The citation cartel

I've mentioned this before, but just saw another thing on it so I'll bring it up as a separate post. A "citation cartel" is a group of authors who cite one another. A piece in Scientific American put it this way:

"But really, excessive self-citation is for amateurs: the real thing is forming a "citation cartel" as Phil David from The Scholarly Kitchen puts it. In April this year, after receiving a "tip from a concerned scientist" Davis did some detective work using the JCR data and found that several journals published reviews citing an unusually high number of articles fitting the JIF window from other journals. In one case, the Medical Science Monitor published a 2010 review citing 490 articles, 445 of them were published in 2008-09 in the journal Cell Transplantation (44 of the other 45 were for articles from Medical Science Journal published in 2008-09 as well). Three of the authors were Cell Transplantation editors. This is even nastier than excessive journal self-citation because, as Davis points out, self-citing can be detected without too much effort, but citation cartels are trickier. In the good news, three out of the four journals Davis reported as suspects of cartel behavior were suspended from the JCR, and Retraction Watch reports that two of the manipulating articles have been retracted. This means TR will have to remove the sentence about citation circles who "call to mind the mythical unicorn" from their next white paper."

One common attribute of Mesoamericanist articles published by FARMS/Maxwell Institute, the Interpreter, FairMormon, BMAF, and the rest, is self-citation and citation to a core group of approved authors. It's groupthink at it's best. I noticed this even on lds.org, where the DNA article cites these authors (in addition to seven presumably non-LDS authors):

Ugo Perego
Robert L. Millet
Michael F. Whiting
Daniel C. Peterson
John L. Sorenson
Times and Seasons from 1842
Hugh Nibley
Matthew Roper
Anthony W. Ivins

The citation to Roper is his 2008 piece titled "Nephi's Neighbors" which in turn cites Sorenson a dozen times, Roper (himself) 4 times, Nibley, Ivins (using the same quotation that's in the lds.org article), Whiting, and the Times and Seasons from 1842. He didn't cite Perego, Peterson or Millet; however, Perego wrote an article in 2014 for the Interpreter that cites Roper, Sorenson, Peterson, and Nibley.

The Maxwell Institute features a book titled "The Book of Mormon and DNA Research," published in 2008. The authors include:

Michael F. Whiting
Daniel C. Peterson
John L. Sorenson (2 articles)
Matthew Roper (3 articles)

I won't belabor the point, but it's something to watch for any time you read a piece on Book of Mormon geography from FARMS/Maxwell Institute, Interpreter, FairMormon, BMAF, and the like. The basic pattern is to cite a General Authority or two, favorably cite some fellow Mesoamericanists, unfavorably cite an anti-Mormon (or, worse, a Heartlander), and then conclude that you've reaffirmed the legitimacy of the Mesoamerican setting. This has been going on for years.

Columbus

I keep seeing the Columbus argument, so although I addressed it before on this blog in the context of longer articles, I'll focus on it here.

Basically, the Mesoamericanists say that Nephi prophesied about Columbus, and Columbus visited Mesoamerica, not North America, so therefore, the Book of Mormon setting must be Mesoamerica.

The argument is fallacious on multiple levels, but before explaining why, I want to let Matthew Roper explain the Mesoamericanist position. I don't know whether Roper initiated this argument, but I see it repeated frequently. (In this article Roper was making the case that all of the Americas are the "promised land," so North America or the Heartland is not exclusively the promised land. I agree with him in the sense that anywhere can be a promised land, but his point is to refute the idea that North America is the promised land in the sense that it is where Lehi landed, and I disagree with him on that.)

______________
One prophecy that deserves more attention ... is Nephi’s vision of the promised land (1 Nephi 11–14). Nephi saw the future events that would eventually culminate in the latter-day fulfillment of the Lord’s covenants concerning the seed of Lehi in the land of promise.

And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was
separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters;
and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought
upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even
unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.
(1 Nephi 13:12)

Latter-day Saints have almost universally understood this verse to refer to Columbus....(I don't know how one knows what Latter-day Saints "almost universally" understand, but the text doesn't mention Columbus. Certainly there have been efforts to link Columbus to this verse, such as a piece by Richard L. Millett that I'll discuss below. But there are reasons to disagree with this spin. Count me in the group of LDS who does not understand this verse to refer to Columbus. But for purposes of these comments on Roper's piece, I'll take his assumption for granted.) Columbus, however, never visited the land now known as the United States (except he visited Puerto Rico, which is part of the U.S.) and never encountered the people who lived there. (Here he makes a distinction based on his claim regarding ancestry of the Caribbean people, but his claim is designed to support the Mesoamerican setting and is problematic as I'll show.) During his first and second voyages, Columbus encountered the islands and people of the Bahamas and the Caribbean, including Cuba and Hispaniola.4 [4. “All the peoples of the Caribbean came originally by canoe from the continent of South America along the chain of islands known as the Antilles, or the West Indies, via Trinidad and Tobago.” Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan (New York: Random House, 2005), 110.] (There are two key points here. First, according to Roper, the people Columbus first encountered were from South America--not Mesoamerica. So his theory about Columbus would lead to Orson Pratt's South American setting, not the limited Mesoamerican setting. Second, Columbus encountered the Ciboney and Guanahatabey people who lived on Cuba; both of these groups had ties to Florida (which is much closer to Cuba and the Bahamas than South America) and preceded the Taino people who came from South America. Because Columbus and his successors slaughtered so many of the people, it is difficult to reconstruct their history. Roper's reference doesn't mention the Florida connection, but other sources do. E.g., Encyclopedia Britannica and these. So it appears that the earliest ancestors of the people Columbus first encountered came from Florida, which is not only part of the U.S. but where we think Lehi landed. So even if Nephi was describing Columbus, the first people he encountered were from South America and Florida--not Mesoamerica.)

On his third voyage he sailed to northern South America to what is now known as Trinidad and Venezuela. During his fourth and final voyage, he encountered Mayan traders off the coast of Honduras and from there continued southward along the coast of Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, and Panama. In his prophecy, Nephi calls those people the seed of his brethren the Lamanites (this is a variation of the Sorenson translation; nowhere does Nephi call the people along the coast of Central America his brethren) and calls their land “the promised land.” Nephi says that the man went forth “unto the seed of my brethren” and that those people were “in the promised land” (1 Nephi 13:12). This suggests that the “promised land” of Nephi’s vision must include not just the United States or North America, but parts if not all of Central and South America as well. (This makes the case for the hemispheric model that the Mesoamericanists have otherwise rejected. Instead, they claim Lehi landed on the west coast of Mexico, which they claim was the promised land Lehi spoke of, on the theory that the entire Book of Mormon took place in about 500 square miles of southern Mexico--an area Columbus never visited. Not only that, but Columbus was not the first to visit Honduras and Nicaragua; it was only after his brother Bartolome told Columbus about his visit there that Christopher decided to make another voyage there. The Mesoamericanist thinking on Columbus is a mess. Because they reject the North American setting, the Mesoamericanists reject not only the concept of a "promised land" inhabited only (or even mainly) by Lehi's descendants, but they also reject the verses in the Book of Mormon that describe the setting as exclusive (e.g., 2 Ne. 1:8) because they think Lehi landed in the middle of a long-established civilization that completely absorbed the Nephite/Lamanite culture and people, to the point that there is no trace of Book of Mormon people (or at least their DNA) remaining there today.) 

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Roper's not the only one to frame the Columbus story as support for Mesoamerica. Here's Brant Gardner,in his critique of Wunderli's book that criticizes the Book of Mormon. (BTW, it's interesting that Wunderli also adopts the Columbus interpretation of 1 Ne. 13:12).

Here's what Gardner writes:

Wunderli is correct that the choice land seems to include the lands of the Nephites and the Jaredites, but Sorenson’s geography places those in a limited area. (Note, this is the point I made in my comments to Roper above.) That the choice land might refer to both does not in itself require a hemisphere. It requires only that it cover the area occupied by the Nephites, the Lamanites, and the Jaredites.

How accurate is his [Wunderli's] conclusion that “these passages all clearly, if not explicitly, identify the promised land with North America”? Let’s take the first one, 1 Nephi 13:12. Note that he helpfully includes his reading of the oblique reference of the passage. Accepting Columbus as the reference is not surprising, (presumably because it is what LDS have "almost universally understood) but it is surprising to use Columbus as a proof that the promised land is North America. Columbus arrived in Central America. (Of course, Central America is part of North America. If we're going to consider Central America as a separate region, then we also have to consider the Caribbean as a separate region. You see why Gardner writes this; he wants his readers to think Columbus arrived in the promised land of Sorenson's Mesoamerica. Inconveniently, Columbus never did that, so Gardner generalizes Columbus' voyage to encompass all of Central America. But then his argument boils down to how far, from where Columbus actually landed, is a legitimate extension of the promised land. I.e., since even Gardner has to admit Columbus never landed where Gardner claims the Book of Mormon took place, he argues that it was close enough. But actually, Columbus landed closer to Florida than he did to southern Mexico.) His voyages of discovery were south of North America. (Do you see why it is difficult to follow the arguments of the Mesoamericanists? Central America and the Caribbean are part of North America! Columbus landed both north and south of Sorenson's Mexico setting. He landed both east and west of Florida, but at his closest, he was hundreds of miles east of Sorenson's Mexican setting.) Wunderli never tells us why the reference to Columbus points toward North America. He clearly assumes it, (because by simple definition, Columbus reached North America) but that does not make for a compelling argument. (This shows what Gardner considers a compelling argument; i.e., his argument that Columbus' voyages were "south" of "North America," when every definition of North America includes the areas Columbus visited. Here's a map of North America from 1621, for example.) Columbus never set foot on North America, and if we use him as the arbiter of location we are back to the limited model, not the hemispheric one. As in other places, Wunderli presents evidence contrary to his position. (I'll let you decide whether it is Wunderli or Gardner who presents evidence contrary to his position. The point here is that Mesoamericanists are dogmatic about their theory. They refuse to engage with those who criticize their theory, and they spin facts to support their theory, ignoring realities that contradict their points. No matter what I write, they will continue to make this argument about Columbus. It has been going on for decades.) 

NOTE: there is a ray of hope, however. There is a Maxwell Institute publication that raises the Columbus issue. Stephen O. Smoot wrote: "I urge caution with Ash’s identification of Columbus as the Gentile spoken of in 1 Nephi 13:12. Although this idea has most certainly been a prevalent interpretation among Latter-day Saints, it is speculative and cannot be classed as evidence for the Book of Mormon. Ash does give some intriguing details about Columbus’s own conviction that he was being led by divine forces in his explorations, and he mentions the famous mariner’s Libro de las profecías (p. 95). There are, however, risks in constructing an argument based on a fundamental uncertainty." Let's hope this caution prevails over the far more common Mesoamericanist argument.

__________________________________

Alwyn Ruddock, a well-known academic in the UK, claimed to have found evidence that a voyage from Bristol England discovered North America before 1470--well before Columbus--but she never published the book she promised. The Cabot project is pursuing this area of research. On Cabot's first known voyage to North America in 1497, he did not encounter any native people, but if the earlier voyage did, it would replace Columbus both as the first to "discover" the new world and the first to encounter people there. Presumably, like Cabot, this would have been somewhere in Eastern Canada or Maine. From a doctrinal perspective, Nephi would have seen the reality of the first discovery, not the most newsworthy. (I don't think the text even requires that Nephi was describing the first discovery. It only refers to a man wrought upon by the Spirit of God, which seems to describe Pilgrims more than these other explorers. And, of course, the Pilgrims came to New England, which is where the plates were found, etc.)
__________________________________

Now, one last comment on Columbus. Here is an excerpt from the Millett article I mentioned above (full link is http://www.bmaf.org/articles/columbus_promised_land__millett).

I don't have time to dissect the entire piece, but I do want to call attention to this paragraph and juxtapose it with some history. Then you can decide what to think about Columbus. (Note: I'm not among those who revile Columbus, seek to eliminate Columbus day, etc. But I also don't think God inspired him to come to America and commit these atrocities.)

From Millett:

"Columbus played an important role in uncovering the peoples and cultures of the Book of Mormon. They had waited for centuries for the Gentiles to find them and to establish a nation whose government would foster and give birth to freedom. With the proper climate established, the way was prepared for the Restoration and for the emergence of the record of the inhabitants of the Americas, the Book of Mormon (see 1 Nephi 13:30–33 and 3 Nephi 21:1–9)."

From history:

Columbus's report to the Court in Madrid was extravagant. He insisted he had reached Asia (it was Cuba) and an island off the coast of China (Hispaniola). His descriptions were part fact, part fiction:

Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful ... the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. . . . There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals....

The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need ... and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

No need for the Book of Mormon in a Mesoamerican setting

Here's another puzzle. The Mesoamericanists claim so much knowledge about Mesoamerica is coming out now that they can find detailed "correlations" between science (archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, etc.) and the text. They know what groups lived where, when the kings reigned, when the battles occurred, and even what myths and stories were told.

The more we learn about Mesoamerica, the less we need a separate record. If the Spanish hadn't destroyed so many of their records, we may have known as much about the Mayans as we know about any culture of an equivalent time period.

(I'm going to pass over the point that it was the Spanish, not the Lamanites, who destroyed their records.)

But the Book of Mormon was preserved to tell a particular people--descendants of Lehi, primarily--about their history and covenants. Does this make sense if those descendants kept meticulous and detailed records for centuries, like the Mayans did? If those descendants wrote their history on their buildings in stone to be preserved for hundreds of years?

No.

If we're looking for the descendants of Lehi, we should be looking for a people who had forgotten their history, who didn't know the origins of the archaeological ruins they lived among, who had no written records... A people who could only learn about their history through a record hidden away so it wouldn't be destroyed, and then brought forth in the future.

We have that record: it's the Book of Mormon.

Now, for whom was it written? For the Mayans, who had many records going back hundreds of years (although the Catholic Priests and monks burned most of the codices, they still had stone monuments and stelae)?

Or the North American Indians, who had lost all knowledge of their ancestors apart from a few oral traditions?

You decide.

The Mesoamericanists don't recognize the irony that the more they learn about Mesoamerica, the more they prove there was no need for ancient prophets to seal up a record to restore a lost history from that area.

The Sorenson translation

Officially, the Book of Mormon is published in 110 languages (see here), but they forgot to count one important translation: the Sorenson translation.

Because it is in English, this is a subtle translation, but you know you're reading it if you spot these words and phrases in something that purports to be a quotation from the Book of Mormon:

HEADWATERS (this replaces the term "head" wherever this phrase, "head of Sidon," appears in the text.)

NARROW STRIP OF MOUNTAINOUS WILDERNESS (this replaces the phrase "narrow strip of wilderness" in the text.)

COLUMBUS (this appears in lieu of 1 Ne. 13:12: "a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.")

FLOWS NORTH (this appears in connection with the term "Sidon" wherever it appears.)

The key thing to remember about the Sorenson translation is this:

Anyone who chooses to believe the Sorenson translation will accept the Mesoamerican setting; it’s axiomatic, because Sorenson retranslated the text to fit his geography. 

By contrast, anyone who chooses to believe Joseph Smith’s translation will find it difficult to accept the Mesoamerian setting--but easy to accept the North American setting.

Now you know how to tell which translation of the Book of Mormon you are reading.

(There are a few variations of the Sorenson translation, such as the ones that substitute different directions for the ones in Joseph's translation, but hopefully readers can detect these immediately. The Sorenson translation has been around for 25 years or so, and it is widely quoted, particularly in articles published by FARMS/Maxwell Institute, the Interpreter, BMAF. FAIRMORMON, and others. You'll probably see it quoted in anti-Mormon materials, too, if you read those.)

We are far beyond worrying about little things like how many miles.

Brant Gardner makes an important point in this blog entry, in response to a comment that the text states distances only in terms of time. I agree with what Gardner writes, but I'm not sure he does. This is what I find frustrating in Gardner's approach. He uses solid research and analysis, but he trips over his own faulty premise and doesn't seem to realize it. Hopefully he will apply his talents to North America with equal vigor someday. (In Sunday School today we discussed the conversion of Saul, an apt model for what I hope happens when the Mesoamericanists change their positions.)

:)

Here are Gardner's comments, with my comments in red:

"The problem of course, is how we are traveling. If I am in my car, 20 minutes gets me a lot farther than if I am walking. So when we attempt to get general ideas of the dimensions from the Book of Mormon, we have to translate time into distance by attempting to find out what might reasonably correlate. (Excellent point--good, solid analysis.) First on the list of important things is to determine the mode of travel. Cars are out. In the New World, there is no known travel on (or being pulled by) any animal (nor is there any indication of that in the text). (One might wonder what the text is indicating when it mentions horses and chariots. Alma 18:9, 20:6, 3 Nephi 3:22. Gardner has addressed this elsewhere, with his unique circular reasoning; i.e., because all we have is Joseph's translation into English, "we must still deal with the question of what the original text might have meant," because in Mesoamerica, no one was conveyed by animals. Well, okay,  Alma 18:9 says the king's servants were supposed to "prepare his horses and chariots, and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi," but in Mesoamerica, kings were carried in litters, and "litters were carried by men, not pulled by animals." Instead, Gardner notes, animals accompanied the litters. Here's how Gardner explains this: "If Joseph Smith, while translating, came upon an unfamiliar idea but which seemed to describe a kingly conveyance associated with an animal, would it not have seemed logical to him to describe it as a horses and chariot for the king? I see the plausible underlying conveyance as an elaborate royal litter, accompanied in peacetime by the spiritual animal associated with the king." IOW, Joseph mistranslated because his translation doesn't match Mesoamerican culture; therefore we have to assume the original text on the plates accurately described Mesoamerican practices, and Joseph just didn't know how to describe it in English. Now that scholars have learned so much about Mesoamerica, we can fix the translation.)  So we are down to river travel, which is possible, and foot travel. While it is possible that we might have river travel distances, it seems like a stretch to assume that for all distances, so the safest is foot travel. (This is an amazing leap. River travel is more than possible; it was a common conveyance in many parts of the ancient world (and in North America, but maybe not in Mesoamerica, which would account for Gardner's rejection of river travel). An unimpeded walking speed of 3 mph is around average; through a Mesoamerican jungle or mountain it would be much less. Sorenson assumes 11 miles/day, or even less because of the mountains. By contrast, a small rowboat can go 3-4 mph, plus or minus the river speed (downstream or upstream). Boats with multiple rowers can go much faster, of course. It is especially strange that Gardner would reject river travel when the text specifies accounts of "their shipping and their building of ships" "cannot be contained in this work," presumably because of space (Helaman 3:14). IOW, they did so much shipping and building of ships that Mormon couldn't describe it all. IOW, the text says the the opposite of Gardner's claim that the Nephites did not use river travel. While an assumption of foot travel may be "safest," what is it "safe" for other than to establish a limited geography set in Mesoamerica?) That is where the question of how far can one travel comes into play. While the distances may vary widely, using any kind of reasonable constant gives you a limited geography for the known action in the Book of Mormon. (Is it a reasonable constant to reject river travel in favor of slow foot movement over mountains and through jungle, none of which is described in the text? Notice that Mormon doesn't say he didn't have room to discuss jungles (or volcanoes); he says he didn't have room to discuss their shipping and building of ships.)

Why limit that statement to the known action? We have people who leave and go "a great distance" north. There is no way to know what that was (though basic human population movement on foot makes some of the long distances speculated in some geographies highly unlikely). (But why limit movement to "on foot" when the text specifically mentions shipping and building of ships?) So we have to take what the text deals with (by excluding the shipping that the text specifically mentions?) and construct a reasonable set of interrelated distances. They will never be precise, because the text doesn't give us distance, only time. Terrain can change the linear distance. Nevertheless, you set a constant and see if the proposed geography fits. (In reality, the Mesoamericanists have done the exact opposite. They take the geography from the 1842 Times and Seasons articles, then set a constant (foot travel in jungles and over mountains) to make the geography fit. The simple alternatives of foot vs. river travel require context; if the proposed geography was in a desert, then river travel would be excluded; it it was in a heavily vegetated area with abundant rivers and streams, then river travel would be far more likely, particularly for long-distance travel or repeated journeys.)

Once there is a proposed geography, other factors come into play. It cannot be only a geographical  discussion. (This is an important point, but when one proposes a geography based on a "problematic" and anonymous statement in the Times and Seasons, and then solidifies that proposed geography by imposing travel distances determined by constants derived from the conditions of the proposed geography itself, one has a self-proving--but far from exclusively plausible--geography. At any rate, I agree with Gardner that it cannot be only a geographical discussion. Let's see how he fulfills this promising approach.) An important one is the destructive events in 3 Nephi. If you haven't seen it yet, read Jerry D. Grover's new Geology of the Book of Mormon. He looks at the descriptions and discusses what might have caused them. He concludes (as other geologists have) that the best cause is a volcano--with accompanying conditions. (Well, I'm disappointed. I've previously commented on Grover's book. There are problems with his assumptions about what the text means (similar to Gardner's argument that the text isn't translated correctly) but another little problem is the text never once mentions volcanoes--or even describes one. Are we to assume Joseph Smith didn't know what a volcano was, so he couldn't translated the "original text" correctly? Or that Mormon didn't have room to include the small detail about the very cause of the destruction? Or that Mormon didn't know about volcanoes? The volcano line of reasoning remains one of the more perplexing aspects of the Mesoamerican setting.) He checks the geology of the Mesoamerican region to find locals where the events might possibly occur. Then he checks with eruption dates (which cannot be given with precision, but certainly within a reasonable time range). He is able to identify the plausible volcano and discusses why the particular geography of that region allows for the descriptions in the text. (If you still think there is any basis for the Mesoamerican theory and you haven't read Grover's book, you should. I think he did as good a job as possible trying to explain 3 Nephi in Mesoamerica, but I'd like to see him take a crack at North America. The evidence is so much stronger in North America that I suspect an open-minded Grover would change his mind like so many other people who have compared the volcano argument to the North American setting, where everything described in 3 Nephi has actually happened.)

Another important approach is to look at anthropology and ethnohistory. Bob Crockett suggested that we are only looking at similarities. We are far beyond that, although you will still see that a lot. We are looking at specific correlations between the action in the text and the known events of a time and place. (Except, remember, Gardner decided on the place before he looked at the "specific correlations." I'm curious if there is any human society that has not had constant wars. Remember, another thing Mormon said he couldn't put in the book was an account of "their wars, and contentions, and dissensions." So even if Gardner can specifically tie the named battles and conflicts to those contained in the text--which he can do, at best, by "correlation" since there is zero connection between the extensive Mesoamerican glyphs and the Book of Mormon--he would have to also show that these were only a hundreth part of the history of the people. IOW, according to the text, there were many wars and contentions not even mentioned, so Gardner has to cherry pick his correlations from a huge universe to match them up with the text. But that leads back to the point that any human civilization has wars and contentions that could be correlated.) By placing the events of the text against that background, we can see how well the text follows the known cultural and social developments in that region at the appropriate time periods. We can explain who the likely Lamanites were that finally caused Mosiah's people to flee to Zarahemla, because we know who invaded that area (he assumes he knows where Zarahemla was, presumably because of the Times and Seasons articles, although those were problematic because they were demonstrably wrong, but they were close enough so that, combined with the self-serving distance "constants," he knows where Zarahemla was; and then he looks for historical events to match up to his location) and caused migrations during that time period. We know why the people of Nephi and people of Zarahemla spoke such different languages (uh, the text tells us) and why the subsequent Book of Mormon history developed precisely as it did. We can explain why the Nephites followed a particular form of apostasy when a fiction writer could have made up any number of different reasons. We can explain why the end of the Nephites finally came when it did--and not earlier.

We are far beyond worrying about little things like how many miles. (We must be, because such "little things" refute the Mesoamerican setting. This sounds like what I'm hearing now from Mesoamericanists, that we are "beyond worrying" about the Times and Seasons articles that are the foundation for the Mesoamerican theory.) With a reasonable (i.e., self-confirming) geography to test, we are now testing and finding that the Book of Mormon fits comfortably into the greater background of the events happening all around them. We learn more about the Bible when we see it against the historical background of the Middle East and later Roman domination of Judah. Events in the text sometimes aren't explicit, but we can enrich them by knowing that background, and those correlations wouldn't happen anywhere else because the historical conditions were different. (I fully agree with these sentences, which are good examples of how Gardner can use solid facts and analysis.) That is what we are finding in Mesoamerica. (I fully disagree with this sentence, but as I've said recently, I haven't had a chance to read his entire book, so we'll see how he does with that.) Geography is only a beginning point to allow more rigorous testing. (Agreed--except when one chooses the geography based on a false premise and then substantiates the choice with self-confirming constants.)

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A short history of LDS Mesoamerican scholars

The FAIRMORMONBLOG for 2 August 2015 offers a recording of another Michael R. Ash column from the 14 Feb. 2011 Deseret News, which can be found here. The title is "A Short History of LDS Mesoamerican Scholars."

Ash discusses M. Wells Jakeman, Thomas Stuart Ferguson, Milton R. Hunter, John L. Sorenson, and David Palmer, all of whom promoted the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon.

Due presumably to space constraints, Ash doesn't mention the arc of Ferguson's career. That arc was summarized in an article in Dialogue by Stan Larson:

"Early in his career, Thomas Stuart Ferguson was instrumental in reducing our conception of the geography of the Book of Mormon from nearly the whole of both North and South America to the more limited area of southern Mexico and Central America. In the middle years of his career, he organized archaeological reconnaissance and fieldwork in the area of Mesoamerica. But in the last years of his career, he concluded that the archaeological evidence did not substantiate the Book of Mormon, and so he reduced (in his mind) the geography of the book to nothing at all in the real world."

(Despite his disappointment with the Mesoamerican setting, Ferguson remained active in the Church for other reasons. Nevertheless, FAIRMORMON has engaged in multiple efforts to discredit Ferguson, excerpted here.)

Ferguson never studied archaeology at a professional level - he was self-educated in that area. John Sorenson wrote: "Ferguson was never an expert on archaeology and the Book of Mormon ... Instead he was just a layman, initially enthusiastic and hopeful but eventually trapped by his unjustified expectations, flawed logic, limited information, perhaps offended pride, and lack of faith in the tedious research that real scholarship requires." 

Peterson and Roper: "We know of no one who cites Ferguson as an authority, except countercultists"

[The Peterson/Roper piece, found here, is an example of what passes as scholarly, peer-reviewed work at the Maxwell Institute. Here's an example of what they write: "In the discipline of Thomas Stuart Ferguson studies, the final state of Ferguson's testimony may be, as Larson puts it, "a major enigma" and a subject of "intense controversy" (p. 3). But it remains unclear why it should be of anything more than peripheral interest anywhere else—except, again, to his family and perhaps one or two specialist intellectual historians of contemporary Mormonism." Also, "We know of no one who cites Ferguson as an authority, except countercultists, and we suspect that a poll of even those Latter-day Saints most interested in Book of Mormon studies would yield only a small percentage who recognize his name.4" Footnote 4: "Professor William Hamblin asked a history class in spring 1996 if they had ever heard of Thomas Stuart Ferguson. Out of ninety students, none had. There is no reason to suppose that Ferguson's name-recognition has increased since 1996." 

Or, one can google the name Thomas Stuart Ferguson and observe "About 8,320,000 results."  

If Peterson/Roper "know of no one who cites Ferguson as an authority," that just shows they can't use google. The universe of BYU students is self-defining, of course; most of the results of the google search are from former/inactive/anti-LDS. Instead of the Peterson/Roper conclusion that Hamblin's poll shows that "only a small percentage of LDS" recognize Ferguson's name, the conclusion the data actually supports is that those who have heard of Ferguson don't attend BYU. So the Mesoamericanists think all is well in Zion so long as students at BYU never hear of Ferguson, which is like hoping kids don't use the Internet or aren't inquisitive when they do. 

Another approach might be to understand Ferguson's objections and why they persist with over 8 million google references, and then address them on the merits instead of insisting no one but the family and one or two specialists cares. I for one have difficulty understanding how the Maxwell Institute rationalizes publishing this type of article--or how Peterson and Roper, both of whom I've met and respect, can proceed without repudiating, or at least drastically rewriting, this piece.] 

Gee: "Ferguson is largely unknown to the vast majority of Latter-day Saints; his impact on Book of Mormon studies is minimal"

These are comments worth discussing in detail sometime, but for now, think of this: Sorenson dismisses Ferguson because he was "just a layman" and "never an expert on archaeology." Then we have Peterson and Roper, neither of whom are professional archaeologists, citing Sorenson's criticism without realizing that same criticism applies to their opinions on this topic. Finally, Gee asserts Ferguson's impact has been minimal, a claim that is easily rebutted by a simple Internet search where the Ferguson case is frequently cited by former, inactive, and anti-Mormons. (I realize Gee referred to the "vast majority of Latter-day Saints," but the "vast majority" is hardly synonymous with "active.") Many former/inactive LDS have followed the same trajectory as Ferguson--except, unlike him, they left the Church after concluding the archaeological evidence in Mesoamerica does not substantiate the Book of Mormon. It's an ongoing and unnecessary tragedy when there is such an abundance of evidence in North America that does substantiate the Book of Mormon.

I like the way Ash concludes his column:

"Sorenson had raised the bar for New World Book of Mormon scholarship. While some of the ideas in his book have been rejected or modified by either himself or subsequent scholars, nearly all Book of Mormon scholars recognize that anyone discussing the Book of Mormon in an ancient New World setting would have to engage the arguments and evidence presented by Sorenson."

Of course, the first Sorenson argument is that Joseph wrote the 1842 Mesoamerican articles in the Times and Seasons. This assertion is the fundamental premise of all the Mesoamericanists. David Palmer took the same position, actually claiming that "The prophet Joseph Smith has stated very clearly that the approach to Book of Mormon geography must be primarily of an intellectual nature." (In Search of Cumorah, p. 21). As authority, Palmer cites the 1842 Times and Seasons articles on the premise that Joseph wrote them.

This claim persists. Here's something Brant Gardner wrote on 12 Feb. 2015, for example: "I do agree that Joseph and the early Saints thought that the moundbuilders were probably Book of Mormon peoples. They probably still held that opinion when Joseph and others got excited about Mesoamerica. They weren't particularly careful of any correlations between the text and time and place, so we have to take all of their statements with caution. They were adapting almost anything they learned into some kind of support for the Book of Mormon. Joseph's location of Zarahemla in Mesoamerica was particularly problematic in that the location where he placed it wasn't a city during Book of Mormon times--but of course no one knew that at the time." (emphasis mine)

This passage, too, deserves more comment, but for now I'll just re-emphasize that Joseph did not locate Zarahemla in Mesoamerica; what Gardner claims is "problematic" is the writing of Benjamin Winchester, William Smith, and W.W. Phelps--all of whom were "problematic" by any definition of the term. Gardner's statement here demonstrates why so many of us are perplexed at the insistence among Mesoamericanists that Joseph wrote this problematic article, when there is zero evidence that he did so.

At any rate, even if, as Sorenson, Peterson, Roper, and Gee claim, Ferguson is largely unknown, was "just a layman" and is only cited by "countercultists," how different is the Ferguson case from the case being made still today by the Mesoamericanists? They both undermine faith in Joseph Smith. Brant Gardner's claim, which is representative of the claims of all the Mesoamericanists with which I'm familiar, is that Joseph Smith, in the 1842 Times and Seasons, was a) speculating and b) wrong. Except only a little wrong; he was right to the extent necessary to show that all the statements made about a North American setting by Oliver Cowdery, the D&C, and Joseph Smith himself were wrong.

To put it more succinctly, here's what the Mesoamericanists want you to believe: The 1842 Mesoamerican articles in the Times and Seasons are "problematic" (i.e., factually wrong), but are still more correct than everything else Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and the D&C say about the North American setting.

Bottom line: It is the Mesoamericanist approach that is problematic, not anything that Joseph actually wrote or said on the topic.

Readership

Just a note to thank you, the readers, who are sharing the link. Apparently the word is getting out; the number of viewers doubled in July over June. Most readers are from the U.S., but according to google analytics, here are some other countries represented:

United Kingdom
France
Australia
Canada
Germany
India
Portugal
Ukraine
Russia

I'll let you know when we hit a million page views.