Criticism of Mesoamerican Geography: the Two Cumorahs—Part III

Continuing with the last post, and dealing with the statement that: “As fantastic as it may seem…there were two Cumorahs: one in Mexico where the great battle took place, and where Moroni buried a longer, unexpurgated version of the golden Nephite records; and one near Palmyra, New York, where Moroni eventually buried a condensed version of the plates after lugging them on an epic trek of several thousand miles.”

First of all, the statement above is not correct. We do not know that Moroni buried any plates. We know that he had “a few plates” which his father, Mormon gave to him before he, Mormon, hid up all the other plates in the Hill Cumorah (Mormon 6:6). What Moroni did with the plates which were entrusted to him we do not know other than he wrote on them the abridgement of Ether’s record, and the last two chapters of his father’s record, and then what is called the Book of Moroni, which included some letters his father had written to him earlier.

And as stated in the last post, we do not know if Moroni was the one who transported the plates, nor do we know if he was still mortal at the time if he did. We do not know if the records Mormon hid in the Hill Cumorah, in the Land of Cumorah among the many waters, rivers, and fountains, were ever moved. We simply do not know any of this.

What we do know is that the plates and records of the Nephites were buried by Mormon for he said, “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). Of the record given to Moroni and the many others, Mormon said, “knowing that these things must surely be made known, and that all things which are hid must be revealed upon the house-tops” (Mormon 5:8), and that the records “are written unto the remnant of the house of Jacob; and they are written after this manner, because it is known of God that wickedness will not bring them forth unto them; and they are to be hid up unto the Lord that they may come forth in his own due time” (Mormon 5:12).

It matters little where the records are, where they were buried by Mormon, whether Moroni transported them, or what portion now resides in the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York. At some point in time, we will know all things for the Lord has told us they will be revealed.

Besides, the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York was not named Cumorah originally, and did not acquire that name until Joseph Smith was told of the location of the buried plates. What records he uncovered under the guidance of the Angel Moroni were three things: 1) what we now have as the Book of Mormon, 2) the Book of Lehi which he translated first and the 116 pages Martin Harris lost, and 3) the sealed portion of the plates which were not translated into print. Whether or not this sealed portion is the writings of the Brother of Jared (Ether 3:24), and that Moroni translated at one time (Ether 5:1), is not known. Where the other “wagon load of records” Brigham Young saw of the “proceedings of this people,” the Nephites (Helaman 3:13-15), is not known.

We only know that two Cumorahs are mentioned in LDS doctrine. The first, in the Book of Mormon, existed in the Land of Cumorah, among the many waters, rivers and fountains (Mormon 6:4), where the plates were buried, except for those few Mormon gave to Moroni, and second, the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York where Joseph Smith uncovered the “few plates” Moroni had and, evidently, buried there. No other plates were known to be in or around that Hill Cumorah in upstate New York. As stated in the last post, Brigham Young saw in a vision plates in a cave under the Hill Cumorah. He would not have known, and we do not know, if that was the same hil where Joseph found the plates, or a different hill somewhere else.

If there were two hills, obviously for continuity sake, both hills, the original burial place in the Land of Promise, and the hill in upstate New York, bear the same name, but there is absolutely nothing in the record to suggest they were the same physical location. That some early authorities thought this to be the case does not prove any fact, other than limited understanding of the geography of the Book of Mormon, which early readers were prone to have—especially since their reading was based on doctrinal matters, not history or geography.

If there are two hills named the same, there is certainly a type of this in Hebrew thought as well as Nephite history. It cannot be ignored that the Nephites named a land and city in the Land of Promise “Bountiful,” as did Lehi name the area along the shores of Irreantum where Nephi built his ship, by the same name, “Bountiful.” There are many other instances in the scriptural record to show that names sometimes were repeated from the Old World to the New.

To disregard any of this out of hand and stubbornly insist that there could not be two Cumorahs is inconsistent with the scriptural record and denies God the ability to move the plates from one place to another for His own purposes.