How do we understand and interpret the historical events recorded in scripture – or elsewhere?

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Prerequisites: I reference Ancient Greek history, a few modern histories, and Christian and Mormon scripture, but I don’t think you need to be familiar with them to understand the argument.

Originally Written: November 2015.

Confidence Level: Interesting to think about. There are some things that I would do differently if I were writing it today.

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A History of History

There have been many different ways of telling the story of human societies. I will begin with a brief history of how people have told history. I was raised in the Western tradition, so this history of history is biased towards Western styles of history. It would be interesting to see how texts like Arthashastra or Shiji fall into this narrative, but I am less familiar with them.

Epic Poems

The earliest examples of histories are epic poems. The Greek literary tradition is anchored by the Odyssey and the Iliad. The English tradition is anchored by Beowulf. The earliest example of a history comes from the Babylonian tradition: The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Epic poems begin as oral traditions. The stories are passed down through generations of storytellers. This makes their historical accuracy suspect. Did the storytellers try to give an accurate representation of the events or did they follow Mark Twain’s maxim: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”?

These oral traditions do preserve information better than modern fiction writers and poets. Troy was a real city that was sacked by the Greeks. Many European fairy tales, another example of an oral tradition, remain recognizable after being told for millennia. ^[1]Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales by Sara Graça da Silva and Jamshid J. Tehrani (2016). Oral traditions can also be useful historical sources even without being factually accurate, because they can preserve and convey the ethics promoted by their society.

How do epic poems portray history? Epic poems focus on a great individual, a hero. The hero is an exemplar of both the virtues of the society and of personal power. However, that individual is only sometimes in control of his destiny. Occasionally, other people influence the hero’s destiny. Most often, the drivers of history are supernatural: gods or monsters who come in and interfere with people’s lives. The same style of history is found throughout mythological sources.

The driving force of history is the supernatural – gods who intervene in the lives of important individuals.

Great Men

The next stage in the development of history begins with Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian Wars, although Herodotus deserves some credit as well.

Unlike the epic poems, which were only written after centuries of storytelling, Thucydides wrote about contemporary history. This allows him better standards of evidence. Thucydides relied heavily on events where he was present or on first hand accounts. He at least pretends impartiality, emphasizing facts over propaganda. Religion is included primarily by how it influences people – the gods themselves do not intervene. These techniques give Thucydides’s work credibility. He provides sufficient evidence that the event he described did take place largely in the way he describes them.

Thucydides’s descriptions of history focused on how powerful politicians made critical decisions. These decisions are the causes of most important events.

This model of history has been a dominant form of history-telling ever since. By the 1800’s, this was referred to as the Great Man Theory of History:

The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

– Carlyle

Note that great means important; it says nothing about whether the person’s decisions were good.

This model of history begs the questions: Who is important? What decisions are important?

Thucydides focused on political and military leaders, starting a tradition of political historians. Economic historians focused on economic decisions of inventors and the captions of industry. Feminists remind people that not all important decisions are made by great men: the decisions of great women are important in understanding history. Other histories focus on the effects of the decisions of artists or intellectuals or the leaders of social movements.

People’s histories are an extreme extension of this – an attempt to understand history by looking at the important decisions made by everyone in society. This description of history is too cumbersome to have much explanatory power beyond the lives of the supposedly representative people considered.

Even during times of its greatest prominence, the great man theory of history had its challengers.

Some historians attempted to describe history using collections of people, instead of using individuals. If these people are bound by shared culture, this gives a history of nations. If these people are bound by similar economic conditions, this gives a history of classes, such as Marx’s description of history.

Other people, like Tolstoy, have argued that fate drives history, not the decisions of great individuals. However, fate is more of a name for something that we do not understand than it is an explanation for something that we do understand.

The driving force behind history is important decisions made by individual people.

Modern Explanations

Several explanations of history have been popularized in recent years by notable books designed for a public audience. I will focus on two that I am familiar with.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1997) argues that we should understand the important events in human history as the results of geography, not the results of individual or collective decisions of people.

Here are two examples of Diamond’s explanations of important historical events without any mention of human decisions:

Why did farming begin in the Middle East?

The Middle East had a uniquely large number of easily-domesticable plants and animals. The area was productive enough that sedentary lifestyles were possible even before agriculture. The climate, with its short rainy seasons and long dry sessions, encouraged people to develop food storage mechanisms. Once primitive agriculture started, the large nearby rivers owing through deserts encouraged people to develop irrigation, further cementing the sedentary, agricultural lifestyle.

Why did Europe conquer the Americas and not the other way around?

Eurasia is oriented primarily east-west, while the Americas are oriented primarily north-south. This allows ideas and inventions to spread easily between civilizations in the Old World because they didn’t have to cross climate zones. Civilizations in the New World remained relatively isolated from each other. Europe was able to draw on a much broader (and somewhat older) experience of civilization, giving it huge advantages over the peoples of the Americas.

The driving force behind history is geography.

Why Nations Fail by by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012) argues that we should understand history by considering the strengths of the institutions in society. Institutions are governments, companies, and religious or social organizations that people interact with on a regular basic. If these institutions exist and are designed to be inclusive, i.e. if they are designed to benefit as many people as possible, then the society will have less conflict and more people will be able to use their talents more effectively. Societies with established inclusive institutions are better, not just because inclusiveness is a virtue itself, but because inclusiveness leads to less violence, more productive economies, and more social cohesion.

One example that they use is Nogales. Nogales straddles the border of the United States and Mexico and is thus effectively split into two cities: Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora. These two cities are located right next to each other and have almost identical demographics, so they have the same geographic and cultural influences and should produce the same number of great individuals. However, the two cities have dramatically different results. Nogales, Arizona is much wealthier and scores much better on human development indices than Nogales, Sonora does. Why? They have different institutions. The one Nogales has the much more predictable and inclusive institutions of the United States and so has better results.

The driving force behind history is the strength and inclusiveness of the institutions.

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History in Religious Texts

Now let’s turn our attention to how history is portrayed in religious texts. The Old Testament and the Book of Mormon (but not the New Testament or Doctrine & Covenants) include substantial historical records. Let’s see how the authors of these texts understand history.

Old Testament

Let’s begin with some of the most overlooked passages in the Old Testament. They may be boring by most people’s criteria, but we will extract interesting information from them nevertheless. Emphasis added.

• 2 Kings 14:1-4 In the second year of Joash son of Jehoahaz king of Israel reigned Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah. He was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not like David his father: he did according to all things as Joash his father did. Howbeit the high places were not taken away: as yet the people did sacrifice and burnt incense on the high places.
• 2 Kings 14:23-24 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
• 2 Kings 15:1-4 In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah son of Amaziah king of Judah to reign. Sixteen years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned two and fifty years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jecholiah of Jerusalem. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah had done; Save that the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burnt incense still on the high places.
• 2 Kings 15:8-9 In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah king of Judah did Zachariah the son of Jeroboam reign over Israel in Samaria six months. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, as his fathers had done: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
• 2 Kings 15:17-18 In the nine and thirtieth year of Azariah king of Judah began Menahem the son of Gadi to reign over Israel, and reigned ten years in Samaria. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
• 2 Kings 15:23-24 In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekahiah the son of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned two years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
• 2 Kings 15:27-28 In the two and fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and reigned twenty years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
• 2 Kings 15:32-35 In the second year of Pekah the son of Remaliah king of Israel began Jotham the son of Uzziah king of Judah to reign. Five and twenty years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zadok. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord: he did according to all that his father Uzziah had done. Howbeit the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burned incense still in the high places. He built the higher gate of the house of the Lord.
• 2 Kings 16:1-4 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign. Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the Lord his God, like David his father. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree.
• 2 Kings 17:1-2 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him.

There is a lot of repetition here. That must mean it’s important, right?

We can see something interesting here, even if moral lessons for people in our day are not immediately visible. We see how people told history during the Old Testament time. The history focuses on the lives of kings. In particular, it focuses on whether individual kings are righteous or wicked. Did they follow the Mosaic law or did they try to worship other gods or in their own way?

In particular, I would like to focus on Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.

The story of Jeroboam referenced here can be found in 1 Kings 12. Rehoboam, the son and heir of Solomon, decided to increase the taxes on the people after his father died. As a result, ten of the tribes of Israel revolted and made Jeroboam king. This caused a permanent division of the children of Israel into a northern and southern kingdom who often were often at war with each other. The Mosaic law required that certain sacrifices and festivals had to be done under the authority of the high priest, a direct descendant of Aaron, near the Ark of the Covenant. Both the high priest and Ark of the Covenant resided at Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. Jeroboam didn’t want people’s religion centered at Jerusalem, the capital of the rival kingdom. Instead, Jeroboam created two golden calves (probably modeled o of Aaron’s golden calf), and told the people to worship the calves as the gods which brought them out of the land of Egypt. Some of the kings of the southern kingdom were righteous and some were wicked. After Jeroboam, all of the kings of the northern kingdom were wicked. Most continued the tradition of worshiping the golden calves. A few, such as Ahab and Jezebel, were even worse and worshiped Baal. None returned to worshiping God in the way He commanded.

Notice how this history is told. The story is focused on two decisions, both of which were made by kings. Rehoboam decided to raise taxes. Jeroboam decided to worship golden calves. Hundreds of years of idolatry in the northern kingdom are blamed on Jeroboam’s decision.

This is a clear example of the great man theory of history. An important person, Jeroboam king of Israel, made an important decision that defined his society for generations. The only difference between this and Thucydides is which decisions are important. To Thucydides, political and military decisions are the most important. In the Old Testament, whether or not a king, prophet, or influential woman follows God is the most important decision. This same pattern is seen throughout the Old Testament.

There is some direct interference by God, especially in the books of Moses. After that, even most of the miracles are filtered through the righteous decisions of influential individuals. For example, consider the victory of Gideon’s 300 men over the army of the Midianites (Judges 7). The victory is achieved by a successful strategy of causing fear and confusion among their enemies – the miracle is that the plan was divinely designed and that it overcame a low probability of success. Miracles, although sometimes important, do not influence history as much as the piety of important people.

The driving force behind history is important people’s decisions to follow or reject God’s commandments.

Book of Mormon

Now let’s turn to the Book of Mormon.

The Bible was written by many people over the course of several millennia. The Book of Mormon was mostly written by a single historian – Mormon.^[2]Unless you think it was written by a single ‘historian’ – Joseph Smith. Mormon compiled all of the records of the Nephites and decided what was and wasn’t important and how he wanted to tell the story. Mormon seriously considered how his history would be portrayed to future generations.

The early parts of the Book of Mormon tell history in a way similar to what is found in the Old Testament. Almost all of the action is focused on the decisions of kings and prophets. The history of the resettlement of the land of Nephi (Mosiah 9) is told as the history of Zeni. The story makes no mention of the reasons why anyone else wanted to go possess the land. The story of the religious revival against the wicked King Noah (Mosiah 18) is the story of the prophets Abinadi and Alma. The rest of the people appear only as followers of Alma.

Mormon includes an explicit justification, made by King Mosiah, for this way of understanding history:

• Mosiah 29:13,16-18 Therefore, if it were possible that you could have just men to be your kings, who would establish the claws of God, and judge this people according to his commandments, yea, if ye could have men for your kings who would do even as my father Benjamin did for this people – I say unto you, if this could always be the case then it would be expedient that ye should always have kings to rule over you. … Now I say unto you, that because all men are not just it is not expedient that ye should have a king or kings to rule over you. For behold, how much iniquity doth one wicked king cause to be committed, yea, and what great destruction! Yea, remember king Noah, his wickedness and his abominations, and also the wickedness and abominations of his people. Behold what great destruction did come upon them; and also because of their iniquities they were brought into bondage.

Why should history focus heavily on the decisions of kings?

The decisions of kings have a huge impact on the society as a whole. Righteous kings make it easy to live in the service of God and prosecute people who break the laws given by God to the king’s fathers. Wicked kings encourage or require people to reject God and disobey the law, eventually leading to bondage and destruction. The decisions of the king determines, or at least heavily influences, the decisions of the society.

However, Mormon was unable to continuing to use this model of history. As the quote above suggests, Mosiah was the last king over the Nephites. After his death, the government consisted of elected judges charged with enforcing the God-given law. Mormon couldn’t tell history as the history of kings because there no longer were any kings.

There were still important individuals – mostly prophets, judges, and generals – and Mormon includes their decisions in his history for the rest of the book. However, the decisions of these people is insufficient to explain the history of the society. Instead, Mormon is forced to consider how to describe the collective decisions of thousands of people.

This type of problem appears in many places. You are trying to describe the behavior of a large group of individuals. It is feasible to describe the behavior of a single individual, but there are too many interacting individuals to describe the behavior of the group using the same techniques. Instead, you can sometimes figure out patterns which occur in the group’s behavior, even if it is not obvious how the patterns relate to each individual’s behavior. These larger-scale patterns are called emergent phenomena.

The groups which exhibit emergent phenomena vary dramatically. The individuals can be people, but don’t have to be. The patterns at the group level can be very different from the behavior of any of the individuals.

In economics, stock prices can be modeled as random processes, even if none of the buyers or sellers in the market are behaving randomly. In physics, emergent phenomena most commonly arise when unusual material properties arise from the behavior of huge numbers of atoms.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of emergent phenomena comes from flocks of birds. In Europe, flocks of starlings form which contain thousands of individual birds. Videos of these ‘murmurations’ of starlings can be found on Youtube. Each bird is only aware of its immediate surroundings. It sees and interacts only with neighboring birds. When you look at the behavior of the flock, it doesn’t look like interacting birds. Instead, it looks more like a wisp of smoke. The flock behaves like a fluid, twisting and flowing as if on the breeze. It is easier to understand the motion of the flock as the motion of a fluid than as the motion of individual birds.

Mormon describes an emergent phenomenon to understand the later history of the people of Nephi: The Pride Cycle.

• Helaman 12:1-3 And thus we can behold how false, and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of men; yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him. Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocks and their herds, and in gold, and in silver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; softening the hearts of their enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, and in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of his people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One—yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity. And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him.

The pride cycle described in that quote is a cycle of righteousness and wickedness, humility and pride, blessings and afflictions. When people are righteous, God blesses them. The resulting wealth makes the people proud, and they begin to value their wealth more than their relationship with God. Because of this pride and wickedness, God removes their blessings and begins to afflict them. These afflictions – poverty, war, famine, and pestilence make the people humble. They return to their God, looking for forgiveness. Humility makes the people righteous again. The afflictions are removed and God begins to bless them again. The cycle repeats.

The pride cycle does not describe the all of the history of the Nephites. A society can break out of it in two ways: The people can continue to be righteous while they are being blessed without being compelled to be humble. This leads to a Zion community (4 Nephi). The people can also refuse to repent when they are suffering afflictions. This leads to the sorrowing of the damned and the eventual destruction of the people (Mormon 2:11-14). Nevertheless, the pride cycle happens repeatedly during the Book of Mormon, especially in the books of Helaman and 3 Nephi. The people alternate between periods of righteousness / peace and wickedness / civil war.

Notice how the pride cycle describes history. The story is not based around the actions of any individuals. Instead, it describes history using the cumulative righteousness of the population. The main attribute of the society is whether the average person was wicked or righteous.

Individuals certainly are important in the pride cycle, but they do not dominate society. Throughout the pride cycles of the book of Helaman, the prophets Nephi and Lehi preach righteousness to the people. Analogously, the robber Gadianton consistently encourages the people to do wickedness. Some of the people loyally follow one group or the other. However, as various individuals converted or became apostate, the average followed the cycle.

The average person is important because the government consisted of judges who were chosen by the voice of the people. When the (average) voice of the people was righteous, the leaders of society encouraged righteousness. When the (average) voice of the people was wicked, the leaders of society encouraged wickedness. The important events in the history of the Nephite society – peace or war, trade or robbery, expansion or destruction – all occurred because of the decisions of leaders who followed the (average) voice of the people. The driving force behind history is the average person’s righteousness or wickedness.

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My Opinion

So which opinion is correct? What is the driving force behind history?

The way I interpret history varies from setting to setting. Each method is valuable for understanding different aspects of and events in history.

The broadest strokes are often most easily understood using geography. If you are interested in questions that compare continents over millennia, the most influential causes are geographic. None of the other ways of understanding history are consistent enough over large times and distances to have much explaining power.

However, geography is worse at describing the details. It may give a reasonable explanation for why Europe could conquer the Americas and the Americas could not conquer Europe, but it does not give a reasonable explanation for why Persia could not conquer the Greeks, but the Greeks (really Macedonians) could conquer Persia.

Different details of history lend themselves to being understood using individual decisions, collective decisions, or institutions. The story of the destruction of the Persian Empire requires the biography of a great man – Alexander. The destruction of the Western Roman Empire doesn’t require any individual’s biography. It is better understood through institutional decay and population movements. The relevant decisions were made by many ordinary individuals, not by a few great ones. Understanding the causes of WWII in Europe requires the biographies of important men – Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill. Understanding the causes of WWI in Europe requires a description of institutions – alliances that escalated a local dispute to a global war. Many events could be productively studied using multiple methods. Each could reveal new information about how and why history happened the way it did.

I do not pretend to have the knowledge or authority to tell you how you should interpret history.

I would encourage you to think about the driving force behind history. Whenever you read a historical account, whether it’s religious or secular, ancient or contemporary, you should ponder about how the author is telling the story. What relative importance is the author placing on the geography, the decisions of important people, the decisions and beliefs of the majority of the population, and on the institutions that direct how people interact?