When is Reason Called Speculation? Responding to Rod Meldrum’s Answer – Part VIII – Meldrum’s Phoenician Connection Part I

Finally, in the evaluation of Rod Meldrum’s answers and comments to the questions posed in an earlier post and covered in the last seven, we come to his concept of the Phoenician ship designers.

To understand this, we need to know that there never was a country called "Phoenicia." The land of the Phoenicians' was located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, in what is today Lebanon. Sea people traders became an important society between 1500 to 700 BC. There were two groups: The Canaanites from the South, and the Aegeans from the area around Greece. By 600 BC, the Phoenicians had sailed around Africa. They traded by leaving goods on the shore and the people would come and leave something by it. If the Phoenicians thought it was a good trade, they would take the payment, and the people knew they could take the product. If not, the buyers could either leave more, or take their payment away.

Phoenicia itself was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plains to the north of Israel. The Canaanites who inhabited that area were called Phoenicians by the Greeks (from the Greek word phoinos, meaning ‘red’) in a reference to the unique purple dye the Phoenicians produced from murex seashells. The Phoenicians mastered the art of navigation and dominated the Mediterranean Sea trade for over 500 years.

Regarding Meldrum’s claim, he wrote about Nephi’s ship: “So we must now address the fact that the Lord was directing the building and that His manner of building the ship was different than that being accomplished at the time by the Phoenicians, who were building wooden sailing ships at the time of Lehi in the Holy Land on the Mediterranean Sea.”

This reoccurring theme of Meldrum that the Phoenician ship designers and their vessels were so well known to the Lehi Colony, and to Nephi in particular, that he, Nephi, claimed he did not build his ship like theirs, is absolutely ludicrous. As has already been pointed out in these posts, the Phoenician world stretched from around Tyre, their capital and major ship-building port, north through Sidon and Byblos, both major Phoenician cities and ports, along the Mediterranean coast of Ionia in Asia Minor (Turkey) and to the islands of Cyprus and Crete. They also sailed south along the coast of Egypt to Cyrene and Lepcis (Libya), Carthage (Tunisia), Sicily and Sardinia, and as far West as Tingis (Tangier, Moroco) and along the coast of Iberia (Spain) to the Balears Islands to Mallorca. From there, the Phoenicians moved westward as far as Iberia (Spain) and along the north African coast. They founded Carthage around 810 B.C., which became the most powerful city-state in all the Mediterranean.

Actually, after about 800 B.C., the Phoenician world mostly surrounded the areas of Carthage, including much of Sicily, Malta, and Sardania, especially west toward the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) and along the southern Iberian coast, and the Atlantic coast from the area of present day Casablanca north to Cadiz. The Phoenician world, assumed to have begun around 1550 B.C., about 20 years after the birth of Moses in Egypt, began along the northeast coast of the Mediterranean, some hundred miles north of Jerusalem.

The point being, Jerusalem, about 40 miles inland from the coast, and at an elevation of about 2500 feet on top of the Judean Mountains, was not involved along the Mediterranean coast, which was controlled by the Philistines in the south and the Phoenicians in the north. When Solomon built his fleet of ships, he did so at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, about one hundred and fifty miles south of Jerusalem, around the city of Ezion-geber, reportedly the first place the Israelites camped after their exodus from Egypt.

During the reigns of David and Solomon, wood and certain materials were imported from Byblos (Jubayl)—the first Phoenician city, according to Philo of Byblos quoting the original writings of Sanchuniathon. Also, it is thought that Solomon employed builders from Phoenicia to build his Palace and the Temple, which would have been earlier than 950 B.C.; however, it is only known that a workman was brought from Tyre to build implements within the Temple, such as those items made of iron and brass (1 Kings 7:13, 40, 45). In addition, Hiram (Huram), king of Tyre, provided seamen to assist with Solomon’s ships (1 Kings 9:27). However, from that point, there seems to be little interaction between Phoenicia and Israel. During this time, Israel possibly used a port at Tel Dor, though this is highly uncertain, but even if they did, this northern port at Carmel was lost in 925 B.C.

It would be highly unlikely that Phoenician knowledge of shipbuilding was known in Jerusalem (to Lehi or Nephi) in 600 B.C., about 350 years after Solomon. In fact, After Solomon’s time, his extensive shipping and navy collapsed, and though Jehosphaphat tried to rebuild the fleet, it was destroyed by the Egyptians around 925 B.C. (1 Kings 22:38).

It would be even more astonishing if Nephi knew anything about Phoenician shipping at all, let alone how they built their ships, for him to say, as Meldrum claims, that “his manner of building the ship was different than that being accomplished at the time by the Phoenicians, who were building wooden sailing ships at the time of Lehi in the Holy Land on the Mediterranean Sea.”

(See the next post, “When is Reason Called Speculation? Responding to Rod Meldrum’s Answer – Part VIII – Meldrum’s Phoenician Connection Part II” for the conclusion to these posts)