Dan wrote a fun piece about Occam's razor.
In his piece, he writes, "I’ve seldom even written on the topic of Book of Mormon geography, and then typically only in passing."
It's good to see Dan distancing himself from his life-long promotion of M2C. As we saw with a previous post, he is taking baby steps toward jumping onto the "end of M2C bandwagon."
We are always glad to see movement toward clarity, openness, and transparency. That's the first element in our pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding, along with respecting multiple working hypotheses. We respect and do not criticize Dan for this new direction. We encourage him and everyone else to move in this direction as we all seek to understand one another with no compulsion to convince or persuade.
But we also cannot overlook the irony here.
Dan carefully circumscribed his contributions to M2C by noting he has "seldom even written on the topic." True. But we can all see that Dan edited 33 issues of the FARMS journals, every one of which enthusiastically promoted M2C as the only acceptable setting for the Book of Mormon.
In this very piece, he humorously cites Matt Roper's M2C article in the FARMS journal Dan edited in 2004. And that issue also contained one of many articles by John Clark that Dan solicited, edited and published. This one was titled "Searching for Book of Mormon Lands in Middle America."
There was no reason for Dan to write on the topic when he eagerly encouraged others to do so.
In his 2011 retrospective, Dan wrote
"I had been an enthusiastic fan of what came to be known as FARMS from its founding in 1979... I wanted the Review of Books on the Book of Mormon to be something that would have value in itself, that would be worth buying and reading in its own right. Fortunately, that goal was achieved right from the start. I’ll use as my illustration of that fact John Clark’s review of F. Richard Hauck’s Deciphering the Geography of the Book of Mormon.... I first approached Professor Clark, already a very experienced Mesoamerican archaeologist,...
[Clark wrote] a marvelous review essay entitled “A Key for Evaluating Nephite Geographies.” It eventually yielded fifty-one pages in the printed edition, complete with maps, tables, and figures. Going beyond simply reviewing a specific book, it set forth ten fundamental requirements that had to be met by any aspiring geographical model for the Book of Mormon."
Naturally, these 10 requirements fit only M2C.
In that same retrospective, Dan observed that "The Review has always had an impish sense of humor and a penchant for irony and satire."
It is in that sense of "irony and satire" that we read Dan's latest protestation that he had little to do with M2C.
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Even to promote this latest piece, he announced it with this M2C graphic in his newsletter:
It's cool that Dan applied Ockham's Razor. One of the most popular posts on my blog discusses Ockham's Razor, specifically regarding M2C.
https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2024/04/legacy-post-simplicity.html
Excerpts:
The simplest explanation is usually the best, a principle often described as Occam's razor. "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected."...
Pursuant to Occam's razor, we can ask, which narrative requires the fewest assumptions, explanations, and qualifications?
Which explanation is the simplest?Which set of assumptions makes the most sense to you?
The North American setting based on the New York Cumorah has one assumption.
1. Assumption: Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery told the truth because they knew that the Hill Cumorah in New York was the place where the Nephite and Jaredite civilizations were destroyed.
The Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs setting relies on a series of assumptions:
1. Assumption: Joseph Smith didn't know where the Book of Mormon events took place.2. Assumption: Lucy Mack Smith misremembered what Joseph told her about Moroni's first visit and about passing by the Hill Cumorah where he met with Moroni in early 1827.3. Assumption: In D&C 128:20, Joseph Smith incorrectly reported "Glad tidings from Cumorah... the book to be revealed" because he didn't learn about Cumorah until he was translating Mormon 6:6 in 1829.4. Assumption: David Whitmer misremembered when he said he had a specific memory of the first time he heard the word "Cumorah" in 1829, directly from the messenger to whom Joseph had given the plates in Harmony when the messenger said he was taking them to Cumorah.
It's fun to see these M2C assumptions at work. For example, the Matt Roper article Dan cited employs several of them. I discussed a few here: https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2015/08/david-whitmer.html
Now, let's see what Dan has to say.
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An Application of Ockham’s Razor to Apologetic Motivations
Also, published in Meridian Magazine, this is an interesting article that was written from an interesting and unusual perspective: “The Sacred “And”: A Linguistic Witness in the Book of Mormon”
The structures shown here postdate the period of the Book of Mormon. Although they were long used quite uncritically in popular Latter-day Saint publications on archaeology and the Book of Mormon, many of the most spectacular ruins in Mesoamerica are actually too late to have been built by its peoples.
Just so that there will be no illusions here — alas, no cure exists for some of the denizens of the Peterson Obsession Board — I repeat (yet again) declarations that I’ve issued here multiple times before. And I expand upon them just a bit:
- I make no money from Latter-day Saint apologetics. (My wife and I have been and continue to be [admittedly minor] donors to apologetics.)
- I have no financial interest or investment in promoting limited-geographical models for the Book of Mormon and derive no profit from any of them.
I am unabashedly proud of the Review. The late University of Utah professor and former assistant church historian Davis Bitton once told me that, in his opinion, the best writing in the church was being published in its pages. (I agree.)
- I’ve seldom even written on the topic of Book of Mormon geography, and then typically only in passing.
- Since I earn no money at all from promoting limited-geographical models, it’s highly unlikely that I earn hundreds of thousands of dollars from doing so.
- I make no money from leading tours to Mesoamerica.
- To the best of my recollection, I’ve been on only one tour to Mesoamerica during my adult lifetime, and I received no money for going on that tour.
- My friend John Sorenson led no tours to Mesoamerica of which I’m aware (and, accordingly, is unlikely to have profited from leading such tours).
- M. Wells Jakeman led no tours to Mesoamerica of which I’m aware (and, accordingly, is unlikely to have profited from leading such tours).
- Janne M. Sjödahl led no tours to Mesoamerica of which I’m aware (and, accordingly, is unlikely to have profited from leading such tours).
- L. E. Hills led no tours to Mesoamerica of which I’m aware (and, accordingly, is unlikely to have profited from leading such tours).
Those who want to speculate about the origins of limited-geographical theories set in Mesoamerica and about the factors that motivated their creation should read Matthew Roper, “Limited Geography and the Book of Mormon: Historical Antecedents and Early Interpretations,” FARMS Review 16/2 (2004): 225–275, before speculating further.
I agree with Dan here. People should read that article in Dan's FARMS journal. Among other things, Matt discusses L.E. Hills (whom John Sorenson recognized as the first to put Cumorah in Mexico, back in 1917). But also read my review of Matt's article to see what Matt omitted from consideration.
And, of course, they should also have read the initial portion of John L. Sorenson’s seminal volume An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), in which he sets out the textual analysis, followed by the archaeological reasoning, that impelled him to his “limited Tehuantepec model.” (See also John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Map [Provo, UT: FARMS, 2000].) The reasons that Professor Sorenson offers are both adequate and sufficient to account for his position. No further reasons are needed to explain it.
We can all see that Dan is obfuscating here. People are complicated, and John explained later in his book a little more about his motivated reasoning.
Here, it’s worthwhile to remember Ockham’s (or Occam’s) Razor, the famous “principle of parsimony,” which suggests that, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is likely to be the best explanation. The Razor essentially states that, when faced with competing hypotheses, the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions or entities should be favored.
As I pointed out above, if Dan simply applied Occam's Razor to M2C, in comparison to Heartland, he would favor Heartland. It's not even close.
Although the fourteenth-century English philosopher and theologian William of Ockham apparently never used these precise words, it is often stated as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, which can be rendered as “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.”
Ironically, given Ockham's emphasis on simplicity, and perhaps satirically, Dan now offers a series of increasingly absurd applications of Occam's razor:
For example, if someone has a headache it is more likely that she is dehydrated than that she has been deliberately targeted by rogue headache-inducing Jewish space lasers — or, even, that she has been dehydrated as an effect of such targeting. (Jewish space lasers are, in such cases — as in the case of California wildfires — dubious and, for explanatory purposes, quite unnecessary entities) And if your son’s room is a mess, it’s more probable that he had failed to clean it up as you asked him to do than that he actually did clean it up but that an unknown marauding prankster, perhaps even misreading your street address on the curb, stealthily entered your home, administered a sleep-inducing drug to your son, and, while he slept, disordered everything in his room as a tribute to the Norse trickster god Loki.
Now here's Dan's application to M2C, which is hilarious (hence best understood as ironic and satirical).
Once the geographical data given in the Book of Mormon have been understood
It is never a question of "understanding" the geographical data, but always a question of interpreting the text. The "data," such as it is, is highly vague and susceptible to multiple interpretations. As just one example, there is a big difference between (i) assuming there is one "narrow neck of land" described by various different terms, and (ii) assuming that various terms describe various things. The difference is not "understanding" but of making assumptions about what the text means; i.e., interpreting the text.
and once the archaeological data have been examined,
The "archaeological data" is as much a matter of interpretation as the text itself.
there is nothing in the origins or motivations of limited-geographical settings in Mesoamerica that remains to be explained.
Do you see the humor, sarcasm and irony in the last part of this sentence?
No lucrative tours need be invented. No unevidenced greed or self-interest need be invoked. Nor do any Jewish space lasers or itinerant Loki-worshiping pranksters.
Notice that Dan avoids the psychological motivations underneath his entire career, along with the careers of everyone else who promotes M2C.
For an academic and a teacher, there are few things more psychologically difficult than changing one's mind about a basic belief he/she has taught to thousands of readers and students.
But we all hope that Dan and other M2Cers are recognizing that openness, transparency, and curiosity, combined with a desire to "get things right" and eliminate contention, might at least motivate them to enable Latter-day Saints to make informed decisions about these topics.
Congratulations are in order!
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Roper's article.
Dan cited Matt Roper's article, which I reviewed in part a while ago. It's available here: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol16/iss2/13/
Matthew Roper, 2004: "Limited Geography and the Book of Mormon: Historical Antecedents and Early Interpretations," available here.
Original in blue, my comments in red.
Traditions about the New York Hill Cumorah
The Book of Mormon seems to imply that the hill Cumorah was near the narrow neck of land, but a long Latter-day Saint tradition links the hill Cumorah with the hill in New York.
The "but" here implies there is a conflict because the "narrow neck of land" must be far from New York. In the North American model, candidates for the "narrow neck of land" are within a hundred miles of the New York Cumorah. The discrepancy Roper alludes to arises from the Sorenson translation of the Book of Mormon. Sorenson thinks there is only one narrow neck, but the text doesn't require that. In fact, the text contradicts the notion that there is only one narrow neck, as I explain in Moroni's America. and several blog posts, such as this one: https://www.lettervii.com/2025/06/narrow-necks-etc.html
How did the hill in New York come to be known as the hill Cumorah? How have subsequent Latter-day Saints reconciled the apparent discrepancy between the description in the Book of Mormon and the tradition that both the Jaredites and Nephites met their end in New York?
It is only an "apparent discrepancy" for M2Cers.
First, some Latter-day Saint scholars have argued that early Saints may have named the hill in New York Cumorah, perhaps assuming that the New York drumlin and the hill mentioned by Mormon were
the same because they were both the repository of plates.
I wish there was a citation here. I'd like to know who came up with this argument. Even better, I'd like to know who the "early Saints" were who named the hill based on assumptions.
They note that Joseph Smith’s own account of the appearance of Moroni fails to name the hill where the plates were found (JS—H 1:51) and that the earliest reference to the New York hill as Cumorah comes not from Joseph Smith but from Oliver Cowdery and W. W. Phelps.
Joseph Smith helped to write Oliver's letters and incorporated them, including Letter VII, into his personal history before the version in JS-H was written. Joseph recorded that "my scribe commenced writing in <my> journal a history of my life, concluding President [Oliver] Cowdery 2d letter to W. W. Phelps, which president Williams had begun." All of Oliver's letters, including Letter VII, were copied into this journal.
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1835-1836/12
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/69
Was this association simply an inference drawn by the early brethren, or was it based on revelation?
If Matt meant to include experiences as "revelation" then his question is fair. If not, this is a false dichotomy because Matt omitted the most obvious alternative, which is Oliver's personal experience in the Mormon's repository of records in Cumorah (Mormon 6:6).
Typically, a "revelation" is thought of as a visionary or spiritual communication. When a divine messenger, resurrected being, angel, etc. appears to someone, the event could be characterized as either an experience or a revelation.
We'll assume Matt intended to include experiences within his term "revelation." In this case, the historical record reports that when Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith, he told him the record was deposited in the "Hill of Cumorah 3 miles" away. As Matt notes next, the divine messenger to whom Joseph had given the abridged plates in Harmony said he was "going to Cumorah" before he brought the plates of Nephi to Fayette. So the answer to Matt's question is undoubtedly revelation.
At least one piece of evidence gives the impression that the association did not originate from mere speculation. On several occasions late in his life, David Whitmer reportedly referred to an incident in
which he was traveling in a wagon with Joseph and Oliver on the way to Whitmer’s home in Fayette, New York.
Excellent! Roper offers this quotation:
The Prophet, & I were riding in a wagon, & an aged man about 5 feet 10 heavey Set & on his back an old fashioned Armey knapsack Straped over his Shoulders & Something Square in it, & he walked alongside of the Wagon & Wiped the Sweat off his face, Smileing very Pleasant David asked him to ride and he replied I am going across to the hill Comorah.
According to Whitmer, Joseph later told David that they had seen one of the Nephite prophets.¹³²
Footnote 132. Edward Stevenson, interview with David Whitmer, 22–23 December 1877, in
David Whitmer Interviews, ed. Lyndon W. Cook (Orem, UT: Grandin Book, 1991), 13;
Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith, interview with David Whitmer, 7–8 September 1878, in
David Whitmer Interviews, 27
The earliest accounts of this incident were recorded over forty-eight years after the event.
The implication here being that Whitmer's statement was too remote from the incident to be reliable. But among the indicia of credibility and reliability that Matt omitted was David's statement that he remembered this because it was the first time he heard the word Cumorah. As if meeting one of the Three Nephites was not memorable enough, learning the word Cumorah for the first time would definitely be "never to be forgotten."
Matt forgot to mention that it was Zina Young, who last saw David when he was a missionary who baptized her family in 1832, who asked Stevenson to ask David about this encounter. That is evidence that David had told Zina's family about the encounter as early as 1832.
If this account is accurate, then the association between the name Cumorah and the hill near Joseph’s home may not have been based merely on personal assumption.¹³³
This is worded in reverse logical reasoning. There is zero evidence that the name Cumorah arose "merely on personal assumption." No one has ever cited historical evidence to that effect; the possibility is purely a modern rationale by M2Cers for rejecting the historical record.
It is funny that Matt says that even if David's account is accurate, the association "may not have been based merely on personal assumption." For the M2Cers, it is not enough that one of the Three Nephites referred to Cumorah in the context of a diversion from the trip from Harmony to Fayette.
Footnote 133: Given that the earliest account of this experience was recorded forty-eight years
after the event, it is possible that Whitmer’s reference to “Comorah” was influenced by
Book of Mormon geographical thinking of the time.
In the sense that "anything is possible," Matt makes a point. But David's recollection should be assessed for its inherent indicia of credibility and reliability in the context of all the evidence in favor of the New York Cumorah.
Separately, Matthew Roper rationalizes away the New York setting for Joseph Smith's reference to Cumorah in D&C 128 by writing, "The Book of Mormon contains the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the ‘glad tidings’ of the Restoration, so the Book of Mormon is indeed glad tidings from Cumorah, whether that hill was actually in New York or somewhere else.”
When read in context, Roper's spin (whether that hill was actually in New York or somewhere else) does not work. The "glad tidings from Cumorah" is not a generalized restoration of the gospel, but specifically refers to Moroni's visit to Joseph--which took place in New York.
Here is the verse in context, showing all the events took place in the general region of the land of Cumorah: "And again, what do we hear? Glad tidings from Cumorah! Moroni, an angel from heaven, declaring the fulfilment of the prophets—the book to be revealed. A voice of the Lord in the wilderness of Fayette, Seneca county, declaring the three witnesses to bear record of the book! The voice of Michael on the banks of the Susquehanna, detecting the devil when he appeared as an angel of light! The voice of Peter, James, and John in the wilderness between Harmony, Susquehanna county, and Colesville, Broome county, on the Susquehanna river, declaring themselves as possessing the keys of the kingdom, and of the dispensation of the fulness of times!"
Furthermore, the glad tidings from Cumorah were announced by Moroni when the Book of Mormon was yet to be revealed. This corroborates the accounts of Moroni himself referring to the hill as Cumorah.
It bears repeating that when Joseph sent the letter to the Times and Seasons to be published, the same newspaper had published Letter VII just the year before. Readers were familiar with President Cowdery's declaration that the New York Cumorah was a fact. It is implausible to conclude that Joseph was referring to anywhere but the New York Cumorah when he wrote what became Section 128.
