Hill Cumorah

[_antishock8]

I think the average Mormon doesn't really hear about the cave filled with plates and whatnot. Regardless, it was said and I would like to see that addressed, too.

What is the explanation for how the NY hill became known as Cumorah, also? Was Joseph Smith, despite his personal tutoring from Moroni, the source of confusion?

I think the source of confusion is coming from the apologists who recognize there are no artifacts nor remains from 2,230,000 warriors that died at the NY site, and thus devised/promulgated the "Two-Cumorah" theory which allows for

1) TBM's to compartmentalize the lack of archaeological evidence

and, 2) shift the focus of discussion away from archaeological evidence to a never-to-be-proved-or-disproved theory that is designed to abet #1.

Regardless, back to the point, I would really like to hear from TBM's who buy into the apologist theory why or how they openly disregard doctrinal statements, or prophetic revelation?

[_christopher]

There are several statements by those who claimed to actually see the content of the NY cave where the plates were hidden. If I recall correctly some said the records and various artifacts filled the room, and were more than ten men could carry or a six mule team could pull.

Here is what Brigham Young said about the room that is hidden in the Hill Cumorah in NY:

"When Joseph got the plates, the angel instructed him to carry them back to the hill Cumorah, which he did. Oliver says that when Joseph and Oliver went there, the hill opened, and they walked into a cave, in which there was a large and spacious room. He says he did not think, at the time, whether they had the light of the sun or artificial light; but that it was just as light as day. They laid the plates on a table; it was a large table that stood in the room. Under this table there was a pile of plates as much as two feet high, and there were altogether in this room more plates than probably many wagon loads; they were piled up in the corners and along the walls. The first time they went there the sword of Laban hung upon the wall; but when they went again it had been taken down and laid upon the table across the gold plates; it was unsheathed, and on it was written these words: "This sword will never be sheathed again until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and his Christ." I tell you this as coming not only from Oliver Cowdrey, but others who were familiar with it, and who understood it just as well as we understand coming to this meeting, enjoying the day, and by and by we separate and go away, forgetting most of what is said, but remembering some things. So is it with other circumstances in life. I relate this to you, and I want you to understand it. I take this liberty of referring to those things so that they will not be forgotten and lost. Carlos Smith was a young man of as much veracity as any young man we had, and he was a witness to these things. Samuel Smith saw some things, Hyrum saw a good many things, but Joseph was the leader. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Volume 19, June 17, 1877)

And Orson Pratt had this to say:

"After having made this abridgment he committed it into the hands of his son Moroni, knowing that his nation would be destroyed, and that Moroni, according to the revelations God had given him, would be spared to keep the records, and to behold the downfall of his nation Mormon hid the records from which he made this abridgment in a hill, called the hill Cumorah, that being its ancient name, and this hill was about three miles from where this young man resided, in the town of Manchester, Ontario County, State of New York. There all the records were deposited, and according to the Book of Mormon they must have been very numerous indeed. The history of the ancient inhabitants of this land was kept by their kings, and the records became very voluminous; and they were all deposited by the Prophet Mormon in that hill; but the abridgment from which the Book of Mormon was taken was given into the hands of his son Moroni, to finish out the record." (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, Volume 15, September 22, 1872)

[_silentkid]

...and how Moroni got all the records and artifacts from Mesoamerica to NY.

TD: this is a great point. When I took my first Book of Mormon class at BYU in 1993, we discussed the Two Cumorah issue, briefly. The question of how the records and artifacts made their way to New York was raised by a student. Either Moroni walked a long way or Jesus used his magical teleportation powers to accomplish the task. Both choices are equally ridiculous and require equally convoluted apologetic rationales. I like SWSU's proposed method.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I confess—I often miss points that aren't articulated in what I'm reading.

We all do. But this one was articulated in what you had read.

Was Heber telling a fib?

Not very likely.

mistaken?

Possibly. I don't believe in human infallibility.

deluded?

That would be far stronger than I would be inclined to go, absent strong evidence in that direction.

And how do you distinguish his pronouncements from any other prophet?

In several ways, some of them quite obvious: For example, he wasn't the prophet, so he lacks authority to declare doctrine that is binding upon the Church. Further, his apparent prophecy hasn't been canonized or even published in a Church publication. It survives in a second-hand journal account, and in a second-hand ledger account.

It would be interesting to interview Heber C. Kimball in order to determine what it was exactly that he felt had been revealed to him. But that is not possible. So we're left with these second-hand accounts, to make of them what we choose. I take them seriously, but it would take more than a pair of private second-hand accounts of a remark by a former counselor in the First Presidency, in my view, to establish a new official doctrine of the Church.

I do, however, appreciate the fact that you're trying to supply an actual revelation establishing the hill in New York as the location of the final battles. Poor antishock8, who still doesn't really understand the issue here, keeps recycling his irrelevant copied-and-pasted list of quotations demonstrating that the New York hill has, until recent decades, been almost uniformly assumed to be the location of the final battles.

The conclusion seems obvious. The prophets and apostles taught the body of the church incorrect principles while functioning in their callings, having sought inspiration beforehand, speaking in the name of Jesus Christ.

I may perhaps have mentioned the fact that I don't believe in human infalibility. If not, let me mention it here: I don't believe in human infalibility. Not even for prophets.

So I don't doubt that prophets and apostles have made factual errors in their published remarks. In fact, I know they have. I've heard them do so. And not debatable errors. Flat-out, unambiguous mistakes.

That doesn't bother me a bit. I may perhaps have mentioned the fact that I don't believe in human infalibility. If not, permit me to mention it here: I don't believe in human infalibility. Not even for prophets.

With that said, though, I don't believe that the prophets and the apostles, on the whole, have taught the body of the church incorrect principles. The GPS coordinates of the location of the final Nephite and Jaredite battles don't constitute a principle of the gospel. Drawing on a mistaken notion of the identity of the original Cumorah to illustrate or strengthen a true and inspired teaching is no more troublesome for me than is, say, the mistaken structure of the physical cosmos presupposed in the Bible (e.g., a more or less flat earth under an arched, solid heaven) as the background against which to teach correct principles or the fact that a New Testament author, writing in Greek, used an inaccurate Greek translation of Psalm 8:5 in Hebrews 2:7 (reading "a little lower than the angels" instead of "a little lower than the Gods") to make his entirely sound point. I may perhaps have mentioned the fact that I don't believe in human infalibility. If not, permit me to mention it here: I don't believe in human infalibility. Not even for prophets.

To boil it down...

The prophets, apostles, and leaders of the church have taught (in an official capacity as representatives of the LDS church) that the final battle was in NY, and the plates were buried in the same hill in which they were found by Joseph Smith.

Not quite. For the most part, the prophets, apostles, and leaders of the Church have (in an an official capacity, as representatives of the Church) taught a number of important and wholly sound principles. With a few exceptions, they haven't been concerned to argue that the New York drumlin was the hill of the final battles; they've simply presumed that notion as the backdrop for teaching the principles they sought to teach. Joseph Fielding Smith's argument for the New York hill is an exception, but it is significant that, instead of proclaiming a revelation on the topic, he argued for it -- in much the way that anybody else who held the position would. Had an authoritative and clear revelation existed on the subject, he could simply have cited that revelation and put the matter to rest. Believing scholars and thinkers would have fallen in line. I, too, would fall in line if such a revelation were provided.

If after praying and asking for inspiration and believing they were receiving revelation, these LDS leaders were wrong on this point what happened?

It's possible that they were wrong. I may perhaps have mentioned the fact that I don't believe in human infalibility. If not, permit me to mention it here: I don't believe in human infalibility. Not even for prophets.

But I see little or no evidence, in the overwhelming majority of the cases cited, to suggest that they had prayed about the location of the original Cumorah, or that establishing its location was a principal or even secondary intent of what they were saying. The New York location was simply presupposed. Assumed. By the time Joseph Fielding Smith began to respond to the question, that location was being challenged by a few thinkers and writers. That's why he responded. Prior to that time, nobody was questioning the New York location.

Did the HG purposely confuse them?

No. I'm not even sure that the Holy Ghost said anything on the subject to them. I see little if anything in what they said to suggest that they claimed that the Holy Ghost had revealed anything to them on the subject.

Did they not really get the revelation they believed they received?

Where's the evidence that they believed that they had received a revelation concerning the location of the original Cumorah?

Did they mistake the HG for some other influence?

Maybe. Maybe not. It's quite possible, though, to confuse matters that we simply haven't questioned with the truth. I may perhaps have mentioned the fact that I don't believe in human infalibility. If not, permit me to mention it here: I don't believe in human infalibility. Not even for prophets.

Were they just lying or making stuff up?

I have no reason whatever to assume that.

For me the difficulty comes in when realizing one cannot trust LDS leaders who claim to be receiving revelation or inspiration, and two, if prophets and apostles and other leaders who claim to commune with the divine with special keys and powers can't get it right, and can't even tell if they are receiving truth or not, then how in the world can the average member know if they are actually receiving correct information or inspiration from the HG?

Further, if all these leaders claim to have received inspiration and revelation that confirm the one and only HC is in NY, I find it really strange that today's apologists can so easily discount these inspired teachings.

Where is the evidence for all these alleged revelations on the precise location of the final Jaredite and Nephite battles? With the exception of Mr. Metcalfe's obscure and somewhat opaque second-hand accounts of a comment apparently made by a nineteenth-century counselor in the First Presidency, nobody here has even tried to supply any.

That the assumption that the final battles occurred in upstate New York was almost universally held and unquestioned is not disputed by anybody. Proving it to have been so, with twenty quotations or even twenty thousand quotations, is irrelevant. That's not the issue.

I would have thought that the concept of trying to carefully separate what is known for certain from what is merely commonly assumed -- a fundamental and important exercise in every field with which I'm familiar -- would, in principle, be comprehensible to almost anybody. It's deeply instructive to me to realize that it apparently isn't.

[_antishock8]

...and how Moroni got all the records and artifacts from Mesoamerica to NY.

TD: this is a great point. When I took my first Book of Mormon class at BYU in 1993, we discussed the Two Cumorah issue, briefly. The question of how the records and artifacts made their way to New York was raised by a student. Either Moroni walked a long way or Jesus used his magical teleportation powers to accomplish the task. Both choices are equally ridiculous and require equally convoluted apologetic rationales. I like SWSU's proposed method.

I'm not sure why some, if not most Mormons resist the idea that the setting to the Book of Mormon story is right there in the NY/Great Lakes region. That would make more sense, given the impossibility of inconspicuously lugging a cave full of artifacts up to NY from Mesoamerica, AND the propetic statements of the Mormon church's prophets and apostles.

[_Daniel Peterson]

The vision of the cave of records was . . . a vision. Assuming the accounts to be more or less accurate (for purposes of discussion), they still wouldn't prove that the vision disclosed the contents of the New York hill rather than of some other. A vision can presumably show the visionary things close at hand or far away. And, incidentally, a glacial drumlin like the New York hill is unlikely to contain a natural cave. My bet is that, if there is a cave of records, it's in or near the original Cumorah.

The Journal of Book of Mormon Studies has published at least one interesting article on this topic.

When I took my first Book of Mormon class at BYU in 1993, we discussed the Two Cumorah issue, briefly. The question of how the records and artifacts made their way to New York was raised by a student. Either Moroni walked a long way or Jesus used his magical teleportation powers to accomplish the task. Both choices are equally ridiculous and require equally convoluted apologetic rationales. I like SWSU's proposed method.

I don't find it at all ridiculous to imagine that Moroni could have walked two or three thousand miles from Mesoamerica to what is now upstate New York over the course of roughly thirty-five years. As I mentioned yesterday, John Sorenson mentions the case of a shipwrecked English sailor who evidently did precisely that in the early seventeenth century.

When I was eleven years old, I backpacked 135 miles through the Sierra Nevada mountains in two weeks -- territory that is certainly no less difficult than that that Moroni would have had to cover -- with no special concern for speed. Even assuming a two-week annual vacation, if I had continued that rate of travel for thirty-five years, I would have walked roughly 114,000 miles. That's almost five times around the planet, at the equator. Three thousand miles, at that rate, would have required about 9-10 months.

[_truth dancer]

I would have thought that the concept of trying to carefully separate what is known for certain from what is merely commonly assumed -- a fundamental and important exercise in every field with which I'm familiar -- would, in principle, be comprehensible to almost anybody. It's deeply instructive to me to realize that it apparently isn't.

I humbly admit that I fell into this category.

I assumed Jesus Christ was at the helm of the church, that LDS leaders conversed with Christ and were inspired as they spoke in their official capacity.

As a believer I truly did not question the leaders. I trusted them and believed them. When my own understanding or knowledge or even belief was not in accord with the Brethren I believed I (or scientists or others), were at fault.

I am less trusting today.

In terms of my belief that leaders pray and ask for inspiration and help as they teach members and share their beliefs as truth... I suppose this is another assumption I have made. Maybe leaders don't pray at all. Maybe they don't ask for inspiration. Maybe they don't even think they are conversing with the Divine. Maybe they know they are just sharing their opinion or making stuff up or repeating past assumptions but pretend they are speaking for Christ.

Hmmmm.... I'll have to think about this. ;-)


~dancer~

[_Daniel Peterson]

I assumed Jesus Christ was at the helm of the church, that LDS leaders conversed with Christ and were inspired as they spoke in their official capacity.

That's my assumption, too.

Did you believe them to be infallible? If so, you were operating on the basis of false doctrine.

In terms of my belief that leaders pray and ask for inspiration and help as they teach members and share their beliefs as truth... I suppose this is another assumption I have made.

It's mine, too.

Maybe leaders don't pray at all. Maybe they don't ask for inspiration. Maybe they don't even think they are conversing with the Divine. Maybe they know they are just sharing their opinion or making stuff up or repeating past assumptions but pretend they are speaking for Christ.

Hmmmm.... I'll have to think about this.

You're absolutely free to think about anything you wish. But don't pretend that that's my position.

[_The Dude]

I don't find it at all ridiculous to imagine that Moroni could have walked two or three thousand miles from Mesoamerica to what is now upstate New York over the course of roughly thirty-five years. As I mentioned yesterday, John Sorenson mentions the case of a shipwrecked English sailor who evidently did precisely that in the early seventeenth century.

It is possible, I agree. Apologists are only, just barely, fenced in by what can be argued as possible. Probability and parsimony and ad hoc hypothesis do not usually trouble them, yet violation of these considerations is reason the rest of us roll our eyes and call it ridiculous.

What made Moroni walk 3,000 miles over 35 years just to bury his load of treasure?

[_silentkid]

Convoluted apologetic rationale:

The vision of the cave of records was . . . a vision. Assuming the accounts to be more or less accurate (for purposes of discussion), they still wouldn't prove that the vision disclosed the contents of the New York hill rather than of some other. A vision can presumably show the visionary things close at hand or far away. And, incidentally, a glacial drumlin like the New York hill is unlikely to contain a natural cave. My bet is that, if there is a cave of records, it's in or near the original Cumorah.

I don't find it at all ridiculous to imagine that Moroni could have walked two or three thousand miles from Mesoamerica to what is now upstate New York over the course of roughly thirty-five years. As I mentioned yesterday, John Sorenson mentions the case of a shipwrecked English sailor who evidently did precisely that in the early seventeenth century.

Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's plausible. Did Moroni have a wheelbarrow or a handcart? Also, where do you get the 35 years figure? I'll admit I haven't read up on this and I don't have a Book of Mormon handy.