Article by Warren P. Aston. Into Arabia - BYU Studies

In his exhaustively reasoned paper “Dating the Departure of Lehi from Jerusalem,”1 Jeffrey Chadwick moved the discussion of the timing of the Lehite departure significantly further. Those like myself, who have long assumed that the Book of Mormon’s dating for the departure (about six hundred years before Christ’s birth) is simply a round, approximate number, now have additional reasons to see that the dating may, in fact, be literal and that a definitive year for the event might be within reach.

While I cannot add to the material on the dating of Lehi and Sariah’s departure from Jerusalem, I would like to offer some observations and suggestions on two aspects of their passage into Arabia that Chadwick’s paper deals with: first, the routing taken from Jerusalem; second, the valley of Lemuel, it's possible location, and the timing of the family’s arrival there.