“Lib Did Smite Upon His Arm That He Was Wounded”

Brant Gardner

Coriantumr is engaged in another back and forth battle, just as he was with Shared. In this case, Lib retreats towards the seashore. This would probably be the Gulf Coast rather than the Pacific. The reason for this supposition is simply that the Gulf Coast was historically more under the sway of the Olmec than the Pacific, though the Pacific coast would become important in the post-Olmec, or Epi-Olmec times. With Lib’s back to the ocean, there was no retreat, and they fight their way to a temporary victory, forcing Coriantumr and his army into a retreat.

Cultural: Coriantumr receives wounds in the battles he fights, and both times they are with the leader of the opposing army. Shared wounds Coriantumr in the thigh (Ether 13:31) and here Lib wounds Coriantumr in the arm. Given that Coriantumr continues to fight, we might expect that the wound was in the shield arm, and that this tells us that both men were either right-handed, or both were left-handed. Of course statistics favor right-handed. The reason that this becomes probable is that when two men face each other, and both use the same weapon-arm, the shield-arm is directly in the way of the typical blows from the sword. Since the Mesoamerican sword was made for a slashing motion, rather than a stabbing motion, the greatest opportunity for being wounded would therefore be to the arm directly in front of the blow – or the shield-arm of a same-handed man.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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