Here are some
additional comments or questions sent in by readers of this website:
Comment #1: “You Mormons cite James
1:5 in support of your beginning. However, James 1:5 is speaking about
believers asking God for wisdom to overcome temptation (James 1:2-18), not
about unbelievers asking God to reveal to them whether a particular book is
Scripture. The Bible tells us to apply objective tests to alleged revelations
(Deut. 13:1-5; Matt. 7:15-23; 1 John 4:1-6), not to seek a purely subjective
revelation of the truth of a written revelation” Laurin M.
Response:
Hmmm. I read this as “God giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not,” and
then adds, “and it shall be given him” (James 1:5). All men. I don’t read “just
to believers.” And if you ask sincerely, the Lord will not upbraideth—give no
reproach. But that is not all. James says, “But let him ask in faith, nothing
wavering” (James 1:6). And when he does, and receives an answer, as Joseph
Smith did, James says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above
and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness” (James
1:17). Matthew also tells us along this line: “Ask and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7),
and to make sure we do not fall into your type of thinking, he adds, “For every
one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that
knocketh it shall be opened” (Matthew 7:8). And to make sure that we understand
that God will respond when we so seek, ask, and knock, Matthew adds, “What man
is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he
ask a fish, will be give him a serpent? …how much more shall your Father which
is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:9-11). It seems
to me that Joseph asked, with real intent and sincere heart, and received as
promised. Why you and others want to deny what the scriptures promise us, is beyond
me.
Comment
#2: “Thanks for the excellent information on engravings on metal
plates!” Alex D.
Response: Thank you. I remember
a time when no one believed people wrote on gold or metal plates, but now we
know that it was very prevalent during the time of Lehi.
Comment
#3: “I read somewhere that in the ancient past, the Earth rotated quicker than
today, and had only 290 days rather than our 365 ¼ days like now. Doesn’t this throw
out the ancient calendars you claim existed in South America?” Dylan G.
Response:
The Lord told Abraham that each planet belonged to an order, and each order had
a set time of its rotation (Abraham Ch 3). This would seem that the Earth would
have always had the same rotational period as it has today.
Comment #3: “Another term
that Wellington and Potter examine to help determine both the path to and the
location of the Valley of Lemuel is “borders.”
They make a distinction between "the borders near the shore of the Red Sea"
and “the borders which are nearer
the Red Sea” (2:5). Concluding that “borders”
actually means “mountains,” they surmise that Nephi is speaking of two mountain
ranges, one near and the other nearer the Red Sea. There are multiple
Hebrew terms translated as “borders” in the King James version of the Bible
that relate to geography, the most common being gĕbûl, which term Wellington and Potter equate with “mountain”
Ernestine.
Response: First of all, the Brown-Driver-Briggs
Hebrew and English Lexicon states that the Hebrew word gĕbûl actually means territory or boundary. Secondly, Nephi uses the word borders (1 Nephi 2:5, 8; 16:14) and mountains (1 Nephi 11:1; 16:30; 17:7) without difficulty elsewhere
in his writing, so there is no reason to believe he meant mountains instead of
borders in 1 Nephi 2:5.
In addition, there are two separate
areas of the Red Sea along Lehi’s path. One is the Gulf of Aqaba (located at
the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula), which is the
northern extension of the Red Sea. The trail south from Jerusalem, through the
Wadi Rum, would have passed along by that area—or stated differently, the Lehi
Colony “came down by the borders of the Red Sea” (i.e., the Gulf of Aqaba off
the Red Sea), “and he traveled in the wilderness in the
borders which are nearer the Red Sea” (along the Red Sea itself). It is always
amazing to me how people writing about the Book of Mormon like to inject
superfluous ideas into the simple statements of the scriptural record.
Comment
#4: “There are several places where tents
are mentioned in the Book of Mormon, used by both Nephites and Lamanites both
at different times. I saw in a painting of Lehi finding the Liahona after
emerging from what looked like an old style army tent. Weren’t the tents of
Lehi’s day different from that?” Jill Y.
The Army style tents some artists use
in their artwork of Lehi finding the Liahona in 1 Nephi 16:10
Response: In the time period indicated, tents were
usually used by nomadic people who followed their flocks to pasture and water,
and moved around according to the seasons—these were mostly Bedouins (Arabs).
There were also semi-nomadic people, who were based in a village but lived part
of the year in upper or lower pasture areas. On the other hand, Lehi, who lived
outside the walls of Jerusalem in a regular home, also had tents (1 Nephi 2:4), though such
would have been unusual for the Jews living inside the walls of Jerusalem to
own.
Tents
of the day were large, typically having two separate sections. The front section was used for
work, and was the public area of the tent, open to visitors. The men of the
family lived here, ate their meals here, gathered here with family members or
friends, and conducted business here if necessary, and was left open in warm
weather. The second or rear part of the tent was private, and was divided from
the front by a curtain. This is where the women, children and babies lived and
slept.
Tents were large, with at least two
sections, and rooms divided by curtains. It took three donkeys or camels to
carry a single tent: one for the poles and ropes, a second for the tent itself,
and a third for the curtains and interior rugs, etc.
These tents were made from goats'
hair or dark sheep's wool, woven in rectangular strips on large looms. Women
wove the fabric for the tents, stitched them together, and kept them in good
repair. They also made the ropes that tethered the tents to the ground. In
effect, they were the craftspeople who produced the housing.
Women also set up the tents each
time the family or group moved to a new site, selected by the women and usually
situated on hilltops in summer to capture the breeze, and in winter on the
leeward side of valleys, just above the base where flash floods could occur.
They used wooden mallets and tent pegs they hoisted up and secured the unwieldy
tents. When it was time to move on, they took down the tents, folded them and
stowed them for the journey. While this might seem heavy work to us, the Hebrew
women were sturdy and skilled, and they worked as a group. In the case of
Lehi’s family, we know of at least two daughters mentioned only once when Nephi
is explaining who went with him when leaving their first landing site after
Lehi died: “...and also my sisters, and all those
who would go with me” (2 Nephi 5:6), there would only have been Sariah and the
two daughters, so undoubtedly the four sons helped set up the tents during
their early sojourn in the wilderness. However, after all were married, no
doubt the five wives and Sariah and Ishmael’s wife set up the tents during the
many years in the wilderness to Bountiful.
Left: Tents were set up by the women,
and (Right) it took three donkeys or camels to carry one tent
Generally, in a family such as
Lehi’s, there would be a tent for the parents, with each adult son having his
own tent. This is shown in Lehi’s case when Nephi and his brothers return to
Jerusalem after the brass plates. “I,
Nephi, and my brethren took our journey in the wilderness, with our tents, to
go up to the land of Jerusalem” (1 Nephi 3:9). Nor were these tents the one
Lehi and Sariah stayed in, for when Nephi and his brothers returned with the
plates, Lehi was living in his own tent: “And when we had returned to the tent
of my father, behold their joy was full, and my mother was comforted” (1 Nephi
45:7).
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