The Fallacy of Using Modern Terms to Interpret Book of Mormon Language or That of Joseph Smith’s Era

It is always interesting that modern man insists on using modern terminology and definitions in the interpretation and understanding of earlier writing and language. Take, for example, the use of the word “America” and “American.” While we have discussed this many times before, it is always disappointing to see people of today, especially those given to a theory about the location of the Land of Promise and the Book of Mormon peoples, misuse the term to describe their particular views and opinions.
    Here in the United States, we call ourselves “Americans,” and our country “America,” but that is basically a nickname. The country is the United States of America, meaning several independent states banding together to form a union, a country, a nation. The “USA” is merely one part of “America.” No one else in either North or South America refer to the people of the United States as “Americans,” since they consider themselves Americans as well, being part of America—the Continent making up the Western Hemisphere.

In the days of the Book of Mormon prophets, of course, there was no such word as “America.” That word was coined in 1507 by, a German cartographer named Martin Waldseemüller which took the name of Amerigo Vespucci, and applied the name Amerigo, or America, to the entire discovery of the New World, thus both North and South America became “America,” which Waldseemüller placed on his 1507 map by name for the entire area after the Italian explorer.
    In fact, in the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster defined the word “America” as: 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.”
    Under the term “American,” Webster defined it as: “A native of America; originally applied to the aboriginals, or copper-colored races, found here by the Europeans; but now applied to the descendants of Europeans born in America.” Thus, when those of Joseph Smith’s time used the term America, it did not have the same meaning as it does today.
    Another word is “continent,” which most theorists today think in terms of their being two continents in the Western Hemisphere, i.e., North America and South America. Consequently, when they quote Moroni’s comment to Joseph Smith, who said, “there was a book deposited written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang” (Joseph Smith History 1:34), they claim Moroni was referring to the continent of North America. However, in the 19^th century, including the time of Joseph smith, and continuing through to almost the Second World War near the mid-20^th century, the term “continent” referred to both North and South America, which was known as a single continent, and had been since the item of Waldseemüller.
    As to Webster’s definition in 1828, the word continent meant “In geography, a great extent of land, not disjoined or interrupted by a sea; a connected tract of land of great extent; as the Eastern and Western continent It differs from an isle only in extent.”
    It should be noted that the United States always viewed the two continents (North America and South America) as a single continent and referred to it as the Americas, which was common in the United States until World War II, and remains prevalent in some Asian six-continent models today.

In fact, “while it might seem surprising to find North and South America still joined into a single continent in a book published in the United States in 1937, such a notion remained fairly common until the 1940s. By the 1950s, however, virtually all American geographers had come to insist that the visually distinct landmasses of North and South America deserved separate designations" (Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: a Critique of Metageography,” University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997).
    Even so, though the Americas are two continents in the U.S. and among many nations today, the fact that they are one continent, called the Americas, remains the more common vision in Latin American countries, including Central and South America, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Greece, where they are taught as a single continent.
    Another word is “country.” Webster defined the word in 1828, among other meanings, as “any tract of land, or inhabited land; any region, as distinguished from other regions; a kingdom, state or lesser district. Inhabited territory; land as opposed to water. Paul said of the word: “They desire a better country a heavenly country” (Hebrews 11:9), meaning a land without country borders, where God dwelt.
    It also needs to be understood that heavenly beings are not so concerned about borders and lines on a map, like temporal beings, as they are in the overall land area under their discussion, prophecy or topic. Thus, when mentioning something that modern man places boundaries to, such as land, country, continent, he is generally going to be off because of his limited or finite way of thinking, where from an eternal viewpoint, boundaries and lines on a map change—but the land itself remains and is the point of discussion.

Map of the United States area as it appeared in 1820. Joseph Smith lived in Palmyra, New York, with Ohio, Indiana and Illinois states, but Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin were not

As an example, take any discussion regarding “land” or “country” in Joseph Smith’s time—the United States then comprised only about one-third of today’s contiguous 48 states. Another third belonged to a foreign country (Spain), and another 15-20% belonged to or was disputed with another foreign country (United Kingdom). In fact, the year Moroni visited Joseph for the first time when he was 14 (1819) and told him about the ancient inhabitants, Alabama was not part of the U.S. and neither was Louisiana. In addition, a much larger portion of Wisconsin and Minnesota were controlled by England under the Red River Colony (Selkirk Concession), Alaska was owned by Russia, and Hawaii by the UK.
    Thus, when Moroni told Joseph Smith that the ancient record that contained “an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang,” the word continent meant the entire North and South America, which was known as a continent in Joseph Smith’s time. In Moroni’s time, the area of Lehi’s isle of promise was located in a small portion of that overall land—but that the inhabitants eventually spread over the entire Americas.
    The problem often lies in 1) interpreting ancient words and statements by current definitions and meanings, and 2) looking for something that agrees with one’s own views.