Where is Cumorah?
The answer, of course, is in western New York, where Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said it was. If someone tells you it’s somewhere else, or that there are “two Cumorahs,” you know they are repudiating Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.
For me, there’s no point in considering geography theories that put Cumorah anywhere else but in New York. This also applies to the “abstract maps,” including those being taught at BYU.
You will find dozens, even hundreds, of different maps if you look online. You can assess them easily by seeing how they treat Cumorah.
One of the best known is the one at BYU Studies, here. https://byustudies.byu.edu/
Scroll to the bottom of the page. The first item under “Popular Pages” is “Charting the Book of Mormon.” Click on that.
You’ll find some useful material here, but there is also some misleading material. Scroll to
Section 13: Geography in the Book of Mormon
Here’s the direct link: https://byustudies.byu.edu/charts/13-149-ten-essential-features-book-mormon-geography
This entire section is a disaster, IMO, Look at this one, for example.
13-149 Ten Essential Features of Book of Mormon Geography
These “Essential Features” have little if anything to do with the text. They are pure Mesomania, an effort to persuade people that the text actually described Mesoamerica.
The first one says “A narrow neck (isthmus) separated the land northward from the land southward and was flanked by an east sea and a west sea.”
Of course, the text never uses the term isthmus. This is classic for Mesomania. The text doesn’t describe anything about Mesoamerica–no jungles, no volcanoes, no huge stone pyramids, and even no Mayans–so the Mesoamerican advocates have to change the wording in the text to make it work.
You can go through all of the items in Section 13, and you’ll see how they use this substitution technique throughout to justify their Mesoamerican theory.
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This is just one example of how far afield people can get when they ignore what Joseph and Oliver said about Cumorah in New York.
You’ll find plenty more. But you can avoid all of that by going to http://moronisamerica.com/
As always, I’m interested in anyone who can come up with a better explanation of Book of Mormon geography with Cumorah in New York.
Source: Book of Mormon Wars