There has been a critical error

Screenshot taken August 25, 2022

What could the critical error be? Apostasy? Special pleading? Strawman arguments?

The world may never know.…

—Peter Pan
 

Jonathan Neville reacts to Spencer Kraus’s reviews

In the wake of Spencer Kraus’s reviews of A Man that Can Translate and Infinite Goodness, Jonathan Neville has been flailing about, vainly hoping to land a blow against Kraus, or me, or Book of Mormon Central, or Daniel Peterson, or Jack Welch, or apparently anyone who opposes him.

Neville has begun a series of responses to Kraus that he runs under the noisome title “Under the Banner of the Interpreter,” apparently in a feeble attempt to connect anyone and anything that’s critical of his work to the loathesome anti-Mormon book and streaming television series Under the Banner of Heaven. That’s par for the course for Neville, who for years has implied that anyone who doesn’t agree with his eccentric views—including general authorities—is leading the Church and its members astray.

Meanwhile, beneath the title “Under the Banner of the Interpreter,” Neville obtusely protests that none of what he writes “is an ‘ad hominem’ argument” for “we focus on the merits” of his opponents’ arguments. Let’s see how well he lives up to that claim, shall we?

Neville writes:

Most Latter-day Saints ignore these foolish antics of the apologists in the citation cartel. We go about our business, helping our fellow Latter-day Saints and our local communities, attending the temple, teaching classes and serving missions, and generally rejoicing in living the gospel on a daily basis. We support our Church leaders and still believe what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said.

That’s only the second paragraph after Neville promised to “focus on the merits,” and he’s already descended into ad hominem and appealed to the self-righteousness fallacy: People who disagree with Neville are guilty of “foolish antics,” while sincere, righteous Heartlanders help others, attend the temple, teach and serve, live the gospel, and support Church leaders.

I’m sure that there are many Heartlanders who are sincere and righteous. That does not, however, make Neville’s views correct or immune from critical review.

In their view, if you disagree with them (especially if you offer a faithful interpretation of Church history that supports and corroborates what Joseph and Oliver taught instead of M2C and SITH), you are an apostate—according to them.

This is a strawman argument: Spencer Kraus wrote a critical analysis of Neville’s use of history and historical sources. Neither he nor the Interpreter Foundation accused Neville of apostasy.

As far as I’m aware, I’m the only “apologist” who has accused Neville of flirting with apostasy. My basis for this claim has nothing to do with Neville’s interpretations or views and everything to do with the way he continually implies—or sometimes even states outright—that today’s leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are ignorant, are leading the Saints astray, are covering up historical facts, and are not teaching the truth.

Later in his blog post, Neville asserts that “the citation cartel aggressively attacks faithful Latter-day Saints who don’t accept either their style or their substance.” But the real issue here isn’t about “style” or “substance”; it’s about how Neville is guilty of evil-speaking of the Lord’s anointed leaders. He should repent and change his approach.

Since the inception of the Interpreter and Book of Mormon Central, the growth of the Church has steadily declined.

Correlation is not necessarily causation, of course, and there are many factors involved with Church growth, but anyone who is active on social media (particularly English-language social media) knows that LDS apologists are flailing in comparison to the critics.

Neville has a penchant for using meaningless charts like this, then denying that correlation equals causation while simultaneously implying via his charts that correlation really does equal causation. One could just as easily claim that the declining growth rate of the Church correlates to the rise of Heartlanderism. (And I have, tongue firmly in cheek, of course.)

Apparently it has not occurred to Neville that the decline in Church growth rates would have been greater if it were not for the efforts of Book of Mormon Central, the Interpreter Foundation, and other organizations that stand up for modern leaders of the Church instead of disparaging them and spreading pernicious conspiracy theories about them.

Undoubtedly, Brother [Spencer] Kraus…is a fine, devout, committed Latter-day Saint, a great person, etc. Nevertheless, as a research associate with Book of Mormon Central, Brother Kraus naturally (and necessarily) follows the direction of his leaders in the organization, as is evident from his articles. His bio doesn’t reveal whether he is a volunteer or paid employee, but either way, he has to toe the party line or he couldn’t work there.

Statements like this make me wonder if Jonathan Neville really understands what an ad hominem argument is, because he just crafted a perfect example of such: According to Neville, Kraus has only been critical of Neville’s writings because Kraus’s job depends on it. If Kraus didn’t “toe the party line” at Book of Mormon Central, Neville claims, then Kraus “couldn’t work there.”

Nowhere does Neville grant that Kraus may have written his reviews of A Man that Can Translate and Infinite Goodness merely because Kraus himself disagrees with Neville’s methods and conclusions. Nowhere does he grant that Kraus may have written his review without the knowledge or approval of those who manage Book of Mormon Central. According to Neville, Kraus cannot possibly be anything more than an errand-boy for the Powers that Be at the M2C Citation Cartel.

Ad hominem itself blushes in the face of Jonathan Neville.

I’m hearing complaints about Brother Kraus, but we can’t blame him.

This is perhaps the strangest statement of all in Neville’s blog post. Complaints? Complaints about what? And from whom? Neville doesn’t tell us, but that’s because he doesn’t really have anything on Spencer Kraus; instead, he’s simply trying to poison the well against a good young scholar who has obviously struck a nerve.

Being that Neville was once a lawyer, it’s a shame that he doesn’t seems to understand the legal concept of libel.

Peter Pan is a good example of the worst of LDS apologetics, which may explain why he’s also a favorite of Dan Peterson’s. He’s basically Dan’s alter ego, given how frequently Dan refers his readers to Peter’s work.

I’ve had people tell me Peter Pan’s identity, but I respect his wish to remain anonymous because what better better [sic] epitome could there be of the worst of LDS apologetics than an individual (or group) so ashamed by his (their) work that he (they) remains anonymous while publishing a blog named after their chosen nemesis? Even better, that blog is a tutorial on logical and factual fallacies.

It’s not often the Jonathan Neville acknowledges my existence, so I suppose I should be flattered just to be mentioned.

Neville claims that “people” (plural) have told him my identity. I have very good reasons to doubt that he’s telling the truth. (Among them is the fact that he can’t make his mind if I’m one person or multiple people.) Unless he’s willing to go public with my identity—and please, Brother Neville, you have my permission to do so, so go right ahead—I think he’s “blowing smoke,” as they say.

The disappointing thing here is that Neville didn’t even make an attempt to respond to anything I’ve written. He simply accused me of using “logical and factual fallacies” (something he’s claimed repeatedly) without bothering to tell his readers where and how I’ve done so. Meanwhile, this is this blog’s 308th published post that has quoted what he’s written and provided evidence of why he’s wrong. His accusation against me isn’t exactly a textbook example of ad hominem, but it’s certainly avoiding the argument.

Finally, Neville incorrectly assumes that I operate under a pseudonym because I’m deeply “ashamed” of my work. I confess that I laughed out loud at this. The truth is that I operate under the pseudonyum “Peter Pan” for three reasons:

1. I want to avoid being personally attacked by Jonathan Neville. (Seeing his attempt to start a whisper campaign concerning supposed “complaints” about Spencer Kraus, I think this has been a wise move.)
2. It’s in keeping with the playful name of the blog to use the names of characters from J.M. Barrie’s children’s books.
3. It annoys Jonathan Neville, and I take a small amount of perverse pleasure in that.

At least Neville seems to have given up on the (incorrect) belief that I’m secretly Daniel Peterson.

Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning!

—Peter Pan
 

Spencer Kraus’s trenchant review of Jonathan Neville’s Infinite Goodness

Following on the heels of last week’s review of A Man that Can Translate, Spencer Kraus has delivered his second knockout blow, this time to Neville’s most recent book, Infinite Goodness: Joseph Smith, Jonathan Edwards, and the Book of Mormon.

You can read his review, “Jonathan Edwards’s Unique Role in an Imagined Church History,” on the website of The Interpreter Foundation. Here is the abstract:

In Infinite Goodness, Neville claims that Joseph Smith’s vocabulary and translation of the Book of Mormon were deeply influenced by the famous Protestant minister Jonathan Edwards. Neville cites various words or ideas that he believes originate with Edwards as the original source for the Book of Mormon’s language. However, most of Neville’s findings regarding Edwards and other non-biblical sources are superficial and weak, and many of his findings have a more plausible common source: the language used by the King James Bible. Neville attempts to make Joseph a literary prodigy, able to read and reformulate eight volumes of Edwards’s sermons — with enough genius to do so, but not enough genius to learn the words without Edwards’s help. This scenario contradicts the historical record, and Neville uses sources disingenuously to impose his idiosyncratic and wholly modern worldview onto Joseph Smith and his contemporaries.

Kraus also recently published a blog post that’s a companion to his two reviews: “Joseph in the Hands of an Angry Pseudo-scholar,” which I enthusiastically recommend to all my readers.

Kraus has truly done yeoman’s work in the field of Neville Studies. His reviews are what I myself would have written, if I had the time and the patience to do so.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Neville has fired back at Kraus’s first review, delivering little gems like this nonsensical strawman argument:

According to the Interpreter, because I still believe Joseph translated the plates, I’m the one who “fails to deal with the historical record seriously or faithfully.”

What Neville’s personal beliefs have to do with his inability to engage in responsible scholarship is beyond me. Apparently, it’s beyond him as well.

—Peter Pan
 

Debunking Jonathan Neville’s fake history of “M2C”

The Heartland theory and the movement behind is based largely on fabrications and exaggerations of history, archaeology, anthropology, and other sciences. Heartlanders regularly make false assertions to support their beliefs; if the facts can’t be distorted, they’ll invent their own facts. (Many examples of this can be seen in the Heartlander-published Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon.)

Among this is Jonathan Neville’s fake history of the development of the Mesoamerican theory of Book of Mormon geography. Since at least 2017, Neville has been making unsubstantiated claims in an attempt to convince his readers that the Mesoamerican geographic theory was adopted by Latter-day Saints from non-members over the objections of Church leaders. (This is not the first time he’s invented history.)

On August 31, 2021, Neville summarized his assertions in the blog post, “Origin of M2C Fantasyland.” His brief summary gives me an opportunity to respond to and expose his fabricated history.

For a reliable (if now somewhat dated) history of theories of Book of Mormon geography, see part 1 of John L. Sorenson’s 1990 book The Geography of Book of Mormon Events: A Source Book.

I will quote Neville’s blog post in full.

People often ask why our leading LDS [sic] scholars continue to teach students (as well as missionaries and new members) that the prophets were wrong about the New York Cumorah.

Once again, Neville quotes from unidentified “people” who are asking him these questions. Who are these people? And how often is “often”?

And again, Neville tries to frame the argument as one of scholars teaching that “the prophets were wrong,” when no Latter-day Saint who believes in a Mesoamerican Book of Mormon has ever used that phrase or even implied anything like it. Continuing to make that assertion, as he has hundreds of times now, is intellectually irresponsible, bordering on libel.

These scholars teach instead that there are “two Cumorahs.” The one in New York, they claim, is a false tradition, while the real Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 is somewhere in southern Mexico. This is the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory (M2C).

Here’s a short explanation of the intellectual genealogy of M2C.

False is too strong of a word, I would argue; incorrect or misguided are probably more accurate terms. Since there is no revelation on the geography of Book of Mormon events—“the Church’s only position is that the events the Book of Mormon describes took place in the ancient Americas”—any comments on specific locations from Church leaders, scholars, and members is just speculation. (And that includes Oliver Cowdery and Letter VII.)

However, I must give Neville credit for the clever image he used in his blog post. He managed to take a jab at the Neville-Neville Land blog without mentioning it by name.

RLDS scholar L.E. Hills decided that Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and their successors in the LDS church [sic] were wrong about Cumorah in New York. He rejected Letter VII and the teachings of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Pratt, and every other LDS [sic] leader who ever addressed the topic.

There are two significant fabrications in this statement:

1. Neville provides no evidence of how he knows what Louis Hills’s thoughts and motivations were. Did Hills actually “decide” that Church leaders “were wrong”? Did he “reject Letter VII”? (Was he even aware of Letter VII?) Neville doesn’t tell us how he knows these things, so we can dismiss his claim as nothing more than mind-reading.
2. Neville begins his “short explanation of the intellectual genealogy of M2C” with Louis Hills’s book Geography of Mexico and Central America from 2234 B.C. to 421 A.D., but he overlooks—or perhaps purposely ignores—Mesoamerican Book of Mormon geographies that predated Hills’s 1917 work, including:
   • The 1842 and 1843 Times and Seasons articles (pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3). Neville insists Joseph Smith had nothing to with these articles, but they at least demonstrate that Latter-day Saints were envisioning Mesoamerica as the setting for the Book of Mormon during Joseph Smith’s lifetime.
   • Apostle Orson Pratt’s article in the June 16, 1866, issue of the Millennial Star. Pratt affirmed a New York Cumorah but placed the remainder of the Book of Mormon in northern South America and Central America.
   • The brief pamphlet, Plain Facts for Students of the Book of Mormon, with a Map of the Promised Land, written and published by a Latter-day Saint in or before 1887:

These three publications, among other statements made by Latter-day Saint leaders in the 1800s, clearly demonstrate that Louis Hills was not the first person to theorize a Mesoamerican Book of Mormon geography. Anthony W. Ivins, who was ordained an apostle in 1907, also apparently supported a Central American setting (Sorenson, p. 17 & 22).

Louis Hills was, as far as we know, the first person to argue in print that the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon was in southern Mexico, but let’s go to Neville’s next step before addressing that.

Hills published a map in 1917 showing Cumorah in southern Mexico.

Over the objection of LDS [sic] leaders, LDS [sic] scholars copied the map published by L.E. Hills, moved Cumorah a few miles east, called it their own, and published it everywhere, including on the BYU Studies web page, where you can still see it today.

Neville presents no evidence whatsoever that “LDS [sic] scholars copied” Hills’s map and “called it their own.” Sorenson (pp. 205–206) indicates that the first Latter-day Saint to present a Mesoamerican geography with Cumorah in southern Mexico was Willard Young, who developed his theory “a few years before 1920.” There is no source that indicates Young was aware of Hills’s theory; Neville is taking advantage of the close timing of the two to fallaciously assert that correlation must equal causation.

Neville also asserts that these new geographic theories of Latter-day Saint scholars were published “over the objection of LDS [sic] leaders,” but he cites only one leader who disagreed with a Mesoamerican Cumorah: Joseph Fielding Smith.

As Sorenson explains (pp. 23–24), Elder Smith published an article in the Church Section of the September 10, 1938, issue of the Deseret News in which he affirmed a hemispheric geography of the Book of Mormon (a theory Neville and other Heartlanders reject) and the location of the hill Cumorah in New York (which Neville and other Heartlanders believe). Smith wrote that the theory that the Book of Mormon took place totally within Central America has caused “some members of the Church [to] become confused and greatly disturbed in their faith of the Book of Mormon.” Elder Smith did not explain how or why believing that the Book of Mormon of took place in Central America would cause a person to be “confused and greatly disturbed,” but his unfounded claim has become an unquestionable fact for Jonathan Neville, Rian Nelson, and other Heartlanders. (Joseph Fielding Smith’s article was reprinted in Doctrines of Salvation 3:232–241, so it must be true!)

Church leaders asked the scholars to stop teaching a specific geography, so CES took the BYU Studies map and turned it into a fantasy map, continuing to teach students that the prophets were wrong about Cumorah in New York.

Neville has blithely skipped over nearly one hundred years of history to get to this point. (See Sorenson, pp. 20–31.) He fails to tell us anything about the work of Janne M. Sjödahl, M. Wells Jakeman, Thomas Stuart Ferguson, Milton R. Hunter, John L. Sorenson, David A. Palmer, V. Garth Norman, and many others who advanced Mesoamerican Book of Mormon studies and maps during the twentieth century.

Neville also completely ignores the long history of internal maps of the Book of Mormon. He would have us believe that the “BYU Studies map” (which was really John Sorenson’s map from his 1985 book, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon) was “turned…into a a fantasy map” sometime recently. As Sorenson’s book indicates (pp. 22–23), the first internal map of the Book of Mormon was created by Lynn C. Layton and published by the Church in the July 1938 issue of Improvement Era. The following year, Latter-day Saint seminary teachers J. Alvin Washburn and J. Nile Washburn published their own internal map that had a Mesoamerican focus (201–203). Other internal maps created by Latter-day Saints include ones by Kenneth. A. Lauritzen (102–103), Daniel H. Ludlow (120–123), Harold. K. Nielson (124–125), Paul Dean Proctor (147–148), and Thomas L. Tyler (190). Ludlow’s internal map was included in the 1979 Book of Mormon Institute Manual and its second edition in 1981, as well as in the 2012 Book of Mormon Seminary Teacher Manual. (See those maps here.) Neville would have us believe that internal Book of Mormon maps were created because “Church leaders asked the scholars to stop teaching a specific geography,” but that is completely, utterly, and totally false.

Then BYU scholars who work with Book of Mormon Central used computer graphics to make the CES map look more like a real-world setting.

Neville is referring to the Virtual Book of Mormon map created by the BYU Virtual Scriptures Group, headed by Tyler J. Griffin, Associate Professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU.

Dr. Griffin explained the Virtual Book of Mormon differently than Jonathan Neville described it: “To not promote anyone’s personal theories regarding exact locations of Book of Mormon events, VirtualScriptures.org includes a geography-neutral Book of Mormon map. It is intentionally not linked to any modern maps of the Americas. Our map is a relational one, based on details found only within the text itself.” (BYU Religious Education Review, Fall 2019, p. 26.)

Book of Mormon Central continues to insist that the only viable and permissible interpretation of the text is M2C. They’ve embedded M2C in their logo by using a Mayan glyph to represent the Book of Mormon.

Neville makes a very big deal about Book of Mormon Central’s logo. It really bothers him that they lean toward a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon.

And yet Book of Mormon Central’s website and publications do not state that Mesoamerica is “the only viable and permissible” location for the Book of Mormon. Neville didn’t get that from Book of Mormon Central; he made it up.

Nevertheless, some people wonder why faith in the Book of Mormon is declining, both among young people who are taught this fantasyland version of the Book of Mormon and among nonmembers contacted by the missionaries (who have been taught M2C).

Again with the “some people” who wonder. Who are these people he’s talking about?

Less than two weeks ago I debunked Jonathan Neville’s baseless claim that “M2C” and “SITH” are affecting the growth of Church membership.

As this blog has demonstrated repeatedly, Jonathan Neville has difficulty telling the truth. His August 31, 2021, blog post is yet another example of how he concocts his own fictitious history to shore up his phony claims about “M2C,” “SITH,” and other subjects.

It’s long past time for him to stop.

—Peter Pan
 
Postscript: Neville tells us, “I posted some images to prod a goofy anonymous critic who, as I expected, posted his typically goofy responses.” Calling my debunking of his fantasy history “goofy” is not an argument, of course.
 

Perhaps Jonathan Neville’s biggest strawman yet

Jonathan Neville frequently employs logical fallacies in his writing. (This blog has documented many examples.)

In his June 10, 2020, blog post, “M2C does not stick to the text of the Book of Mormon,” Neville makes yet another a strawman argument:

Our M2C* friends often justify their repudiation of the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah by claiming they stick to the “text of the Book of Mormon” and that anything the prophets have said beyond that is pure speculation.

Do you see how that is a fundamental logical thinking error?

Nowhere does the text of the Book of Mormon identify the “Western hemisphere,” the “Americas,” or even “America” as Lehi’s land of promise.

There is no basis in the text for looking at any particular part of the world.…

Based on the text alone, Lehi could have landed literally anywhere. He could have landed in Australia, Chile, Guatemala, Florida, or Japan. He could have circumnavigated Africa and ended up in Italy.

Based on the text alone, choosing the “Americas” is as arbitrary as choosing Malaysia or Eritrea or anywhere else on the planet.

I detect nothing in Neville’s post that indicates he’s being sarcastic or using parody. He actually believes that he’s made a good, solid argument against those who argue for a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon.

A strawman argument is one in which the individual claims that his opponent believes X, when his opponent actually believes X₁; X is a caricature of the opponent’s argument, but it’s easier to demolish than X₁. (That’s why the fallacy is called a strawman: It’s much easier to attack a scarecrow than it is to attack a living person.)

What’s the strawman in Neville’s argument? Mesoamericanists have never claimed that only the text of the Book of Mormon informs us about its location, nor have they claimed that anything the prophets have said outside the text is “pure speculation.”

What do “M2C intellectuals,” as Neville calls them, actually believe? Well, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly on this blog (like here, for example), they accept what the Book of Mormon of says about its own geography, along with revealed, authoritative statements from Church leaders on the subject, including this one from Joseph Smith, which is canonized in the Pearl of Great Price:

While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room, which continued to increase until the room was lighter than at noonday, when immediately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor.… He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do.… He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fulness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants; also, that there were two stones in silver bows—and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim—deposited with the plates; and the possession and use of these stones were what constituted “seers” in ancient or former times; and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book. (Joseph Smith—History 1:30, 33–35)

In this canonized account of the angel Moroni’s first visit to Joseph Smith on September 21, 1823, Moroni indicated that the Book of Mormon is “an account of the former inhabitants of this continent,” meaning the continent on which Joseph Smith lived.

Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines continent as “a great extent of land, not disjoined or interrupted by a sea; a connected tract of land of great extent; as the Eastern and Western continent.” Stephen Smoot has compiled dozens of sources from Joseph Smith’s time of “this continent” referring to what we today call the Western Hemisphere, not just to North America.

The scriptural statement in Joseph Smith—History is accepted by every believer in the Mesoamerican setting of the Book of Mormon. For Neville to argue, therefore, that they suffer from a “fundamental logical thinking error” not just untrue; it is grossly and flagrantly untrue. It represents either a fundamental misunderstanding of the arguments of those whom he criticizes or a malcious attempt to misrepresent their arguments.

This is, of course, not the first time Neville has misrepresented the arguments of believers in a Mesoamerican Book of Mormon setting: Prior to this post, I’ve cataloged fifty-eight other examples of him doing so.

It’s odious, and Jonathan Neville should be ashamed—ashamed enough that he would stop doing it.

But after, now, fifty-nine posts pointing out his obnoxious behavior, I sadly have little confidence that he will change his ways.

—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.

Jonathan Neville’s list of “M2C” hoaxes: creatio ex nihilo

On August 21, 2019, Jonathan Neville and his prodigious imagination set forth “a partial list of the hoaxes our intellectuals say you have to believe in, because otherwise, M2C* implodes.”

His list of ten supposed hoaxes is full of misinterpretations and misrepresentations of what other people actually believe and say. Let’s break it down:

1. Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were unreliable witnesses because they taught that the Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 was in New York.

I challenge Neville to quote a single “M2C intellectual” who has ever claimed that Cowdery and Whitmer were “unreliable witnesses.” Neville’s oft-repeated use of this phrase comes completely from his own twisted, distorted version of what he thinks his ideological opponents believe.

The deep, deep irony here—an irony that Neville completely fails to notice due to his usual lack of self-awareness—is that he just wrote a blog post in which he claimed that David Whitmer is an unreliable witness to the translation of the Book of Mormon. (Whitmer was, according to Neville, a “disaffected member of the Church who [had] potential for bias.”)

So, for Neville, David Whitmer is a reliable witness when Whitmer’s testimony confirms Neville’s bias about the location of Cumorah, but Whitmer is an unreliable witness when Whitmer’s testimony conflicts with Neville’s bias about the method of translating the Book of Mormon. Neville’s double standard here is simply appalling, if not sadly unexpected.

2. Joseph Smith passively adopted the false tradition that the Hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 is in New York and thereby misled the Church.

Note Neville’s use of loaded terms like passively and misled that frame the argument in a way that benefits his point of view. He wants to (falsely) present the “M2C” position as being one of “Joseph was ignorant” (more on that in a moment); therefore, in Neville’s version of “M2C” beliefs, Joseph must be “passive,” not the take-charge prophet of the Heartlanders who was certain of everything because everything he knew, he knew by revelation.

The truth, of course, is Joseph was neither passive nor omniscient. He received great revelations and much inspiration, but he also had personal beliefs and interpretations. With regard to Book of Mormon geography, Joseph believed that the book’s events took place across North and South America, the same hemispheric view held by all other Latter-day Saints in Joseph’s time. Ironically, Jonathan Neville disagrees with Joseph about this; Neville confines the action of the Book of Mormon to the American Midwest and Northeast. So it seems that even Neville believes that Joseph “misled the Church” about Book of Mormon geography—that, or Neville “rejects the teachings of the prophets.”

This is Neville’s second double standard in a row.

3. It was Moroni who showed the plates to Mary Whitmer in Fayette. We know this because she was wrong when she said the messenger told her his name was Nephi, and David Whitmer was wrong when he said it was the same messenger who took the Harmony plates to Cumorah, a messenger Joseph wrongly identified as one of the Nephites.

Neville has a weird fixation on the identity of the angelic being who appeared to Mary Whitmer and showed her the plates. As Daniel C. Peterson noted yesterday, “[Mary’s] account has only arrived to us via three separate informants at second hand, so I’m prepared to be agnostic on the matter” of the angel’s identity. (Peterson was responding to yet another one of Neville’s bizarre misrepresentations of what Peterson actually said.)

The writers of Saints, volume 1, chose to identify the angelic being as Moroni and not Nephi. As Peterson noted, the documentation for Mary’s experience is late and secondhand. The evidence for it being Nephi comes entirely from Mary’s grandson, John C. Whitmer, who told Church historian Andrew Jenson in 1888 that Mary “was shown the plates of the Book of Mormon by an holy angel,whom she always called Brother Nephi.” But John himself immediately followed that statement by noting, parenthetically, “(She undoubtedly refers to Moroni,the angel who had the plates in charge.)” So, even John C. Whitmer, the source of the identification of the angel as Nephi, believed it was actually Moroni. Why does Neville insist that it must, then, be Nephi? Because it confirms his bias about the location of the hill Cumorah.

What any of this has to do with “M2C” is beyond me. To the best of my knowledge, no one who has argued for a Mesoamerican geography of the Book of Mormon has used Mary Whitmer’s experience as evidence of where the book’s events took place. Neville is simply lumping Mary Whitmer’s experience into his M2C Grand Conspiracy Theory.

4. Every Prophet/Apostle who has taught the New York Cumorah misled the Church, including members of the First Presidency speaking in General Conference.

Once again, Neville deploys the loaded term “misled.” I’ve addressed this claim on this blog; see this post.

5. Anonymous articles in the 1842 Times and Seasons that didn’t mention Cumorah nevertheless prove that Cumorah cannot be in New York.

The solid scholarly work by Matthew Roper, Paul J. Fields, and Atul Nepal has demonstrated that “the evidence is more supportive of a collaborative effort within the Times and Seasons office between Joseph Smith and John Taylor” on the five Central America editorials published in 1842. Neville refuses to accept or engage their research because it conflicts with his biases.

I’ve already refuted Neville’s claim that Mesoamericanists believe those articles have anything to do with Joseph’s belief in the location of Cumorah here.

6. Joseph Smith was an ignorant farm boy who couldn’t possibly translate the ancient Nephite plates, even with the gift and power of God, so he had to read words that appeared on a seer stone in a hat, put there by an “intermediary translator,” creating a “metaphysical teleprompter.”

This is such a gross distortion of what anyone who has published on Joseph’s translation process has written that it’s hard to give Neville the benefit of the doubt that he’s arguing in good faith. (In other words, Neville is straight-up lying here.)

First, he uses loaded terms again; this time it’s “ignorant.” Joseph Smith clearly did not have an advanced education in 1828. Public schools were just getting started in America; Joseph himself was educated in his home with minimal resources. In 1832, only two years after the Book of Mormon was published, Joseph himself wrote that he “was mearly instructtid in reading writing and the ground rules of Arithmatic.” While Joseph was clearly uneducated, no believing Latter-day Saint would call him ignorant.

Neville then claims that “M2C intellectuals” believe that Joseph “couldn’t possibly translate the ancient Nephite plates, even with the gift and power of God.” This is a lie. He cites no evidence that anyone, anywhere who believes the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica has claimed this. He doesn’t cite anyone because he can’t.

Neville believes that Joseph used only the Urim and Thummim (the Nephite Interpreters) to translate the Book of Mormon. Joseph never explained how the Urim and Thummim worked, yet Neville is confident somehow that they didn’t work the way the eyewitnesses to the translation described the translation process. The terms “intermediary translator” and “metaphysical teleprompter” are, from the investigation I’ve done, invented by Neville himself—he put them in quotes, but he wasn’t quoting anyone who used those terms. He made them up himself to disparage his opponents’ views. They don’t accurately reflect the views of those with whom he disagrees. It’s despicable.

7. The Book of Mormon events took place within a limited geography of Mesoamerica.

Neville’s just being lazy with this one. Clearly he doesn’t believe it, but that doesn’t make it a hoax. No points awarded by judges, I’m afraid.

8. The Book of Mormon describes Mesoamerica, but Joseph didn’t know that so he (and/or the teleprompter) used terms that fit North America to describe Mesoamerican (Mayan) structures, animals, and culture.

Without knowing which “structures, animals, and culture” Neville is referring to, I’m left to assume that he means the ancient burial mounds in the Midwest that Heartlanders falsely claim were defensive fortifications, animals like bighorn sheep that lived nowhere near the Midwest (and still don’t), and the loose trading culture of the Hopewell that in no way resembles the complex societies described in the Book of Mormon.

What Joseph knew or didn’t know about Book of Mormon geography during the translation has nothing to do with anything that the text actually says.

9. Oliver Cowdery misled Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Wilford Woodruff and others when he said he and Joseph entered the Nephite repository on multiple occasions. At most, Oliver was relating visions of a repository in the “real” hill Cumorah in an unknown location in southern Mexico.

I’ve already demonstrated (twice, actually) that there’s no evidence whatsoever that Brigham Young learned about the account of the cave of plates experience or vision from Joseph Smith or Oliver Cowdery; rather, the evidence seems to indicate that he received his account from Heber C. Kimball, who received it from W. W. Phelps.

We can’t know if Oliver Cowdery “misled” (there’s that loaded language again!) anyone about this story, because there’s no account of Oliver relating the story to anyone. Neville believes there’s a cave full of plates under the New York hill Cumorah, so he believes that Oliver said there was one, in spite of the total lack of evidence.

What’s ironic about this is that Jonathan Neville continually preaches about the dangers of “confirmation bias, and yet he himself is constantly confirming his own biases by distorting or even making up evidence to support what he already believes. The “cave of plates” story is only one example of this behavior.

10. The modern prophets have hired the intellectuals to guide the Church in all these matters, so criticizing the intellectuals constitutes criticism of the Brethren.

This is a lie. No less than Daniel Peterson himself has refuted Neville’s claim “M2C intellectuals” are telling the Brethren what to think and that they cannot be criticized. (He’s done so at least twice.)

…

Jonathan Neville persists in telling lies about those he disagrees with, even after he’s been corrected.

Why he does this, I don’t know.

How he can claim, biannually, to be “honest in all his dealings,” I don’t know.

Perhaps one day he’ll examine himself and make some much-needed changes in his approach to how he engages in dialogues with those who don’t accept all of his views and opinions.

God speed that day.

—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.

Neville misrepresents speakers at the FairMormon conference

Jonathan Neville attended this week’s FairMormon conference in Provo, and he posted some of his thoughts on the first day’s presentations. Neville being Neville, he couldn’t help but misrepresent some of the people he disagrees with.

(He also complained that “It cost me $50 to see 7 presentations.” FairMormon is a non-profit organization that pays for most of the costs of the conference through admission. That’s different than Heartlander expos which are for-profit ventures that generate revenue from vendor booths that peddle energy healing, emergency supplies, ammunition, and so forth, which allows them to keep the admission prices low.)

According to Neville, “nothing notable” was said at the presentations (!), “except two funny incidents during the Q&A”:

One speaker discussed the Eight Witnesses. During Q&A, someone asked what he thought about the two sets of plates (referring to the Harmony and Fayette plates). He said he was unfamiliar with that idea (naturally, because he only reads M2C* material).

But Scott Gordon, the President of FairMormon who knows about the two sets of plates because he was in a presentation I gave about that history, leaned into the microphone and said, roughly, “That would make things more complicated.” The audience laughed.

Readers here know how the two sets of plates makes things more complicated for M2C advocates. If the Hill Cumorah really is in New York, their whole theory collapses.

The speaker in question was Larry Morris, who earlier this year published his book, A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon, through Oxford University Press.

It’s fair for Neville to criticize what Morris and Gordon said. It’s not fair for Neville to misquote Morris and Gordon and then disparage them based on things they didn’t say.

Here’s a transcript of that section of Morris’s presentation, which I created from the recorded video stream of the FairMormon conference. Since Neville loves comparison tables, I’ll put his version side-by-side with what was really said:

Neville’s version	Transcript from video (45:24–46:00)
Someone asked what he thought about the two sets of plates (referring to the Harmony and Fayette plates).	Larry Morris (reading aloud from the question card): “A blogger has argued for two set[s] of plates, one set of plates seen by the Eight Witnesses and the other by the Three Witnesses.”
He said he was unfamiliar with that idea (naturally, because he only reads M2C material).	Morris (to audience): I looked pretty carefully at all the empirical accounts of the plates, and I believe that there was one set of plates and one set only. (pause) Now, I don’t know why someone would argue that there were two sets of plates.
Scott Gordon…leaned into the microphone and said, roughly, “That would make things more complicated.”	Scott Gordon (standing just off to the side): That’s more work. (chuckling) Gordon (louder, seeing that Morris missed his comment): That’s just more work. Morris (understanding Gordon’s joke): Yeah, it is more work. (both chuckling)

It’s Neville’s singular theory that Joseph Smith translated from, not one, but two sets of plates. Larry Morris didn’t say that he was “unfamiliar” with Neville’s theory; he said that his extensive research on the Witnesses lead him to believe “there was one set of plates and one set only.” This has nothing whatsoever to do with Morris “only read[ing] M2C material.” (How could Neville know what Morris reads and doesn’t read?) I’ll go out on a limb here and assert that Morris knows far more about the Eight Witnesses than Neville does, but Neville chalks the entire thing up to Morris not reading widely enough!

Neville goes on to misrpresent Scott Gordon, claiming Gordon said Neville’s theory is “more complicated” and using that as a springboard to evangelize for a New York Cumorah (his Fourteenth Article of Faith). Gordon actually said that two sets of plates would be “more work.” What, exactly, he meant by that isn’t obvious from the video, but clearly he was joking because he laughed and Morris laughed with him. Neville distorted Gordon’s words and his intent.

Neville next misrepresented Ben Spackman’s comments. Spackman’s talk was on the scriptural creation accounts and the nature of revelation to prophets; in it, he expressed his concerns about a “fundamentalist” view of revelation and scriptural interpretation held by some Latter-day Saints.

The second funny incident was during another Q&A. The speaker was asked what he thought about the Heartland movement. I’m told he replied, “They’re a bunch of crazy fundamentalists.”

That comment says it all. Now, if you still believe what the prophets have taught, you’re ridiculed by the FairMormon intellectuals as a “fundamentalist.”

That pretty well sums up the M2C citation cartel.

What’s particularly awful about Neville’s misrepresentation here is that he didn’t even hear what Spackman himself said; rather, he he was “told” by someone else. Neville is repeating a garbled, second-hand account as fact and using the (misquoted) words of a single individual to disparage an entire school of thought which which he disagress.

Here’s what actually was said:

Neville’s version	Transcript from video (49:03–50:08)
	Ben Spackman (reading the question card to himself and chuckling): Alright, we’ll take the gloves off. (clearly intending this metaphor as a joke)
The speaker was asked what he thought about the Heartland movement.	Spackman (reading aloud from the question card): “Please name the group pushing ‘fundamentalism.’” Spackman (aside to Scott Gordon): I’m sorry, Scott. (both laughing)
I’m told he replied, “They’re a bunch of crazy fundamentalists.”	Spackman (to audience): There is a group that goes by the name the Heartlanders. They marry a particular geographic interpretation of the Book of Mormon—which is absolutely fine; you can think whatever you want about Book of Mormon geography—but they marry it with right-wing constitutionalist politics, young-earth creationism, an authoritarian view of prophets that is absolutely absolutist—it’s a “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”—and they claim that anyone who disagrees with them is apostate. They have taken to naming Church History [Department] employees and BYU professors who are “off base.” I think the Heartlanders are dangerous fundamentalists. (pause) Bottom line. (Applause, scattered conversation among the audience.)

Note that Spackman wasn’t asked “what he thought about the Heartland movement”; he was asked for examples of groups among the saints who were “pushing fundamentalism.” Spackman was the one who brought up Heartlanders.

More importantly, though, Spackman did not call Heartlanders “crazy fundamentalists”; he called them “dangerous fundamentalists,” a distinction that is not only clear but also important. And he backed up the term dangerous by giving specific examples of the kinds of thinking and behavior displayed by Neville and his associates in the Heartland movement.

…

If Jonathan Neville is going to criticize what others have said, the very least he can do is quote them accurately. The instances above are prime examples of the Strawman Fallacy—Neville quoted what he believed other people said, then attacked the misquotation.

Neville continually preaches to his readers about bias confirmation. He should be more aware of when he himself is confirming his biases.

—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.

Misrepresenting Moroni

It’s becoming more and more difficult for me to tell if Jonathan Neville is being willfully dishonest or if he is simply incapable of grasping the arguments of those with whom he disagrees. His latest post (“Believing Moroni vs. M2C intellectuals”) so egregiously misrepresents those whom he pejoratively calls “M2C intellectuals”* that it is hard for me to grant him any benefit of the doubt. But I really want to, so I’ll try my best to operate under that paradigm for this post.

Neville begins his post with this claim:

M2C intellectuals are teaching our youth that Moroni was wrong about important aspects of the restoration.

Does he actually cite a single source from an “M2C intellectual” to support this claim? Of course he doesn’t. Instead, as expected, he repackages his same old threadbare, dishonest, anti-“M2C” arguments that have been refuted again and again by me, Peter Pan, and other researchers.

But it isn’t just that Neville is spinning the same nonsense for which he’s become infamous; in this post, he takes the nonsense to an entirely new level of conspiratorial lunacy. For example, speaking of Mary Whitmer’s encounter with a heavenly messenger, Neville writes:

Moroni was not a portly old man with a long beard, less than six feet tall, the way David Whitmer and his mother Mary described the messenger who took the Harmony plates to Cumorah and brought the plates of Nephi to Fayette. According to Joseph Smith, that was one of the Nephites. According to Mary Whitmer, he called himself brother Nephi.

But according to Book of Mormon Central, the Saints book, and our other M2C intellectuals, the messenger was a shape-shifting Moroni. Book of Mormon Central commissioned this painting and actually titled it "Mary Whitmer and Moroni."

They teach that this old man was Moroni because they don’t want people to know that the Hill Cumorah is in western New York.

Let’s unpack this first before pointing out just how nonsensical Neville’s conclusion is.

First, Neville characterizes the view of “M2C intellectuals” as believing “the messenger was a shape-shifting Moroni.” Have any “M2C intellectuals” actually used term “shape-shifting,” or anything like it, to refer to the angel? Neither the Book of Mormon Central link nor the Saints book that Neville cites say anything like that. It’s just Neville’s derisive straw-man caricature.

Second, Neville’s conclusion—“They teach that this old man was Moroni because they don’t want people to know that the Hill Cumorah is in western New York.”—is monstrously absurd. I challenge him to show a single “M2C intellectual” who has stated, or even hinted, that the ultimate significance of Mary Whitmer’s encounter with the angel (whomever he was) was that it shows the Hill Cumorah was in Central America. Just one reference, any reference, will do. The Book of Mormon Central KnoWhy on this topic says absolutely nothing about the location of the Hill Cumorah. Neither does Saints. So where on earth, besides his fervent imagination, is Neville coming up with this?

Neville doesn’t stop there, however. He ups the ante by claiming, “To promote M2C, these intellectuals want people to disbelieve Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Joseph Smith, and even Mary Whitmer. As well as Moroni himself.”

That’s a pretty bold claim. Let’s see how it holds up by looking at Neville’s chart putting “the teachings of Moroni” and “the teachings of the M2C intellectuals and revisionist Church historians” side-by-side for comparison.

What, exactly, does Neville mean when he says “LDS intellectuals” claim Joseph “didn’t use the plates”? It would be nice if Neville would perhaps actually quote an “LDS intellectual” or two so that we could hear it from the source and not have to rely on Neville’s jaundiced retelling.

In fact, here’s what two “LDS intellectuals” have said about the significance of the plates:

So, what was the purpose of having the plates if Joseph left them covered during the translation? Though Emma [and other witnesses] explained that Joseph did not use the plates, as a traditional translator would have, they were still deeply important to the translation. They represented where the words originated—demonstrating their historicity, and forming a sense of reality about the individuals described in the Book of Mormon. The plates were in essence the body for the spiritual words that fell from Joseph Smith’s lips as he translated. They created confidence in the minds of Joseph and his family and friends. They offered believers something physical and tangible to understand how and where the text of the Book of Mormon originated.

They were also invaluable for demonstrating that Joseph Smith was a chosen seer. The relationship between the plates, Joseph, and God was indelible for communicating the nature and purpose of the Book of Mormon. Without the plates, the translation was empty, and without Joseph’s gift, it was not from God.

(Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon [Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2015], 87–88; emphasis added.)

I think this citation (and its authors) speaks for itself in refuting Neville’s dishonest reporting.

This is another of Neville’s misrepresentations. “LDS intellectuals” have never said Joseph didn’t use the Nephite interpreters (later called “Urim and Thummim”), the two stones set in silver wire rims and found with the plates, but rather that he didn’t use them exclusively. There is abundant historical documentation for Joseph using both the Urim and Thummim and his personal seer stone in the translation of the Book of Mormon; for example, here is what the Gospel Topics essay, written by “intellectuals” and endorsed by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve has to say about this:

Joseph Smith and his scribes wrote of two instruments used in translating the Book of Mormon. According to witnesses of the translation, when Joseph looked into the instruments, the words of scripture appeared in English. One instrument, called in the Book of Mormon the “interpreters,” is better known to Latter-day Saints today as the “Urim and Thummim.” Joseph found the interpreters buried in the hill with the plates. Those who saw the interpreters described them as a clear pair of stones bound together with a metal rim. The Book of Mormon referred to this instrument, together with its breastplate, as a device “kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord” and “handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages.”

The other instrument, which Joseph Smith discovered in the ground years before he retrieved the gold plates, was a small oval stone, or “seer stone.” As a young man during the 1820s, Joseph Smith, like others in his day, used a seer stone to look for lost objects and buried treasure. As Joseph grew to understand his prophetic calling, he learned that he could use this stone for the higher purpose of translating scripture.

Apparently for convenience, Joseph often translated with the single seer stone rather than the two stones bound together to form the interpreters. These two instruments—the interpreters and the seer stone—were apparently interchangeable and worked in much the same way such that, in the course of time, Joseph Smith and his associates often used the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer to the single stone as well as the interpreters.… Latter-day Saints later understood the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer exclusively to the interpreters. Joseph Smith and others, however, seem to have understood the term more as a descriptive category of instruments for obtaining divine revelations and less as the name of a specific instrument.

Neville has again chosen to either ignore or purposefully misrepresent what these “intellectuals” actually believe and claim.

See above.

See above.

See above. Neville’s ad nauseam use of this dishonest talking point has become, to say the least, rather tedious.

This is a popular argument used by advocates for the Heartland hoax that Stephen Smoot has completely refuted. It further misrepresents what “M2C intellectuals” have said about Native American ancestry relative to Book of Mormon claims.

Without citing any “LDS intellectuals” who actually make this explicit point, Neville has done nothing but make a straw-man assertion.

The wording of this passage is ambiguous; it could be read in at least two different ways: “Written and deposited not far from that place” could mean that the Book of Mormon was both written and deposited in upstate New York (Neville’s reading) or it could mean it was “written [somewhere else] and [then] deposited” in upstate New York, indicating a temporal progression of events. Neville, of course, takes his reading for granted, but that’s because he isn’t a careful historian doing source criticism; he’s a partisan who is bent on proving his interpretation is the only correct one. 

{Sigh.} Again, this is not what the “intellectuals” have actually argued. In addition to the quote from MacKay and Dirkmaat, above, consider this one:

With Joseph looking into the hat at the seer stones, what need was there for Joseph to even have the plates in his possession? While most of the Book of Mormon translation accounts say little in this regard, the plates may well have served several purposes. Their mere existence may have instilled in Joseph with confidence that the words that appeared on the stones were from an ancient record. In the face of persistent pestering, carrying and possessing the plates would have sustained his confidence that the translation process was authentic. His mission was to “translate the engravings which are on the plates” (D&C 10:41), and he spent some time scrutinizing and transcribing some of the characters on them. Yet the translation usually occurred while the plates lay covered on the table (although some accounts suggest that the plates were sometimes kept in a nearby box under the bed or even hidden in the Whitmers’ barn during translation). In addition, the plates encouraged belief in the minds of needed supporters, such as Emma, the Whitmer family, and the Three and the Eight Witnesses, each of whom spoke of having various experiences touching, hefting, feeling, and seeing the plates. The text of the Book of Mormon is abnormally self-aware of the plates; it focuses again and again on the provenance of and the sources by which Mormon and Moroni compiled the gold plates. It essentially tracks the gold plates and their source material from person to person until the plates end up in the hands of Joseph Smith. The Book of Mormon even prophecies of Joseph’s possession and translation of the record. Therefore, the physical plates fulfill thousands of years of preparation, and the witnesses provide authentication of the historicity of the plates. The plates were therefore indispensable for validating the ancient nature of the Book of Mormon.

(Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, “Firsthand Witness Accounts of the Translation Process,” in The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, ed. Dennis L. Largey, et al. [Provo: Religious Studies Center at Brigham Young University, 2015], 71–72.)

Can Neville’s dishonesty be any more obvious by this point?

There are two things to say about this:

First, The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt is a classic of Latter-day Saint literature, and has been rightly enjoyed by scores of Latter-day Saints since its publication in 1874. But Parley P. Pratt died in 1857, so how is it that his autobiography was published nearly twenty years after his death?

Pratt began the book in the mid-1850s, drawing extensively from his personal papers and past publications, but it was not completed by the time of his death and it fell to his son (Parley Jr) and apostle John Taylor to prepare the manuscript for publication. However, “because [the] manuscript has not survived, it is not clear to what extent Taylor and Parley Jr edited the autobiography, particularly the pre-1851 section.” We know from surviving sources that Parley Jr in particular had no qualms about freely revising the text as he pleased, including in its factual details. For example,

To prepare the autobiography for publication, Parley Jr copied his father’s journals into a document known as the “After Manuscript.” This document was then edited. In general, the editing excised passages from Parley’s journal and letters about his family, whether they were positive or negative; also omitted were references to financial difficulties and controversial events. Parley Jr was also conscious of his own image. Parley Sr’s journal for August 18, 1855, notes that Parley Jr met him riding on a mule. In the “After Manuscript,” Parley Jr crossed out “mule” and inserted “horseback.” Eventually, the entire episode was cut from the autobiography.

(Matthew J. Grow, “A ‘Truly Eventful Life’: Writing the Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt,” Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 1 [Winter 2011]: 156–57.)

Such editorial practices were completely normal and accepted in the nineteenth century, before the current standards of professional documentary editing and preservation became the norm. This is not to say Parley Jr was deceitful or dishonest in how he prepared his father’s text; rather, it shows that you cannot uncritically rely on Parley Sr’s autobiography as if it somehow preserves some pristine view of the past without any potential human interpolation. Real historians such as Matthew Grow understand this; Neville obviously does not.

Second, consider what this source is actually preserving. Beginning on page 57 of the first 1874 edition, it quotes Oliver Cowdery verbatim for three whole pages in a speech to the Indians of the Delaware nation. Remember, this speech was reportedly made in the winter of 1830/1831, during the Lamanite Mission. By the time Pratt committed this account to writing in the mid-1850s, over twenty years had passed. Not only that, but it’s explicitly third-hand hearsay:

This Book [of Mormon], which contained these things, was hid in the earth by Moroni, in a hill called by him, Cumorah, which hill is now in the State of New York, near the village of Palmyra, in Ontario county.

So, twenty years after the fact, Parley P. Pratt transcribed what Oliver Cowdery had said what the angel Moroni told “him.” Is the him Cowdery? Or was it Joseph Smith, who then told Cowdery—making this a fourth-hand source? The text doesn’t say where Cowdery got this information. And that’s the point of why real historians like Grow urge caution in not blindly accepting late, third-hand recollections as unquestionable truth but rather as pieces of individual evidence that need to be properly weighed and balanced with other sources.

Now you can perhaps understand why I began this post by saying it is honestly hard for me to tell if Jonathan Neville is being willfully dishonest or if he is simply incapable of grasping the arguments of those with whom he disagrees.

—Captain Hook

* “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.

Jonathan Neville defames people he admires and wins arguments in the shower

Captain Hook and I have been busy in our personal lives this week; as a result, we’ve let several blog posts by Jonathan Neville slip by without a response. In this summary post, I’ll note just a few of the fallacious arguments he’s made recently.

In his criticism of Book of Mormon Central’s KnoWhy #520, “Did Jesus Bleed from Every Pore?”…

(Has anyone else noticed that Neville has finally stopped referring to these articles as “No-Wise”? We’ve criticized him about that on this blog; good for him for dropping the childish name-calling.)

…Neville informs us that Book of Mormon Central’s scholars “are unaware of important sources Joseph drew upon.” He tells us about one of these supposed sources:

As near as I can determine, the first Christian writer to claim that Christ sweat actual blood from every pore was James Hervey, published in 1764 and subsequent editions.…

Why is Hervey important? Because his books were on sale in Palmyra in 1819, and Joseph donated a Hervey book to the Nauvoo Library in 1844. Hervey was a significant influence on Joseph’s vocabulary, as I’m showing in an upcoming book.

This is an exceptionally unusual claim for Neville to make, because it sounds an awful lot like the one he himself argued against in his previous blog post: “Critics claim Joseph and/or co-conspirators wrote the entire [Book of Mormon], drawing from their experiences and sources available to them. The language [of the Book of Mormon] is that of Joseph and/or his co-conspirators.” Yet here we have Neville claiming (perhaps unconsciously) that a book on sale in Palmyra in 1819 is the source Joseph drew upon for the idea and specific language that Jesus bled from every pore. (I thought it was supposed to be the “M2C”* that’s causing people two disbelieve in the historicity of the Book of Mormon!)

It will be interesting to see how Neville threads this needle in his upcoming book.

Speaking of his previous post (“M2C impact on Church history,” June 20, 2019), in addition to Neville again preaching his bizarre “two sets of plates” theory, there are two things he does in it that caught my eye:

First, Neville rejects the testimonies of David Whitmer and Martin Harris that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon using a seer stone that he placed into a hat. He, instead, prefers to the statements of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery from the early 1830s that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim (a.k.a. the Nephite interpreters) and dismisses arguments that Joseph and Oliver were, by that time, referring to any seer stone as “Urim and Thummim.” So here we see Neville rejecting first-hand testimony of two of the Book of Mormon Witnesses because it is late—yet he himself freely accepts third-hand, late testimony about the “cave of plates” in the New York hill Cumorah. (I’m quite sure Neville would agree with Emerson on the senselessness of consistency.)

Second, Neville makes this sweeping claim without (as usual) any support or evidence:

Because the stone-in-the-hat scenario [of Book of Mormon translation] has been embraced in today’s Church, the concept of translation has evolved to the point where most LDS intellectuals now think Joseph merely transmitted (transcribed) words that appeared on the stone. They claim the language is not Joseph Smith’s because he was unschooled and didn’t know big words, the grammar of Early Modern English, etc. [In other words], our LDS scholars now teach that Joseph didn’t really translate the text. He simply read out loud the words that appeared on the stone in the hat.

Setting aside Neville’s nonsensical claim that a translation isn’t really a translation (!), he appears to be completely ignorant of the debate between those who side with Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack in arguing that the words Joseph dictated were, word for word, what he saw in vision (a so-called “tight” translation), and those who side with Brant Gardner and Jack Welch and argue that the Book of Mormon contains words and phrases drawn from Joseph Smith’s own vocabulary and understanding of whatever he saw in vision (a “loose” translation).

Instead, Neville wants to fallaciously frame the debate so that it’s between the “M2C” scholars who argue for a tight translation and Neville’s loose translation theory (publication pending). To do so, he has to ignore the long, rich history of the (friendly) debate between Book of Mormon scholars, all of whom he would include in the “M2C” category. For Jonathan Neville, the debate hasn’t begun until he has spoken on the subject!

Next, with regard to his June 21, 2019, blog post, “Dan, BMC, and deferring to scholars”:

Neville is continually stating in his blogs that he “admires and respects” the “fine young scholars” involved with what he (pejoratively) calls the “M2C citation cartel,” yet his complete and total lack of respect is evident from statements like these:

• “We love all the people at [Book of Mormon Central], but seriously, they’re the last ones people should listen to regarding the [Book of Mormon] witnesses.”
• “[Book of Mormon Central and the Interpreter Foundation] are the least credible organizations imaginable to support the testimonies of the Book of Mormon witnesses.”
• “The strongest attacks on the credibility of the Three Witnesses come directly from within the Church—from the M2C citation cartel, including Book of Mormon Central, the Interpreter, FairMormon, and the rest.”
• “[Book of Mormon Central] has zero credibility when it comes to supporting the testimony of the Three Witnesses. Why does anyone pay them any attention at all?”

And Neville concludes with this absolutely mind-boggling statement:

I’m told Dan Peterson—a wonderful, faithful, smart, and all-around great guy— has been complaining about my criticism of the Interpreter. Maybe someday I’ll read what he has to say, but it doesn’t matter because he has had emotional reactions like this for decades, from the FARMS days through the present. He’s taken what he perceives to be a lot of arrows for what he perceives to be his defense of the Church. If he has a problem, I’m always available for a meeting. I’ve never turned down an invitation to meet with any of the M2C intellectuals, but Dan has declined my invitation to meet. Now he’s producing the Witnesses film through the Interpreter Foundation. We can be confident he’s not going to allow viewers to know what the witnesses said about the New York Cumorah.

Then we have Book of Mormon Central, which is pretty much the same story. I’m told one of their employees is also complaining about my criticism of M2C, but that doesn’t matter, either. He’s just another employee doing a job. His bosses insist the witnesses and the prophets are wrong about the New York Cumorah because of M2C, so he’s doing everything he can to support M2C. I have no problem with that.

I would argue that the scope and scale of Neville’s chutzpah has never been demonstrated as clearly as this. These two paragraphs feature the following:

• A thoroughly disingenuous compliment directed toward Daniel C. Peterson.
• An acknowledgment that Peterson has responded to Neville’s criticism of Interpreter, but a refusal to read what Peterson has written so that Neville can perhaps revise or explain what he wrote about it.
• A dismissal of Peterson’s response as an “emotional reaction,” similar to other “emotional reactions like this” that Peterson has supposedly had “for decades.”
• A claim that the calumny and defamation that has repeatedly been heaped upon Peterson by critics of the Church (within and without) is just Peterson’s “perception”—in other words, it’s all in his mind.
• Neville’s willingness to defame Peterson publicly, but only to actually engage with him privately.
• A dismissal of Stephen Smoot as “just another employee doing a job.” (Smoot doesn’t really believe the things he’s written about the Heartland hoax, you see—he’s only paid to write them!)
• A faux indifference to Smoot’s criticisms, because he has “no problem” with him “doing everything he can to support” what “his bosses” tell him to do.

Brother Neville, it’s completely acceptable for you to believe that the Interpreter Foundation, Book of Mormon Central, and FairMormon represent some kind of “fifth column” of conspirators who operate inside the Church to promote heresies and suppress the truth as you understand it. You’re welcome to that opinion (although I and many others would, of course, argue against it). What’s really weird, though, is your constant refrain about how much you “respect” and “admire” these people who are, in your view, trying to “censor” the historical record so that members of the Church don’t learn about what you consider to be revealed and inspired teachings on the location of the hill Cumorah. So, please drop the pretense. You clearly don’t respect and admire them because you think they’re damaging testimonies and causing a decline in Church membership growth. The two paragraphs in the preceding quote demonstrate how you truly feel much louder than any dishonest claims of admiration.

Another item from his June 20th post that I found curious:

[Book of Mormon Central] expressly rejects Oliver Cowdery’s statements that he and Joseph visited the depository of Nephite records in the Hill Cumorah on multiple occasions.

Which “statements” made by Oliver Cowdery would those be, Brother Neville? The third-hand ones that don’t appear anywhere in the historical record until twenty-five years after the event supposedly took place (and five years after Oliver Cowdery’s death)? And how can you claim that Book of Mormon Central “expressly rejects” these statements when their own KnoWhy on the sword of Laban concludes that the “cave of plates” account was either “a somewhat symbolic vision, [or] a vision of a real location with real items, or an actual cave which [Joseph and Oliver] visited in upstate New York”—three options, none of which rejects that something actually did happen?

Finally, in his June 23, 2019, post, “Working with M2C believers,” Neville gives his readers another example of how to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with the Heartland theory of Book of Mormon geography:

If you know any believers in M2C (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory), ask them one question:

I accept the teachings of the prophets and apostles about the New York Cumorah. Can you help me understand why you disagree?

CAUTION: Usually, they will become defensive. If they work for the M2C citation cartel, they will become angry. You will see their response boils down to [“because the New York Cumorah doesn’t fit my interpretation of the text”], but they resist this reality as long as they can.

Neville’s post should be an entry in the multivolume series Hypothetical Arguments I’ve Won in the Shower. It’s a textbook example of the Strawman Fallacy in action.

First, what evidence does he have that someone who believes in a Mesoamerican Book of Mormon geography will “usually…become defensive” or even “angry” at this question? Neville doesn’t give us a shred of evidence that that is the “usual” reaction, and there’s no reason to believe that he has any.

Second, notice how he again not-so-subtly defames Book of Mormon Central, Interpreter, etc.? They don’t just get defensive, “they will become angry”! (This is, of course, because they’re paid to promote “M2C”.)

Third, there’s absolutely no reason to get defensive or angry when asked this question by a Heartlander, because the answer is simple: There is no revealed declaration that the New York hill is the hill Cumorah. Certainly, many prophets and apostles (including Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery) have called the New York hill “Cumorah,” and some (including Oliver Cowdery, in Letter VII) have directly stated that the final battles described in the Book of Mormon took place there. But assertion is not revelation.

As I wrote in a blog post just over a week ago, most believers in a Mesoamerican geography would respond this way:

“I reject the premise of your query because you are simply begging the question: You presume that statements made by prophets about the hill Cumorah being the hill in New York are based on revelation, rather than on commonly-held belief. If you can point to a statement about the location of the hill Cumorah that has been presented to the Church as a revelation, then we can have a discussion on your terms. Until then, I prefer to follow the published statements of living prophets and apostles who have affirmed that ‘the Church does not take a position on the specific geographic locations of Book of Mormon events in the ancient Americas’—a statement that includes the location of the hill Cumorah.”

Defaming people he asserts that he admires and claiming to win hypothetical arguments that misstate what his opponents would actually say are both indications that Jonathan Neville is disconnected from reality in some way. In his mind he’s fighting a battle for the soul of the restored gospel, when in reality he’s simply demonstrating his preference for the teachings of dead prophets he agrees with over the living prophets he disagrees with.

—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.