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2 Samuel 22: 35 He teacheth my hands to war; so that a bow of steel is broken in mine arms.
There is one other things that tends to prove the validity of the Book of Mormon is when Lehi, after having marched for three days from Jerusalem camped by the borders of the Red Sea. He named a river that flowed into the Red Sea after one of his son. And named a valley which was by the river that flowed into the Red Sea after his other son. The problem with that verse is that the Red Sea is over 200 miles from Jerusalem and could not be reached in only 3 days. The Red Sea is situated in a volcanic mountain and is fed from underground. In the entire history of Israel (until 1963) there was never a river that flowed into the Red Sea.
In the Book of Josephus, which was published in the United States in 1963 we find this verse:

The Tigres, the Phison (Which is now called the Ganges) and the Euphrates flowed into the Red Sea.

There is a footnote after that 3rd verse on page 25 in the book called Antiquities of the Jews that reads: (here is not only the South Sea which alone we call by that name today, but all the water surrounding Israel up to the East Indies were called the Red Sea.)

Joseph Smith had no way of knowing that there was a river that flowed into the Red Sea because that information was not known to anyone at the time of Joseph Smith. So wouldn't you say that Joseph Smith had to be inspired of God to know that a river flowed into the Red Sea when the world believed that there was never a river that flowed into the Red Sea.

Just wondering how others would take that information.
grampa75

beastie wrote:I don't understand your question. You seem to ask whether or not steel existed in ancient America during the Book of Mormon time period, but the "evidence" you cite is a scripture from the Old World.

H5154
נחשׁה נחוּשׁה
nechûshâh nechûshâh
nekh-oo-shaw', nekh-oo-shaw'
Feminine of H5153; copper: - brass, steel. Compare H5176.

2Sa 22:35 He trains my hands for battle so that my arms can bend an archer's bow of bronze.

grampa75 wrote:Did the people living in the Americas at the time the Book of Mormon was being written by the American prophets, have steel as it was written in the Book of Mormon when Nephi broke his bow of steel.
Anyone who doubts that steel existed during those times must not be well read in the scriptures.
The time that it was written in the Book of Mormon that Nephi broke his bow of steel was about 600 BC. But about 1000 BC this verse is written in the Bible concerning steel weapons.

2 Samuel 22: 35 He teacheth my hands to war; so that a bow of steel is broken in mine arms.

Fortigurn wrote:
This passage very usefully provides evidence for three important points:

* Smith using the KJV as as source for the Book of Mormon

* Smith having little or no understanding of when the KJV translation was wrong

* Smith having little or no understanding of Hebrew metaphor

The KJV is wrong to translate the Hebrew word here as 'steel'. It does not mean steel. Modern translations render it 'bronze'. Moreover, the Hebrew literally means 'and a bow of bronze is bent by my arms', nothing about it being broken. It is in the context of a laudatory ode, and is a poetic metaphor. It seems that Smith simply lifted it the phrase from the KJV without understanding that the translation was wrong on two points, that steel was not known in the Ancient Near East this early, and without realizing it was a metaphor.