The Nahom Follies

[_I have a question]

From lds.org search 'Ship'

When the Lord told Nephi to build a ship, Nephi made his own tools. Circle the tools Nephi might have made in those days, then color.

Answers:

ax, bellows, chisel, mallet, rope, and wedge.

https://www.lds.org/friend/1988/03/funs ... query=ship
I'd love to hear about all the possible ways Lehi & Co in the desert managed to make their own tools....

After Lehi’s family had camped by the sea for many days, the Lord spoke to Nephi. He told him to build a ship to carry his family to the promised land.

1 Nephi 17:7–8

Nephi did not know how to make a ship, but the Lord said he would show him. He told Nephi where to find metal to make the tools he would need.

1 Nephi 17:9–10

Okay, so there was a supply of available hardened metal just lying around in the area where Lehi and Co. were hiding. Got it.

Laman and Lemuel made fun of Nephi for wanting to build a ship. They did not believe that the Lord had shown Nephi how to do it. They refused to help.

1 Nephi 17:17–18

Oh dear, so now Nephi has to go pick up all the metal that's lying around, produce some kind of smelting furnace, make the tools, chop down or 'ship in' all the lumber (purchased from people who didn't know they were there because, you know, they were hiding) to build a ship that he didn't know how to make but which would be sufficient to transport Lehi & Co. half way round the world....*breaths in*....BY HIMSELF!

Laman and Lemuel repented and helped Nephi build the ship.

1 Nephi 18:1

Oh, that's a relief. Because with two extra pair of hands it becomes exponentially more plausible....

When Nephi and his brothers had finished building the ship, they knew it was a good ship. They thanked God for helping them.

1 Nephi 18:4

https://www.lds.org/manual/book-of-morm ... query=ship

And that's magic!

Think about the timescale required for three people to build a ship from lumber that wasn't there using tools they didn't have....

[_mentalgymnast]

I'd love to hear about all the possible ways Lehi & Co in the desert managed to make their own tools....

Bellows would have been necessary, right? Ore would have been necessary, right? Would Nephi have had access to raw materials and the means to create tools through a smelting process?

Okay, so there was a supply of available hardened metal just lying around in the area where Lehi and Co. were hiding. Got it.

It might be well to educate ourselves in regards to the ancient processes involved in metal working:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting

...Nephi has to go pick up all the metal that's lying around, produce some kind of smelting furnace...

A bloomery perhaps?

...make the tools, chop down or 'ship in' all the lumber (purchased from people who didn't know they were there because, you know, they were hiding)won...

I wonder if you might be a bit liberal in your use of the word "hiding"? Yes, at times during the long journey they were trying to remain, ummm..., rather inconspicuous. Are we to think that they didn't have contact(s) with 'others' at any time? I would think that it may have been more likely they would have had contact later on in their journey from Jerusalem after much of the hub bub had settled down. Do you think that 'others' that were on the look out for Lehi and Co. would have been looking (resources, time, inclination, etc.) for them with the same intensity eight years later after their departure? I'm a bit hesitant, as you don't seem to be, in simply saying, "they were hiding".

Is it not possible that in addition to using wood from tamarind and sycamore trees, that Lehi and Co. traded with and bartered/paid for teak and other wood components that the tamarind and sycamore trees wouldn't have provided?

On a board like this it is rather obvious that folks would like to strip everything down to a simple conclusion without looking at all the alternatives. I mean, look, you really don't want anything to show up that would demonstrate that the narrative in 1 Nephi 16-17 could have any basis in fact.

For those that are interested, here is some detailed information on the "turn eastward" described in the Book of Mormon.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http ... teen-A.doc

by the way, nice source material. Primary lessons. Goes pretty deep.

Try my link instead, for starters.

Regards,
MG

[_SteelHead]

Mg, methinks yoy know nothing about smelting...... What is required to get ore out of the surrounding rock, and then separate the ore?

[_Chap]

I have a question wrote:
I'd love to hear about all the possible ways Lehi & Co in the desert managed to make their own tools....


Bellows would have been necessary, right? Ore would have been necessary, right? Would Nephi have had access to raw materials and the means to create tools through a smelting process?

I have a question wrote:
Okay, so there was a supply of available hardened metal just lying around in the area where Lehi and Co. were hiding. Got it.


It might be well to educate ourselves in regards to the ancient processes involved in metal working:

There is this guy. We have no evidence of his possessing any metal-winning or metal-working skills of any kind when he leaves Jerusalem, or any wood-working or ship-building skills for that matter. That makes four separate skill-sets, each of which would normally have been learned by years of experience beginning with an apprenticeship served as a young boy. If ancient Israel remotely resembled other ancient societies, each of those skill-sets was the possession of a specific social group, who (in effect) regarded it as their property and did not willingly share it with outsiders.

But now Nephi turns out to be able to do all the things involved in choosing and sorting iron ore, running a bloomery furnace (which I agree is the most likely type), hammering, reheating and re-hammering the resultant bloom of slaggy iron until he has obtained relatively low carbon soft 'wrought iron', and then (an essential step), carburizing the edges of his tools to produce useful cutting edges - and then (assuming he can find the timber) building a ship.

No books, no internet, no Youtube, no-one to talk to who knows how to do all this ... if you say 'God taught him', it's Game Over for you, I'm afraid.

In China during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) a vast movement was launched to get ordinary people to produce iron - and preferably steel - using well-known traditional Chinese technology (which, in the hands of specialists, was pretty good). 'How to do it' manuals were produced and people were told 'You don't need bourgeois experts! Anyone can do this'.

It was all an abject failure. To make a traditional technology work, it is not enough to read the instruction manual - you have to have a whole array of 'knacks' to make things go right, and long experience in dealing with the unexpected. The few people with the traditional skills did of course succeed. But the great mass of ordinary Chinese people did not, however hard they tried.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace



Please just say it was all a miracle and leave it at that.

[_mentalgymnast]

Mg, methinks yoy know nothing about smelting...... What is required to get ore out of the surrounding rock, and then separate the ore?

Tools.

I remember years ago visiting my wife's grandfather's blacksmith's shop in a small town in Idaho. Looking at the bellows. Looking at the furnace. Looking at the tools. Having the process described to us. The ancients had the same ability/processes albeit on a cruder more elementary scale.

You're saying that Nephi couldn't have had the tools/bellows/ore and other substances necessary for the smelting process? by the way, what do YOU think about 1 Nephi 16-17 and the parallels with some of the research that's come about? Interesting, if nothing else, right?

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

...if you say 'God taught him', it's Game Over for you...

You're not the first one to think that.

1 Nephi 17

16 And it came to pass that I did make tools of the ore which I did molten out of the rock.

17 And when my brethren saw that I was about to build a ship, they began to murmur against me, saying: Our brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship; yea, and he also thinketh that he can cross these great waters.

18 And thus my brethren did complain against me, and were desirous that they might not labor, for they did not believe that I could build a ship; neither would they believe that I was instructed of the Lord.

You are effectively saying that God doesn't and would not have had the ability to instruct Nephi on how to build ship?

Period? End of story?

Game over?

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

Mg, methinks yoy know nothing about smelting...... What is required to get ore out of the surrounding rock, and then separate the ore?

Back to tools. I would think that there would be many different tools needed to build a ship. Probably not tools that Nephi brought along with him across the desert. I'm not as concerned, however, in thinking that Nephi probably had some tools with him as they arrived at Bountiful. You know, common tools.

A hammer or two for example.

Regards,
MG

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Holy “F”, MG. Could you be any more obtuse? I mean use your damned brain for a second, and literally think about the step-by-step process it would require for a group of people to mine the earth, create tools and die casts, harvest and cure timber (or find a way to buy it and its associated materials), build a boat, launch the boat (think about what it entails to build a boat in dry dock), operate a boat, and circumnavigate it around the most backassward route imaginable (which in of itself would have to be a MASSIVE BOAT to support this troupe, its supplies, animals, etc...).

You're a nice guy, but what you're doing here is just nerdy fanfiction without any real thought given to the logistics of an operation like this.

- Doc

[_canpakes]

Mg, methinks yoy know nothing about smelting...... What is required to get ore out of the surrounding rock, and then separate the ore?

Tools.

I remember years ago visiting my wife's grandfather's blacksmith's shop in a small town in Idaho. Looking at the bellows. Looking at the furnace. Looking at the tools. Having the process described to us. The ancients had the same ability/processes albeit on a cruder more elementary scale.

You're saying that Nephi couldn't have had the tools/bellows/ore and other substances necessary for the smelting process? by the way, what do YOU think about 1 Nephi 16-17 and the parallels with some of the research that's come about? Interesting, if nothing else, right?

Regards,
MG

Where did wife's grandmother get her tools and ore from?

The first item is merely problematic from a cash/trade standpoint, assuming that Lehi was 'wandering in the wilderness' and living off the land. The second item is more difficult to account for - we could assume that poor Lehi wasn't hand-digging chunks of ore to use in his homemade smelter. And ore isn't something commonly traded, so you'd have to assume that he was trading for pig iron.

And wood, for the drydock and boat structure; and cloth for sails; and rope for rigging; and tar for sealing, and supplies to stock the boat, etc., etc...

I'm not sure what Lehi was doing for work while 'wandering in the wilderness', but it apparently was quite lucrative.

[_canpakes]

...we could assume that poor Lehi wasn't hand-digging chunks of ore to use in his homemade smelter...

Oh, wait - I forgot:

16 And it came to pass that I did make tools of the ore which I did molten out of the rock.

This is like the chicken and egg scenario. He made tools from the metal in the ore that he obtained using the tools that were made from the ore that he mined from the tools that were crafted from the ore.

Waitaminute...