More Comments from Readers – Part IV

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog:
Comment #1: “I have read that name experts claim the Book of Mormon lacks authenticity because there are no Baal names listed in it” Cece D.
Response: While it is true that Ba’al personal names were very popular in Old Testament times, for some unexplained reason recent evidence has verified that the Jews around 600 B.C. did not use Ba’al names. The Prophet Hosea foretold that Israel would no longer use Baal names, which occurred at this time. In fact, Baal names in Israel were very common in the 7^th and early 6^th centuries, but none after that period. Instead of showing a lack of authenticity, this shows just the opposite and verifies the correctness of the Book of Mormon.
Comment #2: “I continue to find it strange that so little credit is given to the Andes model. The metallurgy evidence is one of several overwhelming evidences for the model, but none of these strong evidences seem to matter. The entrenched camps almost ridicule the Andes model, but the truth is their models are the ones that are ridiculous” erichard.
Response: Yes. There is one evidence after another that we present. They don't seem to be able to counter these points, so I guess they just ignore them hoping they will go away.
Comment #3: “What is meant when Nephi writes that “And he came down by the borders near the shore of the Red Sea; and he traveled in the wilderness in the borders which are nearer the Red Sea; and he did travel in the wilderness with his family” Micha M.

Gulf of Aqaba: By the borders near the Red Sea; Valley of Lemuel: I the borders nearer the Red Sea (1 Nephi 2:5)

Response: Traveling in the direction he took, the first part of the Red Sea he would have come to is known today as the Gulf of Aqaba, which is a finger of the Red Sea that forks northward between Saudi Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula. As he traveled downward the shore of Aqaba, he would have come closer to the main body of the Red Sea, and eventually camped in the valley he called Lemuel close to the Red Sea and beyond the mouth of Aqaba.
Comment #4: “Why do you say Lehi was rich? A lot of people had gold and silver in Lehi’s time, and it must not have been much because he willingly left it behind” April M.
Response: Actually, the record shows Lehi was very rich. Unlike others of his day, he was not a farmer or a merchant, but an entrepreneurial trader for his wealth was in the form of ‘all manner of precious things,” such as had to be brought from many places. His world, while most others in the area of Jerusalem (who lived and worked within the city) Lehi “lived at” or around Jerusalem where his wealth was evidently accumulated through trading with the caravan merchants who drove their camel caravans across Arabia and then northward past Jerusalem toward Syria. He was like the princes of Syria and Palestinian cities who were also merchants according to Archaeologists in the region of Israel.
    In addition, Lehi’s many precious thing were obtained in exchange or trade of his figs, wine, oil, and honey produced on his farm outside of Jerusalem. He also would have traded with the early merchants in Jerusalem who would have had no access to the caravans that passed below Jerusalem  for those traders who came down to obtain goods for the city on top of the mountain where their camel caravans could not go.
    It also might be of interest to know that at this time Israel looked to the desert for its profits involved in the great trade routes that passed below them from Arabia to Syria, either along the King’s Highway or up the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates River (J. A. Montgomery, Arabia in the Bible, pp5,2,18).
    Since Egypt controlled the western part of the trade routes, it is easy to see that Lehi obviously was involved with the Egyptians and his knowledge of the Egyptian language. In fact, the rule of the day was always that the desert trade, specifically that of the south desert, was the one reliable source of wealth for the men of Jerusalem.

A camel caravan crossing the desert. Lehi may have met such caravans below Jerusalem to trade and then sell the products to merchants in the city

It also tells us why, at a moment’s notice, Lehi had tents, supplies, and provisions to take his family into the desert for a prolonged period. No doubt having farmland to draw from explain why he had seeds of every kind. It is also amazing that readers of the Book of Mormon will read through events without really considering what the events being read really mean. As an example, when people of Jerusalem traveled they stayed in caves, few if any would have had such tents available to them for they would have had no reason to possess them. Also, where did Lehi get his “seeds of every kind,” and how many reader’s of this blog would have access around their home to sufficient seeds to plant somewhere else for at least a year’s crops of grain and fruit? Yet, people read it and never give much thought as to why Lehi had the seeds, or where his wealth came from. Or what “precious things” included and where would he have gotten them? Also why did Lehi know so much about caravan travel while he was involved in a camel caravan along the Red Sea, which he led, and able to live in the wilderness for eight years?
Comment #5: “What is North America’s Role in the Land of Promise?” Bud K.
Response: So many members, perhaps in a parochial desire to make the United States the sole Land of Promise, have laid claim after claim that North America in general and the U.S. in specific is the location of the Book of Mormon Land of Promise. However, sometimes people get mixed up between 1) the Land of Promise, and 2) the Nephite lands as indicated in the scriptural record promised to Lehi and his descendants.
    While all of the Western Hemisphere is the Land of Promise, only a small portion of western (Andean) South America is the location of the scriptural record Land of Promise, or the area of the Jaredites, Nephites, Mulekites and Lamanites in the Book of Mormon. It is important to keep this in mind when both studying the Book of Mormon and considering the location of the actual Land of Promise.
    There is no question that the area now known as the United States fits the land that was blessed more than any other lands (Ether 13:2), so it must be the land of the Nephites also. It is definitely singled out as such by Joseph Smith when he identified the area as “the Plains of the Nephites” to his wife, Emma, in a personal letter. But there is no indication that this Nephite area was one that was connected to the lands described in the scriptural record. Nephites could have moved into the area in their movement northward as a result of Hagoth’s ships (Alma 63:5).

The Heartland is basically a huge flat land with minimal variances in elevation, which simply does not agree with the scriptural record

However, the thought that the Mississippi Valley area (Illinois land Iowa specifically) were the lands of the Nephites of the scriptural record has no basis in reality. All one has to do is look at the description of mountains to the south of Zarahemla, or at least much higher elevations that would have enclosed the city of Nephi in a highland valley shows that this is not a possible area for Illinois and Iowa for the lands to the south of there are flat with no mountains or even elevations.
    As for those who claim the Mississippi River was not wide 2000 years ago is simply inaccurate, for the Mississippi’s history over more than two thousand years is a very wide, shallow and moving river, i.e., changing course as waters rose and found other paths. It was never a narrow river, and certainly was not deep enough to allow a ship to have sailed up from the Gulf of Mexico to this area as so many uninformed but hopeful theorists like to claim. However, making claims and being correct are two different things.
    In addition, to the south of this area is the Des Moines River, and south of that is Clark County, a basically flat land covering approximately 512 square miles along the western shore of the Mississippi River. It should also be noted that the area around Montrose, Iowa, where Zarahemla of Joseph Smith’s time was located, was first settled in the 1780s by Quashquame, the Sauk Indian chief who established villages on both sides of the Mississippi River (present day Montrose and Nauvoo). It is interesting that in this time, being the first there, no previous establishment, ruins, artifacts, etc., of a population that size of the Land of Promise Zarahemla, was ever found by the Indians or the first Americans to settle there.