An open reply to Jonathan Neville

On March 31, 2023, I received the following email from Jonathan Neville:

Hi Mike. People have been sending me excerpts from your blog. Seems like it would make more sense to communicate directly. As you know, when I was on Kerry’s podcast [see here—ed.] someone asked if you and I would have lunch and be friends, despite our different views. I’m happy to do that if you are. It turns out, I’ll be in Southern Utah ████ ██████ (███ ██).

I remembered that about 6 years ago you wrote to me suggesting a correction to one of my charts.

I want to accurately represent the position of the M2C/SITH believers. Could you let me know if there is anything in the table below that is incorrect?

Thanks in advance.

All the best,

Jonathan

At the bottom of his email was a table with a side-by-side comparison of his beliefs with his version of the beliefs of those who disagree with him about the location of the hill Cumorah and the means of translating the Book of Mormon. (I’ve included his table below, with my corrections.)

I was happy to have a discussion with him—this is, until I saw what he posted on his “Interpreter Peer Reviews” blog the same day. I have my differences with Jonathan Neville, but I have never called him names as he did by referring to Daniel Peterson—twelve times, no less!—as “Slander Dan.” Likewise, he again stooped to using language from the temple endowment to imply that Peterson is somehow like Satan. (This is a repeat of the same reprehensible behavior he engaged in last December.)

So, after reading his blog post, I’m afraid lunch won’t be possible. If he wants to engage in a free and open dialog, it must be done without name-calling, misrepresentation, and disrespectful use of the temple to disparage those he disagrees with.

Regarding the feedback he requested: I’m being as charitable as possible when I say that the second column in his comparison table grossly misrepresents the views of the people he names at the top of column two. His degree of misrepresentation is so extreme that the second column could only have been written in ignorance or in bad faith.

His comparison table is an example of dichotomous thinking that he regularly appeals to. Framing the debate as “Joseph and Oliver either told the truth or they didn’t tell the truth” leaves no room for complexity, nuance, or ambiguity. In doing so, he has cast aside critical analysis and replaced it with the logical fallacy of the false dilemma (“either A or B only”). By characterizing others’ beliefs in the worst light possible—something he does regularly—he can dismiss anyone who disagrees with him as being unfaithful and motivated by prestige, status, or money. This is not an honest or considerate way to approach any debate or discussion.

My suggested corrections to what he wrote in the second column (in red) can be found in the third column (in blue) below. I can’t speak for the other people named in the heading to the second column; I only speak for myself. (Please also note that Stephen Smoot has never used the abbreviated name “Steve.”)

Jonathan Neville	Jonathan Neville’s synopsis of Dan Peterson, Mike Parker, Steve Smoot, Jack Welch, Royal Skousen, and their followers and donors	Mike Parker (who has neither followers nor donors)
Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery told the truth about the Hill Cumorah in New York. Extrinsic evidence corroborates their teachings.	Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery did not tell the truth about the Hill Cumorah and the translation of the Book of Mormon. Oliver Cowdery invented the New York Cumorah, but he was speculating and was wrong. Joseph Smith passively adopted Oliver’s false theory about Cumorah.	There has been no divine revelation that identifies the hill near Joseph Smith’s home as the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon. Claims that Moroni called the New York hill Cumorah are late and secondhand and should therefore be treated with caution. Early Latter-day Saints believed that the two hills were the same. That belief was based on assumption, and we cannot and should not fault them for coming to that conclusion. They, of course, did not realize their own assumptions, which is an extremely common human tendency. Extrinsic evidence does not confirm that the New York hill was the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon, and internal evidence from the text also strongly suggests that it was not.
Their faithful contemporaries and successors in Church leadership reaffirmed the truth about Cumorah in New York, including members of the First Presidency speaking in General Conference.	Their faithful contemporaries and successors in Church leadership, like Joseph Smith, passively adopted Oliver Cowdery’s false theory about Cumorah and thereby misled everyone for decades until the scholars found the truth.	Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery’s contemporaries and successors shared the same assumptions about the text that they did, and they taught and testified in good faith based on these assumptions. These assumptions became traditions, but just because something is traditional does not make it true (as has been seen in the Church’s recent disavowal of theories that for over a century were used to explain the priesthood ban). The location of the hill Cumorah is not a matter that pertains in any way to salvation; therefore, no one has been “misled” by general authorities who expressed their belief that the hill in New York is the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon.
Origin of M2C. Scholars starting with RLDS scholars Stebbins and Hills, and continuing with LDS scholars Sorenson, Welch, Peterson, et al, decided JS, OC and their successors were wrong about Cumorah. Instead, these scholars determined that the real Cumorah is somewhere in southern Mexico (Mesoamerica). Hence the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory, or M2C, which repudiates the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah and is merely the speculation of intellectuals.	Origin of M2C. Scholars starting with RLDS scholars Stebbins and Hills, and continuing with LDS scholars Sorenson, Welch, Peterson, et al, decided JS, OC and their successors were wrong about Cumorah. Instead, these scholars determined that the real Cumorah is somewhere in southern Mexico (Mesoamerica). Hence the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory, or M2C, which repudiates the mere false speculation of the prophets about Cumorah and is the truth that must be defended against those who still believe the teachings of the prophets.	Framing the issue as “scholars decided the prophets were wrong about Cumorah” both dishonestly misrepresents the people involved and unfairly accuses them of “repudiating the teachings of the prophets.” No one began or ended with the conclusion that “the prophets were wrong” about anything. Since there has been no revelation about Book of Mormon geography—including the location of the hill Cumorah—the question has been entirely one of finding a location in the Western Hemisphere that best fits, geographically and anthropologically, the descriptions given in the Book of Mormon. Beginning in the late 19th century, careful readers of the Book of Mormon began to realize that the action it describes could not have taken place across the entire Western Hemisphere and must have happened in a much more limited area. Latter-day Saints and members of the Reorganized Church were working along parallel lines (similar to how Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz both independently discovered calculus), but there is no evidence that Saints in Utah were aware of RLDS publications. In 1880, Latter-day Saint George Reynolds proposed the first limited geography model, with Desolation—the land where the hill Cumorah was—located in Central America. (This was published by the Church in their periodical The Juvenile Instructor.) The anonymous 1886 Latter-day Saint publication Plain Facts for Students of the Book of Mormon situated the entire text of the book in northern South America and Central America. In 1909 Elder B.H. Roberts wrote, “The question of Book of Mormon geography is more than ever recognized as an open one by students of the Book,” and that the lands of the Book of Mormon might “be found between Mexico and Yucatan with the isthmus of Tehuantepec between.” During the 20th century, many Latter-day Saint scholars and students of the Book of Mormon developed and refined several competing Mesoamerican Book of Mormon geographical models. (Daniel Peterson and John W. Welch are not key individuals in this and haven’t published any independent research on Book of Mormon geography.) None of these scholars and students has ever written or spoken anything resembling the assertion that a Cumorah in Mesoamerica “is the truth that must be defended against those who still believe the teachings of the prophets.” Those who favor a Mesoamerican geography remain open to serious, reliable evidence that it took place elsewhere. The fraudulent artifacts and implausible geographical models proposed by followers of the Heartland movement fail in every way to meet that standard.
Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery both told the truth about the translation of the Book of Mormon; i.e., that Joseph translated the plates with the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.	Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery both intentionally misled everyone about the translation because in fact, Joseph never used the plates or the Urim and Thummim to translate the Book of Mormon (at least the text we have today).	Framing the issue as “Joseph and Oliver intentionally misled people” dishonestly misrepresents the views of those who accept that Joseph also used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon. Martin Harris—Joseph’s first scribe in translating the Book of Mormon—testified that Joseph used both the Nephite interpreters and a seer stone in the process. The historical record suggests that early Latter-day Saints referred to both items as “Urim and Thummim.” And it’s more than a little disingenuous for Jonathan Neville to accuse others of claiming Joseph Smith “intentionally misled everyone about the translation” when he himself has used his “demonstration theory” to argue that Joseph Smith did exactly that. (See below.)
Witnesses who rejected the leadership of Brigham Young, such as David Whitmer and Emma Smith, are less credible than what Joseph and Oliver (and their successors) said, so even if Joseph Smith dictated words while looking at the stone in the hat (SITH), this was a demonstration, not the translation of the Book of Mormon.	Witnesses who rejected the leadership of Brigham Young, such as David Whitmer and Emma Smith, are more credible than what Joseph and Oliver (and their successors) said, so we know that, instead of using the U&T and the plates, Joseph Smith merely read words that appeared on the stone in the hat (SITH).	What eyewitnesses to the translation of the Book of Mormon believed about succession in the presidency of the Church is immaterial to their credibility as witnesses of the translation process. (The same principle applies in the law: A witness to a crime cannot be ignored or rejected just because he is a communist, a MAGA Trump supporter, or a flat-earther.) Not one single eyewitness to the translation process ever denied that Joseph Smith was inspired by God to translate the Book of Mormon. The witnesses—Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Emma Smith, David Whitmer, and others—are equally credible, and their statements must be examined and understood in the context of when, how, and why they were made. Dismissing an eyewitness’s testimony because the content of that testimony does not fit one’s hypothesis is a fatal error that reflects a biased, prejudiced methodology. No one who accepts the overwhelming number of eyewitness testimonies that Joseph did use a seer stone to translate has ever claimed that Joseph “merely read words that appeared” to him; rather, Joseph’s early revelations clearly indicate that the translation process also required study, prayer, and spiritual confirmation, as described by the revelation to the Prophet Joseph in D&C 9. Also, no one is claiming that the seer stone was not a sacred consecrated object at the time the Book of Mormon was translated, nor is anyone asserting that the translation could have been accomplished without the gift of seership from God. On the contrary, both the interpreters and other seer stones worked through the gift and power of God. No firsthand eyewitnesses or secondhand accounts (or any later Church leaders, for that matter) have ever suggested that Joseph Smith “demonstrated” the translation process to curious individuals by using a seer stone in a hat. Jonathan Neville’s claim that Joseph did this is an ad hoc hypothesis, completely lacking in any evidence whatsoever and invented solely to resolve the problem of the multitude of eyewitness statements that Joseph used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon in Harmony and in Fayette.

Jonathan Neville claims to want to “accurately represent the position of the M2C/SITH believers.” It will be interesting to see if and how he modifies the table in his blog post based on my feedback.

—Peter Pan (Mike Parker)