Misrepresenting Mesoamerica, The Book of Mormon, and Agreeing with Critics of the Church: A Response to Jonathan Neville’s Lates Interview (Part Three)

Jonathan Neville has been no stranger to dishonesty throughout his career.

In parts one and two of my response to Neville’s most recent interview with the Mormon Book Reviews YouTube channel (part one | part two), I responded to a misrepresentation of this blog and Jonathan Neville’s hypothesis that Jonathan Edwards played an active role in Joseph Smith’s theology and translation of the Book of Mormon. In this final part, I discuss how Jonathan Neville has dishonestly misrepresented scholarship regarding Mesoamerica, The Book of Mormon as a whole (including the text of The Book of Mormon itself), and scholars and apologists for the Church, showing Neville’s hand once again that he is more willing to side with the Church’s critics than faithful scholarship.

I will respond to each of the three points in depth, discussing each a claim at a time.

Mesoamerica Misrepresented

Benjamin Winchester and the Times and Seasons

Within the first five minutes, Neville makes many remarks that were almost impossible to keep track of.

Neville asserts the reason that people criticize his work is how he discovered various “things.” One of those is worth mentioning here (as I have responded to other claims more in depth elsewhere).

Neville asserts that Benjamin Winchester and others wrote Times and Seasons articles that were published anonymously while Joseph Smith was the editor, even though word print analyses show that Joseph Smith is the most likely author, with John Taylor’s editorial hand at play. He later returns to this idea at the 11:00 mark. (This hypothesis falls on its face yet again when it is considered that Joseph Smith was the editor and would have been aware of what was being published in his name, or that Joseph sent letters to John Bernhisel thanking him for the John Lloyd Stephens book discussed in these articles, stating that the book “corresponds with & supports the testimony of the Book of Mormon.”)[1]

These articles assert that ruins discovered in Mexico were of vast import to the Book of Mormon (especially in regard to Zarahemla), and so it makes sense that Neville would say that a man who would apostatize shortly after wrote them – he attempts ever so subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) to paint any idea contradicting his own as an act of apostasy, though he doesn’t make that claim publicly (unlike Rian Nelson at the FIRM Foundation, who frequently calls a Mesoamerican model apostate).

He then argues that people have their careers built around these Times and Seasons articles, even though most people holding to a Mesoamerican model (such as John Sorenson or V. Garth Norman) have constructed an internal map of the Book of Mormon events and used that to help pinpoint locations, not any 1842 Times and Seasons article.

Are Mesoamericanists Scared of the Heartland Model?

At the 8:15 mark, Neville asserts that Mesoamericanists “don’t even want people to know about the Heartland theory, because they see it as a threat.” Of course, this is a lie. I don’t know of anyone who is threatened by Neville’s theories. In fact, a lot of scholarly work has been published regarding his theories, such as reviews of his and Meldrum’s work. That is because unlike Heartlanders, we generally don’t care where people believe the Book of Mormon took place. They are the ones who appear to desperately desire the location of the Cumorah mentioned in Mormon 6:6 to become an article of faith (as evidenced by this cartoon) and actively misrepresent all other viewpoints.

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, Mesoamerica has been the emphasis on Book of Mormon scholarship because it is a location that fits the text – people who could read and write lived there, it is in close proximity to the geographical features Alma 22 demands, and cities and large civilizations have been built there, with a feasible population to fit the requirements of the Book of Mormon. Scholarship has not focused on the Hopewell mound builders because they don’t fit that bill. (That’s exactly why BYU’s New World Archeological Foundation focused its efforts in Mesoamerica.) Scholars are more than happy to review their work, but Neville and Meldrum make it hard to work with when they refuse to let go of pseudo-science and pseudo-history.

In short, reviewing work honestly is not a sign of fear, but misrepresentation is.

L. E. Hills, the "M2C" Scapegoat

At the 14:00 mark, Neville brings up L.E. Hills, a member of the RLDS Church (now Community of Christ) who is arguably the first to postulate in print that the Cumorah mentioned in Mormon 6:6 is a hill in southern Mexico (what Neville calls “M2C”). He postulates here that the reason the Mesoamerican geography was formed is based on “outdated archaeology” by Charles Shook in his book Cumorah Revisited. Neville claims that Shook argued that only one known civilization was North America, and so the whole Book of Mormon must not be a true history.

In fact, Shook’s thesis is misrepresented by Neville – Shook attacks not just the Mound Builders (who he does identify strictly as Hopewell, to Neville’s credit), but also raises concerns against the Mayans. Shook horribly misrepresents all native peoples of the Americas, and few take his book seriously in any context today.

Neville treats an entire geographic claim unfairly due to one claimant who may or may not have actually been affected by Shook’s thesis (which Neville misrepresents to begin with). He does nothing to discuss the multiple people in Utah who were independently coming to similar geographic conclusions as Hills was at the same time,[2] and the view that Mesoamerica held Nephite and Lamanite ruins is even shared in three articles by Rey L. Pratt and Levi Edgar Young (see here and here) that appeared in The Young Women’s Journal between 1914 and 1917 – completely independent of any scholarship provided by L. E. Hills.

Neville likewise does not discuss how Mesoamerica has been a focus of Book of Mormon events (at least in part) since the translation of the Book of Mormon (as is evidenced by the Evening and Morning Star article produced under W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery’s editorship).[3] Both of these facts are critical to fully understand the emphasis on Mesoamerica in Book of Mormon scholarship.

In fact, a more likely source that led to Hills publishing his findings through his study of the Book of Mormon is, in all likelihood, a map produced by the RLDS Church circa 1900 that postulated a hemispheric setting for the Book of Mormon.[4] Hills found that such a large setting was unfeasible, and so he found a setting that best fit the Book of Mormon.

Neville again mischaracterizes what he does not agree with in an effort to make his theory more appealing.

Unmet Expectations and Hypocrisy

Neville says at 1:18:00 that he traveled to Mesoamerica but was unconvinced of the Book of Mormon taking place there because it did not line up with his expectations. He uses this point to imply that anyone who holds to this model are using biased research to continue pushing what they want to be true anyway. However, the real problem was with what Neville expected to find. While he states that you need to open your mind to other possibilities in the same thought, he was entirely unwilling to do the same in regard to Mesoamerica.

In fact, the whole situation is even more ridiculous considering Neville’s recent attacks against a man named Thomas Stuart Ferguson – an amateur archaeologist for the New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF) who simply had expectations of what would be found if he just started digging that, when his expectations were not met, caused him to experience a trial of faith. Most of the attacks against him, Neville’s included, show a complete lack of historical knowledge and nuance, and these attacks make a mountain out of a mole hill.

I am not going to pass any judgement on Ferguson and whether or not he truly did lose his testimony of the Book of Mormon. Frankly, it does him and the Book of Mormon both a great injustice if we focus on him and try using him for proof of anything. The Book of Mormon stands without Ferguson, and archaeological evidence in Mesoamerica has been found that can support the testimony of the Book of Mormon.

Neville is guilty of the very thing that Ferguson was – unrealistic expectations shaping the way the Book of Mormon is viewed in a real-world setting. The only difference is Neville moved his expectations to forged and unprovenanced artifacts to claim a different geography model. For one who claims to champion open-mindedness and “multiple working hypotheses,” his hypocrisy could not be more clear.

Other Issues Regarding the Book of Mormon

The Location of Cumorah

At the 10:43 mark, Neville asserts:

[Book of Mormon scholars] started interpreting the Book of Mormon a certain way. And then they said, “Well, Cumorah doesn’t match our interpretation.” Which is exactly backwards, because they should have started with Cumorah and used the New York Cumorah to interpret the Book of Mormon.

This is actually backwards, as I mentioned in my review of the Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon. For simplicity’s sake, I will refer you to what I wrote there under the heading “The Location of Cumorah.” I would also again stress that nowhere in the text of the Book of Mormon itself is a New York Cumorah required, as Moroni never states what hill he buried the gold plates in. I also recommend this review of Neville’s proposed method of “pinpoints” through modern ideas rather than the actual text.

Should We Expect to Find Writing left by Ancient American Indians?

Neville asserts at the 13:26 mark:

The mound builders are still a mystery right? They didn’t leave any written records, which is what the Book of Mormon says. The only written records were the ones in the New York depository, because from Enos through – I guess Moroni’s book, the Lamanites are always trying to destroy the records. Through the whole history was destroying records [sic] and so we would expect to find a society that didn’t have any records left, and that’s what we have with the mound builders.

This is woefully misrepresenting what the Book of Mormon says about the nature of record keeping in the Book of Mormon.

The destruction of records fits into a category of damnatio memoriae ­– a Latin term meaning “damning the memory.” When rival kingdoms took over or a new dynasty was made in ancient cultures all throughout the world, it was not uncommon for the new leadership to destroy any traces of the old. That isn’t to say, however, that all records ever were destroyed. The Book of Mormon makes it clear that the Lamanites strictly sought to destroy the Nephite records especially – not all records ever made in the Americas. This damnatio memoriae described in the Book of Mormon is well attested in Mesoamerican cultures, as Evidence Central describes here.

Furthermore, the Book of Mormon even describes the Lamanites as a record keeping people. Though they had initially ignored the record keeping role and responsibility, Amulon and the priests of Noah teach them how to write and keep records in Mosiah 24:4-7. This will later be seen throughout the war narratives of the Book of Mormon as the Lamanites prove to be somewhat literate, and even Mormon describes how in his time the Lamanite king sent an epistle to him (Mormon 3:4). While Mormon hid sacred records in the Hill Cumorah as described in Mormon 6:6, even Mormon makes it clear that they weren’t the only records floating around, and the Lamanites remained a semi-literate people who could read, write, and keep records.

It would take a great leap of logic to assume that no writing system could ever hope to be discovered in potential Book of Mormon lands. While we would not expect Nephite records to survive, the broader non-Nephite culture was still at least partly literate and we would expect there to be some evidence of record keeping, such as found in Mesoamerica in multiple scripts (some still undeciphered and others still being discovered) and on multiple mediums.

Skousen and Early Modern English

At 1:09:26, Neville again attacks Royal Skousen for one idea that Skousen has. I personally am not convinced by Skousen’s claims of Early Modern English appearing in the Book of Mormon, especially to the extent Skousen claims to have found. However, I recognize that Skousen is a wonderful scholar who, despite some disagreements I have with him, is faithful to the Church. The Skousen versus Neville debate that Neville has invented has been responded to in depth here, so I will not spend much time on this matter.

Neville Hates Rocks. Especially Seer Stones.

A very baffling remark comes at the 1:11:43 timestamp where Neville says “The Bible itself was written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John… it wasn’t written by someone reading a stone in a hat. It was humans… expressing their experience with the divine.”

Of course, who’s to say that our experience with the divine can’t come through the use of divine instruments? The Urim and Thummim and its ephod were revelatory instruments in the Bible (see 1 Sam. 28:6, 1 Sam. 30:7-8), as well as a silver cup of Joseph (see Genesis 44:5). Jewish tradition talks of a stone that the prophets had that shone with God’s power. This is a baffling shot at Joseph’s seer stones that seems out of place in the larger conversation.

What is further mind-boggling is Neville’s use of how the Gospels were written to somehow undermine one method of translation, when he fails to consider that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John similarly did not write their Gospels using the Nephite interpreters. If they are to be used as proof against one translation method, they must be used as proof against all translation methods.

How Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their Gospels, however, is of little concern to the Book of Mormon’s translation, and it is disingenuous to suggest that any conclusion can be drawn from them to discredit a method of translation.

For a further discussion on the divine instruments I mentioned above as well as Joseph’s seer stones, see my posts here.

Neville Agrees with Critics of the Church Instead of Defenders of the Church

Unfounded Attacks (Again)

Near the end of his long rant at the beginning of the interview, Neville states “That led me to realize… that the academics, the LDS [sic] apologists are really in a group think mentality than individual thought and research.” This is the most ridiculous claim that shows a total lack of self-awareness on Neville’s part. The Heartland mentality once accepted seer stones as is evidenced by this cartoon; once Neville and the Stoddards determined their minds against seer stones, all Heartlanders have acted as though they were ALWAYS against seer stones. The same can be said for their other ideas, such as one of the Three Nephites visiting Mary Whitmer, how many plates Joseph Smith translated, etc. That group think mentality is a lot closer to Neville than he realizes.

All of the assumptions Neville then says he dismisses, such as the translation using a seer stone, are assumptions that FAIR, Book of Mormon Central, and Interpreter accept as well as anti-Latter-day Saint sites such as Mormon Stories and the CES Letter. This is, of course, a blatant lie – John Dehlin and Jeremy Runnells do not accept the translation or historicity of the Book of Mormon, and have misrepresented history in virtually every sentence they produce. But Neville would rather link anyone who disagrees with him as critics of the Church (often showing more support to Mormon Stories than faithful organizations such as Book of Mormon Central) than recognize what he claims to seek – freedom to believe in different settings for the Book of Mormon, something as yet unrevealed.

But, according to Neville, if you get offended when you are linked with antis of the caliber of Dehlin, it’s just “typical academic arrogance, where they think the credentialed class should be telling everyone else what to think.” Neville, who literally thirty seconds after making this claim advocates for multiple working hypotheses, is quick to arrogantly dismiss any “working hypothesis” that disagrees with his own ideas and resort to this sort of ad hominem attack. Despite his later attempts at the 7:55 mark to say he is fine with alternative viewpoints, he does little to actually show that.

Of course, Neville’s “multiple working hypotheses” model is flawed anyway – as this blog post so graciously points out so I don’t have to.

Who Needs Context, Anyway?

At the 6:30 mark, Neville asserts that a scholar and “their group… thought that I was this far from being apostate because I disagreed with them.” He offers no context for what was discussed, and so it is impossible to draw any conclusion from it. I personally don’t think anyone who believes in a North American model for Book of Mormon geography or a Nephite-Interpreter-Only translation method as apostate, but if it was over any other claim that Neville has made (such as his near dogmatic approach to either of the aforementioned as “must be doctrine and if you disagree you are being misled”), I will say, yes. Neville is “this far” from apostasy, as his multiple attacks against the brethren have made it clear.

The Late War and the Book of Mormon

At the 1:05:55 mark Neville remarks how the book The Late War influenced Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon. This is again a talking point of the anti-Latter-day Saints, with Neville’s usual twist on things.

Of course, Neville does not understand what the original talking points of the criticisms are, nor does he understand what the responses by faithful latter-day Saints actually say. Joseph is accused of plagiarizing from The Late War for various reasons (none of which holding much weight), and faithful Latter-day Saints refute that idea. This article from FAIR gives a very detailed run through of all of what these points are – and even though Neville explicitly mentions FAIR, he shows his lack of understanding in what they actually say.

Neville's Love Affair with the CES Letter and Anti-Latter-day Saints

At 1:19:01, Neville says that both Evangelical responses to the Church and the CES Letter make good points that apologists for the Church are unable to respond to. Of course, this is a lie, and another instance of Neville siding with critics of the Church over those who he disagrees with (as I have stated before, Neville is himself a critic of the Church and has attacked the Brethren multiple times for disagreeing with him as well).

According to Neville, it is faithful Latter-day Saints who make fallacious arguments that don’t hold up – despite the many changes that have been made to the CES Letter as parts were removed over the sheer laughability of the claims made, such as a map of cities that didn’t exist claiming to be the origin of Book of Mormon lands.

An excellent response to the CES Letter that is being made right now is a series of blog posts by Sarah Allen, and she has proven to be very well-versed in the issues at hand and responds in a very faithful way without factual or logical fallacies, despite what Neville says.

Conclusion

Jonathan Neville is a critic of the Church.

Frankly, that should be obvious to those intimately aware with claims he makes on his many blogs, such as his claim that Elder Gong has been led astray or his many ad hominem attacks against those who disagree with him, such as those mentioned above.

For further responses to Neville, I could not recommend enough the blog Neville-Neville Land. I too, will offer my voice in continued defense of the Church, and will, when occasion permits, respond to these critics.

As far as the claims he has made in this interview that I have responded to, it is evident that Neville thrives off of misinforming others regarding what others believe. He misrepresents the Book of Mormon text itself to force it into his preferred setting, allows his expectations to drive his findings (and not the other way around), champions those opposed to the Church instead of faithful scholars defending it, and invents his own facts to fit his own narrative.

Neville is a dishonest person. He is also a dishonest scholar. As such, I cannot recommend his work to anyone for any reason whatsoever.

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[1] Joseph Smith to John M. Bernhisel, November 16, 1841, in Rogers et al., JSP–D 8:367. See also Book of Mormon Central, “Why Did the Lord Command the Three Witnesses to Rely upon His Word? (D&C 17:1),” KnoWhy 596 (February 16, 2021), note 16.

[2] See Willard Young’s proposed geography as cited in John Sorenson, The Geography of Book of Mormon Events: A Source Book (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1990); 205-206, the Jakeman model discussed in Sorenson,  98-100; the Ferguson/Hunter model discussed in Sorenson, 73-74; the map from Plain Facts that I discussed in an earlier post and as is discussed in Sorenson, 135-137. Sorenson’s source book is the best go-to source detailing early Book of Mormon geography maps, and much more from the early 19^th and 20^th centuries are discussed therein.

[3] See Book of Mormon Central, KnoWhy 596.

[4] See Sorenson, 160-162.