CHOICE ABOVE ALL OTHER
LANDS
Book of Mormon Covenant Lands
According to the Best Sources
NOT FAR FROM CUMORAH
Image derived from Google Earth,
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Google
"East" is East,
"West" is West in the Promised Land
The
Central American Isthmus of Tehuantepec is far too wide to be the Book of
Mormon's "small neck of land"
(Alma 22:32)
The distance across the
Mesoamerican isthmus is comparable to the distance across the Yucatan Peninsula.
In fact, the distance across Tehuantepec is about 3/4 as far as the distance
across the narrowest breadth of the Yucatan.
The
"narrow pass" mentioned in the Book
of Mormon is described as having water "on the west and on the east" of it.
(Alma 50:34)
It is clear from scripture that there was a "west sea" by the "narrow neck".
(Alma 50:34) In order to accept a Central American setting featuring the wide, lateral, Isthmus
of Tehuantepec as the Book of Mormon's "small neck of land",
one has to accept that ancient peoples of that region used outrageously skewed
definitions of "west" and
"east". The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, lies between the Gulf of Mexico to the
north and the Pacific
Ocean to the south. It is true that various cultures around
the world have different ways of coordinating directions, but ancient Israelites
coordinated their east and west according to sunrise and
sunset. For instance, the Hebrew
expression translated "westward" (in the direction of the Great inland sea) in
Joshua 23:4, literally means "going down of the sun".
Can we trust
that "west" plainly means in the general direction of sunset
and that
"east" faces sunrise
when
the Book of
Mormon tells us of a "sea on the west and on the east"
relative to a point "by
the narrow pass ..."?
(Alma 50:34) The
answer is yes!
The
Hebrew word "qĕdĕm" (קֶדֶם)
means front or before, it is sometimes translated east or before
sunrise. As one stands before the rising sun, "west" is behind or in back.
Therefore, the Hebrew word "ahor" (אָחוֹר)
meaning back, after
or hinder
can in some instances be
interpreted to mean west.
(Y'shaYahu 9:11 in the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 9:12 in the KJV)
The Dead Sea is sometimes referred to as the
"former sea" or
"eastern
sea"
, while the
Mediterranean
is sometimes called the
"back sea",
"hinder sea"
or
"western
sea".
(Zechariah 14:8)
Relative to
Jerusalem, the Mediterranean is west, as the sun sets, and the
Dead Sea
is east - toward sunrise.
The
LORD said to Joshua, "...unto the great sea toward the going down
of the sun, shall be your coast."
(Joshua 1:4)
It makes sense in the
land
of
Israel
to equate
seaward with
"westward".
(Genesis 13:14)
The Hebrew
dictionary in the LDS RESOURCE EDITION of THE SCRIPTURES notes that seaward,
pronounced "yamah"
(יָמָה)
is locally
"westward" (in the direction of the
Mediterranean). In other words, seaward
is
"westward" in the
land of Israel.
Interpreting seaward as west elsewhere risks taking
things out
of context.
Similarly desert-ward, "negbah" (נֶגְבָּה) is used as another way of
saying "south" in the land of Israel, because there is desert to the south.
(Joshua 18:14) This does not mean that ancient Israelites, outside of the land
of Canaan, were inclined to arbitrarily designate "south" in the direction of an arid land, or "west" in the arbitrary direction of a seashore.
The Israelite compass is actually based on the perceived movement of the
heavenly quarters, and there are other terms in Hebrew scripture for east
and west, and these terms directly relate to sunrise and
sunset:
The
Hebrew word "mizrah
"
(מִזְרָח)
literally means from sunrise or place of sunrise and is translated
"east". For example:
"mizrah" is translated
"east
"
in
Joshua 11:3 (KJV).
In the same verse,
"on the west" literally means
"from the
sea" (the
Mediterranean). The English word east
relates to the Greek eos
meaning dawn.
The Hebrew word for west,
"maarav" (מַעֲרָב)
means from evening or place of sunset.
(Isaiah 45:6;
59:19)
This
Hebrew word for west
appropriately applies to places beyond the confines
of the land of
Israel , and would certainly have been used by Lehi and Nephi.
(Psalm 103:12;
107:3,
Isaiah 43:5)
The English word
west
relates to the Latin
vesper, and has much the same meaning as the Hebrew word. There is
no sound reason
to suppose
that the LORD would allow the meaning of "west" in the
English translation of the Book of Mormon, to not remain true to its origin.
The
word translated
"sea" from Hebrew scripture, is "yam" (יָם).
Yam doesn't have to mean ocean. Examples are: yam kinĕrĕt
- "the
sea
of
Chinnereth"
(Numbers 34:11, KJV);
westerners call this sea "the
Sea of Galilee." There is also yam mĕlah
"the
salt sea"
(Genesis 14:3, KJV); westerners call this sea "the
Dead Sea." These are inland bodies of water.
Just as we should not assume that everywhere the Bible mentions a "sea"
or even "the sea", it is referring to ocean, so we should not
assume, as we read the Book of Mormon, that "the sea south", "the
sea north", "the sea west", "the sea east", "the
west sea, south" and "the place where the sea divides the land"
all refer to oceanic bodies of water.
(Helaman 3:8,
Alma 53:8,
Ether 10:20) Ocean,
in fact, is a Gentile
term that does not appear in Hebrew Scripture, or in the Book of Mormon.
Distinguishing the Ocean from other seas, the Book of Mormon and the
Bible speak of "the great deep" or the "the great sea"
(the
Mediterranean).
(Doctrine and Covenants 133:20,
Genesis 7:11,
Isaiah 51:10,
Ezekiel 47:19-20,
2 Nephi 4:20,
Helaman 12:16,
Ether 2:25;
7:27)
Phyllis
Carol Olive, author of The Lost Lands of the Book of Mormon, has found what the lands of western
New York
would have looked like with ancient inland seas restored. The lands that
appear, match descriptions given in the Book of Mormon in terms of location,
orientation and elevation.
Western New York
was once occupied by peoples classified broadly as
"mound
builders".
Phyllis Olive's
discovery of a narrow neck of land (a moraine passing through ancient
Lake
Tonawanda) squares with scripture and the Israelite compass. Sister Olive has realized that the
lands of the Book of Mormon cannot be thousands of miles distant from the place
that scripture designates as Cumorah.
(Doctrine and Covenants 128:20) Sticking with
the Scriptures, Phyllis Olive has discovered, or rather rediscovered, the genuine
lands of the Book of Mormon.
Click on
Broad Neck
to find an article originally titled
The
Tehuantepec Smoke Screen -
Obscuring
the Truth about Israelite Directions in Order to Sell Mexican / Mesoamerican
Cumorah Theory.
This article discusses in greater detail how the Central American theory fails
to follow LDS scripture.
Click on
American Land of Israel
for Olive's Near Cumorah Setting
by Deduction and Best Fit!
Copyright © 2008 by W. Vincent Coon
Click here for More Information on
The Lost Lands of the Book of Mormon
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