According to H. Donl Peterson, the colony spent a total of eight years in the wilderness (1 Nephi 17:4). The distance from Jerusalem to Southern Arabia then east to Bountiful (the Dhofar region) is a distance of between 2,000 to 2,400 miles. The four sons made two additional round trips from the valley of Lemuel to Jerusalem, adding another 800 to 1,000 miles to their travels. By comparison, the Mormon pioneers walked about 1,100 miles--half the distance that Lehi and his colony did. [H. Donl Peterson, "Father Lehi," in The Book of Mormon: First Nephi, The Doctrinal Foundation, p. 63]
“We Did Sojourn Eight Years in the Wilderness”
According to Potter and Wellington, in Lehi's time the journey from Yemen to the frankincense growing regions of Dhofar, could have been made in a little over a month. The journey from Palestine to the Dhofar region could have been traveled in about 4 months by camel caravan. So how does one account for sojourning "eight years in the wilderness"? It is possible that if the family were low on resources they had to work to pay for safe passage, supplies, etc. Perhaps the entrepreneur Lehi even undertook some business endeavor here. With the addition of children they would have needed more supplies and therefore more camels to carry them. Additionally, it will be argued that the family needed finances to build the boat and they were not in bountiful long enough to build up that much cash. S. Kent Brown has even suggested that the family had to spend a period of time in servitude during their travel east, which involved conflict and suffering. Unfortunately the Small Plates do not provide all the details of the trip and so we are left to extrapolate until the time when all will be revealed to us. [George Potter and Richard Wellington, Discovering the Lehi-Nephi Trail, Unpublished Manuscript, 2000, pp. 168-169]
“We Did Sojourn for Eight Years in the Wilderness”
Prior to reaching Bountiful, Nephi continually referred to being "in the wilderness" (1 Nephi 2:5; 16:9,14,35,38; 17:1,4) Potter and Wellington note that a common definition of the word "wilderness" is an area void of signs of human life. Except for the occasional oases along the Frankincense trail, the word wilderness applied perfectly to all the areas they passed through since entering Arabia. It has been argued that wilderness means desert in the scriptures. However this is not always the case. As the family entered a green fertile land at Bountiful it would be easy to understand why Nephi referred to them as no longer being in the wilderness. Yet to Nephi the presence of forests did not preclude somewhere from being a wilderness. He would later state, "as we journeyed in the wilderness . . . there were beasts in the forests of every kind" (1 Nephi 18:25). It seems then that the characteristic these two wilderness locations (desert and forests) had in common was that, for the most part, neither were populated. [George Potter and Richard Wellington, Discovering the Lehi-Nephi Trail, Unpublished Manuscript, 2000, p. 184]
Geographical [Theory Map]: 1 Nephi 17:1--18:7 Eastward to Bountiful and the Sea Irreantum (Year 008) (Illustration)
“Eight Years in the Wilderness”
What were the beginning and ending points of the "eight years" of sojourning (1 Nephi 17:4)? Did it take eight years to get from Jerusalem to Bountiful? Or was it eight years from Nahom to Bountiful? We might even extend the possibilities by noting that if Nephi recorded this record from the New World between 30 and 40 years after leaving Jerusalem (2 Nephi 5:28-34), "eight years" could also be interpreted as the total time it took to travel from Jerusalem to the promised land.
Another question that arises with the term "eight years" concerns distance and cultural contacts. If caravans could traverse the same distance from Jerusalem to Bountiful (the Dhofar region) in about 90 days, where were those eight years spent? We have previously referred to the Hilton's finding that "water was the determining factor of any travel in Arabia, and that the ancient trails connected hand-dug wells that required a tremendous amount of effort and time to create. And therefore, wherever there was water, there were people nearby." Thus, even though the Book of Mormon doesn't give many clues about time spent in different areas, we might safely assume that wherever Lehi's group did spend those eight years, they probably were exposed to people of different cultures. Studying the cultures of this area at the time of Lehi might help us acquire an awareness of cultural and geographical clues that could be either assumed or briefly alluded to in the Book of Mormon. [Alan C. Miner, Personal Notes]