The Geography of the Book of Mormon

I recently watched part of a DVD that discusses theories about Book of Mormon geography.  With that on my mind, I thought I would try to lay out what I see in the text in terms of geography to help me wrap my mind around what we actually know and where the major places were in relation to each other.  The first place that Lehi’s group settled was called “the land of their first inheritance” (see Mosiah 10:13).  When Nephi left as recorded in 2 Nephi 5:6, they traveled “for the space of many days” and named the place where they settled “Nephi” (2 Nephi 5:8).  Several hundred years later Mosiah was “warned of the Lord that he should flee out of the land of Nephi” and they “came down into the land which is called the land of Zarahemla” where they joined with the Mulekites (Omni 1:12, 13).  They must have descended in elevation because subsequent journeys back to the land of Nephi were always “up to the land of Nephi” (Alma 26:23; see also Mosiah 20:7, Mosiah 28:5, Alma 29:14).  From this point on in the text we have to remember the potentially confusing fact that it was the Lamanites who lived in the land of Nephi.  Also we know that the land of Zarahemla (where the Nephites/Mulekites were) was in a northern direction from the land of Nephi since the Lamanites were “on the south” as compared to the Nephites (Alma 22:33).  This is confirmed numerous times throughout the text.  It appears that in the latter part of the Book of Mormon they did not distinguish between the original “land of their first inheritance” and the “land of Nephi”, as is seen in statements such as Alma 22:28. 

                North of the land of Zarahemla was the Nephite land of Bountiful.  This was first mentioned in Alma 22:29, and in that verse it suggests that Bountiful was on the north of Zarahemla.  We see that relationship confirmed in other places in the text.  For example, in Helaman 1 after Coriantumr had success in taking over Zarahemla he went “towards the city of Bountiful; for it was his determination to go forth and cut his way through with the sword, that he might obtain the north parts of the land” (Helaman 1:23).  We learn in Alma 22 that Bountiful “bordered upon the land which they called Desolation, it being so far northward that it came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed” and that on this border between Bountiful and Desolation was “a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward” (Alma 22:30, 32).  So all of this gives us the following picture: the land of Nephi and first inheritance was the southernmost land and was occupied by the Lamanites, the land of Zarahemla and the start of Nephite territory was north of that, and Bountiful was even further north of Zarahemla.  But all of that land just described (Nephi/Zarahemla/Bountiful) was all considered part of the “land southward.”  And at the top of Bountiful was this “narrow neck of land” that we read about in several places.  There was also apparently a “narrow strip of wilderness” that divided Zarahemla from the land of Nephi, but that is mentioned only once and was clearly different from the narrow neck of land (Alma 22:27). 

                The “land northward” (i.e. north of Bountiful) was inhabited by the Jaredites but also later by many Nephites.  We read that the Jaredites at one point “built a great city by the narrow neck of land, by the place where the sea divides the land” (Ether 10:20).  We know that they were on the north side of the narrow neck of land based on Alma 22:30, and it was called Desolation by the Nephites largely because of the Jaredite destruction that took place there: “A land which was covered with dry bones; yea, a land which had been peopled and which had been destroyed” (Mosiah 21:26).  It seems that the Nephites finally went into this “land northward” starting at the end of the book of Alma first with Hagoth’s group who “on the borders of the land Bountiful, by the land Desolation” set sail “into the west sea, by the narrow neck which led into the land northward” (Alma 63:5).  Then in Helaman 3 we read of “an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land” (Helaman 3:3).  Much of the final scenes of the Book of Mormon also take place in this “land northward” as Mormon gathered his people “at the land Desolation, to a city which was in the borders, by the narrow pass which led into the land southward” (Mormon 3:5). 

                Of course understanding the geography of the Book of Mormon is in no way critical to understanding the testimony of Christ that the Book of Mormon offers.  There is much debate about where the Book of Mormon actually took place in terms of what we know today about North and South America, and surely that debate will continue as scholars try to map the brief references in the text to places on the map today.  But as I once heard someone who had spent much of his life studying the Book of Mormon say, “I don’t know where Zarehemla was; but I know there was a Zarahemla.”  We may never know in this life where these locations that we read about were, but we can know for a surety that they did exist and that the people who were there, like us, “knew of Christ, and… had a hope of his glory” (Jacob 4:4).