OK. so. Archaelogical evidence for the BoM. There is not a whole lot of direct evidence, such as, say, a large ancient city with “Welcome to Zarahemla” emblazoned on the gate in Reformed Egyptian.* As a matter of fact, we have not got a very good idea of where the BoM events even took place, although current opinion places everything in a fairly small section of Central America. The BoM is rather short on obvious cultural details, being a brief and abridged account of the religious history of a small people.** They were probably assimilated into a larger population, though the book fails to mention that. Cultural details are instead buried within the text and have to be dug out through careful study.
*(I read recently about a ruin they found in the 50’s that was thought to be a good candidate for Zarahemla, actually. Unfortunately it was almost immediately put underwater by dam construction, and there it remains today.)
**(Actually, the BoM is a very complex book, which describes three distinct cultures and features hundreds of people with confusing names engaging in complicated maneuvers. Story lines are left hanging and then taken up again much later, documents are interleaved and interrupted, and so on–all without plot holes or mistakes.)
That said, there is a surprising amount to be gotten from the BoM, and many details from both ancient Hebrew and ancient Meso-American culture that Joseph Smith, or anyone else back then, could not have known. For example, the language of the BoM teems with ‘Hebraisms,’ phrasing that sounds weird in English but makes perfect sense in Hebrew. The original manuscript (which recently came to light) was packed with them, but Smith went through and edited a lot of them out in order to make it easier to read. Many still remain, and constructions such as “and it came to pass,” “dreamed a dream,” “with much harshness,” and many, many others are very Hebrew in character. Hebrew is a favorite language to learn among students of the BoM.
Another fun one is that ever since the BoM was published, critics have howled with laughter at the idea that the Arabian peninsula could possibly have a river or a green oasis-type place as described in the BoM. Within the past few years, both have been discovered in just about exactly the places Nephi claims them to be located–in fact we have two candidates for the land Bountiful. A link below will give you pictures.
Anyway, that’s enough for now, and I’ll list you some links to explore.
This essay, by the SF author Orson Scott Card, is an enjoyable favorite of mine on whether or not Joseph Smith could have written the BoM-- from the perspective of someone who knows the craft of writing documents purporting to describe foreign cultures and histories.
Jeff Lindsay runs a website condensing FAQs about many facets of LDS beliefs and which also gathers a lot of Book of Mormon evidences together in an easy-to-locate place. This is not an offical LDS website and I make no claims as to its completeness or anything, but it does have quite a bit of good information. This is the one with photos of the Arabian peninsula.
FARMS, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, is where most of the major scholarly work on archaeology, linguistics, ancient culture, and whatnot takes place. They publish a lot, and you can look around the site, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot for non-subscribers.
This appears to be a beta version of a coming new FARMS website. There are several featured articles from the current issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, which you may wish to peruse. Sadly, the JBMS archives are subscriber-only, but here is a list of featured papers on the BoM that you can read. This one in particular may interest you.
Finally, a good book recently came out gathering evidences for the BoM together in a nice layman’s format. Echoes and evidences of the Book of Mormon, ed. by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch may well be available near you through a library or by wandering into your friendly neighborhood LDS bookstore (if one exists) and browsing a bit.
