Latest revision as of 19:26, 5 October 2014

Peterson: "it is now plain that Bethlehem could be, and indeed anciently was, regarded as a town in the 'land of Jerusalem.'"

Peterson: "it is now plain that Bethlehem could be, and indeed anciently was, regarded as a town in the 'land of Jerusalem.'"

Daniel C. Peterson:

[The prophecy in Alma 7:10] has occasioned considerable amusement among uninformed critics of the book,...predicting that Jesus "shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem, which is the land of our forefathers." As everybody who knows anything at all about Christianity also knows, Jesus was born in the little town of Bethlehem. However, although identifying a "land of Jerusalem" as the birthplace of Jesus would have seemed an obvious mistake for at least a century after the publication of the Book of Mormon, it is now plain that Bethlehem could be, and indeed anciently was, regarded as a town in the "land of Jerusalem." A recently released text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example—a text claiming to have originated in the days of Jeremiah (and, therefore, in Lehi's time)—says that the Jews of that period were "taken captive from the land of Jerusalem."49 Texts discovered earlier in the twentieth century seem to include Bethlehem within that "land." Joseph Smith could not have learned this from the Bible, though, for no such language appears in it.^[1]

Notes

1. ↑ Daniel C. Peterson, "Not Joseph's, and Not Modern," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), Chapter 2, references silently removed—consult original for citations.