A geographical blunder or historical precision? The case of Alma 7:10

During my personal scripture study, I sometimes notice details that are jarring. These are moments when you read a verse you've seen dozens of times, but suddenly a question sticks. This recently happened while reading in the book of Alma. I came across a prophecy that, if you have the map of Israel in your mind, seems strange to say the least. It's about a verse in which the prophet Alma announces the birth of the Savior.

Alma 7:10 says the following:

And behold, He shall be born of Mary in Jerusalem, which is the land of our forefathers...

I stopped reading for a moment. Jerusalem? Everyone who knows the Christmas story knows that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The gospels of Matthew and Luke leave no doubt about that. Why would a prophet in the Book of Mormon then mention Jerusalem? I decided not to push this question away, but to search for more truth. What I discovered leads us back to a dusty archive in the Egyptian desert and a political world of 3,500 years ago.

A 'mistake' that was never corrected

Before diving into archaeology, it is important to look at the source of the text. Critics of the Book of Mormon have seized upon this verse since 1830 as ultimate proof that Joseph Smith wrote the book himself. Their argument is simple: an uneducated farmer's son from the 19th century would have made the mistake of naming the best-known city in Israel, simply because he didn't know the details.

What is striking about the history of this verse, however, is the steadfastness of Joseph Smith. During his life, he regularly received criticism for this specific passage. He was pointed out that he had made a 'blunder'. If Joseph Smith had been the author and wanted to conceal a mistake, he could have easily adjusted the text in the next edition to 'Bethlehem'. He did not do that. He left the text exactly as he had translated it. This suggests that the term 'the land of Jerusalem' was not a mistake, but a conscious,authentic representation of an ancient text.

The discovery of the Amarna letters

My quest for an explanation led me to one of the most important archaeological finds of the 19th century: the Amarna letters. In 1887, a local woman in El-Amarna, Egypt, made a chance discovery while digging in the ground. She found a collection of clay tablets covered with strange, cuneiform script. What started as a chance find turned out to be the royal archive of Pharaoh Akhenaten, the 'heretic' king of the 18th Dynasty.

This collection of 382 tablets opens a window into the world of the Near East between 1350 and 1330 BCE. This was a time when Egypt was a world power, but began to lose control over its vassal states in Canaan. The letters are not written in Egyptian, but in Akkadian, the 'lingua franca' or diplomatic language of the Bronze Age. This alone is fascinating: it shows that the world already had a complex network of international relations back then.

The voice of Abdi-Heba

Among these letters is a series of correspondence (known as letters EA 285 to 290) from a man named Abdi-Heba. He was the mayor or king of a city called 'Urusalim' in the tablets. This is the oldest known extra-biblical reference to Jerusalem.

When you read these letters, you hear the despair in his voice. Abdi-Heba was a loyal vassal of the Pharaoh, but he was attacked by hostile groups (the so-called Habiru) and rival local princes. He repeatedly begs the Pharaoh for military support. But what is crucial for our study of Alma 7:10 is the way he describes his territory.

He does not only speak about his city walls. He consistently uses the term  ‘māt urusalim’, which literally translates to 'the land of Jerusalem'.

Bethlehem as part of Jerusalem

The most revealing details can be found in letter EA 290. In this specific letter, Abdi-Heba reports on the political chaos in his region. He writes to the Pharaoh that a city named  Bit-Ninu’arta has defected to the enemy.

Scientists, including prominent archaeologists such as William F. Albright, have determined that  Bit-Ninu’artais the ancient Canaanite name for Bethlehem. The name means ‘House of the goddess Ninurta’. In later times, when the Hebrew language predominated, this became ‘Beit Lechem’ (House of Bread).

Abdi-Heba's letter proves something essential: Bethlehem was considered in antiquity as a city belonging to ‘the land of Jerusalem’. It was a satellite city or a village that fell under the administrative and legal control of the capital Jerusalem. For an inhabitant of that region, or for someone who knew the ancient records of that region, it was perfectly correct to say that something took place in Bethlehem ‘in the land of Jerusalem’.

Why Alma's terminology is correct

This brings us back to the text of the Book of Mormon. If we read Alma 7:10 carefully, we see that Alma uses a very specific construction. He does not simply say ‘in the city of Jerusalem’. He says: ‘at Jerusalem, which is the land of our forefathers’.

This addition is crucial. For the Nephites, who had left Jerusalem in 600 BC, Jerusalem was more than just a collection of buildings. It was their homeland, their entire geographical identity. For them, ‘Jerusalem’ encompassed the entire region where their ancestors had lived, including surrounding villages such as Bethlehem.

The fact that the term ‘land of Jerusalem’ appears in the Amarna letters, but is used almost nowhere in the Bible in that specific way, is a strong argument for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith could not possibly have been aware of the content of the Amarna letters in 1830; they were still deeply buried under the Egyptian sand, and the cuneiform script had barely been deciphered.

The deeper meaning of our quest

What does this teach us about how to deal with questions in our scripture study? For me, this confirms that we do not need to be afraid of apparent contradictions. Often, what we consider an ‘error’ is simply a lack of context on our part.

The Amarna letters give us tangible proof that the world of the prophets was much more complex and richer than we sometimes assume. They show that the language of the Book of Mormon perfectly aligns with the actual historical relations of the ancient Near East.

When I now read Alma 7:10, I no longer see a geographical error. I see a prophet who speaks with an accuracy that has stood the test of time. I see a translator who, despite ridicule and criticism, remained faithful to the words he received. And above all, I see that truth, no matter how deeply buried, will ultimately always speak through the dust.

The land of Jerusalem was indeed the place where the Son of God made His entry into the world. And thanks to a few clay tablets from a forgotten archive, we now know that this description is more precise than we ever dared to suspect.