Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Has Book of Mormon geography been divinely revealed? A lot of people will stake their Book of Mormon geography model based on the fact that, oh, I believe Joseph Smith said it took place here, or this church leader said it took place here. So what's the truth of it? Well, we've brought on a Book of Mormon geography history expert. Matt Roper, welcome to the show.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Well, thank you for letting me come on the show.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: So, Matt, you are a veteran Book of Mormon researcher. You started off your career at first and then the Maxwell Institute at byu, and now you're a researcher of the Book of Mormon at Scripture Central. So you've got a depth of experience here and you've done a lot of research specifically on the history of Book of Mormon geography statements, geography theories. And so if there's someone who knows what the prophets and apostles have said about geography, it's definitely you. Now, before we dive into that, we probably should just preface that the Church's current position, they have an essay where they talk about Book of Mormon geography, and they say that the Church does not take an official position on any location in the Book of Mormon. And so we're sticking to that for now. But people have had a lot of opinions over the years of where the Book of Mormon could have taken place, whether it was revealed, whether Joseph Smith said this is where the Book of Mormon took place and what the scope of is of the Book of Mormon. Did it take place all over the Americas or did it happen in a smaller location that also has been talked about a lot throughout the years of Church history by prophets and apostles and church leaders. So tell us, where did the Book of Mormon take place?
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Or rather not settle it for us right now, Matt, we need to know
[00:01:30] Speaker A: not where did it take place, but like, has it been revealed divinely? What is kind of our intellectual history of Book of Mormon geography here?
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Well, I want to talk a little bit about kind of the history of Book of Mormon geography, and I've written a little bit about this in a couple of articles, and that's been my main focus.
You know, I started out, I was growing up, and I, I read the history stuff in the history of the Church that there were different things that, that it talked about. The, the story of Zelf was in the history of the. As it was in the history of the Church. I've, I, and I, you know, I gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon from a young age, and I believed it happened somewhere. I, I know it happened somewhere today. I, it's just, I, I had this idea that somehow, and I didn't understand exactly how that, you know, North America is land northward. You got a narrow nec.
Central America, you see, it's narrow. You know, that's something is down there somewhere. And then South America, maybe that's where the land of Nephi was and land southward.
And it wasn't until I got older and started paying a little more attention to what the Book of Mormon actually says that I started looking at some of these ideas. And I'd heard some of these things in church history that we talk about.
So I want to talk a little bit about.
First of all, you have this. This hemispheric view of Book of Mormon geography. It's kind of the traditional view that
[00:02:56] Speaker A: it took place in North America, South
[00:02:58] Speaker B: America, all, all between land northward, North America, Central America's narrow neck of land somewhere in there. And then you've got South America's land southward. And so this was an idea that developed early on. And just to give you an idea, you know, we didn't have a church newspaper until Missouri in 1832.
And so what we do have are newspaper reports that describe what early missionaries and early Latter Day Saints were doing.
And as you know, in the early days of the church, in 1830, we had Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, and was it Peter Whitmer Jr.
Who are called on a mission to go preach to the Lamanites? So they're joined together, and then while they're in Ohio, though, they're preaching about the Book of Mormon. There are some wonderful, wonderful things in church history we won't go into that happened there. You should learn more about church history in Kirtland. There's wonderful, wonderful stories there. But they're preaching about the Book of Mormon, and many people were deeply impressed by what they were talking about. Oliver Cowdery was one of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon. He talked about this. And so Oliver, who's kind of the leader of this, is preaching about the Book of Mormon. They talk to different congregations, and there are newspaper reporters who describe what these missionaries are doing.
And this is from a newspaper in the Ohio observer and Telegraph describing these missionaries who are passing through Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt and their companions.
And this is how, based on the discussion of these missionaries, this is how their description of the Book of Mormon and its geography is described.
This new revelation, they say, is especially designed for the benefit of the Aborigines of America, who, as they affirm, are a part of the tribe of Manasseh. Whose ancestors landed on the coast of Chile 600 years before the coming of Christ.
So this is interesting how these earliest missionaries, as they interpret the Book of Mormon, and again, they're doing the best they can based of our understanding, they landed somewhere in Chile 600 years ago.
That's where it occurred. Here is about a year, two years later. This is Parley P. Pratt and Lyman Johnson, who are passing through Pennsylvania on a mission. And they are reported in. In this newspaper, the Catholic Telegraph.
They're giving a. A discussion in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, on the way back east. And he says, lehi, this is the report, came across the water into South America. The last battle that was fought among these parties was on the very ground where the plates were found. But it had been a run battle, for they commenced at the Isthmus of Darien and ended at Manchester.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: That is quite the run.
[00:05:56] Speaker D: What a marathon.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: So you've got, You've got. If you look at. This isn't the great map, but you've got them landing in Chile.
Look down there. It's south of the equator and it's in Peru, I think, right now.
And you got them landing there, and then you got them going up Isthmus of Darien, just north of Columbia.
[00:06:16] Speaker D: Columbia there, Yeah. I mean, that's Panama.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: And then it's a running battle. And so they flee all the way to New York. So this is the general hemispheric view. North America, South America, Central America. And this is as missionaries understand. I mean, they just got the Book of Mormon. They're understanding it. They believe it's true.
And this is kind of where it is, and this is how it's being reported. And it's interesting that people like Oliver Cowdery and Parley P. Pratt and Orson Pratt and other early missionaries, this is their understanding of this. We call it a hemispheric view on the American hemisphere. Book of Mormon geography.
[00:06:54] Speaker D: And I think it's worth noting that this is like the overlay behind which a lot of other statements that sometimes get picked out of context by, by people who want to promote them as, like, revelatory or whatever on Book of Mormon geography. This is the. This is the context in which those is the paradigm. Yeah, this is the paradigm, the mental
[00:07:14] Speaker C: map that these guys have.
[00:07:16] Speaker D: When you talk about the Zelf story, for instance, like, yeah, they think Zelf is part of the Book of Mormon picture because they think the whole thing,
[00:07:23] Speaker C: literally the entire hemisphere is in the picture for them.
[00:07:25] Speaker D: And there's even one of the sources on Zelf says that this is the land of desolation, which in a hemispheric
[00:07:31] Speaker C: paradigm is North America.
[00:07:32] Speaker D: That makes sense. Right?
[00:07:33] Speaker B: There are parts of North America.
[00:07:34] Speaker D: At least you're in the land of desolation. Right. And that's where the final battles happen and all that. Right.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: So I would like to also point out, because occasionally I've heard people say, yeah, but we can't believe these accounts because these are coming from hostile non Mormon newspapers. Right. And the claim is that, well, they're somehow trying to undermine people's belief in the Book of Mormon or something. No, guys, they're just reporting what they're hearing. The missionaries say there's no incentive to try to like, well, we're going to stop people from believing in this gold Bible by saying lehi landed in Chile.
That makes no sense.
There's no motive there to try to get people. They're just honestly reporting what they appear to be hearing from the missionaries at the time. Okay.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: And it's not, it's not just non LDS newspapers that are reporting this. When Latter Day Saints start publishing things, indeed they talk about it in these same terms.
[00:08:25] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: And, and in the article I, that I published, I, I talk about this and document where, where they're talking about it. They're, they're looking at it broadly in terms of North, Central and South America.
[00:08:36] Speaker D: Right.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: I want to correct one misunderstanding. I think that we, that we see sometimes people look at that, they say these statements by Joseph Smith where it says it's the inhabitants of this continent that are spoken of in the Book of Mormon or this country or this country. And a lot of times people will read those statements and they'll think, oh, see, he's talking about the United, the region of the eastern United States or Central United States here. Or he's talking about America, meaning North America, meaning Canada and United States.
But if you look at how that language is used, sometimes we talk about continent in terms of North America as a continent.
But there is another usage in terms of they talk about the American continent. There is usage in the early 19th century where they're talking about north and South America, including Central America or the American continent, right? Or they talk about the Old world, meaning Europe and Africa or Asia, the Eurasian continent, Old World versus the New World, or the talk about the old country and England or Europe as opposed to the new country. And so terms like country and continent, they're not definitive. And identifying only the eastern United States, the eastern United States, United States, basically, they're talking about, it's New World as opposed to Old world.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I have multiple examples we can throw up here on the screen and in the show notes.
When I reviewed the Heartlander annotated Book of Mormon, I made this big point, guys. There are so many examples of this contemporary usage of including. They'll be talking about stuff down in Mexico, Guatemala, the antiquities of this country or this continent, and they're referring to stuff from Central America. So today, our nice little mental map of North America and South America as two distinct continents.
They're starting to think about it in those terms in Joseph Smith's day, but it doesn't become solidified till afterwards.
[00:10:43] Speaker D: I would contend that even today you'll still have people who will conceptualize and use language of like, the Eurasian continent as if it's all one continent and the Western Hemisphere as one kind of thing. I mean, I don't think that's.
It's maybe not as common, but it's not totally foreign, I think.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: So that's not. That's not a proof text for us. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, right?
[00:11:05] Speaker B: You know, you look at this today and I don't think.
And this is not.
I don't. This is not a fault, but I think that even today, I don't think we fully appreciate the distance in terms of North, Central and South America.
We are talking about thousands of miles.
[00:11:27] Speaker C: It's crazy.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: I mean, I remember the first time when I went on a mission and I flew on a plane from Los Angeles all the way down to Buenos Aires and what does it take, hours? I mean, was it 14 hours or something?
I don't know. It was a long time that was flying. Can you imagine walking that kind of a distance? So people in Joseph Smith's day, like today, I mean, less so in Joseph Smith's day, didn't really have an understanding of other countries the way that we.
[00:12:02] Speaker D: And I do think, actually John Sorenson points us out. He has a little brief history of Book of Mormon geography and his.
A geography of Book of Mormon events, a source book. And he kind of points out that, like, the early Saints knew just. They understood so little about the. The actual natural geography and environments and everything of the American continent or of the Western Hemisphere and its size and scale and scope. Like, they just, they really didn't totally grasp that. And I think you have, around the turn of the century, you have. The Book of Mormon Academy has this expedition that they have. They're really ambitious. They're like, we're gonna go down to Columbia and we're gonna. We're gonna go find Zarahemla.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: And it was the disaster.
[00:12:40] Speaker D: It was a disaster. But one of the things that I think comes out of that is who was it Benjamin Clough or Cuff, was it?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: I didn't even know that.
[00:12:48] Speaker D: Who leads it? He leads this expedition. And one of the things that comes out of that is, I think he's sobered to, Holy cow, this is a massive distance that we're talking about here. And he kind of comes back in one of his letters he says, yeah, I think maybe like a limited model around the isthmus of Tuantepec might actually make more sense.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really interesting. So it's good to keep that in mind. And I, I think that's not a fault. It's just, it shows that there's a lot that the early Saints didn't understand. And today there's a lot of things we don't understand too.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Most of the Saints then pretty much accept a hemispheric model. And when did this idea that maybe it took place in a smaller area start to take shape?
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Well, there are a couple of things, but first, one other point I want to make about the.
In Joseph Smith's day, in the early days of the church, there is a tendency because everybody's excited about the Book of Mormon, because, you know, this is wonderful here. We got this record and it's important and, and there's a lot of people that don't believe the Book of Mormon. And so there's a tendency to see anything that looks like evidence from anywhere, from anywhere in the Americas that would support the Book of Mormon. They're going to point this out, incorporated in, and look, I mean, and we have descriptions of some of the missionaries and they encounter people and that people would say they didn't have any kind of a real civilization in pre Columbian times. This is ridiculous. And so when they would see newspaper reports of things in Central America or maybe reports of ruins down in Tennessee or the Southwest or something like that, Latter Day Saints who were interested in the Book of Mormon would often cite these things as evidence for the Book of Mormon to show here there is evidence of civilization in pre Columbian times.
[00:14:35] Speaker D: And within the context of the time that made perfect sense, right? We, we look at this kind of grab bag approach from all over the continent now and we're like, ah, it's not very responsible but like everyone was
[00:14:47] Speaker A: kind of 19th century.
[00:14:47] Speaker D: It was the 19th century. People knew so little about the pre Columbian history. Still the field of archaeology, even the
[00:14:53] Speaker A: biblical world was still Very young in a lot of ways.
[00:14:55] Speaker D: And they hadn't scrutinized the text enough to realize again and that the scale and scope and been like, ah, this probably doesn't work. So it made sense. It made sense in their worldview and in their time.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: One of the early revelations in I think the Section 88, the Doctrine and Covenants, where the Lord tells the early elders and it's almost like he's really patient with us. You guys need to learn more about other kingdoms and other countries and you need to gain a knowledge of things above, things in the earth, beneath, things that are under the earth. There's a lot you need to know, guys.
And it's taken a long time as Latter Day Saints for us to follow that admonition and to really to learn. And in fact there's been a lot of knowledge that we didn't have that wasn't even available back then.
So the Lord wanted his Saints to understand more about other countries, their relationships to each other, where they are, what their cultures, their history was like. And so that was really important. But I think it would be, again, I think it's a mistake for some to argue that that Joseph Smith or the other Saints held that the Book of Mormon events only occurred in one particular location, or that they only occurred within the United States, or that that Joseph Smith, when he says it's the inhabitants of this continent, he was only referring identifies to Native American peoples within tribes, within what were then the then borders of the United States of the Nephites. So again, so this, this perspective, it's important to understand where they think, see things or just a general kind of a vague idea of things happening. They're interested in any kind of evidence that shows evidence of ancient civilization that can support the Book of Mormon.
But they have a lot to learn. And so this is the situation.
It's kind of a traditional interpretation that was there and that most Saints held to.
And you have to keep that in mind when they talk about evidence for the Book of Mormon and you see these things that were published in the Times and Seasons, the Evening and Morning Star and so forth.
Now we're talking about just Joseph Smith and Book of Mormon geography for just a minute in Nauvoo. And again, remember what we're saying about they're looking there. Anything that's evidence is good. One of the problems is these early reports of evidence. A lot of these things were very vague. The reports were very unclear. There were reports of cities that were like a mile long and Central America somewhere. There Were there were these reports and they didn't have much but. But they're trying to cite these things. But something really changed. It was very significant.
There were these two explorers named John Lloyd Stevens and Frederick Catherwood. Yes, Catherwood was an artist and they had published a book previously published a book on their visits and travels to Egypt and they drew the, the pyramids and a lot of the sites. I don't know if you've seen some of these.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I've got a copy of it.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: I can't appreciate in a pre photography world because we can just like see all of this stuff and we just take it for granted.
[00:18:01] Speaker D: But these.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: We go to Google Maps to find it.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it was really good pyramids in some cases.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: And one of the things that was remarkable about this is, is that with Catherwood was a very talented artist. Yeah. And it's free photography and he was remarkable. And both of them, you know they'll, both of them died just a few years after they published their, their books. And Stevens and Catherine would. They traveled, I think it was 1839, they went to Yucatan to Central America and there are a lot of things that are happening there. And if you read their book I really recommend, if you like a travel story. It was really quite interesting and exciting as they describe these things that some people at least in the Western world have never seen before.
And Catherwood, because he's such a good artist and so careful he is able to draw things like the ruins of Quirogua or Copan in Central America and to where people like Mike Coe, late. Mike Coe was a Mayanist. He says, you know, it's just like he shows it here and he says he was so far ahead of his time in terms of documenting these ruins that you find in Central America. Well, what happens is they come back and they publish their, their description of their journey and with Catherine Wood's pictures and they display these in New York and then they publish their book and they have some of these pictures they're in these books and it's published in New York in 1841. It's this two volume set and then the next year they publish another couple of volumes and again then five or six years later both of them are dead.
[00:19:50] Speaker D: But these books must have been some kind of curse these books.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: I don't know, I don't know about that. But these books were very, they were a huge hit in, in England and in the United States and back in New York when these books are published, there is a brother who's a convert of the church, and his name is John Bernheisel. You know that name from church history.
And he.
He picks up a copy of this book, and he sends it back to Wilford Woodruff, who's coming back from his mission. And Wilford Woodruff, he writes about it in his journal, says, I'm reading this. This is fantastic stuff. So he brings it back with a letter from John Bernheisel, and this is a book as a gift to the prophet Joseph Smith. And so Wilford Woodruff brings it back, gives it to Joseph Smith. And John Burnside had a letter that accompanied the book saying, this is a gift to you, my respect for you as a prophet. I thought you'd find these interest.
And Joseph Smith writes him back.
And in this letter, Joseph Smith writes back the following. He says, I received your kind present by the hand of Elder Woodruff and feel myself under many obligations for this mark of your esteem and friendship. Which is the more interesting as it unfolds, this book, as it unfolds and develops many things that are of great importance to this generation and corresponds with and supports the testimony of the Book of Mormon. I've read the volumes with greatest interest and pleasure and must say that of all the histories that have been written pertaining to the antiquities of this country, it is the most correct, luminous, and comprehensive, high praise.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: So, by the way, did you guys catch that? The antiquities of this country. What country is Joseph Smith talking about, ladies and gentlemen?
[00:21:37] Speaker B: SK Central America.
[00:21:38] Speaker C: He's not talking about the United States.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: And so it's very interesting. Now, this letter, it's written in the hand of John Taylor. So either Joseph Smith is dictating this to John Taylor, or he's telling him
[00:21:54] Speaker C: what to write, which, by the way, super common at this point in Joseph Smith's life. Go to the Joseph Smith papers and they will tell you. Like, at this point, especially in Nauvoo, it is routinely he's having clerks take care of this. Either he dictates the letter or they write it for him. And he says, yep, this looks good. Send it off. Right? Or things like that. So just because it's not in his own hand does not. Not mean it's not a Joseph Smith document.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Yeah, most. Most of the letters from Joseph Smith are written by other people. He dictates it to him or asks somebody to do it for him. Including some of the letters that he wrote from Zion's Camp, where he talks about.
They're not written in Joseph Smith's hand. They're written in other People's hands, you know, you can almost sense the excitement. The Prophet here is for sure, and he's writing this and the other church leaders and missionaries who knew about Stephens and Catherwood's discoveries were excited too. And they're talking about it in the mission field. It's mentioned in pamphlets that they're publishing. It's being reported in debates that they're having with people who are criticizing the Book of Mormon.
And so everybody's excited about this. And now the Prophet has a copy of the book and he says he's read it and he finds it interesting.
And it really is a remarkable book for its time because it has such accurate information, comparatively speaking, the ruins in Mesoamerica compared to other things.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: This book kind of single handedly blows the lid off of the whole like the savages and their teepees kind of narrative. Right. Like you have the mound builder stuff in North America that people are sort of debating. But like this like definitively settles this question of like civilization.
[00:23:34] Speaker D: And in terms of people taking interest in this, we do have the story from David Whitmer decades later, mind you, but he tells the story that yeah, when, when they were first, when the three witnesses were first told to sign this, you know, this statement, they're like, well yeah, we had the experience and, and it's true, but do we really have to tell the world this? Because you know, the Book of Mormon has all these cities and civilizations and nobody thinks that existed in the Americas. But then he says the Lord promised that the evidence would come forth. And in David Whitmer's mind at least this is when that happened, when Stevens and Catherwood came with all of these cities.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: I just appreciate how like enchanting this would have been. Latter Day Saints aside, like just even American society in the 19th century Pre photography and we're not building massive skyscrapers at this point. And yet you like read this book and you see these images of these pyramids and all of the cool ruins in Mesoamerica and those might have been like the biggest buildings you'd ever seen. Thinking that is here on this continent, like how mind blowing that is to see these images, to see the descriptions of what this ancient society could have been like. And then you add the element of the Latter Day Saints that they're like, well, we believe that God covenanted with his people here and now we're seeing it like unfold before us. Like how cool would that have been to experience that?
[00:24:44] Speaker B: It had a tremendous influence on Latter Day Saints at the Time, at least those that were literate or were those who were reading.
One of the things that occurred is, you know, it's 1841. The apostles are coming back from their mission to Great Britain. And when they come back toward the end of 1841, they buy the newspaper that they were using there in Nauvoo.
They take over the editorship with Joseph Smith and the apostles in charge of this.
And so the prophet's getting ready. He's going to publish the translations from the Book of Abraham.
He's going to publish doctrinal articles. Joseph Smith is concerned that, that they're publishing things that are accurate and reliable that will help build the faith of the saints and help them to understand the revelations that he's been given and understand the doctrines of the church. And so he even has a short revelation, you know, about this, Stephen, of putting the Lord's calling, the twelve apostles to be in charge of the publication of the Times and Seasons. They're going to take that over and Joseph Smith is going to become editor, are in charge of all of that. And during this time, while Joseph Smith is actually serving as the official editor from early 1842 down to about end of mid October of 1842, there are three articles that are published that draw upon these new discoveries in Central America from Stevens and Catherwood. And there's a lot happening in Nauvoo. But again, you can't have all the apostles there in the Times and Seasons office. So they have John Taylor, who is the person who's usually in the office there with Wilford Woodruff. And Wilford Woodruff indicates that John Taylor helps sometimes with some of the writing, and he's doing some of the other business. Wilford Woodruff's doing some of the other business stuff. But Joseph Smith, and he states he's taking responsibility for what is published. He isn't responsible for what was published before we took this over, but I'm responsible for it now.
And so you have these three articles, and it's talking about evidence for the Book of Mormon from Central America based on Stevens and Catherwood.
And then later on end of 1842, Joseph Smith starts doing some other things, and the apostles continue to publish, and there are other things published as well. Now some people have wondered, well, these are published and was Joseph Smith what did Joseph Smith think of these articles?
Were they written by Joseph Smith?
Did somebody else write them? There have even been some who said there must have been some kind of conspiracy to put all this heretical stuff
[00:27:30] Speaker C: about Central America, like somehow undermine faith
[00:27:33] Speaker B: in the Book of Mormon? No, there have actually been, strangely enough, there have been some, even some Latter Day Saints that have kind of bought into the kind of conspiracy theories about who is responsible for these articles. And they weren't really written by Joseph Smith or this is what was asserted.
[00:27:51] Speaker C: They were just written by two apostles.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: So a number of years both became
[00:27:55] Speaker C: presidents of the church.
[00:27:56] Speaker D: The people that Joseph Smith turns the paper over to.
[00:27:59] Speaker C: Yeah. And trusts them to run the paper.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I think that it's argued that there were others of a less favorable character that were. That were somehow inserted that into the
[00:28:10] Speaker D: publication of right under the nose of Joseph John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: So a number of years ago I have have several colleagues that are statisticians and I was looking at the church history and they say, well, you know, these are interesting articles here. I wonder if Joseph Smith actually wrote them or did somebody else write them. And so we did a study and then in 2016 we did an expanded study where we included other potential candidate authors of these articles, including. And these included people we looked at were Joseph Smith, Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, Benjamin Winchester, who was a missionary, later left the church. There were William Smith.
There were other people. And we tried to include people who had actually published on Central American or pre Columbian discoveries. And we included all of those into the mix because these particular articles, they were not signed. And so people have wondered, well, who really wrote them. And so we looked at all these potential candidate authors. These were people that were. That were around, that were interested in this subject and that were writing about this.
And based on the stylometric analysis and our expanded stylometric analysis, which we did, we found some interesting things.
And it turns out that the style of the articles, if you combine them together and there's a method that you do this, that's a solid statistical way of doing this analysis that we've done.
And we find that the style of these articles is consistent. It's most consistent among all the candidate potential candidate authors. It's most consistent with Joseph Smith's personal writing style in his other.
But there is also evidence it's next closest to John Taylor's writing style and Wilford Woodruff's writing style.
It's likely based on this evidence from the stylometric analysis that these articles were a collaborative effort between Joseph Smith, John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff. So you can't.
[00:30:26] Speaker C: Guys who were reading Stevenson gathered in
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Nauvoo again, which isn't. But it's consistent with the other historical Evidence. And so you can't really argue, it's just not sound to argue that somehow someone surreptitiously inserted these articles about Central America to, to lead people astray from what Joseph Smith really believed. They don't say how they know what Joseph Smith really believed, but they, it's just not a.
They were there, they were involved, they're responsible for.
[00:31:03] Speaker D: So let's, let's just be clear because we do want to make it clear. We're not arguing here that because these articles were most likely written by a prophet and two apostles, that this, that these were a doctrinal statement or an authoritative revelation that the ruins that Stephen Catherine discovered were Book of Mormon ruins. That's not the point exactly.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: They were just excited about any evidence for the Book of Mormon.
[00:31:30] Speaker D: What are the implications of these articles? We talked about this hemispheric model. What are the implications of these articles on Book of Mormon geography and how people think about it?
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Yeah, Neil makes a good point, and it's a point that others have made that Joseph Smith or the author, the writers of these articles, they are not claiming that this is a revelation of where Book of Mormon took place.
It is interesting though that they do compare the parts of the Book of Mormon, some geographical locations, with some of the evidence that is mentioned by Stevens and Catherwood. But then they qualify. They say, we're not going to say that this is exactly where Zarahemla is, but can you prove it's not?
[00:32:16] Speaker D: And the books and the stones tell
[00:32:18] Speaker B: the story so plain, but again, it's not revelation. But they're really excited about the evidence for the Book of Mormon and they didn't see anything regards to Central America that detracted from the Book of Mormon as far as they were concerned. So I think that that's, that's really understandable. But it also kind of signaled to Latter Day Saints like, hey, there's a lot of cool stuff happening in Central America, so it's exciting. And so what this kind of did is it signaled the Latter Day Saints that, hey, there really is evidence for the Book of Mormon that's out there, you know, writing on stone monuments, evidence of civilization.
And Stephen Catherwood even speculated about that there was actually writing about histories in there. And you know, Latter Day Saints who read about this and read the Book of Mormon said they're just eating it up. Look at this.
And they were able to refute some of the arguments against the Book of Mormon based on these new discoveries now over the 19th century, as things kind of developed, you know, the church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They're moved to Utah and as they moved west and the church is expanding into other places like Mexico, Canada and other places. Parley P. Pratt goes on a mission to South America for a little while. It's really hard, but they're learning things and they're learning more.
One of the things that you see in the history of the literature on this is that there is an effort. Even though they're still thinking in terms of hemispheric geography, they're seeing an increased importance of Central America in terms of Book of Mormon history.
And again, nobody's presenting this as revelation, but they're seeing it as significant. You got George Q. Cannon, who's writing in California. This is before he's an apostle.
He says, well, everybody knows now that based on Stevenson Catherwood's discoveries, that Central America must have been principal residents of one of the colonies in the Book of Mormon. The principal residents. You know, here's Brigham Young in a letter a year before his death, talks about the land where the Nephites flourished and the golden era of their history being down in Mexico and Central America. Yeah, you've got John Taylor the same year, talks about the churches expanding the missionary work to the Lamanites. He says, we're going to go to the ancient setters of the Nephites, where God dwelt among his ancient people, where Jesus manifested himself in their midst.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: And so this is not revelation, but it's surely indicating an interest in this part of the world. They're seeing that that's got stronger relevance than maybe they first thought.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: That's right. And they're excited, you know, and so in the latter part of the 19th century, you have the Saints are going into Mexico, people like Moses Thatcher who go down there, and there's other missionaries. They're starting to get established in some of these other, other places. And so.
So there's an increased importance in the thinking of Latter Day Saints for Central America as it relates to the Book of Mormon. Okay. Largely based upon Stephenson Catherine's discoveries. And they also learn things about South America, and they're starting to talk about those things as well.
But that's important. Now, another thing that you find in the history of the literature on Book of Mormon geography in the 19th century is there's a whole wide variety of interpretations. And in my article, I'd go through and about every major point of Book of Mormon geography. Land southward, or where was the river Sidon? Where did Lehi Land? Where was the city of Zarahemla? Where's the river Sidon? Where was the land of desolation?
Where is the narrow neck of land? About all of these things? You have a variety of opinions in the literature. It's not just one hemispheric geography there.
They're looking at from different, different angles. And, and some of the arguments, most of the arguments are pretty, you know, they're not that great, but, but there's a wide variety of opinion.
And so much so that by 1890, people like George Buchanan says, you know, there's a lot of maps that are out there. I wish we could find more of these maps because they're. But, but, but apparently there were a lot of Latter Day Saints who were interested in the subject of the Book of Mormon and its geography.
[00:36:43] Speaker D: And if I could, before we go on, I actually listed out in my notes here all of the places you document for different candidates in 19th century sources. Just give people an idea of the diversity of thought. Lehigh's Landing. We talk all the time about the chile statement. Well, 19th century sources have Lehigh landing in Chile, Cobiga, Bolivia, Lima, Peru, just south of the Isthmus of Darien. That's in those Times and Seasons articles. They realize that, oh, these ruins are actually up in Central America. That makes this like a landing way far south, kind of weird. So they move up the, the landing to just south of the Isthmus of Darien, which is Land of Nephi, is in Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala. Zarahemla is in Colombia, Honduras, Mexico.
The Magdalena is the sidon or the USA messinta. The USA masinta shows up in the 19th century already as a candidate.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: George Ottenser, I think.
[00:37:43] Speaker D: Yeah, as a candidate for the Sidon. Anyway, we could go on. The point is there's a very wide variety of opinions about the location of pretty central features of Book of Mormon geography going back very early.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: And so with this going on and you get the impression that there was maybe there were some serious disagreements among some Latter Day Saints who talked about Book of Mormon geography. And some people wanted to say, look, we need to help people, members of the church. We've got a lot of converts coming into the church. Can the church produce a map where we can get some general idea where these things happen?
And church leaders were very reluctant to do that.
When orson Pratt, the 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon, he puts in some footnotes, but even these are kind of tentative, believed to be this belief. Yeah, yeah. For example, Sidon river believed to be the Magdalena river or, or, you know, and so, so you have these, these references that you, in the 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon, Hill Cumorah talk about being in New York.
So there's, there's all of these different ideas and Orson Pratt talks about, expresses some of his ideas and talks that he's given. And, and we document those in the article.
So you have this in the 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon, which was an important addition to the Book of Mormon. But some people disagreed with some of the extra, the non canonical, the non textual items that were in the Book of Mormon. Some people disagree about the content of some of these footnotes.
Some people look at that, oh, the Church says this must be so other people, when they would disagree with it.
And so the Church is very reluctant. In 1890, George Q. Cannon publishes a brief article on Book of Mormon geography where he gives some counsel. He says, no, we've been asked to prepare a map.
And he says, but I don't know, the Church doesn't want to do so. And I don't know anybody in the First Presidency who feels competent to do that. Now remember, the First Presidency included Wilford Woodruff, who was in exactly.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: That would go in the Book of Mormon or something.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:00] Speaker D: Some kind of just an official map of Book of Mormon lands.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Yeah. That was endorsed by the Church. And this is what some people wanted them to do. And George Buchanan says no, First Presidency said no. And remember this is, they don't feel like they can speak authoritatively on Book of Mormon geography. And this is Wilford Woodruff and he had been in Zion's camp during the so called ZELF episode.
So if there were things about Book of Mormon geography in the ZELF episode, why wouldn't Wilford Woodruff, as President of the Church. Yeah. Who was in Zion's camp, feel competent to go out on the subject if
[00:40:36] Speaker C: it was indeed a revelation or at
[00:40:38] Speaker B: least if it pertained if the revelation to the specifics of Book of Mormon geography. Okay. So that's, I think the issue. It's not to say Joseph Smith didn't have some kind of revelation or revelatory experience in as it pertains to Book
[00:40:51] Speaker C: Mormon geography as a revealed pin in
[00:40:53] Speaker D: the map on Wilford Woodruff. It's actually interesting to look at his journal entry on that because he hedges on, he's talking about like we're, we're, we're going through the mounds that were thrown up by the inhabitants of this country. And he says probably the Nephites and the Lamanites.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:09] Speaker D: In his journal entry.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Now, he's not even confident in his journal.
[00:41:12] Speaker D: Years later, he. He makes more declarative assertions about that. But in the moment in. In his journal that he writes within a few weeks of the event, he says, probably thrown up by the Nephites.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: And even so, George Buchanan says the First Presidency, none of them, they're not
[00:41:29] Speaker D: willing to endorse a map, but they
[00:41:30] Speaker B: do give some good advice, and we'll talk about that toward the end here. But they advise careful study of the Book of Mormon texts. Members should read it. And of course, there's no harm in studying Book of Mormon geography. It's not heretical to try to understand those things, but they should just not understand that the church is not going to give you an official map for these various reasons. Now, here are four examples of some of the. Some. I think these are significant examples of limited geography, some of which were published, some which were not that we know about in the various sources. Various sources. But one of the earliest comes from 1886 from a fellow named Olivos Ayoi. I hope I. I'm pronouncing that right.
This was a brother who was a convert who's originally from Spain.
I think at one point he'd studied to become a Catholic priest and decided not to move to the United States. And where he learned of the church and came to Utah and he became one of. He joined the committee for the first complete translation of the Book of Mormon into Spanish. I think they were up in Logan, Utah, with one of the apostles and there were several other brothers that were helping with that. And because he came from Spain, he was very fluent. It was his native language. And so he was able to be of a lot of help in translating the Book of Mormon into Spanish. They want the Book of Mormon, a complete Book of Mormon, Spanish, because they're going into Mexico, they're going to want to go to South America eventually and do other things. You have another one from Colonel Willard Young, who was a son of Brigham Young.
He was actually the first man to serve at West Point. He's a great guy. He even defends the Book of Abraham in the 1912, 1913 controversy with Franklin Spalding.
But his stuff was never published. But he shares his ideas. In 1920, the church kind of sponsors a private meeting about people expressing different views of Book of Mormon geography. So his ideas were developed before 1920. We don't know how early you got. Gene Driggs published a little booklet called The Palestine of America in 1928, which I would love to get a. I've seen copies of.
I'd love to have my own copy. That'd be really cool. Where he has some maps and some ideas.
Very, very good. And then J. A. And Jan Washburn, 1939, published a little book on Approach on Approaching Book of Mormon Geography, which I still think is an extremely important book in terms of the history of discussion of Book of Mormon geography. That one is entirely internal. He's not trying to really place it in any particular place in the Americas. He's just looking at what the text says. And these are the conclusions based upon what the text says. And all of these brethren come up with limited Book of Mormon geographies, some of which actually place the destruction of the Nephites or the destruction of the Jaredites within Central America, which are. Which are kind of interesting. Now, some people who've looked at the history of Book of Mormon geography, they've suggested that, well, maybe people like John Sorensen later on and other people, they must have borrowed this idea. There was an RLDS fellow, last name of Hills, LE Hills, and.
And he published several booklets that had his ideas about Book of Mormon geography, where he's placing it in Mexico for the most part.
And he was a member of the RLDS Church, but the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ. And some people have said, well, Latter Day Saints who develop limited geographies, they got this all from Ellie Hills. It was from the RLDS Church, and they were not from our church. And so that must be bad somehow.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: As if just being RLDS automatically disqualified
[00:45:37] Speaker B: other people who believe in the Book of Mormon. It's not a very good idea. And I actually have an article that I'm working on, I hope to get published here in the near future, where I talk about some of these early geographies. If you compare what these early writers, these four that I mentioned, if you look at their ideas and where they're suggesting Book of Mormon places are, you find that they rarely match up with what Ellie Hills is arguing. They're in different locations.
They got the narrow neck of land in a different place than Ellie Hills does.
And another interesting thing that you find,
[00:46:17] Speaker D: it's maybe just worth noting that your Olivos, he predates LE Hills.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: That's right.
And RLDS publications about their geography, too. So, yeah, and he's way before Hills.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: So kind of turning around the 20th century, we really start to see people coalesce around. Okay, the Book of Mormon had to have taken place in a smaller area than just the entire hemisphere?
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Well, among some people, but certainly the
[00:46:48] Speaker D: hemispheric view still kind of prevents it.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: But it starts in the late 19th century and I think that that's significant. Now I want to talk about this first brother because most people don't know about him.
So Brother Aoy, he's up in Logan, Utah in 1886, and he's been helping with the translation of the Book of Mormon. And in the course of their translation, he's nearly done. He writes a letter to President John Taylor and the First Presidency of the Church, which is in the church archives.
And it's received by the First Presidency on November 19, 1886.
And in this letter you see on the right there, this is a map that he kind of drew in the contents of letter, trying to explain just as just my take on Book of Mormon geography. And he says some interesting things here.
And I think this is very important when we talk about Book of Mormon geography. At about the end of every page its contents are translated. And trying to assimilate as much as possible the expression of both language, he's trying to translate from English to Spanish.
I reconstruct the sentences anew whenever necessary from English into Spanish or vice versa, thus avoiding many uncouth discrepancies which otherwise might occur.
When engaged in the last translation of the unabridged edition already mentioned, I was inevitably induced to pause and ponder upon it many ungrammatical and even doubtful and obscure sentences, to say the least, and this chiefly on account of the very conscientious and scrupulous way in which said translation was conducted by its director, Elder J.J. stuart. So it happened that my mind was naturally led, forced, I must say, to compare, reflect, deduct upon many topics which otherwise would have been possibly overlooked and therefore might have passed over utterly unnoticed.
And here's another statement in his letter. Compare the imposing architecture of the temples in Yucatan with the mounds and rough constructions of the north continent and the undeveloped rough mounds of the northern Lamanites is plainly seen. So the footnotes are wrong. The book. Book is right. I misspelled that.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: It's a good mic drop moment.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: Yeah, the book is. The book is right. Okay, so he's, he's, he's questioning some of the non textual parts.
It's like, you know, the introduction or the, to the Book of Mormon, which is not part of the translation. You know, that's not what's essential here. He's just looking at it from the standpoint of a translator which has forced him to go look at it carefully, to go carefully, word by word, verse by verse, to try to understand these things. And then he's thinking, okay, well, where would this be? You know, what does this mean?
Here's another.
He says he writes a little footnote in his letter.
He's talking about Helaman 3.
[00:49:47] Speaker D: He's specifically calling out the footnote here.
[00:49:49] Speaker B: Helaman 3, where the people that go in the land northward, and that's where they build, build some. They use, they know, cement.
And there's a sea north, east, west, south. Okay. Well, he's. He says it cannot be the great continent of North America as is advertised in the footnotes.
[00:50:06] Speaker D: And so, I mean, you had a. You had that map up there.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: Well, he puts it.
[00:50:10] Speaker D: It looks like it's in the Yucatan.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: He thinks that Helaman 3 is in the Yucatan.
[00:50:15] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: And he has the. The sea west. He puts over in the Gulf of Mexico, Sea east, you got the Caribbean. The ocean north of the Yucatan is the sea north. And then he has the Pacific Ocean as the sea South. So I'm not saying. Again, we're not saying that he was right. Okay. But he's thinking about that. And that's what some of these early Latter Day Saints are trying to do. They're trying to make sense of these things. This is the map he published about the same time. He has this little map that he made based on some other map. And. And this is his limited geography. And the land southward, most of it is rarely. It's in the very north part of South America. You've got Panama with.
He thinks that's where the city of Lib was with that pass where they got blocked off in the Book of Ether. Okay. And then he has. But he has the. He doesn't have anything relating to the Book of Mormon, although he may have thought in terms of, you know, they call the hill New York, Cumorah. There's nothing north of the Isthmus of Tuanapec in Mexico that relates to the Book of Mormon. Everything else is putting.
[00:51:23] Speaker D: Well, and if I remember correctly, he does put the Jaredite destruction there in Central Mexico.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: Yes. And here he is. Here's some.
[00:51:32] Speaker D: And so that, by implication would put Cumorah.
[00:51:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So you take his letter and his little brochure that he put together. This is where he has these different things like the hill shimmer and the land Anthem between Nicaragua and Honduras. You've got the Jaredites being destroyed, you know, the land of desolation. He's got that down southeast of Yucatan,
[00:51:57] Speaker D: near El Salvador, I was too far north, even with central Mexico.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: Then he says the Jaredites first inheritance was the land of Moron in about Guatemala or Chiapas.
These are just his.
These are his opinions. Moroni and his father Mormon, the son of Mormon had lived near this land of Mormon or were born in it it.
Which is kind of interesting.
[00:52:18] Speaker D: That's not impossible.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: The destruction of the Jaredites had happened not by the hill Cumorah as is generally reported, but over 1500 miles southward, not far from the hill Shem.
So he's got this idea that most of the events of the Book of Mormon are happening in this limited model.
So anyway, there just some key points here to sum up.
Some LDS models, limited geography models predate those of the 20th century. And our LDS models, when you compare these with people like Ellie Hills, it's clear that there was no borrowing. Not that there would be anything wrong with that.
But if you look at them, they're not the same.
LDS models were formulated in a context of intensive scrutiny of the Book of Mormon texts. Each of those four guys I talk about, they say, you know, I've come to this conclusion based on the text, just very intense study of the text. And this is, this is what I've come to the. To decide.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: You're not saying like, oh, Joseph Smith found Zelf in this area, therefore I have to put it there. They're saying, well, what does the Book of Mormon say about it?
[00:53:29] Speaker B: Yeah, and they're. And they're. And then you have people later, people like Johnny Witzel, he says, well, you know, Zelt may have happened after a time. The Nephites and Lehi's people become dispersed all over. So we really don't know the details there. But here I think it's significant that intensive study of the text, which is what people like George Q. Cannon and others church leaders had advocated, counseled the Saints to do, led to this idea of a limited geography.
And some of these early geographies were entirely internal. So it's not that some of them, they're not even trying to put it in Central America, in a real world. They're just trying to understand what the text says and then make sense of that. So I think that's really significant that if you go through this process since Joseph Smith's day, you have this general idea of a hemispheric view. But then as they learn more and there's new discoveries in Central America and other places, the Saints start to pay more attention to these things.
And then you got people like Willard Young, who was an engineer, I think.
[00:54:36] Speaker D: Yeah, he was an engineer. And he went and worked in Panama.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: That's right. And so he's familiar with a lot of these places. And they're suggesting possible correlations in Central America.
And again, none of these things were presented as revelation. And the church decides not to take that position today. Can I have my own views about where the Book of Mormon took place?
Sure. It's. It's a, it's a problem that anybody can fall into about. We all have our favorite ideas and things. It's, it's part of human nature. Okay. Let's, let's face it. I mean, we're all, we're all, we all think that what, what we're individually doing is the most important thing that could be done. We wonder why everybody else isn't as excited about it as, as, as I am. You know, Boyki Packer, a few years ago, he offered this counsel. And I'm not trying to pick out any particular person. This is a warning for everybody. He says some members of the church who should know better pick out a hobby key or two and tap them incessantly to the irritation of those around them. They condole their own spiritual sensitivities. They lose track that there is a fullness of the gospel. They may reject the fullness in preference for a favorite note. This becomes distorted, leading them away into apostasy. So, you know, that can happen to anybody. Okay. On anything. And it's good counsel. You know, again, Book of Mormon geography, frankly, it's brain candy. Which is not to say it doesn't have its place. It's not.
It's an interesting piece. Area of knowledge. But there are limitations. We have limitations. And the church today says that. We do not claim revelation on where the events took place, other than that they were somewhere in the Americas.
[00:56:20] Speaker D: And that's. It's just worth noting.
[00:56:22] Speaker B: Does that include.
[00:56:23] Speaker D: Because that includes everything. Right. The Hill, Cumorah, the final battles.
It's worth noting we didn't get a chance to highlight some of the other statements that have been made over time. But that is a consistent position that the church or church leaders have issued,
[00:56:39] Speaker A: something that they've decided.
[00:56:40] Speaker D: Because our news going at least back to the George Q. Cannon comments that we've mentioned before. Right.
90. At least onward. It's been this consistent position that we don't know. There isn't a revelation.
[00:56:52] Speaker B: But it is so important that we follow the current counsel of the leaders of the church and that we don't spend all of our time quoting dead prophets who lived faithfully and did the very best with what they had, the knowledge that they had and had some revelations that the problem is a lot of church history and things like like the Zelf episode. They require interpretation.
The sources aren't exactly, as we first learned about them, what they are based on. And so we have to be careful not to base our testimony on these things that are outside of the text of the Book of Mormon and outside of the current counsel of the leaders of the Church, like we see in this recent statement that they have endorsed about the Church's position. Yes, there's nothing wrong with studying Book of Mormon geography. It can be fascinating. It can be rewarding. You discover many things in the text of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is wondrous. It's marvelous. It's beautiful.
How is it? Kirk Magleby likes to talk about it. It's miraculous.
[00:58:01] Speaker D: Beautiful and true.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: Miraculous, beautiful and true. It is. And but don't forget there is a whole symphony out there.
Don't forget that the little pieces that we learn, they're going to be part of a bigger picture, but we don't have everything yet.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: Well said. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. History of Book of Mormon Geography for those who want to dive in, Matt Roper has written an article about the history of Book of Mormon geography and what Church leaders have said in the FARMS Review. We're going to link to it in the description below. And remember, you can study deeply and believe boldly and we'll see you next time.
