Continuing with the previous
posts regarding one of our readers sending us information of a blog and asking
our opinion and comments.
Blog comment: “As I mentioned earlier, lack of written evidence
is not evidence of no oral usage of the term.”
Response: “Neither
does lack of written evidence lead to evidence of an oral use of a term. Such an argument
is neither useful nor of any value whatever. To suggest that Joseph Smith said
that the hill in New York was called Cumorah without any written documentation
or suggestive material to support that is as useless as saying that though
Joseph Smith never wrote that the Nephites were in Andean Peru it can be
suggested that from all his conversations with the Angel Moroni about the
Nephite people that he must have said verbally to others that they were there.
If there is no written documentation that can be attributed without question
and without doubt to Joseph Smith, then such an idea cannot be attributed to him
no matter how much a person might believe it to be true.
Nor can it be implied
that if a word or term was used in his presence that he agreed with it or did
not correct it verbally. Chastisement or correction verbally is one thing and
carries little negative connotations; however, to write down one’s disagreement
is a lasting comment that can cause one’s reputation undue harm. Just because
there is no written record that Joseph Smith disagreed with, or at least did
not agree with, Oliver Cowdery’s point of view about the hill Cumorah does not
mean that he actually agreed with something Oliver believed. Once again, Joseph
was well known for not correcting or making a statement about a point that he
may not have had an opinion on or even with which he disagreed.
To assume Joseph said
things that are not recorded and have that belief used as proof of his saying
something is a type of reasoning with which the blog author fills his writing, and
is no different than saying the ship that Nephi built was a two-masted sailing
vessel somewhat like the ships built almost two thousands years later by the
Europeans leading to their Age of
Discovery, despite the fact that no such comment is made or implied by
Nephi’s writings on the plates.
It does not matter how much a person might
believe that, there is no way to use Nephi’s writings as a proof of that point.
It could be said that the stress of a single mast sailing ship, to the pounding
of waves and strength of winds in the deep oceans requiring such a minimal
canvas design, but Nephi’s writings cannot be used for proof or support of the
point.
What can be used in
Nephi’s writings is his comment “driven forth before the wind” (1 Nephi 18:8,
9) which in today’s maritime terminology is the same as “Running Downwind,” or
“Running with the wind,” or “Running before the wind,” all of which means that
the ship is being pushed forward by the wind which is coming from directly
behind the vessel. When running downwind for protracted periods when
ocean-crossing in steady trade winds, for example, which makes the use of a
tiller (steering) difficult and if the wind is not constant and the currents
compatible, the ship can easily be moved off course. On ships that can reach (traveling
approximately perpendicular, 90º, to the wind) or beat (sailing close or into the wind) and run point of sail
(orientation to wind, i.e., port tack or starboard tack), running with the wind
can be both difficult and dangerous for an inexperienced crew; however, in a
fixed sail vessel that can only run with the wind, it is the fastest and
simplest means of sailing and requires little if almost any degree of knowledge
since both wind and current push the boat in the direction one intends to sail.
With this statement
by Nephi “we did put forth into the sea and were driven forth before the wind
towards the promised land” (1 Nephi 18:8, 9), we can obviously know what type
of sailing vessel it was, i.e., fixed sails that had fixed yardarms and could
not tack (move off from the following wind—could not beat or reach). But even
so, it could not be said how many masts, how many sails, the ship had or how it
was configured other than the fact that it ran with the wind (sailed only in
the direction the winds and currents pushed it along).
Blog comment: “Documented history does support the use of the term (Cumorah) in Joseph's presence
before 1830, use in 1833 in the official Church newspaper, and extensive,
specific identification of the New York hill as Cumorah in 1835 that Joseph incorporated
into his own history.”
Response: If all that
is true, then why did President Joseph F. Smith (left), Joseph Smth’s nephew
and Hyrum Smith’s son, declare that “the Lord has not yet revealed it” (Cannon,
p 160), and Anthony W. Ivins, counselor in the First
Presidency, who added in 1929, 'There has never been anything yet set forth
that definitely settles that question [of Book of Mormon geography].... We are
just waiting until we discover the truth" (CR, Apr. 1929, p. 16). While
the Church does not currently take an official position with regard to location
of geographical places, the authorities do not discourage private efforts to
deal with the subject (John E. Clark, “Book of Mormon Geography,” Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1992, pp. 176–179). In addition, it cannot be overstated that, even as the
blog author states, “Joseph had a record of allowing people to believe
whatever they wanted and not correcting false doctrine, preferring to let
people judge for themselves.” Of course, the term “false doctrine” is his term,
not mine, but the fact is that Joseph Smith did, as has been stated earlier,
allow people their own opinions both stated and in writing.
The point should be
made that if there was a need to correct one
misstatement then there would be a need to correct other misstatements, whether
about the Urim and Thumim or the hill Cumorah. The assumptions here are
unfounded. The statement of importance is that Joseph Smith had a record of
allowing people to believe whatever they wanted and not correcting it—this
would be true especially in areas where people’s opinions are used, rather than
saying “false doctrine.” Joseph’s desire to allow people their own free will in
their beliefs is the same as every President of the Church since his time. As
has been pointed out here, even Joseph Fielding Smith made that clear when
Sidney Sperry was fearful of printing something that contradicted what
President Smith had said, as has been reported in this work earlier.
Blog comment: “Some people continue to resist the facts so
this blog seeks to open a few minds.”
Response: Without
quoting a single scripture from the scriptural record to support his view, the
blog author rambles on and on about a very important controversial issue based
on the scriptural record, i.e., the Hill Cumorah.
It is hard to understand
how someone can use such determined comments that are not supportable by clear
cut provisions, but something Oliver Cowdery wrote of his own beliefs,
suggesting that Joseph Smith and he were given insights into the information by
the Angel Moroni without any supportable evidence, that Joseph Smith believed
the hill in New York was the hill Cumorah of the scriptural record where there
is not evidence he ever said or thought that other than it appeared in print in
the Times & Seasons of which it
is assumed he read and knew about, etc. It should be noted that if this type of reasoning prevails, then why do we have such a resistance to Frederick G. Williams writing down in a First Presidency meeting, when he was the Second Counselor to Joseph Smith, that Lehi landed at 30º South Latitude in Chile? How can we accept one and reject the other?
When it is written
“Some people continue to resist the facts so this blog seeks to open a few
minds,” one must consider that “some people insist on something that cannot be
shown to be true other than by innuendo, unsupportable evidence, opinions and
beliefs.”
The interesting thing
is, the blog author claims the Book of Mormon took place in what is now the
United States, yet as has been pointed out in this series, America has always
been North and South America; this continent has always been up until WWII the
American Continent
Isn’t it about time we stopped
trying to force a location for the Book of Mormon Land of Promise that simply
does not fit the profile outlined in the scriptural record? Or stop trying to
make the term “America,” apply only to the United States when, in the early
1800s during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and for nearly a century after his death,
“America” stood for the Western Hemisphere and the continent was the “American
Continent,” which encompasses all of North, Central and South America.
As one of our readers, David K.,
recently sent in from Webster’s1828 dictionary: “Clearly shows that
America at the time included North and South…AMER'ICA, noun [from Amerigo
Vespucci, a Florentine, who pretended to have first discovered the western
continent.]
One of the great continents, first discovered by Sebastian Cabot, June 11, O.S.
1498, and by Columbus, or Christoval Colon, Aug. 1, the same year. It extends
from the eightieth degree of North, to the fifty-fourth degree of South
Latitude; and from the thirty-fifth to the one hundred and fifty-sixth degree
of Longitude West from Greenwich, being about nine thousand miles in length.
Its breadth at Darien is narrowed to about forty-five miles, but at the northern
extremity is nearly four thousand miles. From Darien to the North, the
continent is called North america and to the South, it is called South America” (Noah Webster 1828).
As Galileo Galilei once said, “All truths are easy to
understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
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