The Mulekites—Who Were They? Part V

The description “Mulekite(s)” is never mentioned in scripture. The name “Mulek” is mentioned only twice:

“Now the land south was called Lehi and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north and Lehi into the land south” (Helaman 6:10), and also “will you dispute that Jerusalem was destroyed? Will he say that the sons of Zedekiah were not slain, all except it were Mulek?” (Helaman 8:21)

The term “People of Zarahemla” referring to the Mulekites is mentioned only in Omni and Mosiah:

Amaleki gives us the most information when he wrote about Mosiah who “was made king over the land of Zarahemla” after coming down into the land which is called the land of Zarahemla” and “discovered a people who were called the people of Zarahemla” (Omni 1:12-14). Which people “came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon” and who journeyed in the wilderness and were brought by the hand of the Lor across the great waters, into the land where Mosiah discovered them; and they had dwelt there from that time forth” (Omni 1:15-16).

These people of Zarahemla during their four hundred years in the land of Zarahemla “had become exceeding numerous. Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serous contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator” (Omni 1:17) and that their language, which had originally been Hebrew as had Lehi’s family and the Nephites, was so different, that neither “Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them.”

Mosiah then “caused that they should be taught in his language” after which Zarahemla gave Mosiah “a genealogy of his fathers, according to his memory” which were written on other records, but not on the small plates of Nephi (Omni 1:18). After Mosiah taught the people of Zarahemla in the matters of the brass plates and the promises made to Lehi about his family, and that only Nephites could inherit the land, the people of Zarahemla “did united together” with the people of Mosiah (Omni 1:19; Mosiah 25:13).

We also know that a man named Coriantumr, the last surviving Jaredite, lived among the people of Zarahemla for nine months before dying (Omni 1:21) and that Mosiah interpreted the engravings on a large stone on which Coriantumr wrote (Omni 1:20) about his people being slain (Omni 1:21) and of their first parents coming “out from the tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people,” and that the bones of his people “lay scattered in the land northward” (Omni 1:22).

King Benjamin gave all of “his people” (Mosiah 5:1) a name, “the children of Christ” (Mosiah 5:7) “that thereby they may be distinguished above all the people which the Lord God hath brought out of the land of Jerusalem” (Mosiah 1:11). He referred to all those present, both Nephite and Mulekite by this time, all called Nephites as “my friends and my brethren, my kindred and my people” (Mosiah 4:4). And never after this were the former Mulekites separated out in scripture as anything but Nephites.

(See the next post, “The Mulekites—Who Were They? Part VI” regarding the city of Mulek, and contrary to most Book of Mormon scholars beliefs, where the Mulekites were actually located in the Land of Promise)