Jonathan Neville dishonestly misquotes someone…again

I’ve noted before on this blog that Jonathan Neville has a habit of misquoting people to strengthen his position.

His behavior is dishonest because he (a) doesn’t check his facts before quoting others and (b) doesn’t issue public corrections when he’s told that he’s misquoted someone.

The latest example of this comes from his November 7, 2019, blog post, “Dr. Houston and the M2C hoax.” His post is about Dr. Stephen Houston’s recent presentation at BYU on using LIDAR to survey hidden Mesoamerican ruins. Neville writes:

Professor Houston, a former BYU professor who now teaches at Brown University, is not LDS [sic]. I’m told that at his recent presentation at BYU, he said, “It’s really hard to see how the Book of Mormon relates to Mesoamerica—especially for archaeologists.”

“I’m told” is Neville’s way of excusing the fact that he hasn’t listened to Houston’s presentation but has heard from an unnamed source that Houston said something damning about “M2C.”*

The problem is that Houston said nothing like this at his presentation. You can check this for yourself by listening to the entire session at this SoundCloud page.

Neville should issue a correction and refrain from misquoting others when it suits his purposes.

Based on his previous dishonest behavior, though, I sadly doubt he will do the right and honorable thing.

—Peter Pan

* “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.