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| | #REDIRECT [[Question: Is the description in the Book of Mormon of a "river running into a fountain" absurd?]] |
| {{Resource Title|Critics claims that description of "a river’s running into a fountain" in 1 Nephi is absurd}}
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| =={{Criticism label}}==
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| Critics claims that description of "a river’s running into a ''fountain''" in 1 Nephi is absurd.{{ref|bachelor.1}}
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| {{CriticalSources}}
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| =={{Conclusion label}}==
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| The criticism is based on a shallow reading of the text.
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| == ==
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| {{Response label}}
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| [http://scriptures.lds.org/en/search?search=fountain&do=Search All instances] of "fountain" in 1 Nephi describe either: | |
| * the Red Sea (rivers surely run to the sea)
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| * the fountain near the Tree of Life in Lehi's dream, from which the river flows.
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| Paul Hoskisson explains,
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| <blockquote>
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| Finally, in an unusual passage in the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 2:9,
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| Lehi noted that the river which he named after his son Laman “emptied
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| into the fountain of the Red Sea.” Does a river empty into a fountain?
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| Is it not the other way around? That the passage is problematical is
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| indicated by the attempt to explain fountain in a footnote in the 1981
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| edition of the Book of Mormon. The problem fades, however, when
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| ancient Near Eastern lexical and cosmological considerations are taken
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| into account. In the ancient Near East there were two great bodies of
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| water, the saltwater oceans and the subterranean sweet waters, both of
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| which were thought by the ancients “to be the source of rivers and
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| streams.”[30] These “fountains of the great deep” (a phrase used by
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| the translators of the King James Bible in Genesis 7:11), as U.
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| Cassuto explained in commenting on the Hebrew word thwm, refer
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| “undoubtedly to the subterranean waters, which are the source of the
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| springs that flow upon the ground.”[31] The Hebrews shared this
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| Canaanite concept of the subterranean waters being the source of
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| springs.[32]
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| <br><br>
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| These subterranean and oceanic waters then are actually the source of
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| all rivers, streams, and springs. The ancient Semites did not conceive
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| of this, however, as we currently do, namely, through the chain of
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| evaporation, cloud formation, condensation, and precipitation. (No
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| doubt they also had some understanding of this process, but they did
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| not limit their perceptions to this one process.) It was S. N. Kramer
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| who, when first pointing out the remarkable and unusual ancient Near
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| East perception that the source of rivers is the oceanic waters, said:
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| <br><br>
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| The Sumerian “mouth” of the rivers, while it coincides geographically
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| with the actual mouth of the rivers as we understand it today, is
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| nevertheless not to be understood in terms of our modern usage, as the
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| place where the rivers “empty” their water (into the Persian Gulf) but
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| rather as the place where they “drink” the waters (from the Persian
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| Gulf). In the light of this conception, the “mouth” of the Tigris and
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| Euphrates may well be designated as their source, but not the real
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| source, i.e., in the mountains of Armenia, but the source as conceived
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| by the Sumerians.[33]
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| <br><br>
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| That is to say, the source of the rivers was the oceanic waters, not
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| in an ultimate sense as we conceive it, but in a more immediate sense,
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| in that the rivers drew directly either from the seas as springs, or
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| from the oceans through their mouths, depending on whether the
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| Canaanite concept or S. N. Kramer’s Sumero-Akkadian example applies.
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| <br><br>
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| Returning now to 1 Nephi 2:9, it is the statement that the river flows
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| into the fountain that is disturbing. As was just explained, in the
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| ancient Near East the fountain of a river was conceived of as being
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| the oceanic waters, the river actually drawing from the ocean or
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| fountain in a sense that is not clear to our occidental and empirical
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| understanding. Our Book of Mormon is in authentic ancient Near Eastern
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| tradition on this point; and the Prophet Joseph Smith could not have
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| known about it. This then seems to become sufficient evidence. {{ref|hoskisson}}
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| </blockquote>
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| =={{Endnotes label}}==
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| #{{note|bachelor.1}} {{CriticalWork:Bachelor:Mormonism Exposed|pages=9}}
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| #{{note|hoskisson}} Paul Y. Hoskisson, “Textual Evidences for the Book of Mormon,” in First Nephi, The Doctrinal Foundation, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1988), 283–95. {{link|url=https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/book-mormon-first-nephi-doctrinal-foundation/19-textual-evidences-book-mormon}}
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| [[fr:Book of Mormon/Anachronisms/River runs into fountain]]
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