Helaman 12:15, in particular, has been viewed as indicating that Mormon had a heliocentric view of the cosmos. However, our modern sun-centered model of the solar system would have been inconsistent with the beliefs of ancient cultures.
The finest academic treatment of the cosmological view of world found in the Old Testament and also in this chapter in the Book of Mormon is a very well articulated study by David Grandy, published in 2012 in BYU Studies Quarterly. Among many interesting points, Grandy explains,
There would be no allowance for either the sun or the earth to fully orbit the other body. This is because the earth was not imagined as a round body hanging freely in space. … Instead the earth was thought to rest on subterranean waters, which God had separated at the creation from waters now situated above the firmament. …
Living in the aftermath of the rise of modern science, we might wonder how premodern people could ever attribute sentience or life principle—or at least the capacity to respond to nonmechanistic influences—to things we “know” to be lifeless. Would it not be obvious to every thinking person, regardless of background or era, that rocks are inert entities?
However, the idea that nature was inert was exactly what Mormon did not assume. For him, rocks, hills, mountains, the whole solar system, and even the smallest particles of dust, obeyed the commands of God (Helaman 12:7–10, KnoWhy 183). And actually today we know that even within the rocks are electrons and subatomic particles in constant motion. Something keeps all that molecular movement going, regularly and orderly.
Of course, this is not to imply that Mormon couldn’t have received more scientifically accurate information about the cosmos through revelation. We know that Moses and Abraham, for example, received sacred knowledge of cosmic truths through revelation (see Abraham 3 and Moses 1:33–38), but in neither of those cases was there information equivalent to our modern “scientific” view that the earth revolves around the Sun. David A. Grandy explains, “Mormon’s lament about the inconsistency of man is not evidence of the Nephites arriving at a scientifically correct understanding of the earth’s motion before Copernicus.”
In fact, he goes on to say that Mormon’s statements in these verses are evidence of the Nephites understanding the earth’s motion very differently from the way we understand it today, and that Mormon’s commentary was motivated by an awareness of God’s active involvement in nature and not from a need to make a scientific correction.
Before we talk further about what Mormon actually said here in Helaman 12, let us look at what he did not say. As David A, Grandy has written,
In Helaman 12, Mormon’s concern is not about whether it is the sun or the earth that moves; or whether either body moves around the other, about which no mention is made. Instead, Mormon’s concern is whether entities of any sort move in response to God’s will. This view emerges from the context of the passage, and it is fully consistent with other scriptural descriptions of motion.
In other words, we tend to superimpose our view of the cosmos on Mormon’s words. There is no mention of the astronomical bodies moving around each other. Mormon is simply expressing a view from his day, that resonates with people who believe in the divine creator, that when God instructs the earth to move in whichever direction he needs it to, the earth moves, and no doubt he knew of God’s parting of the Red Sea for the children of Israel just as we think of Jesus calming the storm on Galilee. Mormon is bewailing that we as people are not as compliant as natural matter. He was not speaking from a scientific point of view, but from a doctrinal and symbolic perspective. Thus, he probably intended for his readers to focus mainly on his moral lesson, that humans are “less than the dust of the earth” (12:7) when they disobey God.
Fortunately, despite our fallen condition and natural inclinations to go astray, we do have the agency to put off disruptive temptations, so that through the atonement of Christ and “by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel, all mankind may be saved” and ultimately can become divinely exalted beings. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has taught,
This is a paradox of man: compared to God, man is nothing; yet we are everything to God. While against the backdrop of infinite creation we may appear to be nothing, we have a spark of eternal fire burning within our breast. We have the incomprehensible promise of exaltation—worlds without end—within our grasp. And it is God’s great desire to help us reach it.
David A. Grandy, “Why Things Move: A New Look at Helaman 12” in BYU Studies Quarterly, 51, no.2 (2012): 99–128. “Mormon devoutly desires that humans should be subservient to their Creator and Benefactor, although often they are not—as Mormon knows from his own personal efforts to lead his unruly people” (109).
Book of Mormon Central, “Why Did Mormon Say the Children of Men are Less than the Dust of the Earth? (Helaman 12:7), KnoWhy 183 (September 8, 2016).
Jared W. Ludlow “Abraham’s Visions of the Heavens,” Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant, ed. John Gee and Brian M. Hauglid, Studies in the Book of Abraham 3 (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2005), 57–74.
Hugh Nibley, One Eternal Round, in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Volume 19 (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book, FARMS, Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, and Brigham Young University, 2010), 364–366.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “You Matter to Him,” Ensign, November 2011, 20.