Talk:Ammonihah

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The story of Alma and Amulek in Ammonihah is more properly told, IMO, in their articles. I'm not sure Ammonihah warrants a separate article. andersonpd 00:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Kingsif (talk) 04:54, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

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The Martyrdoms at Ammonihah by John Held Sr., 1888

• ... that in the story of the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire (pictured) as a deliberate reference to a prophet's warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"? Source: 'the "chief judge of the land" asks… "After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?" (Alma 14:14). The chief judge is obviously equating Alma's doctrinal fire with Ammonihah's literal fire.' From Kylie Nielson Turley, "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28 (2019): 20.
  • ALT1: ... that in the story of the Book of Mormon, the city of Ammonihah kills Christians by fire (pictured) as a deliberately twisted reference to a warning that spiritual death is like a "lake of fire and brimstone"? Source: Identical to ALT0 plus 'they use Alma's "words of God" and twist them into a method of mass killing' from Kylie Nielson Turley, "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28 (2019): 20.
  • ALT2: ... that in the Book of Mormon, after the city of Ammonihah mass kills converts by fire (pictured) , the "lake of fire and brimstone" imagery used earlier in the book to describe spiritual death is never repeated? Source: 'Prior to this event, the "lake of fire and brimstone" imagery is used multiple times… Yet when the chief judge asks if they will teach about burning fires again, the answer is silence not just for Alma and Amulek, but for the entire Book of Mormon. The sudden extinction of this phrase… No one in the Book of Mormon will ever preach of a "lake of fire and brimstone" again.' from Kylie Nielson Turley, "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 28 (2019): 38.
  • ALT3: ... that cartoonist John Held Jr.'s father John Held Sr. made woodblock prints depicting Ammonihah (pictured), a city described in the Book of Mormon? Source: 'Held conveys high drama in his woodblock print The Martyrdoms at Ammonihah" and "Held's catastrophic image Deliverance of Alma and Amulek' from Noel A. Carmack, "'A Picturesque and Dramatic History': George Reynolds's Story of the Book of Mormon", BYU Studies 47, no. 2 (2008): 130; and 'John Held married Annie Evans… the couple had six children, the most famous of whom was the eldest, John Held, Jr.' from Gary Topping, "Held, John", in Utah History Encyclopedia (University of Utah Press, 1994), online repr. via Utah Educational Network.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Elisabeth_Griffith ‎
  • Comment: DYK check tool does not seem to be registering the fivefold expansion as described by RfC. Although the page was longer a bit more than six years ago, that unsourced, non-neutral content was long since been deleted such that "the day before the expander began substantive work on it" (RfC on fivefold expansion) it was a 228-character stub. After expansion, begun November 19, the page is now 11915 characters. Really thought the tool was giving back a negative result, but now when I check it's fine? Which I guess is good.

5x expanded by Hydrangeans (talk). Self-nominated at 02:25, 20 November 2022 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Hydrangeans: Good expansion! Will have to AGF on the sources I can't access and approve. Onegreatjoke (talk) 02:50, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the review! Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:22, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Sidebar

@P-Makoto: what does WP:CLN have to do with this? The quoted bit of CLN ("The collection of articles in a sidebar template should be fairly tightly related,") appears to be talking about the articles within the navbox not the placement of the navbox on articles. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

It makes sense to centralize this conversation at Template talk:Book of Mormon#Content in this template that is redundant with other templates. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 18:24, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Why? They're entirely different discussions on equal level talk pages and this one was opened first... So if we're even considering centralizing its here, not there. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:28, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Cleanup tags

I tagged the article with a number of tags because the structure is greatly lacking here. It is not at all clear what we are supposed to be learning from this article. It's a city mentioned in the Book of Mormon. It apparently features in some Mormon art and literature. Is that important or noticed. I think a complete restructuring/reframing of this article is in order. jps (talk) 10:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Acknowledging my past connection to BYU as a student employee, I think it's appropriate to answer in this thread since I significantly contributed to this page (it having spent years before that as a primary source POV stub narrated in the past tense initially added by unrelated editors (who I would guess may have been Mormons back in the early 2000s).

The structure of this article is like those of GAs about topics that appear in literature, like Pippin Took (permanent link), The Shire (permanent link), and The Scouring of the Shire (permanent link): a synopsis, a setting geography, and a summary of secondary source analysis. I added a Background section to explain elements of the Book of Mormon plot relevant to making sense of the synopsis and summarized analysis (like the Nephites and Lamanites, the Alma/Nehor plot, the meta-plot about the principal narrator, etc.).

By way of aside, while I can understand why you deleted the reference to a date, my understanding was that it was neutral because it was like saying that Jean Valjean was born in 1769, even though there's obviously no academic consensus such a thing ever happened: it's referring to the time period of the setting, rather than making a claim about external reality. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 20:35, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

This is not an article about a literary work. This is an article about a city that is mentioned in a sacred text. As such, it holds specific meaning for a believer and that is its primary notability if it has any. The question is, what meaning do believers give to this city and how widespread is that understanding? That's the first question to answer because there is not any real city of Ammonihah to discuss and given that this was probably made up it is worth exploring how and why such things were made up. What was the context in nineteenth century upstate New York that would have inspired this particular set of stories to be told? All of that is absolutely missing from the article and, as such, makes the thing entirely incomplete. jps (talk) 00:29, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the Book of Mormon is a sacred text of a multi-denominational religious movement. Simultaneously, it's also a book, a narrative with a plot, subplots, and meta-plot. The current state of Book of Mormon studies emphasizes literary analysis. For a summary of that trend, see this article by literary critic Grant Shreve (who is not a Mormon) for Religion & Politics, "The Book of Mormon Gets the Literary Treatment" (Religion & Politics is an online news journal published by Washington University in St. Louis's John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics]]).

Asking what meaning do believers give to this city and how widespread is that understanding is an interesting question about reception history, a kind of media/social history, different from the very textually-focused literary approach apparently more common in the last decade of Book of Mormon studies. Since Wikipedia summarizes what's in secondary sources, if we find reception history in secondary sources, then that'd be something to summarize. If we find literary-narrative approaches instead, then I'm not so clear on why that shouldn't be something to summarize. If academics like Shreve, Elizabeth Fenton, and Seth Perry (all non-Mormons) assess the book as literature, then it seems natural for Wikipedia to summarize assessments in that vein. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 06:19, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

You don't get to make declarations about "current trends" in Mormon studies by quoting an OpEd piece in Deseret.com We are here to provide people with information. Articles on the Book of Mormon as literature really ought to be separate from articles on the subjects of the Book of Mormon because "treatment as literature" is a choice that essentially refuses to engage with wider context. I have absolutely no issue with including such analysis as a section of this article, but as the only approach it cannot be. The attempted rehabilitation by, let's be honest, almost all believing Mormons to this effect functions as a way to sidestep the obviously thorny issue that dealing with the history/archaeology/etc. of any of this leads to the obvious conclusion that it did not happen. Not that we have to beat the reader over the head with that, but Wikipedia is not a literary criticism journal. We are here to do the best we can to talk about what is known about a subject and how it is couched by scholars. I see here no attempt at contextualization and if that's because the literature in Mormon Studies is avoiding the same (much the same as how, for example, cold fusion papers avoid discussing the obvious pathological science nature fo the subject), then it's not ready for Wikipedia. jps (talk) 11:27, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I linked to an article in Religion & Politics written by a non-Mormon with a PhD in American literature. The Deseret News link was only to verify that Grant Shreve isn't a Mormon. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 17:24, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

And I'm perplexed by you saying that this effort is led by "believing Mormons" when I just told you that the scholars mentioned in the Religion & Politics article aren't Mormons.

• Grant Shreve writes, I did not, in other words, become a Latter-day Saint. Mine was an aesthetic experience, not a religious one; For someone like me, whose interest in the Book of Mormon is entirely removed from any church affiliation (in I fell hard for the Book of Mormon but did not convert to the LDS Church Deseret News, May 30, 2017. Again, this is cited only to have a source written by the person self-indicating not being Mormon)
• Seth Perry says, I should be clear that I am writing as a non-Mormon in his review of The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions, in the Mormon Studies Review 10 (2023): 70–74, here 71.
• Elizabeth Fenton says, I was raised Catholic in an interfaith household in rural Vermont, a state with a Congregational church on every corner that doesn’t have a Baptist church and I wanted to enter this conversation as a scholar of early US literature and as someone who loved the book immediately upon reading it but did not believe it to be a sacred text, in her article "Understanding the Book of Mormon", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 25 (2016): 37–51, here 38.

In any case, no, Wikipedia is not a literary criticism journal, no. It's not any particular kind of journal. It's an encyclopedia that summarizes secondary sources. If the academic approach to a topic is literary then it makes sense to cite and summarize that. If the academic approach to a topic is bioengineering, then it makes sense to cite that. if the academic approach to a topic is anthropological then it makes sense to cite that. Etc. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

No... you are absolutely missuing the R&P piece to make a sweeping claim that does not appear there. That piece is not arguing that the "primary treatment" for the Book of Mormon is literary. It's just arguing that literary analysis of the Book of Mormon is happening. jps (talk) 19:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Note too that Joseph Smith's disdain for judges and lawyers was pretty well known even at the point that he authored the Book of Mormon. Pillorying a city filled with them? There are definitely some interesting points to be made about that kind of literary dramaturgy. :) jps (talk) 00:39, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, because this is not a literary work, it's hard to know how to handle specific dates. If the text mentions such dates, sure. If there are believers who associate such dates strongly and with purpose, then we should explain that if not here then on some page that details why dates are so important to people who believe in the Book of Mormon. But putting in a date without that needed context is dressing it up as a history that it is not and that serves a particular exegetical purpose which is best left to other venues. jps (talk) 00:59, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

As for dates, the text mentions the Babylonian Captivity, which happens in the Bible circa 600 B. C. E.. I don't know whether the year "600 B. C. E." is fixed in Mormon brains; I cited the number from secondary sources that use the "600 B. /600 B. C. E." to describe the temporal setting of the Book of Mormon narrative. This article cites the historian Richard Bushman, who makes the statement about the described departure of Lehi. Religious studies scholar Laurie Maffly-Kipp (who is not a Latter-day Saint) uses dates in a similar way in her introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the Book of Mormon while summarizing the meta-plot about recordkeeping: Along with the brass plates, the plates of Nephi consist of gathered records from many of the prophets and leaders of the Nephite people between approximately 600 BCE and the appearance of Jesus in the early first century CE. (page x). P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 06:09, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Richard Bushman is not a reliable source for dates associated with the Book of Mormon. He thinks the stuff obviously happened. jps (talk) 11:27, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

This strikes me as an unworkable standard. Bushman is published by Oxford University Press, which is clearly independent of the church, and their Very Short Introductions are targeted to non-specialists. I understand the concerns about "walled garden" scholarship on LDS topics, but this seems like the exact kind of source that breaks down those walls.

Would you apply this criteria to all religious scholarship? Are Catholic authors inherently unreliable when discussing the Bible or Popes, even if Oxford or Cambridge publishes them? Ghosts of Europa (talk) 17:35, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

That's my sense too. It is one thing to object to a denominationally associated publisher, even if we disagree about the extents of doing so, but to insist that an author published by a major press, like a university press or Penguin or Alfred A. Knopf seems like an overreaching standard that somehow implies the publisher doesn't play any role at all, which seems entirely untrue. To publish a book with a press requires submitting a manuscript and the publisher reviewing that manuscript and providing feedback, or even a rejection. University presses often even send the book out for a peer review. If Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction were some screed about how the ruins of Zarahemla are totally in Iowa or whatever, Oxford wouldn't have published it. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 17:50, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Certain Catholic scholars aren't reliable for discussing, for example, the Shroud of Turin, absolutely. That's just how it goes. It so happens that the main dispute is that this book is an entire fabrication so someone who is writing as though it is not is not reliable. It's not as though Bushman is saying something along the lines of "for the sake of argument... let's try to figure out how this lines up." No: Bushman is aiming to set a date for the Book of Mormon events because he wants people to believe they actually happened. I don't care who the publisher is. Publishers will publish anything if they think enough people will by it. That goes especially for OUP which is kinda notorious for just putting any old drivel out there. jps (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I find "approximately 600 BCE" to be a slightly better indicator, but is there any discussion of whether and how that particular timeframe was on the mind of the author of the text? I get the distinct impression that rather than specific dates, the author was trying to tie the story to the biblical story of the captivity and didn't much care when exactly it happened. It's not as though Joseph Smith (or his co-conspirators) included dates in the text, right? jps (talk) 11:34, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

We are both free to pursue this interesting original research question about what may or may not have been in the heads of the book's makers. I think Laurie Maffly-Kipp and Richard Bushman say 'approximately/around 600 B. C. E. ' because that tells the reader more about how long ago the Book's setting supposedly is than a phrase like "ahead of the Babylonian Captivity", which I wouldn't have known the approximate time frame of unless I looked it up.

The Book contains internal references to years passing. Maffly-Kipp's sums it up in stating that the effect is that the plot happens across more than a thousand years within the story. Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman summarize similarly in their introduction to Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019), 1–18, here 2: narrating, in the main, the 1,000-year history of a group of Israelites who, in advance of the diaspora forced by the Babylonian invasion, escaped to the Americas around 600 BCE. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 18:09, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't have known the approximate time frame of unless I looked it up But that's the beauty of Wikipedia. You can wikilink to the article and if someone wants to know more about it, they can look there. This has the added benefit of not importing the not-insignificant disputes that go on over the historicity of that Biblical account. jps (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I guess I question why the 1000 years is at all relevant to our task here. What does the reader gain from knowing that it is 1000 years versus some other number? Unless there is some reason to add up all the years, I guess I don't understand the point of doing so and it brings up more questions than it resolves. jps (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not a Christian. I'm pretty familiar with the Bible, but not the Book of Mormon. I haven't read it, and I hadn't heard of Ammonihah before yesterday. I'm generally interested in religious stories. Hopefully my perspective is useful.

• I think this article does a good job providing context. I understand where it falls in the overall Book of Mormon narrative and its relevance to the LDS church, and I appreciate the reference points to more familiar Biblical stories (like comparing Alma's repentance to Paul's).
  • That said, I would appreciate more info on what it means to be Christian before Jesus' birth.
• I'm not sure what the "excessive examples" tag refers to.
• I agree that the article is way too detailed and gets lost in the weeds. I think the narrative section could be 50% shorter without losing much. I'd be happy to take an editing pass and try to streamline it.
• I'm not sure what undue weight this lends. It's clearly contextualized as a religious narrative, and the article doesn't claim the city was historical. The article could be improved with some material explicitly about its historicity or Joseph Smith's own view of lawyers, but it doesn't feel biased.

As for what I'm supposed to be learning, I found the Intertextuality and Interpretation sections interesting! I learned about a religious narrative from a religion that's clearly important, how people interpret it, and how it's related to more well-known narratives from the Bible. I do think the lede could make a better case for notability; the woodblock prints aren't much of a hook. But I didn't find this proselytizing and it didn't feel like a Fandom article.

Any objection to me splitting off these different concerns into separate threads? I think that will make this easier to follow and discuss. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 18:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

The excessive examples refers to the laundry list of sources that have mentioned Ammonihah for various purposes. It is possible that there may be a way to more fluidly incorporate this into article text, but right now it reads to me like a long list of examples. Sometimes tags are hard to get exactly right, sorry. I think I don't disagree with anything you are saying here, but I think we really need to do some hard work to get this to a point where someone might be able to come to this article and really understand what about this subject deserves discussing and why. jps (talk) 19:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Should have mentioned, the article is primarily a literary analysis of the use of this city in the Book of Mormon. That is undue weight to a particular approach to studying the Book of Mormon which is not the primary approach that people who, y'know, actually read the Book of Mormon have with the text. Literary analysis and criticism can be part of this article but to make the entire article about it is overdone to say the least. And we're left with a buncha unanswered questions as to, for example, why the hell did Joseph Smith bother to make up this silly story? Y'know? jps (talk) 20:33, 14 March 2024 (UTC)