Mormonism is a nickname for the various branches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which first appeared in the United States in the 1830s. Over the next few decades, especially after the migration of Mormons into the Utah Territory, Mormonism became an important new religious movement in North America. Mormonism teaches a set of doctrines that derive from Christianity, but its beliefs regarding ancient inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere constitute a unique and distinctive mythology.
The source of Mormon mythology is the Book of Mormon, along with some of the teachings of Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844). The story of the Book of Mormon itself contains elements of myth, since the accounts of Smith’s discovery of the original tablets and his efforts to translate its original language into English are accepted as factual only by the church and its followers. As the story goes, Smith was fifteen years old and living on his family’s farm in the western New York village of Palmyra when two god-like figures appeared to him during a session of prayer. One revealed the other to be “my Beloved Son” and enjoined Smith to hear him. The figure revealed to Smith that a restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ must occur, the last in a series of “dispensations” to inaugurate the “fullness of times” mentioned in the New Testament Letter to the Ephesians.
A few years later, on September 21, 1823, Smith received another visitor, a resurrected form of the ancient prophet Moroni, who revealed to him the existence of several golden plates in a stone box buried a few miles from his farm. Smith unearthed the plates along with several magical stones called Urim and Thumim, which he used to help decipher the plate’s ancient symbols, a language he referred to as reformed Egyptian. Smith began the work of translation from behind a curtain with his wife Emma on the other side serving as copyist, a process that eventually consumed many months from 1827 to 1829 and involved at least three other copyists. Smith found a printer, and in March 1830 the Book of Mormon finally appeared, prompting a great deal of skepticism and derision. When critics demanded to see the golden plates and magical stones, Smith claimed that Moroni took them up to the heavens upon completion of the translation.
In terms of content, the Book of Mormon purports to detail the history and traditions of people who lived in the Americas in the period between 600 BCE and 421 CE. The narrative centers on the figures of Lehi, a prophet of the Israelite tribe of Manasseh, and his son Nephi, who departed from Jerusalem in 587 BCE in the company of the biblical character Ishmael as Babylonian armies converged on the city. The refugees arrived at the seashore in Arabia, and after a period of preparation, they made the long transoceanic voyage across the Atlantic to the Americas. Once in the New World, Lehi and his family established Hebrew civilization in a placed called Zarahemia by building a temple, establishing the priesthood, instituting Mosaic law and ritual, and carrying on the various traditions of ancient Jewish culture. Eventually, Lehi’s death occasioned a leadership struggle between Nephi and his older brother Laman, and this friction between the Nephites and Lamanites forms the key dramatic tension and predominant narrative in the Book of Mormon.
As the narrative unfolds, readers learn that generations of Nephites remained faithful to God and performed their religious obligations. The Lamanites, on the other hand, lived in a state of rebellion against the law and tradition. In this way, the story of the Hebrews in the Western Hemisphere parallels the history of tribal conflicts in Israel, culminating in the formal division of Israel and Judah when northern tribes refused to acknowledge a common monarch after the death of King David, as described in the biblical accounts of I and II Kings. These parallels and others serve to articulate and reinforce the moral vision of the Bible in which the people who follow God are blessed, the wicked are cursed, and those who go astray can be redeemed through acts of contrition and repentance.
The text conveys the idea of restoration through the experiences of the Lamanites, who returned to God as the time of Jesus Christ’s birth approached, and thus they were able to receive the gospel message. In another instance of myth-making, the Book of Mormon depicts Jesus Christ as appearing to the Nephites, delivering sermons like those recorded in the Gospel of Matthew and elsewhere. Jesus brought peace to the Nephites and Lamanites and empowered them to preach the gospel of repentance and perform miracles. Their faithfulness earned them many blessings from God, but over the next few centuries both groups lost their way and returned to fighting and bloodshed. The work of the Holy Spirit, the administration of the sacraments, and the exhortation of prophets could not turn them from apostasy and suicidal conflict.
During the waning years of Nephite civilization in the Americas, a military commander named Mormon pleaded for his people to repent and return to godliness. In the meantime, he composed a history of his own era and added it to an abridgement of the tablets handed down from the first prophet, Nephi. Before Mormon died in battle, he delivered these plates to his son Moroni, who in turn added text describing the final Nephite collapse and instructions for the church when at some point in the future it should be restored. In 421 BCE, Moroni buried the plates and departed; fourteen centuries later he returned in resurrected form and directed Joseph Smith Jr. to their location in what had become the state of New York in the fledgling United States of America.
Mormon myths about Lehi and his descendants appeared within a deeply religious culture searching for an adequate explanation for the pre-Columbian population of the Western Hemisphere. The Bible served as a prism through which many Americans viewed the world around them, and it gave meaning to the human experience in the past, present, and future. The Book of Mormon fitted neatly into this culture and went further than the Bible itself in bringing the Western Hemisphere and its people into the overarching narrative of sacred history.
For Mormons, God’s relationship with the ancient Nephites is a signifier of his intentions for his people in the present and his purposes for them in the future. They believe that Jesus will return to Earth at the end of days and rule over creation from two capitals, Jerusalem and Zion, the latter of which is associated with a specific, physical location near Independence, Missouri, that Joseph Smith Jr. originally designated as the site consecrated by God for the gathering of the saints. In this way, Mormon mythology and Mormon doctrine invests the geography of the United States with apocalyptic significance in the unfolding of God’s plan for humanity.
Jeffrey B. Webb
See also America as the New Israel; Lost Tribes of Israel
Further Reading
Allen, Joseph L. 2003. Sacred Sites: Searching for Book of Mormon Lands. American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications.
Bushman, Richard Lyman. 2005. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Johnson, Daniel, Jared Cooper, and Derek Gasser. 2008. An LDS Guide to Mesoamerica. Springfield, UT: Cedar Fort.
Ludlow, Daniel H., et al., eds. 1992. Encyclopedia of Mormonism. http://lib.byu.edu/collections/encyclopedia-of-mormonism/. Accessed November 6, 2015.
Ridges, David J. 2007. Mormon Beliefs and Doctrines Made Easier. Springfield, UT: Cedar Fort.
Mormon Mythology—Primary Document
Mormon Mythology in Fiction (1860)
In this passage from an 1860 Mormon novel, missionaries discuss the ancient history of Nephites and Lamanites with several Native American tribal leaders. The text is fiction, but the author carefully explains in the preface that the novel “winds in and out through a framework of historical fact.” At the opening of this selection, the chief relates the story of his people in ancient times, and the missionary explains that his story and the Book of Mormon’s account of the ancient Nephites and Lamanites in America are one and the same.
“There was a time,” he began, “when my people, were strong, healthy, and happy. That was before the white men came to sow sickness, death, and disgrace among us with his whisky, his lying tongue, and his shining wampum. He bought my people with the curse they too weak to resist. He buy the honor of the men and women alike, and make my people a disgrace—something to be laughed at by men and to make the face of the Great Spirit ashamed so that he not often like to look upon his children.
“But,” and the old fellow’s face brightened with pride, “Chetok and Wamba they no can buy. They fight the white man’s whisky—they despise the white man’s money. They stay free from the curse of their fire water—they not made ashamed by his touch. They still fight their whisky—they fight all the evil that they wish to sow among the red men—they always fight—some day they die, but they go down to the grave with their last act, their last word but the end of the long fight they have, fought against the evil spirit in the flask of the traders. But the white men heap cunning—they sly as the old fox who steal the chickens every night but not be caught in the snares that hid so carefully. But Chetok and Wamba more cunning. They like the owl that live in the tree and see both by night and day. They learn cunning from their fathers who build their wigwams on rocks and in caves in the cliff so high that all but them fear to climb up. They learn cunning and bravery from a people who, like the old fox, can see trap when enemies think it not be seen, who come out when the time right and fight and conquer the great army of the enemy, when that army more many than the trees in the forest.”
The old chief momentarily lapsed into silence—a silence in which naught was heard save the howl of the wind, the still more distant howl of the great gray timber wolf, and the crackling of the log in the fire. Then, as though the mention of those who lived in the cliffs suggested the story to him, the old man began:
“A mighty nation, numerous as the leaves on the trees, lived near the country of my people and made war upon them. But they not afraid, for they mighty and strong, too, and our braves returning from the warpath brought much scalps as token of victory. Then there come trouble; some of my father’s people get bad, they steal—they kill—they cheat. They grow stronger as more people join them. At last the bad as many as the good. But that not all. They join the enemy and together they make war on us. Now we not strong enough to fight them longer—we flee across the country—we leave our strong wigwams on the cliffs and flee to the south; we gather all our people together as we go; we gather our cattle and our horses; we gather our grains and our seed. We meet in a strong place—we not leave any food for many mile for the enemy to eat. We have much food. We can live for many moons. The enemy now must fight us; they starve if they don’t. They now must fight us where we have strong place in which to fight. We ask the Great Spirit to fight with us and we not longer afraid of the army that many as the sands in the desert. They come upon us in our strong place and there the greatest battle my people ever see—blood runs in rivers, but the Great Spirit fight with my people and we too strong for the enemy. We drive them back to the land from where they come. We again live in our strong wigwams on the cliff and they not dare fight against us again for many moons.”
After Nathan had taken the Book of Mormon and read to them the account of the Gadiantan robbers, and the most terrible battle of Nephite history, he again lapsed into thought. The story he had just heard from the old chief had upset an old theory. From this reverie he was aroused by Nanita, who plainly showed that she, too, was upset in former convictions.
“I had supposed,” she said, “that the Nephites were all killed, and none save the Lamanites left alive, and here we have proof almost conclusive that Chetok’s forefathers were of the Nephites.”
“I’ll admit,” replied Nathan, “that I, too, was puzzled for a time. But I see it all clear now. This battle took place many years before the destruction of the Nephites. Chetok is of the lineage of Nephi, but he and his people were gradually absorbed by their stronger neighbors, perhaps through this very band of robbers, until finally their identity was lost in that of the more numerous nation.”
“I guess you are right,” mused Nanita, “but however it happened, it is but one more proof of the divinity of the Book of Mormon. God has been good to me, Nathan, in allowing me to hear and accept this gospel.”
A few minutes did they talk ere Chetok, having finished his pipe and basked to his content in the heat of the fire, drew his robes more closely about him as if ready to sally forth into the storm, and, as was his wont, expressed it as his opinion that it was, “Time go bed.”
Source: Smith, Frederick Granger Williams. Nipmuk: A Tale of the North Woods. Independence, MO: Smith and Winegar, 1860.