Editing Zarahemla (section)

==Cultural reception==
=== Namesakes ===
In 1841, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation instructing Latter-day Saints in [[Iowa]] to establish a city across the [[Mississippi River]] from [[Nauvoo, Illinois]] and name it after Zarahemla.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Kimball|1978|pp=138–139}}; {{Harvtxt|Woods|2003|p=87}}.</ref> A settlement of Latter-day Saints, located across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo and south of [[Montrose, Iowa]], was called ''Zarahemla''.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Kahlert|2016|pp=198, 265}}.</ref> The Zarahemla Stake{{Efn|Among Latter-day Saints, a ''stake'' is a regional unit of ecclesiastical organization which oversees several local units, or congregations (known as ''wards'').<ref>{{Harvnb|Alexander|Bitton|2019|p=252}}.</ref>}} in Iowa was abandoned in 1842.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Kahlert|2016|p=265}}.</ref> In the nineteenth century, [[Blanchardville, Wisconsin]] was called Zarahemla.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Kelty|2011|pp=88–89}}.</ref> In 1850, under the direction of [[Zenas H. Gurley Sr.|Zenas H. Gurley]], Latter Day Saints who lived there and were unaffiliated with [[Brigham Young]]'s [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints|Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]] organized into the Yellowstone Branch.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Kelty|2011|pp=91–92}}.</ref> Zarahemla was the location of the Reorganization's first or second conference, held in 1853.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Ishikawa|1979|p=62}} calls it the first conference; {{Harvtxt|Barlow|2004|p=30}} states it is the second.</ref> The congregation at Zarahemla dissolved in 1860.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Kelty|2011|p=101}}.</ref>

Zarahemla, Utah is named after the city from the Book of Mormon.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Eliason|2023|p=74}}.</ref> The second book in author Gary Stewart's Gabe Utley detective series, published in 1986, is titled ''The Zarahemla Vision''.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brady|1987|pp=238–239}}.</ref> Its narrative is set in Salt Lake City and involves the apparent kidnapping of the LDS Church president.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Vicarel|1986|p=114}}.</ref> As part of appropriating Mormon themes of revelation and ideas about indigenous resurgence, Kanaka Maoli author Matthew Kaopio's 2005 novel ''Written in the Sky'' invokes the name Zarahemla to allude to the Book of Mormon.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Amos|2016|pp=197, 199, 208}}.</ref> One of the novel's characters, Dr. Owlfeathers, is from the nonexistent Zarahemla University.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Amos|2016|p=209}}.</ref>

=== Speculating locations ===
Responding to their belief in the Book of Mormon's ancient historicity, Latter-day Saints throughout the nineteenth century believed archaeological evidence would emerge to corroborate the Book of Mormon; many regarded scholarship on the ancient Americas as vindication of the book.<ref name=":0">{{Harvtxt|Jones|2016|p=200}}.</ref> There has been no actual archaeological discovery of Zarahemla.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Stoker|Derengowski|2018|loc="The Book of Mormon's alleged authority over the content of the Bible", second paragraph}}.</ref>

In 1842, Latter-day Saint newspaper the ''[[Times and Seasons]]'' associated Zarahemla with the ruins of [[Quiriguá]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Nash|2017|pp=87, 91}}.</ref> Artist [[George M. Ottinger]] opined that the Maya city-state [[Palenque]] was one and the same as Zarahemla.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Robertson|2022|p=7}}.</ref>  In an elaborate geography constructed from the Book of Mormon's text, Latter-day Saints [[George Reynolds (Mormon)|George Reynolds]] and [[Janne M. Sjödahl]] supposed Zarahemla was located along the [[Magdalena River]] in [[Colombia]].<ref name=":0" /> Classically trained,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Givens|2002|p=106}}.</ref> Sjödahl followed the "signature style of biblical archaeology", in the words of religious studies scholar Matthew Bowman, trying to corroborate Book of Mormon text with archaeological data, to draw his conclusions for associating Zarahemla with the Maya.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bowman|2021|p=83}}.</ref>{{efn|In a retrospective on Book of Mormon historicity apologetics, Brant Gardner states that anthropological evidence indicates that "any facile equation of the Nephites with the Maya (or claim that the Nephites influenced the Maya) cannot work".<ref>{{harvtxt|Gardner|2021|pp=144, 155}}.</ref>}}

[[Benjamin Cluff]], then president of Brigham Young Academy, from 1900 to 1901 led an expedition, mostly comprising students, to try to discover evidence of the city of Zarahemla in Colombia, in accord with Reynolds and Sjödahl's proposed geography.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Givens|2002|p=107}}; {{Harvtxt|Jones|2016|pp=199–201}}; {{Harvtxt|Bowman|2021|p=72}}.</ref> Six of the group reached the Magdalena, but they turned back after learning that civil conflict had destabilized the region, ending their expedition.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Jones|2016|pp=203, 235}}.</ref>

[[Margarito Bautista]] in his 1936 ''La evolución de Mexico: sus verdaderos progenitores y su origen: el destino de America y Europa'' expressed his belief that Book of Mormon peoples were the ancestors of indigenous Mexicans, and he superimposed Zarahemla onto the region north of Panama, somewhere in Guatemala, Honduras, or southern Mexico.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Pulido|2020|pp=108–110, 227}}.</ref>

In 2021, a group of Mormons called the Heartland Research Group believed they had found the location of Zarahemla outside [[Montrose, Iowa]] and searched the soil for evidence of human habitation using [[lidar]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Rushing|2021}}.</ref> They also took core samples with the aim of using carbon dating to identify evidence of fires.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Noyce|2021|loc="Digging deep into the Book of Mormon"}}.</ref> The Heartland Research Group holds to what has been called the "Heartland model", a belief among certain Mormons that the events of the Book of Mormon took place specifically in the Heartland of the United States, the emergence of which coincided with growth in LDS Church membership in Central and South America.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Seriac|2021|loc=second paragraph–third paragraph}}.</ref> ''Religion Dispatches'' reports that the Heartland model movement rests on American nationalism and espouses white supremacy and Euro-American colonialism.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Seriac|2021|loc=sixth paragraph–tenth paragraph}}.</ref>
[[File:Destruction of Zarahemla, by George Ottinger, 1888.png|thumb|''Destruction of Zarahemla'' (1888) by George M. Ottinger]]

=== Visual art ===
[[George M. Ottinger]]'s oil painting ''Destruction of Zarahemla'' took cues for its composition from [[Benjamin West]]'s ''Death on a Pale Horse'' and for its visualization of Zarahemla from archaeological illustrations, including a [[Maya stelae]] resembling one from Quiriguála.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Robertson|2022|pp=6–7}}.</ref> The horses, chariot, clouds, and fleeing crowd also resemble those of [[Nicolas Poussin]]'s paintings ''The Conversion of St. Paul'' and ''The Death of Hippolytus''.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Carmack|2008|p=124}}.</ref> It was published in December 1888 as an illustration in ''The Story of the Book of Mormon''.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Carmack|2008|pp=116, 125}}.</ref>