Many of our ideas are encrusted with old ideas that we inherited without thinking them through. Taking a fresh look at the language of the scriptures can provide new insights.
Such a fresh look leads to the development of multiple working hypotheses, which in turn can lead to unity about the question of historicity and geography. People may not agree on the specifics, but they should be able to agree that alternative approaches are feasible and reasonable.
That’s all we can ask.
But it’s not what our scholars are permitting, especially the scholars at Book of Mormon Central who continue to ban and criticize any working hypothesis other than the one they’ve been teaching for decades. They’ve welded M2C into their very logo.
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People who discuss Book of Mormon historicity and geography often focus on the “narrow neck of land,” as if it is the critical element of the geography. When I point out that that term appears only once in the text (Ether 10:20), people usually don’t believe me. But then they check for themselves and discover it’s true. (There is also a “narrow neck” and a “small neck of land,” which some people conflate to refer to the same thing as the “narrow neck of land,” as if different terms mean the same thing, which I’ll discuss below.)
Years ago, Andrew Hedges pointed out that the Mesoamerican setting requires its proponents to accept as a “narrow neck of land” a crossing that is several times wider than the “narrower” neck in the Isthmus of Panama.
https://rsc.byu.edu/vol-9-no-3-2008/narrow-neck-land
M2C proponents always conflate the terms narrow neck, narrow neck of land, and small neck. I think they are different terms because they refer to different things.
In French, it reads:
s’en fut construire un navire extrêmement grand dans les régions frontières du pays d’Abondance, près du pays de Désolation, et le lança dans la mer de l’ouest, près de la langue étroite qui menait au pays situé du côté du nord.
Ether 10:20 reads:
20 And they built a great city by the narrow neck of land, by the place where the sea divides the land.
In French, it is:
20 Et ils construisirent une grande ville près de la langue étroite de terre, près de l’endroit où la mer divise le pays.
If you don’t read French, you can see that in all three cases, the French uses the term étroite, which means “narrow.” You don’t get the English distinction between “small” and “narrow.” The M2C intellectuals say the terms are synonymous. That’s possible, but they have different connotations that are lost in the French translation.
Again, these are examples of an interpretation, not a translation.
Joseph (or Mormon/Moroni) used different terms. Why should the foreign translations use the same terms?
The French does use “bande” instead of “langue” here, which is an interesting choice. “Langue” means “tongue” or “language,” but “langue de terre” means a “spit of land.” Like a tongue, a spit of land is “a small point of land especially of sand or gravel running into a body of water.”
“Bande” means a “strip” or “stripe.”
Instead of a “small neck of land” we have a “narrow strip of land.”
Instead of a “narrow neck” we have “a narrow tongue.” A neck connects two bodies of water or earth, but a tongue extends from one without joining to another. This is a problem for any proposed geography.
In Alma 63:5, “by the narrow neck” becomes “near the narrow neck.” This, too, loses the possible alternative meanings of the phrase, such as “through the narrow neck,” “by means of,” or “in the vicinity of the narrow neck.”
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In the early days of the Church, Parley and Orson Pratt claimed Panama was the “narrow neck of land.” That reflected the common knowledge of the day, as shown by Alexander von Humboldt, whose 1811 book Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain was on sale in Palmyra in 1818 at the printing shop Joseph visited weekly to get the newspaper for his father.
Three times in that book, Humboldt referred to the isthmus of Panama as a “neck of land.” But Humboldt did not refer to it as a “narrow neck.”
It’s difficult to imagine that anyone on the ground would refer to Panama as a “narrow neck.” If you’ve traversed the Panama Canal, as I have, you know it “narrow” only in the sense that, looking at a map or from space, it appears “narrow” compared with the rest of the continent.
Usage in Joseph’s day.
One usage of the term “narrow neck of land” that was common in Joseph’s day is found in a hymn by John Wesley.
Lo! on a narrow neck of land
‘Twixt two unbounded seas I stand,
Secure, insensible;
A point of time, a moment’s space
Removes me to that heavenly place,
Or shuts me up in hell.
Hymn LVIII, A Collection of Hymns for the use of the people called Methodists, (London 1786) p. 62.
The inspiration for this stanza has generated some speculation, as shown in this discussion in an 1860 lecture on Wesley. The author wrote
The Rev. Dr. Hannah has favoured me with the following note: “I am inclined to think that the sublime stanza which begins,
“Lo, on a narrow neck of land,”
is a magnificent paraphrase of a thought which occurs in different writers not unknown to Charles Wesley. I give two instances: –‘Many witty authors compare the present time to an isthmus, or narrow neck of land, that rises in the midst of an ocean, immeasureably [sic] diffused on either side of it.’ (Spectator, No. 590.) –‘We are here in a state of probation, situated, as it were, upon a neck of land with the two infinite oceans of a miserable and happy eternity on either hand of us.’ (Horbery’s Sermons, IV., Part II., on Acts iv.12. –Horbery was born 1707, died 1773.)”
The coincidence is certainly very remarkable, and the stanza may have been so suggested. Charles Wesley was in the habit, as the reader will find in subsequent part of the Lecture, of paraphrasing other men’s thoughts after this fashion. But I cling to the old Tradition, which was in existence during the Poet’s life-time,–that the Land’s End suggested the imagery. The Hymn, which is called “An Hymn for Seriousness,” was written and published very soon after Charles Wesley’s first visit to that remarkable spot.
Land’s End is the most south-westerly point of Cornwall in England. (see map diagram)
It’s a long peninsula. Wesley referring to this peninsula as a “narrow neck of land” in a well-known hymn opens further possibilities for understanding the Book of Mormon text.
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An 1776 book titled The Practical Navigator defined the terms this way:
A Peninsula is a Part of Land almost surrounded with Water, save one narrow Neck of Land which joins the same to the Continent.
An Isthmus is a narrow Neck of Land joining the Peninsula to the Continent, by which People may pass from one to the other.
Another source, the 1785 Geographical Magazine, points out that a narrow neck could be land or water. With that in mind, it makes sense that Ether 10:20 specifies a “narrow neck of land.”
A Strait is a narrow neck of water, uniting one sea to another; as, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Caffa, etc.
A Sea is a portion of water everywhere inclosed [sic] with land, except a narrow space or neck which unites it to the ocean; as, the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic Sea, the Red Sea, etc.
An Isthmus is a narrow neck of land, by which a peninsula is united to a continent; as, the Isthmus of Darien, the Isthmus of Corinth, etc.
A Peninsula is a portion of land, every where surrounded with water, except a narrow space or neck of land, which unites it to the continent; as, the Morea, which joined to Greece; Crim Tartary, to Little Tartary, etc.
Multiple terms and translations.
In addition to the “narrow neck of land,” there is a “neck of land” and a “small neck of land.”
M2C proponents always conflate the terms narrow neck, narrow neck of land, and small neck. I think they are different terms because they refer to different things.
narrow neck: a narrow feature between larger bodies of either land or water
narrow neck of land: an isthmus or connection between continents, or a connection between any two land masses, or a long narrow peninsula (as Wesley used it).
small neck of land: connotation suggests small in all directions, contrasted with narrow which connotes relatively long compared to width.
It’s also interesting that that the translation of these terms into other languages has, in some cases, removed the distinction.
Those who don’t read English are reading the M2C interpretation, not the text Joseph translated.
Examples.
Alma 22:32 reads:
thus the land of Nephi and the land of Zarahemla were nearly surrounded by water, there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward.
In French, the passage is translated like this:
c’est ainsi que le pays de Néphi et le pays de Zarahemla étaient presque entourés d’eau, une étroite bande de terre existant entre le pays situé du côté du nord et le pays situé du côté du sud.
Alma 63:5 reads:
therefore he went forth and built him an exceedingly large ship, on the borders of the land Bountiful, by the land Desolation, and launched it forth into the west sea, by the narrow neck which led into the land northward.
Those who don’t read English are reading the M2C interpretation, not the text Joseph translated.
Examples.
Alma 22:32 reads:
thus the land of Nephi and the land of Zarahemla were nearly surrounded by water, there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward.
In French, the passage is translated like this:
c’est ainsi que le pays de Néphi et le pays de Zarahemla étaient presque entourés d’eau, une étroite bande de terre existant entre le pays situé du côté du nord et le pays situé du côté du sud.
Alma 63:5 reads:
therefore he went forth and built him an exceedingly large ship, on the borders of the land Bountiful, by the land Desolation, and launched it forth into the west sea, by the narrow neck which led into the land northward.
In French, it reads:
s’en fut construire un navire extrêmement grand dans les régions frontières du pays d’Abondance, près du pays de Désolation, et le lança dans la mer de l’ouest, près de la langue étroite qui menait au pays situé du côté du nord.
Ether 10:20 reads:
20 And they built a great city by the narrow neck of land, by the place where the sea divides the land.
In French, it is:
20 Et ils construisirent une grande ville près de la langue étroite de terre, près de l’endroit où la mer divise le pays.
If you don’t read French, you can see that in all three cases, the French uses the term étroite, which means “narrow.” You don’t get the English distinction between “small” and “narrow.” The M2C intellectuals say the terms are synonymous. That’s possible, but they have different connotations that are lost in the French translation.
Again, these are examples of an interpretation, not a translation.
Joseph (or Mormon/Moroni) used different terms. Why should the foreign translations use the same terms?
The French does use “bande” instead of “langue” here, which is an interesting choice. “Langue” means “tongue” or “language,” but “langue de terre” means a “spit of land.” Like a tongue, a spit of land is “a small point of land especially of sand or gravel running into a body of water.”
“Bande” means a “strip” or “stripe.”
Instead of a “small neck of land” we have a “narrow strip of land.”
Instead of a “narrow neck” we have “a narrow tongue.” A neck connects two bodies of water or earth, but a tongue extends from one without joining to another. This is a problem for any proposed geography.
In Alma 63:5, “by the narrow neck” becomes “near the narrow neck.” This, too, loses the possible alternative meanings of the phrase, such as “through the narrow neck,” “by means of,” or “in the vicinity of the narrow neck.”
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Be careful any time you read an interpretation of the Book of Mormon that insists only one possibility is feasible, or, worse, “correct.”
Source: About Central America
3 thoughts on “Narrow neck of land”
I believe this Jaredite term (narrow neck of land) describes the Isthmus of Niagara (about 21 miles across) or between the Great Black Swamp and a larger Lake Michigan (Grand Kankakee Marsh). The account of Zelph who was a warrior under the prophet Onandagus who was “known from the hill Cumorah or eastern sea to the Rocky mountains” and that he was killed “during the last great struggle of the Lamanites and Nephites” ( HC 2:79). The eastern sea is obviously Lake Ontario.
The east sea and the west sea weren’t mentioned in the Book of Mormon until more than 500 years after Lehi arrived (Alma 22:27). If these 2 seas were important geographical features, why did it take over 500 years to mention it? These seas obviously refer to the Great Lakes and NOT the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The family of Lehi sailed across the ocean known as Irreantum (not the east sea or west sea). I Nephi 17:5 states, “5 And we did come to the land which we called aBountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey; and all these things were prepared of the Lord that we might not perish. And we beheld the sea, which we called Irreantum, which, being interpreted, is many waters.” When they arrived at the land of promise and stepped off the ship, the ship was floating in Irreantum. The Jaredites and Mulekites called the ocean “great waters.” Abraham 4:10 states, 10 And the Gods pronounced the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, pronounced they, aGreat Waters; and the Gods saw that they were obeyed.
1 Nephi 13:10-13, 29 states “many waters” 5 times, describing the Atlantic Ocean and not the east or west sea,
10 And it came to pass that I looked and beheld many waters; and they divided the Gentiles from the seed of my brethren.
11 And it came to pass that the angel said unto me: Behold the wrath of God is upon the seed of thy brethren.
12 And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and awrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.
13 And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.
29 And after these plain and precious things were ataken away it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles; and after it goeth forth unto all the nations of the Gentiles, yea, even across the many waters which thou hast seen with the Gentiles which have gone forth out of captivity, thou seest—because of the many plain and precious things which have been taken out of the book, which were plain unto the understanding of the children of men, according to the plainness which is in the Lamb of God—because of these things which are taken away out of the gospel of the Lamb, an exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them.
It’s all about the water. I hope to write a book with the same name.
Lehi and his family landed on the gulf coast at about 31 to 32 degrees north latitude (same as Jerusalem) and they planted their seeds and they grew exceedingly. Later the Nephites retreated northward to distance themselves from the Lamanites. After about 300 plus years they met the People of Zarahemla (probably near Nauvoo, IL, at the Sidon river) and eventually discovered the Great Lakes.
Alma 63:5 states”
5 And it came to pass that Hagoth, he being an aexceedingly curious man, therefore he went forth and built him an exceedingly large ship, on the borders of the land bBountiful, by the land Desolation, and launched it forth into the west sea, by the cnarrow neck which led into the land northward.
Alma 22:32 states,
32 And now, it was only the distance of a day and a half’s journey for a Nephite, on the line Bountiful and the land Desolation, from the east to the west sea; and thus the land of Nephi and the land of Zarahemla were nearly surrounded by water, there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward.
Ether 15:8 describes the final battles of the Jaredites. “And it came to pass that he came to the waters of Ripliancum, which, by interpretation, is large, or to exceed all; wherefore, when they came to these waters they pitched their tents; and Shiz also pitched his tents near unto them; and therefore on the morrow they did come to battle.” There are no better words than “large or exceed all” to describe the Great Lakes. They contain about 20% of the world’s fresh water and this huge body of water certainly divides the land! Obviously, Mesoamerica does NOT fit because the land divides the oceans. The Hill Ramah and Hill Cumorah is the same hill and it is 19 miles from Lake Ontario.
These different yet similar terms could be the same geographic feature spanning the Jaredite and Nephite civilizations.
– narrow neck of land
– narrow neck
– small neck of land
Mormon 6:4 describes a land of many waters,
4 And it came to pass that we did march forth to the land of Cumorah, and we did pitch our tents around about the hill Cumorah; and it was in a land of amany waters, rivers, and fountains; and here we had hope to gain advantage over the Lamanites.
Mosiah 8:8 describes a land among many waters,
8 And they were lost in the wilderness for the space of amany days, yet they were diligent, and found not the land of Zarahemla but returned to this land, having traveled in a land among many waters, having discovered a land which was covered with bbones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind, having discovered a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel.
The phrase “land of many waters” and “land among many waters” describes the area in western New York. There are also the finger lakes. This is where Ether hid the 24 Jaredite plates so the people of Limhi could find them.
Don’t confuse “land of many waters” or “land among many waters” with “many waters” (ocean).
3 Ne the entire face of the land is changed during the earthquakes. They did not even recognize the very land they lived upon.
Likely a narrow neck of land referenced in the Book of Mormon is no longer recognizable, or no longer exists thousands of years later.
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