How could Nephis group make the ocean voyage from Arabia to the New World?
(I’ve been asked how Nephi’s group could make a ship, how they could possibly carry enough food to survive, and have been told that the ocean currents makes the voyage impossible.) The text makes it clear that they departed from the east side of the Arabian Peninsula, making their voyage a fairly direct but still difficult route. They did not go around the cape of Africa, as some critics assume. The Book of Mormon description – though brief and succinct – of the journey through the Arabian peninsula is one of many powerful evidences for its authenticity, as it describes places and reasonable routes that Joseph Smith could not possibly have known about. I discuss this in some length on the Web page at “http://www.jefflindsay.com/BMEvidences.shtml”. There is indeed a place (a most unusual place) in the right location on the Arabian coast to correspond with the place “Bountiful” where Lehi and his group camped for quite a while before constructing boats from the abundant trees (really – t
