Pangea and Peleg

Today I read Genesis 10 which is a list of the genealogy of Noah's sons, Japheth, Shem and Ham. There is nothing immediately remarkable about this other than it makes genealogy extremely easy if you are able to trace your line back that far. The one part of the chapter that I have always found intriguing is the story of Peleg.

The scriptures only have his name mentioned in passing almost as a footnote. It states that Peleg was a descendant of Shem and in his days the earth was divided. Now, according to the Doctrine and Covenants the earth was once one big land mass, typically called Pangea. There is lots of evidence of this from remains of animals, and humans found in South America and Africa to shapes of landmasses on the coast line. However, the biggest evidence I need is God said it was that way in the beginning in Doctrine and Covenants 133:24. So we can establish that Pangea is real and that when God created the dry land, it was all in one mass, which makes sense seeing that in the creation story, no matter which version you look at, it states that He causes the dry land to appear, which sounds singular to me. One mass of dry land, not multiple little ones.

Now, that being said, a question. If in fact the earth was divided into how we know it today during the time of Peleg, why do the scriptures make special mention of him? It was during the days of other people too, including Peleg's brother, Joktan. So why do the scriptures single out Peleg? I believe it is because Peleg is the one who did the dividing. I think God used Peleg as His instrument to divide the earth. I believe Peleg was a righteous man and a prophet and he used the priesthood under the direction of God and caused the land masses to divide into their current form that we know today. That is why his name was singled out for when the earth was divided. It would be like saying and in Lincoln's day the slaves were freed. There were a LOT of other people around when that even happened, but Lincoln is the one directly responsible for causing it to happen, hence why he would be named.

Nimrod, the founder of Babel, is also named in this chapter. We know from the Book of Ether that Nimrod was a mighty hunter but was not really in tune with the Lord and what was good and right. But we will learn more about Babel in the coming chapters. Until tomorrow.