Mormon Handbook

A REFERENCE TO THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Home / Canon / Book of Mormon

Book of Mormon Locations — Nahom

Contents

The Book of Mormon tells the story of a Jew named Lehi and his family, who leave Jerusalem in 600 BC for the New World. Traveling down the Arabian Peninsula, they stop at a place called Nahom.

Jerusalem to Nahom

After they left Jerusalem, they traveled:

Lehi's New World migration?

Book of Mormon: Lehi's migration to the New World?


Nahom = Nihm?

Some Mormon apologists see a link between the Book of Mormon’s Nahom and the name of the Nihm tribe in Yemen. This Nihm tribe is located about 43-miles northeast of Sana'a, the capitol of Yemen.

The exact equivalency of the root letters cannot be assured. It is probable that the term Nahom was spelled with the rasped or fricative Hebrew letter for "h" (het or chet) whereas the name Nihm, both in modern Arabic and in the ancient Sabaean dialect, is spelled with a softer, less audible h sound... One has to assume, it seems to me, that when the members of Lehi's party heard the local name for "the place that was called Nahom" they associated the sound of that local name with the term Nahom, a Hebrew word that was familiar to and had meaning for them.

S. Kent Brown

— S. Kent Brown

Director of the BYU Jerusalem Center
"The Place That Was Called Nahom", New Light from Ancient Yemen, Footnote 3
Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 79

And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian.

Book of Mormon

— Mormon


9:32

7 years to cross the desert

Book of Mormon: seven years travel across the desert from Nahom to Bountiful.

In the Book of Mormon narrative, the locations of Nahom and Bountiful are inextricably linked. With Bountiful being ‘nearly eastward’ from Nahom. 1 Nephi 17:1

The Rub' al Khali 'Empty Quarter'

The Arabian Desert as delineated by the WWFN. The Rub' al Khali, aka 'Empty Quatert', considered impassible, comprises the bottom third of the Arabhian Desert. It is the world's largest sand sea. Lehi's seven year 'nearly eastward' journey from the proposed Nahom to Bountiful locations in red.

I believe that it took them about a year to go from their first base camp down to Nahom. The reason is because that's when Nephi mentions the birth of the first children.

S. Kent Brown

— S. Kent Brown

Director of the BYU Jerusalem Center
Journey of Faith DVD, 33:20

They're going in an area that no one in his right mind would have gone. This space in the Arabian desert, out in a wilderness where you can barely survive four or five hours without water.

Truman G. Madsen

— Truman G. Madsen

Professor of Religion and Philosophy, BYU
Director of BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies
Journey of Faith DVD, 53:49


A Tribe Place Called Nahom

The name of a tribe doesn’t give us the name of a place in 600 BC called Nahom. To get there:

Nehhm is a small district... the present Shiech [Sheikh]... possesses a few small inconsiderable towns, with a fertile mountain, on which are many villages.

Carsten Niebuhr

— Carsten Niebuhr

German Cartographer
Yemen expedition 1760’s
Travels through Arabia and other Countries in the East (1792), Vol. II, p. 62


Conclusion

After a deep-dive look at all of the evidences pieced together by LDS apologists, it is not unreasonable to consider that the modern Nihm tribe, the ancient Sabaean ‘NHM’ inscription, and 270-year-old maps with Nehem / Nehhm may all be connected.

Contents
Hill Cumorah Get Ebook
Get Print
Bountiful
Linktree YouTube Facebook Twitter Instagram TikTok Contact