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Some critics have termed the presence of scimitars in the text of the Book of Mormon anachronistic. They base their claim on the mistaken assumption that scimitars did not exist in the pre-Islamic Old World and therefore could not have appeared among Book of Mormon peoples who claim an Old World nexus with Iron Age II Palestine.

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There can be no question that scimitars, or sickle swords, were known in the ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Period, that is, about six hundred years prior to Lehi’s departure from Jerusalem. There have been several early attempts to demonstrate this, but more recently Brent Merrill have convincingly shown that scimitars existed in the Late Bronze Age. In addition to the sources Merrill cited, Othmar Keel, on the basis of artifactual and glyptic evidence, dated the use of the scimitar as a weapon in the ancient Near East from 2400 to 1150 B.C., just a little after the traditional 1200 B.C. closing date for the Late Bronze Age.

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With extant Late Bronze Age scimitars (including two from Palestine), with Iron Age glyptic evidence form the ancient Near East, and with an Iron Age and Hellenistic period lexeme for scimitar, there is no room for doubt that Lehi could have known the scimitar. Indeed, Jeremiah, a contemporary of Lehi, placed the kîdôn in the hands of the people who would spoil Jerusalem. The scimitar is no more anachronistic in the Book of Mormon than it is in the Bible.