The decapitation of Shiz, right at the very end of the last chapter of the Book of Ether, is often noted and wondered about. Shiz had his head chopped off, and then he raised up and collapsed. People suppose that it must be mythological. They think it must have been embellished through the ages and doesn’t represent an accurate account of what had happened. Enlightening readers about the plausibility of this reported physiological phenomenon, Gary Hatfield, a professor of neuropathology, explains,
Shiz’s death struggle illustrates the classic reflex posture that occurs in both humans and animals when the upper brain stem (midbrain/mesencephalon) is disconnected from the brain. The extensor muscles of the arms and legs contract, and this reflect action could cause Shiz to raise up on his hands. In many patients, it is the sparing of vital respiratory and blood pressure in the central (pons) and lower (medulla) brain stem that permits survival.
The brain stem is located inside the base of the skull and is relatively small. It connects the brain proper, or cerebrum, with the spinal cord in the neck. Coriantumr was obviously too exhausted to do a clean job. His stroke evidently strayed a little too high. He must have cut off Shiz’s head through the base of the skull, at the level of the midbrain, instead of lower through the cervical spine in the curvature of the neck. … Significantly, this nervous system phenomenon (decerebrate rigidity) was first reported in 1898, long after the Book of Mormon was published.
Apparently, when the brain stem is cut at a certain point there is still enough of the brain left that it can give these impulses before the victim dies. Modern scientific knowledge thus offers corroboration of this gruesome account in the Book of Mormon.
Book of Mormon Central, “How Could Shiz Move and Breathe After Being Beheaded? (Ether 15:31), KnoWhy 248, (December 8, 2016).
M. Gary Hadfield, “The ‘Decapitation’ of Shiz,” in Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon: The FARMS Updates of the 1990s, ed. John W. Welch and Melvin Thorne (Provo UT: FARMS, 1999), 266.