More fun with Brother Clark

Recently I posted about Brother John Clark's article in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. This is the one Brother Gardner cited as containing "the reasons that the New York hill could not have been the location of the final Nephite battle."

Brother Clark cited a report from an archaeological survey conducted before highway construction in the Genesee Valley of New York in the 1970s. Curious, I obtained a copy of the report. Not surprisingly, I found some things readers of this blog might be interested in.

Brother Clark's long citation (footnote 9) ends with this sentence: "This implies that a population decline took place during the Middle Woodland Period." (The Middle Woodland Period, as defined in the report, is 500 BC-AD 1000.) However, Brother Clark omits the final sentence from the original paragraph, which is this: "At present there is no apparent explanation for such a decline."

Had Brother Clark removed his Mesoamerican lenses, he might have seen the connection between the final war between the Nephites and Lamanites in the area and the "unexplained" decline in population in western New York.

The report also notes that "Mortuary ceremonialism declined during the Late Woodland Period, as shown by the lack of grave goods or burial mounds following the Middle Woodland cultures." These burial practices were "patterned after those found in Ohio (Hopewell Tradition)." In Book of Mormon terms, Ohio was Bountiful, the Hopewell were the Nephites. If we read the text, we would expect the Nephite traditions to decline after they were vanquished by the Lamanites.

[Note: The term Hopewell comes from the last name of the man who owned the property upon which a particular mound was excavated. Had his last name been Nephi instead of Hopewell, archaeologists would be referring to these people as the Nephi culture.]
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I also found Brother Clark's description of the highway survey interesting:

"For the nearby Genesee Valley in New York, Neal L. Trubowitz gives detailed information from an intensive survey carried out in conjunction with the construction of a recent highway.⁸ For the wide strip of land involved, there is 100 percent coverage, so the information for relative changes in occupation is unusually good, as such things go in archaeology."

Trubowitz himself has a different perspective. He first explains that the report is his PhD dissertation. Then he notes that when he returned for a visit, "I found that the entire Genesee Expressway had gone to construction since I left, and that a major proportion of the archaeological sites identified in our research, notably the concentration of sites at the junction of the Genesee River with Canaseraga Creek, had been destroyed by that construction without the benefit of any research beyond the work noted in this study.

"The history of highway salvage archaeology peculiar to New York, in combination with the political power structure within the state government at that time, contributed to the loss of many sites in the Genesee Valley that doubtless were eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places and deserved further research. These sites cannot be replaced and their loss represents a serious depletion of of the archaeological record. Yet, the Genesee Expressway investigations still represent a quantum leap in quality over the highway archaeological research that was possible before 1973 in New York. At least with this expressway, archaeologists were able to undertake systematic reconnaissance and some minimal test excavations, as compared to the almost nonexistent levels of research that were done on older major highways."

To Brother Clark, Trubowitz's dissertation represents detailed information of an intense survey of 100% coverage of the area. To Trubowitz himself, though, there were only "minimal test excavations" followed by destruction of "the concentration of sites," which cannot be replaced. Trubowitz says "their loss represents a serious depletion of the archaeological record," to which Brother Clark responds, "Possibilities and probabilities of destroyed evidence have become an excuse for avoiding serious archaeological research altogether."
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Trubowitz also notes that while Ritchie, the other author Brother Clark cited, "did investigate mounds and other non-Seneca sites, very little organized research on cultures earlier than Late Woodland Period had been undertaken" prior to the highway study. He also notes that "Practically every landowner who has any close connection with his or her property (farming, etc.) has a collection ranging from a few stray projectile points to thousands of artifacts. Many collectors are known to have found sites which have not been recorded at any institution. Some of the earlier private collections have been broken up at auctions and are no longer available to researchers... It would take the lifetime of a number of investigators to track down all the extant collections, and any survey of these collections would suffer from the collecting biases of those people who accumulated them."

Yet, based on the Trubowitz study, Brother Clark reaches this conclusion: "sufficient information is available for the surrounding regions to make a critical assessment. Mormon’s hill and Moroni’s hill are not one and the same... Archaeologically speaking, it is a clean hill. No artifacts, no walls, no trenches, no arrowheads. The area immediately surrounding the hill is similarly clean."

The author of the study Brother Clark cites says there are innumerable landowners who have collections that number in the thousands of artifacts, but Brother Clark doesn't mention that. Instead, he tells his readers that there are no artifacts.

As I say, reviewing the publications of the citation cartel is a lot of fun.

I invite anyone with the time and interest to read this stuff for yourself. You'll be amazed.

Objectives and Methodology

Lately I've had some questions about my objectives in writing this blog and the methodology I'm using. My objectives are spelled out in the masthead, but a lot of people pass right by that.

What I've tried to do here is offer my peer reviews of articles, books, and presentations that promote the Mesoamerican theory. I wish this entire discussion could be done on an anonymous basis, but of course in reality, individuals write and publish, and they put their names on their work. As I constantly reiterate, I have great respect and admiration for the scholars who have published their research. I don't question their motives or abilities, but I do assess the facts cited and the arguments made.

Here is my view: the Mesoamerican model of Book of Mormon geography is based on a historical mistake (the assumption that Joseph Smith wrote or approved of the anonymous articles in the 1842 Times and Seasons). Ever since, faithful and talented LDS scholars have sought to vindicate what they thought Joseph Smith taught and believed.

It was a reasonable premise, actually, and one that I accepted for decades. But then the Joseph Smith Papers and digital research technology made it possible to uncover previously unknown facts.

There was a time when many faithful LDS were leery of detailed Church history. Books such as Rough Stone Rolling have helped put historical events and personalities in context, and certainly the Joseph Smith Papers have given more people access to more documents than ever before. As a result, we're correcting a lot of historical mistakes. See this article in the October Ensign as a great example. The subtitle: "The historical record clarifies how Joseph Smith fulfilled his role as a seer and translated the Book of Mormon."

This historical record is also clarifying what happened in 1842 Nauvoo with the Times and Seasons (the equivalent of today's Ensign). However, the idea that Joseph Smith wrote anonymous articles for the Times and Seasons persists, largely because the Mesoamerican theory depends on those articles.

There are obvious reasons why the idea is ill-conceived.

1. Joseph was never much of an author. He had little formal education; he never prepared written speeches (with one exception); he used scribes to write down what he said and did; and most of the material written in his own handwriting that we do have was written in the early 1830s. Even as late as January 1841, the Lord told him to get help writing (D&C 124:12).

2. Joseph was pressed for time. He had to deal with governing Nauvoo and the Nauvoo legion, organizing and educating the Relief Society, responding to legal action including extradition to Missouri and bankruptcy, handling real estate developments, building the temple and associated doctrines, including baptisms for the dead and the endowment, managing the integration of new coverts from Europe and the Eastern States, overseeing the missionary work, arbitrating conflicts among Church members, responding to hostile media, and more. And yet, the anonymous articles reflect some serious research and reading. There is no evidence that Joseph spent time reading and studying the books cited in these anonymous articles. In June 1842, Wilford Woodruff observed that Joseph hardly had time to sign his name to documents that were prepared for his signature. The assertion that Joseph would write anonymous articles in the midst of all this activity is simply ahistorical nostalgia.

3.  The content of the anonymous articles is problematic. Some of the content contradicts other contemporary teachings that are clearly attributable to Joseph. In other cases, the articles are irrational and counterfactual.
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Much of what has passed for historical analysis on this issue suffers from presentism, which is "the anachronistic introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past." It's a common fallacy of historical writing, whereby historians interpret the past to validate their own beliefs.

In this case, we have Mesoamerican theorists (those who believe the Book of Mormon events took place in Central America) interpreting the historical record to justify their beliefs. One primary example is the way they discredit the writing of Oliver Cowdery about the Hill Cumorah in New York in his Letter VII. Although Joseph Smith helped him write that letter, had his scribes copy it into his own journal as part of his history, and explicitly approved the re-publication of the letter (it was published at least 4 times during Joseph's lifetime), Mesoamerican scholars continue to insist that Joseph never said anything about Cumorah except for Section 128--and some even claim that SEction 128 pays homage to a hill in Mesoamerica!

Presentism also appears in the insistence by Mesoamerican proponents that Joseph wrote anonymous articles in the Times and Seasons. They use those articles to claim Joseph merely speculated about Book of Mormon geography, that he changed his mind, and that he thought scholarship would answer the questions. How much more self-serving could historical interpretation be than that?
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I'm not arguing against scholarship; to the contrary, I think scholarship is essential. We are to "seek learning, even by study and also by faith." In this context, I interpret that to mean neither of those elements should be used in isolation.

In my own analysis, I started with a hypothesis based on faith that 1) the Hill Cumorah is in New York (D&C 128 and Letter VII) and that 2) Zarahemla was in Iowa, across from Nauvoo (D&C 125). Then I tested the hypothesis "by study" of the text and relevant disciplines of geography, geology, anthropology, archaeology, and history (both of the Church and of North America). In my view, everything fits the North American setting.

In stark contrast, the Mesoamerican theory requires people to jettison what Oliver Cowdery said about Cumorah, to reject Joseph's explicit endorsement of Oliver's work, and to resort to what I consider sophistry to explain away everything else Joseph said or wrote about the topic (as well as David Whitmer's testimony about Cumorah). Instead, people are expected to accept articles in the Times and Seasons that are so unreliable and counterfactual that even the original author left them anonymous. Then, as "evidence," we are expected to accept a series of "correspondences" between Mayan culture and the descriptions in the text, even though such "correspondences" are ubiquitous in human cultures around the world and throughout human history.
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What accounts for the persistence of the Mesoamerican theory? So far, I've identified two key points.

First, there is a tremendous amount of intellectual inertia. Generations of Mormons have been raised with the Arnold Friberg illustrations of Central America, the "hourglass" depiction of the "abstract" map of Book of Mormon lands, and the waves of publications by LDS scholars that uniformly endorse and promote the Mesoamerican theory to the exclusion of alternatives. The theory has acquired a life of its own. I've had Mesoamerica proponents tell me recently that the Times and Seasons articles have nothing to do with the Mesoamerican theory, which is like saying Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with the Declaration of Independence. It takes tremendous energy to swim upstream against the Mesoamerican current, and will take even more to divert the flow of scholarship into the North American channel, but I think LDS scholars will find this new course far more rewarding.

Second, to a significant degree the Mesoamerican theory was a response to the anti-Mormon argument that the Book of Mormon merely articulates the old Moundbuilder legends; i.e., that Joseph Smith was simply retelling stories he'd heard growing up of an ancient advanced civilization that was destroyed by savages. I think there may be an element of concern among modern LDS scholars that a focus on North America will revive that old argument, but I also think they will soon realize there's nothing to fear on that account.
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Overall, I'm optimistic that there will be open-minded LDS scholars who will take another look at what has happened over the last 50 years or so. Like me, I think they will be surprised at how superficial much of the scholarship has been. There has been a tremendous amount of confirmation bias, and scholars have been much too quick to dismiss what Oliver Cowdery wrote. As I indicated at the outset, this has largely been due to a historical mistake. I hope we can correct the errors and move forward with greater unity.

Guest post on Snow

[Introductory note. Probably the most frequent question I get about the North American setting is this: "If the Book of Mormon events took place in North America, why doesn't the text mention snow?"

Lately, I've been answering this by saying "If Paul traveled to Turkey (Galatia, Ephesus, etc.), then why doesn't he ever mention snow? Are you going to say he didn't actually travel where it snows because he didn't write about the snow?"

The Book of Mormon is hardly a weather report. However, it does mention multiple seasons (Mosiah 18:4 and Alma 46:40), which you get in a temperate latitudes but not in tropical zones (Mesoamerica has two seasons: dry (November-May) and rainy (June - October). The average high temperature for Guatemala City, for example, varies by only 3 degrees centigrade all year long.

A reader sent in this guest post, which is a much more complete answer. Well done!]

A Snowball's Chance

A persistent argument against a North American setting for the Book of Mormon is the lack of references to snow in the sacred text.  Of course, the text actually does reference snow (see 1 Ne. 11:8), but it never mentions snowfall, so this is an issue that should be examined.

And, counterintuitively, examination of the issue may actually present strong evidence for a North American setting.

First, let's consider how the Book of Mormon addresses rain.  There are eleven references to rain spread across ten verses in the Book of Mormon.  Here are those verses:

• 2 Nephi 14:6

6 And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and a covert from storm and from rain.

• 2 Nephi 15:6

6 And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

• Helaman 11:13

13 O Lord, wilt thou hearken unto me, and cause that it may be done according to my words, and send forth rain upon the face of the earth, that she may bring forth her fruit, and her grain in the season of grain.

• Helaman 11:17

17 And it came to pass that in the seventy and sixth year the Lord did turn away his anger from the people, and caused that rain should fall upon the earth, insomuch that it did bring forth her fruit in the season of her fruit. And it came to pass that it did bring forth her grain in the season of her grain.

• 3 Nephi 14:25

25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.

• 3 Nephi 14:27

27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

• Ether 2:24

24 For behold, ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth.

• Ether 9:30

30 And it came to pass that there began to be a great dearth upon the land, and the inhabitants began to be destroyed exceedingly fast because of the dearth, for there was no rain upon the face of the earth.

• Ether 9:35

35 And it came to pass that when they had humbled themselves sufficiently before the Lord he did send rain upon the face of the earth; and the people began to revive again, and there began to be fruit in the north countries, and in all the countries round about. And the Lord did show forth his power unto them in preserving them from famine.

The verses in 2 Nephi are from the prophet's quoting of the writings of Isaiah; those in 3 Nephi are from the Savior's Sermon at the Temple; and Ether 2:24 is a somewhat poetic statement of God's power over the elements.  None of these passages actually refer to it raining.  The only ones that reference rainfall are in Helaman 11 and Ether 9, and both of these following lengthy droughts that had produced dearth and famine.  We can be confident that it rained more than twice in the roughly 3,000 years of combined Jaredite/Lehite history, yet the only time it is mentioned in the text is when its occurrence was unusual.

So how does this apply to snow in the Book of Mormon?  Well, either snow was common enough in regular seasons to not warrant any particular mention, or in those same 3,000 years it never snowed.

I think the former scenario is more likely than the latter for two reasons:  

First, although snow is exceptionally rare in Central America, every several generations it does snow there.  There was a snow storm in 2013: http://lovingarms.ca/snow-in-guatemala/.  The freezing temperatures necessary to produce snow are devastating to the tropical crops such as bananas or citrus fruits (see this article: http://homeguides.sfgate.com/cool-weather-tropical-plants-57280.html), which are commonly grown throughout Central America.  If snow was a rare occurrence (occurring maybe once every few generations), and devastating when it happened, don't you think that would have warranted a mention in the text?

Second, from the scripture referenced at the beginning of this article, Nephi writes how the whiteness of the Tree of Life "did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow."  (1 Ne. 11:8.)  Recognizing that Nephi's principal audience is his own descendants (2 Ne. 33:3) [fn. though he also addresses "the House of Israel" and the "ends of the earth" (2 Ne. 33:13), it is clear that Nephi's record is meant first for his own people], that would be an odd analogy to include for a people who would never encounter snow.  If you were trying to describe the exquisite whiteness of the Tree of Life to your descendants, would you tell them that it was "more white than this really white thing that you'll never actually see and therefore have no context for appreciating how white it was.  But, wow!, it was so white!"?  That just doesn't make much sense to me.

Campus unicorns

I posted this on the consensus blog and thought people here might also appreciate it.
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Campus Unicorns - photo: iStock from WSJ

Another way to look at the problem of Mesoamerican dominance at BYU/CES is by analogy to the situation in universities generally with respect to political orientation. Most of academia is liberal. For example, only 6.6% of professors in the social sciences are Republicans.

In a similar way, most of the BYU/CES faculty follows the Mesoamerican theory. The research groups--FARMS/Maxwell Institute, BYU Studies, BAMF, AAF, the Interpreter, and the other groups shown as links on the BOMC web page (the citation cartel)--are exclusively Mesoamerican in orientation. They refuse to publish anything that contradicts their Mesoamerican theory. This constitutes a serious impediment to the search for truth.

Today's Wall St. Journal has a piece by Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr. titled "Campus Unicorns: Conservative Teachers."* They make an important point that relates directly to the problem with the Mesoamerican theory:

"Political bias expresses an intellectual orientation—one that inclines us to find some questions more important and some explanations more plausible. Because of this, none of us can rely on our fellow partisans to identify flaws in our thinking. Building an academic community with varied biases, then, is essential to the very health of the social sciences. Political uniformity makes it difficult to converge on the best approximation of the truth.

"It’s true that in some happy cases social science is self-correcting. But it can take a very long time. Sociologists spent decades playing down the importance of two-parent households before finally admitting that family structure matters. As a conservative in the field told us: “Basically, sociology had to be dragged kicking and screaming until it recognized that broken families aren’t a good thing. It’s like, if you have to spend decades and millions of dollars in [National Science Foundation] grants to convince astronomers that the sun rises in the east.”"
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The parallels should be obvious. Shields and Dunn could just as well have written that when you see social science through a liberal lens, you can't unsee it.

A key analogy from the quotation is that Mesoamerican scholars cannot rely on their fellow partisans to identify flaws in their thinking. This is apparent to anyone who reads the material published by the citation cartel (as I show on this blog). These scholars convey a pretense of diversity by quibbling about which river in Mesoamerica is the Sidon, but they simply can't see the fundamental flaw in their basic premise or the logical errors in their thinking and writing.

This Mesoamerican uniformity makes it difficult to seek the truth, let alone find it. The charters of BMAF and BOMC don't even pretend to be seeking the truth; instead, they focus on "research and evidences regarding Book of Mormon archaeology, anthropology, geography and culture within a Mesoamerican context," thereby limiting themselves to a flawed and narrow agenda.

The quotation Shields and Dunn provide about two-parent households and the sun rising in the east has an exact analogy in Book of Mormon studies. The Mesoamerican scholars who dominate BYU/CES have to be dragged kicking and screaming until they recognize that Joseph and Oliver put Cumorah in New York all along.

Shields and Dunn "hope to persuade more liberal professors of the importance of viewpoint diversity—something that would require them to cultivate a distrust of their own reason and impartiality." That's exactly what I've been trying to do for the last 16 months, so far to no avail. The Mesoamerican seers are not only convinced of the correctness of their theory, they don't see any need to "distrust their own reason and impartiality." In fact, they don't want to be impartial.

Their minds are made up. Thanks to their Mesoamerican lens, they can't unsee it.

Parents of students at BYU/CES--and the students themselves--should be aware of this situation. They should resist being indoctrinated in Mesoamerican theory without at least a fair and equal presentation of alternatives.
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*Mr. Shields is an associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. Mr. Dunn is an associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. They are the authors of “Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University” (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Scholarship: A matter of degrees

One question that arises often is "How could all the Book of Mormon scholars be wrong?"

To this, I answer they're not all wrong. There is a tremendous amount of scholarship on Book of Mormon topics that is informative, enlightening and inspiring. In fact, I'd say Book of Mormon scholarship is in good shape on most topics except for the geography question.

But that's a big problem.

Scholarship builds on itself, which can be good or bad. If the underlying premise is sound, the scholarship can be sound. But if the underlying premise is faulty, the scholarship will also be faulty--unless someone points out the error and the scholars respond.

Scholarship based on a faulty premise is like a GPS with a bad map: it can be technically accurate and even precise, but it will take you on a non-existent road and lead you off a cliff.

Another approach is is the famous quotation by Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." In the context of BYU/CES scholarship on Book of Mormon geography, there may be an element of ignorance about Church history involved, but in my opinion, based on the articles I've been reviewing on this blog, it's more a case of choosing to see the text through a Mesoamerican lens and then being unable to unsee Mesoamerica. This lens has set them on a course that is off by a few degrees.

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There's a famous talk by President Uchtdorf titled "A Matter of a Few Degrees" that describes the problem of a faulty premise:

"In 1979 a large passenger jet with 257 people on board left New Zealand for a sightseeing flight to Antarctica and back. Unknown to the pilots, however, someone had modified the flight coordinates by a mere two degrees. This error placed the aircraft 28 miles (45 km) to the east of where the pilots assumed they were. As they approached Antarctica, the pilots descended to a lower altitude to give the passengers a better look at the landscape. Although both were experienced pilots, neither had made this particular flight before, and they had no way of knowing that the incorrect coordinates had placed them directly in the path of Mount Erebus, an active volcano that rises from the frozen landscape to a height of more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m).

"As the pilots flew onward, the white of the snow and ice covering the volcano blended with the white of the clouds above, making it appear as though they were flying over flat ground. By the time the instruments sounded the warning that the ground was rising fast toward them, it was too late. The airplane crashed into the side of the volcano, killing everyone on board.

"It was a terrible tragedy brought on by a minor error—a matter of only a few degrees."

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Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery set a clear course on the topic of Book of Mormon geography. Letter VII is unequivocal: Cumorah is in New York. Letter VII is contained in the personal journal Joseph kept with him in Nauvoo, which he had with him when he wrote the letter that became D&C 128 ("Glad tidings from Cumorah!"). Letter VII had been republished in the Times and Seasons the year before.

Had the scholars stayed on that course, they would not have crashed into Mesoamerica. 

For the current and future generations, though, it's not too late to change course.

(Speaking of Mesoamerica, it's ironic that in President Uchtdorf's talk, the airplane crashed into the side of a volcano, much as the Mesoamerican advocates keep insisting the text talks about volcanoes.)
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At this point, the only question is whether the BYU/CES scholars are willing to change course. That remains to be seen.

One good indicator to watch is Book of Mormon Central. A course correction there would be allowing presentation of concurrent geography ideas on an equal basis. A continued focus exclusively on the Mesoamerican setting would mean more crashes.

There are about 100,000 airline flights every day, each of them following a specific course to deliver passengers to their intended destinations. If airlines can figure this out, surely LDS scholars can correct their courses and deliver accurate and useful knowledge about Book of Mormon geography to their students and readers.

Fun with David Palmer

I previously discussed Brother Palmer's book In Search of Cumorah. This is such a fundamental text for the Mesoamerican seers that it is quoted with approval by both Sorenson in Mormon's Codex and Gardner in Traditions of the Fathers.

The citation cartel is oblivious to the following fun aspects of Palmer's book.

1. On p. 20 of the 1981 edition, Palmer writes "There is no record of Moroni having told Joseph Smith that the place where the abridgment was buried was Cumorah, or that the hill was once a great battleground. If this had been the place of those great battles, it would be rather surprising that it was not mentioned. We have only the scantiest of inferences that Joseph ever called the hill "Cumorah." (D&C 128:20). However, he does not appear to have corrected Oliver Cowdery, who may have been the one to first name the New York hill "Cumorah." (Cowdery, 1835)."

Every sentence here is great fun.

First sentence: we have a record of Joseph referring to the hill as Cumorah even before he got the plates (in his mother's history). Who else but Moroni could have told him this? Then we have David Whitmer's recollection of hearing the name Cumorah in 1829 from a heavenly messenger (in the presence of Joseph and Oliver) before he even read the manuscript (and before Joseph and Oliver had even finished the translation). To the citation cartel, though, these don't count as "records" because
they contradict their thesis that the location of Cumorah was never revealed.

Second sentence: Brother Palmer has a good point that it would be surprising if the New York location was not mentioned; but since we have accounts that Moroni did mention it, what is actually surprising is that Palmer ignores the records of Joseph and 2 of the 3 witnesses knowing about Cumorah even before the text was published.

Third sentence: It's fun to read that the canonized scriptures are "scanty inferences." D&C 128:20 was written in the context of universal knowledge among Mormons of the day that the New York hill was Cumorah. Oliver's Letter VII made this as clear as possible. It was published in the Messenger and Advocate in 1835, in the Gospel Reflector in 1841, and in the Times and Seasons in 1841. No Mormon alive during Joseph's lifetime could have not known what he meant by Cumorah when he wrote this letter to the Church. There was such demand for Oliver's letters that they were republished in England as a separate pamphlet in 1844.

Fourth sentence: You have to love this: Joseph "does not appear to have corrected Oliver Cowdery." Why would he correct Oliver when he helped him write the letters that identified Cumorah in New York, and then had his scribes copy those letters into his own journal as part of his history? Far from correcting him, he embraced these letters!
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In fairness, Palmer revised his book a little in later editions. In the 1999 edition (7th Printing, Feb. 2005), the first two sentences are the same, but the third and fourth are different: "The first record we have that identifies the hill in New York with the last Nephite and Jaredite battleground was written by Oliver Cowdery (referencing Letter VII in the Messenger and Advocate). In a revelation given seven years later there was a hint of a possible connection. "And again, what do we hear? Glad tidings from Cumorah! Moroni, an angel from heaven declaring the fulfillment of the prophets--the book to be revealed." (DC 128:20).

Obviously, this isn't much of an improvement. Palmer ignores the reprinting of Letter VII in the Times and Seasons and Gospel Reflector, and in Orson Pratt's pamphlet. He tells readers there was a 7-year gap between Letter VII and D&C 128:20, instead of the "gap" of a year and a half in the Times and Seasons itself, or six months if you count the Wentworth letter. Issues of the Times and Seasons and Gospel Reflector containing Letter VII were bound and on sale in Nauvoo right through the publication of D&C 128. D&C 128 is hardly a "hint of a possible connection." With the full historical context, there is no doubt that in D&C 128. Joseph was referring to the New York hill.

What I find amazing about this is that in 24 years, from the first edition in 1981 to the latest printing in 2005, no one pointed out this basic error to Brother Palmer. Either that, or he declined to correct it. Worse, as I'll show next, the Mesoamerican seers adopt Palmer's approach!
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Another fun part of this book is on pages 84-86 when he discussed Ritchie's book on New York archaeology. I'm guessing this is where John Clark got the idea to cite Ritchie. Like Clark after him, Palmer concludes Cumorah cannot be in New York because there were no large cities dating to Book of Mormon times near Cumorah. Of course, the text doesn't say the Nephites had large cities near Cumorah, so Ritchie's findings actually corroborate the Book of Mormon text. Apparently the Mesoamerican translation describes large Nephite cities near Cumorah though.

Another link between Palmer and Clark is on page 21. Palmer writes, "A 'two-Cumorah' theory is thus more appropriate, since records were hidden in both Mormon's Cumorah and Moroni's Cumorah. Therefore, it matters little whether it was Joseph Smith or one of his associates who called the hill in New York 'Cumorah.'"

John Clark, in the article I had fun with here, wrote "Mormon’s hill and Moroni’s hill are not one and the same."

Of course, both of these authors are misleading their readers with this false distinction between Mormon's hill and Moroni's hill. In Letter VII, Oliver Cowdery unequivocally declared that it was a fact that the final battles took place in the valley west of the Hill Cumorah in New York (Mormon's Cumorah)--the same hill from which Joseph retrieved the plates (Moroni's Cumorah).

Mesoamerican seers are free to say Oliver Cowdery was mistaken (or deceived, or even dishonest, or whatever excuse they're giving lately); they are even free to misinform their readers about what he wrote. But when they do, I'll point it out here.

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A third fun aspect of this book is its treatment of the book by McGavin and Bean titled Book of Mormon Archaeology. On p. 81, Brother Palmer writes, "McGavin and Bean presented significant amounts of data on antiquities of New York state in support of their position. From that I conclude that there msut have indeed been some wars in western New York among the Indians. I will also grant that there might have been scores or even hundreds of drumlin hills with stoneworks that might have served as fortifications.

"What I am not prepared to accept is an age for those remains going back to Nephite times, much less Jaredite times. McGavin and Bean (1949) did not have the advantage of modern dating techniques when they published. Radiocarbon dating was just around the corner, but in its absence even the best of the archaeologists made gross errors in assigning dates to early American cultures. Today, we are in a much better position to evaluate the archaeological data from the state of New York. In doing so, we will first look at the archaeology of the eastern half of the United States, and then will examine the specifics of archaeology in New York to see whether there is consistency with the Book of Mormon model."

This is fun first, because Palmer at least recognizes he's "not prepared to accept" data that conflicts with his preferred theory, and second because Palmer doesn't discuss a single one of the specific sites mentioned by McGavin and Bean. He cites not a single radiocarbon date from any of those sites. Instead, he generalizes from Ritchie's own generalizations.

McGavin and Bean quoted excerpts from several books by early explorers who personally witnessed the extensive ancient forts the Europeans found when they arrived in western New York. These were so well known, and so ancient (as shown by trees growing over them for hundreds of years), that critics contemporary with Joseph Smith claimed he merely used well-known Indian legends and common knowledge of antiquities in the area to write the Book of Mormon. (In fact, one of the motivations for looking at Mesoamerica was to respond to the early critics, some of whom said Joseph just related well-known legends and others who said the Indians were too savage to have ever lived the way the text described.)

If Palmer and other Mesoamerican advocates want to cite radiocarbon data to refute the New York Cumorah, they should at least be specific and relate the dating of the ancient fortifications identified by the French (the first Europeans to arrive there) and other explorers.

Fun with BMAF

Yesterday I attended the annual conference of BMAF (Basically Mesoamerican Archaeological Forum) and people wonder what I thought. (At the UVU conference, I had encouraged people to attend the BMAF conference to hear different points of view. There were several "Heartlanders" at the BMAF conference, but most stayed away, so here's my report.)

The presentations were good, and I really like the people in BMAF, so I'm glad the group is merging with Book of Mormon Central (although I'm not sure what that really means--I just hope it doesn't mean even more Mesoamericanism at BOMC.)

NOTE: For those new to the blog who don't know where I'm coming from, I'm serious about the people at BMAF--I really like them and think they do good work. In my opinion their premise is flawed because it's based on a mistake in Church history, but it's difficult for people to change their minds, so I'm offering my perspectives on some of their publications in this blog. I think they all realize I'm just having a little fun with the articles on their site, in a good natured way, as I seek to encourage them to take another look at the Book of Mormon text, at Oliver's Letter VII, and at the archaeology, geology, anthropology, etc. in North America.

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I'm doing a more serious analysis over at http://bookofmormonconsensus.blogspot.com/. Here I just want to point out that the conference was much more about Mesoamerica than the Book of Mormon, as we would expect from their mission statement (which focuses on finding Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon, not searching all the evidence for the actual setting for the Book of Mormon).

I'll miss BMAF as an organization, though. For one thing, it's fun to have a group so dedicated to a specific geographic theory that they 1) disregard contrary evidence (including what Joseph, Oliver and David said about the subject) and 2) offer their own translation of the text (tapirs, mountainous terrain, volcanoes, north doesn't mean north, etc.). To be fair, they don't all agree on these various translations, but BMAF refuses to publish anything that doesn't support the Mesoamerican setting (or that criticizes that setting). This means there are no BMAF-approved geographies that stick with Joseph's translation.

Fortunately, we still have the Interpreter and the Maxwell Institute and the old FARMS publications to have fun with. But actually, BMAF isn't really going away; I understand that BMAF is going to put all their material on the BOMC web page, where it can be enjoyed for years to come.

One other point. There were some fun criticisms of the "Heartland" model. One question asked how the Heartlanders can explain 3 Nephi when there aren't any volcanoes in the Midwestern U.S. I wanted to submit this question: "What verses in the text mention volcanoes?" I might have done it, too, except I suspect everyone other than hardcore Mesoamerican seers has the same question, and the answer is, none. Not a single verse in the text mentions volcanoes.

CES and BYU people keep reading "volcano" in the text, but you have to be specially trained in the (should I say ministry?) to see it there. Even apart from the absence of the term in the text's detailed accounts of the supposedly volcanic eruptions in 3 Nephi, does anyone seriously believe that people living in Mesoamerica for 1,000 years would never once mention volcanoes? (Some might say this is the mirror image of the "snow" argument against North America. I'll do a separate post on that.)

I posted on volcanoes recently, but to reiterate, here's why the Mesoamerican seers insist on volcanoes. The only way to explain the 3 Nephi destruction in a Mesoamerican setting is if there were volcanic eruptions. The only way to explain why Samuel the Lamanite and Mormon didn't simply write "volcanoes erupted" is... well, I have no idea. If they lived their whole lives in Mesoamerican, one would think the Book of Mormon authors would know the term for a big mountain that periodically erupts and kills people and destroys property. But it's not in the text, so the Mesoamerican seers supply the term that Samuel or Mormon (or Joseph Smith) overlooked, and then establish that as a requirement in the text, so they can say the North American setting doesn't work because there are no volcanoes there.

I realize how crazy that sounds, but that's their argument, and it came up several times during the BMAF conference.

More fun, one group had a poster and handouts about the spread of ancient maize labeled "Maize Map answer to Heart Lander Hoax (Ancient America Foundation)." To their credit, when I pointed out that "Hoax" wasn't exactly a collaborative (or even humorous) term, they whited it out (although you can still see the word under the white out). Of course, the poster had nothing to do with Book of Mormon geography, unless you want to believe Nephites lived in Buenos Aires, Lima, and El Paso, Texas. I know some of the people at AAF, and I like them, too. I chalk up this poster/handout to ignorance about the proposed North American setting for the Book of Mormon.

IOW, they need to read this blog.

:)