Critics often claim that the Book of Mormon, in passages such as Alma 11:28-29 as “proof” that the Book of Mormon contradicts Latter-day Saint theology and other LDS Scriptural texts such as the Book of Abraham that teaches a doctrine of “the plurality of the gods.” I have refuted this many times before, including:
Critics are also guilty of ignoring the Mesoamerican background to the Book of Mormon and how such comments such as those in Alma 11:28-29 is not against the ontological existence of beings that can be called “G/gods” per se but a denial of Mesoamerican religious syncretism. As LDS Mesoamericanist Brant Gardner noted:
Bridging the Nature of God
Syncretizing Nephite and Mesoamerican religions had to deal with concepts of deity. On this most fundamental point, modern monotheists would see tremendous differences with the Mesoamerican polytheists, but there were sufficient perceived similarities with the Mesoamerican polytheists, but there were sufficient perceived similarities with the Nephite explanation of Deity could accommodate, or be accommodated to, Mesoamerican ideas about the nature of the divine.
Although the Nephites cannot be equated with the Maya, Maya culture was already widespread in Mesoamerica and in the Preclassic period (400 B.C.-A.D. 250) and appears to have exerted a great influence on surrounding cultures (Francisco Estrada Belli, The First Maya Civilization, 61-63). We have the best data for this culture, thanks to the preponderance of carved stone monuments and ceramic vessels painted with historical and mythological scenes and texts that have been preserved archaeologically. As plausibly influential neighbors of the Nephites, the Maya exemplify the kind of religious ideas to which some Nephites accommodated. Though certainly not homogenous, Maya beliefs and practices bear fundamental similarities to other Mesoamerican cultures and therefore exemplify the points of congruence along with our proposed syncretism occurred (Larks Kirkhusmo Pharo, “The Concept of ‘Religion’ in Mesoamerican Languages,” 28-70).
Maya scholars use god and deity interchangeably in their scholarly literature. The problem with the terminology is that our modern ideas of “god” and “deity” may not replicate the Maya notion of “supernatural sentient beings that appear in sacred narrative” (Karl Taube, The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan, 8). Maya scholars Stephen Houston and David Stuart lament a scholarly ethnocentrism that has hindered understanding of Classic Period Maya deities. They argue that the Western conception of gods as perfect, immortal, and discrete beings is not applicable to the Mesoamerican pantheon (Stephen D. Houston and David Stuart, “Of Gods, Glyphs, and Kings: Divinity and Rulership among the Classic Maya,” 290). Gabrielle Vail’s assessment of the Preclassic Maya (A.D. 900-1521) representations of gods found in their bark-paper books can usefully be applied to the earlier Classic depictions of gods found on ceramics and monuments: “The picture that emerges is one of a series of deity complexes or clusters, composed of a small number of underlying divinities, each having various aspects, or manifestations” (Gabrielle Vail, “Pre-Hispanic Maya Religion,” 123). Vail argues that in a “deity complex,” a variety of distinctive gods could be lumped together into a single category, predicated on a core cluster of bodily features or costume elements. Conversely, a single god could be represented with a variety of differing characteristics or manifestations. Their names, attributes, and domains of influence were fluid, yet they retained their individual identity. Each of the elaborations that a modern reader might see as a different deity was actually considered to be merely an elaboration of the complex essence of one particular deity.
Although not precisely the same concept, Nephite religion understood a proliferation of “names” for the Messiah. For example, Isaiah declares that “his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6; 2 Ne. 19:6). Each of these names proclaims a different quality, yet all apply to the same God. The Maya deity complexes similarly expanded the qualities of the underlying deity, albeit with a more complete elaboration than just a name.
An example from the modern Ch’orti’, a designation for a Maya people and language, demonstrates how this Mesoamerican deity complex expands the names and manifestations of an underlying deity according to different conditions. One particular god manifests itself as a solar being during the dry season but transforms into a maize spirit during the rainy season (Rafael Girard, People of the Chan, 350). Even as a solar deity, it has multiple manifestations throughout the course of a single day that also demonstrate syncretism with Christian ideals: “They say that the sun has not just one name. The one which is best known by people continues to be Jesus Christ. They say that when it is just getting light its name is Child Redeemer of the World. One name is San Gregorio the Illuminator. One name is San Antonio of Judgment. One name is Child Guardian. One is Child Refuge. One is Child San Pascual. One is Child Succor. One is Child Creator. They say that during at each hour, one of these is its name” (John G. Fought, Chorti (Maya) Texts, 485. Among the Ch’orti, San Antonio is the fire god, San Gregorio emits beams of light, and San Pascual is Venus as morning star).
Although it is foreign to the way we understand our Christian tradition, a people who lived in the context of a world that saw manifestations of the divine in deity complexes might easily reenvision the Nephite God (with multiple names) as a deity complex, being composed of distinctive manifestations in different circumstances. For example, God the Father and Christ the Son are considered “one Eternal God” (Alma 11:44). From a syncretic perspective, the Book of Mormon can be read as teaching that each deity had his own identity and at times was described by different manifestations. When the text declares, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son” (Ether 3:14), the syncretist might easily interpret it as a deity complex. Abinadi’s explanation in Mosiah 15 of how Christ is both the Father and the Son could also be read as an example of multiple manifestations of a single deity:
And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—
The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and the Son—
And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.
And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people . . .
Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father. (Mosiah 15:2-5, 7)
Once a Nephite apostate accommodated the idea of a deity complex, that concept could easily be read into the scriptural tradition, and the Nephite God of many names could be reinterpreted in much more fluid Mesoamerican terms. Such a syncretic perspective would reread descriptions of God as differing manifestations, such as a creator deity (Jacob 2:5), a destroyer (3 Ne. 9), a rain god (Ether 9:35), a god of agricultural fertility (Alma 34:24), a solar deity (1 Ne. 1:9; Hel. 14:4, 20), a fire god (1 Ne. 1:6; Hel. 13:13), a king (Mosiah 2:19), a god of medicine (Alma 46:40), a shepherd (Alma 5:38), a lamb (1 Ne. 14), and even a rock (Hel. 5:12). Clearly, some of these manifestations are metaphorical in their appropriate context, but the ancient Maya similarly used rich metaphorical language, and they often used visual metaphors in their art. In an apostate/syncretic mind-set, the metaphor shifted to express a different underlying meaning (Kerry M. Hull, Verbal Art and Performance in Ch’orti’ and Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, 337). (Brant A. Gardner, Traditions of the Fathers: The Book of Mormon as History [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015], 263-65)