The Florence Mound is located on the Tennessee River, along the route from Chattanooga to the Ohio River.
(click to enlarge) |
For more info, see:
https://alabamamoundtrail.org/mound-site/florence/
President Nelson taught, "Good inspiration is based upon good information." If you are a Latter-day Saint and haven't read Oliver Cowdery's 8 essays on Church history, including Letter VII, you need to read them to understand Church history, the Book of Mormon, and the related teachings of the prophets. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." –Haruki Murakami
The Florence Mound is located on the Tennessee River, along the route from Chattanooga to the Ohio River.
(click to enlarge) |
For more info, see:
https://alabamamoundtrail.org/mound-site/florence/
https://www.ldsarchaeology.com/
The most recent edition contains an article about a letter written in 1949 to Joseph Fielding Smith, who was Church Historian and a member of the Quorum of the Twelve at the time.
Here is a partial transcript of the letter (shown below).
Dear Elder Smith:
Two stake missionaries have put forth the argument that the Hill Cumorah referred to in the Book of Mormon is in Middle America. They are basing their argument on the book “Cumorah-Where?”
It is causing quite a lot of controversy in our Mutual Class and I would like to know the Church view point on the subject.
…The book “Cumorah-Where?” points out that by misconstruing the geography of the Book of Mormon is to make a consistent record seem inconsistent. Therefore some worthwhile persons investigating the gospel be dissuaded by our own error. My question being, would the Church teach that the Hill Cumorah is in New York if it is in Mexico?
"The Hill Cumorah is in Western New York where the Prophet received the plates. It has never been removed except by a bunch of modern critics."
BYU Studies map of "Cumorah" in southern Mexico |
$200,000 in 1945 is worth $3,503,344.44 today.
In our day, Scripture Central spends about that much every year in its ongoing (but futile) effort to accomplish what Ferguson tried to do; i.e., to prove the Book of Mormon events took place in Mesoamerica. Most of us think it's a fool's errand because their fundamental premise is that the prophets were wrong about the New York Cumorah/Ramah.
But people are free to believe whatever they want, and as long as Latter-day Saints continue to support Scripture Central financially, M2C will continue to spend their money.
The wikipedia article on Ferguson points out that one of his collaborators was John L. Sorenson, who of course went on to participate in FARMS and other M2C organizations.
NWAF was the largest archeological project funded by a religious institution.[2] Ferguson, along with master's student John L. Sorenson, spent the next several years traveling throughout Mesoamerica documenting a large number of artifacts and formative period sites.[3]
In April 1953 Ferguson met with the First Presidency and other leaders of the LDS Church to ask for $15,000 for the current year and $120,000 for the next for years funding NWAF. ...
In January 1955 Ferguson wrote to the First Presidency asking again for funding, "To confirm Book of Mormon history through archaeological discoveries is to confirm revelation to the modern world. ... I know, and I know it without doubt and without wavering, that we are standing at the doorway of a great Book of Mormon era." This time, the LDS Church donated $200,000 to fund NWAF for four seasons.[1]
In 1958 Ferguson published One Fold and One Shepherd presenting his excavated evidence to the broader Latter Day Saint community. It included a Izapa Stela 5 which he argued represented the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi's dream. Replicas of this tree-of-life stone are subsequently found in many Latter-day Saint homes.
Ferguson famously lost his faith in the Book of Mormon.
Later in 1976, fifteen years removed from any archaeological involvement with the NWAF, referring to his own paper, Ferguson wrote a letter in which he stated:
"The real implication of the paper is that you can't set the Book-of-Mormon geography down anywhere—because it is fictional and will never meet the requirements of the dirt-archeology. I should say—what is in the ground will never conform to what is in the book."
Had Ferguson simply heeded what Joseph Fielding Smith said about M2C, perhaps he would not have lost his faith. Everyone is complicated, of course, and he had problems with the Book of Abraham among other things.
Some people might be unaware of how the Ferguson M2C theory was passed along.
Ferguson mentored John Sorenson, who in turn mentored two young men who went on to become the principal promoters of M2C. One (Jack Welch) co-founded Book of Mormon Central (now Scripture Central) and the other (Kirk Magleby) now has the title of "Chief Evangelist" for Scripture Central.
They're both awesome people, faithful Latter-day Saints, great scholars, etc.
But they still insist that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were ignorant speculators who misled the Church about the New York Cumorah.
Which, of course, is fine. People can believe and teach whatever they want.
But it would be awesome if they would instead join with us in with the pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding.
In my opinion (and I know they disagree), they owe it to Latter-day Saints to accommodate all faithful narratives at Scripture Central. They should be educating Latter-day Saints and encouraging them to make informed decisions by comparing alternative interpretations.
Instead, they continue to promote M2C as the only acceptable interpretation, and they resort to censorship, bias confirmation, and obfuscation to promote their agenda.
Sigh...
:)
But it's all okay, because Latter-day Saints around the world are learning about the teachings of the prophets from podcasts, websites, magazines, and other sources.
Eventually most Latter-day Saints will come to respect and accept what Joseph and Oliver said all along.
That's why I say...
The Book of Mormon app has an update with a wonderful new introduction.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/feature/book-of-mormon-app?lang=eng
I hope the Church puts this intro into every edition of the Book of Mormon.
Except I hope they explain the "hillside" is in western New York instead of "on the North American continent."
(click to enlarge) |
To commemorate September 21-2, there's a new page on mobom.org, here:
https://www.mobom.org/moroni-day
Moroni's interactions with Joseph Smith are simple and clear when we stick with what Joseph, Oliver, their contemporaries and successors said.
_____
During the night of September 21-22, 1823, Moroni told Joseph the record of the aboriginal inhabitants of "this country" was "written and deposited not far from" his home near Palmyra, New York. It wasn't written thousands of miles away and then somehow transported to the stone box in New York.
That night Moroni also told Joseph the record was deposited in the hill Cumorah, three miles from his house, and instructed him to remove the grass and moss, then remove the stone.
Joseph and his family referred to the hill as Cumorah even before he translated the plates, as Joseph explained in D&C 128:20. "what do we hear? Glad tidings from Cumorah! Moroni, an angel from heaven, declaring the fulfilment of the prophets—the book to be revealed."
In late May or early June, 1829, before leaving Harmony, Joseph gave the abridged plates to the messenger who Joseph said was one of the Three Nephites, not Moroni. The messenger returned the abridged plates to Cumorah and picked up the plates of Nephi, which he took to Fayette so Joseph could obey the commandment in D&C 10 to "translate the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi." (Doctrine and Covenants 10:41)
This is all very simply, clear, and obvious.
Compare that with the convoluted M2C theory which
(i) insists that Joseph, Oliver, their contemporaries and successors misled their fellow Latter-day Saints and everyone else in the world about Cumorah because they were ignorant speculators compared with modern credentialed scholars who know more about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon.
(ii) insists that the "real Cumorah" is somewhere in southern Mexico, although no one knows for sure where.
(iii) insists that Moroni hauled the plates and other artifacts thousands of miles from southern Mexico to western New York.
(iv) insists that Oliver Cowdery either lied when he told about visiting the repository of Nephite records in the hill Cumorah multiple times, or was relating a vision he and others shared of a hill in southern Mexico.
(v) insists that Cumorah can't be in New York because it is not near any volcanoes...
etc.
Here are examples of Scripture Central scholars teaching the world that the prophets were wrong about Cumorah:
Tyler Griffin teaching that Christ appeared at a pagan Mayan temple (click to enlarge) |
Jack Welch teaching that Mormon and Moroni were Mayans and Cumorah was at a Mayan pyramid (click to enlarge) |
Tyler Griffin teaching the Book of Mormon with a fictional fantasy map resembling Mesoamerica, complete with showing Cumorah in southern Mexico (click to enlarge) |
An article in the Wayne Sentinel, published in Palmyra, NY on Tuesday, October 11th, 1825, and available here, discusses the Jews in Europe but also the "Indians of the American Continent."
(click to enlarge) |
_____
Transcript:
M.M. Noah Speech - Concluded
The Jews have resided in Rome since they were brought captive to that capital...
The discovery of the lost tribes of Israel, has never ceased to be a subject of deep interest to the Jews. That divine protection which has been bestowed upon the chosen people, from the infancy of nature to the present period, has, without doubt, been equally extended to the missing tribes, and if, as I have reason to believe, our lost brethren were the ancestors of the Indians of the American Continent the inscrutable decrees of the Almighty have been fulfilled in spreading unity and onnipotence [sic] to every quarter of the globe.
Upwards of three thousand years have elapsed, since the nine and a half tribes were carried captive by Pahranazar, King of Assyria. It is supposed they were spread over the various countries of the East, and by international marriages, have lost their identity of character. It is, however, probable that from the previous sufferings of the tribes to Egyptian bondage, that they bent their course in a northwest direction, which brought them within a few leagues of the American Continent and which they finally reached.
Those who are most conversant with the public and private economy of the Indians, are strongly of opinion that they are the lineal descendants of the Israelites, and my own researches go far to confirm me in the same belief.
- The Indians worship one Supreme Being as the fountain of life, and the author of all creation.
- Like the Israelites of old, they are divided into tribes, having their Chief and distinctive Symbol to each.
- Some of their tribes, it is said, are named after the Cherubinical figures that were carried on the four principal Standards of Israel.
- They consider themselves as the select and beloved people of God, and have all the religious pride which our ancestors are known to have possessed.
- Their words are sonorous and bold, and their language and dialect are evidently of Hebrew origin.
- They compute time after the manner of the Israelites, by dividing the year into the four seasons, and their sub divisions are the lunar months, or our new Moons commencing according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses, the first Moon after the vernal equinox.
- They have their prophets, High Priests, and their sanctum sanctorum, in which all their consecrated vessels are deposited, and which are only to be approached by their archimagas or High Priest.
- They leave their towns and cities of refuge--they have sacrifices and fastings--they abstain from unclean things, in short, in their marriages, divorces, punishment of adultery, burial of the dead, and mourning, they bear a striking analogy to our people.
How came they on this continent, and if indigenous, when did they acquire the principles and essential forms of the Jews? The Indians are not Savages, they are wild and savage in their habits, but possess great vigor of intellect and native talent, they are a brave and eloquent people, with an Asiatic complexion and Jewish features.
Should we be right in our conjecture, what new scenes are opened to the nation--the first people in the old world, and the rightful inheritors of the new? Spread from the confines of the north west coat of Cape Horn, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
If the tribes could be brought together, could be made sensible of their origin, could be civilized, and restored to their long lost brethren, what joy to our people, what glory to our God, how clearly have the prophesies been fulfilled, how certain our dispersion, how miraculous our preservation, how providential our deliverance.
It shall be my duty to pursue the subject by every means in my power.
_____
This article is an example of a common belief during Joseph Smith's day. From the time they first came to America, Europeans speculated about the origin of the American Indians. Many believed they were the lost 10 tribes of Israel and that they crossed over from Asia around the Bering Strait.