The Mothers of Invention - a new Cumorah
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Our friends at Fairly Mormon have a need to prove the prophets wrong, so they have invented a new Hill Cumorah somewhere in southern Mexico. They call this the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory, now known as M2C.
Actually, this is just their theory; they don't know where this Mexican Cumorah actually is. They're mostly looking at mountains instead of hills anyway. But their main objective is to prove the prophets wrong by finding a "hill" in Mexico that contains Mormon's depository and was the scene of the final battles of the Jaredites and the Nephites.
Today we will show their technique in case you also have a necessity to invent a Hill Cumorah in your favorite part of the world. All you have to do is:
1) ignore what the modern prophets and apostles have said* and
2) apply a flexible interpretation of the Book of Mormon text.
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An awesome explanation for how to invent your own Cumorah is provided by our friends at Fairly Mormon, here:
This may be the single most preposterous article at Fairly Mormon, and that's saying a lot. If I had the time, I'd go through, line by line, and itemize the logical and factual fallacies of this piece. But surely you, dear readers of this blog, can do that on your own anyway.
One classic rhetorical trick Fairly Mormon uses frequently is on full display here. This is where you omit references that contradict your thesis, while purporting to discuss all the relevant information. Unsuspecting readers have no idea that they are reading a highly selective, misleading "analysis" of the issue.
For now, I'll briefly comment just on the headings. Throughout, when I refer to Cumorah, I mean the Cumorah of Mormon 6:6, the scene of the final battles of the Nephites and Jaredites.
The original material from Fairly Mormon is in blue.
The Church has no official position on any New World location described in the Book of Mormon
Church leaders consistently and persistently taught two things:
1. The hill Cumorah is in New York; and
2. We don't know where the other events took place.
Fairly Mormon conflates these two teachings to justify their repudiation of the prophets.
President Cowdery's Letter VII, of course, declared it was a fact that the final battles took place in the mile-wide valley west of the Hill Cumorah in New York. Having visited the depository in that hill multiple times with Joseph Smith, President Cowdery had good reason to state this was a fact.
Other prophets have reaffirmed Letter VII by declaring that Cumorah is in New York, including members of the First Presidency speaking in General Conference.
By outright repudiating these teachings, our Fairly Mormon M2C intellectuals want their followers to believe that nothing stated in General Conference is an "official position" of the Church. According to this approach, "only new revelation following proper procedure, and being accepted by the Church as a whole," constitutes an "official position." Which leads one to wonder why we even have General Conference or any teaching other than the canonized scriptures. The M2C advocates don't mention that not a single General Authority has ever stated, let alone implied, that Cumorah, is anywhere else but in New York.
There is no clear indication that Joseph Smith ever applied the name "Cumorah" to the hill in New York
Fairly Mormon skips over evidence such as Lucy Mack Smith's history, in which Joseph referred to the hill as Cumorah even before he obtained the plates.
The Mesoamerican advocates want us to believe that in D&C 128, which includes the phrase "Glad tidings from Cumorah," Joseph was referring to a hill in Mesoamerica in the midst of his list of a series of events that took place in New York and Pennsylvania. Plus, of course, the readers of the Times and Seasons where D&C 128 was first published had read Letter VII in the newspaper just the year before. They all knew Cumorah was in New York.
A late account from David Whitmer is the earliest possible association of the name with the New York hill
David Whitmer told several people, including Joseph F. Smith and Orson Pratt, about meeting the divine messenger who was taking the Harmony plates to Cumorah. This was when David had picked up Joseph and Oliver in Harmony and was taking them to his father's home in Fayette.
Joseph had given the plates to the messenger before leaving Harmony. He had translated all of them (except the sealed portion), including the Title Page which was on the last leaf of the plates, so he didn't need those plates any longer.
In D&C 10, the Lord had told him he would have to translate the plates of Nephi to replace the lost 116 pages. But he didn't have the plates of Nephi.
When David met the messenger, he was taking the Harmony plates back to Mormon's depository in Cumorah. There, the messenger would retrieve the plates of Nephi and take them to Fayette for Joseph to translate.
Obviously, this is a huge problem for M2C. If Mormon's depository was really in New York as the prophets have said, then Cumorah cannot be in Mexico (or anywhere else other than New York).
To get around this, Fairly Mormon wants you to believe David Whitmer is an unreliable witness. (That's what the anti-Mormons want you to believe, too.)
However, in the late 1800s, Zina Young asked Edward Stevenson to ask David about the messenger because Stevenson was heading to Missouri to interview David Whitmer. Zina remembered the account from the last time she had seen David Whitmer, back in 1832 when David Whitmer and Hyrum Smith baptized her family.
IOW, the account of the messenger taking the plates to Cumorah was not a "late recollection" but an event that he told people about as early as 1832.
Joseph Smith never used the name "Cumorah" in his own writings when referring to the gold plates' resting place
Fairly Mormon forgets to tell readers that Joseph Smith's personal writings contain very little information at all. For example, Joseph never wrote the words Moroni or Nephi or Bible. Using the Fairly Mormon logic, we should conclude that Joseph didn't believe anything he didn't personally write. Seriously?
They also forget to tell readers about Letter VII, which Joseph fully endorsed multiple times.
David Whitmer is not told that the hill from which Joseph received the record was called Cumorah, but this usage seems to have nevertheless become common within the Church
This is another attack on the credibility of David Whitmer. They forget to tell readers that Joseph said the messenger going to Cumorah had the Harmony plates because Joseph gave the plates to the messenger before he left Harmony. They forget to explain why the messenger would be taking the plates to Cumorah when Joseph and Oliver were heading for Fayette to finish the translation. I've actually had M2C advocates tell me that this messenger was on his way to Mesoamerica when David, Oliver and Joseph met him on this occasion.
This is one of the funniest claims on the Fairly Mormon website. Basically they're claiming that Joseph and Oliver didn't study the text closely enough to realize the Hill Cumorah cannot be in in New York. This is a classic example of how intellectuals can use sophistry to deny the obvious.
Moroni did not write that he had deposited the abridgment in the hill Cumorah because to do so he would have had to exhume the abridgment to write, "By the way, I put these records in the Hill Cumorah" and then rebury them. But he told Joseph Smith, even before he let Joseph take the plates, that the hill was named Cumorah. Oliver Cowdery explained that the hill had been named Cumorah anciently.
Joseph and Oliver had personal experience with the Nephite repository in the New York hill. Orson Pratt explained that the repository was in a department of the hill separate from the stone box in which Moroni concealed the plates. There was good reason for Moroni to put the abridged record in a separate place from the repository.
Yet these M2C intellectuals, as Fairly Mormon claims, "conclude that they (i.e., Cumorah and the New York hill) could not be the same."
Since the 1950s, opinion among Book of Mormon scholars has increasingly trended toward the realization that the Nephite Cumorah and the Hill in New York cannot be the same
Clever rhetoric here. Fairly Mormon frames this as if everyone who is smart enough has arrived at the "realization" that the prophets are all wrong. It's no longer a theory in their minds; they have "realized" the "truth."
There are 13 geographical conditions required for the Book of Mormon Hill Cumorah
These "conditions" are the product of circular reasoning. They were concocted by the same guy who wrote the entry in Encyclopedia of Mormonism that was plagiarized for a phony fax from the office of the First Presidency which Fairly Mormon and other members of the M2C citation cartel cite as evidence of Church policy.
At the same time, they also deny that statements made by actual members of the First Presidency in General Conference reflect mere personal opinion that is erroneous.
Joseph Fielding Smith, before he became President of the Church, argued for a New York location as the scene of the final battle
Hmm. Fairly Mormon doesn't show readers what JFS actually wrote. Instead, they sanitize it for readers by summarizing it and then arguing against it. Here's what he wrote: "Because of this theory some members of the Church have become confused and greatly disturbed in their faith in the Book of Mormon.”
The first time he issued his warning about the two-Cumorahs theory, JFS was Church Historian and had been an apostle for 20 years. The second time he issued it, he was President of the Quorum of the Twelve. But to M2C scholars, he didn't know what he was talking about and he was wrong.
I think most members of the Church can see that President Smith's warning has been vindicated. We see the evidence all around us in terms of lost testimonies and confused investigators.
Joseph Fielding Smith acknowledged that this was his opinion, and that others were entitled to their own opinions regarding this subject
Any LDS who accepts the Articles of Faith must agree that others are entitled to their own opinions. No one has to believe anything.
What Fairly Mormon forgets to tell you is that their "analysis" of JFS's views is based on a 40-year-old recollection by a student in Sidney Sperry's class, recalling what Sperry said JFS said. Fairly Mormon wants you to believe this compound hearsay instead of JFS's written warnings.
No actual archaeological digs have been performed at the site to actually attempt to find artifacts
In this paragraph, Fairly Mormon tells us that even if they find artifacts on Cumorah (and boxes full of artifacts have been found there), it doesn't prove the site was Cumorah because war artifacts "can be found all over the country in a great many sites." Another of my favorite Fairly Mormon logical fallacies.
The Book of Mormon does not state that the plates of Mormon were buried in the Hill Cumorah: All of the other records except the gold plates were buried there
By "plates of Mormon" they mean the plates Mormon gave Moroni. You can read the goofy "logic" in this paragraph at Fairly Mormon's site, but of course the text never says Moroni didn't bury the plates in the same hill where his father hid the Nephite plates in the repository.
Fairly Mormon also doesn't tell readers that Moroni told Joseph Smith the record was "written and deposited" not far from his home near Palmyra. IOW, Mormon and Moroni lived in the New York area when they wrote the record.
Moroni wandered for 36 years before burying the plates of Mormon
Moroni returned to the Hill Cumorah to get the plates of Ether, and probably a second time to get the sermons and letters of his father. Fairly Mormon wants readers to think "Moroni could easily have eventually come to modern New York state" from southern Mexico.
That's not impossible, of course, but since he and his father wrote the record near Joseph's home, it makes a lot more sense that he would not have traveled over 2,000 of desolate wilderness, all the time evading hostile enemies who wanted him dead.
Ancient militaristic texts, including those of the Bible, frequently exaggerated the numbers involved in battle for their own propagandistic purposes
Fairly Mormon wants readers to think Mormon wrote propaganda. While not impossible, another interpretation is that Mormon was accurate. He saw 20,000 of his dead people from the top of Cumorah. The rest had died elsewhere and earlier.
Fairly Mormon dismisses the statement by Brigham Young, which he related two months before his death, specifically so the events would not be forgotten. He also prefaced his remarks by pointing out he was born in New York and knew the area well.
The M2C intellectuals also dismiss the statements of Heber C. Kimball, Wilford Woodruff, and others, who describe the respository as a room with a stone shelf, etc.
Fairly Mormon wants people to believe that Joseph, Oliver, Don Carlos and others somehow shared a vision of a hill in Mesoamerica that they visited multiple times and spoke about to Brigham Young.
Fairly Mormon also wants readers to believe that Moroni could transport the plates to and from Mexico at will, no problem, even though he never even alluded to such a journey. You probably don't believe that an LDS scholar would make such claims, so please read the Fairly Mormon explanation and see for yourself.
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I put together a video that shows how to manufacture a Hill Cumorah in Mexico. It's based on one of my favorite blogs to follow. You can use the same techniques described on that blog to put Cumorah wherever you want.
https://youtu.be/zUZbgyu6-AI
I also put this one one of my DVDs for anyone interested.
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*Note: You'll notice in the video how important it is to start with step #1. Don't skip step #1. This is the key to manufacturing your own Cumorah. If you make a mistake and pay attention to what the modern prophets and apostles have said, you pretty much have to stick with the Cumorah in western New York, a couple of miles south of Palmyra. That's not nearly as fun as inventing your own Cumorah in southern Mexico or wherever else you want.
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