Book of Mormon monetary system
In the Book of Mormon, the Nephites are the descendants of diasporic Israelites who leave Jerusalem just prior to the Babylonian captivity, migrate to the ancient Americas, and establish a society[3] of what literary critic Terryl Givens calls "pre-Christian Christians.
"[4] Over time, the Nephites industrialize, build urban landscapes, and develop institutions to support a capitalist economy of market exchange.
[5] Susan Curtis, a historian of the United States, compares Book of Mormon statements about "exceeding industrious[ness]" among the people it describes to "assumptions about hard work, regularity, commerce, and accumulation sustained by a Victorian sensibility" prevalent in nineteenth-century America in the wake of the Second Great Awakening "ideology of individual responsibility" that comported with "emerging market capitalism in America.
[15] Editions of the Book of Mormon published by the LDS Church before 1981 included a chapter heading (not part of the text originally dictated by Joseph Smith) describing this monetary system as "Nephite coinage.
[12] Lawyer and Latter-day Saint Corbin Volluz explores the Nephite monetary system in an essay discussing the significance of the number seven in the setting of the Book of Mormon.
[23] Takagi holds that the Book of Mormon narrative describes its setting as including private enterprises in which merchants have "free intercourse one with another, to buy and to sell.
"[24] As such, according to Takagi the narrative's description of grain-based fixed-value for currency describes a system of valuation for accounting purposes and calculating legal fines, rather than implying Nephite society in the Book of Alma uses fixed prices in a command economy.
[25] Takagi compares this to "monetary values assigned to wrongful acts by casuistic laws in the Covenant Code" found in the biblical Book of Exodus.
Latter-day Saint and assistant professor of finance at Williamette University for the Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Robert Couch interprets Nephite currency in a social light.
