How Did the Jaredites Get to the Sea? – Part I

Many Mesoamerican Theorists, having an end result in mind, such as placing the Lehi colony landing in Central America, pay no attention to how the group traveled from one point to another. As in the case with the Jaredites, Hugh Nibley and others simply say they traveled from the Steppes through Asia, across China to the Pacific Ocean and across that ocean to the land of promise. Others say the Jaredites reached Nineveh and then traveled south across the entire Arabian Peninsula to the coast of Oman. How much more accurate scholars would be if they looked for the means of getting the Jaredites from Mesopotamia to the “great sea that divideth the land” by knowing and understanding the topography of the land, the paths available to a traveling group of men, women, and children, including a large number of animals, birds bees, and seeds of every kind.

However, Mesoamrican Theorists cannot be bothered with such trivia. So enamored are they with Guatemala, southern Mexico, and the Yucatan as the landing site and home of the Nephites, and trying to decide what present site was a BOM ancient city, river, or waterway, how the Nephites got there is of no importance to them. So wild theories abound without any consideration for the many winds and currents of the sealanes, height and inaccessibility of mountain passes temperatures, and other matters that any traveling colony in 2100 B.C. (as well as 600 B.C.) would have considered paramount to their safety and survival.

Since Ether tells us that the Lord led Jared’s colony north out of the area of the Tower in Babel, they would have been to the north of this swampy marshland and beyond the delta drainage area as they went down into the valley called Nimrod. Upon leaving this valley, they would have circumvented the populated Shinar district, the tower area and the delta marshland as they headed on their trek toward the great sea. If this great sea was the Persian Gulf, a trek of about 350 miles, they could have reached the northeastern shore without crossing any waterways as described by Ether. However, if the Persian Gulf was the sea in the wilderness, then the great sea would have been far beyond, such as the Arabian Sea, in the area of Salalah, which the Lehi Colony 1600 years later called Irreantum, and the land they called Bountiful (1 Nephi 17:5).
This 1,200-mile-trek would have begun by crossing the marshland near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (arrow), across interconnected tributary rivers and lakes, to reach the desert beyond. With the 200-mile-wide and six-hundred-mile long Gulf on one side, the marshlands running for miles on the other, and the mountains behind them, their only line of travel would be to cross these “many waters,” requiring the building of some type of boats Ether called barges.

This is also borne out by the fact that when the brother of Jared was later told to build barges to cross the great sea, he was instructed to build them “after the manner of barges ye have hitherto built” (Ether 2:16), obviously signifying that the Jaredites had built barges to cross the many waters, and were now instructed four years later to build more barges to cross the great sea.

These two types of barges would have obviously been quite different—in fact, in Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, there are several meanings for the word barge: 1) a small vessel for travel on water, 2) vessel that is used for dredging, 3) a flat-bottomed boat used for transporting freight, 4) a flat-bottomed and flat-decked boat for hauling people, animals, or equipment along rivers or waterways, 5) an open pleasure boat used for parties, pageants, or formal ceremonies, 6) a barge that is designed and equipped for use as a dwelling, 7) a floating structure (as a flat-bottomed boat) that serves as a dock or to support a bridge, 8) a flat-decked boat carrying bulk materials in an open hold, and 9) a submarine. The word barge is also defined as to “transport by barge on a body of water.” Obviously, the word barge as used in scripture would have meant different vessels according to the need.

(Next: See where the Jaredites were led to reach the Great Sea, in the next post, How Did the Jaredites Get to the Sea? – Part II)