Is the Limited Geography Model a late invention?
Critics of the church will often assert that our understanding that the Book of Mormon describes only a limited geography and population among other New World inhabitants is of recent invention and only a justification for the failures of our scholarship. While it is true that many church leaders have held the view that all Nephites, Jaredites and Lamanites formed the total population of the continent, this has not been a universally held view. I found this tantalizing example while reading through The Evening and Morning Star. It is found in an article entitled Good Proof in Issue 13 ( June 1833) “No people that have lived on this continent, since the flood, understood many of the arts and sciences better than the Jaredites and Nephites, whose brief history is sketched in the Book of Mormon. The Facts following, from the star in the West, is not only proof of their skill, but it is good proof, to those that want evidence, that the book of Mormon, IS TRUE.” It is the first sentence tha
