Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Narratives

 The Book of Mormon text has a number of narratives that geographic models should accommodate or explain. Key narratives include:

Mulekite/Phoenician connection. The Mulekites likely sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in a Phoenician ship.

  • The Mulekites named their big river Sidon (Alma 2:15), the name of a major Phoenician port city along with Arwad, Byblos, and Tyre.
  • The Phoenicians ca. 600 BC had formidable maritime experience and capability. They were much more advanced in this area than the Kingdom of Judah. See Philip Beale's two excellent books Sailing Close to the Wind Dorchester, England: Lulworth Press (2012) and Atlantic B.C. Dorchester, England: Lulworth Press (2022).
Philip Beale's Modern Replica of Phoenician Sailing Vessel
Isolation.
  • Mosiah I discovered the Mulekites whose language was unintelligible to the Nephites. At contact, both groups realized they came from Old World Jerusalem. Omni 1:14-17.
  • Coriantumr, a Jaredite survivor, lived among the Mulekites for nine moons. He carved his history on a stela, but no one among the Mulekites could read it. Omni 1:20-22.
Disorientation.

  • Ammon and his reconnaissance party wandered for forty days in the wilderness Mosiah 7:4.
  • Limhi's 43 explorers were lost in the wilderness for many days. Mosiah 8:8, Mosiah 21:25.
  • The Lamanite army dispatched to intercept Limhi and his people were lost in the wilderness. Mosiah 22:15-16, Mosiah 23:30.
Incommunicado.
  • Amaleki's brother returned from Zarahemla back to Nephi with the Zeniff colony and no word from the migrants ever reached Zarahemla. Omni 1:30, Mosiah 7:1.
  • Captain Moroni on the northeast front was uninformed about Helaman's military activities on the southwest front. Alma 59:1-2.
  • Many people who migrated to the land northward were never heard from again. Alma 63:8.
Over Extension.
  • Ca. 71 BC the Nephites achieved their territorial maximum Alma 50:23. Only 36 years later, Lamanites controlled 100% of the greater land of Zarahemla. Helaman 4:5.
  • Helaman thought Nephite armies were too small to effectively hold their large territory. Alma 58:32.
Mistaken Identity.
  • Limhi's 43 explorers thought they had found Zarahemla Mosiah 21:26 and King Limhi believed them for a few days until Ammon and his party arrived Mosiah 7:14.
Enigmatic Phraseology.
  • The term "pure water" appears only 2 times in the text. It is obvious what the fountain of pure water was in the place called Mormon - it was a spring of some kind. Mosiah 18:5. But how do you have an entire land of pure water as in Mosiah 23:4?
  • What does it mean that the Nephites under Mormon fortified the city of Desolation and environs "with all our force?" Mormon 3:6. These fortifications were so well-engineered that had the Nephite armies just stayed home the Lamanites would never have prevailed. Mormon 4:4.
Dissimilar Climate.
  • The disastrous return of Zeniff and his followers from Zarahemla to Nephi is likely due to very different climates in the two places. Economic opportunity, kinship ties, access to good land, violence, and natural disasters are unlikely to have been major motives for the reverse migration. See point #12 in the blog article The Usumacinta/Sidon Correlation.
Scantily Clad Warriors.
  • Armies went to battle around the new year dressed only in loincloths. Alma 43:4, 20
Disobedience.
  • Ammaron ca. AD 324 commanded Mormon to leave the Nephite repository in hill Shim Mormon 1:4. Ca. AD 375 Mormon removed the Nephite repository from hill Shim because the area was no longer secure Mormon 4:23. Ether 15:11 tells us that Mormon created a new Nephite repository in hill Ramah/Cumorah. A useful geographic model will shed light on Mormon's willful disobedience.
Containment
  • There was a point along the west coast where the Nephites could successfully prevent superior Lamanite forces from overrunning the land Northward. Alma 22:32-34, Helaman 4:7.

Lehites Sailed East

Noe Correa, a brilliant Scripture Central colleague, shared this insightful exegesis with me today. I thought about it for several hours, and am convinced Noe's conclusion is correct. When the Lehites left their Bountiful harbor in modern-day Oman, they sailed east toward India, Indonesia, and the Philippines before crossing the Pacific and landing on the west coast of Mexico or Guatemala.

Likely Route of Lehite Voyage 
Up to this point, our single clue in the text of the Book of Mormon that pointed to a Lehite landfall on the Pacific coast of the Americas was Alma 22:28 that says the place of the Lamanites' fathers' first inheritance (aka land of their first inheritance Mosiah 10:13) was bordering the seashore on the west in the land of Nephi. Almost all Mesoamerican geographers locate the land of Nephi in highland Guatemala, so west by the seashore would be in the general vicinity of Izapa near the mouth of the Suchiate River which is the boundary between modern Mexico and Guatemala.

Noe now adds a second confirming data point. His logic is:
1. Nephi quoting Zenos says the Lord in the last days will remember and gather Israel from the isles of the sea and the four quarters of the earth. 1 Nephi 19:16. Jacob explicitly says the Nephites were upon an isle of the sea. 2 Nephi 10:20-21. The Lord also refers to the posterity of Lehi on an island 2 Nephi 29:11 in one of the quarters of the earth. 
2. Nephi reiterates the prophecy that the children of Israel will be gathered from the four quarters of the earth. 1 Nephi 22:25.
3. In 1 Nephi 21:8 Nephi quotes Isaiah 49:8, but as part of his "likening" Isaiah to his people (see 1 Nephi 19:23), Nephi adds the phrase "O isles of the sea" which explicitly makes the Lord's words in the Isaiah passage refer to the Nephites.
4. Nephi, still quoting Isaiah, says the house of Israel will be gathered from the north, the west, and the land of Sinim. 1 Nephi 21:12. The earliest text we have of Isaiah is the great Isaiah scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and rather than "Sinim" it says "Syene" which is Aswan in southern Egypt. So, Isaiah is referring to the house of Israel gathering from the north, west, and south. But north, west, and south are not good enough for Nephi because it leaves his people out of the picture.
5. So in 1 Nephi 21:13 Nephi inserts the phrase "for the feet of those who are in the east shall be established" to complete the quadripartite partition of the earth into four quarters. Nephi is saying that his people, the Nephites and Lamanites, are in the east relative to Isaiah's Jerusalem. This means that the Lehite voyage sailed east from the Arabian Peninsula Bountiful. Nephi literally puts words into Isaiah's mouth to reflect the location of Lehi's posterity in the prophetic geography.

My tireless colleague, Alan Miner, has a third line of reasoning that shows Lehi travelled east from Oman. 1 Nephi 17:1 says the Lehites, after leaving Nahom, travelled "nearly eastward from that time forth."  Generally eastward from Oman (17 degrees north latitude) lands you in Mexico.

Was it possible to sail west from Oman anciently? Yes. Philip Beale in his replica ship Phoenicia demonstrated that single masted square riggers ca. 600 BC could have circumnavigated Africa just as Herodotus said the Phoenicians did. On the south coast of Oman, prevailing winds are seasonal. Westerlies predominate part of the year, then easterlies the other part. See the blog articles "Where did the Mulekites land?" and "Pacific Winds and Currents."

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

This Land

 A previous blog article explored the likely meaning of the terms "this continent" and "this country" in Joseph Smith's day. Both could refer to the New World, the Western Hemisphere, all of North and South America. 

What did people from Joseph Smith's era mean when they used the phrase "this land?" John Taylor (1808-1887) gives one idea in a sermon he preached in Salt Lake City on January 12, 1873 while Brigham Young was still alive. This is recorded in Journal of Discourses Vol. 15, page 279. Elder Taylor said:

"This land, North and South America, is the land of Zion, it is a choice land — the land that was given by promise from old father Jacob to his grandson and his descendants, the land on which the Zion of God should be established in the latter days."

As with "this continent" and "this country," "this land" among contemporaries of Joseph Smith could mean the entire New World.

John Taylor in Journal of Discourses

Taylor's thoughts coincide with the prophet Joseph's. Joseph Smith on July 19, 1840 said: "speaking of the land of Zion, it consists of all North and South America." See BYU Studies Vol. 19 No. 3 (Spring 1979) p. 392.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

This Continent and This Country

Some people in the Church cite Joseph Smith in an attempt to locate Book of Mormon lands in what is today the United States of America. In his 1838 history, Joseph describes his initial visit with the Angel Moroni and recites what Moroni told him: "He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang." "This continent," some students claim, means North America.

Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language says otherwise. In Joseph Smith's day, all of the Americas were considered a single continent, the "Western continent." This was a perpetuation of the idea expressed by Ephraim Chambers in his 1727 Cyclopaedia that there were two grand continents, "the Old and the New." Emanuel Bowen in his 1752 atlas repeated this idea that Europe, Asia, and Africa were a single continent "as America is another." So, to Joseph Smith in 1838, "this continent" likely meant the Americas, the Western hemisphere.

Beginning about 1850 some atlases published in the US began separating North America and South America into two different continents, joined by the Isthmus of Darien known today as Panama. The 1850 Webster's Dictionary, published after the great lexicographer's death, continued to reference the "Western continent" and the "Eastern continent." Almost all European atlases published in the 19th century identified the Americas as a single continent, although some of them began separating Europe, Asia, and Africa into three different continents. Some American atlases published as late as the 1920's continued to show a single American continent. By the 1950's, geographers worldwide decided that North America and South America were two different continents and that modern notion continues today. See the blog article entitled "North America."

A dubious line of reasoning continues that Joseph Smith's "this continent" in 1838 was refined to "this country" in his Wentworth Letter first published on March 1, 1842. This famous letter, that contains the original Articles of Faith, says "I was also informed concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of this country and shown who they were and from whence they came..." 

1838 this continent = North America, 1842 this country = United States of America. Voila, the Book of Mormon happened in the good ol' US of A, or so some people claim.

Except that one of Joseph Smith's close associates published a book in 1839 and used the phrase "this country" to refer to Mexico and Guatemala in addition to the US. This is what Parley P. Pratt said in the 1839 second edition of his widely-circulated A Voice of Warning: "We might fill a volume with accounts of American Antiquities, all going to show that this country has been peopled with a people, who possessed a knowledge of the arts and sciences; who built cities, cultivated the earth, and who were in possession of a written language." Pratt's star "antiquity" was the ancient Maya site known today as Palenque which is located in Chiapas, Mexico. For Pratt, Palenque was in "this country." So as to leave no doubt, Pratt refers to "North and South America" three sentences later in his treatise. This makes it likely that Joseph's use of "this country" in 1842 was intended to convey the same meaning as his use of "this continent" in 1838 and Pratt's use of "this country" in 1839.

Parley Parker Pratt
A Voice of Warning
2nd Edition, 1839

People who insist that 19th century phrases such as "this continent" and "this country" must be interpreted with modern meanings are guilty of the logical fallacy of presentism.

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Pacific Winds and Currents

Poorly informed people sometimes claim that the winds and currents in the Pacific Ocean run only from east to west, which would preclude either the Jaredite barges or the Lehite ship crossing the Pacific. This gross oversimplification distorts the truth. 6 major wind-driven currents in the Pacific Ocean flow from west to east, eventually landing a vessel somewhere on the Pacific coast of the Americas:

  1. North Pacific Current
  2. Kuroshio Current
  3. Equatorial Counter Current
  4. East Australia Current
  5. South Pacific Current
  6. Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Map of Major Ocean Currents
K =Kuroshio Current
NP = North Pacific Current
EC = Equatorial Counter Current
ACC = Antarctic Circumpolar Current

Ocean Motion Map from NASA
and the American Meteorological Association

This map shows all 6 of the major west to east currents in the Pacific.

Map from Science Education through Earth Observation (SEOS)

These maps show mean wind-driven current paths. Seasonal variations exist. Patterns are sometimes disrupted in El Niño years.

From 1565 to 1815 Spanish traders sailed the "Manila Galleons" from the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico. Transit time for them averaged about 4 months to cross the Pacific from west to east.

Explaining seasonality, Philip Beale, captain of the remarkable Phoenicia, told me that sailing his replica vessel from Oman he could have gone west to Africa or east to India depending on the season of the year.

For reasons why the Jaredites almost certainly crossed the Pacific, see the blog articles "Tracking the Jaredites" and "Jaredites Crossed the Pacific."

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Christians by Continent and Country

 The Book of Mormon contains a powerful prophecy about the relationship between freedom and religiosity. "Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ." Ether 2:12. The 6 inhabited continents vary greatly in their adherence to Christianity:

  1. South America 83%
  2. North America 77%
  3. Oceania 65%
  4. Europe 64%
  5. Africa 49%
  6. Asia 12%


This Christ Statue in Cochabamba, Bolivia
is 40 meters (132 feet) high

The 10 contiguous countries in North America also vary considerably in their adherence to Christianity: 

  1. Mexico 91%
  2. Panama 90%
  3. Guatemala 85%
  4. Honduras 82%
  5. Nicaragua 82%
  6. El Salvador 78%
  7. Belize 73%
  8. Costa Rica 70%
  9. US 68%
  10. Canada 53%

North America

 Many people believe the Book of Mormon took place in North America and they may be right. North America is a continent in the western and northern hemispheres. It is bounded by the Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans and the Caribbean Sea.

North America in Orthographic Projection

North America consists of 23 sovereign nations and 23 dependent territories. Modern contiguous countries in North America include (moving in a general north to south direction):

  • Canada
  • United States
  • Mexico
  • Belize
  • Guatemala
  • Honduras
  • El Salvador
  • Nicaragua
  • Costa Rica
  • Panama
Modern island countries in North America include (in alphabetical order):

  • Anguilla
  • Antigua and Barbuda
  • The Bahamas
  • Barbados
  • British Virgin Islands
  • Cayman Islands
  • Cuba
  • Dominica
  • Dominican Republic
  • Greenland
  • Grenada
  • Guadeloupe
  • Haiti
  • Jamaica
  • Martinique
  • Montserrat
  • Puerto Rico
  • Saint Barthelemy
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis
  • Saint Lucia
  • Saint Pierre and Miquelon
  • Saint Martin
  • Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
  • Sint Maarten
  • Turks and Caicos Islands
  • US Minor Outlying Islands (8 in the Pacific, 1 in the Caribbean)
  • US Virgin Islands
There are 7 continents on the planet recognized by the International Standards Organization and the International Geographical Union. They are: Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, Oceania, and Antarctica.

North America is the third largest continent with 24.2 million square kilometers which is 16.2% of the land surface of the earth. 

North America is the fourth most populous continent with 600 million inhabitants which is 7.5% of the population of the earth.