Book of Mormon Geography

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Shulem
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by Shulem »

Dan Vogel,

My other threads in the Terrestrial forum discuss the narrow neck in quite a bit of detail. I can provide links to those posts or quote them if need be. I would like to touch upon this matter in this thread and pull concepts from those threads and place them here in the Celestial forum so the narrow neck can become celestialized. First, let us remind ourselves what a topographical *neck* is and how it is used to describe a landform that interconnects bodies of land. The human neck is a small part of the body but it’s absolutely vital in which the head and the main body are connected -- thus the body can’t exist without a neck. The human neck varies in size but some are wide and some are narrow and most are somewhere in between. Likewise, some necks are short and other are long but most are average or just right.

Now with that said, let me impress upon you that the narrow neck of Delmarva is a perfect example of what Alma described and is the very narrow neck of the Book of Mormon. A neck is a neck and the human head rests atop the neck and is therefore connected to the body. It’s a narrow feature and is not long and does not wind about nor is it far from the shoulders. The same principle and design may be applied to a narrow neck of land for a peninsula. And we know the peninsula of Delmarva runs north and south and has ocean to the west and ocean to the east just like the one in the Book of Mormon.

In order to find the narrow neck of the Book of Mormon on the map it becomes necessary to understand what a neck is! Panama is NOT that neck!

Narrow neck at Delmarva:

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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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We can agree that Joseph dictated the description of a narrow neck of land while his head was in a hat. Imagine that! ;)

Questions for Apologists & Critics to Ponder:

Did Joseph have preconceived ideas of a narrow neck of land prior to dictation?
[ ] Yes [ ] No

Could Joseph have identified his narrow neck of land on a map or globe at the time of dictation?
[ ] Yes [ ] No

Could Joseph have identified his narrow neck of land on a map or globe while publishing the book?
[ ] Yes [ ] No
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by Shulem »

Shulem wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 5:38 pm
We can agree that Joseph dictated the description of a narrow neck of land while his head was in a hat. Imagine that! ;)

Questions for Apologists & Critics to Ponder:

Shulem says:

Did Joseph have preconceived ideas of a narrow neck of land prior to dictation?
[X] Yes [ ] No

Could Joseph have identified his narrow neck of land on a map or globe at the time of dictation?
[X] Yes [ ] No

Could Joseph have identified his narrow neck of land on a map or globe while publishing the book?
[X] Yes [ ] No

Perhaps, just maybe, possibly:

Cowdery Lion (Backyard Professor)
Scarecrow (Radio Free Mormon)
Tinman (Bill Reel)

Can answer the above questions?


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And your little dog too!

Woof!


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Toto (Daniel Peterson) must be able to keep up with Dorothy (Dan Vogel) and run the distance of the width of the narrow neck from one end to the other in just one (1) day!

:lol:
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by Moksha »

Shulem wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 8:14 pm
Toto (Daniel Peterson) must be able to keep up with Dorothy (Dan Vogel) and run the distance of the width of the narrow neck from one end to the other in just one (1) day!
:lol:
Now that Dr. Peterson is a retired graybeard, how about letting him just stroll around one of Delmarva's malls during his travels? Dan Vogel can jog that narrow neck once he sees the genius of your geographic solution.
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by Shulem »

Moksha wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:57 pm
Dan Vogel can jog that narrow neck once he sees the genius of your geographic solution.

Surely Vogel can put the pieces together and recognize that childhood influences go with us through the balance of our lives including the influence that Captain Kidd had on young Joseph. Surely those voyages and landings in the Promised Land meant something! What slippery treasures can be found around Delmarva or on the banks of the Susquehanna River?

Hmmmm.

Captain Kidd wrote:
Where is that bloody Vogel, that scallywag?

Me not going to share my gold booty with him unless he gives me a hand.

Now, where is me divining rod?


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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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Moksha wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 4:57 pm
Now that Dr. Peterson is a retired graybeard, how about letting him just stroll around one of Delmarva's malls during his travels?

Absolutely not! Peterson is only 3 years older than Vogel so they can both trek across the narrow neck in a single day just like the Nephites did. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I wonder how many weeks it would take Peterson to march across the Tehuantepec neck?
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by Shulem »

Who will defend the north country from the savage Lamanites?


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Backyard Professor wrote:
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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How did you sort Kerry, Consiglieri, Dans, and Bill into the respective Wizard of Oz characters? Remember, you are under the Oath of the Freemen.
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by dan vogel »

Shulem wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 12:04 am
For Dan Vogel,

A INTERESTING ACCOUNT OF SEVERAL REMARKABLE VISIONS, AND OF THE LATE DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT AMERICAN RECORDS. BY O. PRATT, MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL.


This pamphlet published by Orson Pratt in 1840 while serving a mission in Great Britain serves as a classic example of how Latter-day Saints interpreted Book of Mormon geography late in Smith’s ministry. The descriptions given by Pratt (not necessarily Smith) are gross mutations of time & measurement as explained in Book of Mormon narratives. Pratt’s ideas mutate and morph narratives and stories into a scene of utter chaos that cannot be substantiated by the text with the least degree of accuracy. Pratt’s geographical descriptions completely defy and distort the text of the book that provides vital information in understanding three key elements and how they define the scenes:

  • Time
  • Space
  • Measure

Orson Pratt and wildly zealous Latter-day Saints turned the Book of Mormon into a CARTOON whereby time, space, and measurement are not grounded in reality and contradict the information contained as precisely given in the text. It’s like smoking crack cocaine (wow man) and visualizing Book of Mormon stories in cartoon format. It turns the book on its head in such a silly way that it has zero credibility. The hemispheric model was not original to the Book of Mormon but was a later construct used to promote faith and visualize something that could never be narrowed down and proven scientifically. What’s more, it completely contradicts definitions given in the book.

In comparison, the Delmarva peninsula works perfectly with matters of time, space, and measure -- expressed in the text in defining the geography as the civilization lived in a limited fluid zone. The Delmarva model is what Smith used to build his story. The area and topography of this model is what Smith originally used.

I can prove it and my threads do just that. Pratt’s ridiculous accounting of Book of Mormon geography is cartoonish and totally spaced out compared to the measured and accurate accounting that is carefully plotted within the covers of the Book of Mormon. There is simply no comparison whatsoever! Pratt was a dope not to have seen that.
Shulem,

I’m sorry but I don’t have time to read long threads at the moment. In my video series on the Book of Mormon, I plan to do at least one on Book of Mormon geography. I’m truly baffled that you would buy into the apologists’ arguments for a limited geography; it is the hemispheric geography that makes the Book of Mormon a fairytale. It had nothing to do with Orson Pratt; he was just reflecting what Joseph Smith taught. If hemispheric geography is so obviously wrong, why did the early Mormon believe it? Most Mormons still believe it, despite the hearlanders. The search for a limited geography began after M. T. Lamb criticized hemispheric geography in 1887, which Pratt had incorporated in the footnotes of his 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon.

As you mention, Pratt in 1840 said:

“[Lehi’s party] were first led to the eastern borders of the Red Sea; then they journeyed for sometime along the borders thereof, nearly in a southeast direct; after which, they altered their course nearly eastward, until they came to the great waters, where, by the commandments of God, they built a vessel, in which they were safely brought across the great Pacific Ocean, and landed upon the western coast of South America.” -- Orson Pratt, A Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records (Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Hughes, 1840), 16.

Later, Pratt will specifically identify Chile as the place of Lehi’s landing.

There is an uncanonized revelation of Joseph Smith’s known as “Lehi’s Travels,” which existed in the early days of the church, probably 1830. The earliest copy is in the handwriting of Frederick G. Williams.

“The course that Lehi traveled from the city of Jerusalem to the place where he and his family took ship, they traveled nearly a south south East direction untill they came to the nineteenth degree of North Lattitude, then nearly east to the sea of Arabia then sailed in a south east direction and landed on the continent of South America in Chili thirty degrees south Lattitude.” – LDS Church History Library.

This item exists on a sheet of paper with other Book of Mormon items. He probably got his copy from Oliver Cowdery when he preached in the Kirtland area in November and December 1830. As one witness reported in Ohio’s Observer and Telegraph on 18 November 1830, Cowdery gave a public address in which he related Joseph Smith’s discovery of the plates and gave an outline of the Book of Mormon’s contents, including the information that Lehi’s party “landed on the coast of Chili 600 years before the coming of Christ, and from them descended all the Indians of America.”

There are a lot more sources pertaining to Lehi’s travels and other items relevant to what early Mormons believed about geography that I will discuss in my video. I’m not sure how you fit Zelph into your geography.

Hemispheric geography comes from the Mound Builder Myth. Joseph Smith’s contemporaries saw the ruins and mounds as one long chain, beginning in Peru, extending through Central America and Mexico, and ending in the Great Lakes Region, where the builders were destroyed in a great battle and buried in the mounds.

Your neck at the top of the Delmarva Peninsula is only 10 miles wide at most, which seems too small for a day and a half’s journey. What would Joseph Smith call a day and a half’s journey? Certainly more than 10 miles. From Palmyra to Harmony was about three days, and that’s about 150 miles or so. Panama is about 60 miles across. Some early descriptions mention that the sea on both sides can be seen from the mountains. The Book of Mormon describes both a “small neck of land” and a “narrow pass.” This seems to fit Panama. The line in Alma 22:32 is said to run from the east to the west sea. Several geographers have noted that the passage doesn’t say “east sea” as a way of shortening the distance across the neck. Yet the context implies that it touches water on both sides and that the land southward would be entirely surrounded by water if it weren’t for the neck. This also fits Panama since on the east there is a bay instead of the Atlantic Ocean.

Anyway, I think you get where I’m going. My job isn’t to make Book of Mormon sound reasonable, as it the book doesn’t have a lot of impossible things in it. My job is to contextualize the Book of Mormon in its 19th-century Mound Builder setting and show how Joseph Smith and early Mormons read the book.
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by Shulem »

Bill Reel wrote: I confess, I’m the guilty one, I did it.

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Radio Free Mormon wrote: What did you do?

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Bill Reel wrote: I chopped down all the trees in the north country. Now it’s desolate and without timber and there is but little timber upon the face of the land. Because of me the people have to live in tents and cement houses.

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