Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Swords and weapons in the Book of Mormon. So the Book of Mormon has warfare and battles all over the place which comes with weapons. And yet some critics have pointed out that that's a fatal flaw for the Book of Mormon because they believe that there weren't swords or scimitars or bows and arrows or the things that Book of Mormon describes as weaponry in the old world at the time or in the new world at the time. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. Welcome to Informed Saints. I'm Jasmine Rapley, Neil Rapley, Stephen Smoot, and today we're going to be talking all about weapons in the Book of Mormon and what evidence we can suggest for their existence. And we're drawing on the work of Matthew Roper. This comes from his work that he published in the Interpreter Journal, but it is basically a volume in and of itself entitled Anachronisms Accidental Evidence for the Book of Mormon. And it is exhaustive in how it documents the evidence we have for things that critics used to claim were historical inaccuracies. And today we're talking about the weapons. So, Neil, you've kind of been diving into the weapons specifically of the Book of Mormon. Talk to us a little bit about what weapons actually show up in the Book of Mormon and how can we deal with those.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so we did a previous episode where we just kind of did an overview of Matt's work on this and kind of showed the big charts and stuff like that. So yeah, we're just going to zero in here. In chapter two called Warfare in the Book of Mormon, he goes through like 39 different items related to warfare. And we'll maybe cover some of the other ones another time. But 15 of those items that he addresses are weapons. Specifically swords, steel swords, which he separates out and we'll talk about that.
Scimitars, daggers, battle axes, javelins, and on and on.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Even that list surprises me because I think I am very influenced by artwork of the Book of Mormon. Like the Arnold Friedberg, Arnold Freeberg, man, 2000 Stripling warriors. And they've all got these Roman style broadswords. And I just kind of assume that that's whenever I hear about warfare in the Book of Mormon. That's what they're using. But you just listed a whole variety of different kinds of weapons.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, and there's, there's spears and quivers and fiery arrows and there's a bunch of different weapons. And a lot of times they're just kind of mentioned in passing. Like you get this Inventory of weapons that are listed, but they don't talk about them much. They don't play a lot of role. But presumably these were all different kinds of weapons that Nephites and Lamanites were using at various times. Right. And so Matt reviews 15 of them that have been allegedly anachronistic at various points to just give kind of a big picture overview of just those 15. And we'll put all of them on screen so people can see that based on his assessment of the current evidence. And you can go look at how he assesses all of them. We're not going to talk about all 18 today. He finds that 12 of them are currently confirmed out of 15. Out of 15.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: That's not bad.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: That's not bad. Two more, and we'll talk about both of these today, are partially confirmed. He thinks the evidence is better now than it was in 1830.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: And these are all things that critics at one point or another said Book of Mormon can't be true because this just does not exist in the archaeological realm.
[00:02:49] Speaker C: This is an anachronism.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: And so the one remaining, and we'll have some discussion around it, is New World steel swords. Right. That is still the sticking point. But I just. Let's just get it out up front because we'll know. We know we're going to get the comments.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: I can hear it from a mile away. What about the steel swords?
[00:03:06] Speaker B: We acknowledge, and Matt acknowledges that we still don't have steel swords in the Americas, but we'll, we'll talk about that a little bit more. More.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Well, let's, let's get into swords in general, maybe from the old world and such, because like I mentioned, that is the most common sword people visualize when they think about the Book of Mormon weapons. Obviously there's more here, but we think about like, oh, the Book of Mormons full of sw.
So what do we, what can we say about the swords that we have?
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Well, obviously the, the most prominent sword in, in the entire book is the sword of Laban. Right. And you get introduced to it. Chapter 4. Nephi is standing before a drunk Laban and he draws forth the sword from his sheath. Right. And the hilt thereof was of pure gold. The workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine. And I saw the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Most precious.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: And
[00:04:00] Speaker B: it has to be pointed out here because this is not the one that people tend to talk about today when they're talking about swords anachronisms. But when the Book of Mormon came off the press, people thought the Idea of steel in 600 BC in Jerusalem was anachronistic. And swords made of steel specifically. And we don't necessarily need to quote a bunch of them. We can put maybe some quotes from critics on screen. But, you know, there was Clark Braden, who was a.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: He was a Campbellite, basically.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: He was a Campbel minister. Yeah. Disciples of Christ. And he debated an RLDS apostle, I think William Kelly.
Was it William Kelly or his brother? Yeah, William Kelly. And in his debates, he says Laban's sword was steel when. It is a notorious fact. Notorious fact, guys, that the Israelites knew nothing of steel for hundreds of years afterwards.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: I just want to be very clear how declarative Clark Braden is here. Okay. Yes, he said it. Very confident. Right.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: He's absolutely certain. That was 1884. There was a book published by University of Notre dame press in 1964. That's. That's not within living memory of any of us, but that's within living memory. I'm guessing there's people listening right now that. That's within living memory of. No one believes that steel was available to Laban or anyone else in 592 BC. And then even the infamous Walter Martin in his Kingdom of the cults.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Dr. Walter Martin, thank you very much. Not really, guys. His doctorate was famous anyways.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Now he had. I don't know exactly when, but he had passed away. But there was an updated revised edition of his Kingdom of the cults work in 1997 that still asserted that the steel weapons of Nephi, both his sword and his bow, were anachronistic because there was just no steel at the time.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: So 600 B.C. jerusalem, we're talking like the Iron Age. So we're not saying that Israelites didn't know how to work metal, work iron, but you're saying there's no evidence, according to these people, that they were combining metals into, like, alloys to make them stronger into steel.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: So. So steel is generally defined as iron that has been carburized.
So when you, when you heat. Well, I'm not going to. I shouldn't get into the technical stuff
[00:06:09] Speaker A: because I clearly misspoke.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: But, but, but. Well, it is. It is an alloy. They would call it an alloy, but the alloy that's being added, just carbon. Right. It's not necessarily another metal or whatever, but it gets carburized. And that actually hardens the steel. Well, the iron that hardens into steel, into steel, and that makes it more.
That gives it more utility.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: So the claim is that that particular technology of hardening the Iron into steel wouldn't have existed.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: Maybe we should also just point out that we're not talking about like modern stainless steel, which was absolutely like we, we think of steel as a very specific kind of thing because it's ubiquitous now. But the, as I understand the modern steel making process that did not even exist in the 1830s. So that could not have been the steel that Joseph Smith is referring to in the Book of Mormon, modern stainless steel.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: This is. These critics are saying, and we're saying well into the 20th century, late into the late 20th century, that steel and steel swords, steel blades for 600 BC were an anachronism. Even though they certainly were working iron. They were saying they did not have steel technology. You may not feel like it's an issue now and that you'd be right. We'll get to that. But I just want to stress that like, no, this has really been, this is what the criticism was and this is why Matt's project here, which is documenting the trend. These are things that people used to say are anachronisms that aren't anymore. Right. Documenting this trend of evidence is important because otherwise we just forget that there is something so often with pretty much
[00:07:35] Speaker A: any anachronism, when we say, oh, it's been confirmed, we'll get accused of being. We're like, well, that's a strawman because no one's claiming that that didn't exist at the time. Like, well, no people did claim that this didn't exist. This actually happened. And we need to document how the Book of Mormon has trended positively over time.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: So let's actually talk now just generally speaking, evidence of ste.
The old world. There's all. There's been some debate as to exactly how early it gets introduced, but there are some publications that talk about the use of carburized steel and quench hardening in the late Bronze Age in Cyprus. Okay, that's like maybe 13th century BC, 12th century BC that's very, very early. And again, that's one of the areas where there's probably still some debate. But we can put the reference on screen in 1971 that was being argued in academic journals.
But the kind of crown jewel of this part of the discussion is there was a sword, a fully intact iron bladed sword about a meter long that was found at a fortress near Jericho and dated to the late 7th century BC. So I mean, maybe say 620 or 609 or something like that dated to the late 7th century BC it was discovered by Avram Etan, who's an Israeli archaeologist and it was analyzed metallurgically. There was a sample taken from the blade and Ahram Eaton wrote that the sample was taken from the blade and it proves. The metallurgical analysis proves that it was made of mild steel and that the iron was deliberately hardened into steel, attesting to the technical knowledge of the blacksmith. And this is a sword. It's actually on display at the. Or at least it has been at times. It's been on display at the museum in Jerusalem there. And the plaque on there even reads, the sword is made of iron hardened into steel, attesting to the substantial metallurgical know how.
So yes, by Nephi's time, they are making swords and out of. Out of iron that are being deliberately hardened and carburized into steel.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: I mean, it doesn't look much like a sword now, but once upon a time it had glory days.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: I mean, for an iron sword, for a steel sword of that time period, this is actually in remarkably good condition.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: So we really have like a real world attestation of Laban sword, basically. Well, not Laban sword, but what could have been something like Laban sword. It could have existed.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: Exactly. That's what you need for a Laban sword.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Sweet. Yeah. All the ingredients, what the Book of Mormon describes is 100% plausible. In 600 BC in Jerusalem at the
[00:10:07] Speaker B: time, certainly as far as the steel blade and stuff goes, I mean, the gold hilt is a separate issue, but there are lots of gold hilted weapons all over the ancient Near East. Right. Stephen, of course is probably familiar with the, you know, the dagger of King Tut.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: King Tut made out of meteoric iron
[00:10:24] Speaker B: with a gold hilt, with a hilt
[00:10:26] Speaker C: sheath that comes with it. We can put a picture up here.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we can probably put a picture up of that. And I think John Tvetness actually had an article on gold hilted swords that were more contemporary, like mid first millennium BC weapons from various parts of the ancient Near East. So, you know, gold hilts, steel sword. Steel blades, that's absolutely a thing in the ancient near east and right in Israel even around this time.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: So, okay, so they have a steel sword in the story of Laban while they're still in Jerusalem, but then they go to the new world. How do we deal with swords in the New world? I mean, according to Arnold Freeberg, steel swords are all over the Book of Mormon. Or are they?
[00:11:04] Speaker B: So that's a, that's a great question.
And the reality is in most references to swords in the Book of Mormon, we aren't told what they're made of. Right.
What we have is Nephi gets to the New World and then he tells us that he used the sword of Laban as his pattern to make more swords.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: And we do understand that Nephi had some metallurgy background. I mean, he made plates.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Yes, yes. He clearly knew how to work metals. And not only does he make plates, but like when he's, when he's building a boat. Building a boat. He, he, he doesn't ask the Lord how to make tools. He says, where do I find the ore? Right.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: He knows how to do this, then
[00:11:40] Speaker B: he seems to know how to do it. So I and others have argued that Nephi did have a metallurgical back and probably learn that from his father Lehi.
But we do have, so we have that reference and you could argue, well, if it's made after the same pattern as the sword of Laban, maybe it's made of the same materials.
I don't know that he's going to necessarily make, you know, armaments for his men though, that are all going to have like gold hilts. Right. And so maybe they're metal bladed weapons.
Maybe not. Maybe it's the pattern. We know a couple of verses later he says he made a temple after the manner of the temple of Solomon, save it were not made of so many precious things. Right. And so the possibility is open that maybe it's not made of the same kinds of materials.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: So maybe not a carbon copy, but nonetheless something similar maybe to what lay
[00:12:29] Speaker C: the same kind of style. Because again, there's different kinds of swords. Right. Big broad swords, small little kind of daggers.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
Double sided blade would be the kind of thing, you know, a hilt with a long blade or a guard or something like.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: So something after that pattern, but maybe made of different materials is possible. But that's maybe one of the instances where you could maybe argue we should be looking for steel swords. And then we do have the explicit reference with actually going back to Jaredite times, which is probably Bronze Age, which makes it all the more perplexing. Right.
[00:13:04] Speaker C: But.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Or difficult to deal with. But we do have with Jaredot times, shul goes and he, he goes to the hill, Ephraim, this is in ether 7, 9.
And he made swords out. He did molten out of the hill and made swords out of steel for those whom he had drawn away with. And then later. Well, earlier in the narrative flow, but later. Right, you have the Limhi expedition goes up to where the Jaredites were destroyed and they bring back Swords that the hilts have perished and the blades were cankered with rust.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: Well, and here's the thing about the Book of Ether that we have to always keep in mind.
The Book of Ether is Joseph Smith's translation of Moroni's abridgment of Mosiah's translation of Ether's abridgment of Jaredite records. You have a lot of layers of both transmission and translation where that steel terminology can come out.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: Do we know that steel is what the Jaredites were calling them? Cause this is Moroni calling it a steel sword. Right. And does moroni mean carburized iron or iron ore?
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Does Moroni even know what steel is?
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Steel is. Is it Joseph Smith' translation of whatever word iron or whatever it could be? Right. So the punchline is it seems to be metal. We could all kind of agree on that because they're cankered with rust and so forth.
But again, what kind of metal? Steel? Iron? I think there's some ambiguity there because we're dealing with layers of translation. And lest I be accused of pettifogging this by our friends in the comments, go read your King James Bible.
When it talks about steel in the King James translation, in certain instances, it's referring to bronze.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: It's not actually referring. Like the Hebrew word is for bronze, not for steel. But the King James translators render it as steel. So they are not always consistent with how they are rendering some of these metallurgical terms.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Well, and part of that is because in earlier English, right, steel was a more broad term that could be used for. I mean, steel is a word that just means hardened. Right. And sometimes feel your courage, feel your nerves, it means to harden. And so an alloy like bronze, that's what. That's what you're doing when you alloy copper with tin or arsenic or whatever or zinc is. You're hardening it. Right. To make it more usable for various purposes, like making weapons and things like that. So there could be. In earlier English usage, you could use steel to more broadly refer to alloyed copper along with carburized iron. Right. Any sort of metal that had been steeled.
Right. It'd be called a steel. So.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: So it sounds like out of all of the references to weapons in the Book of Mormon, there are only two places where it indicates steel swords in the New World, and one of them is Jaredi. And you've already discussed, like, the translation challenges that may exist there that could maybe help us understand what's going on. And then the other one is Nephi himself, where we know he has an actual steel weapon that he is using as a template of some kind to make weaponry or swords of some kind.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: So these are, these are two instances that again with Nephi, we don't even know for sure that it's steel, but it could be, these are two instances where, where we have potentially metal weapons being made. But it could be a small handful, which is precisely the kind of thing that maybe doesn't end up show up in the archaeological, archaeological record.
The rest of our references to swords, and I think it's actually noteworthy, why specify that these swords are steel?
Why specify those two instances, steel swords? Why specify that Laban's sword is fine steel if all swords are steel? Right, good question. It's not.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: Seems unnecessary.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: It's an unnecessary clarification. And so the rest of the swords throughout the Book of Mormon, the material they're made of is never mentioned. And I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest they probably weren't made of steel. Like I said.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Well, what else could you make swords out of?
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Well, that is the great question. Right, okay. So a lot of people will say just like the very concept of a sword is anachronistic for the ancient Americas or pre Columbian America. And that is where a weapon that is called by the Aztec word mukweit and Brandt, I hope I said that right, comes into play here. The Makwa wi. I guess I should maybe just explain what that is. It's basically, it's a long wooden. It's usually, it's got like a handle and a long wooden shaft and then it's got usually obsidian blades inserted into the edge. Sometimes it might be other materials like flint or. I think I've teeth, right? Shark teeth and stuff like that.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Do we have, we don't have many of these that survive, do we? I only. No, I think there's like one that we have down in Mexico.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: It's largely through artwork, the artwork of it both in like the Aztec codices and other codices and stuff like that, and then on like Steela and stuff like that. And we'll get into some of those examples.
But this is the definition this guys, this is from Wikipedia, okay? A Macquarie is a Mesoamerican weapon consisting of a wooden sword with several embedded obsidian blades. Okay, so the definition given in Wikipedia is that it is a wooden sword. And that's not just, that's not just self edited Wikipedia. This is a weapon that is referred to as swords. And I'm stressing this because Some people, when they, when we bring up the Macquarie, some people are like, oh, that's a club. That's a wooden club. That's not a sword.
It is routinely called a sword by academics.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: I mean, think about it functionally. Are they using it to just like bop people on the head or are they using it in slashing and slicing?
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Yes, both.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: And I won't deny that it's sometimes called a club. And in fact, Michael Coe calls it a, he hyphenates it club sword.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Okay, there you go, that's good.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: But I won't deny that it's sometimes called a club, but it is also routinely called a sword. Ross Hasig, probably one of the biggest experts in Mesoamerican warfare, Aztec Warfare, in fact, that's the name of his book, is Aztec Warfare. He has another book on Mesoamerican warfare more broadly, but he routinely calls it Aztec Swords. Seem to have been of at least two varieties, one handed and two handed. One of the most persistent observations of the Conquistadors, this is, I'm quoting from him right now, was the ability of these swords to cut the head from a horse with a single blow. The Aztec swords were described by the Conquistadors as cutting better than the Spanish swords, the Spanish steel blades, which again, like Spanish steel by, you know, the 16th century, this is way more advanced than what Nephi's got with the sword of Laban, by the way. And these, the Makweat, these obsidian edged wooden swords are cutting and are as effective or more effective than those Spanish blades are.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Interesting. So you're telling me that when Ammon is lopping off arms, he could be using one of these obsidian blades?
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Yes. And in fact, we can maybe display, I don't know, maybe it'll be too gruesome for our audience, but we can actually display. There are depictions and codices of people like they're dismembering bodies with these weapons. And then in addition to the fact that scholars call them swords, we have numerous. And actually Matt Roper has a whole separate paper, Eyewitness Descriptions of Mesoamerican Swords that was published in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies in 1996. We can maybe just put some of the accounts on screen, numerous accounts of, of Spanish eyewitnesses encountering these weapons, that they're routinely, they're routinely calling these weapons swords and describing them like, like Hasig said, saying that they're actually very impressive weapons. They, they compete well with the Spanish, you know, steel swords that they come Here with, you know, sometimes people say well if Nephi came in with a steel sword and knew how to make steel swords, why would the Nephites switch to these like inferior, like inferior wooden obsidian swords? These primitive clubs guys, they weren't inferior, that's the point. Right. And they were probably cheaper to make.
[00:21:06] Speaker C: I was just gonna say easier to make, easier to mass produce, more effective.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: The natives didn't lose to the Spanish because their swords weren't as good as Spanish swords. Right.
The Spanish came with guns and germs. And germs and steel armor. Like that kind of stuff made a big difference. But the SW were, you know, it wasn't an advantage between their two different kinds of swords. Right.
So another point that hasn't been made a whole lot is actually not only did the Spanish call the muquahweet a sword, but the Aztecs called the Spanish steel sword a mukwahuit.
[00:21:46] Speaker C: Oh, there you go, reverse loan shifting.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: This is from Michael Koh, a paper that he published pre Kong in a book called Swords and hilt Weapons by the way and his chapter is on pre conquest American weapons. He said the Spanish invaders brought their steel swords to Mexico. The resemblance between the two kinds of weapons, meaning the sword and the mukwit was immediately seen by both sides. And the Aztec term tepuzmaquit metal mekwahuit was soon applied to the import.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Well what I love about this is it's not just like oh this shows that the Book of Mormon can be authentic. It's another evidence or things like that. But it helps me just re envision the Book of Mormon. Mormon. Just like when Jesus talks about like don't hide your candle under a bushel. Well Jesus is probably not talking about a candle, he's probably talking about an oil lamp. And when you understand that context it helps you re envision the scriptures. And this just like helps us re envision and contextualize what the world of the Book of Mormon was more likely what it was like.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: So it's, it's, it is worth noting like there's various kinds of Macquaries. There are some that have like the jagged like the sawtooth sort of serrated edge. Serrated edge. There are some that literally have straight edge and they're interlocked so that you literally have a straight edge up and down.
Many of them are flat topped but some have a point at the top.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Yeah. Having the tipped point is important for. At the battle of sidon. Right. With Captain Moroni.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: And Alma 44 Zarahemna Zarahemna gets a scalp. Yeah. And the servant puts it up on the sword or whatever.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: So. Yeah. And sometimes people have criticized that because they're like, oh, those, those swords don't have a tip. No, we have, we have artwork we
[00:23:26] Speaker C: can show right now with a guy has a tip on his sword, he
[00:23:28] Speaker B: has a tip on the end. Right. And so you can have pointed ones with a tip on the end. And these do go back to Book of Mormon times. We've got things like there's a. There's a pre classic warrior depicted in the Lotoon Cave. The dating of this image, I don't know is completely settled, but it might be 2nd century BC and it shows a guy holding two weapons. One in his hand is.
Looks like a mukweat. And scholars have interpreted it as a mukwahweat. But there's also, there's examples of this going back to Olmec times at San Lorenzo. And Anne Cyphers actually talks about this one on San Lorenzo that's maybe from between 1250 to 900 B.C. i think.
And she says that its form is like that of the later times, particularly the Mexica or Aztec culture. And so basically the kinds of weapons you're seeing in the Aztec depictions, they go back. Those go back to Olmec times. We have evidence for those going all the way back to Olmec times.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: And so in addition to maybe straight bladed swords, the Book of Mormon also mentions scimitars, which are a curved kind of blade. And as early as the Book of Enos, it mentions that they're using scimitars of some kind. And I know early critics of the Book of Mormon would complain about that because according to them, scimitars weren't attested until the time of Muhammad.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: The Islamic period, 600 A.D. and now we're talking about going to the several hundreds bc how do we deal with that?
[00:24:52] Speaker B: So. So yeah, and it's not just early critics. It's actually, this is actually one of the things that shows up in BH Roberts study.
Scimitars, Psymeters, as it's spelled in. That's how I pronounce it as a kid growing up. It's usually spelled. It's usually spelled with an S at the beginning. Now, scimitars were curved swords. This is quoting from the B.H. roberts study. Were curved swords used by the Persians, Arabs and Turks, half a world away from America and appearing a thousand years too late to enter the picture. Right. And it's not as. And even Earl wonderly in like 2013 in his book talked about these. Anyone who's been talking about scimitars as an anachronism since basically the 90s has just been out of date. Out of date. Yeah. Okay, so I'm sure Stephen could tell us about the Egyptian Khopesh and what that is that goes back to the Bronze Age and it's this curved bladed sword basically. Right. That, that the Egyptians had and that was also known in Canaan and really kind of all throughout the ancient Near East. We can show you examples Ami Mazar or Mazar in Archaeology of the land of the Bible.
This is quoting Sickle shaped scimitars are known from both actual finds and from Egyptian artistic depictions. And he's talking about the late Bronze Age there. They go back, I think even earlier than the late Bronze Age. I think they're at least Middle Bronze.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: I believe our earliest. Don't hold me to this, I have to double check. But I believe our earliest attestation of them is the Second Intermediate Period, which is around the same time that the chariot comes convention. We think that's when the chariot comes into Egypt. I think it's around the same time that we get the earliest hopeish, but I'm not sure offhand.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: And then there's actually a translation of a weapons inventory from Don Redford, a very well respected Egyptologist, in his book Egypt, Canaan and and Israel in Ancient Times where he's listing off the weapons that were. It's, it's an inventory of weapons that were seized after a victorious battle or whatever. Right. And it lists battle axes, 10 scimitars, 33 daggers, 12 knives, 11. Okay, so the point being these, these curved bladed weapons from the late Bronze Age at least maybe middle Bronze Age, they go back way long time. And scholars will routinely call them scimitars. They'll translate the word as scimitar.
And it's not just Egypt, it's in Canaan. We also have evidence that the primary sword among the Israelites. Now we showed you guys a straight bladed Israelite sword already, but there is iconographic evidence on the Assyrian reliefs of the Lachish battle. You've got a guy taking booty of a stack of swords over his shoulder and they're curved. Okay, so they've got curved swords around 700 BC in ancient Israel and they're interpreted as swords by archaeologists.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: And what do we have for the new world?
[00:27:42] Speaker B: And well, before we get there, I do want to note that there's also a Hebrew word kidon that scholars will translate as scimitar.
And it shows up. And it's interesting to note that it shows up in Samuel 17 with Goliath where David says, you are coming against me with sword, spear and scimitar. People have sometimes wondered, and I think it's actually with Zarahemna again, he has both sword and scimitar that he gives up. And all these weapons inventories in the Book of Mormon list sword and scimitar together. And people have sometimes been like, well, why would you need both?
Goliath appears to have wielded both sword and scimitar here. So. But, but to your question, New world, okay, do we have scimitars in the New World?
Well, Ross Hasig, who we mentioned earlier, he talks about the Toltecs having a curved club that I have labeled. And I don't know why he labels it this. He says, I labeled it a short sword, but it's a curved weapon. And we can actually show images that it shows up in codices and stuff from the Toltecs. It's a curved shortsword that is basically like a curved macaweet, basically.
And he talks about the advantages of it. It was not a club, like a bashing weapon, which is usually what you think of with a club.
He talks about it being a light mobile slash weapon. You can, you can slash as you're on the go and stuff like that.
That's obviously later than Book of Mormon times. That's, you know, the Toltecs are like post classic. We have earlier examples. Mary Miller and Simon Martin, actually, they show this, this stela from Tony Na in Mexico that dates to 600 AD. So getting there, getting closer to Book of Mormon times. And they literally, they say the Lord on this panel holds a scimitar like flint blade. Okay. And, and you can actually see it. We'll show an image of it. He's holding this, this sort of blade that curves upward and they interpret it as flint. You know, I don't know how well we can know exactly what material it's made of based on just the images. But then going back again, going back to even earlier, you have Carl Talba talking about early classic, which is like 300-400-ad early classic stucco facade that shows the, the war serpent coiled around a sickle shaped weapon.
A type of obsidian sacrificial knife known from Teotihuacan. And Teotihuacan overlaps with book moron times. But Anne Cypherus, she shows, we talked about her earlier with San Lorenzo. There's another monument at San Lorenzo that she describes having a makuitl that has a curved body with 11 triangular elements encrusted in the sides. So curved muqahuit, basically going all the way back to Olmec times. Right. And there are several other examples. Matt Roper has a whole paper, in addition to what he put in his chapter on this in. In his Anachronisms book, he has a whole paper on swords and scimitars in Mesoamerica that we can also link to. And he gave a presentation at fair a couple years ago that talked about a lot of this stuff, too.
So, yes, we have. We have curved swords, which is what a scimitar is. We have curved macaweets going back to Book of Mormon times. We have even. Not. Not even just mukweets, but actually, like flint or obsidian, bladed weapons that are curved, going back to Book of Mormon times.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: So one more thing I want to ask about is bow and arrow, because Nephi talks about how he used this, a steel bow, and the bow and arrow shows up throughout the Book of Mormon as well. But what do we know about that archaeologically? And what have critics said?
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, so just like critics have considered steel swords for Nephi anachronistic. Well, naturally, if you don't think you can make swords out of steel, you don't think you can make bows out of steel either. Right. And so there are critics. Matt Roper does not consider the steel bo a confirmed item, yet he puts that in his partial confirmation category.
And so we'll talk about what the evidence is and how we get there.
But we have actually, the expression bow of steel shows up in the King James Bible.
It's, you know, probably the most prominent example is in 2nd Samuel 22:35, which is duplicated in Psalm 18. Right.
David, he teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms. Okay. And then there's also a reference in Job. He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through. Now, this is interesting because this is one of. This is an example of what Stephen was talking about earlier. The Hebrew word here is nehush. Is that how you say it?
[00:32:06] Speaker C: Nehusha.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Nehusha. Okay. The Hebrew word here is nehusha, which is copper or bronze, and it's being translated as steel.
But even with that caveat there, scholars don't think these are pure bronze bows. Right. Made of. Made of pure metal.
The way scholars like Frank Morecross and David Noel Friedman and Roland Davao, who was an archaeologist in like, the mid 20th century, actually involved in the excavation of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls and stuff. But the way they've generally interpreted this expression bow of steel or bow of bronze, to translate it more accurately, is that it refers to a composite bow, which is, you know, you have bows that are made of a single piece of wood, and those have, you know, so much elasticity and stuff like that, but to get greater functionality out of them, they would create bows that are composite of material. And I probably shouldn't try to describe too technically how they did that, because I'll get it all wrong. But they're more powerful bows. So these composite bows, they're basically suggesting these were composite bows that were maybe had, like, metal parts to them, maybe reinforced at certain points where it might get weak or whatever with some metal fittings and things like that.
Nothing like that has. So we have a literary reference to bows with bronze and probably refers to metal parts and stuff like that. And so the hypothesis would be that Nephi's steel bow would be something like that. And presumably coming several centuries later, being in the seventh century, when we've already established they are working steel, this isn't Bronze Age era anymore, maybe we're talking. They're doing the same thing, but now they're actually using steel, they're using carburized iron in those metal fittings. Right.
So that could be your steel bow.
There haven't been any explicit discovery like nothing like this has been found in the archaeological record, but very few composite bows have actually been recovered archaeologically. Wood is really hard. I mean, yeah, they all corrupt.
Some that we have are from King Tut's tomb, actually, and they don't have. There aren't any with bronze or copper or iron in them, but there are some that are gilded with gold.
And we can maybe show an image here of the bow of honor that has these gold bands around it. And, you know, some people might assume. Well, the assumption might be that with gold like that, it's going to be just a decorative bow.
[00:34:33] Speaker C: Ceremonial.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Ceremonial.
But there is a scholar who analyzed these and did conclude that whether it was used, it was. It probably was a functional bow. In fact, the way they gilded the gold, they did it so that it could be flexible and pulled back and wouldn't break or tear when you were actually using the bow. So it could have been functional. And it's maybe an analog to what a bow with iron or bronze might have been like.
And there are also references in the Amarna letters to bows that were Overlaid with gold coming from Hittites being gifted to Egyptian pharaohs.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: So beyond the Old World, after Nephi goes to the New World, they also still talk about bows and arrows. What kind of bows are we talking about there?
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Well, they never talk about steel bows there, that's for sure.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: So it could be some kind of wooden thing. Was that known in the New World at all?
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Well, this is actually one of the things that's kind of surprising me.
The bow and arrow has been considered an anachronism in the Book of Mormon. And your initial, like, just your intuition would be that, like, surely the bow and arrow.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: That's exactly what I thought about this when I encountered this topic. I'm like, that's like, along with spears and other kind of quote unquote rudimentary forms of weapons, the first thing you think of. Yeah, even. And if they are made out of wood, like, none of them would have survived. Again, I don't know how many Maquiwat we have that have survived. Right?
So, like, even though we don't, I'll let you get into it. But even if we don't have firm evidence for it, like, surely they must have known how to do this.
Paleolithic hunters knew how to make bows and arrows. You know what I mean? Like, come on.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Arrow. The bow and arrow is one of the oldest weapons in the world. It goes back tens of thousands of years. Okay, we have evidence for bows and arrows, and it's all over the world. It's everywhere.
[00:36:20] Speaker C: But not Mesoamerica. We're supposed to assume that they're the
[00:36:23] Speaker B: dummies, but for some reason, and I can put up a couple academic references because I found. I was curious about this because. Because it is thought to come in a little later at Mesoamerica, I thought, what about the rest of the Americas? And even with the rest of the Americas, there's some debate, but there are some fairly recent articles even that are basically saying it wasn't until about 1400 years ago that the bow got introduced to north and South America.
And that's wild because like I said, it's one of the earliest weapons and it spreads all over the world, for one thing. But also it's so like, it's almost stereotypical Native American weapon. Right? You just intuitively think, like, well, they definitely had that. That one wouldn't be an anachron.
But there have been some people who brought it up because it does appear it wasn't introduced into the Americas until a little later. And Mesoamerica has Typically thought, it's been thought to not be introduced until about 900 AD.
Now, what kind of evidence do you actually get for bows and arrows? Like Stephen's talking about? The wood of a bow is gonna, is gonna probably not survive the test time.
[00:37:21] Speaker C: The string. Yeah, man. Fibers or something.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: The stick of the arrow. The main evidence for arrows and even darts or spears and things like that is the tips. Right. The arrowheads, usually those are made out of stone. Right. You know, certainly in, in like Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures in the Old World, you'll get them made out of bronze and iron and things like that. But, but especially in the New World, those are typically.
They're stone, they're obsidian, they're flint, they're things like that.
And the way you, from what I understand, and it can get pretty technical, the way you typically distinguish between an arrow point versus a spear point versus a dart point, and those are all different kinds of weapons is the size and the shape, maybe.
And so the question is, have they found. Basically, you know, there's kind of a size range that scholars look at and say that is small enough that it was probably an arrow that was shot from a bow, basically. And is there evidence for that in Book of Mormon times?
Before we actually get into that, there's also maybe an alternative, a tempting solution here is the atlatl.
This is a, this is a spear throwing device or dart throwing weapon that was, that's attested and that goes back to like 4000 BC in Mesoamerica specifically. And it's another one, it's all over the Americas. Well, I don't know if it's all over, but it's in various parts of the Americas and it's even like it's attested in Australia.
It's similar to the bow and arrow in that it's, it's a projectile weapon. It's a projectile weapon. And so one potential solution here is, like I said, it's in, it's in Mesoamerica at least as a hunting weapon as far back as 4000 BC.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Now, bow and arrow, you've got bow with a string and an arrow. You pull it back and then the tension of the string launches the arrow. With an atlatl, it's like you've got a wooden or some kind of implement to hold the projectile weapon and then you use it to launch and throw, right?
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And we can show some images that will maybe help people visualize how that that functions a little better. It's a, it's a, it's a Different kind of weapon, but it's in Mesoamerica. You have Olmec monuments that depict it. You have, it's. It's a major weapon in Teotihuacan, and they're the ones who really popularize it for warfare use and things like that.
Classic, Middle Classic Maya use it. It's, it's, it's pretty well attested and it's definitely around in Book of Mormon times, even if it's not a major weapon. So that's a temptation here. Well, I say a temptation. One possible solution is that this is a translation issue. Right. And atlatl. Atlatl dart is being translated as bow and arrow rather than atlatl and dart. Right.
So that's one possibility.
And I think some people have have suggested that in the past. In fact, I think Bill Hamblin puts that forward as one possibility in his chapter on bow and arrow. In that book over there, though, the one potential issue with that one that I see at least, is in Jerim 1:8, you have a description of the weapons of war that they had, and he lists the sharp pointed arrow, the quiver, and we do have quivers. That's. You can go look at Matt's thing for that. That's a resolved one.
The dart and the javelin, all and all preparations of war.
Okay. So he describes three different kinds of projectile weapons, and the dart is usually what you would use to describe what is being launched from an atlatl. Okay. So. And in fact, this actually a really intriguing description because if you go look at, if you go read some descriptions of Mesoamerican warfare, you get examples where they list off three pointed weapons like this as well. You have this distinction between arrows and darts. And that does show up at least in one place in the Book of Mormon. That suggests maybe there's different weapons at play, at least for a time. You don't actually hear about darts again in the Book of Mormon.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Okay, so what evidence do we have for Herod?
[00:41:13] Speaker B: So for the arrow, there was a study done back in. It was published in 2005.
I mentioned for a long time it was thought that it wasn't until about 900 A.D. that the arrow, the bow and arrow was introduced to Mesoamerica. But this study found evidence of basically projectile points that were the size and shape you would expect for an arrow rather than an atlateral dart in the Late Classic period. So that's 600 to 900 A.D. and the early classic period at Copan. That's. That's 400 to 600 A.D. getting closer. Right. So you're like, you're right there, like abooting.
[00:41:49] Speaker C: Aboot. Aboot.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: I'm a Canadian right there about the, you know, right up against that final era of the Book of Mormon. Right. And then there's a few other studies. That one is kind of like scholars say, yes, okay, we'll accept the arrow got introduced that early.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: So if you take a very narrow reading of bow and arrow, meaning literally bow and arrow, we're getting close in time for archaeological evidence for it matching up with where the Book of Mormon references it. But we're not quite there yet.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: We're not quite there. There's a few other things and Matt talks about them in his paper.
He also wrote, I think, an evidence article for Scripture Central. And then Hamblin talks about it in his bow and arrow article from that volume there. There are a few other instances where scholars have suggested finding projectile points that they think are arrowheads in pre classic sites. And pre classic, for people who don't know the terminology, that's basically Book of Mormon times.
Now, those are still kind of controversial, but there's a few different places where that's been the case. And there's even a sort of graffiti inscription or not inscription, but carving image of what has been interpreted by at least one scholar of a man holding a bow that is dated to maybe the 2nd century A.D.
again, pre classic times is what you would describe that as.
And that again, controversial. Scholars don't agree with. Not all scholars agree with those interpretations, but there's some potential evidence for arrows specifically. Not atlatl darts, but arrows being used and the bow and arrow being used maybe at least by some small minor groups, maybe hunter gatherers or whatever.
Maybe not the major polities, the Maya maybe aren't using it, but maybe some smaller groups are actually using the bow and arrow during Book of Mormon times in Mesoamerica.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: Like all of these anachronisms, the Book Mormon tends to get better with age. As we learn more about the ancient world, it tends to corroborate what the Book of Mormon actually claims. So if you want to dive deeper into all of this, including the weapons we didn't get to like javelins and spears, check out the volume from the Interpreter foundation with Matthew Roper, Anachronisms, Accidental Evidence for the Book of Mormon. Remember, you can study deeply, believe boldly, and we'll see you next time.
