Lundwall is correct that ancient Near Eastern religion — including Israelite religion — was primarily oral and ritual-based, not centered on individual scripture-reading. This is not a new critique; LDS scholars have discussed it for decades. The real question is what it means for the Book of Mormon — and the episode never honestly engages the LDS scholarly response.

Notably, the Interpreter Foundation — a peer-reviewed LDS scholarship journal — published a substantial analysis titled “Literacy and Orality in the Book of Mormon” that directly addresses this.

The study directly addresses this issue. It concludes that the text reflects a primarily oral culture with an elite literate class.

This matches what we expect in an ancient Near Eastern setting. Most people in the narrative do not read. Instead, a small priestly and royal class keeps records.

In addition, oral performance patterns appear throughout the text. These include chiasmus, repetition, and phrases like “and it came to pass.”

As a result, record-keeping remains concentrated in a small elite. This pattern aligns with known ancient scribal cultures.

This is exactly what we find in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Israel: writing was the preserve of an elite scribal class serving the temple and state. The Book of Mormon shows Nephi explicitly trained as a scribe before leaving Jerusalem — consistent with this model, not anachronistic to it.

Why This Claim Matters

Lundwall argues that writing on metal plates and maintaining scriptural records would have been impossible in 600 BCE Jerusalem. If true, this would directly challenge the Book of Mormon’s historical plausibility.

What the Evidence Actually Shows

Literacy in 600 BCE Jerusalem

However, the archaeological record contradicts this claim.
Ancient Israelites were writing in meaningful ways at the time of Lehi’s departure. A Tel Aviv University study published in PNAS

shows widespread literacy in Judah around 600 BCE.
Researchers analyzed ink inscriptions from the Arad fortress and identified at least six authors.
This suggests a functioning educational system capable of producing complex texts.

In addition, the Lachish Letters—military correspondence from around 590 BCE—show routine written communication.
Likewise, the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls contain the oldest known biblical text.

Writing on Metal Plates

FAIR LDS documents many examples of ancient writing on metal plates across the Mediterranean and Near East. These include the Pyrgi gold tablets, the Darius gold plates, and the Etruscan gold book.
Archaeologists have also found many copper and bronze inscriptions.

In addition, William Hamblin’s peer-reviewed study explores this evidence in detail. Therefore, the claim that brass plates could not exist is not just debatable—it conflicts with known findings.

To be fair, Lundwall raises a valid point. Many examples are ritual, not historical. However, “they don’t exist” and “this exact type doesn’t exist” are different claims. The episode blurs that distinction.

Lundwall’s Argument About Monotheism

However, Lundwall argues that monotheism requires literacy.
He claims that reducing many gods into one demands abstract thinking shaped by literacy. This is an interesting theoretical framework, but it has a serious problem when applied to the Israelites specifically: it doesn’t fit what we know about Israelite religion.

Historical Context: Israelite Religion in Transition

Lundwall himself acknowledges that early Israelites were “not monotheistic” — they worshipped multiple gods including Asherah. This is true; the Hebrew Bible itself records this. However, prophets like Lehi, Jeremiah, and Isaiah challenged that culture.
They taught explicit monotheism against dominant polytheism.
This tension defines the Deuteronomistic reform period (~630–600 BCE). The narrative framework of the Book of Mormon places Lehi in exactly this prophetic reform context. He is a dissenter from mainstream Israelite polytheism, aligning himself with the prophetic tradition that called Israel back to exclusive Yahweh worship. His departure from Jerusalem just before the Babylonian exile places him squarely within the historical moment when this tension was at its peak.

At the same time, the archaeological evidence Lundwall cites for polytheism in Meso-America is a separate question — the absence of monotheistic archaeology in the Americas is a genuine challenge for Book of Mormon geography models. But his claim that monotheism was simply impossible in 600 BCE Israel is not accurate; prophetic monotheism existed as a minority position alongside widespread popular polytheism, and the Book of Mormon’s narrative is built around exactly that tension.

Dehlin makes this comment, not Lundwall — and the episode leaves it unchallenged and uncorrected, so it stands as an implicit claim of the episode. This claim matters because it mischaracterizes the Nahom evidence.

The Nahom discovery does not support the idea that ‘Old World people were trying to hide.”

Archaeologists discovered three altar inscriptions with the name NHM.
A German team—not LDS researchers—found them at the Bar’an Temple in Yemen.
They date to the 7th–6th centuries BCE.

This location matches where the Book of Mormon places Ishmael’s burial.
It also aligns with the point where Lehi’s group turns east.

 These altars were found by independent, non-LDS archaeologists and predate Joseph Smith by 2,400 years. Multiple peer-reviewed LDS studies document the convergence of name, location, date, and direction.

Why the Dismissal Falls Short

However, critics argue that Joseph Smith could have found “Nehhm” on 18th-century maps.
They also suggest the name match may be coincidental. These are legitimate points that researchers continue to debate. But dismissing Nahom as if it has no evidentiary value, or treating it as an embarrassing last resort, misrepresents the actual state of the scholarship. Terryl Givens described the NHM altars as “the first actual archaeological evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon” — not because it proves everything, but because the convergence of independent factors is not easily explained by coincidence.

Dehlin presents this “dominoes” argument as obvious.
However, it assumes something deeper.
It assumes LDS faith depends entirely on a strict, literal translation model.
It also assumes no other framework exists.

Alternative Faith Models Within LDS Thought

The LDS Church’s Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon Translation explicitly acknowledges that Joseph Smith used a seer stone placed in a hat and that he did not always look at the plates during translation — a disclosure that itself undermines a simple tight-translation model. Many faithful LDS scholars, including those published in the Interpreter Foundation, BYU Studies, and Dialogue, hold nuanced views of the translation process that allow for Joseph’s language, culture, and cognition to have participated in the text.

The “domino” logic also presupposes that the historicity of the Book of Mormon is the only basis for LDS truth claims. But the Church’s theology is grounded in multiple independent lines: the First Vision, the Restoration of priesthood authority, continuing revelation, living prophets, and the personal spiritual witness available to any sincere seeker. Lundwall and Dehlin are entitled to argue that the book’s historicity is foundational. But presenting this as so obvious that it doesn’t require argument — while millions of faithful members hold a more textured view — is not honest intellectual engagement.