Church History blog debunks Heartland hoaxes

The Church History Library recently published a blog post responding to questions they regularly receive about supposed Book of Mormon artifacts:

The Church History Library receives numerous questions about artifacts mentioned in the Book of Mormon and Church history. These questions often ask if the Church is in possession of an artifact, whether we know the whereabouts of an artifact (if the Church doesn’t have it), or whether a recent archaeological exploration has unearthed an artifact. In most cases, unfortunately, the answer is no.

The blog post responds to five questions, three of which are connected to claims made by those who advocate for the Heartland theory of the Book of Mormon. In response to number 1, “Does the Church have the sword of Laban?”, Church historians Jeffrey Tucker and Ryan Combs respond, “No, we don’t.” After explaining what we know of appearances of the sword of Laban in Joseph Smith’s time, Tucker and Combs write:

On June 17, 1877, Brigham Young gave a talk in Farmington, Utah, in which he recounted a story from Oliver Cowdery. Oliver had said that he and Joseph Smith saw the sword of Laban inside a cave in the Hill Cumorah. The cave, Oliver had told him, also contained piles of gold plates bearing the records of the Nephites. Other Saints of Brigham’s era were familiar with the story of the cave, too, though Brigham’s version remains perhaps the most well-known of the accounts, as it was published in the Journal of Discourses. The story has generated much discussion over the years, since, geologically-speaking, the Hill Cumorah is a drumlin, a giant pile of sand and gravel that is unlikely to support naturally-occurring cave structures. That hasn’t stopped people from searching for the cave Oliver described, but nobody has found it.

If you would like to learn more about the sword-in-the-Hill-Cumorah story, Cameron Packer wrote an article in 2004 comparing the story’s versions—all of which, Packer noted, were at least secondhand. Based on the available information, some researchers have concluded that Oliver may have seen the cave in a dream, not during an in-person visit.

As the Neville-Neville Land blog has explained, the accounts of Oliver Cowdery’s story of visiting a cave full of plates are late, second- or third-hand, and conflicting. Jonathan Neville insists that the cave of plates really does exist inside the hill Cumorah in upstate New York and this is evidence that hill is the same hill mentioned in the Book of Mormon; however, as Tucker and Combs note, the existence of such a cave is very unlikely and no such cave has yet been discovered.

In response to number 3, “Did the members of Zion’s Camp find the grave of a Book of Mormon-era warrior during their march through the American Midwest?”, Tucker and Combs respond, “Maybe.” After recounting the multiple accounts of the discovery of Zelph, they write:

The Zelph story is often cited by those interested in establishing the geographical location of Book of Mormon places and events: if Zelph was present during the “last destruction of the Lamanites,” then some researchers conclude that Book of Mormon events may have happened in what is now southwest Illinois. However, the exact interpretation of this phrase is unclear—it is unique to Heber’s account—and the Church takes no official stance on Book of Mormon geography.

In 1990, archaeologists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Center for American Archaeology went to the Zelph mound. Their excavation of the site unearthed additional artifacts, such as bowls and axe heads, which were dated to between 100 AD and 500 AD.

Still, it is difficult to definitively say that Zelph was a warrior during the Nephite-Lamanite wars. If the records of the Zelph story are accurate, and if Joseph truly meant that Zelph was a participant in Book of Mormon events, and if Zelph was buried in the mound at the same time as the other items, then it is possible—but that’s a lot of ifs.

As Tucker and Combs note, the Zelph story is a very slender thread on which to hang such a heavy weight. The narrative found in the seven-volume History of the Church is an amalgamation of four separate accounts made in 1834, only three of which were written by eyewitnesses. As Kenneth W. Godfrey noted in his 1999 scholarly article on these accounts, many of them “are inconsistent and most of the details surrounding Zelph and his life remain unknown. The skeleton cannot, therefore, provide conclusive evidence for anything.”

The accounts of the cave of plates and Zelph are weak evidence exploited by Heartlanders. Much worse, though, is their fascination with the Michigan Relics. I’ve written about these fake artifacts before; here’s what Tucker and Combs have to say in answer to question 4, “Were Nephite tablets found in Michigan?”:

No, it was a hoax.…

Elder James E. Talmage was asked to investigate [the relics]. After extensive trips throughout the country collecting evidence, including a visit with [supposed discoverer James] Scotford himself in which Talmage dug up planted artifacts, Talmage used his scientific training to perform laboratory experiments on samples of the relics he took home to Salt Lake City. The experiments confirmed the relics’ fraudulent nature.

James E. Talmage was not alone in his conclusions: Many experts at the time of the artifacts’ discovery asserted that the Michigan Relics were forgeries crafted by James Scotford and Daniel Soper as a money-making scheme. Modern scientific analysis has confirmed that they are not ancient artifacts. Despite this, over one hundred years later some people are still falling for Scotford and Soper’s con.

When this blog launched in February 2019, I wrote that “the Heartland movement in general—and [Jonathan] Neville’s writings in particular—are a case study in sloppy thinking, poor scholarship, and agenda-driven conclusions” that are based on “appeals to conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.” I’m pleased to see scholars at the Church History Library confirming my evaluation.

—Peter Pan