Thursday, January 30, 2020

Melvin J. Ballard vs. the Heartland Model of Book of Mormon Geography


Melvin J.Ballard, in a talk delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, “Book of Mormon Evidences,” discussed New World geography of the Book of Mormon in a way that is contrary to that of those espoused by Neville, Meldrum, and other proponents of the “Heartland Model.” Consider the following representative comments which reveal Ballard believed the Book of Mormon peoples inhabited portions of Central and South America, not the Heartland:

It has been my privilege to see the great collections in this country and Mexico, as well as those in the republics of the Argentine, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru . . . Long before these evidences were ever known to men, Joseph Smith, in translating the Book of Mormon, recorded that when the people reached this American continent they built temples after the manner of Solomon’s Temple. In the findings of the republic of Mexico there is gathered in that great museum among other things, what is known as the Calendar Stone . . . I have seen, side by side, the alphabet of the Mayan people and the alphabet of the Egyptian language so nearly alike, letter by letter, that one is at once impressed with the thought that either the Mayans borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptians or vice versa. And so men are deciphering these inscriptions; for instance, Mr. Thompson who, for twenty years was an American ambassador in Mexico, and explored the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula of Southern Mexico . . . It has been my privilege to do missionary work among the Indians from Canada to South America. I have never encountered a single tribe where the traditional story of the visit of the fair God does not obtain. The temple of Quetzacoatl where I stood in the valley of Mexico was erected to the fair God . . . This record declares that is to go to the descendants of Father Lehi, the American Indian of either Central or South America. There are s you know in Mexico more than 12,000,000 of them who have Indian blood in their veins, and then in South America there are more than 20,000,000 of them. The joy that I had in my contact with these people has thrilled my soul because, if there ever has been a people in bondage in the history of this world, they are the Indians of South America, Central America, and Mexico. (Melvin J. Ballard: Crusader for Righteousness [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Publishers, 1966], 164, 166-67, 169, 172)