The idea of the Book of Mormon as being partially Faërie came to me on my bike (a great place to think) as I pondered a rather striking turn in the book: the narratives of the Old and the New Worlds are remarkably different in their geographical ontology. The tales set in the Old World are strongly anchored to the real world. We have references to identifiable and recoverable places, the people act in ways that are congruent with ancient oriental custom.
But then it changes. The migrants reach the Promised Land — identified as America — but it does not seem to be in an America recoverable today. ...It will sound like a strange claim but I shall do it again anyway: the American Book of Mormon takes us into the environs of Faërie. The New World Book of Mormon carries that all-important verisimilitude necessary for Faërie. To use Tolkien’s vocabulary, it is the sub-creation of a Secondary World that is internally plausible . . . but it is also a magical world, full of slippery treasures and moving mountains and, most importantly, the seamen who found it seemed to have sailed off the edge of the world and into Aman. The cities of Eldamar will never be found by archaeologists. ...It also helps explain why I feel sympathetic to studies of Nahom and the Arabian coast but simultaneously think that Book of Mormon archaeology in America is a fool’s errand.
History, Faërie — Truth. Why not?
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell summarized the monomyth:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
From out of the Sacred Grove to the pages of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith seems to meet John Ronald Raul Tolkien around the Bay of Belfalas and that is no Nahom.
