Battle Numbers (Howlers #33)

Those who are particularly desirous of information concerning the millions of warriors, and the bloody battles in which more were slain than ever fell in all the wars of Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon, with a particular description of their military works, would do well to read the “Book of Mormon,” made out of the “golden plates” of that distinguished antiquarian Joe Smith!

J. M. Peck, A Gazetteer of Illinois . . . (1834), 53.

This Mormon bulletin or sword fight with the Lamanites sets Napoleon Bonaparte all in the shade. The battle of Waterloo or Trafalgar is not a circumstance to this. Here is 230,000 of God’s people killed, but the 24th that General Mormon saved in his 10,000.

Tyler Parsons, Mormonism Fanaticism Exposed (1842), 27.


That same year that Parson's criticism of the Book of Mormon was was published, John Stephens published, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, which cited historical accounts of Mesoamerican warfare in Guatemala which helped place Book of Mormon battle numbers in a more favorable light.

One pre-Columbian battle reportedly involved over one hundred and forty thousand warriors. This was, “the most bloody battle ever fought in the country” and “the field was so deeply inundated with blood that not a blade of grass could be seen.” (Stephens, Incidents, 1841, 2:173-74). Pre-Columbian armies and those during the subsequent Conquest of Guatemala are reported as numbering “sixty thousand,”  “seventy thousand,” “seventy-two thousand,” “eighty thousand,” “ninety thousand.” (Stephens 2:173-78). Direct correspondences with the Book of Mormon include armies numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands--Alma 3:26; 28:2, 10-11 (Stephens, 2:173-174, 176-77), thirty thousand--Mormon 1:11; 2:25 (Stephens 1:100; 2:174), and numbers in the forty thousands--Mormon 2:9). Mormon fought a Lamanite army of forty-four thousand with an army of forty-two thousand. Stephens mentions Guatemalan armies of 40,000 and 46,000 (Stephens 2:174, 176), and even forces on one rare occasion said to have numbered over 230,000, the size of the Nephite force mustered at the hill Cumorah--Mormon 6:11-15  (Stephens 2:176).

Of course historical accounts may or may not be reported accurately. That is another subject of interest. The point here is simply that there are historical accounts consistent with numbers found in the Book of Mormon.

The Name Zarahemla (Howlers # 29)

In 1917, the American Journal of Psychology published an article by Walter Prince in which he argued that Book of Mormon names were simply a product of Joseph Smith's imagined obsession with controversies surrounding an expose of Freemasonry published by William Morgan. Prince suggested the following etymology for the name Zarahemla.

"On page 52 of the Morgan pamphlet there is an allusion to the (mythical) Palestinian city of `Zaradatha.' There are no italics this time to make the name stand out, but its own sonorous, mouth-filling magnitude was probably as effective besides which the purported city is mentioned in the course of a paragraph which, as we shall see, for other reasons strongly impressed the writer of the pseudo-history. The chief city of the Book of Mormon is not called Zaradatha, but it is called ZARAhemlA,--the same first two syllables, the same termination, only three letters in the same total of nine altered, the same number of syllables. Who can doubt the relationship of the two artifacts?"

Walter Franklin Prince, American Journal of Psychology, July 1917, 383.

With all due respect to Prince's creativity, Zarahemla is actually a very good Hebrew name. Stephens Ricks and John Tvedtnes observed:

Zarahemla was the Nephite capital for longer than any other city, yet it was actually named from Zarahemla, a descendant of Mulek (Omni 1:12–15; Mosiah 25:2). Mulek, the son of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, had come to the New World with other immigrants not long after Lehi's departure from Jerusalem (Helaman 6:10; 8:21).

The name Zarahemla probably derives from the Hebrew zera‘-hemla h, which has been variously translated as "seed of compassion" or "child of grace, pity, or compassion." It may be that the Mulekite leader was given that name because his ancestor had been rescued when the other sons of King Zedekiah were slain during the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. To subsequent Nephite generations, it may even have suggested the deliverance of their own ancestors from Jerusalem prior to its destruction or the anticipation of Christ's coming.

Stephen D. Ricks and John A. Tvedtnes, "The Hebrew Origin of Some Book of Mormon Place Names,"  Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6/2 (1997): 259.

In a follow up article to the above Pedro Olavarria and David Bokovoy made several other significant observations on this name.

A literary analysis of this proposal provides further evidence supporting the legitimacy of this etymological claim. This confirmation derives from what could reflect original Hebrew wordplays in the Book of Mormon consistent with Tvedtnes and Ricks's proposal concerning the prefix zara- and the terminal form -hemla. Reading the Book of Mormon through a Hebraic lens, the name Zarahemla appears linked with attestations of these Hebraic roots.

In their consideration of the name Zarahemla, Tvedtnes and Ricks divided the word into the Hebrew nouns zeraʿ meaning "seed," and ḥemlāh denoting "compassion/mercy" ( See Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, eds., The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), Accordance Bible Software, DVD, 3.0).

As a verbal form, the root ḥml signifies "to have compassion," or "to spare" (Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament; Study Edition [Leiden: Brill, 2001], 1:328).

This nuance appears reflected in texts such as 1 Samuel 15:9 in the King James Version of the Bible: "But Saul and the people spared (ḥml) Agag, and the best of the sheep." Significantly, the Book of Mormon features two occasions in which the place name Zarahemla appears in close proximity with individuals being "spared":

And we returned, those of us that were spared, to the land of Zarahemla, to relate that tale to their wives and their children. (Mosiah 9:2)

And in one place they were heard to cry, saying: O that we had repented before this great and terrible day, and then would our brethren have been spared, and they would not have been burned in that great city Zarahemla. (3 Nephi 8:24)

In terms of analyzing the name Zarahemla, this biblical-like pun provides supporting evidence for the accuracy of interpreting the terminal ending -hemla as the Hebraic nominal form ḥemlāh.

If translated into biblical Hebrew, the Book of Mormon would feature a similar wordplay between the Hebrew word zeraʿ and the proper noun Zarahemla. In addition to its specific nuance "seed" reflecting a vegetative connotation, the Hebrew noun zeraʿ denotes human "offspring, or descendants" (Koehler and Baumgartner, Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon, 282).

The term descendant occasionally appears in the Book of Mormon in close literary proximity to the proper noun Zarahemla:

Ammon, he being a strong and mighty man, and a descendant of Zarahemla. (Mosiah 7:3)

For I am Ammon, and am a descendant of Zarahemla, and have come up out of the land of Zarahemla. (Mosiah 7:13)

Though these literary proposals create an intriguing reading of the text, the legitimacy of these observations as intentional wordplays reflects the assumption that the reformed Egyptian in the Book of Mormon was a modified Egyptian script used to record an attestation of Hebrew. If correct, these Hebraic puns would provide evidence that Book of Mormon authors incorporated similar writing techniques to those witnessed throughout the Old Testament.

In their own literary efforts, ancient Hebrew authors made frequent use of wordplays on proper names of people and places in a way that parallels the Book of Mormon's presumed Hebraic use of the nouns "spared," "descendants," and "Zarahemla"( See Wilfred G. E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques [Sheffield: JSOT, 1984], 244).

For example, in Hosea 12:3—4, the biblical author creates a play upon the proper name Jacob yaʾqob and the verb ʿāqob meaning "to supplant":

The Lord . . . punished Jacob for his conduct. . . . In the womb he tried to supplant his brother (As translated in Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Text [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985], 1000).

Biblical scholars have identified a variety of these wordplays throughout the Hebrew Bible.

Studies have shown that in the process of producing the Book of Mormon, Nephite writers imitated and were influenced by biblical techniques. Assuming that the underlying text from which the Nephite record was translated derived from some form of Hebrew, the literary relationship between "spared," "descendants," and "Zarahemla" witnessed throughout the Book of Mormon supports the etymology offered by Ricks and Tvedtnes for the meaning of this important Nephite name. In addition, interpreting Zarahemla as the place name "seed of compassion" provides evidence that Book of Mormon authors possessed an impressive familiarity with the literary styles and techniques witnessed throughout the Old Testament.

["Zarahemla: Revisiting the `Seed of Compassion,'" Insights: an Ancient Window 30/5 (2010): 2-3].

“For They Shall be filled with the Holy Ghost” (Howlers # 28)

In 1978 Krister Stendahl, a prominent Lutheran Leader and scholar of the New Testament was invited by Truman Madsen to read and comment on the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon at the Temple in 3 Nephi. Stendahl graciously provided an insightful discussion on the subject which was subsequently published in a collection of essays written by other non–LDS scholars entitled Reflections on Mormonism, a volume which is still of value and well worth reading. In his article, however, Stendahl did take note of 3 Nephi 12:6, which parallels Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” except that the passage in Jesus’ sermon in 3 Nephi adds the phrase “with the Holy Ghost.” Stendahl thought that the additional phrase seemed out of place:

The Greek word behind filled is chortazo, which means “fill the stomach,” as one fills the stomach of animals, not “fill up” in the sense pleroo, which is the biblical term for being filled with the Holy Spirit. it is rather unnatural to use the Greek chortazo for making the addition “with the Holy Spirit”

(Krister Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” in Truman G. Madsen, ed., Reflections on Mormonism, 1978), 142.


The following is taken from John W. Welch, The Sermon At the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990, 114-15.

Krister Stendahl has suggested one such translation problem in the way the Sermon at the Temple renders the fourth Beatitude. It reads, "Blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost" (3 Nephi 12:6). He remarked that it seemed unnatural to associate the Greek word chortazo ("physically filled") with a spiritual filling, since the New Testament Greek usually uses a different word, pleroo, when it speaks of being filled with the Spirit and since chortazo appears in passages about actual feedings of multitudes, eating crumbs, and so on.

The problem, however, is solved when we turn to Old Testament backgrounds of the Sermon. The promise of Jesus, that those who hunger and thirst after "righteousness" (dikaiosunen) shall be filled (chortasthesontai), is closely related to the last two verses of Psalm 17 in the Greek Septuagint (the "LXX"), a rarely mentioned text that Stendahl apparently overlooked. The Psalm contrasts the filling (echortasthesan) of the stomach in uncleanliness with beholding the face of God in righteousness (dikaiosune): "I shall be satisfied [chortasthesomai] when I awake, with thy likeness" (Psalm 17:15). Here the word chortazo is used to describe one's being filled with the Spirit and being satisfied by beholding the righteousness of God.

The distinctiveness of this use of chortazo in Psalm 17 and Matthew 5:6 only increases the likelihood that Jesus' New Testament audience would have recognized his allusion to these words in the Psalm, a passage that would have been quite familiar to them. It shows that the translation in the Sermon at the Temple does well by making explicit this particular understanding of chortazo as having reference to a spiritual filling by the Holy Ghost, such as that which comes when a person beholds the face of God in righteousness.

No Pre-Columbian Writing (Howlers # 27)

According to Mormon, these native Americans could read, and write . . . but when that country first became known to Europeans, the inhabitants knew no more about letters than a four-legged animal knows the rules of logic; and not a scrap of writing was to be found.

H. Stevenson, Lecture on Mormonism . . . (1839), 12.

It is a well-known fact that the Indians had no books, and among the twenty millions, who were found scattered about through the three Americas when Columbus made his discovery four hundred years ago, none of them could read, and consequently they had no literature to transmit.

W. B. Godbey, Mormonism (1920), 1.


The evidence for Pre-Columbian writing and even books in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican is plentiful and dates back to Pre-Classic times which would be contemporary with the Book of Mormon. John Sorenson provides a very detailed summary of the evidence for this in his essay, "The Book of Mormon as a Mesoamerican Record" in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited (1997) 391-521. See also chapter 11, "Records and Writing Systems" in his recent work, Mormon's Codex: An Ancient American Book (2013), 184-232.

In their work, The Art of the Maya Scribe, Michael Coe and Justin Kerry suggest that such books may date back to Olmec times.

An intriguing piece of evidence  suggests such a possibility: incised on the sides of a white ware ceramic bowl in the collection of the Snite Museum at Notre Dame University are the representations of two objects which appear to be side views of codices, each bound with a ribbon or cord. Although this vessel has no archaeological context, it is identical in style to Olmec pottery made at the site of Tlapacoya, in the Valley of Mexico, during the early Pre-Classic, and is thus contemporary with the apogee of San Lorenzo. If so, then the screenfold codex made from amate barks coated with gesso may already have been present in Mesoamerican culture as early as 1200 BC. ( Coe and Kerr, The Art of the Maya Scribe, 63).

The 600 Year Prophecy of the Birth of Christ (Howlers # 26 )

The Book of Mormon locates the birth of Christ too late in the world's history to harmonize with the Bible, claiming that Lehi left Jerusalem in the first year of Zedekiah's reign, (1st Book of Nephi, chap. 1) and that Christ's birth was six hundred years from that epoch.

William Sheldon, Mormonism Examined (1876), 9.

The chronology of the Book of Mormon is quite at fault when compared with the dates now accepted by biblical scholars. The Book of Mormon places the departure of Lehi from Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah (1 Nephi 1:4), the years that follow are carefully counted from that date . . . . Now scholars are agreed that the first year of Zedekiah was in 597-596 B.C., and counting 600 years from that time would date the birth of Christ in the year 4-5 A.D. But the date best attested for the birth of Christ is 6 B.C.

Paul Jones, The Bible and the Book of Mormon (1912), 5.

Smith was unaware that Zedekiah must be dated at 597 B.C. instead of the 600 B.C. date the Book of Mormon assigns him. He was unaware that the birth of Christ must now be placed some time prior to 4 B.C., . . .  so he wove into his fabric of the book a modern chronological error. The error was Dionysius Exiguus', who set up the present system of dating time from the birth of Christ in the sixth century A.D. He mistakenly equated A.D. 1 with the Roman year 754 (A.U.C.), whereas Herod the Great had died four years earlier in the Roman year 750 (A.U.C.); or in 4 B.C. by our present dating system. The only way scholars can correct this error is to date the actual birth of Christ prior to 4 B.C., yielding less than 593 years between Zedekiah and the birth of Jesus.

Wesley Walters, Examiner, Independence, Missouri, 17 September, 1977.


In his work, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, John Sorenson wrote:

Both by prophecy (1 Nephi 10:4; 19:8; 2 Nephi 25:19) and by Nephite historical reckoning (3 Nephi 1:1) the American scripture allots “600 years” for the interval between Lehi’s departure in Zedekiah’s first year and the birth of Jesus Christ. Yet secular historical records allow no more than about 593 years (597 B.C. to 4 B.C.) between these events.

Sorenson notes that among the Maya, whose calendar is the one we know best, there were at least three ways in which years were calculated. One of these was the tun a year consisting of 360 days.

Suppose the Nephites used the same system of counting time as the Maya. The prophesied “six hundred years” in that reckoning would constitute precisely one and one half baktuns (thirty katuns), a neat total of 216.000 days. But this count of 600 tun “years” would be about 3,156 days shorter than the total using our sidereal year today (approximately 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.54 seconds long). In other words, “600 years” by the Maya tun method of calculating time would turn out 8.64 years shorter than “600 years” than today’s conventional sense. If we mark off 600 tun years from Zedekiah’s first year, 597-596 B.C., 216,000 brings us into the year overlapping 5-4 B.C., an acceptable date for Christ’s birth. . . .

If the Nephite “year” had been the same as our present year of 365+ days, then the Book of Mormon prophecies and its history as well would be in error, for from Zedekiah to Christ’s birth is in fact not 600 but closer to 592 of our solar years. But if we suppose that the Nephites used the method of calculating time that was standard in southern Mesoamerica, where ther Nephite lands must lie, then 600 of the 360-day tun years used there matches rather neatly the apparent interval from Zedekiah to Christ. Not only is the “problem” eliminated, but we obtain an important perspective of the Nephites’ use of the calendar system that prevailed in their geographical and cultural setting (John Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 1985, 272-274).


In a more recent and very careful evaluation of the historical evidence Thomas Wayment concluded that most likely, “his birth took place between the spring and winter of 5 B.C.” (Thomas A. Wayment, “The Birth and Death Dates of Jesus Christ,” in Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment, eds., The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, From Bethlehem Through the Sermon on the Mount (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 394; See also Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment, “When Was Jesus Born? A Response to a Recent Proposal,” BYU Studies 51/3 [2012]: 53-81).

Critics of the Book of Mormon felt that the issue of the six hundred year prophecy was important enough to dismiss the Book of Mormon as fiction, yet subsequent research suggests that it fits rather nicely into what we know about Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican chronology. Those who have never given the matter of the Book of Mormon much attention, or are prone to dismiss it out of hand, may wonder, if Joseph Smith wrote it, how he happened to get this and other significant points right. They might also give prayerful and serious consideration to the proposition that the Book of Mormon may be exactly what it purports to be.

Passover in the Book of Mormon (Howlers # 25 )

As important as the passover was, and is, among all people of Jewish descent, the Book of Mormon (said to be a history of Jewish descendants) makes no mention of its people ever keeping the passover, nor even hints that its people knew anything about it.
                   Jack Free, Mormonism and Inspiration (1962), 125.


The following first appeared as a FARMS Update in August 1984 and was subsequently published in John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 196-98.


Passover, of course, commemorates the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt by the power of God. As part of this celebration, fathers would gather their sons (as in Alma 35:16) in accordance with Exodus 10:2, which told the Jews "to tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son's son, what things I have wrought in Egypt." Alma would have followed this rule since the Nephites "were strict in observing . . . the law of Moses" at this time (Alma 30:3).

According to traditions at least as early as the time of Christ and probably earlier (See Abraham P. Bloch, The Biblical and Historical Background of the Jewish Holy Days (New York: KTAV, 1978), 128-33), after gathering his family the father then instructed his sons and answered their questions. His words were not fixed but were "to fit the knowledge and understanding of the child" and were supposed "to spell out the sequence of sin, suffering, repentance, and redemption" (Ibid., 131-32). Each of Alma's admonitions to his sons, Helaman (Alma 36-37), Shiblon (Alma 38), and Corianton (Alma 39-42), does this precisely, each in its own way.

Moreover, three Passover questions are found in the Bible. Traditionally, each of these questions was asked in turn by the sons and was answered by the father. In time, each of these questions came to be associated with a different type of son.

First, "What is the meaning of the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you?" (Deuteronomy 6:20). This question was asked at Passover by a wise son. Helaman stands as the wise son: In talking to Helaman, Alma mentions "wisdom" at least eight times in Alma 37. Notice also how Alma explains the meaning of the laws and testimonies of God as he explains the meaning of the plates of Nephi (preserved for a "wise purpose"), the twenty-four gold plates, and the Liahona in Alma 37. The Jewish father was especially expected to explain the meaning of traditional things to "future generations" (Ibid., 153), and to use "allegorical interpretation." (Ibid., 157). Alma does exactly this. See Alma 37:19 ("future generations") and Alma 37:45 ("is there not a type in this thing?").

Second, "What mean ye by this service?" (Exodus 12:26). This question was asked by a wicked son. This son is depicted in the Jewish literature as one guilty of social crimes, who had excluded himself from the community, and believed in false doctrines. According to Jewish practice, he is to be told, in a manner that will "set his teeth on edge," that he will be punished for his own sins, and that, had he been in Egypt, he would not have been redeemed^.(Ibid., 159-63). Such is unmistakably the thrust of Alma's words to Corianton—who had left the ministry (see Alma 39:3), caused social problems (see Alma 39:11), followed false doctrines (see Alma 41:9), and is taught by his father about nothing but redemption and one's personal suffering for sin (see Alma 41:3-4, 7).

Third, "What is this?" (Exodus 13:14), is an ambiguous question. Is it sarcastic or serious? Israelite tradition said that the uninformed son who asked this question needed to be taught the law and given preventative instruction to keep him well away from any risk of breaking the law (Ibid., 163-64). This, indeed, is what Alma tells Shiblon, as he teaches him to be diligent (see Alma 38:10) and gives him a high code of conduct (see Alma 38:11-14).

Many other Passover themes are detectable in Alma 35-42. Alma speaks of "crying out" (compare Deuteronomy 26:7; Alma 36:18) for deliverance from "affliction" (compare Deuteronomy 26:6; Alma 36:3, 27; especially the unleavened Passover "bread of affliction") and from bondage in Egypt (Alma 36:28), from the "night of darkness" (compare Alma 41:7; Exodus 12:30), and from bitter suffering (Alma 36:18, 21; related to the Passover "bitter herbs"in Exodus 12:8). The Paschal lamb may parallel some of Alma's references to Christ; and the hardness of Pharaoh's heart (see Exodus 11:10) may parallel Alma's reference to the hardness of his people's hearts (see Alma 35:15). Just as Alma's deliverance was preceded by three days and nights of darkness (see Alma 36:16), so was the first Passover (see Exodus 10:22).

Although still tentative, the proposition is already quite intriguing, if not compelling: Alma's messages to his three sons were spoken in conjunction with a Nephite observance of the feast of the Passover.

“Filled with the Holy Ghost” in Matthew 5:6 and 3 Nephi 12:6 (Howlers # 24)

In 1978 Krister Stendahl, a prominent Lutheran Leader and scholar of the New Testament was invited by Truman Madsen to read and comment on the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon at the Temple in 3 Nephi. Stendahl graciously provided an insightful discussion on the subject which was subsequently published in a collection of essays written by other non–LDS scholars entitled Reflections on Mormonism, a volume which is still of value and well worth reading. In his article, however, Stendahl did take note of 3 Nephi 12:6, which parallels Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” except that the passage in Jesus’ sermon in 3 Nephi adds the phrase “with the Holy Ghost.” Stendahl thought that the additional phrase seemed out of place:

The Greek word behind filled is chortazo, which means “fill the stomach,” as one fills the stomach of animals, not “fill up” in the sense pleroo, which is the biblical term for being filled with the Holy Spirit. it is rather unnatural to use the Greek chortazo for making the addition “with the Holy Spirit” (Krister Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” in Truman G. Madsen, Reflections on Mormonism, 1978, 142).

The following is taken from John W. Welch, The Sermon At the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount. Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990, 114-15].

Krister Stendahl has suggested one such translation problem in the way the Sermon at the Temple renders the fourth Beatitude. It reads, "Blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost" (3 Nephi 12:6). He remarked that it seemed unnatural to associate the Greek word chortazo ("physically filled") with a spiritual filling, since the New Testament Greek usually uses a different word, pleroo, when it speaks of being filled with the Spirit and since chortazo appears in passages about actual feedings of multitudes, eating crumbs, and so on.

The problem, however, is solved when we turn to Old Testament backgrounds of the Sermon. The promise of Jesus, that those who hunger and thirst after "righteousness" (dikaiosunen) shall be filled (chortasthesontai), is closely related to the last two verses of Psalm 17 in the Greek Septuagint (the "LXX"), a rarely mentioned text that Stendahl apparently overlooked. The Psalm contrasts the filling (echortasthesan) of the stomach in uncleanliness with beholding the face of God in righteousness (dikaiosune): "I shall be satisfied [chortasthesomai] when I awake, with thy likeness" (Psalm 17:15). Here the word chortazo is used to describe one's being filled with the Spirit and being satisfied by beholding the righteousness of God.

The distinctiveness of this use of chortazo in Psalm 17 and Matthew 5:6 only increases the likelihood that Jesus' New Testament audience would have recognized his allusion to these words in the Psalm, a passage that would have been quite familiar to them. It shows that the translation in the Sermon at the Temple does well by making explicit this particular understanding of chortazo as having reference to a spiritual filling by the Holy Ghost, such as that which comes when a person beholds the face of God in righteousness.

“I beheld. . . Rumors of Wars”: (Howlers # 23)

When Nephi had a vision of the future of his people before the time of Christ he wrote, “I beheld wars and rumors of wars” (1 Nephi 12:2). He later recounts the destruction of his people and the subsequent conflicts among the Lamanites, “And I saw wars among them; and in wars and rumors of wars I saw many generations pass away” (1 Nephi 12:21). These references have been an object of ridicule since the publication of the Book of Mormon as the following comments show:

“I beheld wars and rumors of wars” . . . Beheld rumors!
               Origen Bacheler, Mormonism Exposed, 1838, 20.

“And I saw wars and rumors of wars among them; and in wars, and rumors of wars, I saw many generations pass away.” The last quotation reminds me of the old lady who in a time of war remarked that they only had the wars then, “but wait,” said she, “until the rumors come”
           G. Stewart, “The Book of Mormon,” The Perfectionist, 15 May, 1843).

[Nephi] was not only a very “large” man, as we are told, but a very funny man I should say, for he cooly informs us that he saw “rumors of war!” so that, according to this professedly “inspired” book, eyes do the work of ears.
           J. B. Sweet, A Lecture on the Book of Mormon, 1857, 12.

The Book of Isaiah begins with the information that it is “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem” (Isaiah 1:1). The second chapter speaks of “the word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:1). Isaiah, however, speaks not only of what he sees, but what he hears. Motyer observes that the verb to see which is used in these passages can mean more than just to see. “All thirty-five occurrences of vision (hazon) and thirty-six out of forty-eight of saw (haza) refer to truth disclosed by God, not necessarily in visual experience” (J Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary. InterVarsity Press, 1993, 41). 

In another study of this verb, which is rendered “seer” in our English translations of the Bible (Isaiah 30:9-10), Jeffers also notes that the term was not used exclusively of visual perception, “the hozeh `sees’ but he also `hears’ in a context where the reception of the word of God plays an important part” (Ann Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria. Leiden: Brill, 1996, 36). Likewise, since the verb has a broader meaning than visual experience, Nephi Seer of olden time could indeed “behold” not only wars, but rumors of wars, even though the English usage at first may seem strange.

Desert Naming Practices (Howlers # 22 )

“All the rivers and valleys he makes Lehi name with new names.”
    John Hyde Jr., Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (1857), 223.


[From Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert (1988), 75-76].

By what right do these people rename streams and valleys to suit themselves? No westerner would tolerate such arrogance. But Lehi is not interested in western taste; he is following a good old Oriental custom. Among the laws "which no Bedouin would dream of transgressing," the first, according to Jennings-Bramley, is that "any water you may discover, either in your own territory or in the territory of another tribe, is named after you." So it happens that in Arabia a great wady (valley) will have different names at different points along its course, a respectable number of names being "all used for one and the same valley. . . . One and the same place may have several names, and the wadi running close to the same, or the mountain connected with it, will naturally be called differently by members of different clans," according to Canaan, who tells how the Arabs "often coin a new name for a locality for which they have never used a proper name, or whose name they do not know," the name given being usually that of some person. However, names thus bestowed by wandering tribesmen "are neither generally known or commonly used," so that we need not expect any of Lehi's place names to survive.

Speaking of the desert "below the Negeb proper," i.e., the general area of Lehi's first camp, Woolley and Lawrence report "peaks and ridges that have different names among the different Arab tribes, and from different sides," and of the nearby Tih Palmer says, "In every locality, each individual object, whether rock, mountain, ravine, or valley, has its appropriate name," while Raswan recalls how "miraculously each hill and dale bore a name." But how reliable are such names? Philby recounts a typical case: "Zayid and 'Ali seemed a little vague about the nomenclature of these parts, and it was only by the irritating process of continual questioning and sifting their often inconsistent and contradictory answers that I was able in the end to piece together the topography of the region." Farther east Cheesman ran into the same difficulty: "I pointed out that this was the third different hill to which he had given the same name. He knew that, was the reply, but that was how they named them."  The irresponsible custom of renaming everything on the spot seems to go back to the earliest times, and "probably, as often as not, the Israelites named for themselves their own camps, or unconsciously confounded a native name in their carelessness." Yet in spite of its undoubted antiquity, only the most recent explorers have commented on this strange practice, which seems to have escaped the notice of travelers until explorers in our own times started to make maps.

Even more whimsical and senseless to a westerner must appear the behavior of Lehi in naming a river after one son and its valley after another. But the Arabs don't think that way. In the Mahra country, for example, "as is commonly the case in these mountains, the water bears a different name from the wadi." Likewise we might suppose that after he had named the river after his first-born the location of the camp beside its waters would be given, as any westerner would give it, with reference to the river. Instead, the Book of Mormon follows the Arabic system of designating the camp not by the name of the river (which may easily dry up sometime), but by the name of the valley (1 Nephi 10:16; 16:6).

Timber at Old World Bountiful (Howlers # 21)

1 Nephi 18:1 indicates that the Jews make a ship from the ample timber in Arabia. The same objection applies here also. 

     Thomas Key, "A Biologist Examines the Book of Mormon," (1985), 1.

At this point Nephi is instructed to build a ship for passage into the New World, at a location probably more remote from shipbuilding timber than any place on the globe. 

     Gordon Fraser, What does the Book of Mormon Teach?, 1964, 37.


Recent research in southern Oman indicates that several kinds of wood were found in the region of Southern Oman that could have been used in building Nephi's ship.

Ore in Old World Bountiful (Howlers # 20)

Although the territory is one that in expanse is comparable to that portion of the United States lying between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, yet in all that range of territory there has been no metal discovered that would be suitable for ship construction, except in the central part of the Sinaitic peninsula, either of which is hundreds of miles distant from the reputed spot where the vessel was built. And this fact goes far to strengthen the oft repeated assertion that the `author and proprietor’ of the Book of Mormon was illiterate.

     Samuel Traum, Mormonism Against Itself, 1910, 98.


Nephi indicates that after his family's arrival at Bountiful that the Lord commanded him to build a ship. "And I said: Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools to construct the ship after the manner which thou hast shown unto me. And it came to pass that the Lord told me wither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools (1 Nephi 17:9-10).

I love the example of Nephi's faith. He does not ask the Lord to do that which he could do himself. Nephi is willing to work and make tools if he can only find the materials to do so.

The passage suggests that ore resources may not have been abundant, but that they were available nearby. This appears to fit the the Dhofar region in southern Oman, the proposed region for Old World Bountiful. Research, sponsored by Brigham Young university and FARMS over the last two decades has yielded evidence for iron ore that could have been used to make Nephi's tools, which you can read about here and here.

Howler's Index

An index to the various howlers has been posted as a separate page. It is organized both alphabetically by subject and by book in the Book of Mormon.

Scimitars in Mesoamerica in Book of Mormon Times (Howlers # 19)

Part 3

Hassig suggests that the short sword is a Post-classic Toltec invention and was unknown in Mesoamerica before this time (Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, 112-13), however, curved scimitar-like long daggers are portrayed in the hands of warriors at Teotihuacan circa A.D. 450 (Arthur G. Miller, The Mural Painting of Teotihuacan. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1973, 85, 116, 162). A monument from Tonina, Mexico, which dates to A.D. 613, shows a noble posing with a curved “scimitar-like flint blade” (Mary Miller and Simon Martin, Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004, 188, plate 106). A figurine found today in the Museo Regional de Campeche, which most likely dates from this period, portrays a warrior wearing a death mask who grasps an unhappy captive in his right hand and a curved weapon in his raised left hand with which he is about to decapitate his victim. The weapon in the figure’s left hand has been called an ax by some scholars, but given its curved form it could just as well be a scimitar (Linda Schele, Hidden Faces of the Maya, 1997, 100-101).

       Similar blades are portrayed in classic and preclassic Maya art from Comitan, Loltun Cave, Izapa,and La Venta, Mexico, and at Kaminaljuyu in highland Guatemala (Roper, “Swords and `Cimeters’ in the Book of Mormon,” 35-40).  Curved scimitar-like blades are also portrayed on several monuments at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo in southern Veracruz (1500-900 BC). Ann Cyphers, currently the leading archaeologist at the site observes that Monuments 78 and 91 portray weapons resembling the Aztec macuahuitl, except that they are curved. Monument 78 “has a curved body with eleven triangular elements encrusted in the sides” (Ann Cyphers, Escultura Olmeca de San Lorenzo Tenochtilan. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 2004, 145).  Monument 112 portrays a figure with a curved dagger in his belt (Cyphers, 190, figure 126). Monument 91 also displays “an object in the form of a curved macana with 14 triangular points” including one on the tip (Cyphers, 159). These weapons appear to represent variants of the same curved “short sword” weapon known from later postclassic art. This suggests that Mesoamerican scimitars were not a late innovation, but were known from preclassic times as the Book of Mormon text suggests.

Mesoamerican Scimitars (Howlers # 19)

Part 2

Ross Hassig has identified a curved weapon portrayed in Postclassic Mesoamerican art which he calls a “short sword”  (Ross Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992, 112-13;  “Weaponry,” in Susan Toby Evans and David L. Webster, eds., Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2001, 810-11; Mexico and the Spanish Conquest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006, 23-24; “La Guerra en la Antigua Mesoamerica,” Arqueologia Mexicana 14/84 Marzo-Abril 2007: 36. See also Esperanza Elizabeth Jimenez Garcia, “Iconografia guerrera en la escultura de Tula, Hidalgo,” Arqueologia Mexicana 14/84 Marzo-Abril 2007: 54-59).

       It was a curved weapon designed for slashing and consisted of a flat hard wooden base approximately 50 cm. (20 inches) long into which were set obsidian blades along both edges. “It was an excellent slasher and yet the forward curve of the sword retained some aspects of a crusher when used curved end forward” (Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, 113). The lightness of the short sword enabled the soldier to carry more than one weapon. “Soldiers could now provide their own covering fire with atlatls while advancing and still engage in hand-to-hand combat with short swords once their closed with the enemy” (Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, 23-24).

This weapon or something very similar may have been used until shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in some sectors of Mesoamerica. Huastec engravings on shell show “a sort of curved club, apparently of wood and with a cutting edge” which may have been a similar weapon (Guy Stresser-Pean, “Ancient Sources on the Huasteca,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians 11 1971, 595). Hassig reported that short swords are portrayed in the hands of warriors on a Aztec monument from the ceremonial center at Tenochtitlan and took this as evidence that the weapon was either “still in use or at least remembered as a functional weapon” at that time (Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, 248, note 8).  Reportedly among the weapons used by the ancestors of Guatemalan peoples were “certain scimitars they say were made of flint” (“Descripcion de la provincia de Zapotitlan y Suchitepequez,” Sociedad de Geografia e Historia de Guatemala, Anales 28 1955: 74).  Another tradition relates that the Pre-Columbian ancestral heroes of certain west Mexican tribes taught their people to make fire and “gave them also machetes or cutlasses of iron” (Robert H. Barlow, “Straw Hats,” Tlalocan 2/1 1945: 94). Interestingly, if credited, this may suggest that pieces of iron may have sometimes been used as scimitar or machete-like blades rather than obsidian. In any case, this weapon seems to be a reasonable candidate for the Book of Mormon scimitar (William J. Hamblin and A Brent Merrill first suggested this correlation in “Notes on the Cimeter (Scimitar) in the Book of Mormon,” Warfare in the Book of Mormon, 361. For a more detailed discussion see Matthew Roper, “Swords and `Cimeters’ in the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8/1 1999: 39-40, 41-43; Roper, “Mesoamerican `Cimeters’ in Book of Mormon times,” Insights: An Ancient Window 28/1 2008: 2-3).

Ancient Near Eastern Scimitars (Howlers # 19)

Part 1

A Cimeter (more commonly spelled scimitar) is a sword  “having a curved blade with the edge on the convex side” or “something resembling a scimitar (as in sharpness or shape); esp: a long-handled billhook” (Webster’s Third International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged 1993). Critics have long claimed that the scimitar was unknown before the rise of Islam and that references to this weapon in the Book of Mormon is anachronistic.


I might urge the utterance of ideas and the use of words which these ancient writers, if genuine, could not have known, as an argument against the authenticity of the book. Such as . . . . Cimeters.”

John Hyde Jr., Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (1857), 234-35.

The book contains evidence of its modern origin . . . . The cimeter, a Turkish weapon, not known until after the time of Mohommed.

Samuel Hawthornthwaite, Adventures Among the Mormons (1857), 69.

The use of the word `scimitar’ does not occur in other literature before the rise of Mohammedan power and apparently that peculiar weapon was not developed until long after the Christian era. It does not, therefore, appear likely that the Nephites or the Lamanites possessed either the weapon or the term.

W. E. Riter to James E. Talmage, August 22, 1921.

Cimeters were curved swords used by the Persians, Arabs, and Turks, half a world away from America and appearing a thousand years too late in history to enter the picture.

Gordon Fraser, Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates (1964), 58.

Scimitars are unknown until the rise of the Muslim faith (after 600 A. D.)

James Spencer, The Disappointment of B.H. Roberts (1991), 4.

There are other anachronisms such as . . . cimeter, the latter presumably an Arabian scimitar that "did not originate before the rise of Islam" more than a millennium  after Lehi.

Earl Wunderli, An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells Us About Itself (2013), 36.


We now know that scimitars of various forms were known in the Ancient Near East as early as 2000 B.C. (Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963, 1: 10-11, 78-79, 172, 204-207; William J. Hamblin, Warfare in the Ancient Near East to 1600 BC. London and New York: Rutledge, 2006, 66-71, 279-80). They are subsequently portrayed in martial art from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Rare archaeological specimens of this weapon have also been found. The cutting edge was usually on the convex side, however some were double-edged such as the “curved sword sharpened on two sides” discovered at Shechem which dates to 1800 B.C. (“Arms and Weapons,” in Charles F. Pfeiffer, ed., The Biblical World: A Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology. New York: Bonanza Books, 1966, 93). “Ancient representations show mostly the employment of the inner blade; that of the outer one is however also perhaps to be found. Preserved oriental scimitars have the blade outside” (G. Molin, “What is a Kidon?” Journal of Semitic Studies 1/4 October 1956: 336).

In the biblical account of David’s confrontation with Goliath the Philistine champion is said to be well armored. In addition to his spear he had both a hereb sword with a sheath (1 Samuel 17:51) and a kidon which he carries between his shoulders (1 Samuel 17:6). The term kidon was once a mystery, but texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest that it was some kind of sword and is now widely acknowledged to have been a scimitar (Paul Y. Hoskisson, “Scimitars, Cimeters! We have scimilars! Do we need another cimeter?” in Warfare in the Book of Mormon, 352-59. G. Molin, “What is a Kidon?” 334-37; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel. New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1965, 1:242). When challenged in 1 Samuel 17:45 David responds to his opponent, “You come against me with a sword [hereb] and spear [hanit] and scimitar [kidon], but I come against you with the name of Yahweh Sabaoth, god of the ranks of Israel” (See P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., 1 Samuel. New York: Doubleday, 1980, 285). Interestingly, as Hoskisson observes, the biblical description in the Hebrew text parallels that in Alma 44:8 in which the Zoramite chieftain carries both a sword and a scimitar (Hoskisson, “Scimitars, Cimeters!" 355).

The Names Sam and Josh (Howlers # 17 and 18)

One of his brothers was a real Yankee–Sam! Well done, Prophet Smith; you can’t get rid of your Jonathanisms. Sam indeed! Fie, Joseph, how you forget yourself. Can’t you forge better than this? Precious little of Yankee wit, have you in your composition, to let a Yankeeism creep into the ancient `Book of Nephi’ in this manner. . . . `Sam, Josh, and Gid.’ . . . .There’s Yankee for ye. Rather out of place, however, in ancient writings . . . . Sam, Josh, and Gid, are half names, or Jonathanisms.

Origen Bachelor, Mormonism Exposed, Internally and Externally (New York: 1838), 11, 14.

Here is a boy six hundred years before Christ who has the unmistakable Yankee nickname for Samuel. There is certainly nothing Hebraistic about this name, nor does it sound like any Egyptian name we ever heard.

M. T. Lamb, The Golden Bible (1887), 218.

This name Sam, by the way, sounds very modern.

Edgar E. Folk, The Mormon Monster, or the Story of Mormonism (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1900), 186.

No Hebrew named his child "Sam" (v. 5). "Sam" is an American name, but not a Hebrew name.

Marvin Cowan, Mormon Claims Answered (1989), 39.



Both Sam and Josh are now known to be authentic Hebrew names attested in Hebrew inscriptions from before 587 B.C. only published in the last few decades. Both names are hypocoristic or abbreviated forms of Hebrew names which have dropped the theophoric element from the end (John Tvedtnes, John Gee and Matthew Roper, "Book of Mormon Names Attested in Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9/1 2000: 49-51. For more information on the names Sam, Josh and other Book of Mormon names researchers will want to consult the Willes Center's Onomasticon Project.

Sheum (Howlers # 16)

"Neas" and "sheum." Pray tell me what kinds of grain neas and sheum are. Joseph Smith's translation needs another translation, to render it intelligible.

Origen Bacheler, Mormonism Exposed (1838), 14.

The Book of Mormon mentions sheum as one of several crops cultivated by the people of Zeniff during the second century B.C. (Mosiah 9:9). While this term is not found in the Bible, it is an attested Akkadian cereal name dating to the third millennium B.C. (Jean Bottero, Elena Cassin and Jean Vercoutter, eds., The Near East: The Early Civilizations. New York: Delacorte Press, 1967, 63; Robert F. Smith, "Some `Neologisms' from the Mormon Canon." In Conference on the Language of the Mormons. Provo: Brigham Young University Lanaguage Research Center, 1973, 66).

Use of this ancient Akkadian term in the Book of Mormon is significant, since the Jaredite colony may have come from Mesopotamia at approximately the same time (Ether 1:33). The term would have been unknown to the translator of the Book of Mormon, however, since Akkadian could not be read until decades after the Book of Mormon was published (Ernst Doblhofer, Voices in Stone: The Decipherment of Ancient Scripts and Writings. New York: Collier Books, 1971, 121-148; Cyrus H. Gordon, Forgotten Scripts: Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherment. New York: Dorset Press, 1987, 55-85).

The reference to sheum in an agricultural context in the Book of Mormon constitutes a significant piece of evidence supporting the antiquity of the Book of Mormon. "It is a well known fact," writes Professor Hildegard Lewy, a specialist in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian [Akkadian] languages, "that the name of plants and particularly of [grains] are applied in various languages and dialects to different species." Lewy notes that this often poses a challenge in interpreting references to Assyrian cereals in ancient near Eastern documents.  When doing so, "the meaning of these Old Assyrian terms must be inferred from the Old Assyrian texts alone without regard to their signification in sources from Babylonia and other regions adjacent to Assyria" (Hildegard Lewy, "Some old Assyrian cereal names," Journal of the American Oriental Society 76/4 October--December 1956: 201).

Other Assyriologists have observed that the ancient Assyrian term sheum was used at various times to refer to barley, grains generally, and even pine nuts (The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Edited by John A. Brinkman, et. al. Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1992, 17, part 2: 345-55). Since sheum in the Book of Mormon account is mentioned in addition to barley and wheat, the term was likely used by Book of Mormon peoples to refer to some other new world crop of which there are a variety of possible candidates.

For more information on sheum and neas see the Willes Center's Book of Mormon Onomasticon Project.

No Fire and Raw Meat in the Desert (Howlers # 12)

It seems, with all their knowledge of the arts of the compass, they did not know enough to rub two pieces of wood or stone against each other to get fire.
Tyler Parsons, Mormon Fanaticism Exposed (1841), 11.

There was no lack of wood for fire in the wilderness, no lack of stones to smite together, but simply to prove to them that they are the Lord's special pets, he saves them the trouble of making fire by performing the prodigious miracle of making raw meat sweet and palatable.
         M. T. Lamb, The Golden Bible (1887), 61.


From Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert (1988), 63-67.

The Book of Mormon makes no mention of Lehi's people meeting any other party in their eight years of wandering. Casual meetings with stray families of Bedouins then as now would merit no special attention, but how were they able to avoid any important contacts for eight years and some 2500 miles of wandering?

One illuminating "aside" by Nephi explains everything. It was only after they reached the seashore, he says, that his people were able to make fires without danger, "for the Lord had not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire, as we journeyed in the wilderness; for he said: I will make thy food become sweet, that ye cook it not; and I will also be your light in the wilderness" (1 Nephi 17:12—13). That tells all. "I remember well," writes Bertram Thomas, "taking part in a discussion upon the unhealthiness of campfires by night; we discontinued them forthwith in spite of the bitter cold." Major Cheesman's guide would not even let him light a tiny lamp in order to jot down star readings, and they never dared build a fire on the open plain where it "would attract the attention of a prowling raiding party over long distances and invite a night attack." Once in a while in a favorably sheltered depression "we dared to build a fire that could not be seen from a higher spot," writes Raswan. That is, fires are not absolutely out of the question, but rare and risky—not much fire, was Lehi's rule. And fires in the daytime are almost as risky as at night: Palgrave tells how his party were forced, "lest the smoke of our fire should give notice to some distant rover, to content ourselves with dry dates," instead of cooked food.

So of course no fire means raw food. And what is one to do if one's diet is meat? "Throughout the Desert," writes Burckhardt, "when a sheep or goat is killed, the persons present often eat the liver and kidney raw, adding to it a little salt. Some Arabs of Yemen are said to eat raw not only those parts, but likewise whole slices of flesh; thus resembling the Abyssinians and the Druses of Libanon [sic], who frequently indulge in raw meat, the latter to my own certain knowledge." Nilus, writing fourteen centuries earlier, tells how the Bedouin of the Tih live on the flesh of wild animals, failing which "they slaughter a camel, one of their beasts of burden, and nourish themselves like animals from the raw meat," or else scorch the flesh quickly in a small fire to soften it sufficiently not to have to gnaw it "like dogs." Only too well does this state of things match the grim economy of Lehi: "They did suffer much for the want of food" (1 Nephi 16:19); "we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness" (1 Nephi 17:2).

All this bears out the conviction, supported both by modern experience and the evidence of archaeology, that Lehi was moving through a dangerous world. In ancient times Jewish merchants traveling through the desert fell so often into the hands of Bedouin raiders that by the beginning of the Christian era their word for "captor" normally meant simply "Arab"!  Arab inscriptions from Lehi's time show that "in the peninsula . . . there was constant unrest," even as in modern times. Ordinary times in the desert are bad times when, in the words of one of the oldest Arab poets, "the honored man did not dare stay in the open country, and flight did not save the coward." "A lonely life it is," writes Philby, ". . . a life of constant fear; . . . hunger is the rule of the desert." Hunger, danger, loneliness, fear—Lehi's people knew them all.

Just what was the danger? "The Arab tribes are in a state of almost perpetual war against each other. . . . To surprise the enemy by a sudden attack, and to plunder a camp, are chief objects of both parties."  "Raiding to them is the spice of life. . . . Might is right, and man ever walks in fear for his life and possessions." Lehi could ill afford to get embroiled in these perennial desert feuds, and yet he was everywhere a trespasser—the only way for him to stay out of trouble was to observe a rule which Thomas lays down for all travelers in the desert, even today: "An approaching party may be friend, but is always assumed to be foe." In the words of the ancient poet Zuhair, "He who travels should consider his friend an enemy." Nilus describes Bedouins on the march in the fifth century as possessed by the same jittery nervousness and unbearable tension that make the accounts of Cheesman, Philby, Thomas, Palgrave, Burckhardt, and the others such exciting reading: At the merest sign of an armed man, he says, his Bedu fled in alarm "as if seized by panic fear," and kept on fleeing, "for fear makes them exaggerate danger and causes them to imagine things far beyond reality, magnifying their dread in every instance."20 Just so their modern descendants "live always under the impression that an invasion is on the way, and every suspicious shadow or movement on the horizon calls their attention," according to the astute Baldensperger. This almost hysterical state of apprehension is actually a prime condition of survival in the desert: "A Bedawy never tells his name," says the writer just quoted, "nor his tribe, nor his business, nor the whereabouts of his people, even if he is in a friendly district. . . . They are and must be very cautious; . . . a word out of season may bring death and destruction." When the BanÄ« Hila-l migrate, it is "under the darkness of the night, under the obscuring veil of the rain," bypassing settled places in darkness and in silence. What can better describe such a state of things than the Book of Mormon expression, "a lonesome and a solemn people" (Jacob 7:26)? Doughty said he had never met a "merry" man among the Arabs—and there is no humor in the Book of Mormon. This mood is hardly accidental: if the Hebrew gets his brooding qualities from his desert ancestors, why not the Lamanite?

Sir Richard Burton, one of the few individuals who has ever known both the American Indian and Bedouin Arab at first hand, was greatly impressed by their exact resemblance to each other, a resemblance so striking that he must warn his reader against attributing it to a common origin, explaining the perfect paralleling of temperament and behavior as due to "the almost absolute independence" of their way of life. Yet many equally independent tribesmen in other parts of the world in no way resemble these two. One of the writer's best friends is a venerable but enterprising Lebanese, who has spent many years both among the Bedouins of the desert and the Indians of New Mexico as a peddler and trader; he avers that there is absolutely no difference between the two races so far as manners and customs are concerned. Arabs now living in Utah who have had some contact with Indians in the West, affirm the same thing with considerable emphasis. It is a nice problem for the sociologist, and the writer only mentions it because it has been brought to his attention innumerable times. There may be something to it.

Lehi's party, as we have noted, were like the Banī Hila-l trespassers wherever they walked. Every inch of the desert is claimed by some tribe or other that will demand the life of a trespasser. "Marked boundaries do not exist, and it is natural that questions of ownership should be settled by fighting, which becomes an annual affair, while the looting of camels grows into a habit," according to Cheesman. Hence the need for extreme caution and strict avoidance on Lehi's part: "In most cases," says Jennings-Bramley, "Arabs do not think it prudent to allow the raiders near enough to decide whether they are friendly or not," and he describes a typical meeting in the desert: "Both we and they were doing our best not to be seen." Of course this sort of thing leads to comic situations, ignoble panic, and ridiculous anticlimaxes, but in a game of life and death one simply can't take chances, and Lehi was playing for the highest stakes. And so we are left with the picture of a wandering band sticking glumly to themselves for years on end, which, impossible as it seems to us, is a normal thing in the desert wastes, where the touchy, dangerous, unsocial Bedouin takes his stand as one of the most difficult, challenging, and fascinating creatures on earth.

Trouble With Snakes? (Howlers # 11 )

Can you imagine snakes on a cattle drive, humping along behind loping cattle? Can you imagine the snakes setting up guards to keep the people and cattle apart? . . . .Is this a real story or a fairy tale? 

        Charles Crane, The Bible and Mormon Scriptures Compared (1983), 29.

The Book of Mormon story claims that the Lord sent poisonous snakes that out-witted all the warriors who were well equipped with weapons of war

            “The Story Teller,” The Inner Circle, October 1987: [8].


The passage from the book of Ether reads as follows:

And it came to pass that there began to be a great dearth upon the land, and the inhabitants began to be destroyed exceedingly fast because of the dearth, for there was no rain upon the face of the earth.

And there came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous serpents, towards the land southward, which was called by the Nephites Zarahemla.
   
And it came to pass that there were many of them which did perish by the way; nevertheless, there were some which fled into the land southward.
   
And it came to pass that the Lord did cause the serpents that they should pursue them no more, but that they should hedge up the way that the people could not pass, that whoso should attempt to pass might fall by the poisonous serpents.
   
And it came to pass that the people did follow the course of the beasts, and did devour the carcasses of them which fell by the way, until they had devoured them all. Now when the people saw that they must perish they began to repent of their iniquities and cry unto the Lord (Ether 9:30-34).

A snake infestation at a key geographical location could be a particularly troublesome challenge even to a large and well-armed army. Hugh Nibley referenced an episode from one of the campaigns of the Roman general Pompey (Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, 1988, 221). The historian Plutarch related:

Pompey was eager to advance with his forces upon the Hyrcanian and Caspian Sea, but was forced to retreat at a distance of three days’ march from it by the number of venomous serpents, and so he retreated into Armenia (Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Translated by John Dryden. New York: Modern Library, 1979, 765).


In a time of drought, such as described in Ether 9:28-35, the snakes, like other animals would go where they could find food. John Tvedtnes provides an interesting perspective on this episode from the Book of Ether. The following was originally published in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6/1 (1997): 70-72


During my lengthy residence in Israel (1971–79), I had opportunity to visit the Musa Alami Farm near Jericho. The farm had been constructed after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence to settle displaced Palestinian refugees. It was particularly geared toward teaching various farm skills to Palestinian boys. During the 1950s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had equipped the farm with a dairy and a starter herd and had sent dairy experts to operate that portion of the farm.
    
Much of the farm was in disrepair during our visit because of the 1967 Six-Day War. Orange groves had died from lack of water, and most of the fields lay fallow. During the war, all but two of the pumps bringing underground water to the surface had been destroyed, making it impossible to maintain the farm at its previous level. Most of the refugees had fled across the Jordan River to the kingdom of Jordan. The Israelis had also expropriated all the land on the western bank of the river in order to maintain security patrols along the new border.
    
Of particular interest to me was the effect on local wildlife. When crops were no longer being grown near the river, the mice moved westward to find grains in the few fields still under cultivation. They were, naturally, followed by serpents. From time to time, residents of the farm found vipers in and around their houses. This, they assured us, had never happened before the war.
    
My thoughts turned to the story in Ether 9:30–33, where we read that the Jaredites were plagued by “poisonous serpents” during a time of “great dearth” when “there was no rain upon the face of the earth.” Their flocks fled southward from the serpents; some of the people also escaped in that direction, but the large number of serpents “hedge[d] up the way that the people could not pass.” After the people repented, the Lord sent rain, which ended the famine, producing “fruit in the north countries” (Ether 9:35).
 
Several generations after the famine, “in the days of Lib the poisonous serpents were destroyed. Wherefore they did go into the land southward, to hunt food for the people of the land, for the land was covered with animals of the forest” (Ether 10:19). It was at this time that the Jaredites set aside the land southward as a game preserve (see Ether 10:21). This suggests that much of the wildlife had perished during the dearth in the land northward.
    
We do not know by what means—whether miraculous, natural, or by the hand of man—the serpents were eliminated. It may be that they simply dispersed throughout the region as the dearth abated, following the rodents who, in turn, were following the regenerating plant life.
    
A similar tale is told of the Israelites during the period of the exodus from Egypt. Soon after arriving in the wilderness, where there was “no bread, neither . . . water,” they encountered poisonous serpents “and much people of Israel died.” In this case, however, the serpents were not destroyed; instead, the Lord provided a miraculous means for the healing of those who had been bitten (see Numbers 21:5–9; see Deuteronomy 8:15; 2 Kings 18:4; John 3:14–5; 1 Corinthians 10:9; 1 Nephi 17:41; 2 Nephi 25:20). Nor was this an instance of occasional drought, for the desert into which the Israelites fled was perpetually barren. For this reason, rodents, accompanied by their serpent predators, would have been more common at the oases that became the Israelite campsites.
    
In reflecting on the time when Israel wandered “in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness” (Deuteronomy 32:10), Moses again connected poisonous serpents with conditions of “hunger, and . . . burning heat” (Deuteronomy 32:24). Similarly, Jeremiah prophesied a time when there would be “no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade,” a time of war, when the people would flee into the cities for defense and the Lord would “send serpents . . . and they shall bite you” (Jeremiah 8:13–17). War often brought famine in the ancient Near East. Invading armies would consume local produce and capture foodstuffs and would often trample fields of grain during combat (compare Alma 3:2). Rodents in search of food would have migrated to the cities and been followed by the serpents.
    
I suspect that a similar problem would have existed among the Nephites who gathered all their animals and foodstuffs in the time of Lachoneus and Gidgiddoni, making it difficult for the invading Gadianton robber band to subsist (see 3 Nephi 4). From the Book of Mormon, we cannot know for sure if the Nephites had problems with serpents at this time, for, as Mormon wrote, “there had many things transpired which . . . cannot all be written in this book . . . but behold there are records which do contain all the proceedings of this people” (3 Nephi 5:8–9). What is certain, however, is that the story of the poisonous serpents which plagued the Jaredites has a ring of truth about it.

Irreantum and "Many Waters" (Howlers # 10)

"Irreantum, which being interpreted, is, many waters." . . . Proof of this, Mr. Nephi Mormon Moroni Rigdon Harris Cowdery Smith. Let us have the proof. Irreantum signifies a complete ass, nearer than anything else.

Origen Bacheler, Mormonism Exposed Internally and Externally (1838), 14

Nephi says "We beheld the sea, which we called Irreantum, which being interpreted, is many waters" (1 Nephi 17:5). Nephi's wording suggests that this may not have been a name from his native language. Years ago Hugh Nibley suggested a possible Egyptian derivation for the name (Since Cumorah, 1988, 171-72), but his proposal has not persuaded other Latter-day Saint linguists. More recently John Gee, Paul Hoskisson and Brian Hauglid have argued, that the name does make sense as a South Semitic name meaning "watering of completeness" or "watering of (super)abundance" which is consistent with Nephi's interpretation of the name.

For a more complete discussion, see the Book of Mormon Onomasticon entry.