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Nibley writes: Then it takes us to the desert, where Lehi and his family wander for eight years, doing all the things that wandering families in the desert should do. The manner of their crossing the ocean is described...

Do you want to explain how it is that in this passage to the desert, that in 1 Nephi 2:6 the people walked from Jerusalem to the river Laman in Arabia--some 250+ miles away--and did so in a mere 3 days even though senior citizens went with them and they were loaded down with supplies? [Somebody should have told Moses they had a shortcut!]

Let's say they rested/ate/went to the bathroom for only 2-10 total of those 72-80 hrs...Let's say they were on the move for 70 hrs. That means they were zoomin' @ 35 mph! [Why hasn't GM or Ford come out with a sporty car called the Camel in honor of them?)

So while it took them a mere 3 days to cross the desert, on the other hand, where the BoM says nothing about divine power helping them cross such a desert, it does point out that they had "furious winds" blowing their barges in the trip over the ocean. So how long does Ether 6:4-11 say it took them w/these furious winds? 344 days!

Okay. Joseph flunked maritime math. Others have pointed out that if you are being blown by furious winds toward the promised land speedily, as Ether 6 contends, and if you're only going 10 mph over 5,000 miles...then that 344-day trip could be condensed to three weeks.

Also, I suggest that if you're going to make a trip from the Middle East to the Americas, that you NOT make a hole in the bottom of the barge (as indicated in Ether 2:20), lest you have a mini-Titanic experience @ Laman Harbor.

The alleged Smith/BoM reason for such a hole in the bottom of the barge was so that it would provide air should the barges be turned over in the ocean storms. Okay, even if we could for a moment pretend that being in a barge with a hole in the top and a hole in the bottom would somehow stay afloat, imagine being turned over in an oceanic storm. Every time the barge flipped, what was happening to the supplies, people and animals?

If you doubt me, please go to your backyard pool or your bathtub, place a wooden barge with holes in the top & bottom, and then place pretend plastic people & animal & rocks (supplies) in them. Now flip them over like in a storm. Now tell me, minus any divine miracle, what happens? (Note that Jared wasn't instructed to cut holes in the barge so that God would work another sea-crossing miracle; rather, it's purpose was merely an air pocket in case they flipped...but if you flip in mid-ocean, you're immediate problem is not air, it's water...[and only as you're drowning does air become the problem].

Pray tell. Who has replicated brass compasses [the "liahona" as described in 1 Nephi 16:19; Alma 37:38-39, etc.]? Is brass an interchangeable compass part with an iron needle? [Gee, I always thought compasses were linked to the magnetic field of the earth & therefore needed iron needles...how ignorant of me]. But then again, what can you expect of a device that wasn't even't invented for another 1800 years? {The real compass was invented in the 13th century, not 600-592 B.C.) Maybe the magnetic aspect of the earth was only a latter-day development, eh?