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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Critics charge that the description of the Liahona as a "compass" is anachronistic because the magnetic compass was not known in 600 B.C. | Critics charge that the description of the Liahona as a "compass" is anachronistic because the magnetic compass was not known in 600 B.C. |
Critics charge that the description of the Liahona as a "compass" is anachronistic because the magnetic compass was not known in 600 B.C.
Alma2 explained why the director the Lord gave to Lehi was called the Liahona:
Believing it was called a compass because it pointed the direction for Lehi to travel is the fault of the modern reader, not the Book of Mormon.
In every case, it is clear that, at least in Jacobean England, the word was regularly treated as meaning either a round object, or something which moved in a curved fashion.
Further evidence of the archaic meaning of the word comes from a study of the rather lengthy listing for the word in the Oxford English Dictionary. It includes definition 5.b.:
To use the word compass as a name for a round or curved object is well attested in both the King James Version of the Bible and the OED. The Book of Mormon refers to the Liahona as "a compass" not because it anachronistically pointed the way to travel, but because it was a perfectly round object.
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