DiscussMormonism.com

Gunnar wrote:But, is everything Lucy Mack Smith wrote in her history of Joseph regarded, even by the Church, as canon or indisputable truth?

mledbetter wrote:She had a vagina (I can only assume) and so she had no authority. Her words would definitely NOT be canon.

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Let me tell you something. There's no way a dude is carrying a 50 lbs weight, wrapped in clothing, through the woods, fighting off men (one of them armed and having dealt Mr. Smith a blow), and doing this for around three miles. All the men had to do was just follow him, and after about a quarter mile gently take it from him because he would have been exhausted.

The story is complete and utter horse****.

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:That's funny. In my experience, the exact opposite is true. Women, in the Church, have a default setting of being more trustworthy and virtuous than men. Who would question the virtue of Joseph Smith's mother?

I have found that LGT theorists would reject Abraham if he rose from the dead.

"We know positively that it was in this hill that Moroni deposited the abridgment made by his father, and his own abridgment of the record of the Jaredites, and that it was from this hill that Joseph Smith obtained possession of them. " (President Anthony W. Ivins, Conference Report, April 1928-Morning Session)


"Cumorah, the artificial hill of north America, is well calculated to stand in this generation, as a monument of marvelous works and wonders. Around that mount died millions of the Jaredites; yea, there ended one of the greatest nations of this earth. In that day, her inhabitants spread from sea to sea, and enjoyed national greatness and glory, nearly fifteen hundred years. -- That people forsook the Lord and died in wickedness. There, too, fell the Nephites, after they had forgotten the Lord that bought them. There slept the records of age after age, for hundreds of years, even until the time of the Lord." (The Latter-day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, Vol.2, No.2, p.221) [This was the offiical church organ, greater in authority than the Ensign, as it was edited by a member of the First Presidency. Oliver Cowdery was the editor; Joseph Smith read every issue and contributed to it. Joseph Smith called the editors.)

"The hill, which was known by one division of the ancient peoples as Cumorah, by another as Ramah, is situated near Palmyra in the State of New York ." (Apostle James E. Talmage, Articles of Faith , chapter 14)

As to the first quote, from President Ivins, the Church had just acquired the Hill Cumorah and many of the speeches were directed to the sacred nature of the hill the Church had just spent money upon in the midst of the depression. "We know positively" is about as ex cathedra as you can get in a general conference statement.

Well Mister Chung, I don't know where you've been; but some form of Mesoamerican LGT has been the dominant view in LDS scholarly circles since 1950 at the latest.

The most common "folklore" view has always been the "hemispheric" model. The silly, parochial, US-centric "Heartland" model is a recent innovation.

Why don't you try talking to some real believing Mormons sometime?

Yes, you flourish that at me as if it somehow supports your position. (Is it your position? Do you actually believe what you are arguing, or are you being a hypocrite?) However, the record shows that Moroni's plates were not buried in Mormon's Cumorah, per Momon 6:6. The connection between Mormon's Cumorah and the New York hill modernly called Cumorah is a matter of popular usage, if not sentiment, and has no basis in revealed doctrine.

How? By posting a scan of a document you know perfectly well does not represent the actual position of the Church?

I don't know if you killed the conversation, but you certainly demonstrated that you're not interested in the facts of the matter.

In fact, Mormon 6:6 specifically states that all the Nephite records, except the Book of Mormon plates, were buried in the hill Cumorah near the narrow neck of land by Mormon, not Moroni. Nowhere in the Book of Mormon does it state where the Book of Mormon plates were finally buried.

An examination of a map of North America shows that it is possible to sail along the coast of Mexico, up the Mississippi River, and then up the Ohio River to within less than one hundred miles of the New York hill where the plates were buried. Trails and waterways along these major rivers have existed for several thousand years. Sorenson provides a sixteenth-century example of someone walking a similar route in less than a year;59 Moroni had thirty-five years between the final battles of the Nephites and when he buried the plates.60 Thus, the plates could have been transported by canoe to New York, along well-used waterways of the Hopewell Indians (who flourished c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 400).61