The Book of Mormon Site

Land Bountiful

A Bountiful land amidst a sea of Arabian desert, with fruits, along a religious pilgrimage route

“Bountiful” is used as a place name in the Book of Mormon (and adopted later for the same purpose in Colorado and Utah), the term appears twice in the Old Testament—Proverbs 22:9: “He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor.” Isa. 32:5: “The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.”

The term is also used in Christian hymns from the 1820s: “Thou bountiful giver of mercy and grace,” (1822) and “Thou bountiful giver of glory and grace,” (1826) or “Which thy hand hath conducted me through; What blessings bestow’d by a bountiful God.” (1823) etc.

The use of Bountiful as a proper name in English apparently dates to 1707 in the comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem by George Farquhar (Lady Bountiful, Sir Charles Bountiful). This use of Lady Bountiful as a rich and generous woman entered the English lexicon.

As I kept searching for the phrase “bountiful land” in English literature throught 1828, I was trying to find Christian contexts (hymns, sermons), so I was ignoring the results that only referenced places in Arabia, before I realized that this is exactly how it is used in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 17): to refer to the place on the Arabian peninsula where they arrived, after a long journey across a harsh desert wilderness, before they crossed the Indian and Pacific oceans(!), in 600 BCE, aboard a ship made by amateurs, to the New World. Specifically, Arabia, by Josiah Conder, 1825, p. 289 states:

The whole of this tract is a real desert, containing no river, and only a few inconsiderable springs, no arable land, and scarcely a garden throughout the territory. Mekka and Djidda are the only towns: the other inhabited spots are little else than miserable villages, composed of barracks and tents established near a well or spring. Medinah and Tayif are represented as situated “on a bountiful land, with plenty of water, and covered with gardens and plantations.”

The asterisk here quotes Conder’s own reference (Niebuhr):

Tayif, Niebuhr says, “is situate[d] upon a lofty mountain, in so agreeable a country, that the Arabs compare its environs to those of Damascus and Sanaa. This city supplies Djidda and Mekka with excellent fruits, particularly raisins, and carries on a considerable trade in almonds, which grow in great plenty in its territory.” He was told, also, of “a charming valley,” called Wady Fatima, somewhere between Mekka and Medinah, which Mohammed is said to have bestowed as a dowry on his daughter Fatima. It occurs in the western hadji route [(the hadj is one of the pillars of Islam, a pilgimage to the Holy Mecca)], one day’s journey from Mekka.

(Coincidentally, Niebuhr is mentioned as one of the maps that JS Jr. could have had access to, if you believe that Nahom and the Nihmite region have any connection.)

Note that in this part of the Book of Mormon, the land Bountiful is a sort of desert oasis waypoint that also occurs along the route of a religious pilgrimage.

Any one of these points of connection could be dismissed as a coincidence, but to find four in the space of a single page of a book available in English in 1826 really marks this as a potential bullseye.

Every time I think, OK, this one weird angular phrase might be unique to the Book of Mormon, it keeps turning on its head and revealing that any imposter (not JS Jr.) could have written a so-called ancient narrative and included this detail by simply reading material available in their own time, without the need for revelation or ancient records. Luckily no one else attempted to do such a dishonest thing.

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