The Book of Mormon’s opening scenes provide an excellent opportunity to test some of its
geographic details. The story begins with Lehi’s family fleeing from Jerusalem, which
is in the same location today as it was in Lehi’s day. The family then traveled south
until they reached the borders of the Red Sea, another enduring landmark. Starting with
these two known locations, researchers have been able to compare the rest of Nephi’s
travel account with the geography of the Arabian Peninsula. The results have been both fascinating
and faith-promoting.
One of the first clues that Nephi’s account is authentic is his frequent use of the expression
“land of Jerusalem.” The phrase never occurs in the Bible and Joseph Smith was criticized
for its use in the Book of Mormon. Yet it shows up in the Amarna letters and Dead Sea
Scrolls, proving that it was used anciently. In addition, archaeology reveals that in Lehi’s
time a thriving hinterland surrounded the city of Jerusalem. Since these conditions
were unique to the seventh century B.C., the expression “land of Jerusalem” adds to
the story’s ring of authenticity. It’s also notable that Nephi consistently described
journeys away from Jerusalem and into the wilderness as going down and journeys toward
Jerusalem as going up. This agrees with ancient idiom and accurately reflects the region’s
topography, where Jerusalem sits much higher than the surrounding wilderness regions. In
1829 Joseph Smith didn’t even know Jerusalem was a walled city, so there’s a good chance
he wasn’t aware of its raised elevation either.
After leaving Jerusalem and reaching the borders of the Red Sea, Nephi’s family travelled
for three more days until they camped by a notable source of water. Lehi described it
as a continually running river which flowed through a firm, steadfast, and immovable valley
before emptying out toward the Red Sea. It had grain, fruit, and seeds of every kind.
A valley known as Wadi Tayyib al Ism nicely fits each of these criteria. It lies within
a three-day journey from where Lehi and his family most likely arrived at the Red Sea,
and it has fruits, grains, and a stream that cuts through sheer granite cliffs. It’s
exactly the type of scene that would impress wandering, thirsty travelers. What makes this
location so appealing, though, is that it contains the only known stream in all of northwest
Arabia that continually flows toward the Red Sea throughout the year. This of course fits
Lehi’s description of a continually running river. Maps in Joseph Smith’s day didn’t
mention this stream and it wasn’t even reported in a comprehensive geological survey published
in 1984, so it’s highly unlikely that Joseph Smith knew anything about it in 1829.
After leaving the Valley of Lemuel, Lehi’s group traveled for four days in a nearly south-southeast
direction until they reached a place they called Shazer, where they stopped for a time
to hunt. Again, a plausible site can be found right where it should be. In this case a prominent
oasis with good nearby hunting grounds lies within a four-day journey southeast of Wadi
Tayyib al Ism. Its life-preserving waters extend for fifteen miles in length, making
it a natural place to set up camp.
After Shazer Lehi’s group took a long journey in the same southeast direction. Nephi first
described their route as keeping to the most fertile parts of the wilderness and then to
just the more fertile parts, suggesting that the fertility may have decreased as they traveled
southward. This is also what one finds along the ancient incense trail, which several scholars
think Lehi’s party likely followed. Rather than being a single path, the incense trail
was a network of oases that travelers took various routes to reach. Charts used by pilots
show that the oases and areas of cultivated land become fewer and further between as one
heads southeast along the trail, just as Nephi’s statements suggest.
It’s in this setting of reduced fertility that Nephi tells how he broke his steel bow
while huntings and how he had to make a new bow and arrow out of wood. It turns out that
the wood Arabs traditionally used for making bows comes from a type of olive tree that
grows in a limited range within this region. The story makes additional sense in the location
because the change to a more arid climate may have been what caused Nephi’s bow to
break in the first place. Finally, the odd detail about Nephi making a new arrow is also
quite realistic because his newly-fashioned bow probably required a different length and
weight of arrow than his steel bow had used.
After the broken bow incident, Lehi’s party traveled in the same southeast direction as
before until they reached a place called Nahom, which was likely given its name by locals
who already lived there. This is where Ishmael was buried and where his daughters mourned
his passing. It also provides the most compelling archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon
to date. In the late 90s, researchers noticed that the letters NHM were inscribed on a temple
altar in Marib, Yemen, which dates to before Lehi’s time. The letters refer to an ancient
tribe called Nehem that still exists in the region southwest of Marib today. Like most
Semitic scripts, the south Arabian script on the altars doesn’t include vowels, so
linguistically speaking, Nephi’s Nahom could easily be a reference to the region controlled
by the ancient tribe mentioned on the altars. And, as you can probably guess by now, these
tribal grounds are right where they should be to match up with Nephi’s description
of Nahom.
After leaving Nahom, Lehi’s party traveled nearly eastward from that time forward. This
small detail is actually quite notable, because the main incense trail also turned east near
the Nehem tribal area. In fact, this happened to be the first location where southbound
travelers could even turn east without facing a desert wasteland. Maps in Joseph Smith’s
day didn’t mention this prominent turn, nor did they depict the impassable desert
to the north. Then, just as Nephi’s account predicts, a lush coastal region known today
as the Dhofar can be found a long journey nearly due east of the Nehem tribal grounds.
A couple locations in this fertile area nicely fit Nephi’s description of Bountiful. One
inlet in particular called Khor Khorfot complies with 12 specific criteria derived from Nephi’s
record. For instance, it features fruit and honey, trees for building ships, accessible
ore for making tools, and a prominent nearby mountain where Nephi could pray. More importantly,
the Dhofar region is really the only place along the entire eastern coast of Arabia that
even comes close to fitting Nephi’s account.
So once again the right kind of place shows up in the right spot. Altogether these correspondences
showed that Nephi’s travel account is entirely plausible. While individual proposed sites
are certainly intriguing, they become far more persuasive when linked together. For
instance, according to Nephi’s account, Nahom needs to be a long journey southeast
from a place like the Valley of Lemuel, a shorter journey southeast from a place like
Shazer, southeast of a region with wood that could be used to make a bow, a long journey
nearly due west from a likely spot for Bountiful, and also a place where travelers can journey
eastward across the peninsula without facing an impassable desert. When these types of
interlocking details match up with real locations, they’re difficult to explain away as mere
lucky guesswork.
As a way to get around this evidence, some critics have suggested that Joseph Smith obtained
all this information from maps available in his day. Yet, not only would any helpful map
have been quite rare, but most of these geographic details in Nephi’s account couldn’t have
been derived from even the best map or collection of maps in 1829. The bottom line is that the
Book of Mormon seems to contain intimate geographic knowledge of ancient Israel and the Arabia
Peninsula that few, if any, Americans in 1829 could have produced, even with the help of
rare, high-quality maps. For this reason, Nephi’s account of his family’s travels
offers excellent evidence of the Book of Mormon’s historical authenticity, which in turns strengthens
its witness that Jesus is the Christ.