Several months after Smith assumed full
responsibility as chief editor for the Times and Seasons, in the same year in which the Book of Abraham was published, an
article about Noah’s landing was published and presented to the church regarding geography, migration, and early civilization to everyone seeking authoritative instruction from the prophet who finalized the piece by saying,
“we may safely conclude”.
Times and Seasons, 15 October 1842 wrote:MOUNT ARARAT, AND THE EARLY ABODE OF NOAH AND HIS DESCENDANTS.
In the opinion of the most learned among the moderns, Mount Ararat, where the ark of Noah rested, after the deluge, was in Armenia, or Thibet, and between 90° and 100° E. long. and between 30° and 35° north lat. north of Hindostan and Persia, west of the river Indus and of central Asia, and east of Mesopotamia and of the Caspian Sea. This is a temperate clime, and favorable to health and long life, as well as to the pursuits of the shepherd and agriculturist. The Ararat, the Caucasus, and the Taurus are connected, and form almost one group or range, extending a great distance from what is usually called Asia Minor, to India.
The Indian and Hindoo traditions of the earliest times point to Noah and the Deluge; and they claim to be the descendants of that patriarch. Noah and his sons would not long remain on the mountain where the ark rested, on the subsiding of the waters. They advanded no doubt, to the south, to a milder climate and a more champaign country. In the fourth generation, or one hundred and fifty years from the deluge, they removed westward, to the plains of Shinar, where they began to construct a building which should reach to heaven. Dispersed from this place about one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty years after the deluge, they went forth, in different companies, east, west, north and south; but most to the south and to the east, as both the face of the country and the climate would invite. Noah lived two hundred years after this event, and probably journeyed east, where traditions relating to the flood, and the safety of a few from that catastrophe have much prevailed.— From Noah and his sons would be communicated to their posterity whatever was known by them of antedeluvian discoveries and inventions in the arts of life. These could not have been very small during seventeen hundred years, the duration of the old world, according to the common computation; but at this distance of time, and in the want of early records, no very accurate opinion can be formed as to how great, or what those inventions were. But we may safely conclude, that they were not very great; otherwise the early generations after the deluge would have been more civilized than there is now evidence or reason to believe.
The article highlights several points already made in this thread and ties them together rather nicely. We learn how the sons of Noah migrated in all directions but most to the south and east. Smith relates how Noah lived for “two hundred years” (350) after the deluge and recalls how antediluvian civilization endured “seventeen hundred years” (1,656). Smith relates how the sons of Noah did not remain long in the mountain but soon migrated into the plains of Shinar. The tower of Babel is recalled as having been built in Shinar in the fourth generation (Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg) or “one hundred and fifty years” after the flood. This is important because the Book of Abraham tells us that the daughter of Ham and her sons migrated south and discovered a land under water which pays direct reference to Egypt’s Delta -- Lower Egypt.
But notice how the geography takes on proportions that don’t meet with how the story should play out in real time and conditions because distance now becomes nearly astronomical for these families. Egypt’s Delta is a THOUSAND miles from Ararat and Shinar! Even if Egyptus and her sons managed to migrate that far south and discover the land of Egypt, the sheer distance between them and Noah’s homeland with Japheth and Shem would be too far to maintain correspondence. This is a huge hole in the script for Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham!
It makes no sense that Ham’s daughter loads up her belongings, presumably on a cart, and then hauls her family away for a thousand miles to some distant imaginary land for her to discover. The logistics for such an adventure is simply beyond reason. Smith created the biggest hole in the script imaginable! The distance and separation between the Nile Delta and Noah’s homeland established in Shinar turns Smith’s narrative for the discovery of Egypt into a fantasy of biblical proportion. The whole thing is just stupid. It makes no sense that a mother is going to wander off the beaten path for a thousand miles looking for a better place to live.