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The Book of Mormon model for a Mesoamerican geography has – like virtually all scholarly models – a handful of anomalies or potentially problematic issues. One of those areas of concern legitimately asks how the golden plates could have been dug out of the ground in upstate New York, if Book of Mormon events took place in Mesoamerica.
In this installment brother Ash discusses several possibilities concerning how Moroni may have traveled to deposit the golden plates on the family farm of Joseph Smith.
The full text of this article can be found at Deseret News online.
Brother Ash is author of the book Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt, as well as the book, of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith. Both books are available for purchase online through the FairMormon Bookstore. Tell your friends about the Mormon Fair-Cast. Share a link on your Facebook page and help increase the popularity of the Mormon Fair-Cast by subscribing to this podcast in iTunes, and by rating it and writing a review.
The views and opinions expressed in the podcast may not reflect those of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or that of FairMormon
Too much for an unnecessary answer. Moroni could do it (transporting everything from Mesoamerica to new York) , by plane (please do not take this literally ) or any other means; he was working under the orders of God. Please, this is not a problem. How did he take them back to wherever are now? The same way he did it from wherever they were before delivered to Joseph Smith.
The Book of Mormon also refers to the Book of Mormon land as a Land of Liberty.
2 Nephi 1:7 ” Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever.”
Which country in MesoAmerica fits this description?
The title page of the Book of Mormon states that the book was written to the Lamanites and D&C 3:19-20 states that the plates were preserved ‘that the Lamanites might come to the knowledge of their fathers’. The Lord didn’t waste any time, 6 months after the Book of Mormon was published, in Sept 1830, Oliver Cowdrey was instructed by revelation to go to the Lamanites and preach the gospel. (see D&C 28:8). David Witmer, Peter Whitmer were also called to serve with Oliver to preach to the Lamanites. (see D&C 30:1-8). A month later Parley P Pratt and Ziba Peterson were also called to go ‘unto the wilderness among the Lamanites’. (see D&C 32:2-3). So where did they go? It certainly wasn’t to Mesoamerica. They preached to the Indian Seneca Nation and then along with Frederick G Williams (who joined the church en route) they went to the Shawnees & Delaware Indians.
If the Lord and Joseph Smith taught that the Lamanites are located in North America; the covenant land of liberty, the land that the Book of Mormon teaches was to be discovered to the world by Columbus followed by the seed of Ephraim from Britain and Europe…..then that’s good enough for me. All this nonsense about 2 Comorah’s creates so much confusion and is not based on scripture.
The land that is a covenant land that will remain free as long as the people serve the Lord is obviously North America. The Book of Mormon teaches this principle over and over. It was established by inspired men who wrote the constitution. It appears that the constitution is under threat and that the people of North America are in danger of breaking this covenant. For this reason I believe that it is important for church members to understand these principles and the slippery slop America in on right now.
Opie,
The answer to your question is that no country, anywhere in the Americas, fits that description throughout all history. Even if 2 Nephi 1:7 is referring to the United States of America (which it isn’t; more on that in a second), then how does one explain the fact that from the establishment of the first British colony in America in 1586 until 1776—a period of 190 years—there was no United States and hence no “land of liberty” in the (supposed) Book of Mormon lands? Or how does one explain how the French crown owned the large part of what is now the central U.S. (including Missouri) until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803? And that the entire southwest United States was part of the Republic of Mexico until 1848?
Looking at 2 Nephi 1 a little more closely reveals that Lehi was speaking to his immediate family “concerning the land of promise, which they had obtained” (1:3). How big was that land? Surely Lehi didn’t have a map of the American continent, with national borders laid out as they would be 2,600 years in his future. In his mind, the “land which the Lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of my seed” (1:5) would have been the land in his immediate vicinity.
At this point, his family hadn’t even left the area where their ship had landed to escape the threats of Laman and his followers. When they did flee, they went to a place they called Nephi (2 Nephi 5:5–8). Their descendants left the Land of Nephi for Zarahemla (Omni 1:13), after which the Lamanites fully occupied the Land of Nephi. Was Nephi a “land of liberty” under the Lamanites? Was any place in the Western Hemisphere a land of liberty after the destruction of the Nephites in the time of Mormon and Moroni? The obvious answer is no.
So narrowly interpreting 2 Nephi 1:7 to refer only to the United States after 1776 (or 1803 or 1848 or 1959) completely removes that verse from context.
The fact is that Lehi’s promise applies to the entire Western Hemisphere, for, as Joseph Smith taught, “the whole of North and South America is Zion” (Words of Joseph Smith 363; see also History of the Church 6:321, 322). Today, not one country on either continent is ruled by a king; there may be varying levels of liberty between nations, but every one of them has some level of freedom, including the right to worship and to vote.
Jim Spong wrote:
I think you misunderstand how ancestry and DNA works, Jim. If Lehi, who lived 600 BC, was an ancestor of any Native American living in AD 1830, then he was an ancestor of all of them, across both the North and South American continents. Steve Olson, an expert in population genetics, explains:
This means, Jim, that the Native Americans the first Mormon missionaries preached to on the western frontier of the United States, were, in fact, Lamanites: They were descendants of Laman, just as is every other person with native ancestry in all the Western Hemisphere. And so we have temples throughout Central and South America whose dedicatory prayers have included inspired statements like this one from the Guatemala City Guatemala Temple, dedicated 14–16 December 1984 by President Gordon B. Hinckley:
Jim continues:
Christopher Columbus never set foot anywhere near the land that is the United States today:
However, on his fourth and final voyage, he visited modern-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. While in Honduras he met and traded with Mayans from the Yucatan.
Jim:
There are not two Cumorahs. There is one hill Cumorah, the one described in the Book of Mormon, into which the prophet Mormon “hid up…all the records which had been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni” (Mormon 6:6).
In other words, the plates of Mormon were not hidden in the hill Cumorah; all the other plates Mormon had were. It was only because of a misreading of the Book of Mormon by early Latter-day Saints that the drumlin near Joseph Smith’s home in New York came to be called “Cumorah.” (Even though it isn’t the Cumorah of the Book of Mormon, it’s still a fitting tribute to that great hill where the Nephites made their last stand.)
Jim:
Yes, and South America too, as Joseph Smith taught.
Jim:
Your concluding statement explains the current fad of insisting that the Book of Mormon took place inside the United States: It’s driven by patriotic nationalism, not by a close and careful reading of the text of the Book of Mormon.