Michael Coe on Joseph Smith the Shaman

As a nonsupernaturalist, I can’t believe the official Mormon account of its founder, Joseph Smith. (See “What Do You Mean by 'Supernatural'? and “The Message of Jesus for Non-Supernaturalists.”) But on the whole, I think he has had a benign and interesting effect on the world—at a minimum opening up additional possible perspectives on many things that are clearly nonsupernatural. And for the most part, I think Joseph Smith has had a benign and interesting effect on my own life, through my 40 years as a Mormon. So I am inclined toward a view of Joseph Smith as positive as my nonsupernaturalism and the documentary evidence of his life can support. That attracts me to the renowned (and now sadly deceased) archaeologist Michael Coe’s view of Joseph Smith as a very talented shaman. (Michael Coe seems to be just as much of a nonsupernaturalist as I am, so when he says shaman it doesn’t mean what it might to, say, a supernaturalist New Age believer.)

In addition to his interest in Angkor Wat, Michael Coe is an expert on the Maya and ancient Mesoamerica. This makes him an expert on what is by far the most plausible historical milieu for the events recounted by The Book of Mormon—the book taken down from Joseph Smith’s dictation that launched his career as a religious leader. The triple “Mormon Stories” podcast flagged at the top of this post and its sequel flagged on that “Mormon Stories” webpage will give you all the detail you are likely to want about evidence on whether The Book of Mormon could possibly be an accurate historical record. The basic answer is no. Indeed, the evidence against The Book of Mormon being an accurate historical record is persuasive enough that some Mormon Church leaders have begun playing down The Book of Mormon as history, saying it wasn’t intended as history but as a religious record. I’ll give you just one tidbit that is interesting to me: coinage as recounted in The Book of Mormon. the BYU Studies website gives this rundown of coinage at a particular period in The Book of Mormon:


Link to the BYU Studies webpage shown above. The Book of Mormon passage cited, Alma 11:1-19 includes these words: “Now these are the names of the different pieces of their gold, and of their silver, according to their value.”

Link to the BYU Studies webpage shown above. The Book of Mormon passage cited, Alma 11:1-19 includes these words: “Now these are the names of the different pieces of their gold, and of their silver, according to their value.”

This Book of Mormon account of the coinage system, together with the difficulty admitted by Mormon apologists of situating the bulk of the events in The Book of Mormon anywhere other than Mesoamerica amounts to a claim that metal coins were in use in Mesoamerica in ancient times. But according to Michael Coe, archaeologists have not found ancient Mesoamerican metal coins. (Michael Coe says that what they actually used as small change was dried cocoa beans.) Metal coinage, by its nature, tends to be widely used, and therefore tends to show up in archeological digs of sites where it was used in olden times. So not finding ancient Mesoamerican metal coins is important evidence against The Book of Mormon. Indeed, with all the Mesoamerican archeological digs, archeologists should have found many, many of ancient Mesoamerican coins if even a few cities for half a century made wide use of coinage.

At least for the sake of argument, suppose that Joseph Smith did not produce an accurate history of the ancient Americas by supernatural means. If he had no supernatural help whatsoever in producing The Book of Mormon, then he deserves an honored place in the history of the fictional genre of Fantasy. In particular, his works of fantasy with a religious method are up their with, say, C. S. Lewis’s religious-tinged fantasies. (Of course, C. S. Lewis, to his great credit, clearly labeled his fantasies as fiction. Joseph Smith, to his discredit, failed to do this.) Even among believers in Joseph Smith’s supernatural calling, Joseph Smith’s eminence as a fantasy author is, I believe, an important part of the reason for Utah being a hotbed for the flourishing of fantasy and science-fiction authors.

In a PBS interview, Michael Coe gives this take on Joseph Smith as a shaman:

I'm a totally irreligious person, even though I was born and raised a perfectly good Episcopalian Christian. Yet figures like Joseph Smith fascinate me as an anthropologist, and I suppose as an American, too. When I read Fawn Brodie's wonderful book, No Man Knows My History, I couldn't put it down. I mean, it's the most exciting biography I've ever read.

When I did read it for the first time, I realized what kind of a person this Joseph Smith was. In my opinion, he was not just a great religious leader; he was a really great American, and I think he was one of the greatest people who ever lived. This extraordinary man, who put together a religion -- probably with many falsities in it, falsehoods, so forth, to begin with -- eventually came to believe in it so much that he really bought his own story and made it believable to other people. In this respect, he's a lot like a shaman in anthropology: these extraordinary religious practitioners in places like Siberia, North America among the Eskimo, the Inuit, who start out probably in their profession as almost like magicians doing magic. ...

I really think that Joseph Smith, like shamans everywhere, started out faking it. I have to believe this -- that he didn't believe this at all, that he was out to impress, but he got caught up in the mythology that he created. This is what happens to shamans: They begin to believe they can do these things. It becomes a revelation: They're speaking to God. And I don't think they start out that way; I really do not. ...

… Joseph Smith had a sense of destiny -- and most fakers don't have this -- and this is how he transformed something that, I think, was clearly made up into something that was absolutely convincing, convincing to him and to a lot of people, and he never could have convinced a lot of people if he hadn't been convinced himself.

In the Mormon Stories interview I flag at the top of this post, Michael Coe expands on this view. I don’t have a transcript to work from with the Mormon Stories interview, but at close to the 30-minute mark of the third installment, he says something close to this:

Michael Coe: … Joseph Smith knew the Old Testament very, very well. …

John Dehlin (interviewer): How Dr. Coe, in the world, can you explain, what many people think is a miraculous book [The Book of Mormon]? …

Michael Coe: [Joseph Smith] was one of the greatest people who ever lived. … He was an incredible leader. …

Very bright kid—interested in old things, Tom-Sawyer-like guy. … This guy had an incredible brain. I really do think so.

Michael Coe goes on to talk in some detail about his view that Joseph Smith fully assimilated the Old Testament and creatively transformed what he had assimilated into an amazing book: The Book of Mormon. (Someone once called The Book of Mormon “a book-length midrash on the Old Testament.”)

Not everything in The Book of Mormon is admirable. It is tinged with the racism against Native Americans common in upstate New York in the 1820s. And in its first few pages, it has a story that seems to recommend unquestioning obedience. (See “A Book of Mormon Story Every Mormon Boy and Girl Knows.”) But it also includes beautiful ethical principles that, to me at least, came home in a way that the closest counterpart passage in the Bible did not manage. (I hope to return to that theme in a future post.)

Even now, as a nonsupernaturalist, I still look back with amazement at the exquisite warm feeling I felt in my heart when I prayed as a teenager to know if The Book of Mormon was true. Evidently, that exquisite warm feeling in my heart did not mean The Book of Mormon is an accurate historical record. But that exquisite warm feeling in my heart meant something.