Book of Mormon/Compass

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Is the Book of Mormon mention of the word "compass" an anachronism?

Questions


It is claimed that the description of the Liahona as a "compass" is anachronistic because the magnetic compass was not known in 600 B.C.

  • One critical website notes that "the COMPASS which DIRECTED one's course wasn't invented yet for many centuries." Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag

Believing it was called a compass because it pointed the direction for Lehi to travel is a natural interpretation by the modern reader.

  • As a verb, the word "compass" occurs frequently in the King James Version of the Bible[1]; and it generally suggests the idea of surrounding or encircling something. Note the following usages:
    • Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 2 Chronicles 4:2
    • They compassed me about; yea, they compassed me about: but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them. Psalms 118:11
    • And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. Joshua 6:3
    • From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about. Psalms 17:9
  • A third common situation in the KJV is the use of the phrase "to fetch a compass" (e.g., Numbers 34:5; Joshua 15:3; Acts 28:13), which if not recognized as a verbal phrase could be wrongly seen as presenting "compass" as a noun.

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.:

"Anything circular in shape, e.g. the globe, the horizon; also, a circlet or ring."
  • the clock can also be referred to as a compass, yet it points at the time.

Suggested early pre-Columbian compass

If critics insist on reading this as a "mariner's compass," even this may not be as anachronistic as they have assumed.

Naturally-occurring magnetic ore was being mined by the 7th century B.C., and its magnetic properties were first discussed by the early philosopher Thales of Miletos around 600 B.C.[2]

Non-LDS astronomer John Carlson reported finding a Olmec hematite artifact in Mesoamerica, which was radio-dated to 1600 to 1000 B.C. If Carlson is right, this usage "predates the Chinese discovery of the geomagnetic lodestone compass by more than a millennium."[3] Other researchers have suggested the metal is simply part of an ornament,[4] though Mesoamericanist Michael Coe has suggested the use of such ores as floating compasses.[5] Such examples demonstrate how a single find can radically alter what archaeology tells us is "impossible" with regard to the Book of Mormon text.

Notes

  1. Biblical references to "compass" can be seen with this search of the lds.org scriptures web site.
  2. Robert F. Smith, "Lodestone and the Liahona," in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, edited by John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1992), Chapter 12. direct off-site
  3. John B. Carlson, "Lodestone Compass: Chinese or Olmec Primacy? Multidisciplinary Analysis of an Olmec Hematite Artifact from San Lorenzo, Veracruz, Mexico," Science 189, No. 4205 (5 September 1975): 753-760. See also R. H. Fuson, "The Orientation of Mayan Ceremonial Centers," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59 (September 1969): 508-10; E. C. Baity, "Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy So Far," Current Anthropology 14 (October 1973): 443.
  4. Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, Trans-Pacific Echoes and Resonances: Listening Once Again (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 1985), 21.
  5. Smith, "Lodestone and the Liahona"; see also Michael D. Coe, America's First Civilization (New York, 1970).


Further reading and additional sources responding to these claims