Swords and Clubs

Drawing on some existing discussion, Jeff Lindsay suggests that the “swords” of the Book of Mormon may have actually been spiked wooden war clubs. This idea seems problematic for several reasons:

First, the Nephites _had_ at least some old-world style swords. They had the sword of Laban. And they made a number of others like it. They retained this technology up through and including to King Benjamin’s day.
Second, Nephite swords as described did a number of things that war clubs would have difficulty doing. The break by the hilt, and they can cleanly scalp a person while leaving him still alive. They “cut.” They smite off arms. They are drawn.
Third, Jaredite swords were made of steel and had hilts and blades. They behead. The Nephites had these swords, and would certainly have tried to copy them.

The bottom line: The war-club theory sounds like an interesting idea, but seems inconsistent with the Book of Mormon text we now have.

EDIT: Just to be entirely clear about my own (lack of) expertise here, my knowledge of swords, clubs, and so forth is mostly based on watching The Lord of the Rings a few times. I’ll gladly defer to any actual experts, who may be able to better explain this idea which (for now) doesn’t make it past my own “smell test.”

32 comments for “Swords and Clubs

  1. Chiming in as the token skeptic, it seems like if we put all the apologetic responses to the problems of the Book of Mormon together, we’ve actually got an entirely different book. I’m not saying they are wrong or even necessarily challenging Book of Mormon historicity. It just seems odd to me.

    Horses aren’t really horses; swords aren’t really swords; sheep aren’t really sheep; the land northward and the land southward aren’t really all that north and south; the hundreds of thousands of peoples aren’t really hundreds of thousands, it’s just an exaggeration; the Hill Cumorah isn’t really the same Hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon; God and Christ aren’t really one in the same; and so on and so on.

    At some point, don’t we have to take the book at face value for what it says, instead of just reinterpreting everything that might not fit?

  2. Yes, John, but it sounds a lot less romantic if the story line is:

    “War-Chief Moroni mounts his trained deer (or perhaps tapir) and rides into battle with a dozen soldiers at his side — each armed with a big old club.”

  3. Mesoamerican “clubs” do several of these things. They behead and they cut, quite effectively, according to the Spaniards.

    The Mesoamerican parallel would be the weapon the Aztecs called the maccuahuitl, a hardwood club edged on both sides with razor-sharp obsidian blades. The Spaniards called this feared weapon a “sword,” said it was sharper than their own weapons, and learned with dismay that one blow with it could cut off the head of a horse. Bernal Diaz, among the conquering Spaniards, also reported “broad swords” distinct from the maccuahuitl, but these are not elsewhere described, as far as I know

    Sorenson, Ancient American Setting, 262.

    Moreover, wooden clubs with obsidian blades do something metal swords don’t. They stain.

    Although today we speak of “stainless steel,” in Joseph Smith’s day, metals were not generally thought of as becoming stained. Staining was a term that generally applied to wood, cloth, or other substances subject to discoloration. Reference to staining swords with blood is not found in the Bible. Thus, although not impossible, the metaphor of staining metal swords with blood is somewhat unusual. However, if the Nephite sword were the Mesoamerican macuahuitl with a wooden shaft, blood would naturally stain and discolor the wood when an enemy was wounded. Furthermore, if a metal weapon becomes bloody, the blade can be easily wiped clean. Removing a bloodstain from wood is virtually impossible since the blood soaks into the fibers of the wood. Thus the metaphor of the great mercy of God in removing bloodstains from the swords becomes much more powerful and understandable if it refers to wood stained with blood, which only a miracle would remove, rather than if it refers to metal stained with blood, which a piece of cloth would clean.

    White asserts without evidence that the reference to Lamanite weapons being made “bright” can only make sense in terms of steel swords (p. 35). Hamblin notes, however, that “brightness can refer to any object that shines—metal, stars, or stone. Many types of obsidian have a fine luster and the stone edges of the macuahuitl could easily be described as bright.

    FRB 9:1, review of James White.

    Most of John’s objections are translational issues, and many of them apply equally to the KJV. I don’t want to threadjack into translation issues, but I would question the assumption that one should be able to pick it (or any ancient text) up and instantly understand everything. The KJV has been done and redone to avoid those translational issues, and it still takes specialists in the field to explain what was going on. Why don’t the same things apply?

    “God and Christ aren’t really one in the same” I have no problem with this unless, it’s being read through a Classical trinitarian lense. The same applies to John 17:11 and 21.

  4. Also, I’m not sure that the Mosiah scripture indicates that they kept the technology to make them. It only indicates they still had the sword.

    Most of the sword/weapon articles that have been written (I’m behind a bit) can be found here and at 1 Nephi 4:9 on the same page.

  5. Sorry to post again, but I just looked at Lindsey’s page, and I’ve duplicated some of what he wrote. Always look before hitting “make comment”!

  6. Ok, one last post, and then I’m done. This article hits all of these objections- hilts, pointed swords, sharpness of blades, drawing a sword from a hilt, etc…

    Whether it’s because we simply haven’t found it or it’s no longer in existance, I don’t think we have much in the way of material remains from c.600 BC in Mesoamerica, and even less in New York (for anyone who wants to argue that one.)

  7. John:

    And the “buffalo” we see in America aren’t really buffalo, and the “water horses” (hippopotami) that Roman soldiers encountered in the east weren’t really horses, and “flying foxes” aren’t really foxes, and Bountiful in Utah isn’t the same as Bountiful in Lehi’s day or in later Book of Mormon times, and pine apples are neither pines nor apples, and “corn” in the KJV doesn’t refer to what you and I eat off the cob…

    So you can see why those objections don’t really make much difference to me.

    Nathan

  8. It’s funny how all of the translation issues center around exactly the kinds of errors that a 19th century farm boy might make when making up stories about an ancient civilization.

  9. Most of John’s objections are translational issues, and many of them apply equally to the KJV.

    What, no unicorns and cockatrices and dragons? But I was certain that Bagdad was supposed to have those. ;)

    And the “buffalo� we see in America aren’t really buffalo, and the “water horses� (hippopotami) that Roman soldiers encountered in the east weren’t really horses, and “flying foxes� aren’t really foxes, and Bountiful in Utah isn’t the same as Bountiful in Lehi’s day or in later Book of Mormon times, and pine apples are neither pines nor apples, and “corn� in the KJV doesn’t refer to what you and I eat off the cob…

    Well said.

  10. “It’s funny how all of the translation issues center around exactly the kinds of errors that a 19th century farm boy might make when making up stories about an ancient civilization. ”

    Orson Scott Card doesn’t think JS makes this error, and he knows plenty about making stuff up. See his article “The Book of Mormon: Artifact or Artifice” for his unique take on the Book of Mormon as a fiction writer.

  11. That’s a fair point, Adam. Is it also fair to ask what exactly would count as an error that couldn’t be explained as a bad translation? And if so, then what criteria should we apply to discriminate the plausible translation error from the obvious narrative error?

  12. The obvious issue of testability isn’t words that could be ambiguous but the claim of an event at a place and time. That is testable in ways that missing items aren’t. Unfortunately other than the claim of volcanoes and earthquakes, which generally fit, although I’m not sure of the details, there really isn’t much in the text outside of the ANE that can be so tested.

  13. I think people get frustrated, Clark, because simply too much is unknown about the Book of Mormon’s provenance. That means that lots and lots of things can be explained away, but that slipperiness is frustrating.

  14. Adam’s touched perfectly on my own frustration. It’s not that I’m out to somehow disprove the Book of Mormon. My own knowledge of historicity issues is abysmal compared to most.

    It’s that lack of tangibility, that inability to truly grasp the book as a history. Everything else in the Church has a history to it – even if it isn’t always perfect. We can visit where Joseph Smith lived, see where Jesus perhaps walked. Despite what the travel brochures tell you, we have no clue where Nephi may have walked. Those histories may have problems themselves, but not the kind that swirl around the Book of Mormon.

    As for ambiguous words, they’ve only been ambiguous the past 25 years among believers. Before limited geography and other defenses, Church members had little doubt about what the Book of Mormon meant when it talked about horses or swords or population sizes. They took it at its word. New research has shown that such assumptions have to be revisited. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate the book as a historical text, but it does create dilemmas when it seems like so much of the historical hints, and in some cases even the doctrine, need explaining away to fit current understandings.

    Then again, perhaps that’s all the plan – a spiritual witness gives the book its value.

  15. Or it could be unintended, too. I sometimes find it helpful to turn the question around sometimes. Suppose a lineage history was written in Meso-America by the descendants of Israelite migrants, severely edited by later chroniclers, then translated by a 19th century yeoman, what would you get?

  16. john h, i’ve been wanting to post but wasn’t sure how to put my mess of thoughts on the subject into words. but your post said pretty much what i wanted to get across. thanks.

  17. This actually came up a few months ago, and I posted some ideas about steel swords. Also, more recently the History Channel did a program on the conquistadores, and they recreated the weaponry and armor of the spaniards and the Aztecs. The re-enactors used the (maccuahuitl Thanks, Ben S.) on a side of beef and almost cut it completely in half. A regular old neck would be no problem. (The clay sling bullets they tried out also did some really ferocious damage. . .)

    An interesting point about obsidian and related stones is that, even in pre-history, archaeologists have found that it was common to flake these minerals to produce an edge that would consistently measure in the single digits of molecules! For comparison, the sharpest surgical instruments available today measure around 100 molecules at the edge.

    While brittle, the channel design of the clubs that is clearly portrayed in mezzo-american artistry would make replacing shattered teeth a relatively simple task for a servant or slave.

    Also, more to the point, (assuming you have a third grade, turn of the 19th century education) how would you describe a longish, skinnyish thing a bit longer than a man’s arm that people used to smite off heads and cut of arms that you (and almost everybody else in the world at that point) had never seen before? I think Joseph did a pretty good job. . .

  18. Adam Greenwood: I think people get frustrated, Clark, because simply too much is unknown about the Book of Mormon’s provenance. That means that lots and lots of things can be explained away, but that slipperiness is frustrating.

    I’m not going to bear you my testimony, but I do want to say emphatically that I do not find the provenance issue frustrating. Nevertheless, am frustrated by apologetic arguments that make me blush at the thought of showing them to people with real objections. I’m not saying that I have anything better to offer, but I’m much more comfortable with a shrug than many of the prevalent apologetic arguments.

  19. A fun quote from Card (who, of course, I quote because he agrees with me on so many points):

    What an odd pattern, don’t you think? A book named for one man is as much about his son or successor. And when a book seems to be named for that son or successor, it turns out actually to be named for the successor’s successor, who happens to have the same name. This pattern holds true even with the book named for Mormon himself — which was finished by his son, Moroni, who tells us later that he never expected to write a book that had his own name on it. He would have been content to have written the last part of the book named for his father.

    I have no idea what this means. I simply point it out because it makes no sense in terms of Joseph Smith’s culture, and it is hard to fathom why an American in the 1820s, whose only scriptural model was the Old and New Testaments, would structure his own work of scripture this way. The Book of Ruth is about Ruth. The Book of Isaiah includes the writings of Isaiah, and not a single story about Jonah or Ezekiel. The gospels are named for their authors, but Mark doesn’t pick up midway through the book of Matthew. Why would Joseph Smith, if he was trying to create a hoax that would be accepted as scripture by 1820s Americans, not simply pick one of the patterns in the Bible and follow it? Why would he come up with such a bizzarre structure?

  20. #

    I think there might be satyrs somewhere in the OT as well. I’d have to check to be sure.

    Comment by danithew — 12/8/2004 : 5:10 pm

    There are, along with Behemoth (for the hippo), and doleful critters, etc. I just ran out of steam.

  21. David, you do touch on a rather good point. I think a lot of apologetics at best demonstrate how one can rationally believe. i.e. they presuppose that you still believe. To someone who has lost that belief, the apologetics establish little and may actually turn them away. I think, by the way, that is true of apologetics in general on nearly any topic.

    That’s why, I think, I find the writing of apologetics so problematic. Most of them are arguments for why the apologist can rationally still believe. They are thus frequently tied to their suppositions and whatever debate they found themselves in. However I find that the number of apologetics actually carefully written with the doubter in mind in an informed way are very rare.

    That’s not to criticize apologetics, as such. It’s just that I think most are written by true believers to true believers. Further I think that when they are given to people weak in belief or with no belief at all that they have a very negative effect.

    That’s not to say that there aren’t very good questions attacking the plausibility of many attacks on faith or even establishing strong doubts of the doubts. However I think those tend to be in the minority. (If only because the strong places in our beliefs are rarely the places people doubt)

    Once again though that depends upon ones audience. If ones audience is a recent member who was told by an anti-Mormon that prophecy ended with John then that is easy to answer strongly. It’s the more naturalistic, rather than textual, criticisms I’m referring to.

  22. Clark, the very good point that you bring up is actually a little different from the point that I was getting at (and which may not be quite as good). I don’t mind apologetics as such, even when they are written to specifically to buttress a beliefs rather than establish them.

    My point is that many prevalent apologetic arguments are quite obviously auxiliary hypotheses. I thought that this was one of the posts that Kaimi made. I don’t mean to insult Jeff Lindsay or his rather extensive and impressive body of work. It’s nothing I could replicate, and even poor arguments often serve an experimental or transitional purpose.

    For my part, I usually defend the Book of Mormon to other Christians by going after the historical basis of the New Testament, which is pretty darned shaky in its own right. To be sure, this kind of mutually assured destruction approach doesn’t convince anyone that the Book of Mormon is true. It does, however, demonstrate that the deck I’m playing playing with has at least as many cards as theirs.

  23. It’s been years since I read it but what was Oliver Cowdrey’s description of the materiel he saw when he and Joseph were allowed in the Hill Cumorah.

  24. BTW, the alternative hytpothesis has a longer history than twenty-five eyars. The father-in-law of the author of Mormon Doctrine, before he was called to te the President of the Church, used to debate against it. That was one of the threads he let slip upon his call.

    Not that I am certain that we can discern much from what people let slip when they become much busier, but a number of men have become less certain about some things upon recieving that call.

    Anyway, just wanted to point out that the thesis embraced by so many is much older than twenty-five years or so. People who had been debating it were long dead then and I had already read some of their words.

  25. Also, more to the point, (assuming you have a third grade, turn of the 19th century education) how would you describe a longish, skinnyish thing a bit longer than a man’s arm that people used to smite off heads and cut of arms that you (and almost everybody else in the world at that point) had never seen before? I think Joseph did a pretty good job. . .

    Unless what you want is a book just FILLED with more cureloms and cumoms.

  26. David, I don’t think the appeal to “well the Bible has problems too” is terribly convincing in the least. Indeed I think that an example of the kind of apologetics I termed “true believers to true believers.” Were I having doubts on the Book of Mormon I’m afraid that would turn me away. It is like a kid justifying an act by saying, “well everyone’s doing it.” Further it would only really be helpful if someone was considering a fundametalist Christian religion to turn away from. Yet it doesn’t really address the doubts at all.

    Don’t take that as a criticism, mind you. As I said, I think most apologetics reflect the author’s own way of reconciling limited evidence but rarely have much persuasive power to anyone but the author. I came to that conclusion after reading other apologetics critically and listening to people respond to my own apologetic arguments. Often arguments that were very persuasive to me were totally unconvincing to others.

  27. Clark, we’re in total agreement about intended audience and efficacy. I don’t know quite how to deal with people with doubts on the verge of leaving.

  28. I thought it was pretty clear that the work of Lindsay, FARMS, etc was never about proving the Book of Mormon true. It seems nuts to me to think that one could prove the Book of Mormon true. Why in the world would God go through the whole rigmarole of keeping the plates hidden and talking about faith and such if he was going to turn around and let some frumpled little archaelogist prove beyond doubt that the Nephites existed as portrayed in the Book of Mormon> He might as well have angels visibly hang out at Temple Square and tell people to join the Church!

    The scriptures repeatedly say that knowledge comes through obedience, prayer, fasting, and diligent study of the scriptures to know the word of God. If you want entertainment or plausible explanations of things you already believe, read apologetics. If you want to gain or regain a testimony, that is not going to cut it. I see nothing in scripture that says you can “book smarts” your way to the Celestial kingdom.

    Not that worldly learning isn’t important, it just won’t create a testimony from one that isn’t there. The corollary being that God is not likely to unequivocally reveal himself through science.

  29. Kaimi: Yes, John, but it sounds a lot less romantic if the story line is: “War-Chief Moroni mounts his trained deer (or perhaps tapir)…”

    Well, Kaimi, maybe that is because the tapir weren’t ever ridden.

    How often do we have examples of people riding horses in the Book of Mormon? They get mentioned often enough with chariots, but I searched for “horse” in the Book of Mormon and did not find a single example of someone riding on a horse. Maybe I missed something though.

    Here’s a funny thing. Horses do get mentioned in a verse about the Nephites stocking up food. That’s a little weird (though not impossible) if they are talking about our style of horses. Perhaps not so weird if they are talking about tapirs/deer. Because, you know, people eat deer, but typically don’t eat much horse.

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