The overwhelming evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon from the Arabian Peninsula has been discussed in LDS circles for many years now with the discoveries of the River of Laman/Valley of Lemuel; Nahom and Bountiful. Jeff Lindsay has a very good overview on his Book of Mormon Evidences Page (part 1) and his page dedicated exclusively to this issue, too, The Evidence from Arabia for Lehi’s Trail in the Book of Mormon: Updates
In a recent work portraying itself as an up-to-date and scholarly work critiquing “Mormonism,” the long-refuted claims that the River of Laman/Valley of Lemuel and Bountiful are impossibilities are trotted out, showing how the majority of anti-Mormon authors simply do not have a clue about LDS scholarship and apologetics:
The Book of Mormon indeed references a multitude of Jewish populations and anachronisms. Such as . . .
· Desert fruit. 1 Nephi 17:5 talks about ample fruit and wild honey being products of Sinai desert (called Bountiful) Not possible.
· Desert timber. 1 Nephi 18:1 talks about ample timber that these Jews used to build a ship. There is not ample timber in that area. It was a desert. It still is a desert.
· Laman River. 1 Nephi 2:6-9 mentions a river named Laman that flows into the Red Sea. There is no river there and has not been since the Pleistocene era. (D.J. Gonzales, The Wide Divide: Early Mormon History and an Investigation of the Wide Divide Between LDS Doctrine and Christian Doctrine [Meadville, Pa.: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc., 2017], 220-21)
It should be noted that all LDS scholars for the past number of decades that I am familiar with have proposed (and recent discoveries have vindicated) the theory that Lehi et al. travelled, not in the Sinai, but Arabian Peninsula. Furthermore, apart from claiming Bountiful and the River of Laman are impossibilities (wrong: plausible candidates have been discovered), he is also wrong about the purported non-existence of honey, fruit, and timber. For a discussion, see, for example:
S. Kent Brown, New Light from Arabia on Lehi's Trail
Another, more up-to-date discussion of both the places and the material culture therein is that of:
Warren P. Aston, Lehi and Sariah in Arabia: The Old World Setting of the Book of Mormon (2015)
Such ignorant arguments (which permeate the volume) is not due to simple ignorance—it must be explained, at least in part, by intellectual disingenuousness. Why? When we read the “About the Author” section near the end, Gonzales claims that, after retirement, he:
. . . devoted more than five years to fully researching and studying Mormonism, its history and doctrine, which culminated in this book.
