![Oldest functioning temple in the Church](https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/186/2015/12/st-george-temple-lds-149536-gallery-300x211.jpg)
(Photo from LDS.org; click to enlarge)
When John Menzies Macfarlane, a Scottish convert to Mormonism, needed a special song for Christmas 1869 for the choir that he conducted in St. George, Utah, he wrote one. (St. George had only been founded in 1861, and it was still a very small and rough little settlement struggling to survive in an arid desert climate; its tabernacle and temple were still several years in the future.)
Here is the song that he wrote, in a performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square:
https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2013-12-0031-far-far-away-on-judeas-plains?lang=eng
“Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plains” was first published in Salt Lake City’s Juvenile Instructor twenty years later, in 1889. Since then, it has become a popular Christmas carol well beyond the confines of the Latter-day Saint community — one of the relatively few Mormon hymns to travel across denominational lines.
![In der judäischen Wildnis](https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/186/2015/12/800px-Israel_Jud%C3%A4ische_W%C3%BCste_1-300x138.jpg)
(Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge)
Brother Macfarlane got “Judea’s Plains” wrong, though. There are none. Judea is hill country.