"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
Nahom Revisited: A Trivial Parallel of Just Three Letters?
by Jeff Lindsay
When
thoughtfully understood, the evidence for Book of Mormon plausibility
and authenticity related to Nephi’s account of crossing the
Arabian Peninsula are profound and impressive. The modern findings
and insights related to First Nephi 16 and 17, for example, are
worthy of careful discussion and consideration.
As
a result of both field work by Latter-day Saints exploring potential
Book of Mormon locations in the Arabian Peninsula and the work of
non-LDS experts, we have a wealth of information that can strengthen
our appreciation of the Book of Mormon and its plausibility.
This
includes such things as excellent candidates for the Valley Lemuel
and the River Laman, the place called Shazer, the green area called
Bountiful, specific plausible pathways corresponding to the detailed
directions Nephi gives, and the place called Nahom where Ishmael was
buried.
Confirming
the plausibility of these places and names is interesting and can
help us better understand the Book of Mormon, but don’t mistake
these evidences for proof. These evidences do not prove that the Book
of Mormon is true or that God exists or that Jesus is the Christ, but
they do weigh heavily against claims that a 19th century yokel in the
American frontier just fabricated the account in First Nephi 16 and
17.
They
weigh in favor of the hypothesis that those two chapters were written
by someone who actually made the ancient journey described.
The
evidences are not trivial, contrived, random parallels. For example,
what are we to say of finding an ancient burial place with a name
essentially equivalent to Nahom in the Arabian Peninsula in exactly
the place where the Book of Mormon implies it must be — at a
place where one can depart from the south-southeast direction Nephi
was originally traveling, substantially corresponding to the ancient
incense trails of Arabia, and then turn nearly due east to reach a
place like Bountiful, without passing through the nearby portions of
the desolate empty quarter?
Even
if we don’t (yet) accept the Book of Mormon, shouldn’t
that raise an eyebrow or two?
And
when 7th-century B.C. altars are found from that region bearing the
tribal name Nihm, clearly based on the same Semitic root of NHM as
Nahom, indicating that this tribal name and thus most likely a place
name of that kind was in fact not just there “anciently”
but in precisely the era that Ishmael was buried, shouldn’t
that at least give us pause to appreciate that this is indeed an
interesting find for Book of Mormon fans?
When
critics of the Church chant the mantra that “there is no
evidence for the Book of Mormon,” informed Latter-day Saints
may occasionally dare to make an objection and point out that there
is a growing body of rather impressive evidences that should at least
be considered before hastily rejecting Book of Mormon claims.
When
committed anti-Mormon critics are presented with such evidence, the
response can be surprising. Take for example an enthusiastically
received presentation at a recent ex-Mormon conference on Oct. 19th
in Salt Lake City, where Chris Johnson presumed to use statistics to
explain away the Book of Mormon.
His
statistical sleight-of-hand allegedly exposing the Book of Mormon was
supposed to be so impressive that it could utterly destroy the very
foundation of Mormonism, thus the title, “How the Book of
Mormon Destroyed Mormonism.” His work attempting to link the
Book of Mormon to an obscure book about the war of 1812 has been
discussed here previously and at Mormanity, drawing upon a rigorous
debunking by Ben McGuire at the Mormon Interpreter. Here I
would like to address Chris Johnson’s other comments on
parallels.
If
you must, you can watch the video by using the URL provided in
footnote #2 of McGuire’s
article,
or you can use this shortcut: http://tinyurl.com/late-war-fail.
But I don’t recommend it because of its mocking and insulting
tone, beginning with mockery of Jeffrey Holland in his defense of the
Book of Mormon, and ending with snippets of video clips from the
Heaven’s Gate suicide cult to equate Mormonism with them. Low
and rather nasty, IMHO.
What
is instructive, however, in Johnson’s approach to analysis of
parallels is how he dismisses the evidence from the Arabian Peninsula
as just trivial and meaningless parallel. All the impressive finds
and bull’s eyes, in this well trained anti-Mormon’s view,
boil down to nothing more than a random parallel of 3 letters that
can be explained away with the tiniest exertion of a brain cell or
two.
Here
is my transcription of Johnson’s comments: beginning at 6:53 in
the video and ending at 8:05, with screenshots of the slides shown:
Perhaps
the book is true, or false, depending on the evidence. Here’s
some of the evidence for the Book of Mormon.
Just
really briefly, they found Nahom. It’s 3 letters. NHM because
they removed the O and the A because Hebrew apparently didn’t
have those letter back then. But basically, um, so we have 3 letters.
And, there’s a few other little things like that. But what is
the significance of the evidence for the Joseph Smith as a
prophet/translator? What is the evidence? So NHM, for me, that’s
probably the biggest evidence. NHM. It’s in the right place,
it’s the right name.
So
here’s the significance.
We
have NHM in Germany, Austria, Iran, Zimbabwe, Angola, Israel, Canada,
and basically everywhere you look you can find those 3 letters. I’m
sure there’s a dozen companies named NHM that all around the
world as well. Basically, if it was QXP, that would be more
significant because those are more rare across the languages of the
world. But NHM happened to be some of the most common letters. So the
significance of NHM is lacking.
And
there you have it. All the impressive finds in the Arabian Peninsula
reduced to 3 letters, and they are readily explained away because
lots of other countries have places with NHM in it.
Here’s
3 more letters that come to mind: HUH?
This
is the man presumably delivering a death blow to the Book of Mormon
with brilliant analysis and scholarship, finding telltale smoking-gun
parallels in random four-word chunks of text shared by the Book of
Mormon and The Late War Against the United States, chunks that
are also shared with numerous other texts before and after the Book
of Mormon, not because they were somehow plagiarized, but because of
common language and methods of expression.
Minor
random and irrelevant parallels are enough to destroy Mormonism, but
the evidence of intricate, relevant, and interesting “parallels”
like confirming the existence of an ancient burial place
Nahom/Nehem/NHM in exactly the right place and time given in the Book
of Mormon is irrelevant and “lacking in significance”
because…because other 3-letter combinations with NHM can be
found in, say, Mozambique?
One
of the key points in the LDS scholarship about Nahom is that it is,
of course, a name known in the Bible — a person’s name.
But as a place name, it is rare in the Arabian Peninsula.
Johnson claims that NHM is one of the most common 3-letter
combinations (really?), but his list of “parallels” from
all over the world don’t have any others from Arabia, the place
that actually matters in this story.
Warren
Aston in his groundbreaking In the Footsteps of Lehi reports
that the ancient burial site Nehem/Nahom appears to be the only place
In the entire Arabian Peninsula with that name. Here is an excerpt
from page 12(footnotes omitted):
The Rarity of the Name
The
first point to be made is that the name NHM (in any of its variant
spellings Nehem/Nihm/Nahm, and so on) is not found anywhere
else in Arabia as a place name. It is unique. It is known to appear
only once in southern Arabian writings (as a personal name) and a
handful of times in northern Arabian Safaitic texts.
There
are also some interesting appearances in the Old Testament; as Naham
[a person] (1 Chronicles 4:19), as Nehum [another person](Nehemiah
7:7), and, of course, as the name of the Prophet Nahom, whose brief
book provides some of the Bible’s most vivid poetic imagery. …
These
biblical occurrences of the name, however, are far removed
geographically from southern Arabia, and no historical connection
with the tribal name in Yemen can be made. The fact that the name
appears only once as an Arabian place name argues strongly in itself
for a possible link with Nephi’s Nahom.
I
was intrigued by the listing of Nahum as a place name in Israel.
Could Joseph Smith have gotten the concept of Nahum as an Old World
place name from that? Not likely. Wikipedia’s
article on Sde Nahum, Israel
explains that it is a modern kibbutz founded in 1937. Population
around 550. Not likely an influence for the Book of Mormon.
What
about Nehama, Israel? Wikipedia doesn’t seem aware of it, so it
must not exist, I suppose. But there is an Israeli “Comfort
Girls” band called Habanot
Nechama.
Is that the link? Or what about Nahma,
Michigan?
Another 500-person township. Founded 1881. Probably not an
inspiration for Nahom. Or Anhim, Canada? Again, HUH?
Sorry,
but neither I not Wikipedia can find this place. Might exist, but if
I can’t find it with Google and Wikipedia, what chance would
Joseph Smith have?
Again,
please, could someone explain to me how these scattered and sometimes
nonexistent places make NHM names so extremely common, and how any of
these could have somehow influence Joseph Smith to put Nahom as a
place in the Book of Mormon, much less as a place name that perfectly
fits a genuine ancient burial place in just the right spot?
The
significance of Nahom, contrary to Johnson’s assertions, goes
far beyond just 3 letters, and even beyond 3 letters in the right
place on a map. There is also the meaning of the word which ties in
perfectly with the narrative in the Book of Mormon.
The
Hebrew root NHM can have meanings of “to comfort, to console,
to be sorry,” akin to the related Arabic root that refers to
sighing or moaning. Another Hebrew root that can be rendered NHM can
mean “to complain” or “to be hungry.” The
association with sorrow, mourning, complaining, and hunger all nicely
fit Nephi’s text in 1 Nephi 16:34-35:
[34] And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place
which was called Nahom.
[35] And it came to pass that the daughters of Ishmael did mourn
exceedingly, because of the loss of their father, and because of
their afflictions in the wilderness; and they did murmur against my
father, because he had brought them out of the land of Jerusalem,
saying: Our father is dead; yea, and we have wandered much in the
wilderness, and we have suffered much affliction, hunger, thirst, and
fatigue; and after all these sufferings we must perish in the
wilderness with hunger.
[36] And thus they did murmur against my father, and also against me; and
they were desirous to return again to Jerusalem.
The
apparent deft play one words by Nephi in the text is just one aspect
of the many subtle evidences related to the issue of Nahom and the
Arabian Peninsula aspects of the Book of Mormon. To ignore that body
of evidence and see the evidence as no more than 3 common letters
that can be accounted for by, say, Nahimha in Tanzania, reflects a
fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of relevant evidence.
Further,
the straining at four-word gnats in the Book of Mormon to “destroy”
Mormonism does not reflect any significant improvement in objectivity
or analysis.
The
point here is that when our most vocal or committed opponents come to
the podium, they are often not interested in a genuine debate or fair
consideration of the actual evidence, but in trashing the faith at
all costs. Do not dismayed to hear that the evidence in favor of the
Book of Mormon, no matter how impressive, will always be “lacking
significance” in their minds, while that which is truly trivial
will be given great weight if it can be used to attack.
Do
be dismayed, however, at how the Book of Mormon is becoming more
interesting and more worth thoughtful and even scholarly reflection
today than it ever was. There are numerous issues that we can better
appreciate and objections we can better answer today, and more reason
than even to pick it up and take it seriously. It’s a
remarkable book worthy of far more than flippant dismissal and bad
statistics.
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.