Jonathan E. Neville makes some startling claims about the scriptural record in his writings and visually with his maps. One such map shows some locations in his model of the Land of Nephi and the Land of Zarahemla—in particular, his Narrow Neck of Land between Bountiful and Desolation. His claim lies in a believed area of the terrain between two historical marshlands: 1) The Great Black Swamp to the east, and 2) The Grand Kankakee Marsh to the west.
Four sections of Neville’s map are highlighted and described below
On Neville’a map we have highlighted four erroneous areas of interest:
1. (Red Circle) A written scriptural quote about Lehi landing and Nephi reaching the area where he founded his city. Neville writes: “Lehi c.591 BC. The Land of First Inheritance was probably near Tallahassee, Florida. Nephi could travel up the Chattahoochee River to Unicoi, Georgia. The first temple may have been built in Chattanooga, Tennessee.”
Now, notice the different wordage between sailing to the Land of Promise where they settled the area later known as the Land of First Inheritance, and then Nephi (and those who would go with him) journeying to the Land of Nephi and settling the area that became known as the city of Nephi.
“I, Nephi, did guide the ship, that we sailed again towards the promised land and…after we had sailed for the space of many days we did arrive at the promised land” (1 Nephi 18:22-23, emphasis added)
“We did take our tents and whatsoever things were possible for us, and did journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. And after we had journeyed for the space of many days we did pitch our tents” (2 Nephi 5:7, emphasis added).
When Nephi was on the water, he made it clear in the fact he was sailing. When traveling by land, he made it clear that they journeyed in the wilderness.
2. (Dk. Blue) Neville has Nephi and his party going by boat up the Chattahoochee River to Unicoi, near Helen, Georgia. This is an area 126 miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee, which he claims is where the city of Nephi was located and the first temple built.
Neville can claim that Nephi went north by some kind of boat (sailing or man-powered oars and paddling were the only method of powering a boat on a river in Nephi’s time and more than 1000 years afterward) since they would have been going against the river currents (the Chattahoochee River arises as a cold-water mountain stream in the Blue Ridge Province of northeast Georgia at altitudes above 3,000 feet, and flowed toward the south to West Point Lake along the Georgia-Alabama border near La Grange, just north of Columbus, Georgia, to where it joined with the Flint River near the Florida border, forming the Apalachicola, which flowed to Apalachicola Bay of the Gulf of Mexico).
With Unicoi Gap at 2949 feet elevation, or Helen, 126 miles away, at 1447 feet elevation, the confluence of the two rivers lies at 77 feet—which means that any boat, going against the current, would have had to sail or row upward of between 2872 feet to 1370 feet as Neville claims—a daunting task if following Neville’s claims, for most experienced boaters, let alone men, women and children.
No matter how much and how strongly Neville claims otherwise, there is absolutely no suggestive statement in the scriptural record to even suggest he went anywhere by boat after once landing.
The distance between the Great Black Swamp and the Grand Kankakee Marsh is about 90 miles—hardly a narrow neck of land
3. (Light Blue) According to Neville’s map, the distance between the Great Black Swamp and the Grand Kankakee Marsh is extremely narrow, giving him his Narrow Neck of Land. However, as the map above shows, the Great Black Swamp only ran from Lake Erie to just short of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and the Grand Kankakee Marsh followed the Kankakee River southwest from around South Bend, Indiana to the Illinois border—leaving a distance in between of about 90 miles from Ft. Wayne to the Kankakee Marsh, which is almost as wide as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
4. (Light Green) Neville’s Sea West South. This claim by Neville is in two parts: 1) His Sea West North is Lake Michigan, and 2) His Sea West South, is the Mississippi River, from the confluence of the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico.
It should be noted that the exaggerated width of the Mississippi is Neville’s handiwork, not geologically sound according to the Corps of Engineers, who have been studying and trying to keep the normally shallow river open to ship traffic for nearly 200 years. According to all the studies by the engineers, including Mississippi hydrologists and geologists, that have been conducted on the Mississippi for nearly two centuries, there has never been a significant widening or narrowing of the river—only various changes in the channel.
In order to claim that the “head” of the Sidon River is where the Ohio runs into the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois, Neville argues that “head” means a confluence of rivers rather than the source of the river, thus his Sidon River ran only from Cairo southward to the Gulf. What Neville seems not to understand is that rivers have confluences—or where they join with other rivers—and if above and below that confluence a single name is used, such as the Mississippi River north and south of the confluence at Cairo, the “head” can only be at its source in Minnesota.
The head of a River is its Source, or where it begins; the Confluence is where to rivers join or flow together; Mouth is where a river ends, either into another river, or to a Bay, Gulf or Ocean
On the other hand, it two rivers run together and form a new river with a different name, then the “head” of that river is where the confluence of the other two rivers joined, such as with the Ohio River. This river begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the Ohio is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, and ends 981 miles later at Cairo, Illinois when it empties into the Mississippi.
For Neville to claim otherwise, and arbitrarily widen the Mississippi to support his model and beliefs is hardly in keeping with accurate and valuable scholarship, but is completely self-serving.
Mormon makes it clear how the “Small Neck” (Alma 22:32), the “Narrow Neck” (Alma 63:5), the Narrow Pass” (Mormon 2:29), and “Narrow Passage” (Mormon 3:5), are connected in relation to one another, and how there is only one place in the entire Land of Promise where they could be located. The problem for theorists in finding this location, which lies in how they approach Mormon’s information.
(See the next post regarding the answer to Mormon’s clear and precise descriptions)
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