Were There Volcanoes Involved in the Destruction of 3 Nephi? – Part IV

Continuing with the previous three posts regarding the descriptions about the three days of darkness in 3 Nephi at the time of the crucifixion, and the disagreement over volcano eruptions between Mesoamericanists and the Great Lakes/Eastern U.S./Heartland theorists. 
    In the previous post, we discussed “inventions” that, in all reality, we have no idea, even today, as to what they were or how they worked or what damage they did, nor do we know how far they shot whatever payload they hurled, how large were the “arrows” and “stones” involved, etc. The purpose of the inventions is said to be to “shoot arrows and hurl large stones.” The word translated as “shoot” and “hurl” is the Hebrew verb yarah, which is used many times to describe a bow shooting an arrow. But it is also used in 2 Samuel 11:20-24, in which Jonah reports that the defenders of the wall “shot from off the wall upon thy servants and some of the king’s servants were killed (including Uriah).” And Joab told the messenger: “And if so be that the king’s wrath arise, and he say unto thee, Wherefore approached ye so nigh unto the city when ye did fight? knew ye not that they would shoot from the wall?”

The obvious explanation of all of this is that these devices were catapults. But this merely raises another question. The generally accepted history of the catapult holds that it was first invented in the Greek city-state of Syracuse on the island of Sicily in 399 B.C. The Syracusan general Dionysius I had led a military coup in 405 B.C. that overthrew Syracuse’s democratically elected government and installed himself as a dictator. His first acts were to put Syracuse’s society and economy on a war footing in preparation for attacking Carthage, who controlled the western half of Sicily, and seize total control of the island. In order to do this, Dionysius brought in engineers from around the Greek world to work on inventing new weapons. The Greeks in Italy had previously invented an early crossbow called the gastraphetes, which could shoot an arrow further than a bow. Dionysius’ engineers took this a step further and created the idea of using levers, springs and torque to fling even larger arrows and boulder-throwing machines for attacking Carthaginian fortifications.

However, Uzziah was king five hundred years before Dionysius. Yet, in the mid eighth century, at the same time as Uzziah, a text from Egypt describing the Egyptian Pharaoh Piye’s siege of Hermopolis states that the attacking Egyptian army included “hurlers” made out of wood. Unfortunately, that is all we know—a “hurler” was something made of wood that evidently hurled things (Alan R. Schulman, “Military Organization in Pharaonic Egypt,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Vol. I, ed. by Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 298-299)
    The point of all of this is to suggest that writers with limited vocabulary of futuristic things to them were difficult to write about. How the disciple Nephi wrote about volcanoes and three days of darkness would be interesting to know for certain, but we do not know what caused the three days of darkness unless it was the volcanoes, volcanic ash, etc., as has been suggested here. Because a writer of the past did not use a word we would know today does not necessarily mean he did not intend such a word, but that it was simply unknown to him. The point remains, however, and cannot be dismissed merely because a known word of today was not used in the past to describe such an event. As has been pointed out in this series, ancient writers were often left to describe futuristic events in ancient terminology that was not self-explanatory—but the events did happen. Something caused three days of darkness and we cannot just chalk it up to the Lord did it and be satisfied when a very plausible explanation exists—and has happened time and again over history and in the present time frame, i.e., volcanoes and volcanic ash turning bright sunlight into night.

As stated in the first post of this series, the word “volcano” did not exist in the Hebrew language of antiquity. In fact, the word was relatively unknown, originally coming from the name of the Roman god Vulcan (Volcānus or Vulcānus;), the god of fire, who was said to have made tools and weapons for the other gods in his workshop at Olympus. Throughout history, volcanoes have frequently been identified with Vulcan and other mythological figures. Scientists now know that the "smoke" from volcanoes, once attributed by poets to be from Vulcan's forge, is actually volcanic gas naturally released from both active and many inactive volcanoes. As the God of Fire, Vulcan was depicted with a blacksmith’s hammer and said to wield power over the fires emanating from mountains—in Greek mythology he was Hephaestus, the god of fire and smithery, and the Etruscan religion identified him as Sethians. And what fires emanate from mountains other than volcanoes?

Vulcan was first mentioned by Marcus Terentius Varro (between 116 B.C. and 27 B.C.), sometimes called Varro Reatinus, in his list of a series of deities. A shrine is claimed to have been identified with Vulcan dated to 214 B.C., according to Archaic Roman Religion: Volume One. trans. Philip Krapp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.1996 [1966] pp. 320–321. 
    While the name origin is debated, it is claimed to have been associated with the Latin words connected to lighting (fujlgur, gulgere, fulmen) which in turn was thought of as related to flames, and Vulcan’s oldest shrine is thought to be Vulcanal where Romulus and Tatius concluded the peace treaty between the two tribes known as the Latins. Later the statue or shrine was dedicated there sometime prior to 9 A.D.
    All of this, of course, suggests that the Vulcan god did not exist in 600 B.C. when Lehi left, was not part of the wordage that eventually became known as "volcano," and was unknown in any language prior to some 500 years later. Thus, when the disciple Nephi and later Mormon wrote of 3 Nephi 8, there was no singular word or phrase that meant “volcano” in either Hebrew or Egyptian as we have shown earlier. Thus, when Great Lakes theorists write: “The premise, of course, is that 3 Nephi describes volcanoes. Somehow Mormon supposedly described all the things a volcano did but didn't think to simply write, "Volcanoes erupted." That's no problem when you read the text with the Mesoamerican spectacles, though; the word is apparently on every page, invisible to anyone not wearing these specs.”
    Once again, Mormon had no word for “volcano” as we have pointed out. Vulcan, from which volcano comes to us, was not even a word in 600 B.C. when Lehi left Jerusalem—was coined about 400 years later. Yet, something caused the three days of darkness and was associated with the trembling of the earth (“it did shake the whole earth as if it was about to divide asunder”) for 3 hours, sharp lightenings (“never had been known in all the land”) and thunder (3 Nephi 8:6-7). Whatever it was, Mormon did not have a singular word or phrase to describe it, so we are left with the description, but not the wordage.
    In another rather humorous comment, the Great Lakes theorist writes: “Research has shown that there are no volcanoes east of the Rocky Mountains in North America, aside from four extremely ancient ones (dating between 65 million and 1.5 billion years ago) In other words, research has shown that North America, east of the Rocky Mountains, is just like the place the Book of Mormon text describes—no volcanoes in the time frame during which the Nephites and Lamanites inhabited the land.”
    Response: First of all, not as single lake is mentioned in all of the scriptural record; the Book of Mormon makes no claim there is more than one river in the entire Land Southward of the Land of Promise, and no more than the Waters of Mormon and Sebus besides the Waters of Sidon, does that mean there was no other water in the entire Land Southward? One might wonder how the Nephites and Lamanites subsided on such limited water resources if this type of thinking is accurate. According to the scriptural record, the Nephites were involved in the building of ships and shipping, yet we know of only one port, and that was where Hagoth built his ships. Were there no other shipbuilders, shipyards or ports, which would be odd for a people involved in shipping and ship building.
    Secondly, the scriptural record makes several comments about mountains in the Land of Promise, some of which, if not all, “whose height is great,” yet our theorist conveniently neglects to mention that in his “just like the place the Book of Mormon text describes.” As an example: “And the earth was carried up upon the city of Moronihah that in the place of the city there became a great mountain” (3 Nephi 8:10). I would invite our theorist to show us one single mountain anywhere in the Great Lakes Western New York area claimed to be the Land of Promise—a single mountain that could be called “great.” In fact, I’ll even settle for hills as in “and made hills and valleys in the places thereof” (3 Nephi 9:8) since there are no hills in western New York since the entire claimed Land  of Promise area does not rise anywhere above 1300 feet from the shoreline of about an aveage of 500 feet, or rises more than 800 feet in a gradual rise. But I would prefer to be shown all the mountains that rose up from valleys “whose height is great” (Helaman 14:23).
    Obviously, the area of the Great Lakes is NOT like the "text of the Book of Mormon" describes—not at all!

The word hurricane was coined by Spanish conquerors in the 16^th century from an Arawak word in the “Taino” language from the Carib Indians of the West Indies: “huracan” meaning “storm.” It was taken from “hunraken” the name of the Mayan storm god. It is difficult to say when such storms were separated into hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones, but whichever word described, the wordage of Mormon when he says that “there were some who were carried away in the whirlwind; and whither they went no man knoweth, save they know that they were carried away” (3 Nephi 8:16). Now what would a “whirlwind” of such force be?
(See the next post, ”Were There Volcanoes Involved in the Destruction of 3 Nephi? – Part V,” as we continue with the descriptions about the three days of darkness in 3 Nephi at the time of the crucifixion, and the disagreement over volcano eruptions between Mesoamericanists and the Great Lakes/Eastern U.S./Heartland theorists)

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