Theorists claim that the word “Sea” in the Book of Mormon does not always mean an “ocean,” which allows the Heartland/Great Lakes theorists to use the Great Lakes as their model’s four seas. On the same token, they use the Lower Mississippi River as a “Sea,”—even widening it on their maps to make it look more like a “sea” than a “river”—however, this is not an accurate understanding of the descriptions involved.
Aerial map of the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia
As an example, the Book of Ether records the Jaredites as passing by a “Sea” in the Wilderness (Ether 2:7). Some have interpreted this to mean an inland sea, or lake, and as a result change the meaning of the scriptural record. This meaning is better understood by recounting that the Jaredites left the Valley of Nimrod, which was northward of their homeland, and were led toward “that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 2:5).
North of their homeland would be north of the basic area in Mesopotamia where the Great Tower had been built (Ether 1:33). In this area is a great, natural depression which now holds the man-made lake Tharthar, called Buhayrat ath Tharthar, about seventy-four miles north of Baghdad, situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This natural valley is about two hundred feet below the surrounding area and once known as Waddi Tharthar—which is a shallow, usually sharply defined depression in a desert region, the bed or valley of a stream that is usually dry except during the rainy season and often forms an oasis.
In this valley oasis, called at the time the Valley of Nimrod, the Jaredites were commanded by the Lord “that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been. “And it came to pass that the Lord did go before them, and did talk with them as he stood in a cloud, and gave directions whither they should travel” (Ether 2:5).
Now, the following verses have been confusing to many Book of Mormon scholars when describing the “many waters” the Jaredites had to cross by building barges. Hugh Nibley claimed these bodies were left over lakes from the ice age stretching across the steppes of Asia heading toward the Pacific Ocean through China. However, as stated in the book “Who Really Settled Mesoamerica,” this is shown to be a direction of travel impossible for the Jaredites to have taken in 2200 BC.
In addition, others claim the waters the Jaredites crossed were the Caspian and Aral Seas, but again, such a requirement of building barges to cross several such seas would be totally unnecessary since the Jaredites simple could have rounded them on such a journey.
The three marshes of the wetlands are all connected, forming one huge marshland
Now the delta (mouth) of the Tigris and Euphrates is a natural wetlands—a type of wetland that is waterlogged, grass-covered, low-lying, and inundated by seasonal floods, is where numerous rivers, lakes, and waterways exist (evidently why Lehi called it “many waters”). From the time of the Sumerians and Babylonians the people used the marshes as a place to live for thousands of years. Today this area is occupied by the Arab al-Ahwār “Arabs of the Marshlands,” who are also referred to as the Maʻdān ("dweller in the plains"), or shroog ("those from the east")—the latter two often considered derogatory in the present day.
These Marsh Arabs are inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates marshlands in the south of present-day Iraq as well as in the Hawizeh Marshes—along the border between Iraq and Iran—with both areas comprising members of many different tribes and tribal confederations, such as the Āl Bū Muḥammad, Ferayghāt, Shaghanbah and Banī Lām, the Maʻdān. All the groups that have lived in this area developed a unique culture centered on natural resources of the marshlands, which were displaced when the wetlands were drained during and after the 1991 uprisings in Iraq.
The fact is, that in crossing over the shallow Tigris River near the Waddi Tharthar and then traveling down the northern banks toward the south, the Jaredites would have reached the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where they empty into the Persian Gulf, in the area known as Shatt-al-Arab (Arvand Rud, meaning “Swift River”), is a river of some 120 miles long and formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris in the town of al-Qurnah in the Basra Governorate of southern Iraq. Anciently, this entire area was part of the delta wetlands.
At this confluence, miles of swamp and wetlands have always made up this delta, and even today, as anciently, the marshland is crossed only by small boats, or barges, and cover numerous rivers, waterways, lakes, and marshes—truly, “many waters.”
Red Line: Jaredite movement from their home near Babylon to the Valley of Nimrod; White Line: travel to the “many waters,” Blue Line: building barges and crossing “many waters,” Red Line: not stopping at the “sea in the wilderness,” but continuing to the sea,” Green Circle: Wetlands, referred to “many waters”
Once Jaredites crossed this marshland they headed south and came in contact with the Persian Gulf. While some refer to it as an inland sea, it is connected through the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Oman, which is an inlet of the Arabian Sea. Thus, this “sea in the wilderness” is actually part of the Arabian sea and an ocean, connected to the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean which crosses the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Here the Lord commanded the Jaredites not to stop along this sea, “but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people” (Ether 2:7). And “the Lord did bring Jared and his brethren forth even to that great sea which divideth the lands” (Ether 2:13), where “they dwelt along the seashore for the space of four years.”
Where scholars and theorists tend to go wrong in reading the Book of Mormon is their lack of understanding that various terms are not as self-explanatory as they think. An example is the term “many waters,” referring in the scriptural record to a continuous flow of water, whether connected through rivers, lakes, fountains marshes and deltas, or through sea and oceans that run into one another, called by separate names for man’s convenience, but really one great body of ocean that covers most of the world, made up of “many waters” or oceans.
In this case, the “sea in the wilderness” is really an extension inland of the Arabian Sea, which Lehi called Irreantum, when arriving on the southern Arabian coast of present-day Oman. Whether using the term “many waters” or using the name Irreantum, which means “many waters” the point is that this water was all connected. The idea that the word “sea” in the Book of Mormon did not always mean ocean is a misunderstanding of the terms used in Joseph Smith's translation—for in 1829, in the New England area, the word "sea" meant "ocean." After all, the word “ocean” comes the Greek word “ōkeanos,” (Great water deity) through Latin and Old French “occean” to Middle English “ocean,” first used in the 13th century, means a “great stream encircling the earth's disk,” with “The ocean originally denoting the whole body of water regarded as encompassing the earth's single land mass.”
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