The River Sidon, or its Head, is Never Mentioned After the Destruction in 3 Nephi – Part I

From time to time we get comments about our stand that the Sidon River is not mentioned after the destruction which occurred during the Crucifixion of the Savior. As an example, some of the comments are: “…a war broke out in the border of the land by the head of the River Sidon” (Mormon 1:10); or “But the prophet knew where the head of the River was because it was mentioned in Mormon 1:10”; or “…it was the one by the head of the River Sidon”; or “It was obvious. The river was still there, and still flowed unchanged since its beginning”; or “Judging by Mormon 1:10, the Sidon River still flowed much as it had been before the catastrophes mentioned in 3 Nephi 8 and 9”; or “Some have felt that during the judgments poured out in AD 34, when “the whole face of the land was changed” (3 Nephi 8:12), the river Sidon changed also perhaps even disappeared. Yet to judge from Mormon’s comment three hundred years later, the river remained in his day, as did many cities and towns.”

Perhaps this is a good time to clarify Mormon 1:10 and the stance we take that the destruction, which occurred in 3 Nephi 8 and 9, possibly suggests that both the Sea East, the Narrow Neck of Land, and the River Sidon, did not exist, at least in their earlier form or path, after the crucifixion, since they are never again mentioned, having been listed prominently and in some cases, frequently, before that cataclysmic event.
  The problem is often that people read the scriptural record, and insert in their mind’s eye what they think it says or want it to say, when in reality it does not say that at all! Take, for instance, the first of these comments, that “a war broke out in the border of the land by the head of the River Sidon” and referencing Mormon 1:10 as the source of the comment.
  However, that source does not say “river” or “head” but merely Sidon, i.e., “the waters of Sidon,” waters being a rather generic term and not related to river any more than it is related to lake or ocean. Let us take a look at Mormon’s statement word for word:
   “And it came to pass that the war began to be among them in the borders of Zarahemla, by the waters of Sidon” (Mormon 1:10, emphasis added). Notice that it says nothing about the “head” of the river Sidon as was stated in three of the comments above—it says waters.
   Therefore, all we know is:
1. “Now the Lamanites and the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites were called Lamanites, and the two parties were Nephites and Lamanites. And it came to pass that the war began to be among them in the borders of Zarahemla, by the waters of Sidon” (Mormon 1:10)
2. In the eastern border of the land of Zarahemla, presumably where that border ran by the Land of Gideon (Alma 6:7), and where the battle with the Amlicites took place to the east of the valley in the hill Amnihu (Alma 2:15), after the crucifixion there was a body of water called Sidon.
    We know nothing more than that. Putting our own interpretation onto the scriptural reference is neither scholarly nor educational, and certainly not helpful.
    So what does “waters” mean? In Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, which lists the English of the New England area where both Webster and Joseph Smith lived in the time frame involved in the translation, the word “waters” is defined as:
    “The ocean; a sea; a lake; a river; any great collection of water; as in the phrases, to go by water to travel by water.”
    In today’s dictionaries we find a very similar meaning: “a stretch or area of water, such as a river, sea, or lake,” and considered to be synonymous with “sea” and “ocean.” It is also stated that: “Often, waters is an impure state as obtained from a mineral spring,” also “content of a river, inlet, etc.,” “waters moving in waves,” “the seas bordering a particular area.” In addition, “any body of sea or seas regarded as sharing some common quality, as in the “waters of…”
    In scripture, we find “the Waters of Mormon are defined as: “The Waters of Mormon, in the 18th chapter of the Book of Mosiah (in The Book of Mormon), is a body of water where about two hundred Nephites were baptized.” It is interesting at the similarity of this statement in Mosiah as it reads: “they came to a place which was called Mormon, having received its name from the king, being in the borders of the land having been infested…” (Mosiah 18:4), and “Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now as you are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people…” (Mosiah 18:8), and “they were baptized in the waters of Mormon and were filled with the grace of God” (Mosiah 18:16).
    There is nothing in these scriptures to suggest that the Waters of Mormon were part of anything more than a standing body of water, a lake, pond, lagoon or inland sea. In the same way, there is nothing in Mormon 1:10 to suggest the Waters of Sidon was anything more than a lake, pond, lagoon or inland sea.
    In fact, throughout the scriptural record, there is nothing to suggest that waters means anything other than an ocean, sea, or large combination of waters, i.e., several oceans or several seas running into one another, such as Irreantum, meaning “Many Waters,” and in fact at least the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, but probably also the Pacific Ocean and Southern Ocean.
    Now, let’s be realistic about this. Not only is there nothing in the scriptural record to suggest that the “waters of Sidon” referred to a river in Mormon 1:10; there is also nothing in the record to suggest it was not a river. In fact, the word “Sidon” is found 34 times in Alma, and one time in Mormon and nowhere else—of the 34 times in Alma, 22 times it is mentioned as the “river Sidon,” 4 times as the “Head of the River Sidon,” 1 time as “Head of Sidon,” and 1 time as just “Sidon.” It is also mentioned 7 times as the “Waters of Sidon.”
    For those who want it to be a “river,” there is nothing to favor or preclude that point; however, it is simply a matter of choice, i.e., whether you choose to add the word “river” to the “waters of Mormon.” On the other hand, there might be sufficient to suggest that the “waters of Mormon” meant something other than “river.”
    The “waters of Sidon” could just as easily have become a great lake, or a huge waterfall that now fell into the Sea East, some other standing body of water. It could also be a separate body of water than a river, if the river Sidon still flowed, i.e., it could be a gathering of water, such as a lake, where the river Sidon flowed into and out of, or it could have been a seepage of a previous river area that was diverted, or the outflow altered, or it could be an area by which the river flowed. In any event, Mormon chose to call it the “waters of Sidon,” not the “river Sidon,” and we simply do not know why.
    On the one hand, a person could make it be anything they want because the wordage is not conclusive; however, Mormon 1:10 cannot be claimed to say “River Sidon” when it does not. It may be implying, but at the same time, it may be exactly what the words claim, a body of water then named Sidon.
    What we do know from Mormon 1:10 is that the “waters of Sidon” sound as if they are in the same general area as the river once flowed. Naturally, water has to have some source, but it could be that while water flowed down from the mountains into these waters of Sidon, that the river from these waters elsewhere did not exist, or was not the same. It seems interesting that Mormon chose the wordage “Waters” of Sidon when throughout the entire Chapter of Alma (Sidon is mentioned nowhere else but Mormon 1:10) he used Sidon River with only a few exceptions.
(See the next post, “The River Sidon, or its Head, is Never Mentioned After the Destruction in 3 Nephi – Part II, to see how the term “waters of Sidon” are used differently than the “river Sidon” is used in the scriptural record by Mormon)