Thank you Brant Gardner, again

I posted a peer review of Brant's latest two books. Overall I thought they were well done and useful, but in some respects manipulative and misleading because of Brant's M2C convictions.

https://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/2025/01/peer-review-of-brant-gardners-latest.html

Brant explains but does not resolve the obvious problem that the Title Page was on the last leaf of the plates. This means there were no additional plates (such as the plates of Nephi, commonly referred to as the "small plates." 

This means that Joseph obtained the "small plates" separately from the abridged plates that Moroni put in the stone box, as anyone can see from D&C 9 and 10. David Whitmer reported that he encountered the messenger who had the abridged plates. This was when he he was with Joseph and Oliver, traveling from Harmony to Fayette. He offered the messenger a ride, but the messenger declined, saying he was "going to Cumorah."

This used to be a well-known account in the Church. It was in my seminar manual. But the M2Cers have managed to "de-correlate" that account because it is solid evidence that Cumorah/Ramah, including the repository of Nephite records, is in New York. 

One solution Brant proposes is that Joseph didn't even know he was translating the small plates!

Here's an excerpt from my peer reviews (Brant's original in blue, my comments in red).

"it may not have been until Joseph was translating 1 Nephi 9 that he realized that he was now translating a completely separate record from the one Mormon had based his history on."

This speculation by Brant ignores the between D&C 9 and 10. It assumes that Joseph wasn’t really reading from the plates, contrary to Brant’s explanation of the translation. If Joseph didn’t know he was translating “the plates of Nephi” instead of the abridgment by Mormon/Moroni, then how did he know whether he was obeying the Lord’s instructions? For that matter, why would the Lord specify what plates he should translate? And why would Joseph and Oliver even think of re-translating the book of Lehi if they still had a stack of untranslated plates after the Book of Moroni and the Title Page?

That Brant ignores these questions may be explained by his omission of David Whitmer’s explanation that the messenger who took the abridged plates from Joseph in Harmony declined David’s offer of a ride to Fayette because he was “going to Cumorah.”

(For trip to Fayette references, see https://www.mobom.org/trip-to-fayette-references)

Obviously, the Cumorah problem looms large in this narrative.

It continues to amaze us how the M2Cers completely ignore the evidence of the New York Cumorah/Ramah. To Brant's credit, he merely omitted the evidence. 

Jack Welch not only omitted the evidence, but he falsified the account in his infamous Opening the Heavens entry.

https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2017/12/opening-heavens-but-censoring-history.html 

I continually hope that Scripture Central will, at some point, be open and transparent about all of this. So far, they've shown zero interest in helping people make informed decisions.