Double Documents
 

In the ancient Roman world, official documents, such as army discharges, marriage contracts, property transfers, citizenship, etc. were often written on "double documents." These documents could be written on parchment, papyrus, or metal. Obviously, most surviving exempla are the metal type.

Now, on these documents, a text was written twice, in different sections. One of the sections was covered, sealed, and witnessed. The other section was left exposed for reference and use. If the authenticity of the exposed text was questioned, the sealed section could be opened and checked for discrepancies.

BYU, FARMerS, etc. have (anecdotally, to me) expressed interest that this is a corroborative proof of Book of Mormon authenticity, since it indicates that records and legal procedures in "the ancient world" were kept on metal plates that had "sealed" sections. In the Lee liberry, you can see a nice example from the reign of Trajan (98-117 CE) and their supposed significance for Latter-day Saints: http://romanplates.byu.edu/about/what_significance.html

Despite the liberry's claim that "this pattern of documentary preservation, implemented in various media, was widely recognized in several ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean civilizations," they all date from the ROMAN period, hundreds of years after Lehi et al. are supposed to have left the Near East forever. There are double documents from Israel that were discovered in the 1940s and 1950s, but these all date from the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130s CE. If you know of earlier (say, 600 BCE) double documents from Semitic cultures and can direct me to their publications, I'll gladly revisit the issue.

This kind of cherry-picking of evidence to try to prove historicity in the BoM galls me to no end. It's disingenuous at worst, ignorant at best and an embarrassment to the BYU.

It also supports my contention that whoever wrote the BoM had a strong grounding in Classical literature and civilization.

This is interesting. But although I understand your objection that we don't have proof, yet if ever, of double documents from the exact Semitic culture from the time of "Lehi", doesn't the existence of the concept provide suggestive evidence that at least some ancient cultures practiced this, and if we can search further perhaps even those of "Lehi's" time?

Of course Roman culture and society did not develop isolated from the rest of the world, in a bubble. In fact the Romans can thank the Greeks for much of their culture and the Greeks can thank ...

While I generally don't care about FARMS etc. it's not as illogical and disingenous as you make it sound.

We can search, and I'm always open to new evidence, but IMO the liberry is being deceptive because of the time and cultural distance involved.

About 5 or 6 years ago, someone from FARMS tried to get my father to donate/raise money to buy these plates (or maybe some others like them) and I talked him out of it. FARMS has also tried to connect BoM writing with ancient curse tablets (written on scraps of lead). A huge waste of time, IMO.

I don't really have anything to add to the previous two comments.


If you're looking for proof of the BoM in this way, you're going about it the wrong way, IMO.

It's like finding a credit card slip from 1955 on a Native American reservation and concluding that the Indians might have used credit cards before the white man arrived.

Sure, maybe. . .

I agree with this...but still, to each his own.

Academic research into concepts of the ancient world are not to produce "testimony", but for academics it is of interest to them.

Exactly.

I've said it many times: if you receive spiritual witness of the BoM, that's irrefutable. Historical approaches might be interesting, but don't publish them or prominently display them in a university library.

I understand the observation and agree they should not use such stuff as proof. However, wasn't the initial criticism, "well, nobody in the ancient world used sealed documents."

So they find some unrelated in time examples and took the argument too far.