Unfortunate to the field of Book of Mormon Geography are the likes of Ted Dee Stoddard, Phd, who is persisting in his flagrant disregard of fulfilled Book of Mormon land prophecies, particularly the one that says the Nephite record would come forth on Book of Mormon lands – the same lands Jesus preached on.
In this treatise Stoddard uses the “lack of evidence” argument by one Langdon Smith of Virginia dated 2001 as proof there is not evidence for the Western New York model. The “Mormon ‘Myth'” he thinks he debunked is a first hand testimony of arrow heads being found by the basketful at the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, NY.
Stoddard’s “myth busting” fails for two reasons:
- It was not a “myth” but an actual first hand account. (See the testimony of George Albert Smith.)
- He did not debunk that first hand account.
Langdon Smith, like Stoddard wrongly assumed the following:
- The Hill Cumorah was the location of both Jaredite and Nephite battles.
- The Hill Cumorah was the center of the battle.
- Arrow heads were made at the Hill Cumorah.
We demonstrate that the Hill Ramah (where the Jaredite battle was) was not another name for the Hill Cumorah. Those were two separate hills and battle areas.
The Hill Cumorah was opposite the front line and where the battle was.
Sorenson et. al. have skewed the location of Cumorah to fit a previously chosen piece of land. The only place in their models for Cumorah was near inhabited lands. Big mistake. Cumorah was beyond inhabited lands, purposely chosen away from inhabited lands so the winner would not have the displeasure of living with the smell of death.
Langdon Smith presumed that the arrowheads were made at Cumorah and therefore went looking for evidences of their manufacture at Cumorah. Such presumptions by Sorenson, Smith and Stoddard guaranteed they would fail. Not far from Cumorah are a number of flint mines, one of which shows evidence of “hundreds” of workers over hundreds of years.
Stoddard, John Clark and fellow mesotheorists have continually ignored how prophecy was fulfilled in Western New York, and how there is no way for them to find fulfillment outside of America. The evidence they abhor including the flint mines of New York are reminders they should have never jumped ship for the wonders in Mesoamerica. [Reviewed: “The Demise of One ‘Mormon Myth’ about the Hill Cumorah“ by Ted Dee Stoddard, Phd ]