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Let’s try an experiment and see where it goes, shall we? Let’s suppose the Book of Mormon really is a historical record and there really was a Lehi that left Jerusalem and set sail for a land of promise in a place where Lehi could hardly imagine. For him, it was a promised land somewhere on God’s g...

The hemispheric model was first conceived by the Pratt brothers, Orson & Parley. On 18 November 1830, the Observer and Telegraph published a statement from a witness stating that Oliver Cowdery gave a public address in Kirtland, and included the information that Lehi’s party “landed on the coast of...

Smith’s main goal was to establish the USA as a heartland for Christians on this continent where covenants established by God in ancient times would be renewed and restored through a latter-day seer. The promised land was literally within the USA. If I understand you correctly, establishing the USA...

This is the most interesting and illuminating post I have read in a long time. I thank you for it! There's a truly captivating story behind all this that I'm still unraveling. We know that Luman Walters studied in Paris in the early 1800s. Like other Americans studying in Paris at that time (Jonas ...

Sure, if you ignore the obvious geographic details Shulem laid out I'm not ignoring any details. So far we have a narrow neck, a land southward surrounded by water on three sides and a land of many waters in the north. All of these are found in the hemispheric model as well. So I'm looking forward ...

Once again, Delmarva is a template , or a narrative scaffold. The literal dimensions aren’t important. The peninsula can be enlarged as needed, but Joseph Smith has somewhere to plant his fictional characters in a fictional land. Remember, this book was meant to be a novel, not scripture. I underst...

Just ask Emanuel Swedenborg Since you mention it. My hypothesis is that SE Asia as the original template for the Ether narrative and internal geography of the Book of Mormon came from a few passages out of Swedenborg. Emmnauel Swedenborg wrote in a few places about a hidden land protected from the ...

I see. in my opinion, getting some stories and names from a TYPE of source provides even less support for the idea that he would use a very unfamiliar geography from that type of source. I'm curious why you think cribbing the names (eg. Comoro and Maroni) from one source (accounts of the East Indie...

I was responding to this: ... Joseph then borrowed the names of Cumorah and Moroni -- and a few others like Comron and Cumr and Morianton and Ramah and Sidon [1] -- from pirate tales and Arab geographies. Should we then be surprised to find that he also borrowed the template for his peninsula from ...

To insist that things must come from only one source, in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise, is insupportable, in my opinion. I'm not insisting that there's only one source. I've shared several myself. For Delmarva, I'm not convinced yet that it served as the template for the Book of Mormo...