Geography: Potter and Wellington suggest that the valley is eight miles north of Maqna, at the southern end of the shoreline mountain range. From the point at which Lehi’s family might have come out of the mountains “nearer” the Red Sea, there is only one way to proceed which leads directly into a valley known as wadi Tayyib al-Ism. They state: “After three and three-quarter miles [the narrow valley] opened into a beautiful oasis upper valley with several wells and three large groves of date palm trees… [and a] stream that started in the canyon near its upper end and ran down the wadi virtually all the way to the sea.”
This is a very tempting location for the valley of Lemuel and the river Laman that constantly runs to the Red Sea. Unfortunately, Potter and Wellington don’t give us all of the relevant information. Chadwick fills in the contrary data.
Another aspect of the stream is certain evidence that the site could not have been the valley of Lemuel. The stream has no mouth into the Red Sea. Nephi reported that the river Laman “emptied into the Red Sea” and that the valley was “near the mouth” of the stream (1 Ne. 2:8). But the stream at Tayyib al-Ism terminates nearly half a mile inland from the beach, far up the canyon. This should seal the case against Tayyib al-Ism.
Potter and Wellington recognize that this is a problem. Their solution for dealing with this inconsistency is one of the more remarkable theories put forth in the entire book. They suggest that the mountainous land mass on the Gulf of Eilat’s east coast is two hundred to four hundred feet higher now than it was in Lehi’s time!…
How is this possible? Plate tectonics.…
But this theory is problematic.… Archaeological evidence suggests that the eastern plate of the Rift Valley has moved less than one hundred feet since 1000 B.C. And when the plate moves upward, it does not rise only in the Tayyib al-Ism area—it moves upward all along the eastern side of the Rift. But if current shorelines had been even two hundred feet lower in the Iron Age than they are now, many well-known ancient settlements along the Rift’s eastern shorelines could not have existed.
One of the principles I noted in Behind the Text: Chapter 1, “Text and Context” is that while exact archeological fits with the text are not required, neither is it possible to violate natural principles to make the geography fit. While the Potter and Wellington hypothesis is very tempting, I agree with Chadwick that it cannot be the correct answer.
Variant: The printer’s manuscript has the plural “tents” rather the singular “tent.” The pluralizing s was immediately crossed out. The idea that there might have been more than one tent for the family is understandable and might be what influenced Oliver’s original copy of “tents.” Skousen notes:
There is no doubt that the singular tent is correct here in 1 Nephi 2:6. There are 16 references to a leader’s tent in the Book of Mormon, including 13 for Lehi (such as “and my father dwelt in a tent” in 1 Ne. 2:15 and “we did again travel on our journey toward the tent of our father” in 1 Ne. 7:21). But when referring to a group of people, the text consistently uses the plural tents, such as “we did take our tents and departed into the wilderness” in 1 Nephi 16:12 and “they pitched their tents round about” in Mosiah 2:5.
Culture: Lehi named the river for Laman, following a Semitic custom in naming bodies of water and land features. It was not unusual for sites and geographic features to have several names, and likely many forgotten names as well.
The family’s safe arrival occasioned a ritual offering, described by S. Kent Brown: “For a safe journey, according to Psalm 107, a person was to ‘sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving’ (107:22) for safety in travel, whether through the desert or on water (107:6, 19–30). What were those ‘sacrifices of thanksgiving’? They consisted of peace offerings, known from Leviticus 3.” The sacrifice itself was an animal, either “male or female,” from the flock or herd (Lev. 3:1, 6, 12), accompanied by unleavened baked goods (7:12–13) forming part of a “covenant meal” in which worshipers enjoyed “fellowship with one another and their God.” Brown continues:
Peace offerings were “the most common type of sacrifice”.… Truly such occasions were to be a time of rejoicing. In this light, one has to assume either that among the “provisions” moved by Lehi’s family from Jerusalem were animals intended for sacrifice (1 Ne. 2:4) or, more probably, that Lehi’s baggage bore goods that the family could exchange with local people for sacrificial animals. According to Leviticus, the resulting foods for the feast, including the sacrificed animal, were to be “eaten the same day that [they were] offered” so that nothing of the sacrifice remained to the following morning (Lev. 7:15). Thus the banquet and celebrating would continue into the night.
Yahweh called Lehi to a prophetic mission, then directed him to leave his home. Lehi certainly understood that he was fleeing from those who had threatened his life, causing him to abandon his land of inheritance, his home, and his worldly goods. Nevertheless he erected an altar and thanked Yahweh for his deliverance. The record does not include any actual attacks; possibly Lehi’s only real evidence of danger was Yahweh’s word. Nevertheless, it was sufficient for him.
Symbolism: The typical Arab/Hebrew altar was built of earth or unhewn stones. (Ex. 20:24–24.) Possibly few other building materials were available; nevertheless, it could have been a pit ringed by stones or a brush pyre. What significance did a stone altar have?
Early Israelite worship understood “high places” to be of particular religious significance. Moses received his epiphany on Mount Sinai. Constructing an altar of stones probably served two purposes. First, it created a miniature “high place,” which symbolized a sacred location. Second, stones connected the altar to the natural world, creating a symbolic miniature sacred mountain, appropriate for the sacrificial offering.
History: Interestingly, Deuteronomy 12 apparently prohibits building an altar outside Jerusalem. Why then does Lehi build an altar? According to David Rolph Seely’s excellent discussion, “Deuteronomy 12 did not intend to eliminate all sacrifice away from the main sanctuary,” and “Deuteronomy 12 may have been interpreted anciently as applying only to the land of Israel.”
He continues: “The fact that, after the Israelite possession of the land, altars and sacrifice and even other temples continued at various places has led many scholars to believe that the laws in Deuteronomy 12 were either understood differently before the time of the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah or were written but enforced later—perhaps during the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah.”
The second reason is more interesting, particularly in the light of the Book of Mormon text: “While it is clear that Josiah interpreted the injunction of centralized worship to refer only to Jerusalem, it is possible that anciently there was another viable interpretation of those laws.”
Seely notes that the Dead Sea Scrolls provide possible evidence for this view:
Twice in the Temple Scroll the expression three days’ journey from the temple occurs (column 43:12 about the law of the tithe, and column 52:14 concerning sacrifice). The most important passage for our study appears in column 52: “You shall not slaughter a clean ox or sheep or goat in all your towns, near to my temple (within) a distance of a three days’ journey; nay, but inside my temple you shall slaughter it, making it a burnt offering or a peace offering, and you shall eat and rejoice before me at the place on which I shall choo{se} to put my name.” (11 QT 52:13–16; emphasis added).
The standard interpretation by Yigael Yadin and others of the phrase three days’ journey in this passage is that the Temple Scroll prohibits all nonsacrificial slaughter within the boundaries of three days’ distance from Jerusalem.… The particular tie to the Book of Mormon is that Lehi has traveled just those three days journey before building his altar (1 Ne. 2:6–7).
The evidence of the Qumran community is particularly interesting because it comes from a protesting community rather than one that accepted Jerusalem’s priestly authority. As such it may provide a particularly apt background for understanding Lehi with respect to the Deuteronomic prohibition of sacrifices outside Jerusalem. While the Deuteronomic priests would see this particular prohibition as promoting exclusive cultic practice in Jerusalem, Qumran saw it as enabling cultic practice if one were removed from Jerusalem. As a community in protest to Jerusalem, Qumran became a new Jerusalem to its inhabitants. It was not the prophetic New Jerusalem, but rather a location where purity of religious practice could be reinstated away from what the Qumran community saw as the Jerusalem priests’ corruption. The parallel to Lehi may be in a similar protest against the Deuteronomic law, allowing the protesters to continue cultic law outside the Jerusalem priestly elite.
History: One aspect of the brass plates that Nephi deemed worthy of comment is that they traced Lehi’s lineage to Joseph. It is quite unlikely that Lehi did not know this. Thus, the statement in the small plates is probably related to Nephi’s intention to associate his particular story with Joseph rather than reporting a forgotten lineage. This specific lineage is important because it tells us that Lehi’s ancestry was part of the northern tribes of Israel. The southern kingdom included the lands of Judah and Benjamin, but Joseph was allocated lands in the northern part of the kingdom. The tribe of Joseph therefore became one of the “lost” ten tribes.
Thus, the religious history of the northern kingdom is important in understanding the background of Lehi and his family. In particular, the possibility—which I accept as plausible—that Lehi resisted the Deuteronomic reformers may echo religious divisions described for the split of Israel into the northern and southern kingdoms after Solomon’s death.
The fact of that separation is obvious in biblical history, but its religious implications are perhaps less obvious. Assyria’s destruction of the northern kingdom means that our perception of northern kingdom’s history comes from the southern sources that are contained in our Bible. The result is comparable to what the history of the Civil War might have been had the South been victorious and written the North’s history after the war. Nevertheless, the Bible must note the prophetic accuracy which creates the northern kingdom and, for our purposes, highlights the connection between the northern kingdom and the tribe of Joseph:
And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph.
And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in the field:
And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces:
And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee:
(But he shall have one tribe for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel:) (1 Kgs. 11:28–32)
The origin of the northern kingdom is thus tied to a prophet and to Joseph. Interestingly, one of the southern kingdom’s complaints against the northern kingdom was its religious practice. Jeroboam is not the king over Jerusalem, so he has no access to Jerusalem as the cultic center. He therefore creates his own religious shrine/temple in Beth-El and Dan (1 Kgs. 12:28–30).
Of course this action, when seen by the Deuteronomist writers, is the height of apostasy. They specifically pit the reforming king, Josiah, against Jeroboam’s heretical actions:
And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Beth-el: and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense.
And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee. (1 Kgs. 13:1–2)
Siegfried Horn, dean and professor emeritus at Andrews University and former director of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, describes Jeroboam’s religion. Although Horn uses the epithet of “apostate,” we may see through his discussion a glimpse of the pre-reform religion that the Deuteronomists altered and therefore condemned:
For political reasons, Jeroboam introduced religious rites and practices in Israel that drastically departed from the worship of an invisible god Yahweh. At Bethel and Dan—at opposite ends of his kingdom—he built temples or open-air sanctuaries in competition with the Judahite temple in Jerusalem. At Bethel and Dan, Jeroboam set up images of young bulls to represent Yahweh in visible form (1 Kgs. 12:27–31) (although some interpret the bulls as pedestals on which the invisible Yahweh stood). For two centuries, the worship of these golden calves was known as the “sin of Jeroboam.” Except for three of his successors, all the kings of Israel followed Jeroboam in this aberration.
Naturally it is difficult to see Jeroboam without looking through Deuteronomist lenses, since their historical version triumphed. However, the important point is that Jeroboam established temples other than the one in Jerusalem. Of course, the southern history written by the Deuteronomists define his action as a sin. Yet it more likely reflected an earlier understanding that did not require only a single temple in Jerusalem. After all, the tabernacle of Moses’s day went with the people, not the place.
A second important point is the association between the bull and Yahweh. Although Horn and the Deuteronomists consider this behavior apostate, it may also be an accurate remnant of the earlier religion. Frank Moore Cross, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, emeritus, of Harvard University, found in the Ugaritic hymns early understandings in which the bull is frequently used in epithets for the father-god, El, who sits at the head of the council in heaven. He notes:
A number of epithets portray ’El as father and creator. He is called on occasion ’abu bani ’ili, “father of the gods.” One may compare:
toru ’il ’abuho
’Il malk du yakaninuhu
Bull ‘El his father
King ’El who created him
The epithet “Bull” is noteworthy. One may compare, for example, the epithet of the patriarchal god “Abir Ya’qob, the Bull of Jacob.”
Even though the Ugaritic texts are Canaanite, they show important parallels to Israel’s religion. In particular, they can help us understand traces of similar beliefs that remain in our biblical text, such as the “Bull of Jacob” (Gen. 49:24—although the KJV translates this as “God of Jacob,” the Hebrew text clearly has “Bull”). This suggests the reason that Jeroboam (and before him, Aaron) might have seen a bull as a fitting representation of God. The slight difference we have between the Ugaritic text and Jeroboam’s practice is that Jeroboam is linking the “bull” epithet to Yahweh rather than to El. This is not a particular difficulty as Cross explains that this epithet might be applied to any of the sons of El, of whom Yahweh was one.
As with most aspects of culture, Hebrew religion was never static. Over time it developed tendencies and pressures that defined it against its surrounding and competing religions. The historical impact of the Hebrew religion has been the concept of monotheism, a belief in one god as opposed to many. While the modern definition of monotheism is exclusive (only one god), earlier forms of Hebrew religion apparently allowed several gods but identified only one as Israel’s patron. The shift from a Father-El, who was the father of the council of the gods of whom Yahweh was one eventually yielded to the theology of Yahweh’s exclusivity. This process took time, but it saw the shifting of emphasis away from El and toward Yahweh: “El as a separate god disappeared, perhaps at different rates in different regions. This process may appear to involve Yahweh incorporating El’s characteristics, for Yahweh is the eventual historical “winner.”
It may seem strange to talk about an evolving Hebrew understanding of God, but the historical evidence shows that such a development occurred. Perhaps a useful analogy is the experience of many Saints in Kirtland and Nauvoo, who brought ideas about God from their previous churches, but who learned more about God’s true nature as Joseph Smith gained and revealed new understandings over the years. While it has always been the same God, Joseph knew more about the nature of God in Nauvoo than he did in Palmyra, even though he learned important lessons in Palmyra.
Lehi’s theology is harmonious with the pre-reform religion characteristic of Jeroboam’s kingdom. Given, as well, his firm preaching that the Messiah was the Atoning Redeemer, it seems clear that Lehi had a different understanding of ritual space than the Deuteronomists. As a result, Lehi built his altar, not only to express thanksgiving, but also because he did not accept restriction to a single temple as binding. Nephi also builds a temple in the new world (2 Ne. 5:16).
Scripture: The next point of interest in this thanksgiving ceremony is that Lehi traced his genealogy through Joseph, not Levi, and therefore was not one of the line of priests authorized to offer sacrifices. How could Lehi make acceptable sacrifices if he was not a Levite? One answer pertains to the specific sacrifices that Lehi and his descendants performed. Clark Goble, a student of the scriptures, observes:
It may be that they formed a rather unique version of the Law of Moses—one without the sacrifices of the Levites. We have the sacrifice in Mosiah 2:3 fulfilling Exodus 13:11–13, Exodus 22:29–30, and Deuteronomy 15:19–23. But this is a sacrifice that doesn’t require Levites. All the other references to sacrifice in the Book of Mormon refer to the sacrifice of the Savior, with the exception of thank-offerings. [He quotes 1 Nephi 5:9:] “And it came to pass that they did rejoice exceedingly, and did offer sacrifice and burnt offerings unto the Lord; and they gave thanks unto the God of Israel.” These thank-offerings also didn’t require a Levite.
The Bible includes other examples of appropriate sacrifices by non-Levites:
For example, the first sacrifice offered for the Israelites after they left Egypt was performed not by a Levite, but by Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, who was not even an Israelite (see Ex. 18:12). Gideon, an early judge in Israel, like Lehi was from the tribe of Manasseh. Yet when he was commanded of God to build an altar, Gideon made a burnt offering to the Lord upon it without being condemned in any way for the act (see Judg. 6:24–26). Elkanah, the father of the prophet Samuel, was from the tribe of Ephraim and his sacrifices too were accepted by the Lord (1 Sam. 1:1–3).
This particular problem of authority and ritual performance was not unique to Lehi. The Qumran community faced the same problem around four centuries later (c. 200 B.C.) when they separated themselves from Jerusalem and, in particular, from the temple in Jerusalem. Their solution was also to continue the sacrifices but to emphasize the role of personal worthiness, rather than inherited priesthood, in the efficacy of the sacrifice. I see a similar emphasis on personal worthiness over ritual in the Book of Mormon. Possibly, the problem that both communities needed to solve—continuing God-accepted rites without lineal priesthood—prompted the same solution in these two groups, widely separated by time and geography.
Saying that the Lehites focused on sacrifices not requiring the lineal Levitical priesthood does not resolve all of the difficulties, for Lehi’s descendants also performed baptism, which requires God’s direct authority. Where did that authority come from?
We know that Yahweh established a lineal priesthood in Israel. The right to officiate in the priesthood descended through Levi’s descendants (Levitical priesthood). Most Christians assume that it was the only one available to Israelites. However, there were other forms of legitimate priesthood. Aaron was obviously authorized to officiate by God’s direct call. Hebrews 5:4 reminds us: “And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.” Aaron’s priesthood authority came from God’s call, not his lineage.
This issue was also a problem for the early Christians. Jesus was of the house of David, not Levi. Where did Jesus get his authority? As Christians we simply assume that everyone understands that Jesus had authority, but fellow Jews would not have shared this understanding. The book of Hebrews asserts that Jesus received it from God, like Aaron. Such priesthood is confirmed, not lineal. The priest receives it by the laying on of hands, not by birthright.
The Lehites in the New World also needed the Melchizedek Priesthood. Why is the priesthood attached to Melchizedek’s name? Hebrews 7 explains that Christ has priesthood in the same way that Melchizedek did. Melchizedek lived before Levi and therefore could not have held the lineal priesthood. Paul argues that God gave the priesthood to Melchizedek because of his righteous life, not because he descended through a certain lineage. In the same way, Jesus also received authority. In the same way it was transmitted to Lehi’s descendants. They too had confirmed rather than lineal priesthood. The method of the confirmation or ordination is simply undocumented.