• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

FairMormon

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Come, Follow Me Resources

  • Find Answers
  • Blog
  • Media & Apps
  • Conference
  • Bookstore
  • Archive
  • About
  • Get Involved
  • Search

Matthew Roper

The Ordeal of the Three Nephites and the Popol Vuh (Mesoamerican Perspectives)

January 9, 2014 by Matthew Roper

The Book of Mormon tells of three Nephite disciples who, like the Apostle John were blessed by Jesus that they should “never taste death” and “never endure the pains of death” (3 Nephi 28:6-8). As they went forth to preach, these chosen representatives of the resurrected Lord were persecuted by those who “denied the Christ” and his gospel and “did despise them because of the many miracles which were wrought among them. Therefore they did exercise power and authority over the disciples of Jesus” (4 Nephi1:29-30), According to Mormon, “they were cast into prison by them who did not belong to the church. And the prisons could not hold them, for they were rent in twain, And they were cast down into the earth: but they did smite the earth with the word of God, insomuch that by his power they were delivered out of the depths of the earth; and therefore they could not dig pits sufficient to hold them. And thrice they were cast into a furnace and received no harm. And twice were they cast into a den of wild beasts; and behold they did play with the beasts as a child with a suckling lamb, and received no harm” (3 Nephi 28:19-22; see also 4 Nephi 1:30-33). (1) To the modern reader the behavior of the disciples’ enemies may seem curious. There being no shortage of ways in which one might kill or attempt to kill one’s opponents, why, we might ask, were these methods chosen by the disciples’ persecutors, and what may have been their significance to those who observed them? (2) While definitive answers to these questions are elusive, it may be useful to consider Mormon’s account in light of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican myths found in the Mayan Popol Vuh.

Chief and oldest among these tales are the exploits of the two Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, and their triumph over various proud and powerful opponents (3). The brothers’ exploits are represented on Mesoamerican monuments, painted murals and vases dating back to Pre-Classic times evidencing the antiquity of the story. “The Twins were the very model of what ruling princes should be. They were eternally youthful and therefore immortal. Their father the Maize God had suffered death in the Underworld, but thanks to their efforts he was reborn on the surface of the earth; in a like manner, so were the temporal lords of the Maya realm responsible for the seasonal planting, germination, and harvest of the great staple food, maize.” (4)  From an early time down to the European arrival, “Maya kings seem to have emulated the Hero Twins and their exploits.” (5) In fact, “Maya Rulers exploited their myth known as the Popol Vuh, to prove their right to rule . . . They portrayed themselves in the images of their gods and demigods. The most powerful and popular of the characters they cloaked themselves with were the famous Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.”(6)

While the ordeals repeatedly inflicted on the three disciples by those seeking power may seem curious to the modern reader, it is noteworthy that similar ordeals are associated with Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the Popol Vuh. The Popol Vuh tells of the monster Cabracan who had the power to cause earthquakes. At the direction of the god Huracan, the precocious brothers outwitted their dangerous enemy by tricking him to eat, thereby causing him to lose his power. “Then the boys tied him up. They tied his hands behind his back. The boys were mindful to make sure that his hands were well bound. They also tied his ankles together. Then they hurled him down into the earth and buried him.” (7) Contemporary traditions in highland Guatemala seem to reflect this story. In the town of Chichicastenango: “They say of the earthquake that there is a giant under the earth, bound by his hands and feet, and when there is a slight tremor, it is because he has moved his hands and feet a little; and when he turns over on the other side is when there are strong earthquakes.” (8) In the ancient Maya story, the troublesome monster was restrained by hurling him down into the earth and burying him. Perhaps by casting the three disciples into the earth, the disciples’ enemies may have hoped to bolster their claims to rulership and authority by emulating the exploits of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, but their actions seemingly backfired for when the disciples were “cast down into the earth,” this failed to restrain them as it had Cabracan, “but they did smite the earth with the word of God, insomuch that they were delivered out of the depths of the earth; and therefore they could not dig pits sufficient to hold them” (3 Nephi 28:20). Consequently, “the powers of the earth could not hold them” (3 Nephi 28:39). (9)

The Popol Vuh also tells of the Hero twins’ encounter and eventual triumph in Xibalba where they outwitted the lords of death. During their visit, the hero twins were confined in various rooms where the evil lords of death hoped that they would be overcome and killed, as others had been. In one of these ordeals they were confined in a house full of hungry jaguars, but were not killed. They outwitted the Lords of death by speaking to the beasts and giving them bones to eat. (10) “What they had planned to do, they had done despite all their afflictions and misfortunes. Thus they did not die in the trials of Xibalba. Neither were they defeated by all the ravenous beasts that lived there.” (11) In another later, but possibly related tale found among the Popoluca of Veracruz, the corn-god hero Homshuk fills the same role as the Hero Twins and undergoes a similar ordeal. “In the land of Hurricane, there were different kinds of jails: one in which there were hungry tigers, another in which there were famished serpents . . . Then Homshuk was ordered placed in the jail where there were serpents. `You are a nagual,’ Hurricane said. `Here you are going to be eaten.’ But in the morning when they appeared, he was seated on a serpent. He had not been eaten. . . .  The next night he was placed in the jail with the tigers, and he told them the same thing that he had told the serpents, keeping only the largest to serve as his chair. . . . On the following day, Hurricane saw that the boy was not dead, and he said, `That is a nagual.’ Then he pondered, and finally said, `We won’t be able to kill him this way, but since he is a nagual, he can’t continue to live amongst us.’” (12) The tale of Homshuk, like that of Hunahpu and Xbalanque reminds us of the ordeal of the three Nephites who played with the dangerous beasts and receive no harm (3 Nephi 28:22; 4 Nephi 1:33).

In another ordeal, the Hero Twins were confined in a house of fire. “There was nothing but fire inside. But they were not burned. They were to have been roasted and set aflame. Instead they were just fine when the dawn came. It had been desired that they would straightway die when they passed through there, but it was not so. Thus all Xibalba lost heart as a result.”  (13) Similarly, the three Nephites were cast into a furnace of fire on several occasions, but “received no harm” (3 Nephi 28:21; 4 Nephi 1:32). While the persecutors may have thought that these ordeals would have strengthened their own authority in the eyes of the people, the miraculous deliverance of the disciples could be seen as a testament to the power of Jesus who had bestowed this blessing upon his three chosen representatives.

In the Popol Vuh, the two brothers definitively demonstrated their divine power in a voluntary act of immolation. After being consumed in the flame, they were then transformed, disguised and tricked the lords of death into sacrificing themselves. After humbling their proud enemies, the two heroes ascended into heaven where they became the sun and the moon. By besting the lords of Xibalba at the various ordeals, the Hero Twins demonstrated their power over death and exposed the illegitimacy of their enemies. “Surely, they were not true gods. Their names merely inspired fear, for their faces were evil. They were strife makers, traitors, and tempters to sin and violence . . . . Thus their greatness and their glory were destroyed.” (14) While speculative, it is tempting to view the confrontation between the three disciples and their opponents in a setting where the exploits of the Hero Twins were known and tied to claims of authority and rulership by those who rejected the gospel of Christ. The implications of the unexpected outcome could not have been lost on those who witnessed it. In triumphing over these efforts to slay them, the disciples effectively turned the tables, exposing the folly of their power seeking enemies and validating the teachings and authority of their Master, the rightful Lord who had truly triumphed over death.

* This entry also appeared at Ether’s Cave.

(1) Mormon provides two descriptions of the miraculous deeds of the three disciples (3 Nephi 28:18-23; 4 Nephi 1:29-34), but it is unclear if these descriptions refer only to the events in 4 Nephi or to two separate episodes (one shortly after the visitation of Jesus associated with the conversion of the people in that generation and to another two hundred years later, during which the disciples were rejected). While I prefer the later, either reading is possible.

(2) Moroni alludes to the faith of the Pre-Columbian saints. “For in his name could they remove mountains; and in his name could they cause the earth to shake; and by the power of his word did they cause prisons to tumble to the earth; yea, even the fiery furnace could not harm them, neither wild beasts nor poisonous serpents, because of the power of his word” (Mormon 8:24). These miracles attributed to the three Nephites and other Book of Mormon prophets may have become a point of persecution inflicted on the disciples of Jesus by those who saw them as a threat to their own power and opposed the teachings of Christ.

(3) Allen J. Christenson, Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya (New York: Winchester, 2003).

(4) Michael D. Coe, “The Hero Twins: Myth and Image,” in Justin Kerr, ed.,The Maya Vase Book: A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases(New York: Kerr Associates, 1989),1:182.

(5) Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The God’s and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 134.

(6) Justin Kerr, “The Myth of the Popol Vuh as an Instrument of Power,” in Elin C. Danien and Robert Sharer, eds., New Theories on the Ancient Maya(University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1992),  109.

(7) Christenson, Popol Vuh, 110.

(8) Christenson, Popol Vuh, 111, note 219.

(9) One wonders if a similar motivation may lie behind to murder of Jaredite prophets during th reign of King Heth (Ether 9:29).

(10) Christenson, Popol Vuh, 170.

(11) Christenson, Popol Vuh, 177.

(12) George M. Foster, Sierra Popoluca Folklore and Beliefs (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1945), 193.

(13) Christenson, The Popol Vuh, 171.

(14) Christenson, The Popol Vuh, 188.

Filed Under: Book of Mormon

Ancient Near Eastern Scimitars (Howlers # 19)

August 10, 2013 by Matthew Roper

A Cimeter (more commonly spelled scimitar) is a sword  “having a curved blade with the edge on the convex side” or “something resembling a scimitar (as in sharpness or shape); esp: a long-handled billhook” (Webster’s Third International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 1993). Critics have long claimed that the scimitar was unknown before the rise of Islam and that references to this weapon in the Book of Mormon is anachronistic.

I might urge the utterance of ideas and the use of words which these ancient writers, if genuine, could not have known, as an argument against the authenticity of the book. Such as . . . . Cimeters.” John Hyde Jr., Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (1857), 234-35.

The book contains evidence of its modern origin . . . . The cimeter, a Turkish weapon, not known until after the time of Mohommed. Samuel Hawthornthwaite, Adventures Among the Mormons (1857), 69.

The use of the word `scimitar’ does not occur in other literature before the rise of Mohammedan power and apparently that peculiar weapon was not developed until long after the Christian era. It does not, therefore, appear likely that the Nephites or the Lamanites possessed either the weapon or the term. W. E. Riter to James E. Talmage, August 22, 1921.

Cimeters were curved swords used by the Persians, Arabs, and Turks, half a world away from America and appearing a thousand years too late in history to enter the picture. Gordon Fraser, Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates (1964), 58.

Scimitars are unknown until the rise of the Muslim faith (after 600 A. D.) James Spencer, The Disappointment of B.H. Roberts (1991), 4.

There are other anachronisms such as . . . cimeter, the latter presumably an Arabian scimitar that “did not originate before the rise of Islam” more than a millennium  after Lehi. Earl Wunderli, An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us About Itself (2013), 36.

We now know that scimitars of various forms were known in the Ancient Near East as early as 2000 B.C. (Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963, 1: 10-11, 78-79, 172, 204-207; William J. Hamblin, Warfare in the Ancient Near East to 1600 BC.London and New York: Rutledge, 2006, 66-71, 279-80). They are subsequently portrayed in martial art from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Rare archaeological specimens of this weapon have also been found. The cutting edge was usually on the convex side, however some were double-edged such as the “curved sword sharpened on two sides” discovered at Shechem which dates to 1800 B.C. (“Arms and Weapons,” in Charles F. Pfeiffer, ed., The Biblical World: A Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology. New York: Bonanza Books, 1966, 93). “Ancient representations show mostly the employment of the inner blade; that of the outer one is however also perhaps to be found. Preserved oriental scimitars have the blade outside” (G. Molin, “What is aKidon?” Journal of Semitic Studies 1/4 October 1956: 336).

In the biblical account of David’s confrontation with Goliath the Philistine champion is said to be well armored. In addition to his spear he had both ahereb sword with a sheath (1 Samuel 17:51) and a kidon which he carries between his shoulders (1 Samuel 17:6). The term kidon was once a mystery, but texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest that it was some kind of sword and is now widely acknowledged to have been a scimitar (Paul Y. Hoskisson, “Scimitars, Cimeters! We have scimilars! Do we need another cimeter?” in Warfare in the Book of Mormon, 352-59. G. Molin, “What is a Kidon?” 334-37; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel. New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1965, 1:242). When challenged in 1 Samuel 17:45 David responds to his opponent, “You come against me with a sword [hereb] and spear [hanit] and scimitar [kidon], but I come against you with the name of Yahweh Sabaoth, god of the ranks of Israel” (See P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., 1 Samuel. New York: Doubleday, 1980, 285). Interestingly, as Hoskisson observes, the biblical description in the Hebrew text parallels that in Alma 44:8 in which the Zoramite chieftain carries both a sword and a scimitar (Hoskisson, “Scimitars, Cimeters!” 355).

Ross Hassig has identified a curved weapon portrayed in Postclassic Mesoamerican art which he calls a “short sword”  (Ross Hassig,War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992, 112-13;  “Weaponry,” in Susan Toby Evans and David L. Webster, eds., Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2001, 810-11; Mexico and the Spanish Conquest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006, 23-24; “La Guerra en la Antigua Mesoamerica,” Arqueologia Mexicana 14/84 Marzo-Abril 2007: 36. See also Esperanza Elizabeth Jimenez Garcia, “Iconografia guerrera en la escultura de Tula, Hidalgo,” Arqueologia Mexicana 14/84 Marzo-Abril 2007: 54-59).

It was a curved weapon designed for slashing and consisted of a flat hard wooden base approximately 50 cm. (20 inches) long into which were set obsidian blades along both edges. “It was an excellent slasher and yet the forward curve of the sword retained some aspects of a crusher when used curved end forward” (Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, 113). The lightness of the short sword enabled the soldier to carry more than one weapon. “Soldiers could now provide their own covering fire with atlatls while advancing and still engage in hand-to-hand combat with short swords once their closed with the enemy” (Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 23-24).

This weapon or something very similar may have been used until shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in some sectors of Mesoamerica. Huastec engravings on shell show “a sort of curved club, apparently of wood and with a cutting edge” which may have been a similar weapon (Guy Stresser-Pean, “Ancient Sources on the Huasteca,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians 11 1971, 595). Hassig reported that short swords are portrayed in the hands of warriors on a Aztec monument from the ceremonial center at Tenochtitlan and took this as evidence that the weapon was either “still in use or at least remembered as a functional weapon” at that time (Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, 248, note 8).  Reportedly among the weapons used by the ancestors of Guatemalan peoples were “certain scimitars they say were made of flint” (“Descripcion de la provincia de Zapotitlan y Suchitepequez,” Sociedad de Geografia e Historia de Guatemala, Anales 28 1955: 74).  Another tradition relates that the Pre-Columbian ancestral heroes of certain west Mexican tribes taught their people to make fire and “gave them also machetes or cutlasses of iron” (Robert H. Barlow, “Straw Hats,”Tlalocan 2/1 1945: 94). Interestingly, if credited, this may suggest that pieces of iron may have sometimes been used as scimitar or machete-like blades rather than obsidian. In any case, this weapon seems to be a reasonable candidate for the Book of Mormon scimitar (William J. Hamblin and A Brent Merrill first suggested this correlation in “Notes on the Cimeter (Scimitar) in the Book of Mormon,”Warfare in the Book of Mormon, 361. For a more detailed discussion see Matthew Roper, “Swords and `Cimeters’ in the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8/1 1999: 39-40, 41-43; Roper, “Mesoamerican `Cimeters’ in Book of Mormon times,”Insights: An Ancient Window 28/1 2008: 2-3).

* This is cross-posted from a two-part entry at Ether’s Cave here and here.

Filed Under: Anti-Mormon critics, Book of Mormon

Naming in the Desert (Howlers # 13)

July 12, 2013 by Matthew Roper

All the rivers and valleys he makes Lehi name with new names.
John Hyde Jr., Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (1857), 223.

From Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert (1988), 75-76.

By what right do these people rename streams and valleys to suit themselves? No westerner would tolerate such arrogance. But Lehi is not interested in western taste; he is following a good old Oriental custom. Among the laws “which no Bedouin would dream of transgressing,” the first, according to Jennings-Bramley, is that “any water you may discover, either in your own territory or in the territory of another tribe, is named after you.” So it happens that in Arabia a great wady (valley) will have different names at different points along its course, a respectable number of names being “all used for one and the same valley. . . . One and the same place may have several names, and the wadi running close to the same, or the mountain connected with it, will naturally be called differently by members of different clans,” according to Canaan, who tells how the Arabs “often coin a new name for a locality for which they have never used a proper name, or whose name they do not know,” the name given being usually that of some person. However, names thus bestowed by wandering tribesmen “are neither generally known or commonly used,” so that we need not expect any of Lehi’s place names to survive.

Speaking of the desert “below the Negeb proper,” i.e., the general area of Lehi’s first camp, Woolley and Lawrence report “peaks and ridges that have different names among the different Arab tribes, and from different sides,” and of the nearby Tih Palmer says, “In every locality, each individual object, whether rock, mountain, ravine, or valley, has its appropriate name,” while Raswan recalls how “miraculously each hill and dale bore a name.” But how reliable are such names? Philby recounts a typical case: “Zayid and ‘Ali seemed a little vague about the nomenclature of these parts, and it was only by the irritating process of continual questioning and sifting their often inconsistent and contradictory answers that I was able in the end to piece together the topography of the region.” Farther east Cheesman ran into the same difficulty: “I pointed out that this was the third different hill to which he had given the same name. He knew that, was the reply, but that was how they named them.”  The irresponsible custom of renaming everything on the spot seems to go back to the earliest times, and “probably, as often as not, the Israelites named for themselves their own camps, or unconsciously confounded a native name in their carelessness.” Yet in spite of its undoubted antiquity, only the most recent explorers have commented on this strange practice, which seems to have escaped the notice of travelers until explorers in our own times started to make maps.

Even more whimsical and senseless to a westerner must appear the behavior of Lehi in naming a river after one son and its valley after another. But the Arabs don’t think that way. In the Mahra country, for example, “as is commonly the case in these mountains, the water bears a different name from the wadi.” Likewise we might suppose that after he had named the river after his first-born the location of the camp beside its waters would be given, as any westerner would give it, with reference to the river. Instead, the Book of Mormon follows the Arabic system of designating the camp not by the name of the river (which may easily dry up sometime), but by the name of the valley (1 Nephi 10:16; 16:6).

*This item is cross-posted from Ether’s Cave.

Filed Under: Book of Mormon

Laban’s Sword of “Most Precious Steel” (Howlers #5)

June 17, 2013 by Matthew Roper

In his account of his encounter with Laban, an important official in Jerusalem around 600 B.C. Nephi states, “I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel” (1 Nephi 4:9). Nephi’s description of this weapon was long considered anachronistic:

 “This is the earliest account of steel to be found in history.” E. D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (1834), 25-26.

 “Laban’s sword was steel, when it is a notorious fact that the Israelites knew nothing of steel for hundreds of years afterwards. Who but as ignorant s person as Rigdon would have perpetrated all these blunders?” Clark Braden in Public Discussion, 1884, 109.

 “Laban is represented as killed by one Nephi, some six hundred years before Christ, with a sword `of the most precious steel,’ hundreds of years before steel was known to man!” Daniel Bartlett, The Mormons or, Latter-day Saints(1911), 15.

“[The Book of Mormon] speaks of the most `precious steel,’ before the commonest had been dreamt of.” C. Sheridan Jones, The Truth about the Mormons(1920), 4-5.

 “Nephi . . . wielded a sword `of the most precious steel.’ But steel was not known to man in those days.” Stuart Martin, The Mystery of Mormonism (1920), 44.

 “Laban had a steel sword long before steel came into use.” George Arbaugh, Revelation in Mormonism (1932), 55.

 “Every commentator on the Book of Mormon has pointed out the many cultural and historical anachronisms, such as the steel sword of Laban in 600 B.C.” Thomas O’Dea, The Mormons (1957), 39.

 “No one believes that steel was available to Laban or anyone else in 592 B.C.” William Whalen, The Latter-day Saints in the Modern World (1964), 48.

Today, the cutting remarks of  past critics notwithstanding, it is increasingly apparent that the practice of hardening iron through deliberate carburization, quenching and tempering was well known to the ancient world from which Nephi came “It seems evident” notes one recent authority, “that by the beginning of the tenth century B.C. blacksmiths were intentionally steeling iron.”  (Robert Maddin, James D. Muhly and Tamara S. Wheeler, “How the Iron Age Began,” Scientific American 237/4 [October 1977]:127).

Archaeologists, for example, have discovered evidence of sophisticated iron technology from the island of Cyprus. One interesting example was a curved iron knife found in an eleventh century tomb. Metallurgist Erik Tholander analyzed the weapon and found that it was made of “quench-hardened steel.” Other examples are known from Syro-Palestine. For example, an iron knife was found in an eleventh century Philistine tomb showed evidence of deliberate carburization.  Another is an iron pick found at the ruins of an fortress on Mount Adir in northern Galilee and may date as early as the thirteenth century B.C. “The manufacturer of the pick had knowledge of the full range of iron-working skills associated with the production of quench hardened steel” (James D. Muhly, “How Iron technology changed the ancient world and gave the Philistines a military edge,” Biblical Archaeology Review 8/6 [November-December 1982]: 50).
According to Amihai Mazar this implement was “made of real steel produced by carburizing, quenching and tempering.”  (Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000-586 B.C.E. New York: Doubleday, 1990, 361).

More significant, perhaps, in relation to the sword of Laban, archaeologists have discovered a carburized iron sword near Jericho. The sword which had a bronze haft, was one meter long and dates to the time of king Josiah, who would have been a contemporary of Lehi. This find has been described as “spectacular” since it is apparently “the only complete sword of its size and type from this period yet discovered in Israel.”(Hershall Shanks, “Antiquities director confronts problems and controversies,” Biblical Archaeology Review 12/4 [July-August 1986]: 33, 35).

Today the sword is displayed at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. For a photo of the sword see the pdf version of the article here.

The sign on the display reads:

This rare and exceptionally long sword, which was discovered on the floor of a building next to the skeleton of a man, dates to the end of the First Temple period. The sword is 1.05 m. long (!) and has a double edged blade, with a prominent central ridge running along its entire length.

The hilt was originally inlaid with a material that has not survived, most probably wood. Only the nails that once secured the inlays to the hilt can still be seen. The sword’s sheath was also made of wood, and all that remains of it is its bronze tip. Owing to the length and weight of the sword, it was probably necessary to hold it with two hands. The sword is made of iron hardened into steel, attesting to substantial metallurgical know-how. Over the years, it has become cracked, due to corrosion.

Such discoveries lend a greater sense of historicity to Nephi’s passing comment in the Book of Mormon.

*This article was cross-posted from Ether’s Cave.

Filed Under: Book of Mormon

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to Blog

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner


RSS-Icon RSS Feed (all posts)

Subscribe to Podcast

Podcast icon
Subscribe to podcast in iTunes
Subscribe to podcast elsewhere
Listen with FairMormon app
Android app on Google Play

Pages

  • Blog Guidelines

FairMormon Latest

  • Come Follow Me Week Three: The Turning of Hearts
  • Joseph Smith’s First Vision
  • Willing to Be Weak
  • FairMormon Finances
  • FAIR Voice Podcast #25: Interview with Blake Ostler

Blog Categories

Recent Comments

  • Debbi Rollo on Joseph Smith’s First Vision
  • Glenn Thigpen on Willing to Be Weak
  • Rob Peters on Joseph Smith’s First Vision
  • Wendy Ulrich on Willing to Be Weak
  • Rosalie Hamilton Milliner on Joseph Smith’s First Vision

Archives

Footer

FairMormon Logo

FairMormon is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Our Friends

  • Book of Mormon Central
  • BYU Religious Studies Center
  • BYU Studies
  • Interpreter Foundation
  • LDS Perspectives Podcast
  • Pearl of Great Price Central

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • iTunes
  • YouTube

Donate to FairMormon

We are a volunteer organization. We invite you to give back.

Donate Now

Donate to us by shopping at Amazon at no extra cost to you. Learn how →

Site Footer

Copyright © 1997-2021 by The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

No portion of this site may be reproduced without the express written consent of The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc.

Any opinions expressed, implied, or included in or with the goods and services offered by FairMormon are solely those of FairMormon and not those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) Logo

FairMormon™ is controlled and operated by the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR)