From "New lights from Arabia on Lehi's journey" by S. Kent Brown
The English translation of the passage in 1 Nephi 8:33 of "great and spacious building" the dream of Lehi, the calls it "strange" to him (in English the text reads: "And the multitude That WAS great did enter Into That strange building ").
Why Lehi rate of foreign a building unless it was based on reality?
The first and most natural response is their appearance, their architecture was unfamiliar to Lehi. Even as a wealthy man, if he had traveled to interesting places, obviously did not know all the cultural peculiarities of the regions around him a distance away 1. Most of the architectural influence in the area of \u200b\u200bJerusalem was brought from Egypt and Phoenicia, where, playing the point on the height, architecture is typically one or two stories high. 2
This is an important point because, in contrast, the architecture of Saudi Arabia, where Lehi and Sariah at the time of the vision were traveling, had actually skyscrapers at that time. Thus, for a person of Jerusalem, those skyscrapers would be quite unusual, even "strangers." Those skyscrapers have continued into modern times. In this sense we find especially Lehi's interesting that you found interesting to describe the "spacious building" in his sleep - probably has had broad and extensive plants-as if "in the air, high above the earth." The architecture of skyscrapers Shall then even agree to sleep where the objects and scenes are also symbolic for the recipient.
How do we know that the buildings of ancient Arabia were significant height reached? After all, those buildings have not survived. On the basis of archaeological discoveries of the ancient site of Shabwah in 1970, the French team concluded that the base endured in buildings that were then operating public multi-storey buildings rising to more than four or five plants in the air 3.
ruins Image Shabwah province of Yemen
Most surprising is the fact that these massive structures could be found from 100 years before Lehi and Sariah'll start your journey. And that's not all. Inscriptions on the buildings were found in other ancient sites in the region, "indicating that the number of floors in the houses were still three or four floors, with a maximum of six in the town of Zaf? r ". This is how it is found that a number of houses rose over the air. These houses "provide the names of their owners" and their buildings also date from the VIII I BC 4.
Returning to the dream of Lehi, we wonder how those edificons Lehi could appear as "in the air, high above the earth" (1 Nephi 8:26). One answer is that the Saudi desert travelers usually travel by night because the heat and dangers of mercenary 5. This scene is exactly what Lehi shows the beginning of his dream through a plateau he travels through the "darkness" (1 Nephi 8:4,7). The first row of tall windows of those buildings were high enough to provide security to their inhabitants. At night, when the lights of the windows were lit, then those buildings will appear as if suspended in air.
In conclusion, it is clear that Lehi saw a feature ancient architecture of the buildings in southern Arabia and it was only in that part of the world for its time. Contemporary buildings still stand as if they were "on air" (1 Nephi 8:26), reaching heights of [various story].
Joseph Smith's contemporaries knew of these ancient buildings that have been mentioned [in the seventh century BC]? The answer is no. Neither Joseph Smith either. In contrast, Lehi, who saw these structures in their vision, and a member of the group traveling through the region, yes, and so could properly be called Building "stranger [s]."
Footnotes
- Lehi
- should be educated in Egyptian culture but not in Arabic as it is shown that he and his family, culture and peoples of the Arabian peninsula were rather unknown in the route to be addressed by the peninsula.
- See Michael Roaf, "an Palaces Temples in Ancient Mesopotamia" in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sansson et al., (New York: Charles Scribner son, 1995), 1:423-41, at p. 434.
- None of the upper floors have survived but only the bases, but their design allowed the archaeological team arriving at the conclusion that these buildings Feron supports many floors up, something unthinkable to an Israelite as Lehi
