Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Is Zeal evidence for the Book of Mormon and specifically a Book of Mormon geography.
So in the 1830s, Joseph Smith believes he came, comes across an individual named Zelf, and some people have even connected it to that. This is where like the final battles took place.
But we've brought Jerry Grover on to help us discuss that. Welcome, Jerry. Thank you for coming on the show. You are a Book of Mormon researcher and geologist by trade, and you've done research on the archeology of the site where Zelf was found. So before we dive into the archeology, let's just quickly get a recap. What is the story of Zelph? Neil, could you break that down for us?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Sure. In 1834, there's the conflicts that have been going on in Missouri for, you know, from actually the previous year or so.
And we get this revelation, Joseph Smith gets this revelation that's now Doctrine and Covenant Section 103, that they need to go redeem Zion. And so they gather a bunch of men and they start marching from Ohio to Missouri and this becomes known as Zion's Camp. And basically, as they're crossing, after they cross the Illinois river, some of the men, as the account goes, they climb up this Indian mound and Joseph Smith is with them. They dig into the mound and they come across this skeleton known as Zelf. And I do think it's important to note that, like you can read an account of this in the seven volume church history that sounds like it's Joseph Smith himself, like declaring, you know, saying this stuff. But we don't actually have an account from Joseph Smith himself. There is a letter that he writes to Emma where he talks about like wandering over the plains of the Nephites and picking up skulls. And so people think that's probably an allusion to this, but the actual account of what happened all comes from other people. Right. So what Joseph Smith did or didn't say, we, you know, you
[00:01:43] Speaker A: have to kind of piece together, we have to piece
[00:01:45] Speaker B: together from these different
[00:01:45] Speaker A: sources, diaries and journals.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: But we do have a number of primary sources that talk about it. People who were there and actually wrote pretty early.
But yeah, that's kind of the basic story about what happens.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: And it's kind of funny because, like, it's a quirky story and like, critics have made fun of this a lot because, like, first Joseph Smith comes up with the Book of Mormon and then he just like happens upon a hill and then says, oh, this was a Nephite named Zelph. Like it sounds a little out there at first.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Dlc, kind of.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: And I dealt with that a little bit in the paper. Meaning? Well, well, every comment of Joseph Smith, I mean, some people will say that's not accurate. It was not a revelation. Right. When he ate breakfast in the morning, when he talked.
Right.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Not every word is the infallible. Right.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: So it's kind of the question, is this not in the Doctrine and Covenants? Right. So it's
[00:02:39] Speaker A: not. It's not canonized.
[00:02:40] Speaker C: Yeah. So they're like. And so kind of on the church, they kind of call it like an open vision of sorts.
And it doesn't really.
It doesn't have doctrinal points in it. So it's like, why would it be canonized? But it does appear to be by the descriptions that people wrote in their journals. Right. That were on the. That were up on the mound.
That was a vision. Right. He had a vision. So I said, okay, we'll treat it as a revelatory experience.
Okay. So it was. And so if we're looking at it, what. What was the revelatory experience? And does it square with archeology?
Does it? And then if it does, to what extent is it related to the Book of Mormon, for example? And one reason you would ask that is because, well, it says Lamanite. So there's some reason, I can see why people would say, oh,
[00:03:28] Speaker D: to connect them.
[00:03:29] Speaker C: Yes. But
[00:03:30] Speaker D: so you've got a lot of moving parts here. It sounds like you've got to deal with the documentary record of what was actually said there at the mound with Joseph Smith. As Neil said, we don't have any firsthand statements. It's secondhand. It is from people who are there who are hearing Joseph Smith. So it's not just purely hearsay, but it is secondhand. We have to deal with that. We have to deal with the science and the archeology of the site. And then we have to deal with how does this correlate or not with our Book of Mormon geography. And what I find sometimes a bit frustrating, but I guess kind of understandable is a lot of times people just want to kind of jump to, oh, there is a Lamanite, therefore Book of Mormon. Right. And like. And it has some sort of prophetic imprimatur that because of self, therefore we know by revelation. Right.
The Lord has revealed Book of Mormon geography because of Zelf. But I think what you wisely are pointing out here is that it's way more complicated than that.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: So what can we make sense of? How can we make sense of these primary documents?
[00:04:27] Speaker C: Others have done that research. There's a fellow named Godfrey with BYU some time ago, and he actually produced, looked at the sources, said which ones are probably the more primary sources. And then of course, you have multiple sources and they're not going to be exactly completely the same. Right. There's going to be some gaps where some people said some things, others didn't comment on that, and some maybe kind of almost contradictions kind of things. So he has actually made this appendices in a matrix where he talks about these are the sources, these are the kind of the elements of the vision and which one, you know, kind of lays it all out so people can actually say, okay, that jives or that doesn't. I looked at the things that were relevant to the inquiry and said. And then I kind of indicated.
And we'll get to that. It's in the paper of the things that I was interested in, which ones actually had concurrence, meaning they kind of basically said the same thing. Not that every one of them, some of them didn't comment on that element, but there was nothing contradicting the element. So I was trying to narrow it down, say, okay, here's the commonalities. It seemed to be actually more, you know, that's what you do when you're looking at
[00:05:39] Speaker B: multiple sources.
[00:05:40] Speaker C: Yeah, multiple sources to get the narrative as correctly as you can.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: So based, like when we peel back the layers of these sources, what are some of the bare facts that we think we can reasonably say? Like Joseph Smith said, he comes across this skeleton and says his name was Zelf. Is that something that's pretty consensus, Staun.
[00:05:57] Speaker C: So I've made a list here of things that are all essentially agreed upon or some were silent. But it's basically, there was an individual named Zelf. He was a warrior, a captain, a man of God, prophet, white Lamanite.
He fought under Onondagus. I don't know if the pronunciation is correct there because I wasn't part of the vision, but
[00:06:17] Speaker D: we're going with that. Sure, why
[00:06:18] Speaker B: not? You know, there's some spelling oneedegas
[00:06:21] Speaker D: come up with a new pronunciation, put the emphasis on the different syllables.
[00:06:25] Speaker C: I'm just using Onondagus.
There were great battles, and Zelf was killed by an arrow in battle. Onondagus was a king, good man, leader, prophet. Onondagus was known from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Sea or hill Cumorah. There's a little bit of kind of variability in that reference.
Not the Rocky Mountains, but the other way. The mound was built by ancient Inhabitants of this country, specifically Onondagus, had the mound constructed. There's some differences relating to the potential Book of Mormon setting in the various accounts, which is part of my inquiry is that four of the primary witness events do not indicate the nature of the death other than by an arrow.
Some are just killed in battle.
One says last destruction among the Lamanites.
There was a much later one that was the last struggle with the Nephites and Lamanites that actually Godfrey says that seems to just be way laid because somebody has tried to make.
It's not necessarily when they're writing it, they've just made the assumption based on their knowledge of the Book of Mormon. Oh, this must be what it's talking about.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: You see that first list, like, okay, warrior, Lamanite prophet. And so it's easy to see where you'd want to connect those dots and be like, oh, of course, this must be somewhere in the Book of Mormon and someone to kind of just make those connections without it actually being explicitly stated.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: So this is actually something where I do think it's helpful to go back to the official statement, like the statement in the church history document, because it has some of these, it includes some of these elements that people have used to link it directly to Book of Mormon geography. When you actually go back to the manuscript itself, the Church history manuscript, and that's on, we can probably put that up in screen from the Joseph Smith papers. You can actually see all the elements. The reference to Nephites as part of the last great struggle, the reference to the hill, Cumorah and even the word last.
All of those things get struck out in the manuscript sometime before 1843 and they only get restored later after Joseph Smith is dead. So we don't know if Joseph Smith was the impetus for striking those out, but we know he was not the one who put them back in because he was dead when they got put back in.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Like I said, I didn't go into a lot of that's.
I'm relying on this other research and God has kind of gone through that. And so I'm just taking what he has in his matrix.
One was one individual. I know he's a troublemaker, so maybe Joe Smith was trying to reprimand him or something, saying the land was called the land of desolation.
[00:08:55] Speaker D: Talking about Sylvester Smith there. Yeah, poor guy.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: But anyway, so one individual said that. No other witness recounts that. So again, that's. Why am I listing that? Well, that's related to Book of Mormon geography potentially.
[00:09:08] Speaker D: If the assumption is a hemispheric geography which most Latter Day Saints have, then they're going to assume the land of desolation is the land northward, which is North America. And so it's understanding how you get there.
[00:09:18] Speaker C: Yeah, but I understand if that was part of the vision. I mean, there are a few things that somebody might point out, say, oh, maybe this does. But again, part of the scientific inquiry is to actually determine whether it might help us clarify the recountings, which ones maybe are a little more accurate. Right,
[00:09:36] Speaker D: right, of course.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: So then the third one was just Zelf, as opposed to. And Onondagus was known from Nelada to the Rocky Mountains.
So that kind of just narrows the data that I'm looking at from the vision itself.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: And so with that information, you can come to a conclusion that, like, well, maybe this is just a person that has nothing to do with the actual events of the Book of Mormon, but is just like one of the descendants of or dispersing groups from the original Nephites and Lamanites. And that's kind of always the assumption I had had when encountering this story, that this is just not the primary events of the Book of Mormon, but it's just something that is related too distantly from people in the Book of Mormon. Or you can come to the conclusion that, like, this is a definitive statement that this is like the Book of Mormon took place in this area right here at the last battle, and this was one of the participants in that actual story.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: And so I don't know, what does the archaeology say?
[00:10:29] Speaker C: Well, and see, there was kind of two questions. Is one, is, is this vision consistent with the known archeology? Then the second question is, what about Book of Mormon geography? Right. There are actually two separate questions because you can argue about the geography, but, hey, was there a potential for Onondagus to be known from the. You know, was there a.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: That's a big claim.
[00:10:54] Speaker C: Yes. Was there a culture that went from Atlantic all the way to the Rocky Mountains? Evidence of that?
You know, that's kind of the primary. Is what. What is the underlying culture of the mound?
And then whether or not, you know, he. The.
You can just. You can show that. I mean, we're obviously not going to find Onondaga a stone with Onondagus on it. If somebody does, you know, that's probably some fraudulent thing, but so it's kind of like, okay, could theoretically this individual have been known in that culture that stretched from those points? The mound itself is from the Hopewell culture. The Hopewell culture I'm not going to go into great detail.
It does overlap timeframe with Book of Mormon times. So it's not inconsistent with that. It's like 100 BC to 400 or 500 AD isn't what they say. I mean, obviously no culture just starts on a particular date.
So.
So they do find that there are elements, trade elements, all the way from south to north to the Atlantic, over to the Rocky Mountains. Obsidian from Yellowstone, for example. Because you can actually trace where
[00:12:10] Speaker B: obsidian comes
[00:12:11] Speaker C: from. Yes. And so you say, okay, actually the culture sphere the vision talks about is correct.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: So hypothetically, a significant person within that culture could have been reputable throughout that region.
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Well, yeah. And so. And here's kind of the point too, is that they're looking at the trade networks and, you know, there's different ways trade can work, but usually it's like point to point to point to point. They're not. But actually, archaeologists are saying there's evidence, at least in this central place, actually kind of in the area of the Zelf Mound, is that there were pilgrimages. So it wasn't. They had the central core area with the large mounds and the circular.
So it's actually very possible that he could have been known even by the point to point. Perhaps people knew, but
[00:13:01] Speaker D: just word of mouth, his reputation. Yeah,
[00:13:03] Speaker C: but it looks like there were people that maybe were traveling all the way there and going back. So there was like a direct possibility of transmission of the knowledge of this individual. Does that make sense?
[00:13:13] Speaker D: Yeah, for sure.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: Yes. And so I would say that the archaeology that we know of the Hopo culture is saying, yes, the vision is not inconsistent with the known archeology.
Interesting. Yes.
So it's helpful to say I'm not trying to attack or not even prove the vision. I'm just comparing it. It's like, well, that vision actually is consistent.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: What's actually in the mound? What can we say about burials that may or may not be there?
[00:13:40] Speaker C: Okay. Yes. And so the mound was excavated.
This is the primary source of information. It's excavations by Kenneth Farnsworth. He had some other earlier excavation publications, but they mostly got incorporated into this book.
And so that's kind of where most.
That's the one who's done most of the digging in this area, on that mound and in the general area. So let's kind of go to.
That's like. That's the COVID of the book. There's a district. So it's. It's not like I just have one mound. Right. So there's a series of mounds, and the culture lives in that area. So the. The mounds are funerary mounds, if you want to call them that, in the sense that they're typically where bodies are buried. Of course, there's other artifacts buried with them, probably, as, you know, going along with the burials. But that's the function of most of the Hopewell mounds.
And so you have this kind of archeological area within that area. You have the Napoleon Hollow Archeological district.
I don't know how well you can see, but it's the Naples Russell mounds, and they're up there on the north,
[00:14:44] Speaker B: right up at the top of the map there.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: And the reason I'm showing all this is because there's also some questions, as you get to, like, the Book of Mormon archaeology, related to, like, potential for late burial. So it's important because they actually. I'm kind of using some data from elsewhere in that area of mounds that they've looked at to look at some of the issues of Book of Mormon geography. Now, this is the mound group itself. So there's the primary mound.
There's other smaller mounds there to the side.
And it's kind of a lobed peak. There's kind of a flat saddle is what they call it. They used to. They actually thought, hey, maybe that saddle is just some looter excavation. But then they've actually. They did it. They go, no, that actually was built that way. They do think it is a unique.
A unique mound. It has some differences.
And so this gives you kind of the topographic map kind of general, the. The mound itself. Now, one of the things that.
That the paper is talked about in the paper is that you have one description in Wilford Woodruff. Where did they dig on the mound?
Some people said they went to the top, but they didn't talk about digging. He actually said they went halfway down the mound and dug into the side. And so these are the looter.
They actually noted areas that had been excavated for looting.
Some they had refilled earlier because they tried to, like, you know, archaeologists and that didn't want people up there looting. So they kind of try to restore it. But there is two that are about halfway down. There's a larger one there on the right side of your, you know, which would be to the east. And there's a smaller. And to scale, that smaller one, those little squares is actually where they did excavations. So those aren't. And the smaller one is about two meters. I mean, the dimensions. So that's a possibility, too. So the story is consistent with what they're finding as the excavation sites. So again, this is kind of just copying out of my paper, but it says it underwent in 2001. It's bound number eight. That's what it's called.
It's basically saying, yes, it was kind of a funerary.
And they actually think there was some area like for prep of the body of the. So it was more than just, hey, we're digging it there. They're actually like doing some prep. That's what they're theorizing. But they took the highest the skeleton that was probably the last burial.
Joseph Smith the Vision. When they went up there, there were some bones scattered around on the surface. So it's not necessarily the last one because maybe there had been some looting or some erosion or something.
But this was the last one they determined in the mound.
But it's probably pretty. There wasn't that much that they determined would have been removed or from erosion or something. So those are probably just looter skeletons, you know, that have been people. And it said that they dug down. Joseph Smith the Vision. Not the vision, but just the recounting of the vision says that they dug down a foot or two to get to the skeleton, to the self skeleton that they discovered. But the last skeleton here that was interred, the radiometric dating gives it a date of 91 A.D.
i put the calibrated range in there. I don't know if people are familiar with radiometric dating, but it's a statistical range. And so two sigma is like 95% probability of 91, but it can stretch to 58 to 127 AD. So that's your range.
There's no intrusive burials, which would be kind of the issue that you get to geography is like, oh, hey, maybe Zelf got buried later.
[00:18:29] Speaker D: That was my first kind of thought. Because that does happen commonly. Tombs get reused and so forth. Yeah,
[00:18:34] Speaker C: yeah. And they observed no intrusive burials here or in the entire district. So it's not likely
[00:18:43] Speaker D: that it's being reused.
[00:18:45] Speaker C: The other issue is, even if you're talking about a burial on the top, the recounting of the vision said Onondagus, who was contemporary because Zelf operated under Onondagus. He was the one that built the mound.
And so
[00:19:00] Speaker D: it has to be built in the first century.
[00:19:02] Speaker C: Yes, it has to be built when the. He has to be buried when the mound was initially he's not a later burial.
[00:19:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:08] Speaker C: And I kind of say even if you. Even if he was like they kind of finished the mound, that his life Went, okay, maybe you could stretch it to like 177 AD but
[00:19:18] Speaker D: you're not going to get to 400 AD
[00:19:19] Speaker C: yes. The time that they take the best case. Best case for that argument, which I'm willing, I entertain arguments say, okay, the best case for that would be 177 or something. And that also becomes important when we look at the Book of Mormon itself. Comparison.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: So from what I understand, you've got this burial mound and the burials at the bottom are gonna be the earliest burials. And then as the mound continues upward, those are later burials. But the latest burial is dated to about 91 A.D. give or take A.D. 58 to 1 27. So the book of Mormon battle takes place in like the 400-00 A.D. this M.O. was finished in like the 1st century to 2nd century A.D.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: right. And so that. And that's where, you know, the discussion of the later burial comes in. It's like, well, the mound itself clearly was not that late. And then there's no indication of late burials. Even if it was the vision.
The recounting of the vision requires Zelf to be within the time frame of when the mound was built. Even if he was. Even if he was the very last guy.
[00:20:22] Speaker D: So based on the sources, either you can have Zelf at the time the mound is built, or you can have him at the final battle of Cumorah, but you can't have him at both.
[00:20:33] Speaker C: Yeah, and also, it was kind of. They found it in the side. So it's almost like you would not expect that even to be the last burial.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: So in other words, basically based on the archaeology of the mound and even really the whole mound group and the contents of the vision, like you said, if Onondagus is the one who actually commissions the mound in the first place, then you'd think Zelf is going to be one of the earlier burials.
But based on this archaeology, you can't put Zelf in the time period of the last battle or last battles.
How could he? Or, you know, what can we say about Book of Mormon events and archeology based on this?
[00:21:15] Speaker C: Okay, let's go to the.
So evidence of the Zell story does not take place in Book of Mormon lands. Okay, first of all, you got a widely known prophet, Onondagus, and Zalf, who is a significant figure, is not mentioned in the text by Mormon or Moroni. Again, these are prophets, known man, righteous men, as indicated to be living in the area of the Book of Mormon. I mean, he's never mentioned.
You would kind of think that that might be something Mormon might mention or Moroni might mention. Okay. Especially if you're talking like last battle.
They also indicate Mormon. There's no righteous people around that time frame.
Right. So we got these righteous people. Mormon, Moroni are not living where there's righteous people. So there's kind of that problem with.
Again, it's trying to place it at the time of the last battle type of thing. The Zelf skeleton located further down the hill. I'm just saying maybe circa 25 A.D. i mean, nobody, you know, didn't.
They didn't take skeletons from that level or anything, but saying, well, it's not the top.
Could not be. The other issue is it could not be a candidate to be involved in any final battle because it's too early. Right.
Much later, which we talked about during the period that the Book of Mormon encompassed by 91 AD using the radiometric, it indicates there were no Nephites or Lamanites or Ites. So they wouldn't even be called Lamanites.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's a period of peace.
[00:22:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
Right.
If you kind of take. Okay, let's take the later end. You do have in the Book of Mormon, there was a small part of the people left the church and took upon themselves the name Lamanite that's in Fort Nephi. But again, those are people that are against. They're not righteous people.
So, okay, that term, maybe you can argue that term could fall within the range of the radio. Again, I'm being generous in the devil's advocate kind of argument here. So again, Neil mentions a period of peace, approximately 85 in my chronology in the Book of Mormon calendar is somewhere around.
Way too early.
And there's no contention among all the people in all the land. No battles start until 321. Again, my chronology is 315 AD that's still. People can argue plus or minus four or five years. Yeah,
[00:23:34] Speaker B: I mean, it's not a significant.
[00:23:36] Speaker C: Because I have Christ's birth at 6 BC in my chronology book. So.
So that's basically kind of the problems that you run into. I don't really talk about it. But then there's kind of the question of like Lamanite, you know, why would they use the term Lamanite if it's not a Book of Mormon land? Right. So Bowen, I think, indicates that, you know, Laman means unbeliever. Right.
[00:24:02] Speaker D: Lo Amon went without faith.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: Right. And so. And actually the. I'm not going to talk about my research on Egyptian, but that actually matches the term. I didn't really know that at the time. It's unbeliever. There's a glyph that's unbeliever for Lamanites. So it could just be. This is a general classification of that group. It's not necessarily.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: I've kind of always gotten the sense that when the Book of Mormon's talking about Lamanites, it's not always like layman's children and descendants, it's just like outsiders. Non Nephites are Lamanites.
[00:24:28] Speaker C: Exactly. And that's. And you see that reflected in the Book of Mormon, too. Not always. It's kind of confusing for people because sometimes they are referring to some tribal lineage or something.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Right?
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:37] Speaker C: Or political organization.
But generally you can just.
It's not inconsistent. If you're saying if it's not in that area, it's not inconsistent that you have Mesoamerica and they're just calling these people this just a group of Lamanites kind of unbelievers.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: One thing that I do think is interesting based on the dating of that mound, is it's about that time in the Book of Mormon, like the early chapters of Helaman, the final chapters of Alma, where you actually do get an account. Accounts of people going up into a land northward and then just kind of falling out of the narrative completely. They're never talked about again. And so I think
[00:25:17] Speaker A: timing tracks. I
[00:25:17] Speaker B: think Mark Wright actually talked about in his paper Heartland is Hinterland. He kind of proposed that, hey, maybe Zelf and Onondagus are part of some kind of colony that came out from those northward migrations. And they're just. They're up there and they've just kind of fallen. Of the Book of Mormon narrative. We can't prove that. Right. But maybe it's
[00:25:37] Speaker A: fun speculation.
[00:25:38] Speaker C: I think Hagoth would have had to go all the way around the Arctic and up the Mississippi or something.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Well, sure,
[00:25:43] Speaker C: it probably wasn't him.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Sure. But you do have, like, in the early chapters of. Yeah, in the early chapters of Helaman, you have people migrating by land and they go so far northward that they're just kind of never talked about again.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's interesting, kind of. My theory there is. It's like people are. Why is. Why is. Why are they mentioning Hagoth and all that? It's because it's a lineage history of sorts. And so they're still talking about them a little bit because they are part of their lineage. Even though they're no longer known where they are, they still, you know, What I'm saying, it kind of completes more of a complete lineage history, if you want to call it. It's not really history, but a lineage text. Right.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: The other thing I've always found odd about the idea that Zelf was part of one of these last battles, which apparently maybe wasn't coming directly from Joseph Smith, but some of these other extra accounts that have kind of been Interpol, like, well, the Zelf mount is like nowhere near the hill Cumorah.
How do people make sense of that?
[00:26:41] Speaker D: I had the same question. Because if it's part of the final battle, I think John Sorensen famously said, what are they trapezing across the continent? Right. All the way to, like, how would that work? Exactly.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: You can answer. Turn
[00:26:53] Speaker C: it over to Neil.
I think he gave a presentation.
Did you publish something or did you actually give a presentation?
[00:26:59] Speaker B: I did not publish anything.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: Okay. But he actually.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: I looked into that particular question and I actually, I have a map. We can put it on screen.
When we put this out.
The Zelf mound to the Cummill Cumorah is 734 miles about away. And that's like as the crow flies. So you've got to go over one of the Great Lakes. So walking distance is going to be way, way more. Now, there is a map that was published by a heartland organization that kind of tells you where what they're thinking is on this.
And again, we can put this up on screen, but they do. Like, this is their map showing the northward retreat of the Nephites in the little B. Book of Mormon. Right.
And on this map, they seem to be putting Zelf and his battle in the fighting that happens in Mormon 1.
Well, that fighting is dated to Book of Mormon year 322. Okay.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Which already we've discovered does not match with the archaeology.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Which doesn't match with the archaeology, but also is over 60 years before the destruction in Cumorah. And so my question there is, would that really be considered part of the last battle? Right, right.
That's like conflating World War I, World War II, the Korean and Gulf War, like, everything.
[00:28:26] Speaker D: The Iraq War.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, that's like conflating all of that stuff as one big conflict where like. No, those are discrete periods of conflict. And I actually, I spent way more time than I should have yesterday building this timeline here to help people see this. The red zones on this timeline are conflicts that happen in the land of Zarahemla, which is where it is on the heartland geography where you could potentially have someone like self getting killed.
The Little skinny, dark red one here is a maybe, maybe that one is in the land of Zarahemla.
It's an advance by the Nephites from their northward countries to try and reclaim land. They get repelled immediately. And Mormon isn't even leading. This is when they're so wicked that Mormon has ceased to lead them. So it's probably not a time when a great prophet and righteous warrior named Zelf are actually part of the conflict.
But the light blue sections, there are periods of no conflict. And so you've got at least those conflicts in the 320s where Heartlanders are placing Zelf's death. There are at least three major, like several years of peace in between there. Before you get to where I consider you start getting to what I would say is like the last battles zone that start in, in Nephite year 375. I don't know what that translates to in Jerry's chronology, but that's where you get, and you get the sense in it can be easy if you just read the small Book of Mormon, you're like, oh, all of these battles are last battles. But no, this is spanning over 60 years.
And it's really at 375 where you really get the sense that like they're on the retreat, they're facing their demise. There is like a four year break, but it's between 380 and 384 when they battle at Camorra. But that break is deliberately taken so that they can basically set up for this the great final battle. So that is if you want to say someone died in the last battles, at least as far as I'm concerned. You've got to fit them into what's going on from 375 to 384.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: And that makes sense. Again, we mentioned some of the accounts, some of the stories going around Zion's camp, that it was part of the land of desolation. If you have a hemispheric geography and you're in the land of desolation, well, that actually makes some sense. And you can see why people would have made this association with the last battles. But once you try to shrink the geography down to and your entire Nephite geography is across the eastern United States and you're putting this in the land of Zarahemla,
[00:30:58] Speaker D: it's no longer a land of desolation, it's
[00:30:59] Speaker B: no longer land of desolation. It really doesn't make a lot of sense to say this is someone who died in the last Battles.
[00:31:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:31:06] Speaker C: And just so you know, a lot of my research is not like, oh, I'm attacking a model or whatever. I mean, I just do research and whatever the results are, you just need to take that into consideration when they're constructing their models.
[00:31:18] Speaker D: Sure, yeah.
[00:31:19] Speaker C: I mean, there's some Mesoamerican models. Got really mad when I did the geology of the Book of Mormon.
[00:31:24] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:31:24] Speaker C: Because I had ammonia where there was like no faults or potential for seismic activity. Right. And you had this huge earthquake. So I'm just saying, I don't care.
My goal is not to like, I'm just saying I present it and then here's the data. If you think you have different scientific data, great, then we could talk about that. But it's like if you're doing models, you probably need to take into consideration the science and the archeology and the facts when you're trying to construct your model. And so I'm saying this is just one where it's like, this clearly was not.
This vision was not related to something that happened in Book of Mormon area.
[00:32:00] Speaker D: Well, that's interesting. And you know, I think we should point out that we're not necessarily saying that Zelf and Onondagus could not have been real people, that this could not have been a legitimate vision by Joseph Smith.
Zelf has never been my kind of big thing. It's always been kind of a curiosity to me, but like, sure, who's to say, Right. Joseph is a prophet. He can have visions like that if he wants.
So I hope our listeners won't think that we're just trying to get people don't believe Joseph Smith had a vision or something. Right. We're asking bigger questions on how do we tie. If we accept that he had a vision about a Lamanite named Zelph, which. Sure, why not? How do we tie that in with this? So long as we're doing our kind of speculative, extended DCU Book of Mormon universe. Right.
I mean, Jesus in third Nephi says that he has other sheep to go visit besides the Nephites. Even says, others will I go visit besides you? You know, who's to say if he doesn't go visit a little pocket of Book of Mormon descended peoples up in Illinois or something commissions a prophet named Z. I'm just making it up, but you can see how, you know, we can have a little bit of epistemological humility here. Epistemic humility. And how do we fit this with the Book of Mormon? Different ideas, different theories. We can bandy about it doesn't have to be an all or nothing. Either you believe Joseph Smith or you believe the archeologist. You can't believe both. No, we can accommodate this as you're saying. Yeah, and I think that
[00:33:14] Speaker C: was the first point is actually this is consistent. The vision is not inconsistent with the known archaeology. I'm not going to exalt for the names, but at least of the general description of what was going on at that time. There's Hopewell culture, they're extensive. They had trade networks where people could know things. So the vision is not inconsistent with archaeology at this point. So I'm saying.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Which is great.
[00:33:36] Speaker C: Yes,
[00:33:37] Speaker D: good for us,
[00:33:38] Speaker A: looking at all this that we've discussed. I mean, I think critics of the Book of Mormon look at that self story and say, Joseph Smith's just clearly making up fan fiction here. And I don't know that anything in this discussion definitively proves or disproves that. But you have shown that there's plausibility to at least the descriptions. We can more confidently pin to Joseph Smith about the trade networks maybe extending from Rockies to Atlantic. And then the dating may be matching with like migratory groups that just break off from the Nephites and Lamanites and kind of get dropped from the story.
But we do have to be careful to not like pin geographic models based on this story because the dating doesn't match the last battle and the geography doesn't match where the last battle. And
[00:34:20] Speaker D: the accounts don't match each other in some
[00:34:21] Speaker A: details. Match each other.
[00:34:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:34:22] Speaker C: I mean, if you care about science and using it to help determine where your geographic models are, this is one point.
Just like my geology of the Book of Mormon had different points, different parameters. I'm just saying I'm not necessarily the guy selling for particular models or whatever. I do have my own things where the evidence indicates it probably is. And I don't spend a lot of time often. I mean, this was just interesting curiosity. I'll look at it, but I kind of try to spend my time doing research in areas where more likely happened. You know,
[00:34:54] Speaker A: if you are interested in learning more about the archaeology and how it pairs up with the Zelf story, you can find Jerry Grover's paper from the Interpreter foundation in the description. And you can also go to his website that we'll link to where you can find all of his research. Remember, you can study deeply and believe boldly. And we'll see you next time.
Sam.
