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From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith
By Michael R. Ash
After a long journey that probably took several years, the Lehites finally came to Bountiful –a land of “much fruit and also wild honey” (1 Nephi 17:5) Here they camped and built a ship for the final leg of their journey to the Americas. According to the Book of Mormon, Bountiful was a fertile place with vegetation, shipbuilding timber, flint deposits for making tools, and a nearby mount where Nephi’s brothers nearly threw Nephi into the sea.
Located precisely where we would expect to find Bountiful is the Arabian site of Khor Kharfor –the most naturally fertile location on the Arabian coast. There are fresh water springs, timber trees up to forty feet in circumference, wild honey, and small game animals. Until recently there was a sheltered sea inlet from where one could launch a raft (it is now closed by a sand bar). Towering on the west side of the bay is a mount where Nephi could have prayed, and 120-foot cliffs where Nephi’s brothers could have threatened to throw off their younger brother.
Geologists have recently found nearby iron deposits and forms of flint from which Nephi could have fashioned tools. All the items necessary to meet the description of Bountiful is found on the Dohfar coast just as described in the Book of Mormon.
Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt. He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.
Julianne Dehlin Hatton is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.
Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.
