This has bugged me for years.

I wonder if it has bugged anybody else, so I'm going to ask the board.

There was another post about this issue in another thread and it was just too much for me to hold in.

We heard countless times about the "narrow neck of land". I mean countless, right?

How in the hell did they know it was a narrow neck of land?

They had no ability to see it from the air.

They were not a society that was big into cartography. There were no maps scratched into the gold plates that JS mentioned.

There is mention of a "days journey" or "two days journey" but that wouldn't have been enough to see "the big picture" of a large land mass to the south (think how big South America is) and the north (North America is pretty big) with this "narrow neck of land" between them.

This "narrow neck" of land by itself is HUGE (if we're talking about Panama) by walking distance (or on tapirback as the case were).

Thoughts? Am I being silly? Am I being stupid (has this been addressed?)?

They didn't know anything, because "they" never existed. Just another thing that JS made up. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a narrow neck of land that was in the area JS lived in at the time.

There was a narrow neck of land near where Smith lived. It's the land between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.

I just saw a map in a document that I was reading and it looked identical to where JS lived. I'll keep looking to see if I can find it again. It also had a list of BOM place names that were nearly identical to some near JS.

This is where Joe lived. He used real maps with some names changed a little, so that he could keep his stories (somewhat) straight.

http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/holley/holleymaps.htm

Thank you scarecrowfromoz. I knew I had seen this recently.

Uh yeah, where's that map with the extremely similar place names? The one that compares an area of New York with a mock up map of some BoM locations?
I know one of you here knows what I'm talking about...

Ok ok, here we go, the Vernal Holley maps:
www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/holley/holleymaps.htm


But I'm with you, Levi. Implausible, fortunately it is fiction. Stupid parents. Stupid Joe. >:(

Great minds, lol!

It's also in the CES letter. What was really interesting to me was seeing names of the areas around where JS lived, and how they were so similar to BOM names. What a coincidence, huh?

Seriously what difference does it make? It was all made up by Joseph Smith. What possible difference can it make that he wrote
narrow neck of land or purple spotted land? It is bogus bull shit.

I think the OPs point was "how can Mormons believe this crap when the anachronisms are so obvious?"

CA girl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think the OPs point was "how can Mormons believe
> this crap when the anachronisms are so obvious?"


Oh ok. Obvious to us but not to the TBM's.

I think you're right. They wouldn't have had any reason to refer to it as "a narrow neck of land." That's the way someone would refer to it when they can see it on a map, when it looks like a narrow part compared to the not narrow parts. And no car or train or airplane to gain the distance perspective needed to refer to it in relation to the adjacent land masses.

I'm almost ashamed to admit that that's one of the things I never even noticed or thought about at all when I was a TBM. So many things that don't make sense, and so many TBMs who overlook them all.

trudging along in the same direction for one and a half days and

using the sun as a guide I guess they came to some more water

those ancient Nephites were smart

Excellent point, Levi. I hadn't thought of that before. Another nail in the coffin.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.religion.mormon/G9aCAg_0eFg[51-75-false]

I debated these issues with TBMs for several years. This thread concerns the book "Exploring the Lands of The Book of Mormon" by Joseph Allen. A TBM named Charles Dowis suggested that we evil, ignorant apostates read the book. I happened to have a copy, so I wrote this post to refute Allen's silly theories.

To quote from Allen (p. 279):

"The Book of Mormon requirement for the Narrow Neck of Land/Narrow Pass is that
it divided the Land Southward from the Land Northward:

'And now, it was only the distance of a day and a half's journey for a Nephite, on the line Bountiful and the land Desolation, from the east to the west sea;
and thus the land of Nephi and the land of Zarahemla were nearly surrounded by
water, there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land
southward.' (Alma 22:32.)"

Allen then offers, "I propose that the Narrow Neck of Land is located in what
is now called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Southern Mexico. Furthermore, I
propose that the Narrow Pass runs through the Isthmus in a north-south
direction and runs between two mountain ranges, as opposed to running between
two oceans or seas."

The first and most glaring fatal error in Allen's proposal is one of distance.
At its narrowest point between the Gulf of Mexico on the north and the Pacific
Ocean on the south, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is 125 miles wide. The Book of
Mormon verse quoted above clearly states that it was "a day and a half's
journey" for a "Nephite" to travel "from the east to the west sea." Obviously,
no "Nephite" or any other human could travel 125 miles in a "day and a half" in
the era proposed in the BOM, unless he possessed a means of travel unknown to
modern science.

Secondly, the BOM text calls for an "east sea" and a "west sea," whereby the
"narrow neck of land" would necessarily run north-south (as the BOM states, the
"land northward" and the "Land southward.")

Contrary to that, the actual physical layout of the Isthmus and its surrounding
bodies of water is 90 degrees rotated from the directions stated in the BOM; so
in proposing the Isthmus as the "narrow neck of land," Allen must misrepresent
what the BOM actually states concerning directions. Twisting and
misrepresenting what the BOM actually states is a common habit of Mormon
apologists, including Charles Dowis. By engaging in such twisting, they render
everything written in the BOM meaningless.

Thirdly, the BOM states that "the land of Nephi and the land of Zarahemla was
nearly surrounded by water." Allen proposes that the "Land of Zarahemla" lay
in the southern and narrowest point of the Isthmus (in present-day Chiapas),
and the "land of Nephi" was 200 miles or so to the east (in present-day
Guatemala.)

The problem here is that in light of the proposed areas and distances, no
ancient person would have described such a large area of land as being "nearly
surrounded by water." The term "narrow neck of land" requires, in the eyes of
an ancient, primitive observer, an easily visible, measurable span. Obviously,
no observer of 2000+ years ago would describe a region which was at least 125
miles thick at its narrowest point as a "narrow neck of land." Also, Allen's
proposed areas and distances do not in the least fit the BOM's description of
the region as "being nearly surrounded by water." The BOM's description
requires the area to be more like a small peninsula of no more than 20-50 miles
separating the two "seas" by which it is "nearly surrounded."

And another thing: the Isthmus of Panama around 600 BC was a horrendous jungle. It would have taken weeks and weeks of trudging through thick vegetation, being attacked by every sort of rainforest vermin, and relying on parasite-infested water to slake one's thirst from the baking humid heat of the tropics, all the while climbing up and down imposing mountains.