There are not many modern anti-Mormon arguments. Almost all anti-Mormon claims recycle from earlier generations, but one newer claim the anti’s on X like to use is that Joseph Smith copied the names Moroni and Cumorah from a small island group off the coast of Mozambique.
The reason this claim even exists is because of a stacked set of assumptions resting on the work of early anti-Mormon writer Pomeroy Tucker.
Pomeroy Tucker’s Anti-Mormon Book
Pomeroy Tucker wrote his anti-Mormon book Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism: Biography of Its Founders and History of Its Church in 1867. In an effort to portray Joseph as a treasure-seeking fanatic and money-digger, he claimed that Joseph got this worldview from reading Captain Kidd pirate stories, which Joseph supposedly loved. Tucker used those stories to place Joseph inside folk superstition and treasure-seeking culture.
This Book was published four decades after the time when Tucker supposedly knew the Smiths. Think about the people you knew as a child. What do you remember about them from 40 years ago? The fact that you can remember them at all means their was some sort of connection, but specific details are easily blurred. There is a lot of room for memory fade, especially if your motive is hostile and shaped by sensationalism in order to sell a controversial book.
Pomeroy Tucker was about three or four years older than Joseph. He worked in the printing business, and we know that he was acquainted with Joseph Smith and had some involvement with the printing world at the time of the publication of the first edition of the Book of Mormon. Tucker would have been familiar with local gossip, rumors, and newspaper opinions about the Smith family. But there is no evidence that Pomeroy Tucker knew Joseph intimately or had special access to Joseph’s private thoughts, passions, or reading life as a young boy.
So do we know whether Joseph really loved and was inspired by Captain Kidd pirate stories? Do we know whether he even read them before the publication of the Book of Mormon?
Joseph’s Access to Captain Kidd Stories
Anti-Mormons claim that these stories were published in a local Palmyra newspaper. There was at least one mention of Robert Kidd and treasure hunting in a February 16, 1825 issue of the Wayne Sentinel, but that is not a printing of a Captain Kidd story.
There is also a much later claim connected to Philetus B. Spear, published in 1923 from an earlier reminiscence, saying that Joseph “had for a library a copy of the Arabian Nights, stories of Captain Kidd, and a few novels.”
And how reliable is a source that late and indirect? It wasn’t exactly a moving log or catalog of books.
Stealing Moroni from Captain Kidd Pirate Stories
In his Anti-Mormon Book, Pomeroy Tucker never makes the claim that Joseph stole the names Moroni or Cumorah from Captain Kidd stories. Tucker’s argument was that those pirate stories supposedly helped shape Joseph’s treasure-seeking worldview and folk beliefs. He did not build the 2003 Comoros theory.
Tucker wouldn’t have made this claim, because he himself would not have known about obscure islands off the coast of Africa either.
The Captain Kidd materials do discuss islands in the general region where the Comoros are located, but they do not ever mention the names Comoros or Moroni in the primary Kidd material itself.
So how did this accusation ever come up, and what is the basis for it?
Modern Critics and the Fabrication of a Theory
The modern claim came in 2003, when an anti-Mormon familiar with Tucker’s claim of Josephs obsession with pirate stories noticed that the modern capital of the Comoros Islands is named Moroni, which is also the same name as the last prophet in the Book of Mormon.
From there, they started stacking assumptions, likely giddy for a source of something to discredit the Book of Mormon.
These are the assumptions that must be made to have faith in this explanation for two Book of Mormon Names:
- Joseph supposedly knew pirate stories.
- Captain Kidd was connected to stories set in the Indian Ocean.
- The Comoros are in the Indian Ocean.
- Comoros sounds somewhat like Cumorah.
- The modern capital of the Comoros is named Moroni.
Conclusion: both Moroni and Cumorah are in the same general part of the world, so it must be too much coincidence.
Therefore, Joseph Smith must have stolen the names from maps. Origin of this part of the Book of Mormon solved!
The Smoking-Gun Flaw in the Theory
The main problem with this claim, and there are many, is that you have to have faith in layer after layer of assumptions to believe it is true, all for the possibility of explaining just two of the Book of Mormon’s proper names.
The City of Moroni
The biggest problem with this theory is that while Moroni existed long before Joseph Smith, it was not some major world-famous city. It became the seat of the colonial administration on Grande Comore in 1886, and it did not become the capital of the Comoros archipelago until 1958, long after the Book of Mormon was published in 1830. In 1958, its population was still only 6,545.
Moroni Does Not Appear on the Maps Critics Need
The name Moroni does not appear on any known maps prior to an 1843 French naval survey, recorded in a chart titled “Mer des Indes: Croquis du mouillage de Moroni, côte ouest de la Grande Comore.” This was a specialized French maritime chart, not a common map circulating, especially in an irrelevant place like rural New York. And it was made more than a decade after the Book of Mormon was published.
Critics like the CES Letter point to Pinkerton’s 1809 Southern Africa map, include the Comoro Islands but the map does not do not label Moroni. This map was part of a high-end British atlas. It would not have been common in rural western New York and there is no evidence Joseph Smith ever had access to it
And let’s be honest, claiming that Comoros and Cumorah are basically the same thing is a stretch on its own.
How many other place names in the world contain the consonants C-M-R in that order? There is Cameroon, Comrat in Moldova, Camiri in Bolivia, Camorim in Brazil, Cam Ranh in Vietnam, and Cape Comorin in India, just to name a few.
Is that kind of similarity really evidence of source origin?
Assumptions That Must Be Believed to Accept the Theory
To believe that Joseph Smith plagiarized Moroni and Cumorah from pirate stories and island maps, you have to accept all of the following:
→ Joseph made up the Book of Mormon
→ He needed borrowed names
→ Pomeroy Tucker is a reliable source on Joseph’s childhood reading interests
→ Tucker really knew Joseph well enough to know what fascinated him as a boy
→ Joseph learned of the Comoros through Captain Kidd stories, even though the names Comoros and Moroni are not found in the primary Kidd material
→ That interest led Joseph to search for maps of the Indian Ocean
→ Those maps were somehow available to him in rural upstate New York
→ Those maps included the place-name Moroni
→ Joseph studied those maps, even though there is no evidence he had them
→ Joseph noticed the name
→ Joseph remembered the names Comoros and Moroni for later use
→ Joseph modified Comoros into Cumorah
→ Joseph used Moroni to describe the angel who first visited him in 1823, 2 years after the newspaper article that mentions Captain Kidd.
That is a lot of faith in assumptions.
While the claim that Joseph Smith plagiarized tiny island maps to get names for the Book of Mormon is a modern one, it is still one of the weakest anti-Mormon arguments in circulation. It shows how desperate critics are to find any source for the Book of Mormon other than what Joseph Smith actually claimed: that it was brought forth by the gift and power of God.
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