Book of Mormon "Highways"

[BMAF]

November, 2015

Highways in the Book of Mormon 

The Book of Mormon is filled with superlatives. Examples: "the whole world" means the entire globe to us.  To Mormon it meant "their" world. The "whole land" was once thought to include North and South America, now understood to mean the land they occupied at any given time. Population statistics may be inaccurate.  To us, 10,000 soldiers means 10,000 soldiers.  In ancient cultures, on both sides of the world, 10,000 was unfathomable and meant a large undefined number. We have often placed unnecessary and impossible burdens on the book because of its use of superlatives taken literally.

Other than three uses of the word "highway" in 1st and 2nd Nephi which are quotes of Isaiah from the plates of Laban, the word appears only three times in Helaman and 3 Nephi.  In other words, highways are not mentioned until the Nephites had been in their promised land for five to six hundred years. (In comparison, the United States has been a country for just over 230 years)  As is the case with almost all aspects of the book, chronology plays an extremely important role and cannot be overlooked.  We cannot generalize and say that such and such was an attribute or possession of the Nephites for their whole history.  Things change over 1,000 years!  We should expect to see changes in the meaning of the word "highway" over time.

The Early Years

John Tvednes was asked this question:  

The mention of “highways” in the Book of Mormon is anachronistic (Helaman 7:10; 14:24; 3 Nephi 6:8; 8:13). The first 

roads in America were constructed after colonization of the New World by Europeans. 

His answer:   

Though the term “highway” has come to denote in our time well-paved roads for automobile and truck traffic, its use predates 
the modern era. Indeed, the term is used 25 times in the King James version (KJV) of the Bible, which was translated nearly four centuries before the invention of the automobile. Unlike our modern use of the word, in these scriptures it can refer to trails or paths used for foot or animal traffic, though they may refer to improved roads. Some of the highways mentioned in 3 Nephi were destroyed and broken up at the time of Christ‘s death (3 Nephi 8:13), so they may not have been recognized by European colonists. 

The Later Years

 

John Sorensen comments: “The Book of Mormon specifically mentions the laying out and building of cities and connecting highways (3 Nephi 6:7-8) as well as the planning of massive fortification systems (Alma 48:8). To these may be added the possible construction of irrigation systems based on engineering knowledge accumulated in the Near East by Iron Age times.” Mormon’s Codex pg 360

Extensive networks of excellent roadways are well known throughout Central and South America, some of which date well into Book of Mormon times. One hard-surfaced highway in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico was in place ca. 300 BC, and another at Cerros in Belize was in use between 150 and 50 BC. Roads or “highways” seem to have been known to Pre-Columbian North Americans in certain regions. One scholar has  recently discovered what appears to have been a 60 mile long roadway that joined Hopewell ceremonial centers at Newark, Ohio, and Chillicothe.  A much smaller network of roadways spanned the Anasazi region of the American Southwest.  Another scholar wrote that Mayan “roads were built in Yucatan that embodied all [the] sound principles of road making . . . The thoroughness and good engineering of their construction rival the famous roads of the Roman empire. In ancient times Chichen Itza and great cities of the Yucatan peninsula were linked by a network of smooth, hard-surfaced highways called sacbe."  

The term "sacbe" is Yucatec Maya for "white road"; white because they were originally coated with limestone stucco, which was over stone and rubble fill. While the longer roads could be used for trade and communication, all sacbe apparently had ritual or religious significance as well. Travel writer and early Mayanist John Lloyd Stephens reported that some local Maya people in Yucatán still said a short ritual prayer when crossing a sacbe in the early 1840s, even though they had been overgrown with jungle for centuries at the time. (Wikipedia)

                   

These descriptions of "highways" sound like they are vastly different .  .  . and they are.  But they are both correct.  In the early years, during Alma and the Sons of Mosiahs' fourteen year mission there were few, if any, highways.  Their travels were over trails, many of which were used by the Spanish in the 16th century and are still in use today.  The Spanish added some permanence by lining them with stones and boulders which still bear the marks of the wheels of their narrow carts, but they remain to this day only good off-road vehicles trails; a long way from a highway as we understand it. In the later years, with a vastly larger population base, the development and construction of highways became feasible.

Geography as well as chronology plays an important role in visualizing a Nephite highway.  Until Mosiah1 left the City/Land of Nephi which was in the highlands of Guatemala, there were no highways and the word doesn't appear in the record during that time period. (600 BC to about 250 BC  Omni1:12--14)  It would be virtually impossible to employ a system of highways (sacbe) of any length in highlands terrain.

When Mosiah1 joined with the Mulekites, their City/Land was in the lowlands north of the Narrow Strip of Wilderness.  This environment would allow for the development of highways, so that as the Nephites expanded northward into the Yucatan, the technology would allow the building of highways though the terrain.  While the sacbe in the Yucatán are the best known, they are documented throughout the Maya area. Some appear to have been built as early in Maya history as the Pre-Classic.  There is also the possibility that the Jaredites built some of the original highways in the Yucatan and were improved upon by the Nephites.

Articles posted on the BMAF website this month:

• Exploring the Explanatory Power of Egyptian and Semitic in Uto-Aztecan  by  Stubbs, Brian D.

• The Great and Terrible Judgments of the Lord”: Destruction and Disaster in 3 Nephi and the Geology of Mesoamerica  by  Rappleye, Neal

Join the stimulating conversations and concepts with us on BMAF  Facebook.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/bmaf.org/