Neville misuses more sources

Here are two recent examples of Jonathan Neville trying to make source documents to be stronger evidence of his position than they really are.

I’ve previously discussed how Neville irresponsibly uses sources. Legitimate scholars consider the sources they use carefully and cautiously, without overstating their reliability and value. Neville, on the other hand, frequently uses obscure, late, and secondhand sources as solid evidence of his belief that the hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the gold plates is the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon.

In his February 20, 2019, blog post, “Cumorah’s Southern Messenger,” Neville introduces his readers to a “Church newspaper” that was “published by the South African Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1927–1970.”

Neville tells us that the existence of this newspaper is “another fun indication of how far M2C* has pulled us away from the teachings of the prophets.” What he doesn’t tell us is why or how it indicates that. I can only guess that it’s because, for a few years in the early 1930s, the newspaper’s masthead had a drawing of the New York hill Cumorah:

Why an obscure, twelve-page, monthly mission newsletter from 1930s South Africa with a drawing of the New York Cumorah on its front page is evidence of any revealed, doctrinal statement on the location of the Book of Mormon hill Cumorah is completely beyond me. It is, however, one example of how far Jonathan Neville has to stretch to prove his pet theory.

“Of course,” Neville also asserts in connection with this newspaper, “our M2C intellectuals want Cumorah censored everywhere. They don’t want members of the Church to know what the prophets have taught [about the location of the hill Cumorah], but members will discover it anyway, one way or another.” However, this statement is inconsistent with his continual assertion that the Church History Department is part of the “M2C conspiracy,” because it’s the Church History Department that scanned and put Cumorah’s Southern Messenger online at Archive.org. If the nefarious plot is to hide the truth about the New York Cumorah from Church members, putting this newspaper online would be the last thing you would expect them to do, no?

My second example is from Neville’s February 21, 2019, blog post, “Joseph Smith’s account referring to Cumorah.” Neville has discovered an obscure journal entry by one Joseph Curtis (I consider it “obscure” because Curtis isn’t mentioned on the Joseph Smith Papers website) in which Curtis recorded Joseph Smith teaching that he (Joseph Smith), “had other manifestations saw an angel with a view of the hill cumorah & the plates of gold had certain instructions got the plates & by the assistance of the urim & Thumin translated them by the gift & power of God.”

Let me clear: There is nothing wrong with this journal entry, as long as it isn’t misused as evidence for something it doesn’t prove. It certainly demonstrates that Joseph Curtis attended a meeting and heard the Prophet Joseph testify about the First Vision and the Book of Mormon. The Prophet Joseph did that kind of thing a lot, so Curtis’s journal entry doesn’t tell us anything new, but it is another witness of the Prophet’s preaching.

The problem is in how Jonathan Neville tries to use this source as evidence for his Cumorah theory. In his blog post, he places the phrase “saw an angel with a view of the hill cumorah,” in bold typeface as if it were evidence that the hill in New York is the same hill in the Book of Mormon. There are two major problems with this, though:

• The report is secondhand. Neville titled his post “Joseph Smith’s account referring to Cumorah,” but the account was’t made by Joseph Smith or dictated by the Prophet to a scribe; it was made by Joseph Curtis as a summary of what Curtis heard the Prophet say.
• The account is late. Joseph Curtis did not write down what he heard Joseph Smith say while Curtis was at the meeting or even later that same day. He wrote it no earlier than October 1839, three to five years after Joseph Smith preached in Michigan where Curtis lived. It’s therefore extremely unlikely that Curtis’ entry reflects what Joseph Smith actually said; rather, it’s Curtis’ filtered recollection of a meeting from years earlier. (How well do you remember the exact details of conversations you had three years ago?)

Since the early Latter-day Saints were calling the New York hill “Cumorah” well before 1839, it would make perfect sense for Curtis to use that name in connection with the New York hill in his journal. It doesn’t provide any reliable evidence, however, that that’s what Joseph Smith called it at the meeting Curtis attended.

But let’s assume for a moment that Joseph Smith did call the New York hill “Cumorah” in that meeting. All that would be evidence of is that Joseph had also come to call it that based on common Latter-day Saint interpretation. There’s no evidence here—or anywhere—that Joseph or anyone else called it that based on divine revelation.

Like Neville’s misuse of Cumorah’s Southern Messenger, the Curtis journal is yet another nothingburger.

—Peter

* “M2C” is Jonathan Neville’s acronym for the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica and that the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is not the same hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon.