The Book of Mormon and The Land of Jerusalem
The
Book of Mormon describes a ‘land of Jerusalem.’ The land of
Jerusalem appears about 40 times in the book. It is not found once in
the Bible, and that is important. Perhaps the most controversial
reference to the land of Jerusalem is in Alma
7 where
Alma seeming to foreshadow the role of John the Baptist,
saying:
‘Repent
ye, and prepare the way of the Lord, and walk in his paths, which are
straight; for behold, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and the Son
of God cometh upon the face of the earth. And behold, he shall be
born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the land of our forefathers…’
Alma 7:9,10
Of
course, Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not ‘at Jerusalem.’
Where is the land of Jerusalem? Mormons say Alma was written 500 years after Nephi left Jerusalem, that this is entirely consistent with how the Book of Mormon describes places “being in the land” of cities. However, the people of the Book of Mormon are supposed to be culturally as well as ethnically Hebrew. Lehi and his family began their journey in the city of Jerusalem.
The test is what the Bible and Bible history tell us. The Bible doesn’t talk about the land of cities. It speaks of a land of people. Babylon, for instance, was the capital of the land of the Babylonians. It makes no difference that the Book of Mormon is internally consistent. There is no 'land of Jerusalem.' Mormons need to demonstrate such a land existed, was conceived, was spoken or written about outside the Book of Mormon for the Book of Mormon to plausibly reference it.
An argument has been made that 2 Samuel 5:6 makes reference to ‘the land of Jerusalem’: ‘And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land’.
The Jebusites were a tribe of Canaanites whose capital was Jerusalem (called by them Jebus) although this is disputed. The Jebusites are described in Numbers 13:29 as dwelling in the hill country. If Jebus (Jerusalem) was their capital, the Jebusites lived in the hill country outside the city. Attacked by David, they would have fled to the relative safety of the city walls. The verse in 2 Samuel refers to the land of the Jebusites, not the land of Jebus (Jerusalem).
Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the city looked to by diaspora Jews since time immemorial. To this day the phrase 'next year in Jerusalem' is often sung all over the world at the end of the Passover Seder and at the end of the Ne'ila service on Yom Kippur.
The psalmist writes, 'If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.' Psalm 137:5,6
If Book of Mormon people are truly Hebrews they would be the only ones in history to forget Jerusalem, what it is, and what it means.
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