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Book of Mormon and Archaeology: The Lehi Cave - Notes

Research by Kerry A. Shirts

Frank Moore Cross, Jr. described the cave inscriptions of the Khirbet Beit Lehi in his article "The Cave Inscriptions From Khirbet Beit Lehi" in the text "Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century," James A. Sanders, editor, Doubleday, 1970. He notes that among other things one inscription says "Yahweh (is) the God of the whole earth; the montains of Judah Belong to Him, to the God of Jerusalem." (p. 301).

Then he discusses some of the differing opinions and translations of the inscriptios but concludes very interestingly that "the Beit Lehi inscriptions are safely dated to the sixth-century B.C." (p. 304). He also notes that we are inclined (as professional archaeologists) to attribute the inscriptions and sketches (of ships) to chance visitors or to refugees or travelers who took shelter in the cave. One inscription is a petition for deliverance, another takes the form of a prophetic oracle. He then says "It is very difficult to avoid the speculation that the inscription A is the citation of a lost prophecy and that it and its companion inscriptions were written by a refugee fleeing the Chaldeans who conquered Judah and destroyed the holy city in 587 B.C." (p. 304). Many ideas about the opening chapters of the Book of Mormon come to mind. Not that this was the cave that Nephi and his brothers fled to and hid in, but the pattern of fleeing to the caves in the wilderness is clearly established here. Did Joseph Smith know thats what people were doing anciently? He didn't even know Jerusalem had walls when he was translating the BofM.

J. Naveh in his article "Old Hebrew Inscriptions in a Burial Cave" in the "Israel Exploration Journal," 1963 although disagreeing with some of the translations of the inscriptions, shows that there was activity in the desert as the BofM claims. He does not mention the Bofm, but we certainly do. He says either way, whether we date the inscriptions from the Assyrian conquest, or the Chaldean, there were people fleeing into the caves and writing religious poetry in them. Now the BofM does not say Nephi or his brothers made any inscriptions, but they certainly were at home in the wilderness, and they did hide in caves from danger, exactly as real people did anciently for centuries. Yigael Yadin in his very fine archaeological text "Bar Khochba" mentions that when the archaeologists found some very interesting instruments they broke out in singing hymns of the temple because these strange objects reminded them of temple vessels. But when they were dated they dated to 3,000 B.C.! People have always been fleeing into the desert in other words from the time of the first Pharoahs in Egypt into Christ's day. The BofM is very authentic in following this pattern of behavior discovered via archaeology.

Lamar C. Berrett has written about this cave in his article "The So-Called Lehi Cave" wherein he states that when he was talking to Joseph Naveh, who introduced him to Mahmud Ali Hassan Giawi who said that an ancient prophet named Lehi judged his people here at the cave. So the BofM name Lehi is apparently very realistic in the ancient Jewish deserts. Interesting in light of this is the Hiltons article on the Lihiyanites (Lee Hi Ya Nites) which tell of ancient groups of people called the Lihiyanites after a leader of a small group of people escaped the destruction of Jerusalem. What we need to keep in mind is that we are looking at patterns. It would be doubtful if we ever find the exact ship that Lehi sailed over to the New World in, but then we'll never have the original vaphio cups that King Priam used at Troy either, though we have vaphio cups so we know they did use such things anciently. Patternism demonstrates broad patterns which we find the BofM fitting into very neatly on many points, many hundred points which posits our explanation that we believe the BofM is an ancient text, fitting comfortably into an ancient setting, and was brought forth in modern times by God through Joseph Smith. The ancient parallels and patterns are very interesting. On many points critics have just claimed that Smith made it up, only to be found later, to have actual ancient equivilants and bearings. We believe it is because the Book of Mormon is an ancient text from Jerusalem in the Old World from 600 B.C.