“Finding Nephi’s Ore”

Last updated on: December 13, 2024 at 7:45 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Finding Nephi’s Ore” 2024-12-13T19:45:42-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The Islamic Center of Southern California, at 434 Vermont Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, not far from the University of Southern California (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Last night, at the Islamic Center of Southern California, I participated in a dinner that was followed by a discussion and a Q&A that involved me and Salam al-Marayati, the president and co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Our conversation and our responses to questions went well, I think, and they were recorded for eventual future posting. (I noticed three cameras.) The audience was made up of both Muslim and Latter-day Saint young people, in what seemed to me to be equal proportions. Maybe around fifty or sixty of them? Seventy, perhaps? For such a balance to have been achieved they must have been invited, and there was obviously no intent to attract a larger crowd; their numbers exactly corresponded to the number of chairs that had been set up. The meeting was opened, called to order, and closed by Larry Eastland, who serves as chairman of the board of the John A. Widtsoe Foundation. Salam al-Marayati recited the Fatiha at the beginning of our discussion — effectively (and commonly) the Muslim analogue to a Latter-day Saint invocation or opening prayer — while, having been requested to offer the benediction, I gave a thoroughly Latter-day Saint closing prayer, thanking the Lord for the spirit and amiability and generosity of the evening and asking, among other things, for blessings and peace to rest upon the Islamic Center and those associated with it.

Khor Rori and Khor Kharfot have both been suggested as possible locations for Lehi’s Old World Bountiful. I lean strongly toward the latter.

This article has been newly published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Finding Nephi’s Ore,” written by Bradley R. Larsen.

Abstract: Khor Kharfot and Wadi Sayq are in the region that has become the premiere candidate for Nephi’s Old-World Bountiful. Out of the several matching criteria that has led to this opinion, the one that may be the weakest has been the identification of readily available ore in the area that Nephi could have used to manufacture the tools necessary to build his ship. This investigation found several distinct examples of iron ores suitable for ”smelting” in the form of float, all pointing to deposits yet to be located. Additionally, I review the investigation of Dr. Revell Phillips, who headed a group from BYU in 2000, that found two locations north of Khor Kharfot apparently containing significant deposits of iron ore. However, one site turned out to be problematic and the other site is too distant for Nephi to have been able to access it. Nonetheless, their efforts are reviewed as a backdrop for this current study. Also presented are findings regarding heretofore unrecognized features of Wadi Sayq and Khor Kharfot and the likely conditions that produced them, going back into the Pleistocene era.

This post is a summary of the article “Finding Nephi’s Ore” by Bradley R. Larsen in Volume 63 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreterarticles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.

A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https://youtube.com/shorts/bPuXDj70KB4.

The Takeaway: Larsen provides some additional insights into the potential Bountiful site at Khor Kharfot and Wadi Sayq, based on an extensive expedition to the area in 2016-17. He details evidence that the area had a deeper lagoon and greater access to usable iron deposits than previously thought, making the area more suitable for shipbuilding.

I think it might plausibly be argued that the Muslim man shown praying in a mosque in this photograph, which was kindly sent to me by Matthew Wheeler, neither hates Christians nor despises Christmas.

Not long after the launch of what is now called Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship in August 2012, we conceived the idea of running special holiday essays on the Friday immediately prior to Christmas and on Good Friday, which, of course, immediately precedes Easter Sunday. Worthwhile though it is and would be, it seemed wrong, somehow — it just didn’t seem seasonally appropriate — for Interpreter to publish an essay, on Good Friday or even on Christmas Day itself, that was devoted, say, to Semitic etymologies in Uto-Aztecan, or to EModE syntax in the Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, or to the precise GPS coordinates of the Jaredite city of Lib.

Accordingly, we resolved to invite submissions specifically for those holiday seasons. We didn’t dictate the approach that authors could or should take, but we said that, if their authors chose, the holiday essays could be more personal or inspirational or devotional than our articles typically are. Or they could be academic, if an author chose, but specifically relevant to the holiday for which they were written.

In the hope that at least some of the readers here might find them interesting and helpful for this Christmas season, I’m providing a list of the Christmas articles that we’ve published thus far (though not of the Easter articles), with links:

Orson Scott Card wrote our first, for Christmas 2014: http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/christmas-is-about-a-baby/#more-6417
Clayton Christensen wrote our Christmas message for 2015: http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/he-did-it-a-christmas-message/#more-7981
Sharon Eubank wrote our Christmas message for 2016: https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-song-i-cannot-sing/
Jenny Oaks Baker was the Christmas essayist for 2017: https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/author/jennyb/
Elder Spencer J. Condie provided the 2018 Christmas piece: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/christmas-in-transition-from-figgy-pudding-to-the-bread-of-life/
The Christmas essay for 2019 came from Kristine Wardle Frederickson: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/musings-on-the-birth-of-the-savior-jesus-christ/
Cherry Bushman Silver contributed the 2020 Christmas essay: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/christmas-as-devotional-a-time-of-commitment/
Daniel C. Peterson furnished the 2021 Christmas article (as a last-minute substitution): https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/christmas-and-a-condescending-god/
David F. Holland authored our 2022 Christmas piece: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/puritans-pagans-and-imperfect-christmas-gifts/
Kent P. Jackson wrote our 2023 Christmas essay: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/glory-to-god-in-the-highest/

Our invited Christmas essay for 2024 will appear next Friday, 20 December 2024. I hope that you’ll enjoy it.

Astonishingly, since the founding of the Interpreter Foundation in August 2012, and despite the fact that our authors receive no financial remuneration at all, we have never lacked for submissions, and we have never missed a Friday publication. Our Easter and Christmas articles are unique in one other respect, though, beyond their often personal and essayistic character: They are, as I’ve indicated, invited.

Which entails something: Whereas we have always had (and, as of now, continue to have) a number of articles in the queue awaiting publication for every other Friday of the year, the situation is distinctly different for Good Fridays and Fridays-immediately-before-Christmas. For those days, we have only a single article awaiting publication. And if, for some reason, that article falls through, there is no alternative Easter or Christmas essay waiting patiently in the queue. Which explains my own 2021 Christmas piece: The Christmas article for that year fell through at the last possible moment. It was so late in the process, in fact, that I was too embarrassed to approach anybody else as a substitute. And yet we didn’t want to skip our Christmas tradition that year. So I went to the only person whom I dared to approach with such a request — myself — and I managed to toss something together pretty quickly. I still feel awkward about that. For one thing, I had never, ever, wanted to be included among those from whom we asked holiday essays. But there you have it.

This year, happily, the Christmas essay is already in hand and long since ready to go up. A week from today. Merry Christmas!

From the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Finally, another piece of Christmas music that I treasure. This piece, written by Chris Eaton and Amy Grant, represents the voice (and the humble heroism) of the young girl Mary:

I have travelled many moonless nights
Cold and weary, with a babe inside.
And I wonder what I’ve done.
Holy Father, you have come
And chosen me now
To carry your son.

I am waiting in a silent prayer.
I am frightened by the load I bear.
In a world as cold as stone,
Must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now.
Be with me now.

[Chorus]
Breath of heaven,
Hold me together.
Be forever near me.
Breath of heaven,
Breath of heaven,
Light up my darkness.
Pour over me your holiness,
For you are holy.

Breath of heaven,
Do you wonder as you watch my face
If a wiser one should have had my place?
But I offer all I am
For the mercy of your plan.
Help me be strong.
Help me be . . .
Help me . . .

[Chorus: x2]

Breath of heaven!
Breath of heaven!
Breath of heaven!