The Fallacy of Seven Matching Points – Part III

A reader sent me a copy of Joseph Warren Grammer’s work Book of Mormon Evicdences Revisited (2009), containing 14 chapters and 3 appendices. Much of his first so-called “matching point” was covered in the previous post. In this post we look at the final part of Point One, and his fourth matching point, that of the mound builders.

The green area suggests where mounds have been found throughout the eastern United States, most attributed to the Adena and Hopewell Cultures
    Point Four: Grammer: “We know that the Hopewell and Adena people both built gigantic mounds and earthen enclosures, as did the Nephites and Jaredites of the Book of Mormon.”
    Response: It is always a curious argument that Mound Builder Theorists keep coming up with—there are mounds built in the eastern U.S., ergo, they must have been built by the Jaredites and Nephites. Where on earth does such logic stem? There is not a single mound built in the Old World in the area from which the Jaredites came—very extensive pyramids, true, but no mounds. Nor are there any mounds built in the entire area of Israel, actually not even a pyramid. Where does such a connection get started?

Mounds are found all over the eastern United States. Some are large, some are decorative, but most are simple mounds with no room on top for much of anything. Within the mounds are burials of skeletons as well as artifacts. There is no match to such mound-building anywhere the Jaredites or Jews lived in the Old World
    After all, mounds are not pyramids. They are completely different. There are ancient mounds found around the world—but not in the same countries or regions where pyramids are found. Egypt has no mounds. And when we say mounds, we are talking mostly about burial mounds and sometimes decorative or maybe religious mounds—but not pyramids or anything like them.

Hopewell mound locations. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world, suggesting a unique people with no history elsewhere
    As for mounds in the Book of Mormon, there is no such thing. Earthen banks were cast up by Moroni’s army as a means of defense against Lamanite attack, as well as stone walls, ditches, etc. These are not the mounds found around the eastern U.S.
    The only comment in the scriptural record of building up earth, is found where Moroni “had been strengthening the armies of the Nephites, and erecting small forts, or places of resort; throwing up banks of earth round about to enclose his armies, and also building walls of stone to encircle them about, round about their cities and the borders of their lands; yea, all round about the land” (Alma 48:8, emphasis mine). This does not say they build mounts of earth in any way, but built walls out of earth “banks” and stone walls in order to “enclose his armies.” This is repeated when the Lamanites tried to throw down the banks of earth in order to get to the Nephites behind these earthen banks (Alma 49:22), back into the ditches from which the earth had been dug, but ended up only filling the ditches with their dead and wounded bodies.
    It is fallacious to say that “We know that the Hopewell and Adena people both built gigantic mounds and earthen enclosures, as did the Nephite and Jaredites of the Book of Mormon” as Grammer does. When one becomes so infaturated with their own ideas that they completely misrepresent the scriptural record, their research is pointless.
    Point Five: Grammer: “We know that the Hopewell did not use stone in building their dwellings, but did use stone in some of their mounds, as did the Nephites of the Book of Mormon.”
    Response: Here is another fallacious statement. Nowhere in the scriptural record does it say or even suggest that the Nephites used stone in building mounds. Again, the only area where this type of thing is mentioned is in Alma 48:8, quoted above and again here: “Yea, he had been strengthening the armies of the Nephites, and erecting small forts, or places of resort; throwing up banks of earth round about to enclose his armies, and also building walls of stone to encircle them about, round about their cities and the borders of their lands; yea, all round about the land” (emphasis mine). For the reading impaired, evidently like Grammer, the scriptural record that stone was used to build walls to encircle them about—defensive walls, defensive positions, for the protection of the Nephite army against Lamanite attack. These are not mounds! Saying they are does not alter the scriptural record!
    Point Six: Grammer: “We know that at the height of the Hopewell culture, the people were not only spread over much of the Midwest, but from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, from Minnesota and North Dakota to the Mississippi and Florida, and from Yellowstone and the Rockies to the Appalachians of Virginia.”

Response: Granted, the Hopewell Culture was spread over most of the eastern United States. To consider that the Nephites covered such a large area in size is to misread and misquote the scriptural record, for nowhere in the record do we find the Nephites occupying an area about half the size of the present United States.
    Point Six (cont): Grammer: “— which brings us to the Zelph enigma. Zelph, being a rather strange name, comes from the experiences of a few Latter-day Saints (Mormons) who visited several high mounds in Illinois created by former inhabitants. About one of the mounds Joseph Smith said,"On the top of the mound were stones which presented the appearance of three altars having been erected one above the other...; and the remains of bones were strewn over the surface of the ground. The brethren procured a shovel and a hoe, and removing the earth to the depth of about one foot, discovered the skeleton of a man, almost entire, and between his ribs the stone point of a Lamanitish arrow, which evidently produced his death.”
    Response: This event is well recorded, though each written record of it is different and no common factors agree other than the basic information: 1) Within a mound, about a foot deep was the burial site of a skeleton; 2) stones had been placed upon the top of the hill like three altars, one above the other; 3) Joseph stated that the skeleton belonged to a white Lamanite named Zelph, “a warrior and a chieftan under the great prophet Onandagus, who was known from the eastern sea to the Rocky Mountains” History of the Church Vol. 2: 79-80, June 3, 1834, 1948 edition). We have reported here in the past about the different and conflicting comments of last battles, hill Cumorah, etc., and that they were not what Joseph Smith, himself said.

The mound called Zelph’s Hill, located during Zion’s Camp they passed on their journey from eastern Ohio through Illinois to Missouri on June 4, 1834
    The fact remains that these men of Zion’s Camp found a burial site of an ancient skeleton belonging to a White Lamanite Joseph named Zelph,who was a great warrior during the time of the prophet Onandagus, who was known from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. Nothing more about the burial mounds was discussed or written. And the fact that burial mounds have been found all over the world by just about every Culture that has ever existed is, in and of itself, dully unremarkable. The fact that the Lamanites were located in the upper United States shows the important fact, that those who left the Book of Mormon Land of Promise in Hagoth’s ships ventured into Central America, Mesoamerica where a large contingency settled and built magnificent buildings as they had in Andean Peru, and eventually their descendants traveled even further northward covering the area from the Eastern Sea (Atlantic Ocean) to the Rocky Mountains. This should show to everyone that the entire Western Hemisphere is indeed the land of the Nephites and Lamanites, or the Land of Promise.
(See the next post, “Fallacy of Seven Matching Points-Part IV,” of Joseph Warren Grammer’s work Book of Mormon Evidences Revisited (2009), containing 14 chapters and 3 appendices, for the last of his so-called “matching” points)