1 Ne 16:13 We
traveled for the space of four days, nearly a south-southeast direction
The Book of Mormon is quite clear as to
the course they took before building the ship. First they traveled almost due
south from Jerusalem to the valley of Lemuel by the borders of the Red Sea
(probably near the Gulf of Aqaba). Next, they traveled in a south-southeast
direction.
Hugh Nibley
¡°As
to the direction taken by Lehi's party the Book of Mormon is clear and
specific. He took what we now know to have been the only possible way out, what
with immediate danger threatening from the north, and the eastern and western
lands held by opposing powers on the verge of war. Only the south desert, the
one land where Israel's traders and merchants had felt at home through the
centuries, remained open--even after Jerusalem fell this was so. And the one
route into that desert was the great trade-road down the burning trough of the
Arabah. For a long time the party traveled south-southeast and then struck out
almost due east over a particularly terrible desert and reached the sea at a
point to be considered later. Nephi is careful to keep us informed of the main
bearing of every stage of the journey, and never once does he mention a
westerly or a northerly trend. The party traveled for eight years in but two
main directions, without retracing their steps or doubling back, and many of
their marches were long forced marches.¡±
¡°All
this entirely excludes the Sinaitic Peninsula as the scene of their wanderings,
and fits perfectly with a journey through the Arabian Peninsula. The slowest
possible march "in a south-southeasterly direction" in Sinai would
reach the sea and have to turn north within ten days; yet Lehi's people
traveled "for many days," nay, months, in a south-southeasterly
direction, keeping near the coast of the Red Sea all the while. Ten days take a
foot traveler the entire length of that coast of Sinai which runs in a
south-southeasterly direction--and what of the rest of the eight years?¡± (Lehi
in the Desert and The World of the Jaredites, pp. 54-5)