We seem to be receiving a lot more questions and comments
lately and we will endeavor to answer them all; however, it might take a while
because of our backlog of articles we are also posting.
Comment #1: “When
you look at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to one side goes north into Mexico and
the U.S., and on the other side, it goes south into Central America and South
America. Surely the Nephites would have known this, so where do you get east
and west?” Malcolm J.
Response: According
to General J.G. Barnard (left), U.S. Corps of Engineers, “The Isthmus of
Tehuantepec” (results of a survey for a railroad to connect the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans made by the Scientific Commission, NY, D. Appleton & Co.,
1852…Tehuantepec Railroad Company of New Orleans), “The coast-lines on either
side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec have a general direction nearly east and
west.” These coastlines run, nearly east and west, for approximately 200 miles
on both coastlines. So if you disagree, go argue it out with the Railroad who
surveyed it. As for the Nephites, without aerial photography and satellite
imagery, they would not have such an understanding. Even early explorers who were
experience at making maps, did not have the area correct for centuries.
Comment
#2: “Were the Nephite prophets and
leaders dictators as Sorenson claims? In his writing, he certainly makes it
appear so” Melissa N.
Response: To my recollection,
Sorenson never uses the word dictator
in labeling the Nephite leadership. However, he certainly stomps around the
subject in his writing about the Nephites in the Land of Promise. He also never
uses the word prophet, instead using "scribe," in discussing the writings of the
scriptural record. He also claims they were very isolated in their thinking and
writing, paying no attention and giving no comment to the many other people who he claims
lived in the Land of Promise. However, these men were prophets of God, not
scribes or writers, but those who carried out the Lord’s will in the matter of
recording what they saw and understood, or were instructed or constrained to
write.
Comment #3: “In Mesoamerica, the
earliest known ceremonial center which has been credited to the Olmecs is San
Lorenzo, dating to 1350 B.C. This is certainly within the time frame of the
Jaredites” Healey A.
Response:
Note that the word “earliest” is herein used. That is, the first center or
complex that the Jaredites are claimed to have built (San Lorenzo) was begun
some 700 years after their arrival in the Land of Promise. Within the first
century, the Jaredites elected a king, Jared’s son, Orihah (Ether 6:27). By
this time we are looking at twenty-four families who had many children, as
little as 12 and 22 (Ether 6:20), and as many as 31 (Ether 7:2), with many
Jaredites living to an “exceeding old age.” Therefore, it might be concluded by
the end of the first century, there were several hundred people, and within the
second generation, two major cities were developed (Ether 7:4). The idea that
the first structure of San Lorenzo was built 700 years later is extremely
questionable. Consequently, the Olmec on that basis alone would hardly have been the
Jaredites.
Comment #4: “I ran across this
statement and wondered what you thought of it: “In the 1850s the following
unsigned statement was circulated among Latter-day Saints: ‘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, southeast direction until they came to
the nineteenth degree of North Latitude, then, nearly east to the Sea of Arabia
then sailed in a southeast direction and landed on the continent of South
America in Chili [Chile] thirty degrees south latitude.’ The original is in the
handwriting of early church leader Frederick G. Williams, who held a definite
opinion on the subject of Book of Mormon geography. The statement was partially
rewritten by church authorities Richards and Little and published as a
“Revelation to Joseph the Seer” - a statement which the original did not
contain. The Chilean landing site,
promoted in the William’s document, matches Orson Pratt’s geography. Prominent
LDS would later call into question the statement’s authority; but before this
would happen, church leaders publicly attributed (without verification or
proof) features of Orson Pratt’s geography to the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith.
The ideas that Lehi landed on the coast of temperate Chile thousand of miles
south of Panama’s narrow neck, and that tropical Colombia’s thousand mile long
Magdalena River is the River Sidon, were presented by church scholars as
mainstream, majority views in the LDS community” Judson T.
Lehi sailed across the Southern Ocean on the West Wind Drift and driven by the Prevailing Westerlies from Arabia, caught the Humboldt
(Peruvian) Current and landed where the winds and currents die down at the 30º south latitude in Chile
Response: The article you quote appears on the
Wikipedia website under Proposed Book of
Mormon geographical setting. Wikipedia has a lot of interesting stuff and is
a good source of information most of the time; however, anyone can place an
article on these sites and sometimes people put something on them that is not
correct, well-founded, or supportable. Most of the geographical info for the
Book of Mormon placed on Wikipedia is done so by Mesoamericanists, and often is
strictly from their viewpoint. In this case, there are a couple of inaccurate
statements: 1) The statement written on a paper by Williams also contained
three other statements, all of which were revelations; consequently, some
people at the time thought it, too, was a revelation; however, this was what
was “called into question the statement’s authority,” that is, was it a
revelation and the consensus was it was not; however, it is not important whether
it was a revelation or not, what matters is that Williams wrote this down on the
same paper he used for information from Joseph Smith, and likely this was yet
another of the Presidency’s discussion (see a previous series of articles on
this blog); 2) Orson Pratt was not in the Presidency at this time, but Williams
was, and whatever Pratt’s beliefs were, they were not involved in this writing
since it was obviously part of a Presidency meeting or discussion among the
Presidency; 3) The writing and subsequent discussion attributed to Williams did
not contain anything about the river Sidon, nor Colombia, nor even Ecuador or
Peru. It only mentioned a landing site along the 30º South Latitude in Chile.
Personally, though I have studied extensively, I have never heard that anyone
was suggesting the Magdalena River as the River Sidon, nor that this was ever
presented by Church scholars. I knew Art Kocherhans (one of the three mentioned
in this Wikipedia article regarding South America), but do not recall him ever
talking about the Magdelana River—his view, as far as I recall, had to do with
the Urubamba River (Rio Urubamba) being the River Sidon.
Comment
#5: “You keep harping on the Jaredites
never being in the Land Southward. Well, the Olmec settlements were along the
Gulf coast of Mexico in the area of Veracruz, which is north of Sorenson’s
narrow neck of land, so get off your high horse on this issue” Alton W.
Response:
According to the famous Mexican archaeologist Ignacio Bernal, in his The Olmec World, University California
Press, 1969, “The
climatic station of Villahermosa is typical of the Gulf coastal plain of
eastern Mexico, the region Bernal has termed the "Olmec metropolitan
area,” and Nigel Davies, the eminent British writer and archeologist maintains
that the Olmec eventually were found all over Mesoamerica, saying “they were
present in almost every region.”
Map showing the location of Villahermosa to the east of the narrow neck
(Mesoamericanists’ Land Southward). In additional, several other Olmec locations were found to the east of their narrow neck of land where the Jaredites never ventured
It is also now understood that
while some believe the Olmecs originated in the Vera Cruz area and moved
southward across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to have had any
appreciable influence on the cultural evolution of the Soconusco region.
However, such a postulated movement, especially at the time of the Cherla
period, is totally unsupported by any archaeological evidence. On the other
hand, there are numerous indicators that a vigorous movement in the opposite direction
-- toward the north -- was going on at precisely this time, in which case the
so-called Olmec influence must have been a native-born development emanating
from Soconusco itself.
Also east of the narrow neck was
La Venta, which renowned archaeologist Matthew Stirling, along with the
National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution claimed was Olmec. And,
in fact, to distinguish the earliest and original parent group of all
Mesoamerican cultures, Jimenez Moreno, in 1942, proposed that this early and
original Olmec culture should be called the La Venta people (La Venta Olmec).
Left: Matthew and Marion Stirling in Vera Cruz in 1939. Stirling was the Chief of the
Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology, and led the eight Smithsonian
Institution-National Geographic Society Archaeological Expeditions from 1939
to 1946; Right: Stirling beside one of the giant Olmec carved heads
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