Source:Echoes:Ch5:23:Old world Bountiful

Lehi's desert journey: Old World Bountiful

Lehi's desert journey: Old World Bountiful

S. Kent Brown:

There is only one area along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula that matches botanically Nephi's description of Bountiful as a place of abundant fruit, wild honey,102 and timbers (see 1 Nephi 17:5–6; 1 Nephi 18:1–2, 1 Nephi 18:6). It is the Dhofar region of southern Oman. The summer monsoon rains turn the area into a green garden. In addition, one finds small deposits of iron ore there from which Nephi could have made his tools for building the ship that would carry the party to the New World. There is no way that Joseph Smith could have known these facts.

Although one must view attempts to tie Bountiful to a specific locale in Dhofar with deep caution, Latter-day Saint writers have rightly pointed to this area as the probable general region where the party of Lehi and Sariah emerged from the desert.103 It is almost as if one can hear party members singing in Nephi's narrative when he writes of their escape from the harsh desert into an area teeming with fruit: "We did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey; and . . . we were exceedingly rejoiced when we came to the seashore" (1 Nephi 17:5–6).104 At long last, the group had escaped the grasp of the living death of desert famine.