BOM 2 Nephi 5

Elephantine Island, south tip — At the southern end of Elephantine Island in the Nile River, near Aswan, in Upper Egypt
(Wikimedia CC; click to enlarge)

W bank Elephantine — Along the western shore of Elephantine Island

(Wikimedia CC; click to enlarge)
The name of the island, which comes from Greek, hearkens back to the pharaonic period, when Aswan was a major center of the ivory trade with sub-Saharan Africa.

Critics of the Book of Mormon have often criticized the idea, contained in today’s reading (2 Nephi 5), that Nephi built a temple in the New World. I saw a video two or three years ago for which a rabbi had been recruited to mock the notion.

No good Jew, they say, would ever have built a temple except upon the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. (And what bad, irreligious Jew would want to?)

But the archaeological facts say otherwise.

There is, for example, the small Israelite temple at Tel Arad.

And the one at Tel Be’er Sheva.

And another one seems recently to have been found located only about five kilometers from the Temple Mount.

How it might have looked at Elephantine — An artist’s reconstruction of the small ancient Jewish Temple of Elephantine Island

And there were at least two ancient Jewish temples in Egypt. (One was on Elephantine Island, named for the ancient ivory trade with sub-Saharan Africa, which was a significant source of Aswan’s wealth.)

Seen in this light, it doesn’t seem quite so obvious a howler that the Book of Mormon has Nephi building a temple outside of Jerusalem, in the Land of Promise.