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Book of Mormon geography/Models/Limited/Goble 2004
< Book of Mormon geography | Models | Limited
| Model Name | Date Proposed | Scope | Narrow Neck | Land North | Land South | Cumorah | River Sidon | Nephi's Landing | Religion | Type of model
Model name: Goble 2004Date proposed: 2004 |
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Edwin Goble was co-author of the book This Land: Zarahemla and the Nephite Nation in 2002. Goble previously believed in the general US Heartland model, now popularized by Rodney Meldrum.
Understanding the significance of Joseph Smith's statement in the Levi Hancock Journal during Zion's Camp that the area was Desolation in the Land Northward, not the Land of Zarahemla in Joseph Smith's mind, Goble's faith was shaken in the US Heartland model. Goble realized the implication of that statement from Joseph Smith, that it actually pushed the Narrow Neck of Land into Mesoamerica. He ended up retracting the US Heartland model, because it entirely relied on what he previously thought Joseph Smith believed.
Goble calls his new model the Two-Heartland theory. The new model relies on the Book of Mormon text. Now he says it doesn't matter what Joseph Smith believed, only what the Book of Mormon text says. The primary disagreement with other Mesoamerican models is that the Book of Mormon mentions an exceedingly great distance between the Land of Zarahemla and the Large Bodies of Water in the Land of Many Waters to the North. Most Mesoamerican theorists believe this exceedingly great distance is much shorter of a distance. Goble interprets it the traditional way.
Therefore, in this model, it is limited in scope in the sense that most of the Book of Mormon History takes place in Mesoamerica, and it is larger in scope only later in their history that the Book of Mormon peoples spread outward to the North. Therefore, in this model, there are two heartlands, one in the Land Southward comprising the heartland of the Preclassic Maya, and one in the Land Northward, comprising the heartland of the Hopewell/Adena, as archaeology has shown, in Illinois and Ohio. This emphasis on the second heartland and a Cumorah in New York in the theory is a hold-over from his previous beliefs in the US Heartland theory.
Goble claims that the plausibility of a New York Cumorah actually comes from the fact that it is in the backyard of the Hopewell/Adena cultures, not its distance from Mesoamerica, which is what most critics of the New York Cumorah theory focus on. Most critics of the New York Cumorah say the hill is archaeologically clean. Goble says that is immaterial because it is a short term battle site which has been picked over, not a long term settlement site, or in other words, it is the place where people fled to, not where they lived for an extended period of time, and it is well within the domain of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere. In Goble's view, detailed archaeological digs have not been done at the New York Cumorah site. It is only obvious that any artifacts on the surface have been removed, if old accounts are to be trusted, according to Goble.
The model does not attempt to narrow down any specifics except for the general areas, a Narrow Neck of Land at Tehuantepec, and the traditional Cumorah in New York.
(See unpublished book manuscript Resurrecting Cumorah)