Following are some of the comments or questions we have received from readers:
Comment #1: “Why do you spend so much time writing about so many cities in your Land of Promise that you do not tie into cities in the Book of Mormon?” Deana F.
Response: For two reasons:
1) From the scriptural record we know that the Land of Promise had scores of cities and settlements scattered over the land. It is learned frojj the scriptural record that there were at least sixteen cities introduced only once, and that is very late in the story line, such as Gadiomnah, Onihah, Josh, Shem, Jordan, and others. Most cities mentioned do not described where they were, consequently, we don’t know much, if anything, about their locations.
The point is, there were numerous cities that we know of that were scattered around the Land of Promise and would have had to have been many, many more to meet Mormon’s comment that “they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east” Helaman 3:8). Our description of a land filled with cities is paramount to the location of the Land of Promise.
2) The purpose of most cities introduced were as forts or defensive positions and building, in fact the word fort is used 45 times in the scriptural record, most describing cities. Thus, in our writing we show that only Andean Peru shows such numbers of cities and settlements and that they were defensive.
Comment #2: “What about the Nephitish altar and tower that Joseph Smith named on an expedition travelling in Missouri? Doesn’t this how that the Nephites were in North America?”
Response: In 1836, Daviess County Missouri was organized from Ray County and was an area of gently rolling prairie and fine timber lands, cut diagonally from northwest to southeast by the Grand River, a principal tributary of the Missouri River, which is a tributary to the Mississippi, and the principal watershed of the county. By 1837, a small number of Latter-day Saints had settled in Daviess County (Campbell’s Gazetteer of Missouri, 1836-37, R.A. Campbell, St. Louis, 1874), and in May of 1838, Joseph Smith led an expedition into the sparsely settled county to survey possible future settlements (JS, Journal, 18 May-1 June 1838).
The county remained lightly inhabited until 1838, when Joseph Smith told those in his expedition that Tower Hill or Altar Hill, adjacent to Spring hill along Grand River in the center of Daviess County was where Adam-ondi-Ahman was located. Not long after, numerous members flooded the county, which had been created less than two years before from Ray Co., on December 1836, in an attempt to resolve conflicts related to Latter-day Saint settlement in that region (“Aaron Johnson, First Judge of Utah County,” Tullidge’s Quarterly Magazine, vol.4, Apr. 1885, pp409–416)
Significant Latter-day Saint settlements in Daviess Co. were Adam-ondi-Ahman, Marrowbone, Honey Creek, and Lick Fork (LaMar C. Berrett, Sacred Places: A Comprehensive Guide to Early LDS Historical Sites, 6 vols. Deseret Book, Salt Lake City, 1999–2007), and as the Latter-day Saint population grew, so did antagonism of neighboring Missourians who feared the Saints would soon dominate county government—a problem which eventually led in October 1838 to the Missouri governor Lilburn W. Boggs ordering state militia to the county under issued order to exterminate Saints or drive them from the state.
On 19 May 1838, George W. Robinson, who was serving as general church recorder and clerk for the First Presidency at the time, recorded in the Scriptory Book (History of Joseph Smith) that:
“The next morning we struck our tents and marched crossed Grand river at the mouth of Honey Creek at a place called Nelsons ferry [south of Gallatin]. We next kept up the river, mostly in the timber, for ten miles, until we came to Col. Lyman Wight’s who lives at the foot of Tower Hill, a appropriated by Pres Smith in consequence of the remains of an old Nephitish Alter an Tower, where we camped for the Sabbath (George W. Robinson, The Scriptory Book of Joseph Smith Jr. (Far West, MO: April 12 1838, p43. Gallatin, it might be remembered was the sight of one of Jessee James’ bank robberies 30 years later.,
The History of the Church account mistakenly refers to this as a Nephite altar; however, original source material clarifies that instead Joseph Smith calling this a Nephite altar, he referred to as a Nephitish altar—a term which does not appear in the Book of Mormon, though Lamanitish appears twice: Alma 17:26 (he was with the Lamanitish servants going forth with their flocks to the place of water), and Alma 19:16 (save it were one of the Lamanitish women, whose name was Abish, she having been converted unto the Lord for many years)—both these accounts referring to royal servants among the Lamanites. In fact, that altar is the only thing ever having been described as being Nephitish. As for Joseph’s description of the altar, he does not link it to any named Nephite city, place or land.
The only physical altar that is ever explicitly mentioned the scriptural record among the Nephites is at the city of Sidom in association with their sanctuaries (Alma 15:17). “Before the altar,” however, does not mean a physical altar, but a figurative statement like: “Praying before God.”
Finally, there is nothing to preclude the altar that Joseph Smith mentions as having been built anciently by a much later generation of Nephites who moved into North America as shown in the previous post (Comment #2).
Comment #3 : “What happened to the Jaredite language and the Mulekite language. Was either spoken by the Nephites?”
Response: There are three important points to be made here. First, when the Jaredites were annihilated, there was no one left who knew that language to continue it—it simply died out from non-use and when Coriantumr stumbled into the Mulekites in Zarahemla, no one knew it and could not communicate with him. To leave a record of his people, this last Jaredite carved his history on a large stone, which took a seer, the prophet Mosiah, to interpret it (Omni 1:20).
When the Mulekites were reintroduced to their original Hebrew language, there was no one left to continue with their corrupted language, since speaking it would have alienated that fringe or group from the language being spoken by everyone else. If any did retain its use, it would have died off in the next generation or two. Lastly, when the Nephites were annihilated, there was no one left to speak the Hebrew language. Consequently, whatever bastardized language the Lamanites spoke would be the only language left after 421 A.D. in the Land of Promise. In fact, when the Europeans arrived, there were 172 languages spoken by the native Americans, 112 in the area of the U.S., 60 in Canada and thousands in South America (Ethnologue, ISO Country Names [ISO 3166-1], ISO Languages Names [ISO 639-1], CIA World Factbook and others).
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