Book of Mormon Geography

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Shulem
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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Moksha wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 9:02 pm
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Lamanites having dinner along with their horses
--Nibley Collection, 3rd level sub-basement Marriott Library, Provo Utah

Oh my.

Well, that’s pretty much how I sum of the hemispheric model! It’s truly a stretch of the imagination and you can forget about time & space within any degree of reality because that model has none. Zilch! It’s hard to believe that early readers of the Book of Mormon fell for the idea and allowed it to gain traction in light of what the text actually says. It’s the text that counts! Like I told Vogel earlier, it doesn’t matter what Smith said after the fact. I don’t care if he preached the Panama-Neck and planned to canonize it in the D&C. It simply would have served to be another lie and would have set off a lot of BS meters later on.
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dan vogel
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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Shulem,

I’m not as impressed with the chronology as you seem to be, but that’s not relevant. No one is a genius about everything. I’m not so sure that Joseph Smith wasn’t as blind to the hemispheric geography as everyone else. Pratt was a very smart man. Yet he championed the hemispheric model, and plenty of smart people thought nothing of it. Do you not see how your response to Joseph Smith immediately identifying Chile as Lehi’s landing place is ad hoc? Joseph Smith knew there were no ruins and didn’t want to be exposed?

All limited geographies are apologetic moves. Apologists are trying to save the Book of Mormon with their limited geography, but I’m not sure what you are trying to accomplish. The Delmarva theory is unnecessary, especially if you admit Joseph Smith immediately espoused the hemispheric model.

It’s a “small neck of land” between two large land masses, implying length. Delmarva has no length. It has the same problem as the Tehuantepec theory. It’s not a neck. It’s too narrow, while Tehuantepec is too wide. What was a day and a half journey for Joseph Smith? Palmyra to Canandaigua is 13.7 miles, which was an easy round trip. Palmyra to Fayette is 36.8 miles, which could be done in a day. As I mentioned, from Palmyra to Harmony was about three days, and that’s about 150 miles or so. Panama is about 60 miles across. I don’t think Delmarva is as perfect as you think it is.
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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How many miles can you cover on tapirback in a day?
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Shulem
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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dan vogel wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:54 am
I’m not as impressed with the chronology as you seem to be, but that’s not relevant. No one is a genius about everything.

Dan,

It’s relevant, very relevant!

How can you not be impressed with the chronology? It’s amazing that it holds together other than the major error with Enos’s generation. Joseph was able to hold all the chronology together while dictating in a hat. He had to have had notes and kept track of it. It’s really, really involved and my hat goes off to him for pulling off the numbers as well as he did. I’ve spent countless hours analyzing this and came to the conclusion that Joseph was brilliant. RFM is also of the opinion that Joseph used notes. I would encourage you to read my thread about the first 600 years and see just how involved the chronology really is. It took a genius to pull it off. He dictated all that with his head in a hat!
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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dan vogel wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:54 am
What was a day and a half journey for Joseph Smith?

Stories in the Book of Mormon provide many examples of day-time and night-time traveling of those who are chasing and those who are being chased as well as those who are going from point A to point B. Speed of the various marches varied depending on the circumstances at hand.

Day-time travel took place during daylight hours and night-time travel took place in the dark. What is a day of travel? Well, it’s more than half a day and less than a day and a half. So, it can vary somewhat. A day traveling could be 6 hours or it could be a full 12 hours or more by light of the sun depending on the season. A day and a half could be a short or long day plus a short day. It all seems somewhat flexible. It’s not an exact measurement, per-se, it’s relative to the circumstances and the area Joseph visualized.

A day across the narrow neck going east to west (horizontal line of axis) to defend the narrow neck could be 6 hours to 12 hours depending on what part of the map and area in the neck Joseph was looking at and how fast he figured a “Nephite” would walk/march that time of year.

A day and a half across the narrow neck going from south to north (vertical line of axis) to span the length of the neck required more than a day’s march because the length of the neck was longer and farther than the width. This is something I point out in my threads that apologists fail to realize in reading the internal measurements Smith gave in the text. These factors are key to understanding the neck. The neck was not a long and winding LAND BRIDGE (Central America) but was simply a narrow neck of a peninsula adjoined to a large mass going northward. The text makes that perfectly clear.
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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Moksha wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 1:52 am
How many miles can you cover on tapirback in a day?

That’s a great question you might like to pose to Daniel Peterson. A great deal of discussion and speculation has been tendered by apologists looking for answers (excuses) to defend the so-called narrow neck of Tehuantepec. That FAT neck has no place at all in the Book of Mormon. The text doesn’t allow for Tehuantepec no matter how you slice it or dice it. I would love to have a debate with Peterson over that. I would wipe him out and mop the floor with him. Oh, the very thought makes me laugh. But that will never happen.

Can you imagine?

Get out the popcorn and sodas!

:lol:
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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dan vogel wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:54 am
I’m not so sure that Joseph Smith wasn’t as blind to the hemispheric geography as everyone else. Pratt was a very smart man. Yet he championed the hemispheric model, and plenty of smart people thought nothing of it. Do you not see how your response to Joseph Smith immediately identifying Chile as Lehi’s landing place is ad hoc? Joseph Smith knew there were no ruins and didn’t want to be exposed?

Dan,

I’ve expressed (in my long threads) how Smith utilized the Delmarva peninsula as a template for the main course of stories that take place beginning at Lehi’s landing -- leading northward to the land of Nephi, Zarahemla, and Bountiful. The geography of Delmarva works beautifully with time, space, and distance. I’ve followed the stories and have plotted the course and calculations that are illustrated in the stories as Joseph dictated them off the cuff to his scribes. Delmarva, chronology, and space & time are a perfect fit. South America is oversized, is too far from New York, and contradicts the text in every way; it doesn’t work. I’m convinced Smith used a map and a template to design his stories and make it work in the format of Delmarva with New York to the far north.

I love this statement made by a smart man who agrees with many points I’ve made in my long thread you don’t have time to read.

simon southerton wrote:
Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:42 am
The Delmarva Peninsula fits perfectly with the text of the Book of Mormon. It's the right orientation, the landmass is roughly the right size, and it is conveniently located to the Hill Cumorah. And it is easy to imagine how this geography found its way into the mind of Joseph Smith. Anything Smith said after publication of the Book of Mormon is completely irrelevant. The cat was out of the bag and he latched onto anything that embellished his fantasy.

Well said, Simon, well said.
Last edited by Shulem on Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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dan vogel wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:54 am
All limited geographies are apologetic moves. Apologists are trying to save the Book of Mormon with their limited geography, but I’m not sure what you are trying to accomplish. The Delmarva theory is unnecessary, especially if you admit Joseph Smith immediately espoused the hemispheric model.

I agree that all of the limited geographies used by apologists are for apologetic purposes and none of them work! They are all wrong. But what they do understand is that the text is based on a limited geography so they are trying to find some place to make it work where they will not be exposed by the apparent lack of archeology because that will devastate their proposed location.

What am I trying to accomplish? The same thing as you are, Dan. I want to understand Joseph Smith and get into his head and solve the mystery. That’s what I am trying to accomplish! The poor chap was a conman and he knew it. It was a grand pious fraud and you know that too. But hey, I’ve gotten into the mind of Joseph Smith by channeling my thoughts into the great ether and collected them into my little net. You can take that anyway you like, but I’m on to Joseph Smith like bloodhound and he’s fine with that.

There.

Wow, I can’t believe I actually wrote that in this post.

:o
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

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dan vogel wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:54 am
It’s a “small neck of land” between two large land masses, implying length. Delmarva has no length.

Excuse me, but it most certainly does have length! And length is relative unless it’s defined by an actual known standard of measurement whereby exactness can be determined by all parties to examine that measurement. Delmarva DOES have length. The peninsula is 170 miles long. That’s a lot of room for Nephi and his brethren to explore and they never made it past the land of Nephi which was the tail end of Delmarva. You will recall that Nephi said, “we are upon an isle of the sea.”

How did Nephi come to the realization that he was upon an isle of the sea? Well, the tip of Delmarva in which he landed seemed like an island and the only place to go was northward, ever northward. Nobody ever went south of Lehi’s first inheritance.


Image

Image

dan vogel wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:54 am
It has the same problem as the Tehuantepec theory. It’s not a neck. It’s too narrow, while Tehuantepec is too wide.

I will agree that Tehuantepec is too wide because nobody can walk across that in a single day and the orientation is not correct. But the neck at Delmarva is just fine. It’s a neck. I’ve discussed that in this thread as well as in the other threads. How can you not call it a neck?

Look:
Encyclopedia.com wrote:The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal cuts across Delmarva's narrow neck.
Shulem wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:09 pm
Who else knew about the narrow neck?


Image

Augustine Herman, First Lord of Bohemia Manor

Wikipedia wrote:In the mid‑17th century, Augustine Herman, a mapmaker and Prague native who had served as an envoy for the Dutch, observed that two great bodies of water, the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay, were separated only by a NARROW STRIP OF LAND. Herman proposed that a waterway be built to connect the two.

I'm confident that Joseph Smith was aware of this geography and knew about the canal construction taking place prior to writing the Book of Mormon.

Construction

More surveys followed, and in 1804, construction of the canal began...

The canal company was reorganized in 1822, and new surveys determined...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers played a vital yet unofficial role for the canal company in 1823 and 1824...

Canal construction resumed in April 1824, and within several years some 2,600 men...
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Re: Book of Mormon Geography

Post by Shulem »

Orson Pratt wrote:. . . they built a vessel, in which they were safely brought across the great Pacific ocean, and landed upon the western coast of South America

Brother Pratt,

I will inform you that the continent of South America is 4,700 miles long from north to south and is 3,300 miles at its widest point. The coastline of the entire continent has 15,800 miles. Are you aware of that, brother Pratt? And yet Nephi said, “we are upon an isle of the sea” as if he understood the landmass to be a virtual island. How could Nephi have thought it was an isle if he had not traveled to the ends of the continent to learn there was water there rather than land adjoined to the Old World? Nephi’s implication of being on an isle is indicative of being on an island in the midst of the ocean. Nephi’s “isle” is descriptive of a limited geographic model which just so happens to be the case with the first inheritance, Zarahemla, and Bountiful. I’m afraid your model turns Sea East into the Atlantic and Sea West into the Pacific which blows everything out of proportion.

I suggest you carefully reread the Book of Mormon, sir. You will soon discover that your South America theory is oversized and wrong.

Shulem
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