Not After the Manner of Men – Part III

Continuing from the previous post regarding where Nephi’s ship was constructed, built and launched. 
    One of the unique aspects of Khor Rori is that two huge rock promontories, or cliffs, one on either side of the inlet entrance, and referred to as (east cliff) Inquita’a Taqah and (west cliff) Inqita’a Mirbat, provide very important protection for a ship entering and leaving the inlet.

The cliffs on either side of the entrance to the Khor Rori inlet--top: from inside the Khor looking past the cliffs out into the Sea of Arabia; middle: Inside the Khor looking at the West Cliff on the Yemeni side of the entrance; bottom: Outside the inlet, looking past the East Cliff at the West Cliff in the distance, the inlet is in between. Note the height of the cliff compared to the camels in the middle image. This matches Nephi's comment of "throw me into the depths of the sae" (1 Nephi 17:48)

These flanking rock promontories created safe and convenient breakwaters that allowed ancient ships a corridor for sailing into the sea for nearly 500 yard before they needed to pick up the ocean current. This was the great strength of Khor Rori as a port; the natural breakwaters provided protection from both the summer southwest monsoon and the winter northeast monsoon winds, enabling the port to be used all year for shipping and for the building of ships, such as Nephi’s vessel.

One of the side channels between the entrance and Sumhuram that branches off to the east, providing an extremely attractive location for the construction site of Nephi’s ship

The site has been heavily investigated, beginning as early as the 1950s by an American expedition (the American Foundation for the Study of Man–AFSM) directed by W. Phillips and with the archaeologist F. Albright as field director. And since 1996 the Italian Mission to Oman (IMTO), directed by professor A. Avanzini, has been working in the area of Khor Rori.
    Situated along the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula near the Yemeni border, the Dhofar province (“Zafar” in Arabic) actually appears and feels like a world away from the rest of Oman. This largest of the eleven Governorates in the Sultanate of Oman is separated from just about everywhere else in the country, hugging the coast behind a mountainous area that covers over 38,000 square miles. In fact, the region’s history and identity have always been largely separate from that of the rest of the Sultanate.

An ancient copper bowl burning incense that people traveled more than a thousand miles over sea and desert to obtain and trade

Fabled in antiquity as the source of the legendary frankincense trade, Dhofar boasted one of Arabia’s oldest and most cosmopolitan cultures—whose remains continue to exercise historians and archeologists to this day. The region was only finally brought under the control of the sultans of Muscat in the mid-nineteenth century, while the Dhofaris continued to assert their independence until as recently as the 1970s before finally being brought into the Omani fold.
    What more peaceful and remote place could the Lord have provided for Lehi and his family to spend their time isolated from others while they built their ship that would take them across the “many waters” to the Land of Promise without a soul knowing of their voyage, or its final destination. As Lehi told his family: “And behold, it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations; for behold, many nations would overrun the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance” (2 Nephi 1:8).
    Thus, we can see that the Lord brought Lehi and his party some 2400 miles from Jerusalem down along the Red Sea, then across the largest sand desert in the world to this narrow strip of land beyond the mountains and along the seashore where there would be peace and quiet, no disturbances from people, where the Lord could commune with Nephi on a regular basis while he taught and showed this future prophet how to build a ship worthy of traveling into deep water and across the ocean to a land the Lord had promised Lehi.

Experienced shipwrights would have paid no attention to the inexperienced Nephi if he tried to tell them how to build a ship

It should be noted as mentioned earlier, there could have been no other people in the area, especially people experienced in building ships as so many theorists want to claim, for no experienced shipwright and builder would pay any attention to a young man with no building and maritime experience telling him how to build this ship the Lord had instructed. No builders of boats would sit still while a novice told them how to reverse their lifetime experience in building boats to construct a ship “not after the manner of men” (1 Nephi 18:2), but after the manner the Lord instructed Nephi.
    What shipwright worth his salt would sit back and let a young man who had never built even a canoe, raft or rowboat tell him how to construct a large ship capable of carrying fifty people or more out into the deep ocean? What shipwright is going to tolerate Nephi telling him “to work timbers of curious workmanship”? Or to build a boat different from the many others he had built over his life time? Anyone who thinks this way simply has had not experience with the intent and passionate independence of the Arab shipwrights who even today follow the same ancient methods of building their boats.
    If theorists would be honest with themselves on this matter, they would realize that as much as logic tells them experienced builders were necessary to build a large ship like Nephi’s, that it was not to be built after the manner of men, but after the manner the Lord instructed Nephi, there is simply no way men with any experience are going to accept such a change in their life’s work.

Nephi says he went into the mount often to inquire of the Lord. Some theorists claim there are no mountains around Khor Rori, but above the Garbeeb Plain, is the Wadi Dirbat (Darbat), which is itself on a mountain, and above that are high mounts as these images show (the river is the Wadi Dirbat)

It should be noted from Nephi’s words that the Lord told him: “Arise, and get thee into the mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto the Lord” (1 Nephi 17:7). Later, Nephi said, “I did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord” (1 Nephi 18:3). It is interesting that in neither case does Nephi tell us it is a high mountain as he does during his earlier vision when he said he went “into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen” (1 Nephi 11:1), or when he “did go forth up into the top of the mountain” when he was directed to go for game (1 Nephi 16:30). Is this significant? Perhaps not. On the other hand, we have no reason to assume we are looking for a high mountain around Khor Rori, which, by the way is surrounded by the Jabal Qara mountains.
    All Nephi needed was a mountain. And since the area was bereft of people in 600 B.C., where evidence shows the area was not occupied until at least 500 B.C. onward, all Nephi need was some area of height where he would not be disturbed and where the Lord could  communicate with him—where he went oft.

In fact, the process of building the ship was evidently so complicated and different from anything anyone would have known, that Nephi had to go into the mount frequently for the Lord to show him many great things (1 Nephi 18:3). Nor should we neglect to remember  that Nephi, if he was around ship builders, would never have needed to ask the Lord where to go to find ore that he could melt and make tools to construct the ship--they would have been available for purchase or use.
    We need to recognize when we read the scriptural record of the Book of Mormon, that in addition to all the most valuable knowledge we can acquire about the Gospel and about the workings of God with man, and the Plan of Salvation, and all the other doctrinal information contained therein, is a valuable set of lessons as to how we can do and accomplish things in our lives—Nephi was the perfect example for he tells us quite clearly, “I will go and do the things which the Lord had commanded,” because he knew and makes it also quite clear to us that “for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7). This is true whether it is in going back and getting the brass plates, which Nephi understand all the parameters of the assignment, or in building a ship, the parameters of which Nephi had no idea, experience or reason to believe it could be done.
    Nephi did not need help in building his ship other than his own family and that of Ishmael’s sons and people. No experienced ship builders were needed, no maritime knowledge was required. The Lord knew all that man knew and far more and could convey that to Nephi in such a manner that he was fully capable of accomplishing. Obviously, the Lord led Nephi to this one spot, the only natural harbor that exits in southern Oman where an ocean-going ship could have been constructed.
    The ship was not only built “not after the manner of men,” but it was also built not by maritime shipwrights and builders. It was built by Nephi under the Lord’s tutelage, which Nephi makes quite clear in the beginning of 1 Nephi 18.