Question about Book of Mormon Geography

[Olavarria]

Maybe more like finding Cowboys in Wyoming and Texas. They have a similar culture and experience, but certainly wouldn't consider themselves part of some larger group.

Although modern examples are difficult, it is something like being Mormon in American culture. Most of my material goods are not easily distinguished from my neighbors, and even the distinctions are rarely attributable to my religion.

Got it. Thanks.

[poulsenll]

Thank you Larry! I am not nearly prepared to digest all of the details of BoM geography yet, but I appreciate you clarifying it for me.

Quick question. Since you clearly disagree with Sorenson's take on Nephite directions, could you summarize your take on this?

Imagine Lehi leaving Israel with this general method of determining compass directions. It has been long held that Lehi and family landed on the southwest side of Mesoamerica, having crossed the Pacific Ocean. If this is true, Lehi would have stood with his back to the sea (which was south-southwest) and called that yam, or â??west.â? Therefore, on his left hand would be â??northâ? (which was actually west-northwest), on his right hand was â??southâ?, and directly in front of him would be â??eastâ?. Transporting this ancient Israelite model directly to the New World provides us with a means for understanding the skewed directions (from our perspective) that we find in the Book of Mormon.

Sargon

This is an attempt by Sorenson to justify his geocentric conclusion that the Atlantic ocean as a whole was the east sea. Although he says "our perspective" he really means his perspective. He has already concluded that the Atlantic is the East Sea and thus the directions must be skewed.

Rephrasing his logic:

He describes a "general method of determing "compass directions" when the Ancient Hebrews did not even have a compass or the concept of a magnetic north. He then assumes that the Hebrews determined directions by placing their back to the sea. Most Hebrews were nomads living far from the sea. In order for them to put their back to the sea they would have to know that the sea was only at their backs when they faced the sun at sunrise. Now when Lehi and his family arrived in the new world they would have faced the sun at sunrise and immediately noticed that the sea was NOT at their backs. They would never have placed their backs to the sea and ignored the direction of sunrise. Also to think that they would do this and then perpetuate this nonsense for 1000 years when all the cultures they came into contact with thought that west was the opposite of sunrise.

Sorenson also notes the fact that he Book of Mormon references more locations to north and south than it does to east and west. He simply writes this off as something for future research. If one proposes that the Nephites, by the time of Alma and Mormon were using the same directional concepts as did the Aztecs and Mayas then the descrepancy can be easily explained. The ancient Americans divided the land into four quarters with themselves at the center. They also included up and down as directions in their concept of directions, the Quarters were not based on a square as we would do but on a rectangle with the borders of the quarters determined by lines drawn between sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstices. This concept of directions is commonly called a quincunx.

This figure gives a graphic depiction of this concept.

This concept predicts that the frequency of directions in the north and south will be greater than those to east and west. When the 378 Book of Mormon references are used to calculate these percentages, the following results are obtained.

As shown, the results are as predicted for north, east and west. Although south is less than expected, this is reasonable since the Lamanite controlled territory was to the south, specific localities and geographic features would be expected to be less commonly referenced. When I described this to John Clark, before I could give my rational for the descepancy, he immediately responded that the descrepancy with southern directions was likely due to the Lamanites being in the south.

These results support a directional concept similar to anciaent American cultures and do not support the twisted concept proposed by Sorenson.

Larry P

[deadeye]

I'm relatively new here, so I don't know if this has been discussed previously. In reference to Book of Mormon Geography. Has anyone else seen the Great Lakes region map that has over two dozen place name similarities? This seems like a plausible possibility to me. Earlier in my life, it seemed reasonable that Central America represented the "narrow strip of land", but the part that bothered me is how far away that is from the Hill Cumorah in New York. This map is interesting, since the Geography makes sense and the place name similarities are remarkable?

http://www.uwec.edu/geOGrApHY/Ivogeler/w18...place-names.htm

[Brant Gardner]

I'm relatively new here, so I don't know if this has been discussed previously. In reference to Book of Mormon Geography. Has anyone else seen the Great Lakes region map that has over two dozen place name similarities?

As it happens, there is a good article on that topic in the FAIR wiki. If this link doesn't work, go to fairlds.org and then to the FAIR wiki. Search for Vernal Holley.