Author: Jonathan Neville

Two weeks ago I was in Salalah, Oman, to take a look at one of the candidates for Lehi’s land Bountiful in Arabia. 

The discussion on wikipedia is an excellent summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountiful_(Book_of_Mormon)

I discussed this on the Mormon Book Reviews youtube channel, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCR4n8jie1E

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I think Khor Rori makes the most sense, but reasonable people can reach different conclusions. The area around Salalah and Khor Rori has plenty of water and abundant honey, fruit, etc. Even when we visited in February, well into the dry season, waterfalls were running. 

Nephi explained that “Now I, Nephi, did not work the timbers after the manner which was learned by men, neither did I build the ship after the manner of men; but I did build it after the manner which the Lord had shown unto me; wherefore, it was not after the manner of men.” (1 Nephi 18:2)

It’s also interesting that, ss the wikipedia page on Khor Rori explains, the site was not known to the western world until it was discovered in 1895.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khor_Rori

The explanation at the visitor’s center is a nice depiction of how I see Lehi’s ship departing:

(click to enlarge photos)

The cliffs on both sides of the harbor are natural, as you can see in some of the other photos I showed in the video on Mormon Book Reviews:

Wadi Darbat in the mountains north of Khor Rori, the source for the river the flows out to the sea.

Khor Rori viewed from the mountains

The ruins at Khor Rori

Ruins in the foreground

Display of ship

Our guide

The ancient trade routes.

It’s easy to see how Lehi would have sailed south along the east coast of Africa before sailing west to America, as Isaiah described in Isaiah 18:1.

Overview of location of Oman

Seaside cliffs

Our guide

Source: About Central America

Maybe it’s because I’m a Pathway missionary myself, but I’m particularly enthusiastic about the BYU-Pathway program. Last night they inaugurated President Ashton in a event every Latter-day Saint should watch or at least read about. This is how we build Zion in our day, as I’ve mentioned on my Zion blog several times.

You can watch the inauguration here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/broadcasts/languages/byu-pathway-mar10-inauguration/2022/03?lang=eng

Or read this article:

https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders-and-ministry/2022-03-11/elder-holland-inaugurates-new-byu-pathway-worldwide-president-ashton-245776

Elder Holland explained:

“I consider the creation of BYU–Pathway Worldwide to be the most important and most far-reaching development in the Church Educational System of this Church since the creation of seminaries and institutes of religion over a century ago.”

The article continues:

After emphasizing BYU–Pathway’s mission to made education more accessible across the globe and all economic levels, President Ashton said the Church’s education institutions need to increase awareness of BYU–Pathway, allow its operating model to be scalable for whatever size is needed, continue to seek to decrease costs, provide scholarships to meet needs, and offer mentorships.

Other needs include overcoming technological barriers, exploring non-English avenues, simplifying application and endorsement processes, shortening time to graduation and helping students more effectively prepare for jobs.

“As we build disciple leaders and make the blessings of education available and affordable to more of God’s children — thus bringing the Holy Ghost more fully into their lives — we will assist in filling the world with truth and light and help bring an increasing number of the willing hearted and their families to Christ,” he said.

Another article in the Deseret News offered additional info. For example, “BYU-PW is rolling out its programs in 10 new countries and territories this year — Bahrain, Burundi, Hong Kong, Macau, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Réunion, South Korea and Taiwan.

Last year, 64% of the PathwayConnect students lived outside the U.S. and Canada. Meanwhile, Americans and Canadians made up 64% of the online degree students.”

(The countries in bold I’ve visited and/or worked in, so I’m particularly interested in those.)

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2022/3/10/22971271/elder-jeffrey-holland-installs-brian-ashton-as-byu-pathway-worldwide-president-latter-day-saints

Source: Book of Mormon Concensus

From time to time it’s useful to review overall concepts.

Because they know the historical record directly contradicts M2C (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory), the M2C apologists and the historians who accommodate them have been working to purge the New York Cumorah using Orwellian tactics to revise Church history.

The knowledge gap makes young and uninformed Latter-day Saints susceptible to such instructional materials as BYU’s fantasy map of Book of Mormon geography that explicitly repudiates the teachings of the prophets in favor of the teachings of the M2C scholars.

Source: About Central America

A beautiful project underway in Abu Dhabi, UAE, represents the three major Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. For more information, see the links at https://www.mobom.org/outreach-to-nonchristians 

Source: Book of Mormon Concensus

Scott Gordon is the head of FAIRLDS. He’s a great guy, faithful, hard-working, etc. But he’s also a long-time promoter of M2C and SITH, among other things. 

A few days ago I received his email update, which included this section.

Sarah Allen has been blogging responses to the CES Letter for a year now! We are so grateful she’d share her scholarship, insight and testimony with us here at FAIR! If you haven’t taken the opportunity fo read her work, now is a great time! Follow the link to find a list of the posts we have published. Subscribe to the blog here – you don’t want miss a single issue. You can find the entire series of articles here.

It has always seemed strange to me that CES never responded to Jeremy Runnels’ questions. 

Jeremy was entitled to answers to his questions (at least, to his original, non-snarky questions).

Instead, he gets silence from CES and a torrent of sophistry from FAIRLDS and other apologists.

There are simple answers, after all. I started offering some on my blog (https://cesanswers.blogspot.com/) but I soon realized the problem is not the CES Letter.

The problem resides with the LDS apologists who have generated the confusion by repudiating the teachings of the prophets in favor of their academic speculations. 

It serves little purpose for me to offer simple answers based on the teachings of the prophets when our LDS scholars themselves are repudiating what the prophets have taught. (It’s even more fun that many of the apologists mischaracterize what I write so they can implement their typical straw man and ad hominem attacks.)

Throughout the CES Letter, Jeremy’s questions boil down to this: why do modern LDS scholars repudiate what the prophets have taught?

The CES Letter is the inevitable product of someone who accepted the modern scholars as the authority. 

Looking at it from the opposite perspective, LDS apologists agree with the faulty premises of the CES Letter. They then resort to nuances and sophistry to try to lead people through the thickets of their theories. But it doesn’t work well. Their theories are so full of snags that people get stuck at every turn.

By touting themselves as the “Interpreters” to claim superiority over the mere prophets, they’ve pushed Latter-day Saints (and prospective Latter-day Saints) who have questions toward the CES Letter and similar sources. And by comparison, the CES Letter is clearer and more rational.

The teachings of the prophets are even more clear and rational.

Yet FAIRLDS sticks with the sophistry of the scholars instead.

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A good example is the FAIRLDS response to the translation issues.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/blog/2021/09/15/the-ces-letter-rebuttal-part-8

CES Letter (Jeremy) makes a straightforward observation:

Unlike the story I’ve been taught in Sunday School, Priesthood, General Conferences, Seminary, EFY, Ensigns, Church history tour, Missionary Training Center, and BYU…Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat for translating the Book of Mormon.

The FAIRLDS response by Sarah Allen is nearly 6,000 words of self-contradictory, confusing, and speculative rhetoric that never once even quotes what Joseph and Oliver said on the topic. It’s literally unbelievable. 

Sarah starts by questioning whether Jeremy was honest or clear about what he was taught. Maybe that’s because Jeremy was taught to believe the scriptures. 

Sarah writes as though she never heard of such basic scriptures as these (which she never cites or quotes):

34 He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fulness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants;

35 Also, that there were two stones in silver bows—and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim—deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones were what constituted “seers” in ancient or former times; and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book. (Joseph Smith—History 1:34–35)

62 By this timely aid was I enabled to reach the place of my destination in Pennsylvania; and immediately after my arrival there I commenced copying the characters off the plates. I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of them, which I did between the time I arrived at the house of my wife’s father, in the month of December, and the February following. (Joseph Smith—History 1:62)

* Oliver Cowdery describes these events thus: “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’ 

(Joseph Smith—History, Note, 1)

It would not be surprising that Sarah is unaware of these scriptures, given her affiliation with FAIRLDS. The book Saints, Volume 1, doesn’t quote these passages. The Gospel Topics Essay doesn’t quote them, either. These verses are part of the “plain and precious things” that our scholars are systematically taking away from Church history.

Those who promote the SITH (stone-in-the-hat) narrative avoid these scriptures, except when they resort to sophistry to explain away their plain meaning.

These passages from Joseph Smith-History are not the only times when Joseph and Oliver explained that Joseph translated the plates with the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates, but you won’t find those accounts in the SITH narratives either. 

Bottom line: Joseph and Oliver were consistent and reliable. Neither of them ever once suggested or implied, let alone taught, that Joseph used a seer stone he found in a well to produce the Book of Mormon. Neither of them ever suggested, implied, or taught that Joseph didn’t use the plates.

Why, then, does Jeremy assert that “Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat for translating the Book of Mormon” in his letter?

Because of the work of our LDS apologists and the revisionist historians.

As we saw at the outset, Jeremy’s question is legitimate. What he’s really asking is, why do modern LDS scholars repudiate what the prophets have taught?

It’s a good question that Sarah doesn’t even address. Instead, as she’s been trained to do by FAIRLDS and the rest of the SITH citation cartel, she tries to pretend the prophets (and the scriptures) never taught what we can all see they did, actually, teach.

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The SITH narrative arose from what others (the SITH sayers, such as David Whitmer) claimed. 

Some people think the SITH sayers were all liars. 

Others, such as Sarah and FAIRLDS, think the SITH sayers were honest and accurate, even though they contradicted what Joseph and Oliver said about the Urim and Thummim.

The scholars Sarah and FAIRLDS rely upon have tried to reconcile the apparent conflict between the two narratives (SITH vs U&T) by claiming the stone Joseph found in the well was actually the Urim and Thummim to which Joseph and Oliver referred. As Sarah shows in her article, the scholars have successfully persuaded their gullible followers to accept SITH by omitting the scriptures and other contemporary sources, such as Mormonism Unvailed, which unambiguously distinguished between the “peep stone” and the Urim and Thummim. 

Despite the efforts of the SITH apologists, there is no need to ignore or reject the scriptures to reconcile the historical accounts. In my view, for all the reasons I’ve explained elsewhere, the SITH sayers probably told the truth about what they observed, but as witnesses commonly do, they mingled their observations with their own assumptions and inferences. In other words, whatever Joseph did with the stone in the hat, it was not translating the Book of Mormon. That should be clear from the scriptures and from the testimonies of Joseph’s contemporaries and successors in Church leadership.  

After all, Joseph was expressly commanded not to display the plates or the Urim and Thummim until after the translation was completed (at which point he showed the items to the designated witnesses). That commandment was superfluous if Joseph didn’t use the plates or U&T to produce the Book of Mormon. There would have been no reason for Joseph to even relate that commandment in the first place except to explain why no one (other than his scribes behind a curtain or screen) saw him translate. 

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This is a fairly straightforward example of the problem that arises from LDS apologists rejecting the teachings of the prophets in favor of their own theories. 

The most notorious example is the way FAIRLDS and the rest of the M2C citation cartel has repudiated the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah. That has led to all kinds of mischief and confusion, not the least of which is the CES Letter.

As I wrote above, Jeremy was entitled to answers to his questions. 

Instead, he gets silence from CES and a torrent of sophistry from FAIRLDS and other apologists.

_____

A few months ago I visited Scott Gordon at the new offices of FAIRLDS. Apparently they needed to have a physical location to qualify as an organization that can have missionaries assigned to help out. Which is another topic to discuss someday.

I told Scott I’d like to work with him to upgrade FAIRLDS. While I can’t realistically expect them to jettison years of apologetic efforts to promote M2C and SITH, I do expect them to represent the full range of faithful views.

So far, Scott has refused to do that.

As a result, we end up with these convoluted, confused responses to the CES Letter.

So I’ll ask again, and anyone who knows Scott can relay the message.

How about expanding FAIRLDS to include all faithful approaches to the issues?

How about making FAIRLDS inclusive instead of exclusive?

And how about finding a way for FAIRLDS to corroborate, rather than repudiate, the teachings of the prophets?

Source: About Central America

The M2C citation cartel continues to stigmatize Heartlanders as right-wing nationalists. It’s a patently ridiculous claim, but it’s typical of the way many M2C apologists have operated for years. Rather than engage the issues on the merits, or even have a civil, respectful dialog, they resort to ad hominem and other logical fallacies, obfuscate the facts and mislead their followers.

We’ll focus on this more in upcoming posts, but an editorial in the Wall St. Journal made an apt observation that applies to the latest crop of M2C apologists.

From the WSJ:

Suddenly, when our political debate is characterized by so much moral posturing, manufactured outrage and sanctimonious preening, it’s illuminating to see what real honor in the face of real adversity looks like.

Our polarized and angry domestic politics are dominated by virtue-signaling egoists. In Ukraine, the virtue doesn’t need to be signaled.

While privileged young people in America express their outrage at microaggressions in the workplace because someone used the wrong pronoun, the youth of Kyiv are gathering in bunkers to make Molotov cocktails in a last, desperate act to defend their beleaguered city—street by street if necessary—against the most violently macro of aggressions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-invades-invasion-putin-kyiv-ukraine-europe-germany-nord-stream-nato-virtue-signaling-woke-cancel-culture-microaggression-11646068302

Source: About Central America

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m working on a book on LDS apologetics. The topic came to the forefront recently with articles published in the Salt Lake Tribune that I’ll mention below.

This is a good time to reiterate the observation that the M2C/SITH citation cartel includes not only the Interpreter, Book of Mormon Central, FAIRLDS, and Meridian Magazine, but also Mormon Stories and the CES Letter. All of these groups and their principals share the theme that the prophets were wrong about the New York Cumorah, and all of them agree that Joseph Smith didn’t really translate the plates.

Royal Skousen, the retired BYU professor and the premier scholar on the physical texts of the Book of Mormon, expressed the basic idea in the pages of the Interpreter: “Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading.”

https://www.academia.edu/67756647/Agenda_driven_editorial_content_in_the_Joseph_Smith_Papers

Fortunately, the ranks of these citation cartels is shrinking. 

The Maxwell Institute and BYU Studies used to be part of the cartels, but the Maxwell Institute jettisoned the M2C logo along with its previous M2C advocacy. Steve Harper, the new editor at BYU Studies, appears to have jettisoned the obsessive M2C advocacy that his predecessor, Jack Welch, conducted for years. Well, BYU Studies still features the M2C maps, but at least the editorial content in recent issues is a little more balanced and inclusive now than it has been in decades.

Unfortunately, though, the remaining six are moving full steam ahead. They’re all prospering, raising more money, expanding their social media influence, and telling everyone who will listen about their successes (as they define them). 

For example, 3 weeks ago MormonStories, which has 55.2k subscribers, released a short video featuring SITH that has accumulated 386,000 views so far. The response from FAIRLDS and the rest of the cartel is to (i) concede that Joseph actually used SITH to produce the Book of Mormon, and (ii) ludicrously claim that was always taught in the Church. 

An alternative response that the SITH cartel never considers is that Joseph actually did translate the plates, as he and Oliver claimed. In my view, the historical and linguistic evidence corroborates what Joseph and Oliver said. That’s not to say there were no SITH witnesses, but as I’ve discussed at length elsewhere, these witnesses conflated their observations with their assumptions and inferences, and they were motivated by trying to refute the Spalding theory.

As with M2C, the SITH citation cartel seeks to repudiate the teachings of the prophets instead of corroborating those teachings. This is easy to understand when done by MormonStories and CES Letter, but it’s appalling when done by FAIRLDS, Book of Mormon Central, the Interpreter, and Meridian Magazine, each of which portrays itself as promoting faith.

Yesterday the Salt Lake Tribune published a couple of articles about John Dehlin and his MormonStories podcast.

Questions surround podcaster John Dehlin and the quest to build an ex-LDS community (sltrib.com)

This excerpt pretty well summarizes what I’ve observed as well: “People are raw emotionally and lost in a lot of ways, with their worldview flipped upside down,” said Ethan Gregory Dodge, co-founder of the Truth & Transparency Foundation (formerly MormonLeaks). “He comes across as someone who has all the answers and then starts asking for money. People will give John money out of gratitude, but eventually fall out of love with him.”

His “business model thrives on drama,” Dodge said. “The more drama he can drum up, the more podcast downloads and YouTube hits he will get.” 

‘Mormon Stories’ podcaster John Dehlin makes $236K a year from his nonprofit. Is that too much? (sltrib.com)

In a sense, Dehlin has an easy job. He just has to point people who have a faith crisis to the writings of LDS scholars in the citation cartels who have repudiated the teachings of the prophets. Then he asks, if Joseph and Oliver were wrong about the translation and historicity of the Book of Mormon, what’s left?

Today the Trib published another article. 

THRIVE’s aim: Help Latter-day Saints when their ‘shelf breaks’ and they want out of the church (sltrib.com)

As Dehlin and others have observed, problems with Church history and Book of Mormon historicity are among the main issues people have put on their “shelf.” When we get answers from LDS apologists that basically agree with the critics, particularly regarding SITH and M2C, it’s not surprising that people feel their shelves have broken. 

I’ve discussed Mormon Stories on one of my blogs: https://mormonstoriesreviewed.blogspot.com/ 

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Book of Mormon Central spends millions of dollars annually to promote its agendas. One of its main initiatives is its youtube channel, with its M2C logo, that has 149k subscribers. Its most popular video so far is the Tyler and Taylor show’s Come Follow Me episode on Moses 1, released 2 months ago, that has 326k views.

If they didn’t teach M2C and SITH, they’d be even more effective. 

Their M2C video that explicitly promotes M2C was released a year ago. It has 223,000 views.

Source: About Central America

From Scott Adams@ScottAdamsSays

Common Sense: 

1) Follow the advice of experts, 

2) Experts disagree, 

3) So do your own research, 

4) Which obviously doesn’t work because people who do their own research don’t always agree with each other, 

5) Act like you don’t notice and carry on.

Source: Book of Mormon Concensus

A few days ago we were visiting the Louvre in Abu Dhabi and spent some time in the opening exhibit that celebrated similarities among cultures around the world and throughout time.

This display of Gold Masks from Northern China (907-1125), Lebanon (600-300 BCE), and Peru (100 BCE – 700 CE) asked the question, “Why is it that so many civilizations covered the faces of the dead in gold? Does gold, as an incorruptible substance, confer eternal life, liberating our existence from the fine realm? With its luster, it perpetuates the light of life by suppressing the darkness of death… Immortality appears to be the universal hope of mankind when faced with death.”

The other displays featured 3 similar examples each of decorated vases, sculpture of motherhood, houses of the dead, figures in prayer, and dancing figures from around the world, dating as far back as 2800 BCE. The exhibit emphasized the commonality of people regardless of culture.

It reminded me of the futility of finding “correspondences” as evidence of the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica.

One of the main M2C apologist arguments consists of finding “correspondences” between Mayan culture and the text of the Book of Mormon.

The 826-page M2C Bible, Mormon’s Codex, has three parts:

Part 1: Orientation

Part 2: Correspondences by Topic

Part 3: Correspondences from Archaeology and History

The entire book consists mainly of illusory correspondences; illusory because they are typical of most, if not all, human societies.

Terryl Givens’ infamous Foreword to the book notes that “this present work encompasses hundreds of ‘correspondences,’ or points of ‘particular similarity’ involving geography, chronology, archaeology, biology, and other disciplines…”

The basic M2C logic works like this:

Nephites were farmers.

Mayans were farmers.

Therefore the Nephites were Mayans.

We can all see it’s a ridiculous logical fallacy, but our M2C scholars have nevertheless “sold” it to Latter-day Saints who are eager to reject the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah.

Of courses, there’s nothing inherently irrational about finding such “correspondences” between the Book of Mormon and real world cultures. The Book of Mormon describes real people living in the real world, and as the Louvre exhibit showed, people everywhere have similarities in their cultures.

What’s irrational is thinking that these correspondences outweigh the teachings of the prophets, particularly what Joseph and Oliver said.

And particularly when there are even closer “correspondences” between the text and the ancient inhabitants of North America.

Source: About Central America

 If you stay at Aloft hotels in the UAE, here’s what you see in your room:

Aloft is a Marriott brand.

Source: Book of Mormon Concensus