstained men struggling back to Zarahema, brother separated from brother, lost from knowledge, simply dropping out of exitence, as far as the record is concerned, in the terror of the Americas.

Three generations have passed and brother yearns for brother. Both the Nephites at Zarahemla and the Nephites at Lehi-Nephi, separated by an uncharted distance, have sent out small expeditions 'not a map-making people, have sent out small expeditions each intent on finding the other. small-half-hearted. The narrative of the Book of Mosiah (the grandson of the great discoverer of Zarahemla), abridged, edited, and shaped by Mormon centuries later, begins with the expedition sent to Zarahemla under the direction of one Ammon and his three brothers. The four men upon arrival in the land of Nephi are surrounded, taken, bound, and thrust into prison by order of the king, Limhi. After two days, the four brothers stand before Limhi, who commands them to reveal their mysterious identity under penalty of death. Ammon, as spokesman, announces his name, genealogy, origin, and the purpose of the expedition, whereupon Limhi and all his people rejoice, for they dwell on the verge of extinction and are about to slip back into the leveling and eliminating forces of the continent.

This whole episode may be called a type-scene for it clearly recalls another Ammon, son of Mosiah himself, who after venturing forth to the same country with his three brothers some years later, is taken, bound, and granted audience before the Lamanite king. In this latter instance, however, Ammon does not reveal his true identity, a point that bears upon the denouement of the recital. Limhi caused Ammon to read the history of his own people and explains to him the present exigency:

Now, as soon as Ammon had read the record, the king inquired of him to know if he could interpret languages, and Ammon told him that he could not.

And the king said unto him: Being grieved for the afflictions of my people I caused that forty and three of my people should take a journey into the wilderness [reversal of first doomed journey: repentance], that thereby they might find the land of Zarahemla, that we might appeal unto our brethren to deliver us out of bondage.

And they were lost in the wilderness for the space of many days, yet they were diligent, and found not the land of Zarahemla but returned to this land, having traveled in a land among many waters, having discovered a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind, having discovered a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel.

And for a testimony that the things that they had said are true they have brought twenty-four plates which are filled with engravings, and they are of pure gold. And behold, also they have brought breastplates, which are large, and they are of [cold, resounding] brass and of copper, and are perfectly sound. And again, they have brought swords, the hints thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no on in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates.

Therefore I said unto thee: Canst thou translate?"

For: "I am desirous to know the cause of their destruction."

The venture into the wilderness was a dismal one, and the harbinger of fear. The group does not find Zarahemla, but rather loses itself in both space and in time, for the "space" of many days. Mormon, the narrator, perhaps for reasons of thematic emphasis retells the story in a later section of Mosiah, and in so doing plays again upon the language and irony of finding and losing in the dreadful game of discovery. The grand terror of the story is not indeed in the revelation of a land covered with bones and the skeletal remains of buildings, but in the mistaking of this desolation for the blithely abandoned sister-city Zarahemla, an error attributable to an obvious paranoia, not to mention a besetting loss of cultural memory--no one remember Coriantumr or marvelous translation or the testimony of the stone.

Now king Limhi had send, previous to the coming of Ammon, a small number of men to search for the land of Zarahemla, but they could not find it, and they were lost in the wilderness. Nevertheless, they did find a land which had been people yea, a land which was covered with dry bones; yea, a land which had been destroyed and they, having supposed it to be the land of Zarahemla, returned to the land of Nephi, having arrived in the borders of the land not many days before the coming of Ammon, And they brought a record with them, even a record of the people whose bones they had found; and it was engraven on plates of ore. And now Limhi was again filled with joy [type=scene: a king brought records in an unknown language] on learning form the mouth of Ammon that king Mosiah had a gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engraving such engravings. yea, and Ammon also did rejoice [the rejoicing Ammon]

The expedition returns to Lehi-Nephi bearing both the 24 plates and the sad tale of the devastation of Zarahemla. (The found 24 plates calls to mind the lost 24 daughters of the Lamanites in the previous chapter; and the 43 searchers for Zarahemla.) Although, not long afterward Ammon arrives to announce that Zarahemla yet survives in the middle of America, surrounded by a world of pain, a dread question remains; Who were the victims of the land northward? What was the cause of their destruction. It is the anxiousness and fear of a small and time-worn race on the border of the wilderness that impels the asking of such a question. God himself provides the answer and it is a dire one. (See Alma 37; be careful what you ask, but also ask the right question).

And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye keep them, that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works, or the secret works of those people who have been destroyed, may be made manifest unto this people; yea, all their murders, and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people; yea, and that ye preserve these interpreters.

For behold, the Lord saw that his people began to work in darkness, yea, work secret murders and abominations; therefore the Lord said, if they did not repent they should be destroyed from off the face of the earth.

And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.

And now, my son, these interpreters were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled, which he spake, saying: I will bring forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their secret works and their abominations; and except they repent I will destroy them from off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter possess the land.

And now, my son, we see that they did not repent; therefore they have been destroyed, and thus far the word of God has been fulfilled; yea, their secret abominations have been brought out of darkness and made known unto us.

. . . . (Draft Only)

.......but the cessation of history and the wreckage of an entire society on the dark side of the earth: America. Through Mosiah all readers become wonderful seers and discoverers of hidden knowledge Yet as the narrator points out repeatedly whole cultures have been demolished leaving only stones, bones, and plates, hard lifeless testimonies of dashed hopes and bon vivre. These alone are preserved that all people should learn a tale of iniquity, abomination, and total loss.

The glorious discovery of America is ever a record of genocide. And genocide is ever a record of the severity of the judgments in in other words the decisions of the Lord, which are just. To discover America is to be translated instantaneously as it were to the day of judgment, Every stage of Nephite history unravels another chapter in the judgment day of the Lord.

Another example of this discovers itself in the history of Ammonihah, built far from the main center of Zarahemla, by the borders of the land, in order to foster a sense of independence of thought, pride, and self-security. Ammonihah was lost in a single moment of pain, when

"every living soul of the Ammonihahites was destroyed, and also their great city, which they said God could not destroy, because of its greatness. But behold, in one day it was left desolate; and the carcasses were mangled by dogs and wild beasts of the wilderness. Nevertheless, after many days their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering, And now so great was the scent thereof that the people did not go in to possess the land of Ammonihah for many years. And it was called Desolation."

Ammonihah represents a mini-Desolation, a reminder in miniature that widespread destruction of the people in the north, is a constant in the American experience.

EPISODE

Moroni takes his Jaredite account from "the twenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the book of Ether," Coriantumr enters the scene, scion of ancient warrior kings, “having studied himself in all the arts of war,” “for there were many who rose up, who were mighty men, and sought to destroy Coriantumr by their secret plans of wickedness.” The sun trembles at the horizon, and sets in blood.

And so great and lasting had been the war, and so long had been the scene of bloodshed and carnage, that the whole face of the land was covered with the bodies of the dead. And so swift and speedy was the war that there was none left to bury the dead, but they did march forth from the shedding of blood to the shedding of blood, leaving the bodies of both men, women, and children strewed upon the face of the land, to be a prey to the worms of the flesh. And the scent thereof went forth upon the face of the land, even upon all the face of the land; wherefore the people became troubled by day and by night, because of the scent thereof.

Was the war great and lasting or was it swift and speedy? It was as deep and as great as the very foundations of culture; it was swift to cut down even the most tender plants.

Troubled by day and by night, there came, finally, nights wherein men “were drunken with anger, even as a man is drunken with wine.” Then a dawn, by which “all had fallen by the sword,” except Corintumr and the Heraclean Shiz. But

Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little [the nine moon rest would come later], he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz. . . that Coriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life.

Silver, gold, iron, copper, and the luminous bones glittered in the dawn, as the heaps of earth fell back in shadow. The whole face of the land was covered with a shroud.

Discovery bespeaks a search for that which is lost or hidden.  The Book of Mormon employs various words and expressions to clarify the message of discovery: to discover, to find, to search, to bring to light, to reveal. The greatest explorers of the Book of Mormon are the men of light, the seers, for the most significant findings in Nephite history are those of ancient records like the twenty-four gold places and the Jaredite stele. The discovery of a physical object or land is but prelude to the great act of decipherment., the interpretation of the discovery of the ancient record. To interpret a record by the power of God is to discover deeply a people, to reveal them and to come to know them heart to heart. It is to rejoice and to drink of dark sorry. Seers, in this world, see what they would not, yet in sight there is joy. The records of lost cultures proved an indispensable man and a guide for the Nephites by which they could negotiate the new world in which they found themselves.

The finding of the record of the Jaredites comes at the most crucial point in Nephite history—they are split—then split again—even lost.

The reoot of the verb discover is cover. A cover is a barrier to knowledge, and a closing of a door, the end of history. Has covered the eyes of the seers.

The narratives speak of many coverings

And who thus have no lasting cover for their sin, and whose bones lay scattered on the open face of the land. That face wears a cruel and lonesome countenance, as if it were the reflection of the moon..

DRAFT ONLY--MORE PAGES TOMORROW