FairMormon, Day Two, Part Three

Tyler Griffin gave an excellent presentation under the title “Book of Mormon Geographical References: Internal Consistency Taken to a New Level.”

Expressly without committing himself to a “Heartland” or Baja or Mesoamerican geographical model, Dr. Griffin laid out some basic but very significant internal geographical information derived from the text of the Book of Mormon.

He’s impressed by both the complexity of the Book of Mormon’s internal geography and by its consistency in detail.  As am I.  It’s remarkable, and not easily dismissed.

I think the audience enjoyed his presentation, and I hope that a much larger audience will enjoy it in the future.

The work that he and his group — which includes Taylor Halverson — are doing on Book of Mormon maps is available, in a somewhat unfinished way, at http://virtualscriptures.org.

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Brant Gardner, one of the most interesting readers of the Book of Mormon that we have, presented under the title “The Book of Mormon as a Seer Stone: Having Faith In and Through the Book of Mormon.”

He devoted his talk to a really interesting discussion of Joseph Smith’s use of seer stones.  Some have been upset by the idea that Joseph employed a stone for translating the Book of Mormon that he had previously used for treasure-digging.  Brant Gardner’s argument is that this shouldn’t be upsetting in the least.

Brant also addressed a few remarks to the importance of understanding the Book of Mormon as history.

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Gerrit Dirkmaat was the next-to-last speaker.  His topic was “Lost Teachings of the Prophets: Recently Uncovered Teachings of Joseph Smith and Others from the Council and Fifty Record.”

He’s a lively and entertaining speaker, and I’m pleased that work on the Joseph Smith Papers project continues to yield great dividends.

One gem that Dr. Dirkmaat included in his remarks was a quotation from an interview published in the 29 September 1843 issue of the New York Weekly Review:

“I have sworn by the eternal gods that I never will vote for a democrat again; and I intend, to swear my children, putting their hands under the thigh as Abraham swore Isaac, that they will never vote a democratic ticket in all their generations. It is the meanest, lowest party in all creation.—There is five-sixths of my people so led away by the euphoneous term “democrat,” that they will vote the Locofoco ticket. I am a democrat myself. I am a Washington democrat, a Jefferson democrat, a Jackson democrat and I voted for Harrison, and I am going to vote for Clay. The Locofocos are no democrats, but the meanest, lowest, most tyrannical beings in the world.—They opposed me in Missouri, and took me prisoner, and were going to shoot me for treason, and I never had committed any treason whatever.”

That’s really funny.  But please, my dear Democratic readers, don’t get too upset.  Just before that passage, the person interviewing the Prophet said this:

“He said he had never asked the Lord any thing about politics; if had done so, the Lord would have told him what to do. ‘The Lord has promised to give wisdom, and when I lack wisdom I ask the Lord, and he tells me, and if he didn’t tell me, I would say he was a liar; that’s the way I feel. But I never asked him any thing about politics. I am a Whig, and I am a Clay man. I am made of Clay, and I am tending to Clay, and I am going to vote for Henry Clay; that’s the way I feel (A laugh). But I won’t interfere with my people religiously, to affect their votes, though I might to elect Clay, for he ought to be President.”

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There were, by the way, fourteen speakers at the 2017 FairMormon conference.  Of them, six are connected with the Interpreter Foundation in some way:  Matthew L. Bowen, Brant A. Gardner, Ugo A. Perego, Daniel C. Peterson, Neal Rappleye, and Ben Spackman.