now here comes another big concern I
have after reading this letter it says
many Book of Mormon names and places are strikingly similar to many local names
and places of the region Joseph Smith
lived let me show you the maps here
Absolutely, yeah. And when I first saw
this I was shocked, shocked. I mean
especially with names like Alma on it.
I mean, it makes a pretty dang good
argument that the Prophet Joseph Smith
probably used these names and places. See
the thing is, you're not the first person
that's really genuinely confused because
that's like, you're like you're looking
at it and you're like "whoa," right? So the
creator of that map his name is Vernal
Holley. I actually read a personal
interview with him in the library
collection of the University of Utah
about some of his experiences. And he had a lot of doubts and questions about the
gospel, but also very scholarly and
curious man. He also was known, often, for
asking questions that the people around
him didn't really know how to answer at
the time, and maybe because the gospel
knowledge was not nearly as accessible
as it as it is now with the Internet. So
he turned to other actually anti-Mormon
sources, specifically the Spaulding
manuscript, for answers. So basically, he
comes to the conclusion that Joseph Smith did not translate the Book
of Mormon by a divine source, but instead
he wrote it and copied it from others.
And in fact, Holley was later
excommunicated for his attempt to
discredit Joseph Smith, and for a lot of
the research he would later publish. So
there are three hundred forty-five
unique place names mentioned in the Book
of Mormon.
What Vernal Holley did was, he looked at
modern maps that he had available
covering a pretty wide area, from West
Virginia to Michigan to East Canada,
looking for places that he thought
Joseph Smith might have borrowed for the Book of Mormon locations. He came up with
twenty-eight place names that sounded
similar to those in the Book of Mormon,
and he created a map of where they
were located in the New England area,
and how he believed that they could
correspond to the Book of Mormon
geography as well. But there are two big
problems with this. First, the map he
created doesn't line up with what we
know of the Book of Mormon geography at
all. Cities that were supposed to be
North are actually South. Cities that are
supposed to be East are actually West.
Nothing on the map actually corresponds
to the relative locations and distances
that we are told in the Book of
Mormon. The second, and I think bigger
problem, is that of the 28 cities or these
28 locations that he does name, 12 of
them, which is almost half by the way,
aren't even in existence at Joseph
Smith's time. so Kishkiminetas,
Pennsylvania for example, which Holley
claimed was the inspiration for the name
Kishkuman, wasn't named until 1832, two
years after the Book of Mormon was
published. Nine of them are biblical
names, like Jordan or Jerusalem, which
makes sense given the Nephites' ancestry, that Joseph wouldn't have even needed a map
for if he wanted to plagiarize.
There are some that did exist during
Joseph time like Monroe, which Holley claimed was the inspiration for
Moroni, and Ripple Lake, which he
speculated was the basis for the Waters
of Ripliancum, but many were they were
located far away from Joseph, or so small
that they did not appear on any maps at
the time. Basically this map is a
logical fallacy. Just because 2% of the
names are similar, doesn't mean that
there's any kind of evidence or ability to prove this theory. So are
you saying that these maps were created
just to discredit the Book of Mormon?
Exactly, and you can you can find out
more information. I'll give you a link
that you can look deeper and see more
detail. Well, I mean I'm not as shocked
now as I was when I first saw these maps,
I guess. You know you can't you
can't believe everything that you see on
the internet right
well I know that but it looked so
convincing at the beginning what about
this I mean we have Hill Cumorah and
where Joseph Smith found these book of
Mormon plates and we have angel Moroni or prophet Moroni in
the book of mormon the ces letter says that Joseph got these names from a map
like Africa let me see a map of Island
Comoro off the coast of Africa and its
capital city Moroni and I guess there
was a very popular book talking about
adventures of a pirate called
Captain Kidd and he visited this island
so Jospeh must have read the book and
then just used the name
I mean Moroni for example it's not kind
of a name you see in the Bible
you just don't so obviously to me I mean
this similarity it's just we can't I
just can't call it coincidence
yeah. there is a group of four islands
called the Comoro Archipelago just off
the coast of Africa one of which is the
Grand Comore but its current capital
city Moroni which translates from
ancient Arabic and was originally
settled by Arabs around the 10th century
was so small that it almost didn't even
exist in Joseph Smith's time or at least
it's not on the maps around the time
that he translated the Book of Mormon
there was a city on the coast of one of
the other islands called Meroni but
no maps had yet been found that
contain both place names and since
Meroni was too small it wasn't on
the maps of all four Islands. as for the
suggested links to Captain Kidd most of
the stories and legends told about him
is as a pirate captain stemmed from the
book called a general history of the
robberies in the murders of the most
notorious pirates which did exist in
Joseph's day but it didn't it doesn't
specifically mention Comore or Moroni
now is it possible that Joseph could
have somehow heard at least one of those
names somewhere or searched out maps of
two different islands within the same
chain of Africa and linked those two
places together I guess I guess it could
be possible but it is incredibly
incredibly unlikely and it doesn't
account for how that how complex the
Book of Mormon really is or the way that
it's changed millions and millions of
people's lives from a spiritual standpoint.
for me when people make these
random map connections that are really
far-fetched like they don't have any
evidence to prove it and I don't really
think they're an issue
there are three books published before
the Book of Mormon and they are so
similar to it I read some of those on
the ces letter and it was just crazy
let's just tackle it here so we need to
first address where the idea came from
in the first place
