BOOK of MORMON RESOURCES: May 2016

Monday, May 23, 2016

Art and Iconography 3

This post is a continuation of the material developed in the articles "Art and Iconography 1" and "Art and Iconography 2." A dominant theme in the Book of Mormon is resurrection of the dead.

The term "resurrection" appears 75 times in the text e.g. Mosiah 15:21, Alma 12:25.
Some variant of the phrase "rise from the dead" occurs 16 times e.g. 2 Nephi 25:13. Alma 40:9.
The idea of victory over the grave is expressed 8 times e.g. Mosiah 16:8, Helaman 14:25.
Some variation on the theme of breaking or loosing the bands of death appears 44 times e.g. Alma 11:42, Mormon 9:13.
Being born again or born of God is mentioned 15 times e.g. Mosiah 27:25, Alma 22:15.

Izapa monuments portray some of the most striking resurrection images ever created. Stela 1 has birth imagery in a heavenly setting.

Izapa Stela 1
Sky Panel with Celestial Umbilical Cord
Norman 1973 Plate 2

Stela 3 depicts a journey toward post-mortality.

Izapa Stela 3
Dis-embodied Figure Ascending in a Boat
Norman 1973 Plate 6

Stela 9 also shows a figure ascending.

Izapa Stela 9
Winged Deity Bearing a Human Heavenward
Norman 1973 Plate 18

Stela 50 is unmistakable.

Izapa Stela 50
Winged Figure Rises on Umbilical Cord from Skeleton
Norman 1973 Plate 50

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

This post is a continuation of the theme developed in the article "Art and Iconography 1." The story of Moses raising the brazen serpent as a type of Christ was important enough to Book of Mormon peoples that a variant of it appears at least seven times in the text. Eight narrative motifs are standardized across these relevant passages.

1 Nephi 17:41
a. flying serpents
b. bitten
c. healed
d. look, labor
h. rod of Moses

1 Nephi 19:10
b. crucified
e. lifted up
f. three days

2 Nephi 25:13
a. wings
b. crucify
c. healing, saved
e. rise from the dead
f. three days

2 Nephi 25:20
a. poisonous serpents
b. bitten
c. heal the nations
d. cast eyes upon
e. raise up
g. serpent

Alma 33:19-23
c. live, heal
d. look, casting about your eyes, behold
e. raised up
h. tree, springing up in you

Helaman 8:14-15
c. live
d. look
e. lifted up
g. brazen serpent

3 Nephi 27:14-15
d. draw men unto Christ, stand before Christ
e. lifted up
h. cross

Izapa Stela 25 has a fascinating version of all eight motifs blended with Popol Vuh mythology.

Izapa Stela 25
Norman 1973 Plate 42

First, the Popol Vuh connection. 1 is Seven Macaw, aka Principal Bird Deity. 2 is Hunahpu, one of the Hero Twins. 3 & 4 are Hunahpu's severed arm and the bleeding shoulder from which it was torn.

Izapa Stela 25 with Popol Vuh Motifs Identified

Next, the Book of Mormon connection. The letters a - h are the eight narrative motifs itemized above.

Izapa Stela 25 with Book of Mormon Motifs Identified

a. wings, feathers, serpent

b. figure is wounded, bitten, sacrificed

c. conch shell represents life, breath, birth, power over the earth monster

d. figure is looking at, drawn to, standing before the raised bird serpent

e. figure is raising, lifting up the bird serpent

f. three branches

g. serpent

h. crocodile morphs into a tree, rod, cross

Other aspects of this correlation:

The twined serpent evokes a vine as in 1 Nephi 15:15 and Alma 16:17. The arboreal green vine snake oxybelis fulgidus is native to the forests of Central America.
The headpiece on the Moses figure evokes the bird deity's tail implying a god/man relationship.
The "m" emblem inside a cartouche attached to the raised serpent's body is generally regarded as a Venus symbol as in Revelation 22:16.
Crocodile represents the earth, evil, and death as in 2 Nephi 9:10, 19, 26.
The crocodile's snout is under the ground panel denoting that he is a denizen of the waters under the earth as described in Mosiah 13:12.
The upward ascending scrolls above the small bird's head evoke the idea that the tree leads to eternal life as in Alma 32:41 and Alma 33:23.
The crocodile tree and the raised staff are parallel tracks, one temporal and the other spiritual as in 1 Nephi 15:32, Alma 12:16, etc. Ten passages in the Book of Mormon discuss temporal/spiritual duality. See also the article "Kaminaljuyu" point no. 27.
The Book of Mormon links a rod and a tree 1 Nephi 8:19 as does the Pentateuch Numbers 17:8.
Jesus Christ has avian characteristics as in 3 Nephi 10:4-6 and 3 Nephi 25:2.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Art and Iconography 1

Texts shed the most light on the ancient world. They reconstruct to a small degree the words and word patterns that fell from the lips of the people who lived and died in that world. The next most important source of information from antiquity is art and iconography. Graphical and symbolic representations give us a visual picture of ancient life and belief systems. Artifacts offer the fewest insights. They are often quotidian rather than elite. Much of what they tell us comes from context which is frequently uncontrolled or even unknown. Important questions such as occurrence frequency and spatial distribution depend on large enough sample sizes to achieve statistical significance. Function is often ambiguous. Recall the famous quip among archaeologists that "if you don't know what something was used for, call it a ritual object."

Given the fragmentary nature of archaeological data, find frequencies are in inverse proportion to importance. In the Maya world, for example, we have millions of artifacts, tens of thousands of art objects, and only a few thousand texts. Those same ratios are typical of ancient high cultures worldwide.

The Book of Mormon is a text. It sheds vast light on the ancient world. It reconstructs to a small degree the words and word patterns that fell from the lips of remarkable people such as Nephi, Alma, Helaman, Mormon, and Moroni. Some articles on this blog have productively compared it with other ancient texts. See for example:

Notable for its absence on the list above is Popol Vuh, generally recognized as the most important ancient Maya text currently available. Stay tuned. One of the reasons Popol Vuh is so highly regarded is that echoes of and references to its creation myth are found widely throughout Mesoamerica. See the article "Iconographic Corroboration of Quichean Texts."

In the last 40 years, decipherment of written Mayan has advanced rapidly. Fundamental resources in this effort have been the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions (CMHI) at Harvard and Justin Kerr's database of rollout photography. Epigraphers' ability to read Maya texts has enabled art historians to interpret carved monuments, painted pottery, sculpted figurines, etc. with increasing confidence.

This series of articles will not compare the Book of Mormon text with other texts. It will compare the Book of Mormon text with the second most important category of ancient data - artistic and iconographic images. You can read a National Geographic article, or you can look at the images and read the captions. This presentation is like the latter.

Sources for the images are listed in order of first publication.

1973 V. Garth Norman, Izapa Sculpture Part 1: Album, Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation No. 30 (Provo, UT: BYU NWAF)

1976 V. Garth Norman, Izapa Sculpture Part 2: Text, Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation No. 30 (Provo, UT: BYU NWAF)

1986 Lee Allen Parsons, The Origins of Maya Art: Monumental Stone Sculpture of Kaminaljuyui, Guatemala, and the Southern Pacific Coast, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art & Archaeology No. 28 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection)

2006 Julia Guernsey, Ritual & Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan Style Art (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press)

2010 Julia Guernsey, John E. Clark, Barbara Arroyo, editors, The Place of Stone Monuments: Context, Use, and Meaning in Mesoamerica's Preclassic Transition (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection)

2012 V. Garth Norman, Izapa Sacred Space: Sculpture Calendar Codex (American Fork, UT: ARCON, Inc.)

2013 Lucia Ross Henderson, Bodies Politic, Bodies in Stone: Imagery of the Human and the Divine in the Sculpture of Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala (PhD dissertation, UT Austin). Dozens of parallels between the Book of Mormon and Henderson's excellent description of ancient life are in the article "Kaminaljuyu."

1 Nephi 10:8 Shoes had latchets which are thongs or laces.

Shoes with Latchets Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 67
Henderson 2013 p. 621

--
2 Nephi 9:26 Breath symbolized life and resurrection.

Breath Bead by Nose Symbolizing Life and Resurrection
Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 10
Parsons 1986 Fig. 175

--
2 Nephi 13:21 Some people wore nose ornaments.

Nose Ornament Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 24
Henderson 2013 p. 612

--
2 Nephi 17:20 In the genetic population from which Book of Mormon peoples migrated men grew full beards.

Heavily Bearded Figure Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 8
Henderson 2013 Fig. 25 b

--
Enos 1:20 Lamanites wore a short skin girdle about their loins.

Girdle Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 65
Henderson 2013 p. 619

--
Enos 1:20 Weapons included axes and clubs Mosiah 9:16.

Ax or Club Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 24
Henderson 2013 p. 612

--
Mosiah 2:3 Nephites made burnt offerings in a sacral context.

Burnt Offerings on Incensarios Izapa Stela 24
Norman 1973 plate 40

Another representation.

Burnt Offering on Bound Altar
Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 169
Henderson 2013 p. 648

--
Mosiah 8:10 Book of Mormon peoples wore breastplates in battle.

Breastplate Kaminaljuyu Sculpture 54
Henderson 2013 Fig. 13 e

--
Mosiah 17:13 Abinadi was bound, his skin was scourged (the Yale 2009 text reads "scorched") with burning faggots, and this excruciating torture resulted in his death.