Returning to the Book of Mormon itself, 1 Nephi 14 and 15 are fairly forgettable. Fourteen contains a vague pro-Mormon conditional prophesy, saying that if the Gentiles in the "promised land" (read: "Americans") believe in the Book of Mormon, things will go well for them, and if not they'll face some unspecified disaster. The only notable thing about this prophesy is that it stands out with its very vagueness. All the other prophesies we've seen so far in the Book of Mormon have been excruciatingly specific and explicit, to the point of plagiarizing the Gospels they were supposed to foreshadow. However, the 1 Nephi 14 prophesy is instead incredibly vague. Why the difference? It's not like God has ever had any trouble looking forward in time past any particular point, inclusive of 1830 AD...but Joseph Smith would have understandably had a lot more difficulty writing accurate "prophesies" about events after his time than events before it that were recorded by other authors he could easily rip off. Another curiosity of this chapter is that Nephi says he received visions of the end times but was forbidden to write them down--because they were exactly the same as the visions which would be written by John in Revelation. While I applaud Smith's restraint in not flat out plagiarizing an entire book of the Bible, I'm not really sure that his explanation for why Nephi did it, in character, really makes sense. There are, in the Bible, a number of visions of the end times. Revelation is most famous, but there's also passages of Daniel and Ezekiel. None of these visions is exactly like the others: each comes from a different perspective and adds different information to our incomplete understanding of the end times. In fact, a cursory examination of scriptures shows that none of the visions given in scripture is exactly like the others. In other words, prophets, their visions, prophesies, and analogies are all unique. So, if the same God who gave all of these unique visions is behind the end-times vision Nephi received, why is it a carbon-copy of the one given to John in Revelation? The best explanation for "God" in the Book of Mormon being suddenly unable to come up with original material seems, to me, that it wasn't our endlessly creative God at all but Joseph Smith borrowing heavily from what was familiar to him (the Bible, having grown up in the "burned over district" of Bible-thumping preachers) rather than taking the risk of trying to invent something original.
As for 1 Nephi 15, it is a chapter which really should have been omitted altogether. All the chapter does is rehash the earlier explanation of the olive-tree metaphor (originally by Paul, ripped off by Smith and shoved down the throat of his character Lehi). The reason for the rehash is simple: the original description occurred in a vision Nephi alone saw and his brothers were understandably curious about it. A skilled writer, when coming to this situation (whether in fiction or in real life) would summarize rather than repeat an earlier explanation (saying simply "Nephi told his brothers what the angel/Spirit had told him in the vision"). The Bible contains examples of this, summarizing the actions of the shepherds rather than repeating descriptions of their encounter with the angels at Christ's birth (Luke 2:17-19). However, as anyone who's been following these posts knows, Joseph Smith is about the furthest thing from a skilled writer as you can get. So, naturally, rather than summarizing as he should, Smith dives into a pointless and frustrating rehash, wasting one of his chapters and however many minutes of our lives it takes us to read it.
Really, it's not until 1 Nephi 16 when things get interesting again. Lehi and his family finally pack up and move out of the Valley of Lemuel (so named by the Book of Mormon: the only relation to known real geography is that it's said to be three-days journey from Jerusalem on the Red Sea). They journey through the wilderness southeastward "many days," eventually (as per chapter 17) winding up on an eastward track to the sea which takes them eight years to accomplish. However, two important things are laid out at the start of the journey. The first is that the daughters of Ishmael (the object of Nephi's second fetch quest) are parceled out in marriage to Nephi, his brothers, and Zoram--the servant Nephi had to talk into joining the family because he witnessed the god-commanded, cold-blooded murder of his master. Ishmael's sons either already have wives who aren't mentioned at all or they just aren't important enough to God, or maybe (more likely) Smith forgot about them (life sucks when you're part of a plot device of a bad author).
The second thing is that Lehi discovers the Liahona outside his tent door the morning he is to leave. The Liahona (not so named in the text, though apparently it's given a name later in the book), in case you're wondering, is a magical compass. The later description in Alma 37:38 (the origin of the name "Liahona") explicitly says it's a compass. It's described in 1 Nephi 16 as a round brass ball of "curious workmanship" containing two "spindles" suspended within, and also some writing. One of the "spindles" points the direction the party should travel, the other spindle isn't ever mentioned again. Just from the description alone, it sounds like a compass. Compasses were not invented at all until four or five hundred years later in China, and they would not find their way to this part of the world for more than a thousand years. However, the Liahona is supposedly given miraculously by God, so this shouldn't be an issue. So, while I have to say the presence of the compass is, given the circumstances, not entirely implausible, I have to ask: why a compass? God, in the Bible, guides many travelers by many means (wise men by a star, Moses and the Israelites by a pillar of cloud by day, and fire by night), but never a compass. Certainly, God can do whatever he wants, and if He wanted to use a compass in this instance, that's perfectly fine. However, I have to point out that a compass also fits extremely well with the idea of Smith as the author. Smith was a 19th Century man, growing up in a human culture spoiled by hundreds of years of reliance on magnetic compasses for navigation (such that the contemporary idea of escaped slaves "following the Drinking Gourd" and actually using the stars for navigation--like humans had before the invention of the compass--was actually considered unusual and creative). A compass would be his logical choice for guiding a character, possibly to the point of failing to realize that the character should be able to guide himself by other means without a compass. This was a mistake made by Brian Jacques in his otherwise-excellent book Mariel of Redwall, wherein characters living in a medieval fantasy setting (where navigating by the stars should be common knowledge among travelers and sailors) were forced to rely on a primitive magnetic compass for navigation, even in conditions where other, more familiar means would have been available to them. I will be watching this compass closely, to see if it's used in a way that's consistent with people living at the time (who would have used it as a divine supplement to their own navigational knowledge using the stars, sun, and landmarks) or in a way that's consistent with more modern people (who are totally reliant on their compass and pathetically helpless without it).
That being said, it should again be noted that the Liahona is a magic compass. It apparently relays directions from God, but it does so "according to the faith and diligence" the characters pay to it. That is, it's directions are relative. This is in keeping with the overall theme of the Book of Mormon, when it comes to knowing truth (as explored in the previous post): that truth can only be found via direct, subjective revelation from God and that receiving this revelation is entirely dependent on the inquirer's ability to believe hard enough. It's a sort of circular logic where believing something is true magically grants you proof that it is so (why this doesn't work with things that are patently untrue is never explained), and it's the same magic that fuels the little compass. It's also a magic that's totally absent from the Bible. In the Bible, the guidance of God is objective--as objective as God Himself. The cloud that guided the Israelites and Moses was just as thick during the day and just as bright during the night whether the Israelites were giving it due "faith and diligence" or not (mostly not). The star that guided the wise men was equally visible to them and to skeptics (note that Herod doesn't ask the wise men to show him the star--indicating he can't see it--but when they first saw it--indicating he can see it).
Following these things, Lehi and his family pack up and head out into the wilderness. Though they bring a lot of supplies according to verse 11, they are soon forced to live off the land. This is accomplished by Nephi, his brothers, and the sons of Ishmael hunting beasts using their bows and slings (1 Nephi 16:14-15). However, a problem arises. After many days of traveling and hunting in this fashion, Nephi breaks his bow. Because of this, no one gets any food and Nephi's brothers Laman and Lemuel (Sam having been forgotten by the narrative) and the sons of Ishmael complain as starvation sets in for the whole camp. ...At this point, the appropriate link is to the TVTropes page for Fridge Logic--the bits of internal consistency screw ups that the reader may brush over at the moment but which, on second thought, cause him to realize your entire story makes no sense at all. The problem is this: in verses 14-15 we have about half a dozen men (4 sons of Lehi and at least two sons of Ishmael--assuming Zoram did no hunting) who are successfully providing food for the entire party by hunting game with their bows and slings. Three verses later the entire party is on the verge of starvation because one hunter broke his bow. How did all of the other five hunters suddenly become incapable of providing food for themselves and their families? What happened to Nephi's sling, and why doesn't anybody know how to make a basic snare?
Fortunately, Smith is not totally oblivious to the gaping plot hole in his story here. Unfortunately, his solution makes things worse. The reason the other five (minimum) hunters were reduced to starvation by the loss of Nephi's bow was this: their bows had "lost their springs" (1 Nephi 16:21, direct quote). Their bows had lost their springs?
Let's get one thing straight. While a bow is, in the technical language of physical mechanics, considered a spring, it does not have a spring. If your bow has a spring, you're doing archery wrong. Since bows do not have springs, they cannot, of course lose springs and thereby be rendered inoperable. Some online Mormon apologists have proposed that what the Book of Mormon really means is that their bows had lost their springiness, but this also makes no sense. There is no way to remove the inherent spring-like properties of a bow, short of breaking it. Just to be sure on this one, I consulted with the archery department where I worked, asking about possible condition issues with wooden longbows (which is the closest to what would have been used by Bronze Age Hebrews, like in the Book of Mormon). While such bows can suffer defects in the bowstring due to degradation over time (which can be fixed by replacing or rewinding the bowstring) or warping of the limbs due to improper storage (which would cause tension problems, but not a loss of springiness or springs), there is no defect or condition which could be accurately described as the bows "losing their springs." The condition the Book of Mormon describes is totally impossible and completely incorrect.
Joseph Smith, however, did not have an archery department to consult and evidently (like other 19th Century Americans) knew next to nothing about bows. He may well have thought that bows could spontaneously "lose their springs" or that his audience could be duped into believing it was so, thus covering over the gaping hole in his logic. However, for anyone who knows bows, the impossible malfunction only makes the hole bigger still. Even if you don't know enough about bows to realize Smith is making stuff up, you surely have the intelligence to ask what happened to all those slings from a few verses ago and why nobody in this story ever heard of a snare or other weapon (like spears, also used in hunting). The answers to these questions are never addressed in the text, but perhaps these animals could magically only be killed by ranged weapons and maybe the slings mentioned earlier had lost their springs as well.
All this would be bad enough, but unfortunately Smith is just getting started. Even more glaring than the plot hole of how the loss of Nephi's bow managed to reduce half a dozen formerly-competent hunters to starvation is the madness that is Nephi's bow itself. You see, Nephi's bow is explicitly said to be made of "fine steel." A large number of problems arise. The first is that forging steel was generally beyond the capabilities of Bronze Age cultures, like the Hebrews around 600 BC (which is when Nephi supposedly lived). Examples of ancient steel are very rare and steel metallurgy is nowhere mentioned in the Bible (bronze was the predominant metal, as shown by the special emphasis given to materials made of iron--which, previous to the introduction of steel centuries later--was the hardest known metal). A common defense is that the Bible does, in fact, mention steel several times...but in truth only the dated KJV mentions steel, and this is due to a mistranslation of the word nuchushtan. All other translations correctly render the word "bronze." Apologists then try to apply this solution to the Book of Mormon, but in doing so they run into flat contradiction of the Book of Mormon's self-description as "the most correct" book--for if the Book of Mormon mistranslates the word for "bronze" as "steel," then logically books that translate the word correctly (such as any modern Bible translation) are more correct! Furthermore, the official descriptions of how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon character-by-character with divine inspiration completely rule out the possibility of translation error--so either the bow was really made of steel or Smith is a fraud.
This brings us to the question of whether or not steel (or bronze) is a suitable material for making a bow. The answer is no, on both counts. It's true that spring steel can be used to make a good crossbow, and that alloys of bronze with shape memory (allowing them to "spring back" rather than deforming) would eventually be developed, neither of these things existed in Nephi's time. Apologists have argued long and hard that the presence of ancient iron (both forged and meteoric) and one-off articles of low-quality steel equals the availability of spring steel in sufficient quantities that people would start making bows out of it--but the truth is that it is long hard road from haphazardly producing a little steel here and there to producing quality spring steel you can make a bow out of. It is also a road that leaves a clear archaeological record (if not in the steel articles themselves, at least in the forges and facilities required to make them, and the primary sources that would mention them). The simple fact is that the metallurgy necessary to make a practical steel or bronze bow in 600 BC simply did not exist. A Mormon apologist may make a last-ditch defense by saying it is hypocritical for me, a Bible believer, to criticize the Book of Mormon for its one reference to a steel bow when the Bible has three references to steel (or bronze) bows, but an examination of the text deflates this argument. In the Bible, all three references to impractical metal bows are poetic--they are not intended to describe any real or even realistic weapon. However, in the Book of Mormon, the steel bow of Nephi is paraded as a historical fact in a historical narrative: so either he had a real, genuine steel bow or--as that proves implausible--the Book of Mormon is lying to us.
There is, of course, a very plausible explanation for why the Book of Mormon would contain a steel bow, even if it were untrue. Smith would no doubt have thought the idea sounded awe-inspiring and (as it appears three times in the KJV of the Bible, which Smith would have been familiar with) Biblical. He would have therefore been certain to include it, adding awesome-but-impractical weapons to an inventory that already contains impractical-but-awesome gold and brass books. It is in total keeping with his style as a writer.
As for 1 Nephi 15, it is a chapter which really should have been omitted altogether. All the chapter does is rehash the earlier explanation of the olive-tree metaphor (originally by Paul, ripped off by Smith and shoved down the throat of his character Lehi). The reason for the rehash is simple: the original description occurred in a vision Nephi alone saw and his brothers were understandably curious about it. A skilled writer, when coming to this situation (whether in fiction or in real life) would summarize rather than repeat an earlier explanation (saying simply "Nephi told his brothers what the angel/Spirit had told him in the vision"). The Bible contains examples of this, summarizing the actions of the shepherds rather than repeating descriptions of their encounter with the angels at Christ's birth (Luke 2:17-19). However, as anyone who's been following these posts knows, Joseph Smith is about the furthest thing from a skilled writer as you can get. So, naturally, rather than summarizing as he should, Smith dives into a pointless and frustrating rehash, wasting one of his chapters and however many minutes of our lives it takes us to read it.
Really, it's not until 1 Nephi 16 when things get interesting again. Lehi and his family finally pack up and move out of the Valley of Lemuel (so named by the Book of Mormon: the only relation to known real geography is that it's said to be three-days journey from Jerusalem on the Red Sea). They journey through the wilderness southeastward "many days," eventually (as per chapter 17) winding up on an eastward track to the sea which takes them eight years to accomplish. However, two important things are laid out at the start of the journey. The first is that the daughters of Ishmael (the object of Nephi's second fetch quest) are parceled out in marriage to Nephi, his brothers, and Zoram--the servant Nephi had to talk into joining the family because he witnessed the god-commanded, cold-blooded murder of his master. Ishmael's sons either already have wives who aren't mentioned at all or they just aren't important enough to God, or maybe (more likely) Smith forgot about them (life sucks when you're part of a plot device of a bad author).
The second thing is that Lehi discovers the Liahona outside his tent door the morning he is to leave. The Liahona (not so named in the text, though apparently it's given a name later in the book), in case you're wondering, is a magical compass. The later description in Alma 37:38 (the origin of the name "Liahona") explicitly says it's a compass. It's described in 1 Nephi 16 as a round brass ball of "curious workmanship" containing two "spindles" suspended within, and also some writing. One of the "spindles" points the direction the party should travel, the other spindle isn't ever mentioned again. Just from the description alone, it sounds like a compass. Compasses were not invented at all until four or five hundred years later in China, and they would not find their way to this part of the world for more than a thousand years. However, the Liahona is supposedly given miraculously by God, so this shouldn't be an issue. So, while I have to say the presence of the compass is, given the circumstances, not entirely implausible, I have to ask: why a compass? God, in the Bible, guides many travelers by many means (wise men by a star, Moses and the Israelites by a pillar of cloud by day, and fire by night), but never a compass. Certainly, God can do whatever he wants, and if He wanted to use a compass in this instance, that's perfectly fine. However, I have to point out that a compass also fits extremely well with the idea of Smith as the author. Smith was a 19th Century man, growing up in a human culture spoiled by hundreds of years of reliance on magnetic compasses for navigation (such that the contemporary idea of escaped slaves "following the Drinking Gourd" and actually using the stars for navigation--like humans had before the invention of the compass--was actually considered unusual and creative). A compass would be his logical choice for guiding a character, possibly to the point of failing to realize that the character should be able to guide himself by other means without a compass. This was a mistake made by Brian Jacques in his otherwise-excellent book Mariel of Redwall, wherein characters living in a medieval fantasy setting (where navigating by the stars should be common knowledge among travelers and sailors) were forced to rely on a primitive magnetic compass for navigation, even in conditions where other, more familiar means would have been available to them. I will be watching this compass closely, to see if it's used in a way that's consistent with people living at the time (who would have used it as a divine supplement to their own navigational knowledge using the stars, sun, and landmarks) or in a way that's consistent with more modern people (who are totally reliant on their compass and pathetically helpless without it).
That being said, it should again be noted that the Liahona is a magic compass. It apparently relays directions from God, but it does so "according to the faith and diligence" the characters pay to it. That is, it's directions are relative. This is in keeping with the overall theme of the Book of Mormon, when it comes to knowing truth (as explored in the previous post): that truth can only be found via direct, subjective revelation from God and that receiving this revelation is entirely dependent on the inquirer's ability to believe hard enough. It's a sort of circular logic where believing something is true magically grants you proof that it is so (why this doesn't work with things that are patently untrue is never explained), and it's the same magic that fuels the little compass. It's also a magic that's totally absent from the Bible. In the Bible, the guidance of God is objective--as objective as God Himself. The cloud that guided the Israelites and Moses was just as thick during the day and just as bright during the night whether the Israelites were giving it due "faith and diligence" or not (mostly not). The star that guided the wise men was equally visible to them and to skeptics (note that Herod doesn't ask the wise men to show him the star--indicating he can't see it--but when they first saw it--indicating he can see it).
Following these things, Lehi and his family pack up and head out into the wilderness. Though they bring a lot of supplies according to verse 11, they are soon forced to live off the land. This is accomplished by Nephi, his brothers, and the sons of Ishmael hunting beasts using their bows and slings (1 Nephi 16:14-15). However, a problem arises. After many days of traveling and hunting in this fashion, Nephi breaks his bow. Because of this, no one gets any food and Nephi's brothers Laman and Lemuel (Sam having been forgotten by the narrative) and the sons of Ishmael complain as starvation sets in for the whole camp. ...At this point, the appropriate link is to the TVTropes page for Fridge Logic--the bits of internal consistency screw ups that the reader may brush over at the moment but which, on second thought, cause him to realize your entire story makes no sense at all. The problem is this: in verses 14-15 we have about half a dozen men (4 sons of Lehi and at least two sons of Ishmael--assuming Zoram did no hunting) who are successfully providing food for the entire party by hunting game with their bows and slings. Three verses later the entire party is on the verge of starvation because one hunter broke his bow. How did all of the other five hunters suddenly become incapable of providing food for themselves and their families? What happened to Nephi's sling, and why doesn't anybody know how to make a basic snare?
Fortunately, Smith is not totally oblivious to the gaping plot hole in his story here. Unfortunately, his solution makes things worse. The reason the other five (minimum) hunters were reduced to starvation by the loss of Nephi's bow was this: their bows had "lost their springs" (1 Nephi 16:21, direct quote). Their bows had lost their springs?
Let's get one thing straight. While a bow is, in the technical language of physical mechanics, considered a spring, it does not have a spring. If your bow has a spring, you're doing archery wrong. Since bows do not have springs, they cannot, of course lose springs and thereby be rendered inoperable. Some online Mormon apologists have proposed that what the Book of Mormon really means is that their bows had lost their springiness, but this also makes no sense. There is no way to remove the inherent spring-like properties of a bow, short of breaking it. Just to be sure on this one, I consulted with the archery department where I worked, asking about possible condition issues with wooden longbows (which is the closest to what would have been used by Bronze Age Hebrews, like in the Book of Mormon). While such bows can suffer defects in the bowstring due to degradation over time (which can be fixed by replacing or rewinding the bowstring) or warping of the limbs due to improper storage (which would cause tension problems, but not a loss of springiness or springs), there is no defect or condition which could be accurately described as the bows "losing their springs." The condition the Book of Mormon describes is totally impossible and completely incorrect.
Joseph Smith, however, did not have an archery department to consult and evidently (like other 19th Century Americans) knew next to nothing about bows. He may well have thought that bows could spontaneously "lose their springs" or that his audience could be duped into believing it was so, thus covering over the gaping hole in his logic. However, for anyone who knows bows, the impossible malfunction only makes the hole bigger still. Even if you don't know enough about bows to realize Smith is making stuff up, you surely have the intelligence to ask what happened to all those slings from a few verses ago and why nobody in this story ever heard of a snare or other weapon (like spears, also used in hunting). The answers to these questions are never addressed in the text, but perhaps these animals could magically only be killed by ranged weapons and maybe the slings mentioned earlier had lost their springs as well.
All this would be bad enough, but unfortunately Smith is just getting started. Even more glaring than the plot hole of how the loss of Nephi's bow managed to reduce half a dozen formerly-competent hunters to starvation is the madness that is Nephi's bow itself. You see, Nephi's bow is explicitly said to be made of "fine steel." A large number of problems arise. The first is that forging steel was generally beyond the capabilities of Bronze Age cultures, like the Hebrews around 600 BC (which is when Nephi supposedly lived). Examples of ancient steel are very rare and steel metallurgy is nowhere mentioned in the Bible (bronze was the predominant metal, as shown by the special emphasis given to materials made of iron--which, previous to the introduction of steel centuries later--was the hardest known metal). A common defense is that the Bible does, in fact, mention steel several times...but in truth only the dated KJV mentions steel, and this is due to a mistranslation of the word nuchushtan. All other translations correctly render the word "bronze." Apologists then try to apply this solution to the Book of Mormon, but in doing so they run into flat contradiction of the Book of Mormon's self-description as "the most correct" book--for if the Book of Mormon mistranslates the word for "bronze" as "steel," then logically books that translate the word correctly (such as any modern Bible translation) are more correct! Furthermore, the official descriptions of how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon character-by-character with divine inspiration completely rule out the possibility of translation error--so either the bow was really made of steel or Smith is a fraud.
This brings us to the question of whether or not steel (or bronze) is a suitable material for making a bow. The answer is no, on both counts. It's true that spring steel can be used to make a good crossbow, and that alloys of bronze with shape memory (allowing them to "spring back" rather than deforming) would eventually be developed, neither of these things existed in Nephi's time. Apologists have argued long and hard that the presence of ancient iron (both forged and meteoric) and one-off articles of low-quality steel equals the availability of spring steel in sufficient quantities that people would start making bows out of it--but the truth is that it is long hard road from haphazardly producing a little steel here and there to producing quality spring steel you can make a bow out of. It is also a road that leaves a clear archaeological record (if not in the steel articles themselves, at least in the forges and facilities required to make them, and the primary sources that would mention them). The simple fact is that the metallurgy necessary to make a practical steel or bronze bow in 600 BC simply did not exist. A Mormon apologist may make a last-ditch defense by saying it is hypocritical for me, a Bible believer, to criticize the Book of Mormon for its one reference to a steel bow when the Bible has three references to steel (or bronze) bows, but an examination of the text deflates this argument. In the Bible, all three references to impractical metal bows are poetic--they are not intended to describe any real or even realistic weapon. However, in the Book of Mormon, the steel bow of Nephi is paraded as a historical fact in a historical narrative: so either he had a real, genuine steel bow or--as that proves implausible--the Book of Mormon is lying to us.
There is, of course, a very plausible explanation for why the Book of Mormon would contain a steel bow, even if it were untrue. Smith would no doubt have thought the idea sounded awe-inspiring and (as it appears three times in the KJV of the Bible, which Smith would have been familiar with) Biblical. He would have therefore been certain to include it, adding awesome-but-impractical weapons to an inventory that already contains impractical-but-awesome gold and brass books. It is in total keeping with his style as a writer.
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