Is The Earthquake in 3rd Nephi Realistic?

Research by Kerry A. Shirts

The Apparent contradictions disappear as we realize that we are talking about two different areas in the world, the Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon being precisely in earthquake zones, which, on the whole in history have had stronger quakes than in Palestine. They need not be talking about the same earthquake at all.

The Book of Mormon story of the destruction that accompanied the crucifixion of Jesus at Jerusalem is most explicit about the physical destruction it produced. Tempest, earthquake, and risings and sinkings of the land are vividly described. Actually, changes in society turned out to be even more significant. Together this wrenching of the established order set back the clock, so to speak. The survivors faced a new environment, emptied by the disaster of much of the overpopulation that had plagued them. They had an opportunity to start over, comparable to the opportunity Nephi's group had enjoyed when they were new in the land six centuries before.[1]

That area lies in a zone of intense earthquake activity—the edge of the Pacific basin, along which periodic violent quakes are a fact of life. [Manuel Maldonado-Koerdell, Geohistory and Paleogeography of Middle America, HMAI 1 (1964), pp. 22-26; Robert C. West, "Surface Configuration and Associated Geology of Middle America," ibid., pp. 42-58, 75-78.[2]

Scores of volcanoes are scattered along this particular zone of instability from north-central Mexico to Nicaragua. Many of them have been active within historical times. [Felix W. McBryde, Cultural and Historical Geography of Southwest Guatemala, SISA 4 (1947), p. 6. [3]

Antigua, the former capital city of Guatemala, was utterly destroyed by an earthquake in 1773 and hit heavily again in 1917. The great damage done in Guatemala in 1976 by another series of earthquakes is typical of many previous experiences. Traditions and the presence of hieroglyphic signs signifying earthquakes demonstrate the profound effect they had on the pre-Columbian peoples. [Maldonado-Koerdell, Geohistory, p. 26.[4]

We located Jerusalem in Guatemala on the shore of Lake Atitlan (Alma 21:1). The level of this lake has fluctuated as much as 40 feet due to subterranean shifts in the volcanic material that plugs its exit, according to geologists. [McBryde, Cultural and Historical Geography, pp. 132, 168, 179-80; Samuel K. Lothrop, in Atitlan, CIWP 444 (1933), p. 83, reported waterworn potsherds from the site of Chuitinamit well above the water level of that time; these can only be explained by extensive fluctuations.] Earthquakes and eruptions could have stirred the base of the lake to make water "come up in the stead" of Jerusalem (3 Nephi 9:7). The nearby land or valley of Middoni, today probably the location of Antigua, former capital of Guatemala, has been fiercely shaken many times. [Maldonado-Koerdell, Geohistory, pp. 25-26.] The entire fault system and volcanic chain extending through highland El Salvador, Guatemala, and Chiapas must have been involved simultaneously to create the vast havoc described in the scripture. Other volcanic- and earthquake-prone areas lie in a northern system in the Mexican states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Mexico. [Robert C. West and John P. Augelli, Middle America: Its Lands and Peoples, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 35.[5]

The Book of Mormon earthquake has several descriptions which let us in on the fact that this catastrophie was reported by eyewitnesses as they lived through them in Ancient America which is a completely different land than Palestine, with different geography, rivers, mountains, lakes, land, as well as different weather, climate, etc. The two events are not the same earthquake in other words. The Book of Mormon quake has many quite realistic descriptions about it however.

... there was a lot of noise, "terrible thunder, insomuch that it did shake the whole earth as if it was about to divide asunder" (3 Nephi 8:6). Note that the thunder was thought to cause the shaking, obviously preceding it. This is another strange thing about earthquakes: "In accounts of earthquakes we always hear of the frightful noise which they produce. . . . But in addition, it seems that sometimes the earthquake can be heard before it is felt," which is "difficult to explain. . . . One should feel the shock before hearing it." [John H. Hodgeson, Earthquakes and Earth Structures (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1964), 48-49; cf. Eiby, About Earthquakes, 25; Heck, Earthquakes, 28; Perry Byerly, Seismology (New York: Prentice Hall, 1942), 73-75. [6]

The thunder seems to shake the earth, since "the sound always appears to come from the ground beneath the observer." [John Milne, Earthquakes and Other Earth Movements, 7th ed. (Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1939), 15.] In the Assam earthquake of 1950 "one thing is stressed in all the reports: the awful rumble that heralded the outbreak of the quake, . . . a deafening roar, louder than anything any of the witnesses had ever heard before." [Knop, "The Day the Earth Exploded,'' 25, 114.] The Book of Mormon aptly describes the continuous sounds as "the dreadful groanings . . . and . . . tumultuous noises" (3 Nephi 10:9). [7]

"And there were exceedingly sharp lightnings" (3 Nephi 8:7). According to an eyewitness account, the great earthquake that completely destroyed the old capital of Guatemala on September 11, 1541, was preceded by "the fury of the wind, the incessant, appalling lightning and dreadful thunder" that were "indescribable" in their violence. [Juarros, cited by Herbert J. Spinden, "Shattered Capitals of Central America,'' National Geographic 36 (1919): 202.] One of the still unexplained phenomena of earthquakes is that "all types of lights are reported seen. . . . There are flashes, balls of fire, and streamers." [Byerly, Seismology, 76.] The terrible wind at Guatemala City is matched in the Book of Mormon by high winds with occasional whirlwinds that even carried some people away (3 Nephi 8:12, 16; 10:13-14). In the Japanese earthquake of 1923 the wind reached a velocity of 50 m.p.h., and "the fires, in turn, set up minor tornadoes"; and in the Assam earthquake "strong winds raised the dust until visibility was reduced to a few feet." [Heck, Earthquakes, 115; Knop, "The Day the Earth Exploded,'' 114. [8]

"And the city of Moroni did sink into the depths of the sea" (3 Nephi 8:9). The tsunami or sea wave "is the most spectacular and . . . appalling of all earthquake phenomena" and almost invariably follows a major shakeup on the coast. Along with this, however, we have in the Book of Mormon record what seems to be a permanent submergence of coastal areas when "the waters . . . [come] up in the stead thereof" and remain (3 Nephi 9:7). Such a submergence happened on a spectacular scale in the Chilean earthquake of 1960: "We would have taken these flooded stretches—permanently flooded—for coastal lagoons," a geologist reports, "if here and there we had not seen roads that ran straight toward them and into them. . . . roads that vanished, or sometimes showed under the stagnant water, branching into what had been the streets of a town." [Haroun Tazieff, When the Earth Trembles (New York: Harcourt, 1964), 34. On a winter night of 373/2 b.c. the great city of Helice in Greece disappeared beneath the sea: "Not a single soul survived.'' Spyridon N. Marinatos, "Helice: A Submerged Town of Classical Greece," Archaeology 13 (1960): 186.][9]

The Book of Mormon description emphasizes the fact that it was not any one particular thing but the combination of horrors that made the experience so terrible. As N.H. Heck puts it, what makes a major earthquake so devastating is "the combination of forces . . . into an almost irresistible source of disaster." The picture of cumulating disaster at the destruction of Guatemala City in 1541 strikingly parallels the story in the eighth chapter of 3 Nephi "It had rained incessantly and with great violence. . . . The fury of the wind, the incessant, appalling lightning and dreadful thunder were indescribable. The general terror was increased by eruptions from the volcano to such a degree that . . . the inhabitants imagined the final destruction of the world was at hand. . . . [The following morning] the vibrations of the earth were so violent that the people were unable to stand; the shocks were accompanied by a terrible subterranean noise which spread universal dismay."[Spinden, "Shattered Capitals,'' 202.[10]

The earthquake in the Book of Mormon is very realistically described as only eyewitnesses could have, instead of how an average American boy in the early 1800's who had never seen or felt an earthquake would have described it from a modern American point of view. Two recent studies on this same issue have concluded likewise that the three days of darkness and the terrible destruction are entirely possible in big earthquakes as the Book of Mormon describes.[11]

Endnotes

1. John Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon [hereafter cited as Ancient Setting] , Deseret/FARMS, 1986, Page 318.

2. Ancient Setting, p. 320.

3. Ancient Setting, p. 320.

4. Ancient Setting, p. 320.

5. Ancient Setting, p. 322.

6. Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah, Deseret Books, 1967, Page 232.

7. Since Cumorah, p. 232.

8. Since Cumorah, p. 233.

9. Since Cumorah, p. 233.

10. Since Cumorah, p. 237.

11. Russell H. Ball, "An Hypothesis Concerning the Three Days of Darkness Among the Nephites," in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, [Hereafter cited as JBMS ] FARMS, Vol. 2, #1, Spring 1993, pp. 107-123; John Tvedtnes, "Historical Parallels to the Destruction at the Time of the Crucifixion," in JBMS, Vol. 3, #1, Spring 1994, pp. 170-186.