The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel

Abstract

Drawing on observations and suggestions from scholars of Tibetan Buddhism and Mormonism, this article compares the production of the Book of Mormon with that of the class of Tibetan Buddhist scripture known as gter ma (“Treasure,” pronounced “terma”).2 In brief, both are said to have been authored by ancient religious figures, buried with the anticipation of future discovery, discovered by visionaries with the help of supernatural beings, and “translated” from an obscure language into the discoverers’ native tongue by supernatural, revelatory means.3More specifically, this article aims to use a new lens—a gter ma lens, if you will—to explore and extend existing theories of the relationship between the gold plates that Joseph Smith claimed to discover and his translation of those plates, the Book of Mormon. Before continuing, it will be important to briefly clarify and justify the use of comparison for the purpose of analyzing these two culturally, geographically, and temporally separate phenomena, and especially the idea that the analysis of one can be used to shed light on the other.Whereas comparative methodologies were once common to the field of religious studies, they have become increasingly unpopular since the postmodern turn.4 One of the persistent postmodern critiques has been that the logic of comparative religion rests on the unwarranted assumption that there is such a thing called “religion” that can be compared cross-culturally. Indeed, the concept of religion has been shown to be a modern concept birthed from the rise of, and hence modeled on, Protestant Christianity.5 As such, when scholars compare “religious phenomena” they are often imposing anachronistic and provincial categories that distort that which they intend to illuminate.In light of such critiques, I want to be clear that in using events and ideas located in Tibetan Buddhist history to shed light on Joseph Smith's translation of the gold plates, I am not arguing that because Tibetan Buddhists acted and thought in a certain way, Joseph Smith must have acted and thought in a similar way, based on some sort of preposterous organic connection.6 Rather, I am arguing that as we attempt to trace associations between Smith's gold plates and the Book of Mormon, considering how other people in radically different times and places have described structurally similar events can serve to highlight and challenge assumptions previously taken for granted, and introduce new possibilities that would be otherwise indiscernible.7Reading Smith's interactions with the gold plates alongside structurally comparable events in the Tibetan gter ma tradition—as well as alongside how scholars of Tibetan Buddhism have approached those events—highlights and challenges two prevailing paradigms in Mormon studies and serves to introduce a novel possibility on how Smith experienced his translation of the Book of Mormon. In brief, this comparison first draws attention to problematic assumptions about the nature of human subjectivity in relation to the material world that have fueled longstanding debates that posit the Book of Mormon must be either a translation of an authentic historical document or a fraud. Moreover, although I agree with much of the work of scholars such as Karl Sandberg, Ann Taves, and Sonia Hazard, whose work transcends this either/or binary by showing the gold plates could have functioned as something other than an inert object subject to linguistic translation, I will take issue with their persistent return to Smith's subjective imagination or creativity as one of the (if not the primary) driving source of his “translation.”In light of the gter ma tradition, where the discovered material scroll acts as an agent that draws forth the memory of a particular teaching given by the Buddhist master Padmasambhava in a previous life, and where the work of “translation” consists primarily of ritually orienting oneself in relation to its power as to be an effective intermediary for Padmasambhava's message,8 I will argue that the gold plates can similarly be thought of as having their own “generative potencies” that acted on Smith in “unpredictable ways.”9 As such, I will suggest that Smith's “translation” be approached as a set of rituals in relation to an agentive material object that enabled him to act as a present intermediary for past voices crying out “from the dust.”10 I will also contend that this idea is plausible in light of recent work concerning Smith's use of the term “translation,” some of Smith's later theological innovations, and postcolonialist and new materialist theories of subjectivity and agency.The primary goal of this article is to use this idiosyncratic pairing of Tibetan Buddhist and Mormon modes of scriptural production to help us trace the associations between Smith, the gold plates, and the Book of Mormon in a way that better aligns with the primary sources. To do so, I will begin in part 1 by outlining a set of important functional similarities between the gold plates and gter mas within their respective religious traditions. This portion of the article is meant to provide fuller context for introducing my own critiques and theories in part 2, as well as to make a broad case for the comparability of the two traditions that could be generative of future comparative work. Focusing the bulk of the article on their comparability and my own critiques and theories concerning Smith's translation will admittedly leave a number of relevant questions about the implications of this study for Smith's life and legacy unanswered. Nevertheless, I will conclude by briefly discussing two implications of this study, namely around questions of the Book of Mormon's historicity and Smith's later theological innovations on the theme of materiality, which will have to be fully developed elsewhere.What is particularly interesting to note in this section of the article is how these apocryphal scriptures functioned within their respective traditions, which gives us an idea of the comparability of the activities of Joseph Smith and the Tibetan gter ma discoverers (gter ston) despite their highly distinctive temporal and geographical contexts. Specifically, Smith and the Tibetan gter stons discovered and translated ancient material objects as a means of bridging the religiously authoritative past with the present to address contested questions of religious authority and national identity amid religious and political paradigm shifts. In doing so, their scriptures posed similar challenges to the received authority of preexisting canonical texts and expanded traditional canonical boundaries beyond their previous geographical and temporal limitations, thereby sacralizing their native lands and contextualizing them within the larger arc of Christian/Buddhist history, as well as authenticating the otherworldly prowess of their discoverers and the contested authenticity of their own traditions.The gter ma tradition can be seen as a mix of native Tibetan traditions of pragmatic treasure burial and Indian Buddhist revelatory traditions that coalesced into a unique response to contested questions of canonical, denominational, and personal religious authority, as well as religio-national identity, amid religious and political paradigm shifts. The gter ma tradition emerged within what is now called the Nyingma (rnying ma) tradition of Tibetan Buddhism around the twelfth century,11 during a period denoted by Tibetan historiographers as the later spread of the Dharma in Tibet, juxtaposed to the earlier spread of the Dharma. These two periods of Buddhist transmission are divided by a hundred year “period of political fragmentation” or “dark period,” brought about when the Tibetan central government, and thus imperially sponsored monastic Buddhism, dissolved following the assassination of the putatively anti-Buddhist king Lang Darma by a Buddhist monk in the mid-ninth century.12When political and economic conditions restabilized amid a cultural renaissance and religious revival in the latter half of the tenth century,13 the authenticity of extant Buddhist scriptures and practices became a topic of serious concern. Many of the new religious authorities suspected that many, if not all, of the tantras14 said to have been transmitted to Tibet during the imperial age—denoted as Old or Nyingma (rnying ma) tantras—were not authentic Buddhist teachings but Tibetan fabrications. In addition, individuals associated with the old dark-period religious traditions were charged with engaging in a variety of disreputable activities, implying that they had misinterpreted or deliberately abused these traditionally esoteric teachings and were thus operating within a lineage corrupted by heresy.15 The only possible solution, it seemed, was to “send young men to India . . . to bring back to Tibet the pure esoteric dispensation,” resulting in a baseline standard of scriptural authenticity defined as texts of Indic origin, transmitted to Tibet post-late-tenth century.16Amid this importation of new Indic scripture, new Tibetan Buddhist schools also emerged that articulated their ecclesial authority and authenticity by linking their teaching lineage to current Indic traditions “in the face of the supposed corruption and antiquity of previous Tibetan Lineages.”17 These previous lineages were subsequently dubbed Nyingma (“old”) in contrast to the new schools. In response, the Nyingma began articulating their own lineal heritage through the Buddhist masters of the imperial period—the ancient Tibetan kings and Indian Buddhist ambassadors who had come to be remembered as great bodhisattvas (awakened beings) and who compassionately introduced Buddhism to Tibet between the seventh and eighth centuries CE.18It is within these religious paradigm shifts around the turn of the eleventh century that individuals primarily associated with this fledging Nyingma tradition claimed to discover gter mas: heretofore unknown sacred historical, ritual, and doctrinal texts attributed to a Buddhist master (typically Padmasambhava, who will be discussed below) from Tibet's imperial age.19 Thus, the Nyingma tradition began to distinguish itself from other Tibetan Buddhist schools over the doctrine of “continuing revelation” against an ostensibly closed canon20 by appealing to discoveries of ancient, buried treasure across a period of perceived religious corruption.Although Nyingma apologists attempted to legitimate their innovations by appealing to similar revelatory precedents in Mahāyāna sūtras,21 this movement posed a unique challenge to traditional modes of scriptural transmission—known as spoken transmission. By establishing a direct link between the enlightened beings of Tibet's imperial age and the present, the gter ma discoverers created a timeless repository of ancient knowledge that turned “the original critique of decline among the ‘old school’ . . . on its head.”22 Whereas the Indian tantras brought to Tibet following the close of the dark period in the late tenth century by new school representatives were transmitted from teacher to student for generations upon generations and thus—according to Nyingma apologists—subject to corruption, the gter mas shortened the lineage, placing the gter ma discoverer in direct communication with an enlightened source.23 Thus, the Nyingma were able to claim that the gter mas were a direct revelatory corrective to gaps, errors, or misinterpretations of the current canon. Moreover, as such had been hidden by an enlightened being with the express purpose of discovery at a precise future date, they were said to be better designed to “suit the mental desires, needs and capacities of people born in those times.”24 Thus, the gter mas existed in a dialectic relationship to the existing canon, which served as a source of legitimacy, yet in turn was made to appear somewhat obsolete as comparatively more distant and less personalized.Here, it is worth noting that the Book of Mormon likewise positioned itself both as a corrective to erroneous biblical translations and interpretations across a period of spiritual darkness, and a source of fresh prophetic wisdom designed to uniquely address contemporary needs amid turbulent times. Moreover, it existed in a comparable dialectic relationship to its own canonical counterpart, the Bible.Joseph Smith both propagated the idea that the early Christian church had apostatized soon after the death of Christ and his apostles,25 as well as joined a number of marginal voices challenging the cessationist notion that the Christian canon had been sealed with the writing of the New Testament.26 Yet Smith did not only couch his claim in his own words, or even the words of God revealed to him, but in the words of ancient Israelite prophets who—unbeknownst to the rest of the world—had anciently inhabited portions of the American continent. With prophetic foresight, these prophets maintained and ultimately buried an ancient record (the gold plates) that preserved the “plain and most precious parts of the gospel,” which would be taken away from the Bible,27 and which would uniquely speak to the needs of the latter-day followers of Christ.28 Thus, by discovering and translating the gold plates, Smith could likewise claim direct access to uncorrupted and personalized prophetic wisdom against the comparatively erroneous and provincial Bible.Yet just as this new scripture challenged the Bible's inerrancy, universality, and soteriological sufficiency, the Book of Mormon's function within the early Mormon movement was most often to the signal the impending fulfillment of eschatological and restorationist biblical prophecies, and was itself defended through reference to biblical passages interpreted as prophesying its emergence.29 Many saw in its emergence the fulfillment of a variety of Old and New Testament prophecies that signaled the impending restoration of the primitive Christian church after a period of apostasy, the literal restoration of Israel, and the establishing of God's kingdom in anticipation of Christ's millennial reign.30 Thus, similar to the gter mas, the Book of Mormon's meaning and legitimacy was both defined in relation to the rest of the Christian canon while simultaneously rivaling its previously unparalleled authority.In addition to their role as canonical innovations, the gter mas and the Book of Mormon were also important means of legitimating the religious careers of their discoverers, the authority of their associated tradition, and a means of contextualizing those traditions within the larger arc of Buddhist and Christian history. As Gyatso has analyzed in depth,31 the gter ston's claiming part in the prophesied discovery and propagation of a gter ma—itself a complicated semiotic process consisting of locating oneself in canonical prophecies and interpreting external signs to be discussed below—is “powerfully self-legitimating.” In doing so, the discoverer “accrue[s] to their own person the exalted qualities of that text and its holy origins,”32 and his or her tradition becomes authenticated against its detractors through recourse to a “competing power structure located in the culturally powerful memories of the dynastic period.”33 Moreover, as this competing power structure consisted of ancient Tibetan voices in the face of a canonical tradition in which “Indian provenance [had become] the sine qua non of religious authority,”34 the gter ma tradition not only expanded canonical boundaries past their traditional temporal and geographical constraints but made Tibet “an active partner in the Buddhist cosmos. Instead of being the disheveled stepchild of the great Indian civilization, by means of [gter ma] the snowy land of Tibet became the authentic ground of the Buddha's enlightened activity.”35Likewise, the Book of Mormon's origin story—both its miraculous translation and what its claimed ancient authors prophesied about this event—served to route the fulfillment of restorationist and eschatological biblical prophecies through the inspired actions of a particular individual—Joseph Smith. As the seer who brought to light this ancient scripture, whose very existence signaled the incipience of the long-awaited “restitution of all things” as prophesied in the New Testament book of Acts,36 Smith went from rural visionary to God's newly called prophet,37 and his movement to the culmination of God's dealings with humankind. Moreover, by placing both the internment and discovery of this pivotal text—with its accompanying mythology of ancient Christian worship and even a visit from the resurrected Christ in the Americas—Smith brought his followers into a new (or restored) Christian teleology in which God's plan had always included, and would culminate with, the prophetic work of his chosen peoples on the American continent.This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of the role these texts have played within their respective religious traditions, nor is it an exhaustive list of the commonalities between the two. Much could be written, for example, about how this revelatory mechanism enabled these traditions to give modern doctrinal, ritual, and theological innovations a historical guise, and how these texts validated canonical texts whose authenticity was being called into question.38 Nor is it to say that their functionality has not changed over time, as it surely has; although I would argue that the concerns mentioned here have been rather constant.39 Yet, this brief comparison indicates that Joseph Smith and the Tibetan gter ma discoverers were—in some important ways—engaged in functionally comparable projects.More specifically, this comparison highlights that the ancient artifacts discovered within these two traditions operate in functionally similar ways. In both traditions, a material artifact enables a discoverer to bring to light ancient voices across a temporal divide. This act has dramatic personal implications related to that individual's religious authority and that of their tradition, but those implications are defined by the relationships that the material artifact forges between the discoverer and a variety of other agents. And it is precisely by analyzing how the material artifact is said to do this in the gter ma tradition and applying the theoretical possibilities that this analysis opens up concerning what a material artifact can do—rather than merely what it could be or what Smith could be doing with it—to Smith's translation of the gold plates that we can begin to tug at the seams of the assumptions undergirding some of the current theories.A serious challenge to reading Joseph Smith's translation of the gold plates in light of the gter ma tradition is its sheer diversity. Whereas discoveries of ancient, buried texts as an institutionally recognized means of scripture production in Mormonism begins and ends with Joseph Smith,40 the gter ma tradition has generated hundreds of discoveries and discoverers since the late tenth century.41 The origins of the tradition, and what holds it together as a tradition, are ongoing points of debate.42 My reading of the gter ma tradition draws heavily on Do Drubchen III's (1865–1926) analysis of gter ma discovery and translation in his essay “Wonder Ocean, an Explanation of the Dharma Treasure Tradition,” translated and elaborated by Tulku Thondup in his book Hidden Teachings of Tibet. I supplement this reading with accounts of gter ma discovery drawn primarily (but not exclusively) from the lives of the Tibetan gter stons Jigme Lingpa (1730–1798) and Nyangrel Nyima Ozer (1124–1192), as well as broader theorizations about how treasure materials (gter rdzas) exert power in ritual contexts by the Tibetan ritual master Sokdokpa (1552–1624).Thus, my reading is neither comprehensive nor governed by an emphasis on a particular time period or gter ma lineage within the Nyingma school. As such, the sources cited below are not to be taken as unilaterally congruent. In addition to spatial restraints, this focus has mostly to do with accessibility to what is still a rather understudied tradition. Yet, by focusing on the few individuals whose treasure discoveries and theories related thereto have been subjects of in-depth analyses by contemporary scholars of religion—Janet Gyatso, Daniel Hirshberg, and James Gentry, respectively—this study will also provide an opportunity to reflect on how contemporary scholars of religion operating in a different field have delt with this peculiar revelatory mechanism in relation to scholars in the field of Mormon studies.I will begin with an explanation of the relatively standard mythology undergirding the tradition. Around the twelfth century, gter mas began to be traced primarily to the eighth-century tantric master Padmasambhava.43 Recent scholarship on Padmasambhava suggests he came to Tibet from present-day Pakistan at the request of King Trisong Detsen to subdue the local deities who were obstructing efforts to build Tibet's first monastery, Samye monastery. Soon after arrival, the earliest sources claim he was expelled from Tibet because his exceptional powers made him a dangerous political rival; although, some scholars have suggested his removal had more to do with the controversial, transgressive tantric teachings he promoted.44 Nevertheless, by the twelfth century, a counternarrative arose that has since become characteristic of his representation in the Nyingma tradition and foundational to gter ma discovery: after pacifying the opposing indigenous forces and enlisting them in the protection and propagation of Buddhism, Padmasambhava traveled throughout Tibet, teaching his many students and burying his inscribed teachings and other relics in the Tibetan soil for later recovery.45 In conjunction with this narrative, Padmasambhava has taken on the status of “second Buddha” in the Nyingma tradition, remembered as the primary protagonist in Tibet's conversion to Buddhism, who graciously hid his teachings on account of his prophetic perception of the future challenges Tibetan Buddhist practitioners would face.46The content of Padmasambhava's teachings that were inscribed as gter mas are perceived as scripturally authoritative in part because he preached them, but he is more of a codifier than an author. Like the conventional, spoken transmissions of the Nyingma tradition, these teachings were said to have been first transmitted nonverbally by a buddha in a pure land (“transmission of the realized”), then semiotically by early Nyingma patriarchs (“transmission in symbols for the knowledge holders”), and lastly in conventional discourse (“transmission into the ears of people”), which is where Padmasambhava appears.47 Within this last step, the gter ma tradition posits its own three-step transmission process. First, through a tantric ceremony known as a “benedictory initiation,” Padmasambhava transmitted teachings and appointed specific students to reveal them in future lifetimes; second, he prophesied their future revelation; and third, he appointed dākinīs or Treasure protectors48 to protect the gter ma and help the gter ma discoverer find them. After, his consort, Yeshey Tsogyal, recorded the teachings on “yellow scrolls.” Finally, the texts were concealed, often in a container with other material objects (gter rdzas).49The historicity of this narrative, as well as the claims of discovery and translation by each individual gter ma discoverer, have been a popular topic of debate in Tibetan Buddhist inter- and intra-denominational polemics, as well as modern academic scholarship.50 Yet, although some scholars have dubbed the entire gter ma enterprise a blatant fraud,51 academic scholarship on the gter ma tradition as a whole has been considerably less polarized and more nuanced than studies of the Book of Mormon.52 There are myriad potential reasons for this difference;53 yet, what is important to note for our purposes is that among scholars of the gter ma tradition there is a tendency to refrain from making comprehensive claims about the plausibility, and thereby historical authenticity, of the gter ma discoverer's claims. Rather, scholars (especially Janet Gyatso and Thondup) have critically analyzed the phenomenology of gter ma discovery and revelation in conjunction with the traditional mythology and claimed material discoveries, shedding light on a complex revelatory interplay between agentive material, human, and superhuman forces, as well as Buddhist theories of reincarnation, no-self, prophecy, interdependent origination, and Tibetan semiotics.In the field of Mormon studies, there has been a persistent idea that the Book of Mormon's claim to be rooted in “artifactual reality” rather than the “nebulous stuff of visions” automatically shifts the scholarly debate around Smith's claims “from the realm of interiority and subjectivity toward that of empiricism and objectivity.”54 As argued by Mormon studies scholar Terryl Givens: Dream visions may be in the mind of the beholder, but gold plates are not subject to such facile psychologizing. They were, in the angel's words, buried in a nearby hillside, not in Joseph's psyche or religious unconscious, and they chronicle a history of this hemisphere, not a heavenly city to come. As such, the claims and experiences of the prophet are thrust irretrievably into the public sphere, no longer subject to his private acts of interpretation alone. It is this fact, the intrusion of Joseph's message into the realm of the concrete, historical, and empirical, that dramatically alters the terms by which the public will engage this new religious phenomenon.55In accordance with this logic, much of the scholarly debate on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon has centered around using historical and inter/intratextual criticism to verify the book's internal, historical claims in what are often called the “Book of Mormon wars”—debates over perceived archaisms56 vs. anachronisms,57 evidence of many ancient authorial voices consistent with its internal claims,58 or evidence of nineteenth-century interpolations interwoven by a nineteenth-century editor.59 This information, in turn, is used to make sense of what Smith was doing—whether he was restoring a long-lost scripture as part of his larger Christian restorationist project or deceptively trying to accrue personal power by playing on the religious sensibilities of his time.60 In this way, rather than asking what the unique revelatory mechanism that facilitated the book's production reveals about its origins and significance, scholars have focused primarily on what its textual content reveals about its origins and significance. That is, they have conflated the gold plates with the Book of Mormon, creating the logic that the existence of the former can be verified by the antiquity of the latter. And although some have bracketed the question of the gold plates origins, focusing rather on how the idea of the plates influenced Smith's movement, most religious studies scholars and historical biographers make their opinion known on the basis of perceived metaphysical plausibility and/or historical evidence, and proceed to either depict Smith as a rural visionary turned prophet61 or conscious (or delusional) deceiver.62 This, in turn, has generated a scholarly field sharply divided along emic/etic lines.63Although we need not discard the possibility that Smith was actually linguistically translating an ancient text, or that he was making the whole thing up, comparison with the gter ma tradition demonstrates that this binary is not necessitated by the revelatory mechanism alone. Returning to the gter ma tradition, it is interesting to note that although gter mas are said to be translated, the material scroll which is “translated” in practice serves more as an instigator and facilitator of revelation. In fact, the content of the core text of a transcribed gter ma cycle—the portion of the gter ma discoverer's oeuvre authorially attributed to Padmasambhava—is traced not to the inscriptions on the discovered scroll but to the memory of Padmasambhava's oral transmission (described above in the first unique step of gter ma transmission). At that moment of oral transmission, it is said that the teaching goes from the mind stream of Padmasambhava to the “luminous natural awareness . . . of the minds of his disciples,” which makes the teachings impermeable to karmic forces across the protectors’ various lifetimes.64 According to Thondup, this act of embedding a particular teaching in the recesses of a future revealer's mind, known as “Mind-mandate Transmission,” is the defining feature of a Nyingma gter ma.65In fact, the material scroll often contains no more than a couple of characters or a brief phrase which may or may not be thematically related to the teaching itself. Moreover, the scroll is encoded with a secret script and often written in a secret language,66 hindering attempts at conventional translation. The scroll's function is not to preserve the teaching itself, but to awaken the memory of its being taught to the gter ma discoverer in a previous lifetime. The contents of this memory are subsequently transcribed by the gter ma discoverer (or a scribe), yet authorially attributed to Padmasambhava. Some who receive Mind-mandate Transmission even reveal gter mas by accessing the memory without a material support, known as mind gter ma.67 I will focus here on the revelatory mechanics of earth gter ma, as this revelatory mode best aligns with the Book of Mormon, but that such a genre exists serves to accentuate the unique mnemonic and revelatory character of gter ma production, and carries interesting parallels with some of Joseph Smith's other revelatory activities.68Although there is much to elaborate here, allow me to briefly return to Joseph Smith and the gold plates to consider what is known about the go