Nahom and the Arabian journey

Three altars naming a Nihm tribesman are the apologists' best single piece of evidence; the question is how much one three-consonant match can prove.

What the Church claims

1 Nephi 16:34 says Ishmael was buried at 'the place which was called Nahom', after which Lehi's party turned 'nearly eastward' to a fertile coast called Bountiful; apologists say the altars confirm a real place Joseph Smith could not have known.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Holds up. Three altars naming a Nihm tribesman were excavated where the text puts the burial, and the eastward turn to a fertile coast fits the terrain. As an Arabian claim it stands, and nobody has explained it away. It stands only there: a match on the other side of the world carries none of the New World claims.

The record

  • A German team under Burkhard Vogt excavated altars at the Bar'an temple near Marib, Yemen, whose donor is called 'the Nihmite'; the first went on exhibition in 1997. Scripture Central dates them to the seventh-eighth centuries BC.
  • The name survives as the Nihm tribal region north-east of Sanaa, and appeared as 'Nehhm'/'Nehem' on Carsten Niebuhr's maps from the 1761-67 Danish expedition and on later maps derived from them.
  • FAIR acknowledges that a Niebuhr-derived map was held at Allegheny College and argues the college was about 320 miles from Joseph's home in Harmony, Susquehanna County.
  • Critics citing the epigrapher Christian Robin argue that South Arabian inscriptions distinguish a tribe from its territory, so the altars attest a tribe, not 'a place which was called' NHM; Jeff Lindsay replies with counter-examples.

The moving target

The Church has never published a position on the Nahom altars. NHM appears in Church magazines and Church-produced video as illustration of Lehi's journey, but no essay, manual or conference talk claims the altars as proof, and the Church has never said how much weight a three-consonant match can carry. The argument belongs to its apologists, who have raised its stated strength considerably since 2000 without any official backing.

The exchange

Warren Aston; S. Kent Brown; Scripture Central; Jeff Lindsay; Neal Rappleye and Stephen Smoot

A rare name, in the right region, at the right date, at the very point where ancient trade routes turn east, followed by a plausible Bountiful on the Dhofar coast (Khor Kharfot): the convergence is too specific for chance, and the maps were too rare for a New York farmhand.

The answer: It is a real hit and skeptics should say so. But its weight depends on base rates. Hebrew-style names are consonantal roots; with only three consonants, flexible vowels and dozens of Book of Mormon toponyms to test against every gazetteer of the Near East, some match is expected, and NHM remains the only Old World toponym match on offer. The book does not say Nahom was a tribe, a region or near a temple. The name was in print on European maps and in English translations of Niebuhr before 1830, so access is unlikely but not impossible. And the 'eastward turn' fits because Bountiful was located by looking east from Nihm. Above all, Arabia is the part of the story that overlaps the Bible's world; the New World portion, which is the great majority of the book, has no Nahom.

What they get right: The altars do pre-date Lehi, which refuted Dan Vogel's claim that NHM was unattested before AD 600. Nobody has shown Joseph saw a map.

Warren Aston; Scripture Central

Bountiful is the second half of the case and is independently strong. Khor Kharfot on the Dhofar coast has fresh water, timber, fruit, ore and a harbour, sits at the end of the one eastward route from the Nahom region, and matches the description in detail.

The answer: Bountiful is the weaker half, not the stronger. The description — fertile, wooded, fruit and honey, ore, by the sea — fits several points on the Dhofar coast, and candidate sites have been proposed and quietly dropped as the argument developed. What makes the altars interesting is that they are a named, dated, located artifact found by people with no stake in the outcome. Bountiful is a landscape matched to a description after the fact. Folding the two into one claim borrows credibility from the altars rather than adding to it.

What they get right: The altars are exactly what apologists say they are: three inscriptions naming an NHM tribesman, from the right region and roughly the right century, published by archaeologists with no interest in the Book of Mormon.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

Nahom is one consonantal match in the one region where the Book of Mormon overlaps a documented ancient landscape. The historian Philip Jenkins's challenge is the right frame: a single coincidence in Arabia cannot offset the absence of any corroboration in the Americas, where the book sets a thousand years of history. The name was on published maps, the tribal-versus-place distinction is contested by a specialist in the inscriptions, and the supporting 'turn east' and 'Bountiful' finds were located using Nahom as the anchor, so they are not independent confirmations.

The apologetic case

Joseph Smith dictated a name that turns out to be an authentic, ancient, locally attested South Arabian name at about the right point on the only viable route, and then had his travellers turn in the one direction that leads to the only fertile stretch of the Arabian coast. Dismissing that as luck is possible, but it is luck the critic has to concede.

What would change this

For the apologists' case: evidence Joseph had access to a Niebuhr map would deflate it; an inscription using NHM as a burial place name would strengthen it.

Closely related

Sources

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