Steel
in the Book of Mormon
By
William Hamblin
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Since there
has been a lot of criticism by some anti-Mormons about the steel-using
Nephites, it might be useful to see what the Book of Mormon
actually says about iron and steel.
There are
two major fallacies in discussions on this topic. First is the
problem of the hermeneutics of hyper-skepticism. Applying the
same hermeneutical standard to other ancient texts creates some
obvious absurdities that I will describe shortly. Second is
the semantic fallacy, which consists of arguing about the meaning
of words rather than the reality the words are trying to depict.
A single ancient reality can be described in a number of different
ways. Ancient peoples often described their perceptions of reality
differently than we do. These fallacies are omnipresent among
many anti-Mormons.
Steel
in the Text
Steel is
mentioned only five times in the Book of Mormon — once in the
Book of Ether (7.9), and four times in the Nephite records (1
Ne 4.9, 1 Ne 16.18, 2 Ne 5.15 and Jar 1.8). Of these, two refer
to Near Eastern weapons of the early sixth century B.C. 1 Ne
4.9 states that the blade of Laban's sword was "of most
precious steel." Nephi's Near Eastern bow was "made
of fine steel" (1 Ne 16.18). The next two references are
to steel among generic metal lists. The first is to the time
of Nephi, around 580 B.C.:
work in
all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass,
and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores
(2 Ne 5.15)
The second
is from Jarom 1.8, around 400 B.C.:
workmanship
of wood, in buildings, and in machinery, and also in iron and
copper, and brass and steel, making all manner of tools of every
kind to till the ground, and weapons of war — yea, the sharp
pointed arrow, and the quiver, and the dart, and the javelin,
and all preparations for war
Notice that
these two texts are what is called a "literary topos,"
meaning a stylized literary description that repeats the same
ideas, events, or items in a standardized way in the same order
and form.
·
Nephi: "wood, and of iron, and of copper,
and of brass, and of steel"
·
Jarom: "wood, …iron and copper, and brass
and steel"
The use
of literary topoi is a fairly common ancient literary device
found extensively in the Book of Mormon (and, incidentally,
an evidence for the antiquity of the text). Scholars are often
skeptical about the actuality behind a literary topos; it is
often unclear if it is merely a literary device or is intended
to describe specific unique circumstances.
Note, also,
that although Jarom mentions a number of "weapons of war,"
this list notably leaves off swords. Rather, it includes "arrow,
and the quiver, and the dart, and the javelin." If iron/steel
swords were extensively used by Book of Mormon armies, why are
they notably absent from this list of weapons, the only weapon-list
that specifically mentions steel?
Significantly,
there are no references to Nephite steel after 400 B.C.
Putting
all this together, we find the following:
·
The steel sword is a Near Eastern weapon. It
is imitated by Nephi in the first generation — although we are
not sure if this imitation is of function, form or material
— or all three.
·
Steel swords are never again mentioned in the
Book of Mormon after this first generation.
·
Steel is mentioned once more, in 400 B.C., in
a literary topos list, which is notable also for its failure
to mention swords, steel or otherwise.
The minimalist
and tightest reading of this evidence is that Nephi had a steel
weapon from the Near East. He attempted to imitate this weapon
— whether in function, form, or material is unclear. His descendants
apparently abandoned this technology by no later than 400 B.C.
Based on a careful reading of the text of the Book of Mormon,
there are no grounds for claiming — as anti-Mormons repeatedly
do — that the Book of Mormon describes a massive steel industry
with thousands of soldiers carrying steel swords in the New
World.
Linguistics
Layers and Steel
An historical
Book of Mormon would have at least seven different linguistic
layers:
1.
early nineteenth century American English;
2.
Jacobean English of the KJV Bible;
3.
Fourth century A.D. language of Moroni (Morm
9.33-34);
4.
Mesoamerican language(s);
5.
Hebrew of the sixth century B.C.;
6.
Egyptian of the sixth century B.C.;
7.
Jaredite language.
Even a person
who rejects the historicity of the Book of Mormon must agree
that linguistic levels one and two are found in the Book of
Mormon. The one linguistic category we know was not used in
the production of the Book of Mormon English text is twenty-first
century scientific terminology, since this version of English
did not exist in the 1820s.
A fundamental
fallacy of critics of the Book of Mormon is that they ignore
this linguistic complexity, conflating twenty-first century
English categories and concepts with those of these other linguistic
layers. If you want to make a serious argument against the Book
of Mormon you must argue from pre-twenty-first century linguistic
categories, or you are begging the question. It is quite pointless
to argue that because the Book of Mormon does not correlate
with early twenty-first century linguistic categories, that
is somehow evidence that the Book of Mormon is ahistorical.
An important
question is what, precisely, is meant by "steel" in
the Book of Mormon. Based on linguistic layer two (Jacobean
English of the KJV Bible), "steel" translates "nechushah/nechosheth,"
which is copper or bronze (often "brass" in KJV).
Certainly the Book of Mormon does not refer to twenty-first
century "steel," since the Bessemer steel process
upon which modern steel-making is based was not invented until
1846.
By the time
of Joseph Smith there was already serious linguistic disjunction
between Hebrew, Jacobean English, and early nineteenth-century
American English. In the KJV, the Hebrew nechosheth (and various
cognates) translates into brass (or cognates) 144 times, fetters
or chains 8 times (i.e to be "placed in copper" is
a Hebrew idiom to be placed in fetters of nechosheth), steel
4 times, and copper once. The Hebrew term nechushah/nechosheth
can describe copper or any largely copper-based alloy (Baumgartner,
Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament [Brill, 2001]
1:691). Note — and this is important — there is no single English
term that can accurately translate Hebrew nechushah/nechosheth;
furthermore, the Hebrew term covers at least three distinct
categories in modern English: copper, bronze (copper and tin
alloy) and brass (copper and zinc alloy). Note, finally, that
in Joseph Smith's day there is a conflation between brass and
bronze.
An interesting
key to the problem is Nephi's steel bow (1 Ne 16.18). My assumption
here is that this phrase is meant to describe the same weapon
that is called a "steel bow" in the KJV Bible. (I
think this is obvious whether Joseph Smith invented the text
or it is ancient.) The phrase "bow of steel" occurs
three times in the KJV: 2 Sam 22.35, Job 20.24, and Ps 18.34.
In all cases it translates the Hebrew phrase qeshet nechushah,
which modern translations consistently, and correctly, translate
as "bronze." There is one other reference to "steel"
in the KJV at Jer 15.12, also referring to bronze. The metal
is apparently called "steel" in the KJV because bronze
is "steeled" (strengthened) copper through alloying
it with tin or through some other process.
Likewise
steel did not necessarily mean an iron-making process in Joseph
Smith's day; its base meaning is hard or strong.
Among the meanings of "steel" in Webster's 1828 dictionary
is "extreme hardness." For the verbal form, one of
the meanings is "to make hard or extremely hard,"
while one of the meanings of "steeled" is "hardened,"
"steeliness" means "great hardness," one
of the meanings of "steeling" is "hardening,"
and one of the meanings of "steely" is "hard,
firm." The term steel is still used this way in modern
English, such as saying someone has "steely eyes"
or a "will of steel." The concept of "steel"
(the metal) seems to derive from "steel" meaning hard
or strong, not the other way around.
At any rate,
it is clear we should not necessarily presume that Book of Mormon
steel is related to modern steel. Once again, it is necessary
to examine these issues in their original linguistic, textual
and cultural context to understand what the text is saying.
Steel
in the Near East
According
to R. Maddin1 there
were two forms of ancient "steeling" iron:
·
quenching
·
carburizing through taking heated iron and hammering
it and folding it so carbon molecules from the charcoals were
beaten into the iron.
"By
quenching, a process in which hot [note: not melted] iron is
plunged into cold water, the iron could be made hard."2
Anciently,
iron was never melted or cast in the Near East. The earliest
known examples of casting liquefied iron are from China in the
fourth century B.C. "Due to its high melting point (1540
degrees C), iron was never worked as a molten metal during the
[Near Eastern] Iron Age … Iron had to be hammered, the blacksmith
first having to consolidate a hot, spongy bloom of iron mixed
with slag. By hammering out the slag he was able to produce
a usable lump of iron. In order to … use that iron, however,
it was necessary to reheat the lump of iron and forge the hot
metal to the desired shape."3
Note that
the term "smelt" is never used in the Book of Mormon.
This, again, is a modern conflation of ancient and modern concepts
and practices.
Steel
Among the Jaredites
Ether mentions
making "steel" only once (Ether 7.9), only a few generations
after Jared. It does not say how many swords were made. Anti-Mormons
often assert that this necessitates a large-scale iron and steel
industry. This interpretation is not required by the text. Ether
does not make this claim in any explicit form. This is a classic
example of the fallacy of hyper-skepticism. Considering a counter-example
will help to illustrate the absurdity of this fallacy.
In the royal
shaft graves at Alaca Hoyuk (Turkey) {circa 2500-2200 B.C.),
a roughly nine-inch iron dagger with a gold handle was discovered.4 Tutankhamun
(fourteenth century B.C.) had an iron dagger in his tomb. Applying
the anti-Mormon fallacy (that insists a single example necessitates
universal use) we would be required to insist that all Near
Eastern soldiers from 2300 B.C. to 1300 B.C. had iron daggers.
The reality,
however, is that these two daggers are unique before the eighth
century B.C.5 Furthermore,
"iron does not appear to have been produced in Egypt on
a large scale until the end of the Third Intermediate Period."6
Thus, the
assumption that a single reference to "steel swords"
in Ether necessitates that all Jaredite soldiers in all ages
had "steel swords" would, if consistently applied
to the Near East, likewise require that these two examples of
iron daggers mean that all soldiers in the Near East in all
ages would have to also have iron daggers. But this was not
the case. Critics employing the hyper-skepticism fallacy ignore
the concept of elite weapons vs. common weapons and the issue
of transformation of weapon types through time.
Imagine
if we had not discovered the tomb of Alaca Hoyuk in Turkey,
where an iron dagger from the twenty-third century B.C. was
found. Imagine, further, that Tut's tomb had been plundered
in antiquity, as had nearly all other pharaonic tombs. The result
would be that there would be no archaeological evidence for
iron/steel weapons before the eighth century B.C. Yet this would
clearly be wrong. There is a single known Bronze Age royal iron
dagger in Egypt when all other soldiers had weapons of bronze
or flint, and that was discovered by sheer luck. Why should
we reject the possibility of the existence of similarly unique
or very rare royal metal weapons in Book of Mormon times when
most of the commoners used stone weapons? To reject this possibility
is blatant anti-Mormon special pleading.
Furthermore,
Near Eastern peoples used hematite, magnetite and meteoritic
iron, along with other types of iron ore. Did they have different
words for what we in modern scientific English would consider
different types of iron? As far as I am aware, they did not.
Indeed, the earliest Egyptian word for iron was: "bi3 m
pet" or "copper from heaven." That is to say,
in archaic times they didn't even distinguish between copper
and iron. For the early Egyptians, iron was a type of copper!
Later they used the word "banpi" or "benpi"
(which are probably contractions of "bi3 m pet"),
and this term lasts until Coptic times in the word "benipe."
Hebrew and other Near Eastern languages are precisely the same.
There is only one term for all types of iron in the entire Bible,
"barzal," which is cognate with Aramaic "parzal."
Both of these are derived from the Akkadian "parzillu."
Thus, anti-Mormons
insist that the Book of Mormon must be evaluated on the basis
of modern metallurgical terminology and science, which has categories
and distinctions completely foreign to ancient peoples such
as the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews, who had a single term
covering what now is divided into many different categories.
If the failure of the Book of Mormon to match modern semantic
categories on types of iron proves there were no Nephites, shouldn't
the failure of the Hebrews and Egyptians to match modern semantic
categories likewise demonstrate there were not Hebrews or Egyptians?
Or is there a better alternative?
Another
possibility is that Ether 7.9 is a "mythical" text,
a recollection of an ancient heroic "golden age" when
men had weapons of steel or iron. An example of this type of
phenomenon is found in the Pyramid Texts (PT) of Egypt (circa
2400 B.C.) that describe thrones and implements of iron, which
no pharaoh ever actually had. According to these texts, gods
in heaven sit upon an "iron throne" which the king
shares in the afterlife,7 the
king receives an "iron scepter,"8 and
the god Horus wears "iron bands on [his] arms."9 In
the resurrection the king's bones will be made of iron,10
strong and everlasting, and the gates to the gods' celestial
castle are protected by "doors of iron."11
Since we know the Egyptians in 2400 B.C. lived over a thousand
years before the Iron Age, what are we to make of this? Should
we insist, following anti-Mormon hyper-skeptical methodology,
that the Egyptians didn't exist because they describe the widespread
use of iron which archaeologically we know they did not possess?
Or is this a tale of a great cultural hero miraculously making
a unique weapon out of celestial materials-the "metal from
heaven" (meteoric iron)?
Note, finally,
that the Olmecs did, indeed, work iron. Several tons of worked
iron have been discovered.12
Notes
1
R. Madden, "How the Iron Age Began," Scientific
American 237 (October 1977): 131.
2
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (Oxford
University Press, 2000): 182.
3
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, 3:1514-1515.
4
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, 83 #111.
5
There may be an iron dagger from Tell Asmar (Eshnunna) in central
Iraq that may be from this period, but I haven't been able to
track down the precise data yet.
6
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (Oxford
University Press, 2000): 183.
7
PT 21, 424, 461, 483, 509, 536, 610, 667, 667A, 669, 689.
8
PT 665C.
9
PT 214.
10
PT 570, 684, 724.
11
PT 469.
12
See Richard A. Diehl, The Olmecs: America's First Civilization
(Thames & Hudson, 2004), 93-94.
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