Missing the Point in Locating the Land of Promise – Part II

Continuing from the last post regarding how Theorists start out by looking at maps and trying to locate an area that is a Peninsula, has two or three seas around it, and has something that they think will pass for a narrow neck of land, then proclaiming it the location of Lehi’s landing and name it the Land of Promise. In the last post, it ended discussing whether or not the Lamanites would have been literate after the 120 years of savage and brutal wars that wiped out the entire Nephite nation and people (and even if they were literate before that time).

Left: Atilla the Hun, though illiterate, slaughtered Goth tribes in what is now Germany and Austria on his way the conquest of Rome, ruling territories from Germany to the Caspian Sea; Right: Also illiterate, Ashoka the Great killed all his brothers and slaughtered a hundred thousand citizens on his way to ruling India Pakistan Nepal and Afghanistan
   So, let’s be realistic about this—the more vicious the person, the less inclined they are to intellectual pursuits. And by the time of the final Lamanite wars, there is no evidence that the Lamanites themselves were literate, and certainly after the length of time of their long civil wars. As Moroni stated after the fall of Cumorah and all the Nephites had been destroyed (Mormon 8:7): “the Lamanites are at war one with another; and the whole face of this land is one continual round of murder and bloodshed; and no one knoweth the end of the war” (Mormon 8:8), and nearly forty years later, added, “their wars are exceedingly fierce among themselves” (Moroni 1:2)  421 A.D.
    One might ask Sorenson how he thinks any books were written, copied, read, etc., by the Lamanites during and after this violent and bloodthirsty time. And as stated in the last post, even the Mulekites, in less than 400 years, lost their original language altogether and were not literate, though they sprang form the royal house of Judah. 
    Now we come to the interesting part. What makes anyone think that any Nephite writings survived this period? Mormon tells us that he “began to be old; and knowing it to be the last struggle of my people, and having been commanded of the Lord that I should not suffer the records which had been handed down by our fathers, which were sacred, to fall into the hands of the Lamanites, (for the Lamanites would destroy them) therefore I made this record out of the plates of Nephi, and hid up in the hill Cumorah all the records which had been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni” (Mormon 6:6).
    Moroni tells us that after Cumorah, the Lamanites hunted down all the Nephites who escaped the battle and killed them all (Mormon 8:2). It cannot be over-emphasized that the Lamanites were “hell bent on” destroying all the Nephites, everything Nephite, “because of their hatred” (Moroni 1:2). In fact, the Lamanites had a history of their hatred toward the Nephites (Alma 26:9), and anyone who disagreed with them, even their own people (Alma 43:11), and took up arms against them (Alma 24:2), especially savage in their hatred were those Nephite defectors who became Lamanites (Alma 43:7).

Obviously, this hatred, which constantly degenerated into bloodshed, was directed at the Nephites, but also anyone who worshipped God, and all such “knew that if they should fall into the hands of the Lamanites, that whosoever should worship God in spirit and in truth, the true and the living God, the Lamanites would destroy” (Alma 43:10). By the time of the final wars that culminated in the battle at Cumorah in 385 A.D., the Lamanites were so depraved and steeped in bloodthirsty wantonness, that the Lord warned Mormon that any records the Lamanites found would be destroyed. So Mormon, commanded of the Lord, buried all the Nephites records in his possession.
    So again, one might ask Sorenson, why he thinks any books written by the Nephites would have survived that final purge? In fact, who could even imagine that the Lamanites would want to preserve any written records, codices, books, et al, that the Nephites possessed?
    Perhaps these two examples might suffice.

Spanish priests burned thousands of Maya codices or books in the 15^th and 16^th centuries
    1) Sorenson’s own writing tells us that the Spanish conquistadors burned thousands of Maya books. Actually, it was their priests, namely the Bishop (and Inquisitor) of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatan, Franciscan Friar Diego de Landa, who ordered in 1562 the burning of 5000 Maya cult images and 27 hieroglyphic scrolls, who said, “We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all.”
    These codices were primary written records of Maya civilization, and it is claimed “their range of subject matter in all likelihood embraced more topics than those recorded in stone and buildings, and was more like what is found on painted ceramics.” Alonso de Zorita wrote that in 1540 he saw numerous such books in the Guatemalan highlands that “...recorded their history for more than eight hundred years back, and that were interpreted for me by very ancient Indians.”
    Only three codices survived this holocaust, approximately 208 pages (the authenticity of a fourth, the Grolier Codex, fragments of 11 pages, is disputed).

In 1933, students giving Nazi salutes and singing anthems from several universities gathered in Berlin and burned 20,000 books deemed unGerman
    2) When Adolf Hitler gained control of Germany, a large number of students from several universities gathered in Berlin, along with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and protected by brown-shirted storm troopers, burned 20,000 books on the Opera Square. As Goebbels proclaimed watching the bonfire, “And  thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past.”
    In both cases, the important books and records of past generations were destroyed by fanatical zealots proclaiming the destruction of evil. This is so similar to the fanatical nature of the Lamanites at the time of their final victories, that one cannot imagine anything Nephite surviving. In fact, we are told that during Mormon’s rapid retreat, trying to save as many civilian Nephites as possible “that whatsoever lands we had passed by, and the inhabitants thereof were not gathered in, were destroyed by the Lamanites, and their towns, and villages, and cities were burned with fire” (Mormon 5:5—emphasis mine).
    It is simply not realistic to think that any books or writings survived this Lamanite holocaust that destroyed everthing in its path, including people, buildings, towns and cities. It is simply not realistic to think that the Lamanites, seething with this thousand-year hatred would want, let along keep, anything Nephite, especially books. While we know the Nephites had books (Helaman 3:15), which contained their proceedings and history (Helaman 3:13-14), what Mormon didn't bury (and there are reports of early Church leaders seeing wagon loads of them hidden in Cumorah) would not have been preserved by the Lamanites.
    Another example of Theorists picking an area rather than the scriptural reference, is seen in the Great Lakes Theorists whose chief claim to location is based upon the Hill Cumorah in Western (upstate) New York. Nothing else in the entire area fits any description of the scriptural record, yet they hold to that location as though it has been sacredly revealed to them.
    Still another area is Baja California, chosen because it is a peninsula, yet, there is no suggestion in the scriptural record that the Land of Promise was a peninsula. It was an island (2 Nephi 10:20), and while the Land Southward was nearly surrounded by water, it had a narrow neck of land connecting it to the Land Northward, which had a sea to the east (Ether 9:3; 14:13), a sea to the north (Ether 15:8), and a sea to the west (Ether 10:20), and basically seas in every direction (Helaman 3:8),which pretty well confirms Jacob's statement of the Land of Promise being an island (2 Nephi 10:20).

The point is, as has been stated in the last post, and here innumerable times before, the only—and we mean only—criteria for locating the Land of Promise, and that is that it must match all—and we mean all—of the descriptions written about in the scriptural record first, and foremost. Other criteria can be used, but it is the scriptural record that is where we start, pursue and end our search. Twenty-seven of these scripturaly-documented criteria were covered in some degree during our posts: “So Where is the Land of Promise?” Parts 1 thru 12, posted between December 26, 2013 and January 7, 2014. All the others can be found in our book Lehi Never Saw Mesoamerica. And every one of these criteria is found in Andean Peru as is outlined in that book!