Joseph Smith never once connected the Book of Mormon to Central America.
Anonymous articles in the Times and Seasons said that Zerahemla was in Guatemala.
But Joseph Smith said the Hill Cumorah was in New York.
The scholars chose to reject the New York Cumorah and accept the Guatemala Cumorah. Thus was born the dilemma to where scolars say there’s 2 Hill Cumorah’s.
In some publications where theories were put forward about Book of Mormon in Central America, it was assumed that Joseph Smith edited those publications, but he did not. He didn’t not have time for that even if he wanted to. He didn’t release documents without his signature, and his signature isn’t on it he, so he didn’t write it. He didn’t have time to work at the Times and Seasons publication.
It wasn’t Taylor or Woodruff that edited it either, they were too sick to work when these were published.
It was likely Benjamin Winchester and WW Phelps who published these things.
A month before Joseph died he said that Winchester was rotten at heart and would drop the Church as much as he could. Later Winchester was excommunicated.
The Book of Mormon territory is traveled in a matter of days, it is much too small to be all of North and South America.
Letter 7 by Oliver Cowdrey was published repeatedly and approved by Joseph Smith. Letter 7 confirms that the Book of Mormon occurred in North America. Cowdry said it was a fact that the final battles of the Nephites took place by the New York Hill Cumorah. Joseph Smith had his scribes copy this letter into his journal as part of his life story. Joseph repeatedly approved of the reprinting of this letter. Letter 7 makes it very clear that both the Nephites and the Jaredites died in the New York Cumorah area.
Those who choose to adopt the 2 Cumorah’s theory must make the conscious decision to reject Letter 7.
The 2 Cumorah’s theory is fulfillment of Joseph Smith’s prophecy that Benjamin Winchester would injure the Church as much as he could.
Both Joseph and Oliver promoted the Book of Mormon Hill Cunorah in New York. All we have promoting the Guatemala Cumorah is the anonymous article with apostate Benjamin Winchester behind it.
Boxes of artifacts have been witnessed recovered from the New York Cumorah.
A stone-lined room in the Hill Cumorah has been discovered that matches the description of Brigham Young, except it is empty of its artifacts.
The latitude of Alabama and Florida is similar to the latitude of Jerusalem. When Lehi’s family got to America they were able to successfully garden just like in Jerusalem.
Nephi says he finds metal ores which are found in this area.
It doesn’t say that when they got there they encountered other indigenous people, or that they had to fight for land, or that they were able to just eat the wild food growing everywhere, as would be the case in mesoamerica.
Nephi says they landed in and traveled in the wilderness, this means an uninhabited uncultivated area. The book specifically says that the knowledge of this area was kept from other nations. It says nations, not people, so there weren’t organizations there, but there could have been some people, and there are some archaeological finds from before the Nephites that could have been from the Jaredites or other Adamic pre-flood people, or other migrants.
Nephi likely escaped from his brethren in the Alabama Florida area on the Flint River, finally landing in Tennessee. It says they didn’t pitch their tents for several days, this is because they would have been on the boat, and going on a river would make it so their brothers can’t track where they went, it would give them time to escape rather than making a trail through dense vegetation.
Mulekites went up the Mississippi river landing in Iowa, where historically the Des Moines rapids make it hard to go further.
(Many of these neat points are made in the book, especially the full non-pocket edition. I’ll name a few more in these notes.)
D&C 125:3 identifies Zerahemla as the land in Iowa near Nauvoo, “3 Let them build up a city unto my name upon the land opposite the city of Nauvoo, and let the name of Zarahemla be named upon it.”
Mosiah’s river was the Tennessee river. They went downstream to the Ohio river, then downstream to the Mississippi (Sidon) river, which cuts through the land of Zerahemla, which is where he escapes to.
Coriantimr left New York Cumorah traveling toward the New Jerusalem (Missouri) via the Ohio river. The people of Zerahemla naturally discovered him as he was on route going along the river they lived on.
Large Ohio temple mound discussed.
Book of Mormon people had law of Moses, so would need required animals for it, those are found in North America (not in central America).
Speaks of Mosiah’s people, and details of how the passages fit. Goes over Ammon’s travels geographically in North America. Much more in this book, and even more in the non-pocket full edition.
These are people who didn’t have much written records, just on metal plates. This is also unlike Mesoamerica.
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Identifies with various specific US river routes how the people would have gotten lost, as happens several times.
The word “building” included and actually referred to earthworks.
Many sights in Alma Helaman and Mosiah were destroyed. It’s not unprecedented for the Mississippi River to change course. And 3rd Nephi says the entire face of the land was changed. Yet they could still identify major features. Also, the compiler Mormon would not have visited every place he wrote about.
Modern revelation tells us several major pins in the map, identifying the geographic locations of Cumorah, Zerahemla, Manti, and Adam-Ondi-Ahman.
Knowing the geography makes it easier to understand the book.
St. Louis was called Mound City because of all the mounds there.
There are more mounds and so forth in America than are described in the Book of Mormon, which makes sense because Mormon says he couldn’t even tell one percent of the whole history.
The wars are described as being in valleys, not mountainous areas. This matches how Joseph Smith called Indiana Ohio and Illinois The plains of the Nephites.
There were once over a million mounds found in America though must have been destroyed.
Eventually there are some references to mountains. What could that be referring to? Remember D&C 117:8 refers to mountains in the area of Adam-Ondi-Ahman in Northern Missouri, these mountains are only around 270 feet high. It is referring to the hills!
The Mississippi and Ohio river valleys are where we would have had Gaddianton robbers attacking and then retreating back into the ‘mountains.’ In these areas there are sizable banks, which in modern times robbers have hid behind too! River pirates as late as 1830 have been known to hide behind them.
Changing the face of the land isn’t about massive tectonic movement, it’s about surface features changing to reorient the land, and this very thing has happened due to earthquakes changing the course of the Mississippi River.
Earthquakes are described in 3rd Nephi; people don’t realize the largest quakes in the continental US have been along the Mississippi River in 1812 on the New Madrid fault. The historic 1812 quake resulted in such great darkness that people couldn’t see by candlelight.
(Note- this both fits the record, and is something that may occur again as the Lord prepares the world for his Second Coming!)
There are three possibilities for the narrow neck of land, all in the Great Lakes region. These lakes qualify as seas.
There are three passages in the Book of Mormon about a narrow area, not just the narrow neck of land. Moroni separately helps to identify each area. They’re each described differently for a reason.
The Niagara peninsula is his top choice for the narrow neck of land. This Mohawk Indian name even means narrow.
We can’t use this single verse about the narrow neck of land as the whole hinge point of Book of Mormon geography.
Many people ask where are the volcanoes in the eastern US? The answer is, where are the volcanoes in the Book of Mormon? (There are none!)
Many people ask why the Book of Mormon doesn’t mention snow. Actually Nephi does mention snow and uses it as an analogy, so his people must have been familiar with it or it wouldn’t have been a good analogy.
The Book of Mormon also refers to some seasons, this would not have meant only two seasons, so the book would not have happened in a place where there’s only a rainy and a dry season (as in Mesoamerica).
Zions camp retraced the route of many Nephite warriors.
The Kirtland Temple is likely built in the same location as an ancient Nephite Temple.
Joseph and Hyrum are buried in a Hopewell Nephite cemetery in Nauvoo.
D&C 128:20 when Joseph Smith said glad tidings from Cumorah, he is referring to the Book of Mormon from New York.
In New York David Whitmer and Joseph Smith were riding along. They met an old man who said he was going to Cumorah. David turned to ask Joseph about it and when he turned back the man had disappeared. Joseph explained he was a divine messenger who was carrying the plates.
When this occurred Joseph had already finished the translation from the stone box in Hill Cumorah New York.
Before he left Harmony Joseph was commanded to give the plates to a Divine messenger. This messenger was bringing the plates back to Cumorah!
(Note- Angels can take the form of their glorified body or their mortal body to fit in, this is why he could appear as an old man on this occasion.)
When asked if the plates were still in New York, David said yes, and clarified not in Cumorah but not far from that place. (This shows he understood Cumorah to be in New York.) Likely Joseph and others worked together to move the plates and other sacred relics all to the hill Shem to protect them from treasure seekers.
The people of Latin America who have legends of being taught by the white God, this could be referring to them being some of the other sheep that Jesus visited, they don’t necessarily have to be the people of the Book of Mormon record.
One possibility is the hinterland theory, that the descendants of the Lamanites migrated southward into Central America. Or that some of the Central Americans came up to North America and intermingled with the Lamanites, then went back down to Central America (bringing Lamanite culture down south). Most of those in Central America have Asian ancestry and perhaps the predominantly Asian Jaredites may have influenced that. (There are a few books out there showing the many parallels between the Hindus and the Mesoamerican tribes.)
Ether had over 30 generations of people who lived in the Americas. Moroni specifically says he’s only writing about the portion of Jaredites which were destroyed in the North country. The Book of Ether is about a particular family line. He could have had cousins throughout the hemisphere.
For the first 100 years of church history, Cumorah was in New York, and Letter VII (which confirms the New York Cumorah) was widely published.
The Book of Mormon used to be published with footnotes that declared without question that the Hill Cumorah is in New York. These footnotes by Orson Pratt were removed in 1920.
It was originally the RLDS church that proposed Book of Mormon events happening in Mesoamerica. Later in the 1920s various LDS Church members began promoting it too. Then leaders in the LDS church responded that Mesoamerica is not the correct location of the book’s events!
In the 1928 General Conference President Anthony W Ivan reaffirmed that all of the sacred Nephite were kept in the New York Hill Cumorah which the Church had acquired.
In 1938 Joseph Fielding Smith (Church Historian and Apostle) said that some had begun saying that the Book of Mormon happened in Central America, notwithstanding teachings of the Church to the contrary for the past 100 years. He he affirmed that Book of Mormon locations can be known just as the Church had been saying. He published this in Doctrines of Salvation. But people ignore it and continue teaching 2 Cumorah theory and Central America theory.
In 1954 LDS member M Wells Jakeman promoted Central America Theory.
In 1960 Sidney B Sperry at BYU was passing out handouts on the Book of Mormon being in Central America.
In 1981 David A Palmer promoted Central America theory.
In 1984-5 John Sorensen made Central America theory mainstream in the Church.
In 2014 John Sorenson in his book Mormon’s Codex ridiculed the idea that the Hill Cumorah was in New York. He was a major proponent of Central America. He called the New York Cumorah and events surrounding it “absurd” and “sci-fi.”
In 2015 Brant Gardner said, “the New York Hill cannot be the Cumorah described in the text.”
In 2017 historical and archaeological research affirmed the claims of Letter VII and The New York Cumorah. This harmonizes and confirms what every modern prophet and apostle has taught about Cumorah.
Mesoamerica Theory doesn’t align with archeology and it doesn’t align what the prophets have said about Book of Mormon geography.
Advocates of Mesoamerica theory relied on correspondences between Mayan and Nephite cultures, but the similarities they point out are similar in most human cultures.
The author of this book Jonathan Neville was taught Mesoamerica theory at BYU and religion institute classes etc.; he went to see the sites of Mesoamerica, he read the claims of Farms and the Maxwell institute etc. on the topic, and he knew that they do not match the Book of Mormon or the teachings of the prophets.
The anonymous articles that some claim were by Joseph Smith which claim Mesoamerica for the Book of Mormon were in fact not written by Joseph Smith. This is the subject of many of Neville’s books including The Lost City of Zarahemla, Brought to the Light, and the Editors Joseph William and Don Carlos Smith.
Neville also published a book called Letter VII: Oliver Cowdry’s Message to the World about the hill Cumorah and Moroni’s America.
See also the full edition of this book Moroni’s America, as these were just a few highlights to his shorter Moroni’s America Pocket edition. Of course, my notes Here have not covered all of the evidence even in the Pocket edition.
