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Source:Echoes:Ch5:25:Old world Bountiful - honey
S. Kent Brown: Lehi's desert journey: Old World Bountiful: Honey
The wide availability of domesticated bees and honey in certain regions of Arabia has been known since Eratosthenes of Cyrene wrote about the subject (ca. 275–194 BC) and Strabo quoted him.107 But it is impossible that Joseph Smith would have had access to this source because Strabo's Geography did not appear in English translation until 1854. Only recent years have seen biologists take a firm interest in the bees of the Arabian Peninsula.108 Terry Ball and others of the faculty of Brigham Young University reported that wild honeybees—to be distinguished from Eratosthenes' domesticated bees—live in the rock cliffs of the escarpment that rises above the maritime plain near Salalah, making the retrieval of honey an interesting challenge.109 Thus, wild bees and their honey are still in this part of Arabia.[1]
Notes
- ↑ S. Kent Brown, "New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch, (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2002), Chapter 5, references silently removed—consult original for citations.