Did this inspired writer really have in mind the whole round earth, or was he speaking with reference to what happened right there in Judea where the main event occurred? Undoubtedly he had reference to what had been stated to him by the eye witnesses of the scene, who merely related what appeared to them; namely, that a darkness settled down over the land, but they were not thinking of the face of the whole earth when they told the story to Luke, nor was he when he wrote his statement of the event.
One other example:
Be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister. (Col. i: 23.)
Is this statement of Paul's literally true? Had the gospel at that time, or, for matter of that, has it at any time since then, been preached unto every creature under heaven? Certainly not. And when Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians there were millions of the children of men, as there are to this day, who never had heard of Messiah or the gospel. Paul could only have meant by this over-statement of the matter, that the gospel had been generally preached in the kingdoms and provinces with which himself and the Colossians were acquainted; and no one thinks of rejecting Paul or his books because of such seeming inaccuracies. His use of such broad-sweeping phrases are interpreted in the light of reason, and limited by the well known circumstances under which he wrote. It should be remembered in this connection, that hyperbole is a habit of speech with oriental peoples, to whom the Jews belonged; and indirectly, too, the Nephites are descendents of the same people, and have retained to a large extent the same habits of expression; all of which should be taken into account in the interpretation of the Nephite records as it always is in exegeses of the Hebrew scriptures.
V.
The Birth of Jesus "at Jerusalem."
The following prediction concerning the birth place of Jesus is found in the book of Alma.
And behold he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem, which is the land of our forefathers.
Jesus, it is well known, was born at Bethlehem, Judea, between four and five miles south of Jerusalem, really a suburb of the larger city. Nearly all objectors point to this prophecy as being in contradiction of the well attested historical fact of Christ's birth at Bethlehem. The objection is seldom fairly stated. It is charged that the Book of Mormon says that Jesus was born "at Jerusalem," and Alexander Campbell quotes it as being "in Jerusalem," and all omit the qualifying clause "the land of our fathers," which clearly indicates that it is not the "city" which the Nephite historian gives, but the "land" in which Jesus would be born.
This explanation of the supposed difficulty is further strengthened when it is remembered that it was a custom of the Nephites to name large districts of country—such as might correspond to provinces and principalities in other nations—after the chief city of the land: