(Supposed)
Book of Mormon Anachronisms
(c) Copyright Michael R. Ash 1998. All rights reserved
Verses in question:
And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed to pieces... (Ether 2:23.)
In response, the brother of Jared “did molten out of rock sixteen small stones: and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass...” (Ether 3:1). The brother of Jared then brought these before the Lord and asked Him to touch the stones so they would “shine forth in the darkness” (Ether 3:4).
Anti-Mormon comment:
The Jaredites enjoyed “glass” windows in the miraculous barges in which they crossed the ocean; and “steel” and a “compass” were known to Nephi despite the fact that neither had been invented, demonstrating once again that Joseph Smith was a poor student of history and Hebrew customs. (Martin, 166; see also “compass” and [forthcoming] “steel”.)
Rebuttal:
Had Mr. Martin not been such a “poor student” of the Book of Mormon he would have known that the Jaredite barges did not have glass for they would have been “dashed in pieces” (Ether 2:23). It makes one wonder what other errors are contained in Martin's work if he can't even get the simple things right. Martin is not the only anti-Mormon, however, to claim that the Book of Mormon’s “glass” is anachronistic.
The writer did not know, probably, that glass windows were not invented till more than three thousand years after the time to which he refers. (Sunderland, 43.)
Considering that the Jaredites lived in approximately 2000 B.C., the above critic would put the invention of glass at about 1000 A.D. Thanks to modern research, however, we find “such objects as Egyptian glass beads ‘from the end of the third millennium B.C.’ and ‘plaques of turquoise blue glass of excellent quality’ in the possession of Zer, one of the very earliest queens of Egypt. ‘Very little is known,’ writes Newberry, ‘about the early history of glass,’ though that history ‘can indeed be traced back to prehistoric times, for glass beads have been found in prehistoric graves.’” (Nibley, Lehi, 213-214.)
Michael R. Ash
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