Thursday, August 31, 2017

Reviews of Jonathan Neville's Works

Jonathan Neville is a proponent of the Heartland Model of Book of Mormon geography. He has a reputation of lacking intellectual integrity as he tends to distort facts to suit his agenda of propping up the indefensible (the Heartland model) as well as his attacks on those who hold to Mesoamerica being the lands of the Book of Mormon. One recent example is his article “Elder Holland’s powerful talk to a room full of unbelievers” where he clearly distorts the talk given by Jeffrey R. Holland's talk The Greatness of the Evidence at the Chiasmus Jubilee celebrating the 50th anniversary of John W. Welch's discovery of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon.

Today I read a book by Neville, Whatever Happened to the Golden Plates? While I am unaware of any review of this particular volume, his works have been refuted rather soundly by competent LDS scholars:


Gregory L. Smith, “From the Sea East Even to the Sea West”: Thoughts on a Proposed Book of Mormon Chiasm Describing Geography in Alma 22:27

Matthew Roper, The Treason of the Geographers: Mythical “Mesoamerican” Conspiracy and the Book of Mormon

Idem, John Bernhisel’s Gift to a Prophet: Incidents of Travel in Central America and the Book of Mormon

Matthew Roper, Paul Fields, and Larry Bassist, Zarahemla Revisited: Neville’s Newest Novel