History: These verses are some of the most historically interesting in the Book of Mormon, because they are both right and wrong, and the way that they are wrong is right! Mormon is cataloguing a set of Lamanite practices that have counterparts in Mesoamerican practices as well. Mormon describes four elements: rape, human sacrifice, torture, and eating human flesh. Rape is not a known accompanying practice in Mesoamerican warfare, but the sad history of humanity tells us that we should not be surprised to find rape and war in the same context.
Human sacrifice is very well known and well documented for Mesoamerica. While the Aztec sacrifices are the best known, there are indications of human sacrifices going much farther back in time, even beyond Book of Mormon times. Torture was a Maya practice, knowledge of which is amplified by dramatic new evidence. The Maya appear to have been particularly cruel and inventive in their tortures. When the murals of Bonampak were restored, a grisly motif was blood dripping from captives’ fingertips. Either the captives’ fingernails had been pulled off or their fingertips had been cut off.
Eating human flesh is best known from Aztec times. Pieces of the victims were cooked and distributed to be eaten. Because this was a religious rite, it would be unfair for us to label it cannibalism because of the connotations we bring to that label. For the Aztecs, it would be more accurate to see it as a rather too-literal “sacrament” of flesh. Where the Christian symbolically eats the flesh of the Savior, the Aztecs literally ate the flesh of their sacrifices.
All of these descriptions are accurate for Mesoamerica. However, Mormon describes the Lamanites feeding the fathers’ flesh to women and children who “devour their flesh like unto wild beasts.” Here is where Mormon gets it wrong, but he gets it wrong in precisely the right way. Historically, ritual cannibalism (which is always a religious ritual, never mere food) has always been greeted with strong revulsion by non-eating cultures. A typical response by the non-eating population is to overstate the case and make the actions of those “other people” even more reprehensible. Therefore, Mormon tells us that the flesh of the fathers is fed to the wives. This practice makes us recoil in horror, which it is intended to do. However, it is unlikely to be historically accurate.
An early Christian writer, Epiphanius, described the rites of a group of Gnostics called the Phibionites, including orgiastic rites and cannibalism. Bart D. Ehrman, chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill describes part of their accused practices: “if… the woman becomes pregnant, the fetus is allowed to develop until it can be manually aborted. Then, claims Epiphanius, it is dismembered, covered with honey and spices, and devoured by the community as a special Eucharistic meal.” His accusations are explicit, but it seems improbable that he had accurate information. It is much more likely that he made up the accusations as an act of propaganda to label the Phibionites as the “enemy.” Ironically, Romans also levied this same accusation of cannibalism against the early Christians.
For this reason, I read antipathy to his enemies as the most likely origin for Mormon’s description. Perhaps Mesoamerican ritual cannibalism provided a kernel of truth, but the specific description developed because such behavior is “typical” of the enemy.