The Hill Cumorah

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

I am interested in reading where everyone thinks this took place?

[Rob Osborn]

4 minutes ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

I am interested in reading where everyone thinks this took place?

Western New York

[mordorbund]

2 hours ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

I am interested in reading where everyone thinks this took place?

An art studio in Utah?

[Just_A_Guy]

David Palmer’s In Search of Cumorah sold me twenty years ago on El Cerro Vigia (“Lookout Hill”) in southern Mexico; and I’ve seen nothing since then that really convinced me Palmer had it wrong.

[mrmarklin]

Well, clearly that’s Cumorah in the background. So yeah, I’ll go with it.  

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

I am interested in reading where everyone thinks this took place?

I have never seen the painting, nor heard anything about it.  Can you give more background?

[Anddenex]

I haven't received any spiritual confirmation as to the location of this battle, and I am minutely familiar with the different positions and theories regarding at least two places. Since my mission I was convinced with all the structures in Central and South America that this battle took place somewhere in and around there.

Then I discovered the "mound builders" in North America and the evidence or proof some people put forth that it was the same place where Joseph found the plates. In correlation with the mound builders I have wondered about how far Moroni then walked if the last battle was in Central or South America. At the same time we are informed that Moroni dedicated the ground where the Manti Temple was built. So, Moroni traveled a long way, and could have traveled from Central or South America to New York.

As of right now, I am still more swayed toward Central or South America (no exact location), but recognize there is some enticing thoughts toward New York also.

[Rob Osborn]

My studies so far has led me to believe that Cumorah is in New York. 

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

7 hours ago, Anddenex said:

I haven't received any spiritual confirmation as to the location of this battle, and I am minutely familiar with the different positions and theories regarding at least two places. Since my mission I was convinced with all the structures in Central and South America that this battle took place somewhere in and around there.

Then I discovered the "mound builders" in North America and the evidence or proof some people put forth that it was the same place where Joseph found the plates. In correlation with the mound builders I have wondered about how far Moroni then walked if the last battle was in Central or South America. At the same time we are informed that Moroni dedicated the ground where the Manti Temple was built. So, Moroni traveled a long way, and could have traveled from Central or South America to New York.

As of right now, I am still more swayed toward Central or South America (no exact location), but recognize there is some enticing thoughts toward New York also.

Why does everyone assume that Moroni traveled with the plates. He buried them after he finished Ether and only wrote in them again some 30 years later. During that time we can assume he traveled to the Utah area. Of course there is no scriptural support for the story that Moroni dedicated the hill for the Manti temple, that is based on a story told by Brigham Young.

I think he buried them in Cumorah after Ether, then did his wandering. When he found himself in the New York area again he decided to dig them up and writer a few more items that had come up that would be of use to us.

[Just_A_Guy]

46 minutes ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

During that time we can assume he traveled to the Utah area. Of course there is no scriptural support for the story that Moroni dedicated the hill for the Manti temple, that is based on a story told by Brigham Young.

The provenance of that story is not as solid as many have supposed.  We get it from Bishop Warren Snow, who claims Brigham Young told it to him.  But Bishop Snow elsewhere shows himself to have been a bit of a confabulist.  IIRC we have pretty good minutes of both the groundbreaking and dedication ceremonies for the Manti Temple, and at no point is this story mentioned by any speaker.  A hand-drawn map of Moroni’s purported wandering through the Rocky Mountains that was supposedly dictated by Joseph Smith and that resides in LDS archives, has an even dodgier history.  I understand it’s gotten to the point that the Manti Temple Pageant, advised by the Church History Department, recently removed the tale from their script.

I believe Ardis Pardhall reviewed some of this in her “Keepapitchinin” blog at some point.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

4 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I understand it’s gotten to the point that the Manti Temple Pageant, advised by the Church History Department, recently removed the tale from their script.

And now the Manti Pagent is coming to an end.

 

[MarginOfError]

Interestingly, the Church seems to have formally distanced itself from any particular geography theory.

https://www.lds.org/manual/gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-geography?lang=eng

[Rob Osborn]

4 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

Interestingly, the Church seems to have formally distanced itself from any particular geography theory.

https://www.lds.org/manual/gospel-topics/book-of-mormon-geography?lang=eng

And it's understandable. The leading research for both the meso-america and heartland models are so flawed in my opinion that it is good that the church is distancing itself from these theories.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

3 minutes ago, Rob Osborn said:

And it's understandable. The leading research for both the meso-america and heartland models are so flawed in my opinion that it is good that the church is distancing itself from these theories.

To me it does not really matter where the historical events occurred, only that they did occur. I do believe there is only one Land of Cumorah. The Book of Mormon chapters are pretty clear that Mormon got the plates from the Hill Shim? The Nephites then escaped North and continued to move North through lands that had not been mentioned before. Then the plates were deposited by Mormon in the Hill Cumorah in New York and that is where they are to this day. At that time the final battle of the two groups occurred. At some point after the battle was over Moroni dug up the plates and finished the record of Mormon, he wrote the book of Ether and said farewell and re-buried the plates. Many years later Moroni returned to the plates, wrote the book of Moroni and buried them for the last time until Joseph Smith got them.

I don't understand why it is so difficult to accept that there it only one Cumorah for some scholars. When people are educated it seems they develop a need to over complicate simple things.

[MarginOfError]

11 minutes ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

I don't understand why it is so difficult to accept that there it only one Cumorah for some scholars. When people are educated it seems they develop a need to over complicate simple things.

Or is it that when people are not educated, they feel a need to over simplify things?  (As long as we are painting in broad strokes)

[Rob Osborn]

15 minutes ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

To me it does not really matter where the historical events occurred, only that they did occur. I do believe there is only one Land of Cumorah. The Book of Mormon chapters are pretty clear that Mormon got the plates from the Hill Shim? The Nephites then escaped North and continued to move North through lands that had not been mentioned before. Then the plates were deposited by Mormon in the Hill Cumorah in New York and that is where they are to this day. At that time the final battle of the two groups occurred. At some point after the battle was over Moroni dug up the plates and finished the record of Mormon, he wrote the book of Ether and said farewell and re-buried the plates. Many years later Moroni returned to the plates, wrote the book of Moroni and buried them for the last time until Joseph Smith got them.

I don't understand why it is so difficult to accept that there it only one Cumorah for some scholars. When people are educated it seems they develop a need to over complicate simple things.

I agree, there is only one Cumorah. I think the hard part for most scholars who study this are the distance issues as New York is a long ways away from meso-america. It took Mormon some 3-4 years to get his people moved and gathered to Cumorah. Personally I find no distance in the Americas unreasonable given such a long time. We know that trade in the Americas in ancient times spanned thousands of miles.

[Rob Osborn]

14 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:

Or is it that when people are not educated, they feel a need to over simplify things?  (As long as we are painting in broad strokes)

This leads to the erroneous idea that only trained scholars can know and if you don't have a degree you don't know what you are talking about.

[MarginOfError]

7 minutes ago, Rob Osborn said:

This leads to the erroneous idea that only trained scholars can know and if you don't have a degree you don't know what you are talking about.

It seems you missed the point.

[Anddenex]

16 hours ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

Why does everyone assume that Moroni traveled with the plates. He buried them after he finished Ether and only wrote in them again some 30 years later. During that time we can assume he traveled to the Utah area. Of course there is no scriptural support for the story that Moroni dedicated the hill for the Manti temple, that is based on a story told by Brigham Young.

I think he buried them in Cumorah after Ether, then did his wandering. When he found himself in the New York area again he decided to dig them up and writer a few more items that had come up that would be of use to us.

Good question, it depends on the theory one subscribes to. If Central or South America was the place of the last battle of the Nephites, then it is safe to assume Moroni traveled with the plates, which is where I was drawing the conclusion.

If a person feels New York is Cumorah then it makes sense that he would have buried them before he started wandering; although, if a war was on this hill he would have to have waited until war aftermath to die down to go back to that hill and bury the plates. 

The reality, is even what you offer is speculation. Would Moroni have buried them or kept them with him? Again, any thoughts, unless the Lord has revealed it to you, are speculation.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Anddenex

[Rob Osborn]

6 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:

It seems you missed the point.

Maybe so

[Just_A_Guy]

2 hours ago, Rob Osborn said:

 It took Mormon some 3-4 years to get his people moved and gathered to Cumorah. 

For comparison, it took Brigham Young about two years to get most of Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley.

If Young knew that on arrival in Salt Lake the Church would there have to fight a last-ditch battle of extermination (and lose), would he have bothered moving the Church some tweve hundred miles?  If not, why would Mormon have moved a group of Nephites literally a hundred times bigger, over a distance nearly four times as great?

By comparison, the Israelites under Moses and Joshua covered just shy of five hundred miles.

 

Edited January 31, 2019 by Just_A_Guy

[JohnsonJones]

51 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

For comparison, it took Brigham Young about two years to get most of Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley.

If Young knew that on arrival in Salt Lake the Church would there have to fight a last-ditch battle of extermination (and lose), would he have bothered moving the Church some tweve hundred miles?  If not, why would Mormon have moved a group of Nephites literally a hundred times bigger, over a distance nearly four times as great?

By comparison, the Israelites under Moses and Joshua covered just shy of five hundred miles.

 

I think it would depend on what type of war he was fighting.  If we believe Joseph Smith that the Inhabitants of the Book of Mormon covered this entire continent (though most assume this means North and South American and not just the North American Continent, even with just North America that is immense) that would indicate that they had a great deal of ability to transverse great distances. 

If we take the notes on distances and a measurement of distance (rather than how many Book of Mormon Scholars take it) if we go by the usual walking distance of a man (3 miles/hr) it indicates at a minimum that they would regularly travel up to 72 miles in a day.  If we take it that this was TRULY a measurement rather than just a hiking/walking pace it would indicate a speed somewhere between 5-10 miles/hour.  If we take it that their measurement would be equal to a mere 5 miles an hour (a heavy jog, not even a runner's  pace which is more akin to 10mph) that would mean that in a day they would travel 125 miles in one day as a measurement of distance.

This indicates that they actually had a great deal of distance in their travels and how they were spread out. 

This could also apply to the final war.  It would indicate that they may have traveled FAR further than we would expect.  The final wars of both civilizations were desperate.  They were not the normal statutory wars that we think of.  They were basically gathering as many people as fast as they could.  It was a migration where one army was running away (fleeing) as fast as they could while gathering any they could to their banner.  The other army was chasing as fast as they could. 

A better idea would be if the mobs in Carthage formed into an army that was entirely focused on the destruction of the Saints.  They were composed of men who would run their hardest and fastest to kill any Saint available.  They would overcome Nauvoo and then come after the rest of the Saints as fast and furious in their eager haste to destroy and kill. 

In this instance, not only would the survivors probably move a LOT faster than the Saints did across the plains, but you'd have a mass exodus of people moving all at once.  It would become a trail of death with delaying and fighting actions, and probably with a LOT of people dying by starvation and other ailments along the way. 

By the time each army reached the Rocky Mountains it could quite possibly be the last stand of BOTH groups.  They'd be low on food and supplies, possibly having resorted to cannibalism at that point, and each knowing death was all that awaited them as a reward. 

Of course, with the Lord leading the Saints, that would not have happened, but without him and with a bloodthirsty army behind them...it basically becomes a matter of chase and defense.  It's a moving war that can move very quickly.

It is probably more akin to wars that came Westward from Asia with the warlike tribes that invaded than the standard wars that we have had in Europe or in modern times.

[Rob Osborn]

1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

For comparison, it took Brigham Young about two years to get most of Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley.

If Young knew that on arrival in Salt Lake the Church would there have to fight a last-ditch battle of extermination (and lose), would he have bothered moving the Church some tweve hundred miles?  If not, why would Mormon have moved a group of Nephites literally a hundred times bigger, over a distance nearly four times as great?

By comparison, the Israelites under Moses and Joshua covered just shy of five hundred miles.

 

And yet Lehi took his family to the other side of the globe...

[Just_A_Guy]

54 minutes ago, JohnsonJones said:

I think it would depend on what type of war he was fighting.  If we believe Joseph Smith that the Inhabitants of the Book of Mormon covered this entire continent (though most assume this means North and South American and not just the North American Continent, even with just North America that is immense) that would indicate that they had a great deal of ability to transverse great distances. 

If we take the notes on distances and a measurement of distance (rather than how many Book of Mormon Scholars take it) if we go by the usual walking distance of a man (3 miles/hr) it indicates at a minimum that they would regularly travel up to 72 miles in a day.  If we take it that this was TRULY a measurement rather than just a hiking/walking pace it would indicate a speed somewhere between 5-10 miles/hour.  If we take it that their measurement would be equal to a mere 5 miles an hour (a heavy jog, not even a runner's  pace which is more akin to 10mph) that would mean that in a day they would travel 125 miles in one day as a measurement of distance.

This indicates that they actually had a great deal of distance in their travels and how they were spread out. 

This could also apply to the final war.  It would indicate that they may have traveled FAR further than we would expect.  The final wars of both civilizations were desperate.  They were not the normal statutory wars that we think of.  They were basically gathering as many people as fast as they could.  It was a migration where one army was running away (fleeing) as fast as they could while gathering any they could to their banner.  The other army was chasing as fast as they could. 

A better idea would be if the mobs in Carthage formed into an army that was entirely focused on the destruction of the Saints.  They were composed of men who would run their hardest and fastest to kill any Saint available.  They would overcome Nauvoo and then come after the rest of the Saints as fast and furious in their eager haste to destroy and kill. 

In this instance, not only would the survivors probably move a LOT faster than the Saints did across the plains, but you'd have a mass exodus of people moving all at once.  It would become a trail of death with delaying and fighting actions, and probably with a LOT of people dying by starvation and other ailments along the way. 

By the time each army reached the Rocky Mountains it could quite possibly be the last stand of BOTH groups.  They'd be low on food and supplies, possibly having resorted to cannibalism at that point, and each knowing death was all that awaited them as a reward. 

Of course, with the Lord leading the Saints, that would not have happened, but without him and with a bloodthirsty army behind them...it basically becomes a matter of chase and defense.  It's a moving war that can move very quickly.

It is probably more akin to wars that came Westward from Asia with the warlike tribes that invaded than the standard wars that we have had in Europe or in modern times.

Interesting thoughts.  What other civilization in human history, before the invention of the internal combustion engine, have considered “a day’s journey” to equal anything like seventy miles?  What race of humans was able to continually trot at even 3 miles per hour, 24 hours a day, for days on end?  I mean, Pheidippides did seventy miles per day for two days in a row—but the last twenty-odd miles on the third day literally killed him; and to this day we consider it such an extraordinary feat that we (well, not me personally, mind you!) run marathons in his memory.  It’s easy for us twenty-first-century dwellers to blithely posit theories about how much ground men, women, children and animals should have been able to cover on foot in a given period of time.  It’s unfortunate that Brigham Young isn’t around to tell us just what we can do with our theories. 

The trouble I see with your goosed “desperate flight” numbers is that the same author (Mormon) used “day’s journey” to chronicle not only the last battle, but more leisurely journeys spanning back through Nephites history.  Moreover, it wouldn’t be *that* desperate of a flight since the Lamanite king had granted Moroni’s request for a cease-fire.  

Moreover—if you had your pick of any place in North America at which to make a last stand for yourself and about a million compatriots, and you had reasonably good geographical knowledge:  of all places on the continent, what natural features would make you choose Ontario County, New York?  What would make IT worth the time, effort, and logistical nightmare of getting there—not to mention wholesale abandonment of every other stronghold and strategic position you still held?

Whatever “a day’s journey” meant:

— we know it was twenty days’ journey from Nephi to Zarahemla by way of the land of Helam (Mosiah 23-24); and that may not have been the most direct route.

—we know that Limhi’s expedition, while searching for Zarahemla, stumbled into Ramah/Cumorah; apparently without ever realizing that they had overshot their goal (Mosiah 8 ).

Whether the heartland or mesoamerican model turns out to be the better paradigm; the continental or bicontinental model of Book of Mormon geography seems to depend on either a not-very-close reading of some key texts, the Nephites being effectually a race of demigods, and/or good deal of wishful thinking.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Just_A_Guy

[Rob Osborn]

12 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Interesting thoughts.  What other civilization in human history, before the invention of the internal combustion engine, have considered “a day’s journey” to equal anything like seventy miles?  What race of humans was able to continually trot at even 3 miles per hour, 24 hours a day, for days on end?  I mean, Pheidippides did seventy miles per day for two days in a row—but the last twenty-odd miles on the third day literally killed him; and to this day we consider it such an extraordinary feat that we (well, not me personally, mind you!) run marathons in his memory.  It’s easy for us twenty-first-century dwellers to blithely posit theories about how much ground men, women, children and animals should have been able to cover on foot in a given period of time.  It’s unfortunate that Brigham Young isn’t around to tell us just what we can do with our theories. 

The trouble I see with your goosed “desperate flight” numbers is that the same author (Mormon) used “day’s journey” to chronicle not only the last battle, but more leisurely journeys spanning back through Nephites history.  Moreover, it wouldn’t be *that* desperate of a flight since the Lamanite king had granted Moroni’s request for a cease-fire.  

Moreover—if you had your pick of any place in North America at which to make a last stand for yourself and about a million compatriots, and you had reasonably good geographical knowledge:  of all places on the continent, what natural features would make you choose Ontario County, New York?  What would make IT worth the time, effort, and logistical nightmare of getting there—not to mention wholesale abandonment of every other stronghold and strategic position you still held?

Whatever “a day’s journey” meant:

— we know it was twenty days’ journey from Nephi to Zarahemla by way of the land of Helam (Mosiah 23-24); and that may not have been the most direct route.

—we know that Limhi’s expedition, while searching for Zarahemla, stumbled into Ramah/Cumorah; apparently without ever realizing that they had overshot their goal (Mosiah 8 ).

Whether the heartland or mesoamerican model turns out to be the better paradigm; the continental or bicontinental model of Book of Mormon geography seems to depend on either a not-very-close reading of some key texts, the Nephites being effectually a race of demigods, and/or good deal of wishful thinking.

I do find it of high interest that many of the ancient mounds and ancient fortifications found in New York were primarily for a defensive purpose. 

I don't see great distances as a hard thing. In South America they had ancient roads that spread for thousands of miles and they were all controlled by the same empire. Travel for them in ancient times over great distances was a normal thing.

That said, I find it highly plausible that the BoM events could have taken place on both the North and South American continents.