Author: Jonathan Neville

I thought the captain of this little ship was getting lost. We were in the dugout canoe for about an hour.

My book The Lost City of Zarahemla doesn’t involve a search through the jungle, except metaphorically.

To figure out who wrote the anonymous articles in the Times and Seasons, I had to wade through the jungles and swamps of Mesomania.

And unlike my trip in the Amazon, I didn’t have a guide.

Ultimately, it was worth it, though.

For decades, these articles caused a lot of confusion about the Book of Mormon. Scholars embarked on semantic journeys to rationalize the obvious inconsistencies between what Joseph and Oliver taught about Cumorah and the plains of the Nephites on one hand, and what they thought he said about Central America on the other.

As you can imagine, it required a lot of imagination to concoct their two-Cumorahs theory, their idea that Joseph and Oliver were confused and ignorant and misled the Church, etc.

Now it turns out that Joseph never once linked the Book of Mormon to Central America.

We no longer have to pass through the swamps of Mesomania–unless we really want to for some reason.

At any rate, I haven’t seen the movie Lost City of Z. From the poster (below), it looks pretty good.

Maybe next year we’ll have another movie: The Lost City of Zarahemla.

Before I went to BYU, I had been taught the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon. At BYU, this was the universally understood and believed setting. On my mission, I bought books about Mayans and used all the approved artwork (Friberg, etc.) to teach investigators about the Mesoamerican setting.

When I left BYU, I became friends with an archaeologist who was doing a peer review of John Sorenson’s book, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. I still have a copy of that early draft somewhere. I visited sites throughout Central America (and the rest of the world, on every continent).

Then, after decades of accepting the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon, I realized it was all a huge mistake. There was a major error in Church history that led to the assumption that Joseph Smith linked the Book of Mormon to Central America.

I now realize he never did, and I’ve written several books about the mistakes.

But a lot of people still believe in the Mesoamerican setting, in spite of the evidence. You might enjoy reading Mesomania to understand the psychology behind this obsession. (Amazon).
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Some people think this book is a jab at the Mesoamerican theory, but it’s not. I really like and respect those scholars and educators who have promoted that theory, and that’s what led me to wonder what role psychology plays in all of this.

Most members of the Church don’t realize that the Mesoamerican theory depends on the Two Cumorahs theory, and when they do learn this fact, they are usually surprised, if not shocked. And yet, the true believers–the people who actively promote the Mesoamerican theory–actually do believe and embrace the Two Cumorahs theory. I really wanted to understand the reasons why people adhere to a theory that rejects what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said, that contradicts the text itself, and that doesn’t fit modern archaeology, anthropology, geology, geography, linguistics, etc.

In my opinion, most members of the Church were imprinted at a young age with images of Mesoamerica, mainly from the Arnold Friberg paintings, but also from other artwork, videos, books, articles, and maps. I’ve discussed this at length on this blog, such as here.

Because of this imprinting, Church members have inferred that the Church has endorsed, or quasi-endorsed, the Mesoamerican setting. That’s not the case, of course, but it’s easy to understand why people would think that. It is only when they learn how the Mesoamerican theory depends on the Two Cumorahs theory that they say, “Wait a minute.” When they learn that the LDS scholars and educators who promote the Mesoamerican theory outright repudiate what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said, they usually change their minds.

Just like I did.

I think Mesomania is fading in the light of new understandings about Church history and the relevant sciences. Eventually the confirmation bias that has perpetuated the Mesoamerican theory will be a thing of the past, and we will have a consensus about the Book of Mormon in North America.

But even then, people will wonder how the Mesoamerican theory persisted for so long.

That’s what Mesomania explains.

I included the back cover here because it summarizes the book pretty well.

I wrote this book to give context and background for Letter VII. You might enjoy reading it because it’s the only book that focuses on Letter VII. (Amazon).

Letter VII is the 7th of 8 letters that Oliver Cowdery wrote about the history of the Church. Joseph Smith helped write the letters and fully endorsed them on multiple occasions.

Letter VII declares as a fact that the final battles of the Nephites and Jaredites took place in the mile-wide valley west of the Hill Cumorah in New York.

This fact was well established during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. It wasn’t until around the 1920s that “scholars” began doubting what Joseph and Oliver said. They invented a so-called “Two Cumorahs” theory that claims the final battles took place somewhere in southern Mexico. (Others have claimed the battles took place in other parts of the world).

During Joseph’s lifetime, Letter VII and the New York Cumorah were well known and universally accepted. As I explained in Moroni’s America, I think the text and all available extrinsic evidence supports what Joseph and Oliver taught.

I think members of the Church everywhere should know what Joseph and Oliver taught, but LDS scholars have essentially suppressed Letter VII because it contradicts their Mesoamerican dogma. As more members of the Church read Letter VII for the first time, they come to understand for the first time what Joseph and Oliver actually said. They take another look at what they’ve been taught about Book of Mormon geography and realize that what they’ve suspected all along–that the Mesoamerican stuff doesn’t make sense–is actually the case.

Everyone who reads the Book of Mormon knows it says nothing about jungles, tapirs, jaguars, huge stone pyramids, or Mayans. There is no way to reconcile the Arnold Friberg paintings of Central America with what we actually read in the text. Certainly, we don’t read about Chichen Itza.

Many active LDS people have decided to live with the cognitive dissonance generated by the Mesoamerican and other non-New York Cumorah theories. Others have eliminated the cognitive dissonance by reading and accepting Letter VII.

But far more people–like 99+% in the world–will not live with the cognitive dissonance that comes with reading the Book of Mormon and being told that it describes a small group of Israelites who were absorbed into Mayan culture. It’s difficult to imagine a greater impediment to missionary work than expecting investigators to believe this Mesoamerican theory, especially when they’re also told that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery told the truth about everything except the New York Cumorah.

In my view, Letter VII is the antidote to the ongoing nonsense about Mesoamerica.

I was at a book signing for Moroni’s America when a woman came up to me and said she’s really like to read it, but it was too long. She flipped through it and saw the hundreds of footnotes and said she wanted something smaller.

A summary.

It was a great idea.

I condensed and simplified Moroni’s America into what we call the “Pocket edition.” Granted, you need a 5″ wide pocket, but this book is much smaller and offers a succinct introduction to the North American setting for the Book of Mormon.

You might enjoy reading it because most chapters are only 2 pages long. (Amazon)
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One of the big challenges for missionaries (full-time, part-time, and member-missionaries) is explaining the Book of Mormon to investigators and motivating them to read it for themselves.

I always recommend that people who read the Book of Mormon for the first time start with Mosiah. That way, people get the pure gospel in an accessible, inspiring way.

Later, after they’ve made it to Moroni, they can go back and read 1 Nephi.

Starting with 1 Nephi is like reading the New Testament beginning with the Book of Revelation.

I think there is a reason why the Lord put 1 Nephi first, as I explain in Before the World Finds Out, but I also think that was more suitable to earlier generations (mainly of Christians who knew the Bible) than to the current generation.

Mosiah is the perfect starting place for the current generation and for non-Christians around the world.*
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Speaking of people around the world, one reason I wrote the Pocket Edition is to help make the Book of Mormon understandable to nonmembers and people unfamiliar with Mormonism generally.

As part of that effort, we have adapted and translated the book into French and other languages are underway.

I’m hopeful that the distractions of the non-New York Cumorah theories (Mesoamerica, Baja, Peru, Chile, Panama, Eritrea, Malaysia, etc.) will fade into oblivion soon enough. IMO, it would be far better for people around the world to learn about the Book of Mormon from a perspective that supports and embraces what Joseph and Oliver said.

In my view, the sophistry used by the Mesoamerican scholars to justify their position and to reject what Joseph and Oliver said has no place in a worldwide Church that will soon have millions of new members.
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*(I think the Book of Lehi will work for them as well.)

One obstacle to reaching consensus is absurdity.

For a good example, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKwEeaQ_7gE

We have people wandering through Mesoamerica searching for Cumorah. Seriously. My favorite line in the presentation is, “We’re doing all we can while waiting for the Lord to give us more.”

These people are rejecting what the Lord already gave us. Why would they think the Lord would give more?

We have a few lines of ambiguous text from the Book of Mormon, granted. It’s possible to concoct any number of “requirements” for Cumorah depending on what assumptions we want to make and how far we are willing to “expand” the text.

But we also have the declaration by Joseph and Oliver that it was a fact that the final battles took place in the mile-wide valley west of the hill Cumorah in New York. We have the repository in that same hill.

There is (or should be) no ambiguity about the location of Cumorah in New York.

And yet we have serious people traipsing (to use John Sorenson’s term) through the jungles of Mesoamerica searching for a mountain that can “qualify” as the Hill Cumorah. They come up with their list of imaginary criteria or requirements based on a few vague passages and a whole lot of speculation. The most fun speculation is that Cumorah has to be near volcanoes, but not active ones that might have buried the site in ash. Plus, they need 2,000 hectares of land, and the hill Cumorah has to be smaller than the hill Riplah because of what the Onomasticon says about the word Riplah, etc. This sort of cascading series of assumptions moves the endeavor beyond absurdity.

There is also a “Hill Cumorah Expedition Team” from the Community of Christ, competing with LDS scholars to be the first to locate the hill Cumorah.

It is difficult to conceive of a more absurd pursuit than this.

Here is Team B’s website.

http://www.hillcumorahexpeditionteam.com/

Here is Team A’s website (with links to all its affiliates):

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/
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One thing they don’t explain is why they are looking in Mesoamerica. If it’s not because of the anonymous Times and Seasons articles, why limit the search to Mesoamerica? Why exclude Peru, Chile, Panama, Baja?

For that matter, why exclude the actual Hill Cumorah in New York?
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For bonus laughs, check out the comments.

 

Fair Mormon1 week ago

While he did make the above references you cited, he also made many other statements that placed The Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica, South America, Canada and the western US. This video we put together may help answer your question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rsyAExrNNc&t=813s

Reply 1  

That FairMormon video is every bit as ridiculous as the comical search for Cumorah in Mesoamerica.

I wrote Moroni’s America for members and nonmembers because I wanted to explain why Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery insisted that Cumorah was in New York.

Anyone who still believes in a non-New York Cumorah, whether in Mesoamerica or Chile or Baja or Malaysia or Eritrea, out to read Moroni’s America, if only to understand why so many members of the Church accept what Joseph and Oliver said about Cumorah.
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Once I realized that Joseph Smith had nothing to do with the anonymous articles in the Times and Seasons that were the genesis of the Mesoamerican theory, the next step was to analyze the text itself.

My wife made a list of around 300 geography-related verses and told me she wanted to know where everything took place. It was an awesome challenge. I started with 1 Nephi 1 and ended with Moroni 10.

I was actually surprised to see how well the Book of Mormon describes North America.

If you ignore everything Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said, and you just take the text and try to match it to a real-world setting, the closest fit, anywhere on the planet, is North America.

Nowhere else is even close.

I wrote Moroni’s America to explain how, IMO, the text describes North America.

Then, when you consider what Joseph and Oliver actually said and wrote, as well as what their successors have said and written, including in General Conference, and you factor in the prophecies and promises, and the fulfillment of those prophecies, you realize that no matter how you look at the question of Book of Mormon geography, everything points to the North American setting. 

This has become best known as the Heartland model. I like Moroni’s America because the significance is not merely geography, but the prophetic destiny and responsibility of the covenant land of promise, exemplified by General Moroni and clearly delineated by Moroni son of Mormon.
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Mesoamerican promoters like to say they are using the text as their primary rationale for locating Book of Mormon events in Central America. The text, they claim, is the highest authority on their hierarchy of evidence.

This is a cognitive fallacy, of course. Technically, it’s choice-supportive bias, also called post-purchase rationalization. It is a cognitive bias whereby people retroactively justify choices they’ve made. Once you decide where you want the Book of Mormon to have taken place, the text is vague enough that you can adapt it to almost any site in the world. You can “see” any culture in the text as well.

The common human tendency toward choice-supportive bias is why I take the approach of starting with what Joseph and Oliver said, and then seeing how the text supports and corroborates what they said. When you do this, Cumorah is in New York and everything else flows from there.
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Ironically, the Mesoamerican promoters started out with that same process. The difference is that they chose the anonymous Times and Seasons articles instead of Letter VII and other statements by Joseph, Oliver, David Whitmer, etc.

Incredibly, they chose to accept what Joseph did not say instead of what he did say. 

This is why they have come full circle to the point now that to continue to rationalize their choice of Mesoamerica, they must outright reject what Joseph and Oliver actually said.

Although they’ll deny it if you ask them, you can follow the history and see that the Mesoamerican promoters first decided where the events took place, based on the 1842 Times and Seasons articles, before they even considered the text.

The authors of those articles, some combination of Benjamin Winchester, William Smith, and W.W. Phelps, made their claims based on discoveries of ruins in Central America. They barely analyzed the text, and they didn’t care that the ruins themselves were anachronistic in terms of the Book of Mormon. They were focused on promoting the Book of Mormon for missionary work, and if that meant linking it to sensational finds in Central America, then why not?

Their successors, the modern-day Mesoamerican promoters, have pursued a fundamentally irrational approach. They acknowledge that the anonymous articles were incorrect (i.e., Zarahemla is not Quirigua, the ruins don’t line up to Book of Mormon time frames, etc.). Some even acknowledge that Joseph Smith had nothing to do with the anonymous articles.

Yet they persist in finding “correspondences” between Central America (Mesoamerica) and the text, all the while repudiating what Joseph and Oliver taught.

Their theory is not only completely detached from Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer and the rest. Their theory outright contradicts what Joseph, Oliver, David and the others said! They have reached the point where they are trying to persuade people not to believe Joseph and Oliver and David, solely because of the intense desire to rationalize their “purchase” of the Mesoamerican setting.

This is why they are drifting in confusion and sophistry to justify their theories. It’s apparent in everything they write about the topic. They “can’t unsee” Mesoamerica any longer. I call that Mesomania, a book I’ll summarize in the next few days.
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People ask why I keep writing about this. The reason is that Mesomania continues to confuse people and cause them to be disturbed in their faith. When the visitors centers and the missionary edition of the Book of Mormon itself continue to teach Mesomania, it’s not difficult to see why investigators and members alike are confused.

I’m optimistic that the right thing will happen. Eventually.

I realize this may all sound a little confrontational, but I think it’s important for people to know what is going on here. Not many people know what BMAF is, but BMC has done a lot of work and spent a lot of money to promote its message.

As always, I emphasize that I respect the views of everyone involved. On a personal level, I like them and am happy to work with them in any way possible. But I also think members of the Church and investigators should know that there is a specific agenda involved here that is not exactly listed on the splash pages of these organizations.
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BMAF is a strident advocacy group for the Mesoamerican theory. They actively promote the two-Cumorahs theory and the idea that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were ignorant speculators who misled the Church about the New York Cumorah through Letter VII, etc.

BMC is merely a front for BMAF. People who donate money to BMC are donating money to promote the Mesoamerican and two-Cumorahs theory.

It really is as simple as that.
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I wouldn’t bother bringing this up except that BMC provides material to promote their Mesoamerican theory that is spread throughout LDS culture, such as through Mesomania Magazine, aka Meridian Magazine.

Here is the Mission Statement of BMAF, found here:

If you can’t read it, it says:

The Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum (BMAF) is a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization dedicated as an open forum for presentation, dissemination, and discussion of research and evidences regarding Book of Mormon archaeology, anthropology, geography and culture within a Mesoamerican context.  Our goals are (1) to increase understanding of the Book of Mormon as an ancient Mesoamerican codex, (2) to correlate and publish works of LDS and CofC scholars, (3) to help promote unity and cooperation among scholars and students of the Book of Mormon, and (4) to provide a forum where responsible scholars can present current ideas and discoveries. 

Of course, by “responsible scholars” they mean “scholars who promote a Mesoamerican setting” that supports the organization’s mission.
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I call BMAF a club for Mesoamerican activists, and if you read their materials, you see it clearly. They make no pretense about following the Church’s official position of neutrality.

I have no problem with that because they are open about it.

That’s not the case with BMC, though. They have pretended to follow the Church’s policy in the past. But in reality, they are merely a front for BMAF.

Here is the explanation of how BMC is a front for BMAF, found here:

If you can’t read it, it says:

The legal organization behind Book of Mormon Central is the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, Inc., a 501 (c) 3 non-profit public charity chartered in the state of Utah in 1983.

Now, look at what BMAF wants people to believe about its mission:

Our Mission Statement

1. Build faith in Jesus Christ
2. Learn and cherish pure doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3-4)
3. “Remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon” (D&C 84:57)
4. Access scholarly evidence from BMC to answer hard questions about the Book of Mormon, including its origins—so that they “may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:5)

Those are laudable goals that I completely embrace, of course, but they forget to tell people about the mission of their corporate owner, BMAF, which I listed above.

We need to add #5 to the BMC mission statement:

5. Our goals are (1) to increase understanding of the Book of Mormon as an ancient Mesoamerican codex,

BMC’s pursuit of this unlisted goal has been apparent for a long time, based on the editorial slant of the BMC “Kno-Whys” and other material. It’s difficult for me to understand how they can build faith while promoting the Two-Cumorahs theory that undermines the credibility and reliability of Joseph Smith, David Whitmer, and Oliver Cowdery, but they have rationalized this in their own minds.
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As with BMAF, I would have no problem with it if they were more up front about it. By pretending to be neutral, BMC is not coming clean with their readers.

BMC adopted this statement in June 2016:

Book of Mormon Central Policy on Book of Mormon Geography – June 2016

• In our hierarchy of evidence, the text itself is primary because it is closest to the divine.
• If profound and compelling location-specific insights shed light on the text, we highlight these regardless of their geographic provenience.
• We favor authors with credentials in their areas of interest.
• We favor formally published works from reputable presses.

In reality, of course, these wonderful sentiments are a smokescreen over the goal of BMAF “to increase understanding of the Book of Mormon as an ancient Mesoamerican codex.” The content of BMC’s archive and the new material they produce is all designed to fulfill the BMAF goal.

In my opinion, it is tragic to have such a potentially valuable resource as BMC become nothing more than a souped-up version of BMAF.