Brant Gardner is an awesome guy, a careful scholar, a faithful Latter-day Saint, etc. His series of articles we've discussed on this blog purport to compare the "Heartland" scenario with the "Mesoamerican" scenario. The series is highly useful, although probably not for the reasons Brant had in mind.
He is illustrating the Occam's Razor principle:
"Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected."
Or, alternatively,
• Simple assumptions are often right.
• Don't overcomplicate things with too many assumptions.
Regarding the setting of the Book of Mormon, there is a simple assumption v. multiple cascading assumptions.
Brant and other M2Cers reject the simple assumption in favor of the complicated series of assumptions. Brant further See what you think.
The simple assumption:
1. Moroni identified the hill in New York as Cumorah the first time he met Joseph Smith.
This assumption is corroborated by Lucy Mack Smith's account of that visit, by D&C 12:20, and by everything Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and all of Joseph's contemporaries and successors in Church leadership said about Cumorah. This includes Oliver's account of personally visiting Mormon's repository of Nephite records in the hill Cumorah in New York.
The M2C assumptions:
1. Moroni did not identify the hill in New York as Cumorah the first time he met Joseph Smith.
2. Joseph Smith didn't know where an of the Book of Mormon events took place.
3. Lucy Mack Smith misremembered what Joseph told her about Moroni's first visit and about passing by the Hill Cumorah where he met with Moroni in early 1827.
4. In D&C 128:20, Joseph Smith incorrectly reported "Glad tidings from Cumorah... the book to be revealed" because he didn't learn about Cumorah until he was translating Mormon 6:6 in 1829.
5. David Whitmer misremembered when he said he had a specific memory of the first time he heard the word "Cumorah" in 1829, directly from the messenger whom Joseph had identified as one of the Three Nephites and to whom Joseph had given the abridged plates in Harmony when the messenger said he was taking them to Cumorah.
6, Oliver Cowdery (or another unknown person) at some unspecified date started a folk tradition that Cumorah was in New York, based on an incorrect and ignorant assumption.
7. When Oliver, as Assistant President of the Church in 1835, published an article claiming that it was a fact that the hill in New York was the Cumorah of Mormon 6:6, he was merely expressing an incorrect folk tradition. (Letter VII)
8. Joseph, for unexplained reasons, passively adopted Oliver's erroneous speculation and had it widely re-published, including in the 1841 Times and Seasons.
9. Joseph, who wrote very little himself, and, according to Wilford Woodruff, barely had time to sign documents they prepared for him, nevertheless wrote a series of articles in the 1842 Times and Seasons about Central America that he left anonymous (signed Ed.) for unknown reasons.
10, Those 1842 articles were either (i) prophetic confirmation of a Mesoamerican setting or (ii) evidence that Joseph relied on scholarship to learn about the setting of the Book of Mormon.
11. Modern LDS scholars have correctly determined that (i) early Church members had incorrect beliefs about the location of Cumorah and (ii) Cumorah cannot be in New York because that is too far from Mesoamerica.
12. All Church leaders who reaffirmed or corroborated what Joseph and Oliver said about Cumorah were also wrong because they merely expressed their own incorrect opinions.
Again: Which set of assumptions makes the most sense to you?
