Talk:Ammonihah

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The story of Alma and Amulek in Ammonihah is more properly told, IMO, in their articles. I'm not sure Ammonihah warrants a separate article. andersonpd 00:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kingsif (talk) 04:54, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

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The Martyrdoms at Ammonihah by John Held Sr., 1888

• ... that in the story of the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire (pictured) as a deliberate reference to a prophet's warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"? Source: 'the "chief judge of the land" asks… "After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?" (Alma 14:14). The chief judge is obviously equating Alma's doctrinal fire with Ammonihah's literal fire.' From Kylie Nielson Turley, "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28 (2019): 20.
  • ALT1: ... that in the story of the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire (pictured) as a deliberately twisted reference to a warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"? Source: Identical to ALT0 plus 'they use Alma's "words of God" and twist them into a method of mass killing' from Kylie Nielson Turley, "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28 (2019): 20.
  • ALT2: ... that in the Book of Mormon, after the city of Ammonihah mass kills converts by fire (pictured) , the "lake of fire and brimstone" imagery used earlier in the book to describe spiritual death is never repeated? Source: 'Prior to this event, the "lake of fire and brimstone" imagery is used multiple times… Yet when the chief judge asks if they will teach about burning fires again, the answer is silence not just for Alma and Amulek, but for the entire Book of Mormon. The sudden extinction of this phrase… No one in the Book of Mormon will ever preach of a "lake of fire and brimstone" again.' from Kylie Nielson Turley, "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28 (2019): 38.
  • ALT3: ... that cartoonist John Held Jr.'s father John Held Sr. made woodblock prints depicting Ammonihah (pictured), a city described in the Book of Mormon? Source: 'Held conveys high drama in his woodblock print The Martyrdoms at Ammonihah" and "Held's catastrophic image Deliverance of Alma and Amulek' from Noel A. Carmack, "'A Picturesque and Dramatic History': George Reynolds's Story of the Book of Mormon", BYU Studies 47, no. 2 (2008): 130; and 'John Held married Annie Evans… the couple had six children, the most famous of whom was the eldest, John Held, Jr.' from Gary Topping, "Held, John", in Utah History Encyclopedia (University of Utah Press, 1994), online repr. via Utah Educational Network.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Elisabeth_Griffith ‎
  • Comment: DYK check tool does not seem to be registering the fivefold expansion as described by RfC. Although the page was longer a bit more than six years ago, that unsourced, non-neutral content was long since been deleted such that "the day before the expander began substantive work on it" (RfC on fivefold expansion) it was a 228-character stub. After expansion, begun November 19, the page is now 11915 characters. Really thought the tool was giving back a negative result, but now when I check it's fine? Which I guess is good.

5x expanded by Hydrangeans (talk). Self-nominated at 02:25, 20 November 2022 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Hydrangeans: Good expansion! Will have to AGF on the sources I can't access and approve. Onegreatjoke (talk) 02:50, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the review! Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:22, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Sidebar

@Hydrangeans: what does WP:CLN have to do with this? The quoted bit of CLN ("The collection of articles in a sidebar template should be fairly tightly related,") appears to be talking about the articles within the navbox not the placement of the navbox on articles. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

It makes sense to centralize this conversation at Template talk:Book of Mormon#Content in this template that is redundant with other templates. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 18:24, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Why? They're entirely different discussions on equal level talk pages and this one was opened first... So if we're even considering centralizing its here, not there. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:28, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Cleanup tags

I tagged the article with a number of tags because the structure is greatly lacking here. It is not at all clear what we are supposed to be learning from this article. It's a city mentioned in the Book of Mormon. It apparently features in some Mormon art and literature. Is that important or noticed. I think a complete restructuring/reframing of this article is in order. jps (talk) 10:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Acknowledging my past connection to BYU as a student employee, I think it's appropriate to answer in this thread since I significantly contributed to this page (it having spent years before that as a primary source POV stub narrated in the past tense initially added by unrelated editors (who I would guess may have been Mormons back in the early 2000s).

The structure of this article is like those of GAs about topics that appear in literature, like Pippin Took (permanent link), The Shire (permanent link), and The Scouring of the Shire (permanent link): a synopsis, a setting geography, and a summary of secondary source analysis. I added a Background section to explain elements of the Book of Mormon plot relevant to making sense of the synopsis and summarized analysis (like the Nephites and Lamanites, the Alma/Nehor plot, the meta-plot about the principal narrator, etc.).

By way of aside, while I can understand why you deleted the reference to a date, my understanding was that it was neutral because it was like saying that Jean Valjean was born in 1769, even though there's obviously no academic consensus such a thing ever happened: it's referring to the time period of the setting, rather than making a claim about external reality. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 20:35, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

This is not an article about a literary work. This is an article about a city that is mentioned in a sacred text. As such, it holds specific meaning for a believer and that is its primary notability if it has any. The question is, what meaning do believers give to this city and how widespread is that understanding? That's the first question to answer because there is not any real city of Ammonihah to discuss and given that this was probably made up it is worth exploring how and why such things were made up. What was the context in nineteenth century upstate New York that would have inspired this particular set of stories to be told? All of that is absolutely missing from the article and, as such, makes the thing entirely incomplete. jps (talk) 00:29, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the Book of Mormon is a sacred text of a multi-denominational religious movement. Simultaneously, it's also a book, a narrative with a plot, subplots, and meta-plot. The current state of Book of Mormon studies emphasizes literary analysis. For a summary of that trend, see this article by literary critic Grant Shreve (who is not a Mormon) for Religion & Politics, "The Book of Mormon Gets the Literary Treatment" (Religion & Politics is an online news journal published by Washington University in St. Louis's John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics]]).

Asking what meaning do believers give to this city and how widespread is that understanding is an interesting question about reception history, a kind of media/social history, different from the very textually-focused literary approach apparently more common in the last decade of Book of Mormon studies. Since Wikipedia summarizes what's in secondary sources, if we find reception history in secondary sources, then that'd be something to summarize. If we find literary-narrative approaches instead, then I'm not so clear on why that shouldn't be something to summarize. If academics like Shreve, Elizabeth Fenton, and Seth Perry (all non-Mormons) assess the book as literature, then it seems natural for Wikipedia to summarize assessments in that vein. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 06:19, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

You don't get to make declarations about "current trends" in Mormon studies by quoting an OpEd piece in Deseret.com We are here to provide people with information. Articles on the Book of Mormon as literature really ought to be separate from articles on the subjects of the Book of Mormon because "treatment as literature" is a choice that essentially refuses to engage with wider context. I have absolutely no issue with including such analysis as a section of this article, but as the only approach it cannot be. The attempted rehabilitation by, let's be honest, almost all believing Mormons to this effect functions as a way to sidestep the obviously thorny issue that dealing with the history/archaeology/etc. of any of this leads to the obvious conclusion that it did not happen. Not that we have to beat the reader over the head with that, but Wikipedia is not a literary criticism journal. We are here to do the best we can to talk about what is known about a subject and how it is couched by scholars. I see here no attempt at contextualization and if that's because the literature in Mormon Studies is avoiding the same (much the same as how, for example, cold fusion papers avoid discussing the obvious pathological science nature fo the subject), then it's not ready for Wikipedia. jps (talk) 11:27, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I linked to an article in Religion & Politics written by a non-Mormon with a PhD in American literature. The Deseret News link was only to verify that Grant Shreve isn't a Mormon. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 17:24, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

And I'm perplexed by you saying that this effort is led by "believing Mormons" when I just told you that the scholars mentioned in the Religion & Politics article aren't Mormons.

• Grant Shreve writes, I did not, in other words, become a Latter-day Saint. Mine was an aesthetic experience, not a religious one; For someone like me, whose interest in the Book of Mormon is entirely removed from any church affiliation (in I fell hard for the Book of Mormon but did not convert to the LDS Church Deseret News, May 30, 2017. Again, this is cited only to have a source written by the person self-indicating not being Mormon)
• Seth Perry says, I should be clear that I am writing as a non-Mormon in his review of The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions, in the Mormon Studies Review 10 (2023): 70–74, here 71.
• Elizabeth Fenton says, I was raised Catholic in an interfaith household in rural Vermont, a state with a Congregational church on every corner that doesn’t have a Baptist church and I wanted to enter this conversation as a scholar of early US literature and as someone who loved the book immediately upon reading it but did not believe it to be a sacred text, in her article "Understanding the Book of Mormon", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 25 (2016): 37–51, here 38.

In any case, no, Wikipedia is not a literary criticism journal, no. It's not any particular kind of journal. It's an encyclopedia that summarizes secondary sources. If the academic approach to a topic is literary then it makes sense to cite and summarize that. If the academic approach to a topic is bioengineering, then it makes sense to cite that. if the academic approach to a topic is anthropological then it makes sense to cite that. Etc. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

No... you are absolutely missuing the R&P piece to make a sweeping claim that does not appear there. That piece is not arguing that the "primary treatment" for the Book of Mormon is literary. It's just arguing that literary analysis of the Book of Mormon is happening. jps (talk) 19:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I think we both know the primary treatment of the Book of Mormon is uncritically devotional, in Sunday School manuals directly published by the LDS Church written by Mormons who believe it all happened. That's not NPOV, so we don't cite or summarize it. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 05:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh no! We absolutely should cite and summarize that if it is documented by third-party independent sources coming from, say, the sociology of religion. jps (talk) 05:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, a good distinction to point out. Then it's not devotional coverage; it's sociological/anthropological coverage of devotionalism, in which we are certainly interested. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 06:01, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad we agree on that! This is, in fact, one of my primary concerns going through all the Book of Mormon articles. I really want to know how Mormons think about these stories and that kind of analysis is missing. It may be because not enough research has been done on each and every detail, but without this kind of context it becomes harder to understand exactly why a certain detail from the Book of Mormon deserves a standalone article. At some point, we are going to have to look at how to establish notability for the massive number of forked articles and I don't think mere mention in a more extensive source is good enough. I will be looking for entire works or at least sections of works that deal substantively with the subject of the article. So far, that has been really scant which is concerning, but one thing at a time. Even if a lot of these articles are not notable enough for standalone articles, the content can be merged upstream to articles which are inarguably notable. But I'll stop getting ahead of myself now. jps (talk) 12:48, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Note too that Joseph Smith's disdain for judges and lawyers was pretty well known even at the point that he authored the Book of Mormon. Pillorying a city filled with them? There are definitely some interesting points to be made about that kind of literary dramaturgy. :) jps (talk) 00:39, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, because this is not a literary work, it's hard to know how to handle specific dates. If the text mentions such dates, sure. If there are believers who associate such dates strongly and with purpose, then we should explain that if not here then on some page that details why dates are so important to people who believe in the Book of Mormon. But putting in a date without that needed context is dressing it up as a history that it is not and that serves a particular exegetical purpose which is best left to other venues. jps (talk) 00:59, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

As for dates, the text mentions the Babylonian Captivity, which happens in the Bible circa 600 B. C. E.. I don't know whether the year "600 B. C. E." is fixed in Mormon brains; I cited the number from secondary sources that use the "600 B. /600 B. C. E." to describe the temporal setting of the Book of Mormon narrative. This article cites the historian Richard Bushman, who makes the statement about the described departure of Lehi. Religious studies scholar Laurie Maffly-Kipp (who is not a Latter-day Saint) uses dates in a similar way in her introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the Book of Mormon while summarizing the meta-plot about recordkeeping: Along with the brass plates, the plates of Nephi consist of gathered records from many of the prophets and leaders of the Nephite people between approximately 600 BCE and the appearance of Jesus in the early first century CE. (page x). Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 06:09, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Richard Bushman is not a reliable source for dates associated with the Book of Mormon. He thinks the stuff obviously happened. jps (talk) 11:27, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

This strikes me as an unworkable standard. Bushman is published by Oxford University Press, which is clearly independent of the church, and their Very Short Introductions are _targeted to non-specialists. I understand the concerns about "walled garden" scholarship on LDS topics, but this seems like the exact kind of source that breaks down those walls.

Would you apply this criteria to all religious scholarship? Are Catholic authors inherently unreliable when discussing the Bible or Popes, even if Oxford or Cambridge publishes them? Ghosts of Europa (talk) 17:35, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

That's my sense too. It is one thing to object to a denominationally associated publisher, even if we disagree about the extents of doing so, but to insist that an author published by a major press, like a university press or Penguin or Alfred A. Knopf seems like an overreaching standard that somehow implies the publisher doesn't play any role at all, which seems entirely untrue. To publish a book with a press requires submitting a manuscript and the publisher reviewing that manuscript and providing feedback, or even a rejection. University presses often even send the book out for a peer review. If Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction were some screed about how the ruins of Zarahemla are totally in Iowa or whatever, Oxford wouldn't have published it. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Certain Catholic scholars aren't reliable for discussing, for example, the Shroud of Turin, absolutely. That's just how it goes. It so happens that the main dispute is that this book is an entire fabrication so someone who is writing as though it is not is not reliable. It's not as though Bushman is saying something along the lines of "for the sake of argument... let's try to figure out how this lines up." No: Bushman is aiming to set a date for the Book of Mormon events because he wants people to believe they actually happened. I don't care who the publisher is. Publishers will publish anything if they think enough people will by it. That goes especially for OUP which is kinda notorious for just putting any old drivel out there. jps (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I find "approximately 600 BCE" to be a slightly better indicator, but is there any discussion of whether and how that particular timeframe was on the mind of the author of the text? I get the distinct impression that rather than specific dates, the author was trying to tie the story to the biblical story of the captivity and didn't much care when exactly it happened. It's not as though Joseph Smith (or his co-conspirators) included dates in the text, right? jps (talk) 11:34, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

We are both free to pursue this interesting original research question about what may or may not have been in the heads of the book's makers. I think Laurie Maffly-Kipp and Richard Bushman say 'approximately/around 600 B. C. E. ' because that tells the reader more about how long ago the Book's setting supposedly is than a phrase like "ahead of the Babylonian Captivity", which I wouldn't have known the approximate time frame of unless I looked it up.

The Book contains internal references to years passing. Maffly-Kipp's sums it up in stating that the effect is that the plot happens across more than a thousand years within the story. Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman summarize similarly in their introduction to Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019), 1–18, here 2: narrating, in the main, the 1,000-year history of a group of Israelites who, in advance of the diaspora forced by the Babylonian invasion, escaped to the Americas around 600 BCE. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 18:09, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't have known the approximate time frame of unless I looked it up But that's the beauty of Wikipedia. You can wikilink to the article and if someone wants to know more about it, they can look there. This has the added benefit of not importing the not-insignificant disputes that go on over the historicity of that Biblical account. jps (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I guess I question why the 1000 years is at all relevant to our task here. What does the reader gain from knowing that it is 1000 years versus some other number? Unless there is some reason to add up all the years, I guess I don't understand the point of doing so and it brings up more questions than it resolves. jps (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not a Christian. I'm pretty familiar with the Bible, but not the Book of Mormon. I haven't read it, and I hadn't heard of Ammonihah before yesterday. I'm generally interested in religious stories. Hopefully my perspective is useful.

• I think this article does a good job providing context. I understand where it falls in the overall Book of Mormon narrative and its relevance to the LDS church, and I appreciate the reference points to more familiar Biblical stories (like comparing Alma's repentance to Paul's).
  • That said, I would appreciate more info on what it means to be Christian before Jesus' birth.
• I'm not sure what the "excessive examples" tag refers to.
• I agree that the article is way too detailed and gets lost in the weeds. I think the narrative section could be 50% shorter without losing much. I'd be happy to take an editing pass and try to streamline it.
• I'm not sure what undue weight this lends. It's clearly contextualized as a religious narrative, and the article doesn't claim the city was historical. The article could be improved with some material explicitly about its historicity or Joseph Smith's own view of lawyers, but it doesn't feel biased.

As for what I'm supposed to be learning, I found the Intertextuality and Interpretation sections interesting! I learned about a religious narrative from a religion that's clearly important, how people interpret it, and how it's related to more well-known narratives from the Bible. I do think the lede could make a better case for notability; the woodblock prints aren't much of a hook. But I didn't find this proselytizing and it didn't feel like a Fandom article.

Any objection to me splitting off these different concerns into separate threads? I think that will make this easier to follow and discuss. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 18:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

The excessive examples refers to the laundry list of sources that have mentioned Ammonihah for various purposes. It is possible that there may be a way to more fluidly incorporate this into article text, but right now it reads to me like a long list of examples. Sometimes tags are hard to get exactly right, sorry. I think I don't disagree with anything you are saying here, but I think we really need to do some hard work to get this to a point where someone might be able to come to this article and really understand what about this subject deserves discussing and why. jps (talk) 19:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Should have mentioned, the article is primarily a literary analysis of the use of this city in the Book of Mormon. That is undue weight to a particular approach to studying the Book of Mormon which is not the primary approach that people who, y'know, actually read the Book of Mormon have with the text. Literary analysis and criticism can be part of this article but to make the entire article about it is overdone to say the least. And we're left with a buncha unanswered questions as to, for example, why the hell did Joseph Smith bother to make up this silly story? Y'know? jps (talk) 20:33, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

why the hell did Joseph Smith bother to make up this silly story?

William L. Davis, Visions in a Seer Stone: Joseph Smith and the Making of the Book of Mormon (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), page 160: a careful review of historical claims favors the idea that Joseph Smith himself sincerely believed, to one degree or another, that his epic work contained an authentic historical account of ancient American civilizations. Whether the process was as conscious yet credulous as Davis argues, or as subconscious yet credulous as Ann Taves argues (in her Revelatory Events [Princeton University Press, 2017]), the "make up" description doesn't really capture the sociocultural experience under study. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 21:00, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

What does that have to do with Ammonihah? I want to know why this particular city was invented. What is the purpose? What is the context? What is the goal of telling this story? jps (talk) 21:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

According to Dan Vogel (Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet pages 219-20) Smith may have been pushing back on Unitarian-Universalism, which his father was courting at the time. And maybe the imprisonment and lawyers part was influenced by Smith's legal troubles in 1826. And in my opinion (I don't have a source on had to back this bit up) Smith was taking a stab at the age-old question of why a good God would let bad things happen to good people. ~Awilley (talk) 21:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

How does Ammonihah push against unitarians? Were the judges and lawyers in the area unitarians or something? I'm also baffled by how this story says anything about theodicy. Still, that's much closer to the sort of analysis that would make a good article about these subjects than what I currently see. jps (talk) 22:07, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Awilley: According to Dan Vogel (Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet pages 219-20) [etc.]

Vogel says some interesting things about the Book of Mormon, but I've been reluctant to cite them beyond his observations about biblical intertextuality because of Ann Taves's criticism of Vogel's approach in her "History and the Claims of Revelation: Joseph Smith and the Materialization of the Golden Plates", Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 61, no. 2–3 (Brill, 2014): 182–207. The difficulty is that Vogel attributes to Smith conscious misdirection/deception, something both Ann Taves and William L. Davis (both publishing in more rigorous venues than Signature Books) thoroughly disagree with. Vogel's interpretation that Smith was intentionally trying to get Smith Sr. to drop Universalism makes less sense in light of Taves & Davis's more current consensus that Smith believed in the Book of Mormon and was (according to Taves) dictating it from a subconscious/sort of automatic state (and therefore wasn't writing things with intent) or was (according to Davis) dictating it with the intent to narrate a history he believed was real (and therefore wasn't writing as a reaction to Smith Sr; Davis holds that Smith Jr. had mentally mapped the book for years).

JPS: I'm also baffled by how this story says anything about theodicy.

Mea culpa if the summarization currently in the article doesn't clearly explain what the secondary sources say. The point I tried to get across is that the literary/theological assessment is that the Ammonihah plot calls theodicy into question: a very unconvincing explanation for why God lets bad things happen to the converts in Ammonihah is put into the mouth of Alma, while he's supposedly watching people get burned alive, and that explanation, that theodicy, falls flat. That's from Salleh & Olsen Hemming (2022) and Hardy (2023) assessments. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 22:42, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that the people you are citing actually believe the truth of this story so they struggle with theodicy because they are "rooting for the good guys". But is there any evidence whatsoever that this was the motivation of the author? Theodicy was not the concern in 1830 Americas which were still in the thrall of Calvinism and predestination (one of Weber's three forms of resolution to the trilemma) and it beggars belief to think that the fabulists of the Book of Mormon were trying to come up with a story that would push their followers into consternation as though the story is a new Job or something. I do not begrudge these threetwo-and-a-half Mormons their struggles with theodicy vis-a-vis this story, but that's surely irrelevant to our encyclopedic charge. This is all just small group sharing among obscure scholars. This isn't what the city of Ammonihah is about. jps (talk) 00:01, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

If there was evidence that this story was a major bone of contention among Mormons due to the theodicy concerns, I would be delighted. But this is just random thoughts of obscure academics... unnoticed by the larger scholarship that, you know, actually studies theodicy. People like Mark Larrimore at the New School, for example. jps (talk) 00:04, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

You sound very invested in either an authorial reading (presuming that an author must somehow intend a meaning for it to be "real") or a reception history (presuming that a mass audience must believe the author intends a meaning for it to be "real"). Some forms of literary criticism are interested in authorial intent. But it's also possible for books to mean things their authors don't intend. Tolkien swore up and down that "The Scouring of the Shire" wasn't an allegory for postwar Britain—and since he'd been writing and planning the story since 1939, that makes sense; how could he have planned to write an allegory about something that happened yet?—yet literary critics still read it as such.

As for reception, the first readers of The Lord of the Rings in the 1940s and 1950s didn't consider the "The Scouring of the Shire" an environmental treatise, yet since the 1970s eco-literary criticism has read it as a call to environmentalism.

This isn't what the city of Ammonihah is about. (italics original to the post)

This is a thesis that could guide interesting original research. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 00:21, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Nah, I'm not particularly invested in the authorial reading, but I am absolutely interested in reception history because, ultimately, that's all Wikipedia ever cares about. Unlike the Tolkein example, these theodicy claims are so obscure that there is no dialogue to be had about it even. My conclusion: remove that discussion entirely. It's not encyclopedic as it has been noticed by essentially no one. jps (talk) 00:29, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I do not begrudge these three Mormons By way of aside, it'd been my impression that Fatimah Salleh is a Protestant minister—hence she is called the Reverend Fatimah Salleh, a title not used in Mormonism. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 06:15, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It's possible, surely. But why are you hung up on who is or isn't Mormon? Whether Mormon or someone who wants/is paid to help Mormons deal with their incredible racism, it's all the same in the context of our work here. The real question is, who other than Mormons cares? jps (talk) 07:15, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

But why are you hung up on who is or isn't Mormon?

It's hard to treat this question credulously when it seems patently obvious you are the one, between the two of us, who is hung up on who is or isn't Mormon. You explicitly described the authors as these three Mormons, said immediately thereafter the material is surely irrelevant to our encyclopedic charge (because, it seems, they're Mormons writing about a Mormon thing), and it was you who brought up the apparent unacceptability of this being as you describe it a Mormon discourse that has been noticed by essentially no one [other than Mormons] (italics original to jps). If I mention that an author isn't a Latter-day Saint, it's to remind us that those statements aren't accurate. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 07:41, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think you have greatly misunderstood my evaluation so let me try to explain: The religious identities of the authors hardly matters. After all, people could publish things anonymously or cynically or from some sort of "thought exercise" approach. What matters is the reception and seriousness of how the source was received by others. That means citations. This is the problem. In many of these cases we have sources which adopt a faith-based POV that lacks any context. Because these sources are not cited by others, we can't really contextualize them for what they are. That's why they typically need to be excised. The reason is that such sources radically violate WP:WEIGHT clause of NPOV. All we can go on in the talkpage is an attempt to try to understnd what the source is doing and as an aid to article writing, I think it is worthwhile to point out what is going on in the sources as a practical matter (for example, both sources you are using for the theodicy ideas are 100% uncritically starting from the perspective of a Mormon believer whether the authors are believers or not -- that's the ideological ground of being that these sources occupy and we ought to be honest about that). jps (talk) 12:54, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Even after your explanation, we seem to disagree about whether I've misunderstood you. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 19:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I've looked at some of the in-line tags you've posted, and here are some explanations that could be used to improve the article, with consensus

Lead

• Clarification asked for who lead an aristocratic and materialistic social order: here "social order" means something like "way of life"; if that would be clearer, rewrite it to that.
• Clarification asked for ministerial tour: One of the purposes of a lead is summarizing the body text of the article. That's summarizing the part that says Alma goes on a preaching tour.
• Specifying the Old and New Testaments: That seems contrary to the purpose of a lead which is to summarize the article—this summarizes the several biblical intertextualities. Additionally, I'm confused why you added the tag at all: it's there in the body text, it's hardly left mysterious what the more specific intertextualities are.
• Clarification asked for turning point in the Book of Mormon's use of the phrase "lake of fire and brimstone" as a metaphor for hell: Again, leads summarize the body text. It seems hardly like summarizing if this lead restates the entire observation summarized in the body text, that "lake of fire and brimstone" is a recurring metaphor for hell in the Book of Mormon before this arc and then never appears in the text again afterward.
• Asking whom for was commissioned: My impression is by George Reynolds, author of the book, though I waffled on specifically identifying because Carmack doesn't come out and say it in so many words. Maybe it's unclear if Reynolds hired an agent to commission the artists on his behalf.
• Relevancy for : I think the next sentence states that clearly: These were among the first published illustrations of Book of Mormon content. Carmack's article, "A Picturesque and Dramatic History", has been cited by publications from Princeton University Press and Palgrave Macmillan, and periodicals like American Art (published by the University of Chicago) and Conversations (published by Yale University).

Book of Mormon

• Clarification asked for the Nephites have a Christian society with prophets among them: It means that in the setting, Nephite society is Christian—they believe in Jesus as a savior figure who atones and dies for sins. The depiction of pre-Christian Christianity is a fundamental element of the plot.
• Citation needed for the retrospective work of its principal narrator, Mormon, a Nephite who lives near the end of the chronological narrative and reflexively: The citation is there at the end of the sentence: pages 85–87 of Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). Bushman writes, The entire Book of Mormon is an elaborate framed tale of Mormon telling about a succession of prophets telling about their encounters with God. Read in the twenty-first century, the book seems almost postmodern in its self-conscious attention to the production of the text. The word choice is using definition 2, from Merriam-Webster: of, relating to, characterized by, or being a relation that exists between an entity and itself.

Book of Alma

• Clarification asked for the then-current incarnation: Not my best wording, I'll admit. As John Christopher Thomas elaborates in his book, Alma's father founds a Christian church which ends up replacing an earlier version of the Nephites' Christian church established by King Benjamin and King Mosiah in a previous arc. There are a few different versions of the Nephite Christian church that exist throughout the story.
• Clarification asked for church: Yes, "churc" is the word used; reading the Book of Mormon and Thomas's book makes that pretty apparent. Thomas writes, Alma 1.1 – a book devoted to the son (Alma) of the deceased high priest and church founder by the same name. The word "church" is all over the Book of Alma in the Book of Mormon. As for what church means that seems rather excessive—Catholic Church doesn't define what a "church" is. If a definition is needed, it's a religious institution, in this case a Christian one.
• Clarification asked for on the Nephite church's orthodoxy: That seems to be what the immediately next sentence is about: the Nephite church's orthodoxy is that humans need a redeemer to save them from sins, that's—as the background section explains—part of the plot.
• Clarification needed for need for a Redeemer: You ask for a direct quote at any point breaks the connection to the time and place of the narration. Can you explain what you're asking for? I know what each word means but I'm not getting what you want in context. That any time the plot synopsis refers to something from earlier in the book I should explain it? Isn't that what this entire background section is for?
• Citations asked for Alma repents and goes on to become high priest of the Nephite church: Setting aside our disagreement about books Kylie Nielson Turley's book, I can't help but think Testimony of Two Nations should be less controversial as a publication of the University of Illinois Press, a secular university press.

Nephite dissenters and Alma

• Clarification asked for spends some time ruling as chief judge: The tag asks, what is this judicial system like? Is it like the US federal court system or something? This is an unexpectedly historicist question and seems like too much detail—on an article you already say is too detailed—for Wikipedia's summarizing purposes, like asking about the rules of order in Gondor's royal court. From secondary sources I've read, no, the Book of Mormon political system isn't like the US federal court system. As memory serves, Columbia University Press' 2004 anthology of essays by Richard Bushman, Believing History: Latter-day Saint Essays, includes "The Book of Mormon and the American Revolution" which summarizes the Book of Mormon's depiction of its Nephite judgeship system as a semi-hereditary, quasi-aristocratic system where "judges" act as jurists, governors, and commanders-in-chief.

Narrative

• Clarification asked for the scriptures: You ask what scriptures, and I'm not sure how to answer. These would be Nephite scriptures. There's not some actual book with an ISBN number; they exist in the setting of the book. Apparently they teach Christianity. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 20:16, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm finding these responses to be pretty much missing the point entirely. That's too bad. For the ones you find legitimate, go ahead and fix them. But I don't think you've appreciated how difficult this article is to understand. To pick one example: You act like the word "church" is obvious. How is it at all obvious? What is the Nephite Christian Church? How am I supposed to understand that? jps (talk) 01:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

What is the Nephite Christian Church? How am I supposed to understand that?

I'll muse on how this could be elaborated on, but the questions as posted come across as oddly apologetic, in the sense of implying the reader needs to know about the complex, anthropologically rich ecclesiology in this... church from a book. Or to talk about it in another way, the posts give off an impression that if we were summarizing the wedding scene at the end of The Princess Bride, you might ask for an explanation of the priest's ecclesiology, rather than recognize that this priest and his religious organization are there to facilitate a plot and aesthetic.

I want to hear you out on things, and you have some good points—your explanation below about the redeemer sentence is fair; that was obtuse and didn't effectively summarize Christian salvation theology in the Book of Mormon—but I'm curious what conversation could be had between you and Ghosts of Europa, whose post said the article does a good job providing context. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 02:34, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I worry that we're holding this to an FA standard, not a "Does this article have multiple issues?" standard. I totally agree that this article would be better with additional context, and we should add that context if we can! But I think the context that exists right now is enough to remove the mark of shame maintenance tag. I read this article before reading any of the Book of Mormon, and I was not lost.

Compare this to the article Book of Job. That article doesn't explain what Judaism is, what the Bible is, who Satan is, anything about the narrative of the Old Testament, etc. It uses terms like "Second Temple period" without explaining what the Temple is. Extra context would improve that article, and I would not promote it to FA! But I don't think it deserves a maintenance tag. Do you? Ghosts of Europa (talk) 05:32, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the tags are "marks of shame", but I understand that others interpret those things as such. The goal is not to keep them on forever and we have been making progress, as far as I'm concerned. It's great that you understand the article on first read. I still have issues with it. Now, y'all can think I'm being obtuse or argumentative or weird or whatever, but this is me trying to get this article to a point that I am comfortable with the way it is presenting things and weighting things. jps (talk) 11:15, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

As for Book of Job, the advantage that article has is that it can wikilink to things like Judaism, Bible, Satan, and Second Temple period. This article has most of the concepts that are similar just sitting in text letting the reader (me) twist in the wind. Anyway, I put in a link to first Temple Period as that's the period prior to the Babylonian exile. Let the wikilinks do the heavy lifting if we can. jps (talk) 11:29, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

If the questions come across as oddly apologetic, then I think the issue here is that there is wording being included which forces this reader into a confusion that leads in that direction. jps (talk) 11:12, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

you might ask for an explanation of the priest's ecclesiology, rather than recognize that this priest and his religious organization are there to facilitate a plot and aesthetic.

EXCELLENT COMPARISON. Because, indeed, “The Impressive Clergyman,” part of the film always mystified me. It's playing for farce, obviously, and the vestments are clearly Catholic, but the ceremony is closer to the one out of the Book of Common Prayer. It's a delightful mismash and one that deserves some attention paid. :)

What would make the comparison even better if there was an entire religion devoted to keeping the film as scripture, but, alas, that cult has not yet formed much to my chagrin.

jps (talk) 11:36, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Nephite Christian Church

I think adding a section about the Nephite Christian Church is a good idea. Then we can explain what this thing is and not surprise the reader. Using Fenton might be a good starting point, "The Book of Mormon describes the existence of Christian churches in the New World described as divinely inspired and independently existing prior to and simultaneous with the establishment of Christianity." Things along those lines. I need something to hang my hat on to understand what the hell these churches and Christians are doing.

Anachronism time

Turns out, this is one of the Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon! HOORAY! So that explains my confusion. Do we want to mention the issue with synagogues? Maybe a page on Churches and synagogues in the Book of Mormon would be good to have so idiots like me can figure out what the hell is going on! jps (talk) 13:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Redeemer

What is more, I don't know how to handle this "need for a Redeemer" sentence. First there is the word "need". Is that need an existential one? A material one? A suped-up desire? Or is it more practical because you go to hell without it? I need a bit more than just "Reedemer" here. Maybe that needs to be described in the Nephite Christian Church as well.

jps (talk) 01:20, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Reflexively

I don't understand the use of this word even now. Please, can we get something simpler? jps (talk) 01:31, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I suppose "reflexively" is something of a five dollar word. The meaning is supposed to be "in a meta, self-aware way", but "meta" in that sense would make the article sound like a conversation about Undertale which I don't think is what Wikipedia's going for. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 01:40, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Is it unique that there is someone talking about writing stuff down in the Book of Mormon? If so, can we just say that instead of trying to pack it all into one word? jps (talk) 01:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

A paragraph in the lede I don't like

"The narrative set in Ammonihah is intertextual with the Old and New Testaments[specify]. Literary and theological scholarship treat the Ammonihah story as an exploration of suffering and a turning point in the Book of Mormon's use of the phrase "lake of fire and brimstone" as a metaphor for hell.[clarification needed]"

Can we get rid of it? It is not helpful and distracting to me.

jps (talk) 01:32, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Intertextuality

• Deep breath*

I think that intertextuality is dangerous because it can get is into apologetics very easily. On the other hand, it can also give the reader a better sense for where the ideas came from since the Book of Mormon was written with knowledge of KJV and other sources (which ought to be intertextually connected as well and are not so much since Mormons are not happy that that other source material is mentioned at all -- is there anything like this in View of the Hebrews, for example?). In any case, striking a balance is most important.

I asked about the court system. It dawned on me that the easiest comparison according to what a lot of these sources are saying is the Book of Judges. Is there a source which identifies this intertextuality? The conversion story is intertextually connected to the Road to Damascus. That's cool, but it would be nice if we could be more specific. Is there a striking blind of Alma or something?

Etc.

jps (talk) 11:27, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Alternate Interpretation

Psychiatrist and Mormon scholar Robert D. Anderson considers this story a violent revenge fantasy written by Joseph Smith, whom he diagnoses with both narcissistic and anti-social personality disorder. Anderson notes that the Ammonihah narrative, unlike most of the Book of Mormon, emphasizes the specific dates of its events. He notes that these events parallel an episode of Smith's life, with Alma corresponding to Smith, Amulek to Joseph Stoal, and Ammonihah to the town of South Bainbridge, where Smith was briefly imprisoned. In Anderson's reading, the violent destruction of Ammonihah is Smith's revenge for the "humiliation" of this imprisonment.

• Should we add this as a subsection? Is it reliable? Neutral?
• Does this count as an "LDS Source"? Remarkably, the author self identifies as a Mormon(!), but this is clearly not the official view of the church.

Ghosts of Europa (talk) 00:14, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I remember reading that article, but I didn't summarize the interpretation because I'm persuaded by Hugh Trevor-Roper that pyschobiography/psychohistory (permanent link) rests on a "defective philosophy" and entails a "defective method". Anderson's argument involves Smith's subconscious doing some remarkable calendrical maths to convert Gregorian years to Nephite ones. It'd be like summarizing claims about finding the ruins of Ammonihah. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 00:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think I agree with that psychobiography is not worthy of inclusion here unless noticed by others. Who cites that account? jps (talk) 05:23, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

To answer my own question since I just went through a source culling: the answer is no one. A shame. It's a cool idea. But it needs to be noticed first. jps (talk) 14:22, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Removing sources with 0 citations

I just went through and removed all sources with 0 citations as a means to start to deal with the WP:FRINGE WP:OR walled garden in this website. It was really concerning to me how many sources were being used that had 0 citations in Google Scholar. However, there were some good sources being used that I have kept. Even if there was 1 citation, I kept the source, but I think the threshold probably ought to be at a number higher than 1 citation due to issues of citogenesis. I am very concerned that sources have been used which essentially have no citation from anyone else. This is exactly the sort of problem I'm seeing in most Book of Mormon articles.

jps (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Let's develop consensus about these sources before we start removing them. Many of these sources are new and there hasn't been time for a scholarly response to build off of, say, the Hardy Annotated BoM (published by Oxford UP) or Austin's Testimony of Two Nations (University of Illinois Press) or Turley's Brief Theological Introduction to Alma (The Maxwell Institute). Also, Google Scholar sucks for Book of Mormon studies. Where would be a good place to develop consensus about individual sources? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:38, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm extremely uncomfortable with that approach. I take WP:WEIGHT and WP:FRINGE very seriously and this is exactly what happens in articles where these rules are being bent and broken. I get that some things don't have citations because there hasn't been enough time. That's fine. Let's wait until they are noticed by third-party independent sources (which is, incidentally, the next step -- checking to see that the sources that are left are cited by third-party independent sources).

The thing we have to do at Wikipedia is excise problematic things as soon as possible. This is especially true in situations where Wikipedia ends up leading instead of following the pack in terms of citations. It is highly irresponsible for us to start using sources that have not been noticed by others with a kind of immediacy that ignores WP:NODEADLINE and WP:RECENTISM and WP:NOTFINISHED. Being dramatically conservative with what sources are used in articles is the only acceptable option, here. On this, I don't think there can be negotiation. The alternative is, frankly, violation of WP:NOR as far as I'm concerned and also WP:PROFRINGE advocacy -- neither of which are allowed.

jps (talk) 16:04, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

jps, @Hydrangeans:, @Rachel Helps (BYU): — I know I am not happy with the state of sourcing on some BoM related articles. At ANI it came up that there are at least three articles that are cited by personal blogposts. Hopefully, we can solve those issues.

I chimed in here because I want to say that maybe if the author of a cited source has a proven track record as a professor/scholar of history and religious studies, then his/her view as presented in a citation can be counted as acceptable sourcing (for Wikipedia). I am just throwing this out there. I am thinking of someone who is not primarily or mostly affiliated with institutions such as BYU. For instance he/she might be a professor at University of California or Arizona or North Carolina and so on. Thoughts?---Steve Quinn (talk) 17:46, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Sure. That sounds reasonable. I just needed some place to start, so I started here. But, by all means, I think people should be able to make the case that a source is usable if it is new and there is some provenance. jps (talk) 17:54, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

jps, I asked if we could develop consensus about sourcing, and you said we should not do that. As a longtime Wikipedia editor, that is concerning to me. Why should we treat sources about the Book of Mormon differently from sources used in other places on Wikipedia? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:04, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, I didn't mean to say that we should throw WP:CONSENSUS out the window as though it is no longer relevant at all. I'm just saying that in the past we've run into problems with the consensus model explicitly when it comes to undue weight and fringe sourcing because it's easy in parochial articles (like this one) for people who are close to the subject (I sometimes call them "pet theories") to be overly lax in their sourcing standards. What has happened in the past is that a pile-on of pet theorists come in and demand, for example, that the cold fusion article be rewritten with sources that happily and proudly declare cold fusion to be fact! That is the danger here. It's something like WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and while one way is to run lots of RfCs and noticeboard discussions and try to expand, expand, expand a more efficient way to to this sort of thing is to get everyone on board with the general principle of trying to avoid sources which are essentially WP:PRIMARY non-WP:FRIND collections. jps (talk) 19:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

This seems different from usual Wikipedia expectations. The citation of newspapers and journalism—and a whole In the News section on the encyclopedia's front page about breaking/ongoing stories—seems to entail a sense of citation being possible without other people doing it "first". Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 19:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It is not different from expectations when there is a risk of WP:PROFRINGE WP:POVPUSHing. That's the concern.

There is active debate (WP:RECENTISM) about whether Wikipedia is or is WP:NOTNEWS. That's neither here nor there. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, for sure. My concern is that we don't start proselytizing even inadvertantly. jps (talk) 19:41, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposed sources

Please list proposed sources for this article here. Please also include the number of citations each source has and a rough summary of what sorts of sources are citing it (if you can). Then we can discuss whether they are appropriate for use.

jps (talk) 16:06, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• The Annotated Book of Mormon by Grant Hardy, published by Oxford University Press.

Hardy is an LDS believer, but Oxford is an extremely reputable publisher and clearly unaffiliated with the church. If we exclude this, I think we need a clear rule that we would also apply in non-LDS contexts. If our rationale is something like "Even Oxford-published books need N citations to be reliable" or "Religious scholars are presumed non-neutral about their own religion", I think we should get broader buy-in, since those rules could substantially impact our coverage of other topics as well. (I don't know how to check citation counts for this, sorry)

Ghosts of Europa (talk) 17:29, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I actually am not so convinced that OUP is "extremely reputable". I have a discussion on my user talkpage about exact this publisher and a number of questionable books they have published (that is, not properly reviewed by relevant experts). Of course, to get the perspective of a religious person, a source by them may be very reliable. Or, perhaps the religious person is offering information that is not clouded by the religious faith questions. I'm thinking of things like where, for example, Christianity Today might publish statistics and demographics of church goers. All reliability is contextual so I can see an argument for maybe using this source in the right context. I would not want to use it as a source for what a particular idea in Book of Mormon means without reference to the way in which we are supposed to understand how that meaning was derived. For example, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has taught since XXXX that this passage can be explained as...." I think the source is probably reliable for reporting that matter. "This passage in the Book of Mormon refers to this biblical reference..." however is much more dicey. That might be Hardy's opinion, but it's the opinion of one believer and its hard to give proper context. Does that make sense? jps (talk) 18:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Just read through that talk page discussion. It's definitely interesting, and lets me know that I should be a bit more skeptical about OUP books, but I still worry about creating an unworkable standard. For example, it's easy to point to terrible New York Times stories where they completely dropped the ball, but we still generally treat the NYT as reliable. Any objection to a broader RS/N discussion about this? Ghosts of Europa (talk) 18:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, as I read through what I can get my hands on in that book, it seems pretty clear to me that there is an agenda to present a Mormon's take on the Book of Mormon. Fine. The problem I'm having is understanding how widespread that take is. If that could be decided upon, we could use The Annotated Book of Mormon as a way to describe what a certain portion of Mormon's believe. Or, we could work with a simple attribution like "The Annotated Book of Mormon, written by Grant Hardy, himself a Mormon...." But this begs the question of why the reader should care what Grant Hardy believes. It seems to me he is absolutely writing this book from the perspective of his understanding of his faith. Is there disagreement about that? jps (talk) 18:54, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

why the reader should care what Grant Hardy believes

For reasons similar to why our editing community cares what's in any work of scholarship. Hardy has a PhD (he's trained to do this kind of textual analysis), has a position as a religious studies scholar (he is employed to do this work), and has previously been published on Book of Mormon topics (e. g. Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide [2010]; he has a track record). From my reading of the book, as much as he wrote while making no secret of being a believer, it's not as idiosyncratic as you make it out to be. The book includes bibliographic essays about preceding work in the field. The annotations and essays advance competing interpretations (an essay titled "The Book of Mormon as Fiction" doesn't seem like an example of his personal belief; it's scholarship he's doing in the course of annotating, covering, analyzing the book).

When With Faith in God and Heart and Mind: A History of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity is released this July, should editors working on Omega Psi Phi ignore it because it hasn't received reviews yet? Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 19:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

No... this is an abrogation of WP:IINFO. Just because a work is scholarship does not mean we are under the obligation to promote/promulgate etc. I need to know why a random reader would be interested in Grant Hardy's take. The answer cannot be "because he published it".

I'm not sure what the WP:PROFRINGE concern we would have over the Omega Psi Phi article such that we would want to be cautious with souring there. Different articles absolutely have different sourcing standards. Still, as I've said just above WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. jps (talk) 19:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

As for RS/N, start a discussion if you'd like. But I'm actually not sure how to frame it. If you're really excited about using this source, sure. But there's going to be like hundreds of sources we may have to consider so it might make for sapping the good will and energy out of editors if they start getting inundated. In any case, are we actually that far apart from each other that we think we need outside help to figure this out? I don't actually know what type of text you intend to use this source for. jps (talk) 19:02, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'll be honest and admit I have not read Hardy's book, nor the Book of Alma that we're ultimately talking about here. So I don't have a strong opinion on what, if any, material from Hardy to include!

My main concern with excluding Hardy is that hard cases make bad law. I really don't want our concerns about this specific BYU project to generate unworkable standards that make it hard to improve religious articles in general. We definitely shouldn't hold LDS articles to a stricter standard than e.g. Catholic articles. So if we would generally allow Oxford-published sources about Catholicism written by Catholics, I think we should allow an Oxford-published source about Mormonism written by a Mormon. If you think we shouldn't generally allow (or at least, we should highly scrutinize) Oxford-published sources about Catholicism written by Catholics, I want to make sure that's a consensus view, since that could have wide ramifications. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 19:21, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I took a look at Grant Hardy. He is a professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. Hence, being employed by that university I think he does engage in actual scholarly work that is outside of BoM stuff and which probably compels him to be objective [1]. I think it is worth reading the Editor's Preface in the Annotated BoM to get a sense of the book itself and why he has authored it. Here is the Google Books URL for that [2]. You'll have to scroll down a couple of pages to get to it.

AT OUP here is author information:" Grant Hardy is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He has written or edited seven books, including Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian's Conquest of History; The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition; The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China (co-authored with Anne Kinney); The Oxford History of Historical Writing, Volume I: Beginnings to AD 600 (co-edited with Andrew Feldherr); and Understanding the Book of Mormon. "(bolding and italics mine). ---Steve Quinn (talk) 19:34, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

The editor's preface indicates to me that this is Mormon apologia. Does anyone else disagree? jps (talk) 19:38, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, there is disagreement. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 19:41, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

"When he translated the plates through miraculous seer stones--dictating the entire text once through, over the course of three months in the spring of 1829--he learned that they contained writings from ancient American prophets who were descended from a family that in the sixth century BCE had fled Jerusalem and sailed to the New World, where they had established a now-lost Christian civilization." How is this anything but Mormon apologia? jps (talk) 19:47, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Because non-Mormons use similar language to summarize the book's frame narrative.

Laurie Maffly Kipp, The Book of Mormon, Penguin Classics (Penguin, 2008), xiii: It was not until the translation process was nearly concluded that Smith received a revelation allowing him to display the plates for select "witnesses," an event portended within the translated text [or do Maffly-Kipp and Penguin Books apparently believe the book has prophetic powers?]; After the translation process was completed, Moroni took back the plates, depriving Smith of material proof of their existence. [or do Maffly-Kipp and Penguin Books apparently believe Moroni has agentive existence?] Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 20:25, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

They seem to say that, yes. That makes them Mormon apologists. Yep! jps (talk) 20:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It's pretty much well-known that religious scholars tend to adopt apologia in the context of describing the beliefs of others. That's the entire point. They are describing the beliefs of Mormons. Hardy is doing the same, though it is even more personal and in far less well-regulated fashion. jps (talk) 21:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I don't agree that Hardy is a Mormon apologist. He has done alot of work beyond LDS and Book of Mormon. I think a more refined look (somehow) is in order. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 23:45, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

You don't think that line I quoted is Mormon apologia? What is the intention of it then? To present disinterested neutral facts? I'm somewhat mystified by this sort of binary argument -- either you are a Mormon apologist or you have done a lot of work beyond LDS/Book of Mormon. Couldn't he be both? jps (talk) 23:49, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

On the contrary, I am seeing a binary argument when presented with he is either an apologist or not. In this particular instance, I think painting with such a broad brush, or pigeonholing, based on one quotation doesn't work. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:40, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

You still did not answer my question. Is the quote I provided above an example of Mormon apologetics? jps (talk) 00:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

You still did not address the issue of out-of-hand pigeon-holing based on one quote that everybody is supposed to buy into.----Steve Quinn (talk) 00:47, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Does it hurt your feelings or something? Why the antagonism? jps (talk) 01:22, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Would it help if I reframed the case? I said that I thought the sources was "an agenda to present a Mormon's take on the Book of Mormon". I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do think it needs to be attributed to the source and possibly the author and I'm not sure how authoritative that is. Is it just his personal interpretation or is he banking off of some wider cultural understanding? Unclear. But it is clear to me that what he is saying in places I can match to other Mormon sources matches those Mormon sources. So can we say, "this is what Mormons seem to believe"? Or "According to The Annonated Book of Mormon, a common Mormon interpretation is...." That, to me, would be good framing. jps (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Hydrangeans. And responding to jps. That did not hurt my feelings or offend me. The quote above is apparently a well known story (or legend). Here, I am trying to contextualize your quote. And, in any case, I am saying let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. I am trying to come up with a succinct summation about what I see as Hardy's perspective in this matter. However, I am short on time now, and I don't have much time to deal with this right now.

Well, for one thing Hardy does say (third paragraph) "A final impediment to careful reading [of the Book of Mormon] - is the book's implausible origin story. Joseph Smith claimed that he was led by an angel to a set of gold plates buried near his home...". (underline mine).

Next, I found that one sentence you quoted, just after what I quoted above. So here Hardy is prefacing your quotation with some skepticism by using words such as "implausible" and "claimed" - which I underlined here, but which is not underlined in the book. So there is an argument to be made that he is not a total apologia. Add to this he is a professor of religion and history at a secular college, and so on. So, I don't think it is one thing or another thing - if that makes sense. I am looking forward to your response - but I might not get back here for a day or two. Sorry if we had prior misunderstanding. Regards, ---Steve Quinn (talk) 18:53, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is all I was asking for. A self-reflective religious sources is better than one that lacks this. Yes, I can agree. But I think that this was rather my point above. There are warning signs that I see, but one can do a bit of contextualizing to decide that it is actually something slightly different. Fine with me. Use the source with caution. It's not authoritative. Etc. jps (talk) 18:59, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Anachronistic "Christian"

Can someone provide context for what "Christian" means in this article? It is never explained. jps (talk) 19:45, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Latter_Day_Saint_movement#Christians_prior_to_Christ

Referring to figures in the Book of Mormon as "Christians" is following how reliable sources in religious studies interpret the story and setting of the Book of Mormon.

A wikilink to Christian could provide a pretty straightforward answer.: A Christian is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 20:20, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it's worth adding a more detailed explanation in the Background section, rather than simply Wikilinking Christian, since this is a pretty unconventional and unintuitive usage of the word. For example, we wouldn't describe Isaiah as a Christian, even though most Christians interpret Isaiah 53 as a prophecy about Jesus. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 20:48, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Having a more detailed explanation is understandable and wouldn't hurt the article. Something could, I imagine, be added by citing one of the sources I listed in that talk page thread, perhaps Elizabeth Fenton, "Open Canons: Sacred History and American History in The Book of Mormon", J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-century Americanists 1, no. 2 (Fall 2013) 339–361:

Within The Book of Mormon, Christianity takes root in the Americas not only before the arrival of Europeans but also, more radically, before the birth of Jesus. In moments of prolepsis similar to those appearances of Pauline language that predate Paul, the Nephites embrace the teachings of Jesus and assume the title of "Christians" in advance of the gospels. (354)

I admit to finding the Isaiah comparison seeming a bit different. Isaiah's first known publication was well before the existence of Christianity—hence, he isn't Christian, as the Christianization of the Isaiah texts is a matter of later reinterpretation rather than a meaning received on first publication (outside a Christian worldview, that is; within a Christian worldview, Isaiah was just being cryptic). The Nephites are set before the birth of Christ, but the Book of Mormon was published well after (in 1830), and by Christians. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 20:55, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

What does Fenton mean? What is this form of "Christianity"? Was it Eastern or Western? Did it follow the Church Councils? etc. jps (talk) 20:55, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

If the Nephites self-identify as Christians, then we can say that. Especially if that's the actual quoted text from the Book of Mormon. Is that the word used in the Book of Alma and elsewhere? jps (talk) 21:06, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I should get out of the habit of asking rhetorical questions, sorry. This is what it says, "But it came to pass that whosoever did not belong to the church of God began to persecute those that did belong to the church of God, and had taken upon them the name of Christ." It does not use the word "Christian". jps (talk) 21:08, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Resorting to the Book of Mormon as a primary source text seems like original research. Also, asking what the Nephites self-identify as is baffling if we are taking the academic consensus and treating them as textual constructions rather than living people (or, rather, dead people). If we wish to publish about how all secondary source scholarship identifying the figures in the Book of Mormon as "Christians" is wrong and contrary to the text, then we should find a journal or magazine to submit to, rather than reject the prevailing consensus in secondary sources while summarizing the Book of Mormon. Numerous secondary sources agree (across non-denominational publishers and including non-Mormon authors) that on balance, the Book of Mormon presents Christian characters.

As for what Fenton means, she means the Nephites are, anachronistically, Christians who believe in Jesus as a savior. The plot entails Nephites knowing, through future-predicting prophets, about the plot of the New Testament. Fenton's larger interpretive moves include arguing that the Book of Mormon not only establishes a narrative precedent for the critique of US Protestantism that would come to form the backbone of early Mormonism but also importantly reframes American Christianity as a cyclical rather than linear phenomenon. Christianity is the ancient if dormant force driving American history, and just as the hemisphere’s indigenous inhabitants seem to have forgotten their Christian roots, so too might its European settlers (341) and that the Book of Mormon's allusion to New Testament content destabilizes orthodox Christian claims about the Bible’s originality and completeness, threatening to decenter New Testament writings and replace them with itself (345).

The article is available through Wikipedia Library, so you are also free to read it yourself. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 21:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a good argument for calling them Christians, as long as we explain this in the Background. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 21:18, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Except Fenton is not a religious scholar so the whole thing is really more of a literary treatment than it is a careful explanation. What the hell is "American Christianity"? jps (talk) 21:20, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Except Fenton is not a religious scholar

This is an odd way to describe someone who's been published multiple times for writing about religious texts and contexts:

• "Birth of a Protestant Nation: Catholic Canadians, Religious Pluralism, and National Unity in the Early U. S. Republic", Early American Literature 41, no. 1 (March 2006), 29-57.
• Religious Liberties: Anti-Catholicism and Liberal Democracy in Nineteenth-century U. S. Literature and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2011
• "Indeliberate Democracy: The Politics of Religious Conversion in Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive", Early American Literature 51, no. 1 (2016): 71–100

What the hell is "American Christianity"?

This question suggests unfamiliarity with the field of religious studies and religious studies of the United States. "American Christianity" is an academically used term for Christianity in the United States, of, well, America. It's all over the place.

• Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989)
• Jerry Z. Park and Samuel H. Reimer, "Revisiting the Social Sources of American Christianity 1972–1998", Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41, no. 4 (John Wiley & Sons, December 2002): 733–746
• Sylvester A. Johnson, The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-century American Christianity: Race, Heathens, and the People of God (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
• Seth Dowland, "War, Sports, and the Construction of Masculinity in American Christianity", Religion Compass 5, no. 7 (John Wily & Sons, July 2011): 355–364
• Stephen Cox, American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution (University of Texas Press, 2014)
• Katherine Carté, "Doubt and American Christianity", Reviews in American History 48, no. 2 (Johns Hopkins University Press, June 2020): 229–234

The above are all titles to lend a bit of a taste of breadth. As with Fenton, scholars also use the term in body text as a descriptive term. For an example:

Donald E. Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (University of California Press, 2023), 5: Combined, these movements represent over 1,000 churches, and the "ripple effect" that they are having on American Christianity is profound.

Searching on GoogleScholar provides example after example after example. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 21:37, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, the people who study religion are not housed in English departments. That's a profound misjudging of genre. I know that critical theory is all the rage, but you don't get to be an expert on the topic just because you do close reading on a few things. She doesn't have the background in religious studies and that's fine, but it's not something we can use for our purposes.

You also entirely missed my meaning in criticizing Fenton's inexact use of the term "American Christianity". "American Christianity" is an extremely broad thing. It is not one thing. It's not Protestantism. It's not Catholicism. It's not Eastern Orthodox. It's not Mormonism. It's not Amish. etc... it's simultaneously all of those things and none of those things at the same time. That's why it's useless for our purposes. jps (talk) 21:42, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Our purpose on Wikipedia is to make an encyclopedia that is a tertiary source built by summarizing reliable secondary source scholarship. Your posts seem to be extending that purpose to somehow encompass a role of assessing whether academics used the "right" disciplinary method in their secondary sources, which seems beyond the scope of what our policies guide us to do as editors. If there were secondary sources that sociologically divined the ecclesiastical practices of the Nephites, hypothetically revealing that they're an iteration of the Armenian rite and directly criticize the Methodists or something, sure, we could summarize that. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 21:51, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

For this narrow and specific purpose, Fenton doesn't do what we need her to do (provide a definition of Christian). That's not what she set out to do. Stop trying to make it something she's done. jps (talk) 21:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I would ask you to stop writing posts and making edits that leave the impression of believing that a personally held research agenda for the Book of Mormon is superior to that of the state of the field. It strikes me as unlikely that you would stop, though. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 21:59, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:YWAB. It's not personal, I assure you. jps (talk) 22:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:YWAB: What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't.

"Lunatic charlatans" like professors of literature? Is that the implication? Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 22:19, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, we had a big long discussion a while back about blacklisting those words, but it came up "no consensus". Whachagonnado? jps (talk) 22:22, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

LOL, WP:NOR isn't a suicide pact. We are allowed to read the Book of Mormon. I am trying to decide whether it is reasonable in text use in Wikipedia voice to use the word "Christian" to describe the people who, "had taken upon them the name of Christ". Fenton makes no case for this. She isn't saying that this is the word we should use. She's just using an inexact and modern idealization to provoke an understanding for her reader of what the upshot of this Mormon conceit is. That's okay, she's not trying to be precise. We are. jps (talk) 21:19, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

she's not trying to be precise. We are.

I disagree. Fenton is plenty and sufficiently precise. Trying to identify if Nephites are more like the Amish or like the Eastern Orthodox is an exercise in impossible exactness I would expect from an apologetic venue like Interpreter known for obsessing over impossible-to-discern-from-the-text details about Nephites and Lamanites. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 21:46, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

You are missing the point. You are arguing that we should use the word "Christian" in Wikipedia's voice to describe this group of people that in the text are not described as Christian but are maybe described as Christians in Mormon Sunday School classrooms (I don't know, never been) and are certainly described as "Christians" by a English Professor trying to describe how Mormonism makes something she fails to define, "American Christianity" more cyclical because, y'know, anachronism. This is Wikipedia. We don't play stupid games like this. Just use another word that doesn't cause problems.

Exactness is required when the word you want to use means something entirely different to must people who read it than what it is supposed to mean. And, no, it's not impossible. There are plenty of other ways we can phrase the sentences that use Christian problematically. In fact, I'm going to go do that right now. jps (talk) 21:51, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia. We don't play stupid games like this.

Scholarship published in academic venues constitutes "stupid games"? Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 21:54, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

In most cases, absolutely. jps (talk) 21:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

This statement—In most cases, absolutely.—seems contrary to WP:RS, particularly WP:SCHOLARSHIP: Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 22:01, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Good thing talk pages aren't covered by WP:RS. Whew, that was a close one!

Wasn't it Thomas Aquinas who said, "All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me."? jps (talk) 22:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

talk pages aren't covered by WP:RS

Talk pages aren't. You advanced the vocabulary in article space.

Whew, that was a close one!

I should assume good faith and presume that if posts read with a dismissive and sneering tone that it's unintentional. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 22:21, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Abridged Narrative Draft

I've now read the relevant chapters of Alma (I have not read the entire book). I rewrote the narrative section to remove excess detail. Here's my proposed draft.

• I focused on the wording, not the citations, so some references might be misplaced.
• I added more detail about the preachers' message. Hearing them mention Jesus by name and use language right out of Hebrews definitely helped the "Christian" label make more sense.
• I think the discussions of the "brutal irony" of the burning, the refugee trope, etc belong in a different section. They feel awkward interspersed with the narrative.
• The narrative frame of Mormon editing Alma to add context about the war doesn't seem relevant to this article. It's not like we're asked to consider one narrator more reliable than the other, and the war seems more like an epilogue to the story than a core part of it.
• I'm also not sure what the "scriptures" are. Alma and Amulek discuss the Melchizidek story, so are the scriptures the Pentateuch? Since this wasn't clear, I removed all references to "scriptures".
• I think this section was too detailed, but some details might have strong cultural significance that I missed. For example, I removed the amount of Zeezrom's bribe because it felt unnecessary, but if I wrote about Judas, I would definitely mention that he was paid thirty pieces of silver.
• I removed a bunch of quotes that didn't seem to add much. But I indulged myself a bit, and added the one about being "arraigned before the bar" of God. Great metaphor for preaching to a lawyer!

Ghosts of Europa (talk) 05:12, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is really, really good synopsis of the Ammonihah plot. Like—I'm a little floored, and a bit humbled. You hone in on the core beats. I can really see where I got too into the weeds with details.

One comment: the "scriptures" in Book of Mormon's narrative are somewhat vague in my reading and secondary sources seem to agree. Richard Bushman in his "Nephi's Project: The Book of Mormon as Book History", chapter in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, eds. Brian M. Hauglid, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Michael Hubbard MacKay (University of Utah Press, 2020) is a reading of scripturalization as part of the book's plot and the meta-plot with Joseph Smith's narrative of himself and the book—the short of it is that the book talks about Nephite scripture and seems to mean a scattering of "Old Testament" sources that Lehi and his family are supposed to have brought along (e. g. the long Isaiah quotations in 2 Nephi) and occasionally stuff from earlier in the Nephite past (i. e. from earlier in the overarching plot). I'm aware of formal apologetics that try to identify the Nephites' scriptures more specifically, saying that the "brass plates" in the Book of Mormon contained the Torah, or the Tanakh, etc., but that seems like supposing more than the Book of Mormon itself can sustain. Sort of a whimsical comparison, but it's like the sacred Jedi texts in Star Wars: The Last Jedi—what was in them? Unclear, but the point is they were sacred, and that informs the meaning of the narrative context. Hydrangeans (she/her) (talk) 11:41, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I like this narrative section better than our own. I think it's worth emphasizing the kind of miraculous and startling (if you take the BoM on its own terms) quotations from Hebrews. A bit sloppy there, old Joey S. The "scriptures" thing is absolutely a problem. It is somewhat related to anachronism, of course. By the way, I've read some stuff about Zeezrom/Judas elsewhere, but not sure where. However, "arraigned before the bar" and references to lawyers as such is another anachronism, of course. It is, contrary to the assertions above, showing that the reference to legal structures is closer to nineteenth century America than it is to anything biblical. jps (talk) 13:13, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree that reading Hebrews in the middle of the story was startling! I also agree that we should add a section discussing these anachronisms; I’ll try to find a good source. That said, I don’t think highlighting the anachronisms belongs in the narrative summary, just like I don’t think the discussion of the refugee trope belongs in the summary. That seems messy. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 17:54, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Fair point. The church stuff, the scripture stuff. Also the word "synagogue" inexplicably appears in the narrative. jps (talk) 18:37, 16 March 2024 (UTC)