Mosiah 8:8 adds an additional element to the list of textual criteria that will help us identify the land of Cumorah. The land where we will find hill Ramah/Cumorah was not just a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains
Mormon 6:4. (The term "many waters" as used by Book of Mormon authors refers to salt water ocean as in
1 Nephi 17:5 and
Psalm 93:4. See the blog article "
Many Waters.") The place where the Jaredites destroyed themselves in civil war and where the combined forces of the Lamanites and Gadianton Robbers
Mormon 2:27-28;
8:9 massacred the hapless Nephites in egregious ethnic cleansing (Ramah = Cumorah per
Ether 15:11) was a land
among many waters
Mosiah 8:8.
The
OED says "among" derives from crowd or assemblage and means "surrounded by" locally. Thus, Columbus was among the Gentiles
1 Nephi 13:12 before he embarked on his epic voyage of discovery in 1492. Adam and Eve hid among the trees in the Garden of Eden
Genesis 3:8 (which reads "among" rather than "amongst" in the 1535 Coverdale Bible).
Ether 9:3 tells us there was a seacoast due east of hill Ramah/Cumorah.
Mosiah 8:8's use of the word "among" tells us salt water ocean surrounds the land of Cumorah on more than one side.
The Book of Mormon geographic correlation that passed a strict audit with a perfect score of 100% (see the blog article "
Auditing Book of Mormon Geography Models") places the land of Cumorah in the Tuxtla Mountain region of southern Veracruz where it is literally surrounded by salt water on two sides.
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| Land of Cumorah Among Many (Salt) Waters |
Another geographic detail emerges from a close reading of the phrases "north country," "north countries," "south countries," and "country southward." The Jaredites established polities the prophet Moroni called "the north countries"
Ether 9:35. These north countries were not on the extreme north because other countries lay round about (north of) them
Ether 9:35. Mormon hid the 24 plates of Ether in hill Ramah/Cumorah
Mormon 6:6. Moroni abridged the 24 plates of Ether after he returned to the Nephite repository in hill Ramah/Cumorah following the final battle. Moroni called Ramah/Cumorah "this north country"
Ether 1:1. It was one of the "north countries" toward which the Nephites retreated when the Lamanites drove them out of the central Sidon corridor in the greater land of Zarahemla
Mormon 2:3. It was the same "north country" the Nephites kept the Lamanites south of ca. 34 BC with a fortified line in land Bountiful described in
Helaman 4:7. Just prior to the final battle, a few Nephites had escaped from Ramah/Cumorah to the "south countries"
Mormon 6:15. After the final battle, the few Nephites who had escaped into the "country southward" were hunted down by the Lamanites and killed
Mormon 8:2. Moroni was the lone Nephite survivor. All of this movement between north and south countries under battle or refugee conditions implies geographic proximity. Ramah/Cumorah must have been a modest distance from the country southward. In the map above hill Ramah/Cumorah (proposed correlation: San Martin Pajapan) is 150 air kilometers from the proposed land Desolation/Bountiful border on the modern Tabasco/Chiapas line and 270 air kilometers from the proposed land Desolation/Bountiful border on the west sea near the modern Oaxaca/Chiapas line.
After studying the textual relationships mentioned above, I concluded that the land of Cumorah may have extended further east than the Coatzacoalcos River, so I moved the proposed eastern boundary to the modern Tonalá, ancient Grijalva rivers. This is the modern Veracruz/Tabasco boundary.
For 30 other detailed textual criteria this correlation satisfies, see the blog article "
Ramah/Cumorah." For an independent corroboration of this correlation, see the blog article "
Linguistic Cumorah."
