Question: Why does "Nahom" constitute archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon?

Written Hebrew does not employ vowels, therefore, Book of Mormon "Nahom" is NHM in Hebrew

The Book of Mormon name "Nahom" becomes NHM when written in Hebrew. This is a significant correlation in name and location.

Three altar inscriptions have been discovered containing the name "NHM" as a tribal name and dating from the seventh to sixth centuries BC

Three altar inscriptions have been discovered containing the name "NHM" as a tribal name and dating from the seventh to sixth centuries BC. This is roughly the time period when Lehi’s family was traveling though the same area.

S. Kent Brown: ^[1]

In one instance, however, Nephi does preserve a local name, that of Nahom, the burial place of Ishmael, his father-in-law. Nephi writes in the passive, "the place which was called Nahom," clearly indicating that local people had already named the place. That this area lay in southern Arabia has been certified by recent Journal publications that have featured three inscribed limestone altars discovered by a German archaeological team in the ruined temple of Bar'an in Marib, Yemen.^[2] Here a person finds the tribal name NHM noted on all three altars, which were donated by a certain "Bicathar, son of Sawâd, son of Nawcân, the Nihmite." (In Semitic languages, one deals with consonants rather than vowels, in this case NHM.)

Such discoveries demonstrate as firmly as possible by archaeological means the existence of the tribal name NHM in that part of Arabia in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, the general dates assigned to the carving of the altars by the excavators.^[3] In the view of one recent commentator, the discovery of the altars amounts to "the first actual archaeological evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon."^[4]

These altars are located in the area where the spice route makes an eastward turn to cross the Arabian desert

The spice route proceed southward from Jerusalem and then turns toward the east at the place where the NHM inscriptions were found. Lehi's group proceeded southward and then made an "eastward" change in direction after leaving the "place which was called Nahom."

1 Nephi 17꞉1:

And it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the wilderness; and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth.

S. Kent Brown:

The case for Nahom, or NHM, in this area is made even more tight by recent study. It has become clearly apparent from Nephi's note—"we did travel nearly eastward" from Nahom (1 Nephi 17:1)—that he and his party not only had stayed in the NHM tribal area, burying Ishmael there, but also were following or shadowing the incense trail, a trading road that by then offered an infrastructure of wells and fodder to travelers and their animals. From the general region of the NHM tribe, all roads turned east. How so? Across the Ramlat Sabcatayn desert, east of this tribal region and east of Marib, lay the city of Shabwah, now in ruins. By ancient Arabian law, it was to this city that all incense harvested in the highlands of southern Arabia was carried for inventorying, weighing, and taxing. In addition, traders made gifts of incense to the temples at Shabwah.^[5] After this process, traders loaded the incense and other goods onto camels and shipped them toward the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian areas, traveling at first westward and then, after reaching the edges of the region of the NHM tribe, turning northward (these directions are exactly opposite from those that Nephi and his party followed). Even the daunting shortcuts across the Ramlat Sabcatayn desert, which left travelers without water for 150 miles, ran generally east-west. What is important for our purposes is the fact that the "eastward" turn of Nephi's narrative does not show up in any known ancient source, including Pliny the Elder's famous description of the incense-growing lands of Arabia. In a word, no one knew of this eastward turn in the incense trail except persons who had traveled it or who lived in that territory. This kind of detail in the Book of Mormon narrative, combined with the reference to Nahom, is information that was unavailable in Joseph Smith's day and thus stands as compelling evidence of the antiquity of the text.^[6]

The name NHM is associated with a burial site and mourning

Nephi indicated that their group had reached a "place which was called Nahom," indicating that the site was already named. Ismael was buried there, and his daughters mourned him there.

1 Nephi 16꞉34-35:

And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom. And it came to pass that the daughters of Ishmael did mourn exceedingly, because of the loss of their father...

Critical responses to NHM

Critics of the Church attempt to dismiss this correlation as simply "the willingness of LDS scholars to look anywhere in their despair to find a shred of validation for their erroneous beliefs." ^[7] However, given the high correlation of the data, it seems that the critics are the ones that have difficulty explaining the data.

See also: Question: Did Joseph Smith have access to materials related to Nahom at Allegheny College?

Book of Mormon Central Evidence: Nahom

To make this information easier to understand and digest, Book of Mormon Central has produced the following video to explain Nahom and the strength of using this as evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon:

Question: What are the responses to critical arguments concerning the name "Nahom" in the Book of Mormon?

Several popular criticisms of the Book of Mormon name and location "Nahom" are the following

• It is claimed that there is no evidence dating NHM before A.D. 600.
• It is claimed that the pronunciation of NHM is unknown and may not relate to Nahom at all.
• It has been Claimed that Joseph Smith produced the name Nahom from one of the Biblical names Naham, Nehum, or Nahum.
• It is claimed that the name NHM isn't actually a match for "Nahom," and that the only existing pronunciation for NHM is NOT necessarily "Nahom."

Is the name NHM actually a match for "Nahom"?

Yes. It is a match, but it is not a unique match, since other words with vowels removed can match NHM.

Is the only existing pronunciation for NHM "Nahom"?

No. LDS scholars do not claim that the only existing pronunciation of NHM is "Nahom."

Is the only translation of the name "Nahom" to Hebrew written as "NHM"?

Yes. Remove the vowels, and the only way "Nahom" can be written is NHM.===

The issue of vowels is a non-sequitur, and the claim about the “only existing pronunciation” is just nonsense. The Book of Mormon name "Nahom" becomes NHM when the vowels are removed. Nobody is claiming that the only existing pronunciation of NHM is "Nahom."

Nephi’s original text would also not have had vowels and would thus just be NHM, the South Arabian tribe/territory name has been translated in a variety of ways.

The tribe and territory of NHM still exist in the area today, and local pronunciations range from “Neh-hem” to “Nä-hum,” and the name has been translated in a variety of ways, including Naham and Nahm. There is no reason “Nahom” should be considered beyond the pale. When written, Semitic languages do not need to include vowels, so the altars simply have NHM (in South Arabian), and Nephi’s record would have been no different. As such, no closer correlation in name could be asked for. (Neal Rappleye and Stephen O. Smoot, "Book of Mormon Minimalists and the NHM Inscriptions: A Response to Dan Vogel," Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, vol. 8. (2014) 173.)

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Book of Mormon Minimalists and the NHM Inscriptions: A Response to Dan Vogel"

Biblical “minimalists” have sought to undermine or de-emphasize the significance of the Tel Dan inscription attesting to the existence of the “house of David.” Similarly, those who might be called Book of Mormon “minimalists” such as Dan Vogel have marshaled evidence to try to make the nhm inscriptions from south Arabia, corresponding to the Book of Mormon Nahom, seem as irrelevant as possible. We show why the nhm inscriptions still stand as impressive evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Click here to view the complete article

Question: Did Joseph Smith have access to materials related to Nahom at Allegheny College?

At least two critical websites have asserted that Joseph could have accessed materials related to Nahom at Allegheny College because, they claim, it was only "50 miles from Harmony"

A 1782 map by Carsten Niebuhr shows "Nehem" in the proper location. (See the map at http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~31563~1150042:A-new-map-of-Arabia-divided-into-it) Could Joseph Smith have accessed a copy of this map?

1782 map by Carsten Niebuhr shows the name "Nehem". A copy of this map was located at Allegheny College, which was 320 miles away from Harmony Township, Pennsylvania, during the time that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon

Several websites that are critical of the Church have presented the following argument:^[8]

This FAIR Link mentions Niebuhr's and d'Anville's books. It also says that neither were at Dartmouth when Joseph was a boy, nor were they available in Manchester, New York in the lending library.

Now for the rest of the story. Allegheny College in Meadville Pennsylvania is about 50 miles from Harmony. Its library began through donations from private individuals. In 1824, Thomas Jefferson wrote that he hoped his University of Virginia could someday possess the richness of Allegheny's library.

In the Allegheny's collection were both books that apologists claim were not available to Joseph Smith. Here is an 1823 catalog:

D'Anville's book on ancient geography is on page 18
[Carsten] Niebuhr [1782 map] is on page 44

The critics conclude with the following assertion:

Both books were fifty miles away from where the translation was being done.

This is not, however, the case. These books were actually 320 miles from where Joseph Smith lived.

The "Harmony" located 50 miles from Allegheny College is not the same as the Harmony Township where Joseph Smith lived

Actually, the "Harmony" located 50 miles from Allegheny College is not the same as the Harmony Township where Joseph Smith lived. Indeed, if one simply types “Harmony, Pennsylvania” into Google Maps, it does indicate that a town called “Harmony” is located approximately 50 miles from Allegheny College in Meadville. However, the critics got it wrong. The Harmony Township in which Joseph lived is located 320 miles from Allegheny College. This is easily confirmed by typing “Harmony Township, Susquehanna, PA” into Google Maps.

Allegheny College, at 320 miles distance, was too far from Harmony Township for Joseph to have seen the name “Nahom” on one of the maps located there

FairMormon has acknowledged that two books were available at Allegheny College in Meadville Pennsylvania containing maps which showed the location of Nahom (alternatively spelled Nihm or Nehem). We concluded that even though these books were present, that they were not located close enough to Harmony Township for Joseph to have utilized them. The critics, however, appear to have utilized a faulty Google search to assert that these books were located close enough to where Joseph Smith lived for him to have used them. For example, the critical website MormonThink attempted to refute FairMormon's argument on their "Book of Mormon Problems" page. MormonThink stated in June 2014: "Now for the rest of the story. Allegheny College in Meadville Pennsylvania is about 50 miles from Harmony. ...In the Allegheny's collection were both books that apologists claim were not available to Joseph Smith." However, after Neal Rappleye and Stephen Smoot pointed out in the paper "Book of Mormon Minimalists and the NHM Inscriptions: A Response to Dan Vogel" that the critics had selected the wrong town of Harmony for their Google map search, MormonThink removed the claim and it no longer appears as of October 2014. The claim still appears on at least one other critical website.^[9]

• Harmony Township, Forest County, Pennsylvania is located 50 miles from Allegheny College, however, this is not the Harmony Township in which Joseph Smith lived.
• The second possibility is Harmony Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, which is located 86 miles from Allegheny College. But this isn’t the location at which Joseph Smith lived either.
• Finally, we have Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. This is where Joseph Smith lived and translated the Book of Mormon. The Harmony Township in which Joseph lived is located 320 miles from Allegheny College. This is easily confirmed by typing “Harmony Township, Susquehanna, PA” into Google Maps.

FairMormon therefore stands by its assertion that Allegheny College, at 320 miles distance, was too far from Harmony Township for Joseph to have seen the name “Nahom” on one of the maps located there.

The description of Lehi's desert journey matches exactly how one would traverse Arabia

S. Kent Brown:

The entire thrust of these remarks underscores the observation that Joseph Smith could have known almost nothing about ancient Arabia when he began translating the Book of Mormon. Yet the narrative of the journey of the party of Lehi and Sariah through ancient Arabia, written by their son Nephi, fits with what we know about the Arabian Peninsula literally from one end to the other, for their journey began in the northwest and ended in the southeast sector. Nephi's narrative faithfully reflects the intertwining of long stretches of barren wilderness with pockets of verdant, lifesaving vegetation. Recent discoveries have illumined segments of the account, tying events to known regions (e.g.,) and climatic characteristics (e.g., mists along the coastal mountains). People in Joseph Smith's world may have possessed accurate information about one or two aspects of Arabia through classical sources (e.g., incense trade, honey production). But those same sources offered inaccurate caricatures of Arabia that Nephi's narrative does not mirror (e.g., that the peninsula was graced by large forests, etc.). Hence, on both fronts—modern discoveries and more accurate information—the Book of Mormon account shines as a radiant beam across the centuries, inviting us to adopt its more important message of spiritual truths as our own.^[10]

Three altar inscriptions containing NHM exist in the correct Old World location, and a non-LDS archaeologist has dated one of them to the seventh to sixth centuries BC.

Stephen D. Ricks: ^[11]

Surprisingly, evidence for Nahom, the name of the place where Ishmael was buried (1 Nephi 16:34), is based on historical, geographic, and archaeological—and only secondarily on etymological—considerations.
Three altar inscriptions containing NHM as a tribal name and dating from the seventh to sixth centuries BC—roughly the time period when Lehi’s family was traveling though the area—have been discussed by S. Kent Brown.^[12] Dan Vogel, writing in the misleadingly named Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet and responding to two books by LDS authors about Lehi’s journey in the Arabian desert, has objected to the dating of the Arabian word NHM: “There is no evidence dating the Arabian NHM before A.D. 600, let alone 600 B.C.” ^[13] It should be noted, however, that Burkhard Vogt, perhaps unaware of its implications for the Book of Mormon, dates an altar having the initial letters NHM(yn) to the seventh to sixth centuries BC. ^[14] This is not insignificant since Vogel’s book was published in 2004, while Vogt’s contribution was published in 1997.

Nhm appears as a place name and as a tribal name in southwestern Arabia in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic period in the Arab antiquarian al-Hamdani’s al-Iklīl ^[15] and in his Ṣifat Jazīrat al-’Arab. ^[16] If, as Robert Wilson observes, there is minimal movement among the tribes over time, ^[17] the region known in early modern maps of the Arabian Peninsula as “Nehem” and “Nehhm” as well as “Nahom” may well have had that, or a similar, name in antiquity.

The location of Arabian NHM is in the correct location for the "Eastward turn" toward Bountiful

S. Kent Brown:

The case for Nahom, or NHM, in this area is made even more tight by recent study. It has become clearly apparent from Nephi's note—"we did travel nearly eastward" from Nahom (1 Nephi 17:1)—that he and his party not only had stayed in the NHM tribal area, burying Ishmael there, but also were following or shadowing the incense trail, a trading road that by then offered an infrastructure of wells and fodder to travelers and their animals. From the general region of the NHM tribe, all roads turned east. How so? Across the Ramlat Sabcatayn desert, east of this tribal region and east of Marib, lay the city of Shabwah, now in ruins. By ancient Arabian law, it was to this city that all incense harvested in the highlands of southern Arabia was carried for inventorying, weighing, and taxing. In addition, traders made gifts of incense to the temples at Shabwah.^[18] After this process, traders loaded the incense and other goods onto camels and shipped them toward the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian areas, traveling at first westward and then, after reaching the edges of the region of the NHM tribe, turning northward (these directions are exactly opposite from those that Nephi and his party followed). Even the daunting shortcuts across the Ramlat Sabcatayn desert, which left travelers without water for 150 miles, ran generally east-west. What is important for our purposes is the fact that the "eastward" turn of Nephi's narrative does not show up in any known ancient source, including Pliny the Elder's famous description of the incense-growing lands of Arabia. In a word, no one knew of this eastward turn in the incense trail except persons who had traveled it or who lived in that territory. This kind of detail in the Book of Mormon narrative, combined with the reference to Nahom, is information that was unavailable in Joseph Smith's day and thus stands as compelling evidence of the antiquity of the text.^[19]

The root for "naham" means "to mourn"

Nephi's party reaches an area "which was called Nahom" (1 Nephi 16:34)near the time that they make an eastward turn in their journey. ^[20]

It [the root for naham] appears twenty-five times in the narrative books of the Bible, and in every case it is associated with death. In family settings, it is applied in instances involving the death of an immediate family member (parent, sibling, or child); in national settings, it has to do with the survival or impending extermination of an entire people. At heart, naham means "to mourn," to come to terms with a death; these usages are usually translated...by the verb "to comfort," as when Jacob's children try to comfort their father after the reported death of Joseph. ^[21]

It is intriguing that Nephi tells us that the deceased Ishmael was buried at a spot with a name associated with mourning and death of loved ones.

The ancient process of mourning in desert cultures matches what the daughters of Ishmael did in 1 Nephi 16

It was the daughters of Ishmael who mourned for him and chided Lehi for his death (1 Nephi 16꞉34-35). Budde has shown that the Old Hebrew mourning customs were those of the desert, in which "the young women of the nomad tribes mourn at the grave, around which they dance singing lightly." The Arabs who farm also put the body in a tent around which the women move as they mourn. "At the moment of a man's death, his wives, daughters, and female relations unite in cries of lamentation (weloulouá), which they repeat several times." 65 It is common in all the eastern deserts for the women to sit in a circle in a crouching position while the woman nearest related to the dead sits silently in the middle—in Syria the corpse itself is in the middle; while singing, the women move in a circle and whenever the song stops there is a general wailing. The singing is in unison, Indian fashion. In some parts the men also participate in the rites, but where this is so the women may never mix with the men. They have a monopoly and a mourning tradition all of their own.66 Mourning begins immediately upon death and continues among the Syrian Bedouins for seven days, a few hours a day. "All mourning is by mourning women and female relatives. No men are present."67 As is well known, no traditions are more unchanging through the centuries than funerary customs.68^[22]

S. Kent Brown, "Nahom and the "Eastward" Turn"

In one instance, however, Nephi does preserve a local name, that of Nahom, the burial place of Ishmael, his father-in-law. Nephi writes in the passive, "the place which was called Nahom," clearly indicating that local people had already named the place. That this area lay in southern Arabia has been certified by recent Journal publications that have featured three inscribed limestone altars discovered by a German archaeological team in the ruined temple of Bar'an in Marib, Yemen.2 Here a person finds the tribal name NHM noted on all three altars, which were donated by a certain "Bicathar, son of Sawâd, son of Nawcân, the Nihmite." (In Semitic languages, one deals with consonants rather than vowels, in this case NHM.)

Such discoveries demonstrate as firmly as possible by archaeological means the existence of the tribal name NHM in that part of Arabia in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, the general dates assigned to the carving of the altars by the excavators.3 In the view of one recent commentator, the discovery of the altars amounts to "the first actual archaeological evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon."

Click here to view the complete article

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Some Notes on Book of Mormon Names"

Surprisingly, evidence for Nahom, the name of the place where Ishmael was buried (1 Nephi 16:34), is based on historical, geographic, and archaeological—and only secondarily on etymological—considerations.

Three altar inscriptions containing NHM as a tribal name and dating from the seventh to sixth centuries BC—roughly the time period when Lehi’s family was traveling though the area—have been discussed by S. Kent Brown.8 Dan Vogel, writing in the misleadingly named Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet and responding to two books by LDS authors about Lehi’s journey in the Arabian desert, has objected to the dating of the Arabian word NHM: “There is no evidence dating the [Page 158]Arabian NHM before A.D. 600, let alone 600 B.C.”9 It should be noted, however, that Burkhard Vogt, perhaps unaware of its implications for the Book of Mormon, dates an altar having the initial letters NHM(yn) to the seventh to sixth centuries BC.10 This is not insignificant since Vogel’s book was published in 2004, while Vogt’s contribution was published in 1997.

Nhm appears as a place name and as a tribal name in southwestern Arabia in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic period in the Arab antiquarian al-Hamdani’s al-Iklīl11 and in his Ṣifat Jazīrat al-’Arab.12 If, as Robert Wilson observes, there is minimal movement among the tribes over time,13 the region known in early modern maps of the Arabian Peninsula as “Nehem” and “Nehhm” as well as “Nahom” may well have had that, or a similar, name in antiquity.

Click here to view the complete article

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Book of Mormon Minimalists and the NHM Inscriptions: A Response to Dan Vogel"

Biblical “minimalists” have sought to undermine or de-emphasize the significance of the Tel Dan inscription attesting to the existence of the “house of David.” Similarly, those who might be called Book of Mormon “minimalists” such as Dan Vogel have marshaled evidence to try to make the nhm inscriptions from south Arabia, corresponding to the Book of Mormon Nahom, seem as irrelevant as possible. We show why the nhm inscriptions still stand as impressive evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Click here to view the complete article

See FAIR Evidence:
More evidence for the place called Nahom

Video

Notes

1. ↑ S. Kent Brown, "Nahom and the 'Eastward' Turn," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12:1 (2003)
2. ↑ See S. Kent Brown, "'The Place Which Was Called Nahom': New Light from Ancient Yemen," JBMS 8/1 (1999): 66-68; and Warren P. Aston, "Newly Found Altars from Nahom," JBMS 10/2 (2001): 56-61.
3. ↑ See Burkhard Vogt, "Les temples de Ma'rib," in Y émen: au pays de la reine de Saba (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), 144; see also the preliminary report by Burkhard Vogt et al., "Arsh Bilqis"—Der Temple des Almaqah von Bar'an in Marib (Sana'a, Yemen, 2000).
4. ↑ Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), 120.
5. ↑ Brown: "On these ancient laws, see Nigel Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh: A Study of the Arabian Incense Trade (London: Longman Group Ltd., 1981), 169–70, 181, 183–84. Concerning the taxation of incense and the gifts to the temples, see Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 12.32 ( §63)."
6. ↑ S. Kent Brown, "Nahom and the 'Eastward' Turn," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12:1 (2003)
7. ↑ MormonThink.com page "Book of Mormon Problems".
8. ↑ MormonThink.com and Mormon Curtain (accessed 4 June 2014). As of 18 October 2014, MormonThink has removed it, while it is still present on Mormon Curtain.
9. ↑ The claim still appears on Mormon Curtain as of 18 October 2014.
10. ↑ S. Kent Brown, "New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch, (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), Chapter 5, references silently removed—consult original for citations.
11. ↑ Stephen D. Ricks, "Some Notes on Book of Mormon Names," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship4(2013): 155-160.
12. ↑ Brown, “New Light from Arabia on Lehi’s Trail,” in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2002), 55–125, esp. 81–82.
13. ↑ Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), 609.
14. ↑ Burkhard Vogt, “Les temples de Maʾrib,” in Yémen: au pays de la reine de Saba (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), 144.
15. ↑ Al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Hamdani, al-Iklil, ed. Nabih Faris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940), 35, 94.
16. ↑ al-Hamdani, Sifat Jazirat al-‘Arab, ed. David H. Müller (Leiden: Brill, repr. 1968), 49, l. 9; 81, l. 4, 8, 11; 83, l. 8, 9; 109, l. 26; 110, l12. 2, 4 126, l. 10; 135, l. 19, 22; 167, l. 15–20; 168, l. 10, 11, where nhm is listed as either the name of a “region, territory” (Ar. balad) or a “tribe” (Ar. qabila); Jawad ‘Ali, Al-Mufassal fi Ta’rikh al-‘Arab qabla al-Islam (Beirut: Dar al-‘Ilm lil-Malayin, 1969–73), 2:414, gives “Nhm” as the name of a “region” (Ar. ard) during the period of the “mukarribs and the [ancient] kings of Saba” (Ar. fi ayyam al-mukarribina wa-fi ayyam muluk Saba’); he also gives “Nhm” as a place name, Al-Mufassal, 4:187 and 7:462.
17. ↑ Robert Wilson, “al-Hamdani’s Description of Hashid and Bakil,” Proceedings of the Seminar on Arabian Studies 11 (1981): 95, 99–100.
18. ↑ Brown: "On these ancient laws, see Nigel Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh: A Study of the Arabian Incense Trade (London: Longman Group Ltd., 1981), 169–70, 181, 183–84. Concerning the taxation of incense and the gifts to the temples, see Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 12.32 ( §63)."
19. ↑ S. Kent Brown, "Nahom and the 'Eastward' Turn," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12:1 (2003)
20. ↑ Anonymous, "Nahom and the 'Eastward' Turn," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12/1 (2003). [113–114] link
21. ↑ David Damrosch, The Narrative Covenant (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 128–129.
22. ↑ Hugh W. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 3rd edition, (Vol. 6 of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley), edited by John W. Welch, (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company; Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1988), Chapter 19, references silently removed—consult original for citations.