As I've said before, the Stick of Joseph has been one of my favorite LDS podcasts. The Paul brothers are smart, engaging and open to new ideas. Great guys all around.
And as readers here know, I'm cool with multiple working hypotheses. I have no problem whatsoever with people believing in a Baja setting, a Meso setting, a Peru setting, a Thailand setting, any of the various Heartland settings, etc.
But I'm not cool with misleading audiences.
That's why I follow the FAITH model of analysis, which starts with Facts and separates Facts from Assumptions, Inferences, Theories and ultimately hypotheses.
The pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding starts with Clarity for a similar reason. Discussions and analysis are pointless when people are unclear from the outset and when they mingle facts with their own assumptions, inferences, etc. And the main reason why people mingle facts with their own assumptions and inferences is to promote an agenda, not to educate people or help them make informed decisions.
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About a month ago Stick of Joseph released a podcast purporting to discuss the Hill Cumorah. I welcomed this topic because I had discussed the Cumorah issue with the Paul brothers in relation to the Baja theory and I hoped they would do an episode on the topic.
Because of other commitments I didn't have a chance to watch/hear this podcast until now.
And I was surprised, if not shocked, to see how they manipulated the historical record, commingled different topics, and ended up in a deep excursion into assumptions and inferences, all to promote their Baja theory.
As they point out in the podcast, they've received a lot of pushback against the Baja theory. If anything, this podcast should add to the pushback they've received.
At one point, they say "People are not calling us the Stick of Joseph anymore, but the Baja Peninsula Book of Mormon Theory Propagandizing Channel."
That's pretty accurate, unfortunately.
Hopefully the Paul brothers will someday rethink this approach and revert to their more solid fact-based podcasts.
Here's the link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFpw-kcMBjQ
The TLDR version is this:
1. They purport to discuss all the historical references to Cumorah, but instead they discuss (and dismiss) a handful and ignore most of the most relevant ones.
2. They quickly divert the audience attention away from Cumorah to the various theories of Book of Mormon geography, which is a separate topic, and they misrepresent some of the key sources they represent even on that topic.
3. They spend most of the video discussing the Baja theory based on the subjective assumptions, inferences, and interpretations that the Rosenvalls developed to promote their Baja theory.
To avoid confusion, I'm annotating the transcript below. See what you think.
Original in blue, my comments in red.
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1:171 Welcome everybody to another episode on the Stick of Joseph YouTube channel. Now we have David Rosenval again and David Rosenval has caused quite a stir on the Stick of Joseph and many of you have watched his previous videos. If you haven't, you can still start with this one, but I would recommend watching the other ones. Today we're talking about something that has been more controversial uh and a question that has popped up consistently on his previous videos.
Exactly. And we're joined in the studio not only by David but by Jay Davis. Love your smiling face. Back again. Just a joyous countenance he has.
David, here’s what we got going on here. People are not calling us the Stick of Joseph anymore, but the Baja Peninsula Book of Mormon Theory Propagandizing Channel.
[laughter]Sorry about that.
It's cool that they think this is funny, but this looks like a Freudian slip. This channel has been promoting Baja heavily, to the point of avoiding criticism of the Baja theory and now to the point of manipulating historical sources to mislead their audience.
All right. A lot of people think that we’re leading people astray with this, but uh, we have a topic today that I think is going to uh, tackle head-on a lot of the gripes that people that aren’t fans of this Book of Mormon geography model yet, uh, have.
The Baja bias is evidence by the fact that they have a Baja-promoter to "tackle head-on" the problems with his own theory. That's like a judge permitting only the prosecution to present a case while forcing the defense to listen in silence. Another term for this is the documentary effect, which is how a documentary film maker can lead audiences to believe whatever he/she wants by selective editing, omitting contrary evidence, etc. The structure of this podcast is like watching Mormon Stories for a comprehensive understanding of the Restoration.
And so, a lot of feedback that we’ve gotten from people that specifically believe that the Book of Mormon took place in the heartland, uh, of the, uh, American continent is that your model requires the hill in upstate New York to not be the Hill Cumorah as has been referenced as from people, uh, like Oliver Cowdery saying in letter seven that it is a fact that the Book of Mormon that the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York is the Hill Cumorah from the Book of Mormon text.
Exactly. This is what we hoped the Stick of Joseph would deal with here. But instead of doing so, they presented a series of straw man logical fallacies, as we'll see.
Um, and many other people. And so, help us understand, how do you how do you deal with this? And what’s your, uh, explanation for, by what authority are you teaching these things? So, take take us through this. Take us through this.
[3:13]
I have no authority to declare this, but let me just tell you a little bit about it. It’s been interesting. Obviously, the comments have clearly been where’s Hill Cumorah? And why haven’t you put it in New York? And when I first started presenting this to people, I had no idea that there was this question.
This is what happens when people start with finding a location they like and then interpreting the text to fit instead of starting with what we know from unambiguous historical accounts.
And I remember almost every time I did a presentation, someone said, “Well, what about Cumorah? Like, what about Cumorah?” And so, what I actually did, uh, because I was unfamiliar with it, I wanted to get a better sense of what early Saints were saying about where they thought the Book of Mormon was.
Right here, he has conflated the issue of Cumorah with the separate issue of geography. These are completely separate topics, involving different people, different historical evidence, and different assumptions.
And so, I started a database that took every quote I could find, what location were they saying it, when did they say it? and then I started putting pins.
And so, I want to go through that process with you cuz I I really want to understand what was this early Saints understanding of geography cuz I think that’s really at the core of this whole premise is they said this, therefore it has to be.
Everyone who has looked into the topic of geography knows there are widely diverse opinions, each based on a subjective interpretation of the text. But none of that involves the core question of Cumorah.
We okay to go through that?
[4:15] [advertisement deleted]
[4:51]
Let’s um I just want to pull out a few scriptures and historical things. This is from Joseph Smith history when Moroni uh first presented to Joseph Smith, there’s a record that uh you’re going to translate. And he told him a little bit. So, this is the very first geography point that I think we have.
It says this, “Moroni said there was a book deposited written upon gold plates giving account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from which they sprang. He also said that the fullness of the everlasting gospel was contained in it as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants.”
The first thing to notice is that he put brackets around [Moroni]. That's because the verse starts with "he," referring to the previous verse:
33 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; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.
(Joseph Smith—History 1:33)
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/times-and-seasons-15-april-1842/3
We can see that this came from Howard Coray's drafts, here:
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-june-1839-circa-1841-draft-2/5
and here:
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-1841-draft-draft-3/6
The note in the JSP on Nephi is useful:
A later redaction in the hand of Albert Carrington changed “Nephi” to “Moroni” and noted that the original attribution was a “clerical error.” Carrington probably made the note in 1871, at a time when he was Church Historian and Recorder. He and others at the Historian’s Office were assigned by Brigham Young to investigate the difference of the name of the angel in this source compared with other sources. Early sources often did not name the angelic visitor, but sources naming Moroni include Oliver Cowdery’s historical letter published in the April 1835 LDS Messenger and Advocate; an expanded version of a circa August 1830 revelation, as published in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants; and a JS editorial published in the Elders’ Journal in July 1838. The present history is the earliest extant source to name Nephi as the messenger, and subsequent publications based on this history perpetuated the attribution during JS’s lifetime.
The point is that parsing the language of Joseph Smith-History is problematic because it is not Joseph's language. His scribes compiled the history and, to the extent he reviewed it, he did not review it carefully enough to catch an obvious error such as this.
Note also that the JSP referred to Oliver's Letter IV as the earliest source to identify Moroni.
So, Moroni is the first one that’s going to kick off this geography question and debate with the concept of this continent.
Now Rosenvall is going to try to confuse the audience by conflating "geography" with the Cumorah question.
And I don’t know if people know this, but the word continent um is one of those words that I think has changed over time. And I want to just take a moment and just point this out.
Joseph Smith in the Articles of Faith actually referenced this whole concept. He said we believe in the little literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the 10 tribes that Zion, the New Jerusalem will be built upon the American continent.
The Articles of Faith are extracted from the Wentworth Letter. Rosenvall misquotes it here. Originally the passage read "That Zion will be built upon this continent." (Times and Seasons III.9:710 ¶2) Later versions modified the language to read "built upon the American continent."
Had the Stick of Joseph podcast been interested in a serious analysis, they would have pointed this out or they would have had someone who was familiar enough with he sources to point this out.
What's worse, Rosenvall forgot to point out another aspect of the Wentworth letter. When Joseph wrote that letter (he actually signed it), he adapted it from an 1840 Orson Pratt pamphlet. Orson spent several paragraphs speculating about the people in Central America. Joseph replaced Orson's speculation with the simple statement that "The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country." (Times and Seasons III.9:707 ¶7)
That Christ will reign personally upon the earth and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory. So, clearly Joseph Smith
to correct I have to correct you. It’s paradisiacal. I got I got slammed for this not too long ago and I and I learned I learned I said it on YouTube and everybody in the comments was like it’s paradisiacal.
You don’t want that. I was giving you the sweetest Canadian version. That was the
[laughter]
Sorry about that. I’m learning.
This is an entertaining exchange, but it presents the hosts as sort of "fact-checking" the Baja theory when they are doing everything but fact-checking.
[6:31]
So, here we have this concept of a continent and specifically the American continent.
Do not listeners recognize they switched horses between JS-H and the Article of Faith? And that they misquoted the Articles of Faith anyway? Why don't the Paul brothers point this out?
I think most people when they hear that they go United States. But let me just pull out some definitions from the 1828 Webster dictionary. I think this is a good place to use that. So, continent in geography a great extent of land not disjoint or interrupted by a sea, a connected tract of land of great extent as the Eastern and Western continent. So, let me just stop here. In in 1832, do you know how many continents there were in the world?
know about tectonic plates.
Exactly right.
Okay, that makes sense. So, it was literally just like the East had a big bunch of land that was connected. The West had a big bunch of land that was connected. We didn’t know that there was tectonic divides and all that sort of stuff.
So, there were only five continents. Whereas today in school you’ll find out we talk about seven. Okay? So, the other one, what was America back then in their minds? America was one of the great continents. Not the United States.
As we just saw, they ignored what Joseph said about the Indians in "this country."
And it's worse than that, actually. We just saw how the Church went back to Oliver Cowdery's Letter IV to correct the error in Joseph Smith - History that confused Moroni and Nephi.
If we look at that same Letter IV, we can see more clearly what Moroni told Joseph Smith that first night.
He then proceeded and gave a general account of the promises made to the fathers, and also gave a history of the aborigenes of this country, and said they were literal descendants of Abraham. He represented them as once being an enlightned and intelligent people, possessing a correct knowledge of the gospel, and the plan of restoration and redemption.
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/68
Here, in the first detailed account of Moroni's visit, written by Oliver with the assistance of Joseph and copied into Joseph's own journal at his direction (and republished multiple times during Joseph's lifetime), we see Moroni using the same phrase, "this country," that Joseph reprised in the Wentworth letter.
Obviously, there is no inconsistency for Joseph's scribes to write "this continent" instead of "this country" because "this country" is a subset of "this continent." But to ignore the other sources and refer to the dictionary to interpret what Joseph's scribes meant when they wrote "this continent" in JS-H is not only poor scholarship, but deeply misleading to viewers.
And so, it’s important to know that back in 1838 they considered the American continent North and South America.
As we just saw, "American continent" is a term added by modern editors, not the term in the original Articles of Faith. And JS-H did not use the term "American continent."
And that’s where they started from their mindset. And that according to Moroni the Book of Mormon happened on this continent.
People can debate what the scribes meant by the term, but viewers of this podcast have no idea of what is going on here because they are being presented only one set of assumptions and interpretations without even the basic facts.
America.
[7:58]
So here’s what I started doing. And And we won’t go through in every detail, but I want you to see this. I went through and I’m trying to find every quote and I started with the prophets Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and John Taylor. What did they say about this?
The table includes references to geography in general, not to Cumorah, which was the purported topic of this podcast.
End of Part 1.
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