Appearance
Anachronisms
The claim:
"Anachronisms: Horses, cattle, oxen, sheep, swine, goats, elephants, wheels, chariots, wheat, silk, steel, and iron did not exist in pre-Columbian America during Book of Mormon times. Why are these things mentioned in the Book of Mormon as being made available in the Americas between 2200 BC - 421 AD?"[1]
The CES Letter later adds: "It has been documented that apologists have manipulated wording so that steel is not steel, sheep become never-domesticated bighorn sheep, horses become tapirs, etc."[2]
Thirteen items. One footnote. No individual analysis. No citations to archaeological literature. No engagement with the actual text.
How many of these thirteen have actually held up under scrutiny?
The list-blast technique
The CES Letter's anachronism argument works by volume, not by depth. Pile thirteen items into a single sentence, assert they're all impossible, and count on the reader not checking any of them.
The track record of anachronism claims against the Book of Mormon is remarkably bad.
Matthew Roper of the Interpreter Foundation reviewed over 1,000 critical publications spanning 1830 to 2024. He cataloged every anachronism claim ever leveled at the Book of Mormon — 226 distinct items across nine categories — and tracked their status over time.[3]
| Period | Total claims | Confirmed | Partially confirmed | Unconfirmed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1830-1844 | 102 | 7 (6.9%) | 2 (2.0%) | 93 (91.2%) |
| 1845-1965 | 168 | 36 (21.4%) | 10 (6.0%) | 122 (72.6%) |
| 1966-2024 | 226 | 174 (77.0%) | 31 (13.7%) | 21 (9.3%) |
In 1844, over 90% of claimed anachronisms were unconfirmed. By 2024, that number dropped to 9.3%.
The trend moves one direction. Items critics said couldn't exist keep turning up in the record.
John E. Clark ran an independent study in 2005, examining 60 alleged "blunders" from three 19th-century critics. About 60% had been resolved in favor of the Book of Mormon. His conclusion: "The overall trend in the data over the past 175 years fits the expectations for the Book of Mormon as history rather than hoax."[4]
Bottom line: The CES Letter presents its list as a closed case. The data says it's an open one — and the evidence keeps moving in the Book of Mormon's favor.
Loan-shifting and the translation question
The Book of Mormon is a translation of an ancient record. That distinction opens three pathways for apparent anachronisms:[5]
Not yet discovered. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence — especially when only about 1% of Mesoamerican archaeology addressing Book of Mormon timeframes has been excavated. Cement, barley, and iron were all on the "impossible" list. All three are now confirmed.
Loan-shifting. People apply familiar names to unfamiliar things. This isn't apologetic spin. It's one of the most thoroughly documented phenomena in linguistic anthropology.
Translator's terminology. Joseph Smith rendered ancient concepts in his own vocabulary, just as the KJV translators rendered Hebrew oil lamps as "candles" and Greek lychnos as "candlestick."
Loan-shifting is universal
| Culture contact | Familiar term applied | Actual species |
|---|---|---|
| Greeks encountering Nile fauna | "river horse" (hippopotamus) | Hippo — minimal horse resemblance |
| Aztecs encountering Spanish horses | "deer" | Horse |
| Maya encountering European horses | "tapir" | Horse |
| Spanish encountering tapirs | "ass" | Tapir |
| Spanish encountering peccaries | "wild pigs" (los puercos) | Peccary |
| Spanish encountering brocket deer | "goats" | Brocket deer |
| European settlers encountering bison | "cows," "cattle," "oxen" | American bison |
| KJV translators | "candle" | Oil lamp (lychnos) |
The CES Letter treats loan-shifting as a sign of desperation. In practice, it's what every culture does when naming unfamiliar things.
The Greeks weren't "manipulating wording" when they called a hippo a "river horse." The Spanish weren't being dishonest when they called peccaries "pigs." And a translator rendering an unknown New World animal with the closest available English term isn't committing fraud.[6]
Key Point
When the KJV translators rendered Hebrew oil lamps as "candles," no one calls the Bible a fraud. When a translator renders an unknown New World animal with the closest Old World term, the same principle applies. Translation always involves approximation.
Barley: the vindicated "anachronism"
This one item tells the whole story of how anachronism claims work.
For 150 years, critics cited barley as proof the Book of Mormon was fiction. Pre-Columbian barley didn't exist, they said. Case closed.
Then in 1983, archaeologists discovered domesticated "little barley" (Hordeum pusillum) at a Hohokam site in Arizona, dating to approximately AD 900.[7] Further research revealed little barley was a major staple crop throughout the Mississippi River valley during the Middle Woodland period (200 BC - AD 500).[8]
The timeline kept pushing earlier. At Gast Springs, Iowa, "likely cultivated specimens" were dated to approximately 800 BC — well within Book of Mormon timeframes.[9]
| Discovery | Location | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Domesticated Hordeum pusillum | Arizona (Hohokam site) | ~AD 900 |
| Major staple crop | Mississippi River Valley | 200 BC - AD 500 |
| Cultivated specimens | Gast Springs, Iowa | ~800 BC |
| Cultivation evidence | Southwest and parts of Mexico | Various pre-Columbian |
The Book of Mormon mentioned barley in 1830. Archaeology confirmed it in 1983. The item that critics most confidently called impossible turned out to be a prediction.
Steel: confirmed where it matters most
The Book of Mormon mentions steel in two settings: Laban's sword in Jerusalem around 600 BC (1 Nephi 4:9) and Nephite weapons in the New World (Jarom 1:8, Ether 7:9).
The Old World case is closed
A complete steel sword was excavated at Vered Jericho — roughly twelve miles east of Jerusalem — dating to the late 7th century BC. Metallurgical analysis confirmed the iron was "deliberately hardened into steel, attesting to the technical knowledge of the blacksmith."[10]
Chemical analysis of over 60 Iron Age objects from Israelite sites showed "ghost structures" of pearlite indicating carbon content — the signature of deliberate steelmaking — in nearly all specimens.[11]
An 1884 critic had declared that Israelites "knew nothing of steel for hundreds of years afterwards."[12] The archaeology proved him wrong. Laban's steel sword at 600 BC fits the evidence precisely.
The New World: an open question
New World steel production remains unconfirmed. Roper notes such items "would likely have been elite, uncommon items" — rare enough that archaeological absence isn't surprising.[13]
What has been found: eight tons of polished, perforated ilmenite iron-ore at Olmec San Lorenzo (~1100 BC), hematite mirrors requiring hundreds of hours of skilled labor, and iron-containing pottery at Teotihuacan (AD 300).[14] Iron-working in the Americas predates the Book of Mormon's earliest claims. Smelting into steel remains an open question.
Worth Acknowledging
New World steel is unconfirmed. Old World steel — where the Book of Mormon's most specific claim appears — is fully confirmed. The distinction matters.
Horses: complicated, not impossible
Horses are the most frequently cited anachronism. They deserve honest treatment.
The conventional view: horses went extinct in the Americas around 10,000 BC and weren't reintroduced until the Spanish. The Book of Mormon mentions horses fourteen times.
What the text actually says
Book of Mormon horses are never ridden. Never used in cavalry. Never used in agriculture. Never harnessed to pull plows. They appear in lists with food animals (1 Nephi 18:25) and alongside "chariots" in royal processions (Alma 18:9-12).[15]
If Joseph Smith were inventing, he'd write horses the way he knew them — in cavalry charges, pulling wagons, plowing fields. He didn't. Not once.
The archaeological picture
In 2022, Wade Miller and an international team published findings from stratified sites near Cedral, Mexico. They recovered horse remains (Equus mexicanus and Equus conversidens) with calibrated radiocarbon dates including:
- 1660-1508 BC (Jaredite era)
- 548-400 BC (Lehi's arrival era)
- 73-226 AD (later Nephite era)[16]
These are extinct New World species — not Spanish horses. The species identification rules out contamination from the colonial period.
Earlier work documented horse bones in northern Yucatan associated with ceramics and charcoal dated to approximately 1840 BC.[17]
These findings remain contested in mainstream paleontology. That's the honest answer. But "contested" is different from "impossible," and the evidence base keeps growing.
The loan-shift possibility
Even if pre-Columbian horses remain unconfirmed, the loan-shift explanation stands. When the Spanish arrived, Maya peoples called horses "deer" and sometimes "tapirs." The Aztecs called them "deer."[6:1] If post-contact Native Americans — people seeing horses for the first time — mapped them onto familiar animals, a pre-contact Nephite translator could do the same in reverse.
Elephants: mentioned once, in the right period
Elephants appear exactly once in the Book of Mormon — Ether 9:19, in the Jaredite record, placing them before roughly 2000 BC.[18]
They never appear in the Nephite era.
Mammoths and mastodons lived across the Americas during the Pleistocene. Standard extinction estimates center around 10,000 BC, but late survival keeps pushing that date forward:
| Evidence | Date |
|---|---|
| Woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island (Arctic) | Survived until ~2000 BC |
| Mammoth bone, Sandy, Utah | ~3985 BC |
| Cuvieronius (gomphothere), Guatemala | ~7500 BC |
The Jaredite window overlaps with the tail end of proboscidean survival in the Americas. The fit is close, if not yet airtight.
A 19th-century author would have no reason to restrict elephant references to the earliest time period and then drop them entirely. Joseph Smith knew elephants existed — they were common in circuses and menageries by the 1820s. If he were inventing, why not use them throughout? The textual restraint matches a real extinction pattern that no one in 1829 could have known.[19]
Cement: the prediction that came true
Helaman 3:7-11 describes Nephites becoming "exceedingly expert in the working of cement" around the mid-first century BC, building "houses of cement" and "many cities, both of wood and of cement."
Critics once dismissed this as anachronistic. Then archaeology mapped the timeline.
| Period | Development |
|---|---|
| 1100-600 BC | Non-structural lime plasters in Mesoamerica |
| 800-300 BC | Maya discover limestone-based plaster |
| ~100 BC | "Explosion of activity" in Northern Peten — structural cement |
| 1st century AD | Fully developed cement at Teotihuacan |
| AD 300 | Most Teotihuacan inhabitants in "substantial plaster-and-concrete compounds" |
The Book of Mormon places the cement innovation at mid-first century BC. Archaeology places the explosion of structural cement at approximately 100 BC in Mesoamerica. The match is precise.
John W. Welch: "The dating by archaeologists of this technological advance to the precise time mentioned in the book of Helaman seems far from knowable to anyone in the world in 1829."[20]
No one in 1829 knew when cement appeared in Mesoamerica. The Book of Mormon got it right anyway.
Chariots: not what you're picturing
The word "chariot" appears three times in non-quotation Book of Mormon passages. Every appearance is non-military:
- Alma 18:9-12 — Ammon prepares King Lamoni's "horses and chariots" for a feast
- Alma 20:6 — Lamoni uses them for a diplomatic state visit
- 3 Nephi 3:22 — Listed among provisions during a Nephite retreat[21]
Chariots are never used in battle. Never explicitly pulled by horses. Never described as wheeled. This is the opposite of the Old Testament, where chariots are central to warfare.
The Hebrew word merkabah can refer to any conveyance. Another term, appiryon (Song of Solomon 3:9), rendered "chariot" in the KJV, specifically denotes a non-wheeled litter or palanquin.[5:1]
Maya kings were carried in litters — non-wheeled conveyances borne by servants, reserved for nobility and diplomats. The earliest depiction (Izapa Stela 21) dates to 300-50 BC, squarely within Book of Mormon timeframes. Litters accompanied royal processions and diplomatic visits throughout Mesoamerica — exactly the contexts where Book of Mormon "chariots" appear.[21:1]
About 100 wheeled clay figurines have been found in Mesoamerica, some from the Remojadas culture (100 BC - AD 800), proving knowledge of the wheel and axle.[22] Whether full-scale vehicles existed remains an open question.
Silk: multiple candidates
Silk appears in Alma 1:29. The CES Letter assumes this means Chinese Bombyx mori silk.
Pre-Columbian Americas had silk and silk-like materials from multiple sources:
- Wild silk moths: Eucheira socialis and Gloveria psidii produced actual silk in Mesoamerica. Zapotec women gathered wild silk from caterpillar cocoons and wove it into fabric.[23]
- Ceiba tree (kapok): Pod fibers described as "excellent, very white, soft, and strong."
- Silk grass (Achmea magdalenae): Strong silk-like fiber from wild pineapple, widely used in Guatemala.
- Historical documentation: A 1777 colonial document describes pre-Columbian burial textiles of "cotton and wild silk intertwined with feathers" from the Tehuacan-Cuicatlan Valley.[23:1]
John L. Sorenson: "Mesoamerica evidently exhibits almost an embarrassment of riches for the 'silk' and 'linen' of Alma 1:29."[24]
The "coins" that aren't in the text
The CES Letter doesn't list coins among its thirteen anachronisms, but the claim circulates widely. It illustrates how anachronism claims can be built on editorial additions rather than the text itself.
The word "coin" never appears in the Book of Mormon.[25]
What Alma 11:1-20 describes is a weight-based exchange system: gold units (senine, seon, shum, limnah) and silver units (senum, amnor, ezrom, onti), pegged to grain measures. The values follow the pattern 1, 2, 4, 7 — allowing any amount to be expressed with minimal pieces.[26]
The word "coins" appeared in a 1920 chapter heading added by editors. The Church removed it in 1981.
Weight-based exchange was standard across the ancient Near East before coinage was invented. Welch: "Joseph Smith would have been hard pressed to produce on his own such an elegant, complex, yet practical system."[26:1]
Five animals, one pattern
Cattle, oxen, sheep, goats, and swine share a common story: each has a New World species that European observers consistently named with the Old World term.
| Book of Mormon term | New World species | European naming evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Cattle/Oxen | American bison | Settlers universally called bison "cows," "cattle," and "wild oxen" |
| Sheep | Mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis) | Native species; readily domesticable — Valerius Geist: "hard to imagine a wild animal more readily tamed"[15:1] |
| Goats | Brocket deer, mountain goats | Spanish observers classified brocket deer as "goats" and "wild goats" |
| Swine | Peccaries | Called "wild pigs" by Spanish; documented from Olmec times (1200-400 BC); Lyle Sowls: "names given by people who first knew domestic hogs"[15:2] |
Mountain sheep bones with cut marks were found at an Epiclassic site in Tula Hidalgo, dated to AD 750-900 — evidence of sustained human use.[15:3]
If early American settlers — people who knew what cows and pigs looked like — consistently applied those terms to bison and peccaries, the objection collapses.
The pattern a 19th-century author can't explain
If Joseph Smith invented the Book of Mormon, the anachronism pattern should look random — he'd include things he knew about and exclude things he didn't, with no internal consistency.
Instead, the pattern looks like this:
Elephant restraint. Elephants appear only in the Jaredite period and vanish. This matches a real extinction timeline. Joseph Smith had no reason to restrict elephant references to the earliest era.
Chariot restraint. Chariots never appear in battle — the opposite of what any reader of the Old Testament would expect. A forger steeped in biblical imagery would put chariots in warfare. The text doesn't.
Horse restraint. Horses are never ridden, never used in cavalry, never pull plows. Fourteen mentions, and not one matches 19th-century American horse culture.
Cement timing. The text dates a cement construction explosion to the mid-first century BC. Archaeology confirmed that date. No one in 1829 could have known this.
Barley prediction. The text names a grain that critics called impossible for 150 years — then archaeology confirmed it.
Untranslated terms. Ether 9:19 leaves "cureloms and cumoms" untranslated. A fiction writer names things. A translator of a real text admits when he has no English equivalent. Joseph Smith did that — and the restraint extends to "neas" and "sheum" elsewhere in the text.
Weight-based exchange. Alma 11 describes a weight-based system with mathematically elegant ratios. It doesn't use the word "coin." A 19th-century forger would have used coins — the only monetary system Joseph Smith knew.
That pattern — right details in the right periods, restraint where a forger would embellish, untranslated terms where a faker would invent — is hard to produce by accident.
What remains unresolved
Intellectual honesty requires naming what's open. Of Roper's 226 items, 21 (9.3%) remain unconfirmed as of 2024. The most significant for the CES Letter's thirteen:
- Wheat — No pre-Columbian Triticum wheat identified. Loan-shifting to an indigenous grain (amaranth, chia, or another cultivated crop) is plausible but unconfirmed.
- New World steel — Iron was worked but steel production isn't confirmed in the Americas.
- Horses — The most genuinely difficult item. Post-Pleistocene horse remains from Mexico are published but contested. No mainstream consensus yet.
These are real gaps. They don't have clean answers.
But the trend line matters. In 1844, over 90% of anachronism claims were unconfirmed. Cement was on that list. Barley was on it. Steel swords were on it. Iron-working was on it. All confirmed since. The honest question isn't whether open items exist today — it's which direction the evidence has been moving for 180 years.[27]
The scorecard
| Item | CES Letter claim | Current status | Key evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horses | Didn't exist | Contested | Horse remains in Mexico with Book of Mormon-era dates; loan-shift well documented |
| Cattle | Didn't exist | Confirmed | Bison universally called "cows" and "cattle" by European settlers |
| Oxen | Didn't exist | Confirmed | Bison are bovines; called "wild oxen" universally |
| Sheep | Didn't exist | Confirmed | Mountain sheep native to the Americas; readily domesticable |
| Swine | Didn't exist | Confirmed | Peccaries called "wild pigs" by Spanish; documented from Olmec times |
| Goats | Didn't exist | Confirmed | Brocket deer classified as "goats" by Spanish observers |
| Elephants | Didn't exist | Partially confirmed | Mammoth survival to ~2000 BC; Book of Mormon places them only in correct period |
| Wheels | Didn't exist | Partially confirmed | ~100 wheeled figurines prove wheel knowledge |
| Chariots | Didn't exist | Partially confirmed | Royal litters documented; match Book of Mormon's non-military usage exactly |
| Wheat | Didn't exist | Unconfirmed | Possible loan-shift to amaranth or other cultivated grain |
| Silk | Didn't exist | Confirmed | Wild silk, ceiba kapok, pineapple fiber all attested |
| Steel | Didn't exist | Confirmed (Old World) | Vered Jericho sword — 7th century BC steel in Israel |
| Iron | Didn't exist | Confirmed | 8 tons of iron-ore at Olmec San Lorenzo; 36+ ore exposures |
Of thirteen items, eight are confirmed or explained through loan-shifting. Three are partially confirmed. One is actively contested with evidence on both sides. One remains unconfirmed.
The CES Letter presents this list as thirteen strikes. The evidence says it's closer to one open question, with the rest answered or answerable.
Bottom line: The CES Letter's anachronism list is designed to overwhelm, not inform. Ninety percent of anachronism claims were unconfirmed in 1844. Today it's 9.3%. The trend line tells the real story.
Further Reading
- Matthew Roper, "Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms" — 9-part series in Interpreter (2025)
- John E. Clark, "Archaeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins" — BYU Studies Quarterly (2005)
- Neal Rappleye, "A Scientist Looks at Book of Mormon Anachronisms" — Interpreter (2014)
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 5, pp. 11-12. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 5, p. 11. ↩︎
Matthew Roper, "Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms — Introduction," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 65 (2025): 1-8. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/anachronisms-accidental-evidence-in-book-of-mormon-criticisms-introduction ↩︎
John E. Clark, "Archaeological Trends and Book of Mormon Origins," BYU Studies Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2005). https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/archaeological-trends-and-the-book-of-mormon-origins ↩︎
Brant A. Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011). Gardner distinguishes "translation anachronisms" (modern vocabulary for unknown concepts) from "historical anachronisms" (things that actually did not exist). ↩︎ ↩︎
John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: FARMS, 1985). Sorenson pioneered the loan-shifting framework for Book of Mormon animal terms. See also Mormon's Codex: An Ancient American Book (Deseret Book / Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2013). ↩︎ ↩︎
Nancy B. Asch and David L. Asch, "Archaeobotany," in Deer Track: A Late Woodland Village in the Mississippi Valley, ed. Charles R. McGimsey and Michael D. Conner (Kampsville, IL: Center for American Archeology, 1985). Initial 1983 discovery confirmed pre-Columbian domesticated barley (Hordeum pusillum) at a Hohokam site in Arizona. ↩︎
"Barley," Scripture Central Evidence. https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-barley ↩︎
John L. Sorenson and Robert F. Smith, "Barley in Ancient America," in Reexploring the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: FARMS, 1992). See also Michael T. Dunn and William Green on Gast Springs specimens (cited in Evidence Central). ↩︎
Avraham Eitan, "A Sword from Vered Jericho," Israel Museum Journal (1994). The sword is the only complete example of its size from the late 7th-6th century BC found in Israel. Metallurgical testing confirmed the iron was "deliberately hardened into steel." See also "Laban's Steel Sword," Scripture Central Evidence. https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-laban-s-steel-sword ↩︎
Philip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001). Documented carburization processes predating Nephi's era by centuries. ↩︎
M.T. Lamb, The Golden Bible (New York: Ward & Drummond, 1884), 89-90. ↩︎
Matthew Roper, "Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms — Metals and Metallurgy," Interpreter 65 (2025). https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/anachronisms-accidental-evidence-in-book-of-mormon-criticisms-chapter-3-metals-and-metallurgy ↩︎
Ann Cyphers Guillen, "San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan" (1994). See also Steven E. Jones et al., "Archaeometry Applied to Olmec Iron-ore Beads," BYU Studies Quarterly 37, no. 4 (1997): 129-142. Three industrial-scale iron-processing sites identified at San Lorenzo, Mirador Plumajillo, and Amatal. ↩︎
Matthew Roper, "Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms — Book of Mormon Animals," Interpreter 65 (2025). https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/anachronisms-accidental-evidence-in-book-of-mormon-criticisms-book-of-mormon-animals ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Wade E. Miller et al., "Post-Pleistocene Horses (Equus) from Mexico," Texas Journal of Science 74, no. 1 (2022). Species identification (E. conversidens, E. mexicanus) rules out Spanish contamination — these are extinct North American species. ↩︎
Daniel Johnson, "'Hard' Evidence of Ancient American Horses," BYU Studies Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2015). https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/hard-evidence-of-ancient-american-horses ↩︎
Ether 9:19: "And they also had horses, and asses, and there were elephants and cureloms and cumoms; all of which were useful unto man, and more especially the elephants and cureloms and cumoms." ↩︎
"Why Does the Book of Mormon Mention Elephants, Cureloms, and Cumoms?" Scripture Central KnoWhy #281. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-does-the-book-of-mormon-mention-elephants-cureloms-and-cumoms ↩︎
John W. Welch, cited in "Cement," Scripture Central Evidence. https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-cement. See also John L. Sorenson, Mormon's Codex (2013): "The first-century-BC appearance of cement in the Book of Mormon agrees strikingly with the archaeology of central Mexico." ↩︎
"What Is the Nature and Use of Chariots in the Book of Mormon?" Scripture Central KnoWhy #170. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/what-is-the-nature-and-use-of-chariots-in-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎
Matthew Roper, "Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms — Warfare in the Book of Mormon," Interpreter 65 (2025). https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/anachronisms-accidental-evidence-in-book-of-mormon-criticisms-chapter-2-warfare-in-the-book-of-mormon/ ↩︎
John L. Sorenson, Mormon's Codex (2013), 164. See also "Did Book of Mormon Peoples Wear Silk and Linen?" Scripture Central KnoWhy. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/did-book-of-mormon-peoples-wear-silk-and-linen ↩︎ ↩︎
John L. Sorenson, Mormon's Codex: An Ancient American Book (Deseret Book / Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2013), 164. ↩︎
Philip E. Allred, "Coin of the Realm: Beware of Specious Specie," FARMS Review 12, no. 1 (2000). ↩︎
John W. Welch, "Weighing and Measuring in the Worlds of the Book of Mormon," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8, no. 2 (1999): 36-45. ↩︎ ↩︎
Matthew Roper, "Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms — Concluding Observations," Interpreter 65 (2025). https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/anachronisms-accidental-evidence-in-book-of-mormon-criticisms-chapter-9-concluding-observations ↩︎