The Sea West, a River, and Book of Mormon Geography
I recently was reminded of an argument for Book of Mormon geography that I find quite ridiculous, filled with misinterpretations of the Hebrew language, and all around a poor answer for a question that should be simple to answer that I ran across last year.
This argument comes in relation to the “sea west” of the Book of Mormon. Jonathan Neville, whom I have responded to multiple times in the past regarding his overt criticism of the Church, once wrote the following:
Because the Nephites referred to their seas with only general directional designations and not proper nouns or names, it is possible there were multiple seas; i.e., the “sea west” could refer to one body of water in one passage, and a different body of water in another passage.[1]
This is an interesting argument, though the Book of Mormon’s internal map places them as a single body of water; i.e., the sea west is the sea west, and the sea east is the sea east. However, if Neville can produce an argument that can adequately defend this hypothesis, good for him.
He, however, does not. His argument is simple, “A sea can mean anything I want it to mean when it will help me.”
Continuing from his book:
Because the Nephites were Hebrew and knew the Hebrew language even after a thousand years in the New World, Hebrew terms may be useful references when we seek to understand and define the English terms Joseph dictated to Oliver Cowdery. Moroni noted that Hebrew had advantages over the characters he used on the plates. He implied that Hebrew would be more precise and leave less room for ambiguity. (Mormon 9:32-3)
I looked up the word sea in Biblical Hebrew concordances. Strong’s Concordance transliterates the Hebrew as yam, with the number 3220. The NAS Exhaustive Concordance defines yam as sea and notes variations, including seacoast, west, west side, and westward. Brown-Driver-Briggs offer usages in context, including the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Dead Sea, Sea of Galilee—and “a mighty river.”
The example given for “a mighty river” is the Nile River. The Hebrew term yam is used in Isaiah 19:5 and Nahum 3:8 (twice in one verse), both in connection with Thebes, or the modern Luxor.
Alternate translations show the term is translated as either sea or river…
If Biblical translators used the English word sea for the Hebrew term yam, even when it clearly referred to the Nile River, then Joseph Smith could have done the same when referring to a mighty river.[2]
Neville goes on to describe the Mississippi River as a “sea west,” placing it as the westernmost sea of his proposed map, even though it is east of his proposed site for Zarahemla (near Montrose, Iowa), and despite the fact that Alma 22:28 describes a seashore west of Zarahemla (of which no lake, sea, or even main river lies west of Montrose on Neville’s map).
So how accurately does Neville’s definition of “sea” hold up?
How Reliable are Neville's Sources?
First, some source criticism that needs to be aired out.
Strong’s Bible Concordance is a resource that is used generally by people who don’t know Hebrew or Greek, and it often shows when arguments are made basing their arguments off of Strong’s. Strong’s generally can be described as an eisegesis concordance – that is, reading your present theology and worldview into the scriptures as you study. An exegesis concordance is demanded when trying to define what Hebrew or Greek words mean, because exegesis is focused on how things were understood in the times and contexts they were said and the scriptures compiled.
That being said, an eisegesis reading of the scriptures is not always inherently bad – some verses may mean different things in various times of your life and the Spirit can use that principle in a method outside the exegetical reading to teach you. It is not, however, favorable when trying to discuss Hebrew terms to try and learn what ancient authors had in mind.
In fact, based on Neville’s citation of both Strong’s and the NAS Concordance, I find it reasonably safe to assume that Neville turned to BibleHub’s entry for the Hebrew word yam, but only did a cursory glance to find his information:
There you can clearly see that Neville is indeed correct, yam appears as seashore, river, west, etc.
But do they really, though?
Yam as Seashore
Moving down the list we come to the translations “seacoast” or “seashore” and other variants.
Here, it becomes clear that Neville did not read past this prominent list of translations of the word yam except to find one additional meaning that the Brown-Driver-Briggs (hereafter BDB) offers, because if he did, it would become clear that yam by itself never means “seashore,” and the fact that he relied on using the BDB for the definition of a river while ignoring what the BDB said concerning other translations is appallingly bad research.
Scrolling down, you would see the following screenshot quoting from the reliable BDB:
For those of you who can’t speak or read Hebrew, this may not mean much. The two-letter word yam is preceded (to the right of the word, as this is Hebrew) in these instances with a heh conjunction signifying the definite article and another word entirely.
Short story short, the phrases here listed are compound nouns, much like the terms “library book” or “banana chair” are in English. Two nouns are used together to create a new noun that has additional meaning than any one of its parts.
The noun sepat hayam, for instance, means “sand (sepat) of the sea,” hof hayamim means “shore (hof) of the seas” or “seashore,” and hevel hayam would mean “region (hevel) of the sea.”
In no instance does the word yam ever mean seashore.
Yam as Westward
Here, westward could be an accurate translation into English, but a simplistic one that removes the word from the context of ancient Israel.
The word yamah, which is a construction of the word yam and again not the word itself, is more accurately translated as “to the sea,” “seaward,” or any other number of translations signifying a movement or directional change walking towards the sea.
This construction uses something called the directional heh. The heh preposition, as mentioned above, is the definite article, but when heh is attached to the end of a few words it shows a movement towards the object it is attached to, in this case the sea.
For ancient Israelites, using yamah to imply west would have been perfectly natural. The Mediterranean Sea is the largest and most prominent ocean that they would have been referring to, and it lies west of the Israelite territory. For this reason it is often used next to “eastward” in the Bible, and the translation of “westward” is just a clarification by English translators, though not the literal translation.
Similarly, if someone was living south of the Dead Sea, they could use yamah to mean “northward,” if they were referring to the Dead Sea, and so on.
So, can yam mean west? No, not by itself. If used with a directional heh can it? Yes, but it gained that translation based on the cultural context of the land of Israel, and other words for west exist that the Nephites could easily have used.
Yam as South
The appearance of south appears in the NAS Concordance, though to clarify, it has nothing to do with the word yam. A proposed textual ammendation places one instance of yamah to to yamin, which is a word that means “right,” as in “right hand.” Yamin is also used as a term for south, just as smul/left is used for north. Seas play no part of this designation, and neither does the word yam have anything to do with have anything to do with yamin, even if they share some letters.
Yam as River in the Hebrew Bible
Finally, the main crux of Neville’s argument: yam can mean a mighty river.
To be fair: yes, yam is used as the word yam without any constructions to refer to a river in a few instances of the Hebrew Bible. However, context is critical as always, and it begins to be doubtful that Mormon would have ever described a river as a sea in his record once the contexts are fully explored.
There are five verses where the word s where the word yam is referring to a river in the Hebrew Bible.[3] However, they are all doing so poetically. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Nahum all take advantage of their mastery of language in their prophecies. Never once are they used as a historical or literal description of a river.
Yam does mean a river on occasion, but only as a hyperbole used in a Hebrew poem to exemplify some aspect of the prophecies issued by the prophets who used them.
Where Does Neville's Hypothesis Fall?
I am reminded of a scene from The Incredibles 2 where a frustrated Bob Parr/ Mr. Incredible tries helping his son Dash with (what I can only assume to be Common Core) Math homework. With a little modification, we get this short conversation:
Dash: That’s not the way you’re supposed to [read] it, Dad. [Jonathan Neville wants] us to do it this way…
Mr. Incredible: I don’t know that way! Why would they change [what a sea is]? [“Sea”] is [“sea.”] [SEA.] IS. [SEA!]
Neville attempts to describe the Mississippi River as a sea and the River Sidon simultaneously to help contort the Book of Mormon to a specific geographic model, where he could describe it as Sidon for passages that talk about Sidon and a sea west for passages discussing a sea west. He uses his ignorance of the Hebrew language as the main justification for his belief and the assumed ignorance of his readers to push this narrative, without actually providing any substantive proofs for his hypothesis that the Book of Mormon describes a multitude of seas west and east, when Mormon likely was referring to a single body of water as the sea west and a single body of water as the sea east based on the contextual clues we have regarding locations within the Book of Mormon.
It is extremely doubtful that a general who took to such accurate mapping of his homeland would have noticed two or three references to a river as a sea used in poetic contexts and decided that he would do just that as well, only removing the poetic nature of the phrase in question. This would only work towards muddying up Mormon’s clear internal map of Book of Mormon events and provide confusion for his readers, both in his time and ours.
It is safe to conclude that Neville’s hypothesis regarding the sea west is inaccurate, misleading, and incorrect.
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