If the Vernal Holley geography map is evidence that Joseph Smith copied Book of Mormon names from Eastern U.S. towns, why did you ask your Reddit audience whether you should remove it?
In 2015, you went to Reddit and asked the exmormon community whether you should remove the Vernal Holley geography section from the CES Letter.
If this were actual evidence of plagiarism by Joseph Smith, why crowdsource whether it belongs?
If the geography map demonstrates plagiarism, why does it need a vote?
Because the Vernal Holley theory has problems. Serious ones.
And not small technical problems. Structural ones.
Let’s walk through them.
28 Names Out of 188
The Holley model claims Joseph Smith copied Book of Mormon place names from towns in the Eastern United States.
It identifies 28 “supposed” parallels.
The Book of Mormon contains 188 unique proper names.
That is less than 15 percent.
Even before we examine the quality of the matches, the quantity is thin. If Joseph were copying from a regional map, why are 85 percent of the names unmatched? How did he have enough creative genius to create 85% of names, but not the final 15%?
Why do the vast majority of names have no geographic parallel?
Why would a fraud copy selectively and inconsistently?
Forced Phonetics of Vern Holley Map
Look at some of the alleged matches:
Monroe → Moroni
Oneida → Onidah
Antioch → Ani-Anti
Ripple Lake → Ripliancum
How many letters are allowed to change before it stops being a match?
How many syllables can be added to still be “plagarism”?
If “Ripple Lake” can become “Ripliancum,” what can’t become something? Are you sure he didn’t actually plagarize Ripliancum from Richmond, Rhinebeck, Rowley, Rutlake or Riegelsville when making up that name?
If this is a valid standard, could we produce dozens more “matches” across the United States by slightly modifying names?
With roughly 8,000 to 10,000 settlements in the United States around 1829, what are the odds that flexible phonetic matching produces 20 to 30 surface similarities?
High.
Very high.
Under loose criteria, statistical modeling shows that the probability of finding that many superficial matches by chance is more than 95%.
If you search a large enough dataset and allow spelling flexibility, patterns appear.
That is not evidence of design. That’s called probability.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Tolkien Plagiarized US Cities for Lord of the Rings!
My oh my.
Looks like Old Joe Smith isn’t the only one who plagiarized Eastern U.S. maps. J.R.R. Tolkien did it too in The Lord of the Rings. Look at all these city names he copied to use in his own book because he didn’t have the creativity to make up names by himself.
| Lord of the Rings Name | Eastern U.S. Town | Type of Match |
|---|---|---|
| Bree | Breezewood, PA | “Bree” sound + common ending |
| Rivendell | Riverton, NJ | “Riven” → “River” + ending change |
| Mordor | Morton, PA | “Mor-” start + “dor” → “ton” |
| Isengard | Iselin, NJ | “Isen” → “Ise” + ending twist |
| Edoras | Edison, NJ | “Edo” → “Edi” + “ras” → “son” |
| Minas Tirith | Minerva, NY | “Min-” start + vowel stretch |
| Osgiliath | Ossining, NY | “Os-” start + long name shortening |
| Lothlórien | Lorain, OH | “Loth” → “Lor” + ending change |
| Fangorn | Fawn Grove, PA | “Fang” → “Fawn” + “orn” → “grove” |
| Helm’s Deep | Helmetta, NJ | “Helm” → “Helmet” + “deep” → ending |
| Dale | Dale City, VA | Almost exact + “city” added |
| Lake-town | Lakewood, NJ | “Lake” + “town” → “wood” |
| Erebor | Erie, PA | “Ere” → “Eri” + drop ending |
| Moria | Moravia, NY | “Mor-” + “ia” ending |
| Anduin | Andover, MA | “And-” + “uin” → “over” |
Non-Existent Towns
And the entire map theory get’s even more unrealistic when you find out that many of the proposed “matching city names” did not even exist in 1829.
Isn’t that what we call an anachronism?
Some were incorporated years later. Like after Joseph died later.
Angola, New York was established in 1854.
Minoa was incorporated in 1895.
Mantua Village, Ohio was incorporated in 1898.
Conner, Ontario was named in 1865.
Tecumseh received its name in 1912.
How did Joseph Smith copy from towns that did not yet exist?
Was he consulting future maps?
I mean I guess if anyone could do it, it would have been the Prophet Joseph. Maybe he used his seer stone to look at future maps when he couldn’t think of any more names for his imaginary text.
Or is it more likely that loose phonetic similarities were retrofitted after the fact?
If a theory requires time travel, is it still a theory?
Geography That Doesn’t Work
The Book of Mormon describes directional relationships.
Northward.
Southward.
East sea.
West sea.
Relative distances.
Battle routes.
Migration paths.
The Vernal Holley Book of Mormon map does not preserve those relationships.
Cities are placed in reversed directions.
North becomes south.
Coastal becomes inland.
Relative distances collapse.
If Joseph copied from a real map, why would he scramble the geography?
Why would he invert directional consistency, when the text itself is remarkably consistent? Nearly every Book of Mormon Model is able to put consistent directional differences between maps.
Wouldn’t borrowing preserve structure?
If the structure fails, what exactly was copied?
Biblical Names Ignored
Several “parallels” are names are already found in the Bible.
Jerusalem.
Jordan.
Boaz.
Ephraim.
Midian.
If Joseph needed a source for Jerusalem, would he really pull it from a random American town instead of the Bible he already knew?
Isn’t the common biblical belief explanation simpler? Even if he didn’t own a Bible at the time of the translation, that was the text that Joseph Smith learned to read from. Surely he remembered some of the more common Biblical cities.
And given that the United States was founded largely by Christians, wouldn’t it be likely that they would name many cities after biblical names? Isn’t that the same reason so many cities in Utah are named after Book of Mormon names—Nephi, Lehi, Manti, Moroni, Bountiful, etc.? Could that be reason for a few similar names?
And if ancient migrants from Israel settled a new land, is it strange that they reused familiar Old World names that were found in their scripture?
Migration patterns across history show repeated reuse of ancestral names. It’s found all over the world.
Is that plagiarism?
Or human behavior?
Is there any Evidence?
There is no documentation that Joseph owned the maps Holley relies on.
No eyewitness statement that he studied them.
No journal entry referencing them.
No record of him copying names.
No record of him identifying the modern versions of the names as actual locations of Book of Mormon sites.
No printing notes showing drafts of altered town names.
The theory rests entirely on a visual comparison of loose similarities done more than 160 years later.
No contemporaries noticed.
No critics in the 1830s raised this argument. Not one.
Wouldn’t they have been the ones who would have seen it much more easily when the country was 1/10th the size that it is now?
Why did early hostile critics miss something that is supposedly obvious they could have used to discredit Joseph Smith and the Church they hated so much?
Could the Vernal Holley Model actually provide evidence of the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon?
While reviewing Book of Mormon city names that resemble modern locations, an important question arises: could any Native American place names preserve older Book of Mormon names?
If certain modern names come from Native American languages—and those names predate European settlement—is it possible they reflect even earlier regional designations?
Two examples from your list.
Oneida is a confirmed Native American name of Iroquoian origin. It is very close to the Book of Mormon name Onidah. Unlike many comparisons that rely on biblical or colonial names, Oneida is authentically indigenous. The phonetic similarity raises the question of possible name retention across populations.
Kishkiminetas, an Algonquian river name, resembles Kishkumen. The match is less exact, and Kishkiminetas clearly fits Algonquian linguistic patterns. However, the root “Kish” is a Semitic name found in the Bible. Why were the Native Americans using a Biblical name?
Are these similarities coincidence, or distant preservation?
And Then Came Reddit
Here is the question that remains:
If the Vern Holley Book of Mormon Geography is compelling evidence of plagiarism, why did you ask Reddit whether it should be removed?
Why crowdsource confidence?
Why hesitate?
Why publicly float the possibility of cutting it?
Was it because the dates do not work?
Because the phonetic stretching is too obvious?
Because probability undermines the shock value?
Because you feared that it might be reveal actual Book of Mormon locations?
Or because you know that the speculation is so foundationally irrelevant that it loses credibility of your letter?
The Larger Methodology Problem
The Holley map fits a pattern.
Start with a conclusion.
Search for anything that resembles support.
Stretch phonetics.
Ignore chronology, facts, and basic statistical probability.
Downplay contradictory geography.
Present a graphic.
Let visual impression carry the argument assuming nobody would look into it.
Move on before the details are examined.
That approach may create initial doubt. But what happens when readers check incorporation dates?
When they compare directional descriptions?
When they examine map availability in 1829?
When they realize 85 percent of names have no connection, and many of the connections come from a shared Biblical origin?
When they discover several towns did not exist?
What does that do to confidence?
Questions That Remain
If Joseph copied geography, why are most names unmatched?
Why do several matched towns postdate the Book of Mormon?
Why do directional relationships fail?
Why rely on phonetic stretches and manipulation?
Why was this not raised by early critics?
Why are there not more people claiming that Tolkien copied US Maps?
Why was its removal publicly considered?
And if you were willing to keep this in your letter, even though you knew it was weak, in order to make a point and create doubt in readers, what does that say about your integrity and your actual intentions?
If your letter was written to a CES Director to answer your concerns, why were you asking about making revisions two years later?