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By making Church history more interesting and accessible, the book will do a lot to improve Gospel scholarship among Church members, especially those who;
(i) don't speak/read English and therefore have never had much material available to them; and
(ii) do read English but have never taken the time to study Church history.
This includes tens of thousands of Seminary and Institute students around the world.
Here's an announcement of how the book will be used.
In addition, S&I is publishing new teacher material for the Latter-day Saint History: 1815–1846 (Religion 341) institute course. Saints: Volume 1 will provide the student readings for this course, which covers key events from the early years of the Restoration through the dedication of the Nauvoo Temple in 1846.
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Here's the tragedy.
Because the book Saints purges certain aspects of Church history, all these unsuspecting Latter-day Saints will never learn the actual history, including specific elements of early Church history that Joseph Smith considered so important he had it copied into his own personal history and republished multiple times during his lifetime.
Some critics think I'm obsessed with the New York Cumorah, but I'm only using this specific issue as a concrete example of what our revisionist historians are doing. The problem extends beyond just the New York Cumorah and Letter VII, but the censorship of Cumorah is so obvious that it's a good topic to start the discussion.
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Everyone in the world can read Saints and see how the term Cumorah has been censored from the text.
The modern prophets have taught from the beginning that the Hill Cumorah is in New York, but revisionist historians inexplicably reject their teachings, so they censored the term in the text of the Saints book.
(Well, it's not inexplicable. There is an influential group of intellectuals in the Church who insist the prophets were wrong about the New York Cumorah. Instead, they promote the idea that the "real Cumorah" is in Mesoamerica. They developed M2C--the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory and they have persuaded the revisionist historians to erase the New York Cumorah from the record as much as possible. The censorship in Saints is merely part of a long-term trend.)
This isn't an opinion. You can see it for yourself.
And to do it, the revisionist historians had to work around some obstacles--such as the early Church documents they needed to cite for other details. I'll show how they did this in a future post.
The editors of Saints claim they were merely writing a narrative history without all the details, so naming the "hill in New York" was not important.
Let's consider that claim.
The book is subtitled "The Standard of Truth." That phrase is taken from the Wentworth letter. One of the most egregious examples of censorship in recent Church history was the lesson manual that censored a key paragraph from the Wentworth letter, as I discussed here.
The Wentworth letter was originally published in the March 1, 1842, Times and Seasons, just a year after Joseph's brother Don Carlos published all of President Cowdery's historical letters, including Letter VII. In fact, the Wentworth letter was adapted from Orson Pratt's missionary pamphlet that quoted extensively from Letter VII.
A few months later, Joseph Smith wrote the letter that became D&C 128, with its direct reference to Cumorah in verse 20. Joseph and his contemporaries were all familiar with Letter VII, to the reference was crystal clear.
But thanks to Saints, future generations will have no idea to what D&C 128:20 refers. They won't understand Hymn #13, which, as President Hinckley pointed out in a message titled "The Power of the Book of Mormon, is one of our favorite hymns.
(BTW, don't be surprised if Hymn #13 doesn't make the cut in the new hymn book.)
If Saints is intended to entertain people, I suppose it's effective. It is definitely easy to read. But if it's intended to educate people so they can understand the teachings of the prophets, there are serious omissions that need to be corrected.
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For now, if you have the Kindle version, do a search for Cumorah. Here's the result I got on my desktop Kindle reader.
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| Search results for "Cumorah" in Saints |
That's it. Three. And none of them in the body of the text.
The first two entries are footnotes that refer to a 2002 "Master's thesis" by Cameron J. Packer. We'll discuss more that in a separate post.
The last entry is to the Index.
Click on that link and you will go to the Index.
The graphic below shows what that looks like.
You can click on each of those pages (22, 24, 25, 25, 29 and 34) but you won't find a single mention of Cumorah.
Only a "hill."
At first, you might think this index makes no sense. If you've been a member of the Church and can read English, you know the prophets have consistently and persistently taught that the Hill Cumorah is in New York. Why would the index give page numbers for "hill" with the term "Cumorah" in parenthesis? What is this strange terminology?Actually, I take that back. If you've been a member for less than, say, 30 years, you wouldn't know what the prophets have taught about Cumorah unless you did some research on your own.
You certainly won't learn about the New York Cumorah at BYU or in CES, because both institutions now teach that the Book of Mormon took place in a fantasy world where "Cumorah" is nowhere near anyplace that looks like New York, but instead is near a seacoast that looks just like the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Central America, albeit rotated 90 degrees.
Nevertheless, as of this writing (October 2018) there's still a visitors center outside of Palmyra, New York, called the "Hill Cumorah Visitors Center." https://www.lds.org/locations/hill-cumorah-visitors-center?lang=eng. There's still an annual event titled "Hill Cumorah Pageant."
[Note: the missionaries assigned to Palmyra are not allowed to tell visitors anything about the "hill in New York" except that it's the place where Joseph found the plates. They can't read Mormon 6:6 to visitors to explain its significance. They can't read or even refer to Letter VII or Letter VIII or the teachings of the prophets about the significance of the Hill Cumorah. Instead, they have to show visitors illustrations of Christ visiting the Nephites in Mesoamerica.]
Of course, none of this makes sense to visitors, and now, thanks to Saints, future generations will have no idea why this hill is called Cumorah in the first place.
If the revisionist Church historians get their way, that facility will soon be renamed to "A Hill in New York Visitors Center." We'll have "A Hill in New York Pageant."
In this context, the censorship in Saints makes sense. Readers just need to realize that the basic premise for M2C is that the prophets are wrong and the hill from which Joseph obtained the plates is "just a hill in New York," as this index and the text of Saints teaches.
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Contrast this revisionist Church history approach to actual Church history.
In 1834-5, with the assistance of President Joseph Smith, Jr., President Oliver Cowdery (then Assistant President of the Church) wrote a series of eight letters about Church history. Among these was Letter VII, which declared it was a fact that the hill from which Joseph obtained the plates was actually the Hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6.
Joseph made sure every member of the Church had access to these letters. During Joseph's lifetime, they were published in Church newspapers in Kirtland, Nauvoo, England, Philadelphia, and New York City (and, later, in Salt Lake City by Joseph F. Smith). Joseph's own brothers, Don Carlos and William, both published them in their respective newspapers (the Times and Seasons in Nauvoo and The Prophet in New York City). Apart from verses from the Book of Mormon and Bible, few if any documents in Church history were more widely known and accepted than these historical letters.
The editors of Saints recognize the importance of these letters by citing them often in Saints. They even refer to the "hill" Oliver described--yet without actually displaying the forbidden term Cumorah, even though that name appears in the letters themselves.
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| BYU's fantasy map of the Book of Mormon that teaches the prophets are wrong |
Today's Church members have no idea about the New York Cumorah, unless they search beyond what BYU/CES and Saints are teaching.
Worse, if they attend BYU or CES, they learn that Cumorah is located in a fantasy land--along with all the rest of the events in the Book of Mormon.
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I'm told the Church historians are telling people there is no historical evidence that Joseph ever identified the "hill in New York" as Cumorah.
That's simply false.
What they really mean is, they don't want members of the Church to know about this historical evidence.
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Go back to your Kindle edition and click on one of the Cumorah links that takes you to Packer's Master's Thesis. Open the file and go to page 29. At the top of the page you will see an indented quotation from Lucy Mack Smith.
This is the passage in which Lucy quotes her son, Joseph, referring to the "hill of Cumorah, where the plates are," before he had even removed the plates.
Stop, father, stop.. .it was the angel of the Lord: as I passed by the hill of Cumorah, where the plates are, the angel met me, and said that I had not been engaged enough in the work of the Lord; that the time had come for the Record to be brought forth; and that I must be up and doing, and set myself about the things which God had commanded me to do. But, father, give yourself no uneasiness concerning the reprimand which I have received, for I now know the course that I am to pursue, so all will be well.
You can see the original version of this history in the Joseph Smith Papers. It looks like this:
Yet he knew the hill was named Cumorah.
How did that happen?
Packer's thesis explains that Moroni tutored Joseph for several years before allowing him to take the plates.
We infer that Moroni told Joseph the name of the hill, and there are other references to corroborate that inference, but the inference merely involves how Joseph knew the hill was named Cumorah.
It doesn't matter how Joseph knew the name; what matters is that he did know it, long before anyone else (outside of his family) did.
Plus, on page 39, Packer notes that Lucy said that on the night of his first visits in 1823, Moroni told Joseph, "the record is on a side of the hill of Cumorah, three miles from this place."
Packer observes, "depending on the accuracy of Lucy Mack Smith's history, it is possible that the family of Joseph Smith could have been aware of the name 'Cumorah,' and referring to the nearby hill by that name as early as 1823."
When assessing the accuracy, credibility and reliability of a historical account, we usually consider any information that contradicts the account. So far as I know, there is zero historical evidence that contradicts Lucy's accounts.
If there is any, I'd love to have someone point it out.
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As it stands, we have direct first-person testimony by a reliable witness--Joseph's mother Lucy--who everyone acknowledges was in a position to know what she was talking about.
There is no historical evidence that contradicts Lucy's statements about the identification of the "hill in New York" as Cumorah.
There is substantial historical evidence that corroborates her statements--including Letter VII, but lots of other evidence.
All the prophets and apostles who have ever addressed the issue have affirmed Lucy's statements.
The only people who reject Lucy's statements are the M2C advocates and the revisionist Church historians who support them.
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Direct, clear, and corroborated quotations from Joseph's mother are solid historical evidence by any standard.
All the authors/editors of Saints had to do to be accurate was to quote Lucy's statement.
But they can't do that because it contains the forbidden word Cumorah. And while that word has been frequently taught by the prophets and apostles, the word offends the M2C proponents.
Hence, you won't find this quotation in Saints; instead, the editors misled readers by citing an earlier version of Lucy's history that was crossed out, as I've explained before.
Those who promote the M2C narrative, and those who accommodate the M2C advocates such as our revisionist Church historians, are telling people that Lucy's history, on this one point, is not even historical evidence.
And yet, they cite Lucy's history throughout Saints on other issues.
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When challenged, our revisionist Church historians say that they linked to Packer's thesis so people can read this more detailed history. Therefore, they claim, they are not misleading anyone.
Think about that a moment.
First, they censored the word Cumorah from Saints. Then they translated the book into many languages and distributed throughout the Church.
But have they translated all the footnotes?
Of course not.
They want us to believe they are accurately portraying Church history, when they know they have buried a critical point in an obscure Master's Thesis that is available only in English.
They know, as we all do, that most people will not look up the footnotes. And they also know that non-English speakers will never have access to the truth.
Hence, the tragedy of Saints.
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And now this tragedy is being institutionalized through CES so that no Seminary and Institute students will know what the prophets have taught about the Hill Cumorah.
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