It has been a while since I wrote or read anything about the Book of Mormon. It is good, however, to remember what we have in the Bible and to appreciate it in contrast (and comparison) to those books (like the Book of Mormon) which pretend to be its equal.
So resuming where I left off, after the incident with the bow, Nephi and company travel eight years eastward until they eventually reach a sea they call "Irreantum" on the shore of a land they call "Bountiful, because of its much fruit" (the name and the reason behind it being repeated twice in the space of two verses). Where this is in the real world is a little difficult to parse out since the only point of known geography mentioned in the book has been Jerusalem. However, since the overall direction of the journey has been southeastward of Jerusalem, we can say it's probably the Indian Ocean and the southern shore of the Arabian Peninsula. This is, in fact, the only possible destination given their direction of travel.
Upon their arrival at the seashore, Nephi goes up into the mountains and God commands him to build a ship with which to cross the ocean. This will be a special ship, not made in the fashion of any normal human shipbuilding but according to special divine instructions (1 Nephi 18:1-3). Nephi then asks where he will get the ore to make the metal tools necessary for ship building. Much is made of the manner in which Nephi constructs these tools, down to describing how Nephi constructed a bellows and started the fire to melt the ore to make the tools, etc.
The curious thing is that Nephi's question and the descriptions of his work that follow miss the point. Tools are the easy part of any such ship-building endeavor. Primitive shipbuilding did not require much in the way of specialized metal tools. Even a small ax could be used to accomplish much of the work, cutting, splitting, and planing wood, as well as driving in nails with the back side (axes are, really, terrifically useful tools common to every culture and era, which is one reason why Gary Paulson was able to convincingly write two books revolving around a plane crash victim surviving alone in the wilderness with only a small hatchet). Knives could be used for chisels or for sealing the cracks between boards with cordage. In fact, it is difficult to conceive of any primitive tool shipbuilding would require which would not have been with Nephi's party already. Without an ax, they would have been unable to cut wood either for the making of Nephi's bow in chapter 16 or for the making of the forge fire in chapter 17. Without a knives, they would be unable to skin and dress the game they survived upon in the wilderness for eight years...so either they had pretty much all the tools they needed already or they couldn't have made it this far in the narrative to start with.
Of course, we might assume that more specialized tools might have been required, but again, making them should not be too difficult. What would unquestionably be difficult and what explicitly required direct input from God was designing and building a ship. Curiously, this part is glossed over. There is absolutely no description of the design of the ship Nephi built, nor of its materials or manner of construction, even though all are said to have been directly commanded by God. In the Bible, God commands Noah to build a ship with a specific design, but there in Genesis the design of the ship is described in detail, as are its construction materials. There the hard part which required God's direct intervention is described to us while irrelevant details (where Noah got the tools) are left out. In the Book of Mormon the opposite is true.
It is difficult to believe that the same God who painstakingly described the special design of Noah's ark would be sidetracked from doing the same with the special design of Nephi's ship. However, an alternate explanation exists. The designs for the Ark contained in Genesis are complete enough to allow scientists and engineers to create scale models of the Ark to test its seaworthiness and estimate its cargo capacity, both of which verify the Biblical accounts. If God truly designed Nephi's ship as well, inclusion of its design would similarly result in proof of the Book of Mormon. But no design is included. This may be because, in fact, God did not give a design to Nephi, Joseph Smith did. Smith grew up in a landlocked region as a farmer and knew nothing of nautical engineering. However, he did know that people would have trouble accepting the idea that ancient Jews from Jerusalem managed to build a vessel seaworthy enough to cross the oceans to the Americas over 2,000 years before Columbus. Someone was bound to object that the Israelites of the 6th Century did not know how to construct such ships, so Smith claimed the design was special from God and even used different techniques. However, if he included the design and techniques to verify his claim there was always a chance someone would test them and find him a fraud. As he did with the Lost Pages, Smith took the easy way out and omitted any reference to an actual design, anything that could be tested and verified. Smith calls us to trust blindly. God calls us to test Him and see that He is true.
So resuming where I left off, after the incident with the bow, Nephi and company travel eight years eastward until they eventually reach a sea they call "Irreantum" on the shore of a land they call "Bountiful, because of its much fruit" (the name and the reason behind it being repeated twice in the space of two verses). Where this is in the real world is a little difficult to parse out since the only point of known geography mentioned in the book has been Jerusalem. However, since the overall direction of the journey has been southeastward of Jerusalem, we can say it's probably the Indian Ocean and the southern shore of the Arabian Peninsula. This is, in fact, the only possible destination given their direction of travel.
Upon their arrival at the seashore, Nephi goes up into the mountains and God commands him to build a ship with which to cross the ocean. This will be a special ship, not made in the fashion of any normal human shipbuilding but according to special divine instructions (1 Nephi 18:1-3). Nephi then asks where he will get the ore to make the metal tools necessary for ship building. Much is made of the manner in which Nephi constructs these tools, down to describing how Nephi constructed a bellows and started the fire to melt the ore to make the tools, etc.
The curious thing is that Nephi's question and the descriptions of his work that follow miss the point. Tools are the easy part of any such ship-building endeavor. Primitive shipbuilding did not require much in the way of specialized metal tools. Even a small ax could be used to accomplish much of the work, cutting, splitting, and planing wood, as well as driving in nails with the back side (axes are, really, terrifically useful tools common to every culture and era, which is one reason why Gary Paulson was able to convincingly write two books revolving around a plane crash victim surviving alone in the wilderness with only a small hatchet). Knives could be used for chisels or for sealing the cracks between boards with cordage. In fact, it is difficult to conceive of any primitive tool shipbuilding would require which would not have been with Nephi's party already. Without an ax, they would have been unable to cut wood either for the making of Nephi's bow in chapter 16 or for the making of the forge fire in chapter 17. Without a knives, they would be unable to skin and dress the game they survived upon in the wilderness for eight years...so either they had pretty much all the tools they needed already or they couldn't have made it this far in the narrative to start with.
Of course, we might assume that more specialized tools might have been required, but again, making them should not be too difficult. What would unquestionably be difficult and what explicitly required direct input from God was designing and building a ship. Curiously, this part is glossed over. There is absolutely no description of the design of the ship Nephi built, nor of its materials or manner of construction, even though all are said to have been directly commanded by God. In the Bible, God commands Noah to build a ship with a specific design, but there in Genesis the design of the ship is described in detail, as are its construction materials. There the hard part which required God's direct intervention is described to us while irrelevant details (where Noah got the tools) are left out. In the Book of Mormon the opposite is true.
It is difficult to believe that the same God who painstakingly described the special design of Noah's ark would be sidetracked from doing the same with the special design of Nephi's ship. However, an alternate explanation exists. The designs for the Ark contained in Genesis are complete enough to allow scientists and engineers to create scale models of the Ark to test its seaworthiness and estimate its cargo capacity, both of which verify the Biblical accounts. If God truly designed Nephi's ship as well, inclusion of its design would similarly result in proof of the Book of Mormon. But no design is included. This may be because, in fact, God did not give a design to Nephi, Joseph Smith did. Smith grew up in a landlocked region as a farmer and knew nothing of nautical engineering. However, he did know that people would have trouble accepting the idea that ancient Jews from Jerusalem managed to build a vessel seaworthy enough to cross the oceans to the Americas over 2,000 years before Columbus. Someone was bound to object that the Israelites of the 6th Century did not know how to construct such ships, so Smith claimed the design was special from God and even used different techniques. However, if he included the design and techniques to verify his claim there was always a chance someone would test them and find him a fraud. As he did with the Lost Pages, Smith took the easy way out and omitted any reference to an actual design, anything that could be tested and verified. Smith calls us to trust blindly. God calls us to test Him and see that He is true.
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