The Mulekites—Who Were They? Part VII

For the second of the two reasons mentioned in the last post that show the fallacy of the Mulekites founding a city on the east coast, called the city of Mulek in 67 B.C., is stated here.

When Mormon inserts his description of the Land of Promise in the 22nd chapter of Alma, he makes a statement that scholars and theorists have long misunderstood and misquoted. To fully understand this statement, given below, we need to know why it was inserted into the record. First of all, it is the result of an event that took place between 90 and 77 B.C., when Ammon was teaching the Lamanite King Lamoni and Aaron and his brethren were encountering Lamoni’s father, the king over all the Lamanites (Alma 22:1), and teaching him the gospel (Alma 22:12).

After the king was converted, he had Aaron and his brethren preach to the assembled Lamanites in the king’s palace and city. After that, he “sent a proclamation throughout all the land, amongst all his people who were in all his land, who were in all the regions round about, which was bordering even to the sea, on the east and on the west, and which was divided form the land of Zarahemla by a narrow strip of wilderness, which ran form the sea east even to the sea west round about on the borders of the seashore, and the borders of the wilderness which was on the north by the land of Zarahemla, through the borders of Manti by the had of the river Sidon, running from the east towards the west—and thus were the Lamanhites and the Nephites divided” (Alma 22:27).

Now this land, the Land of Nephi, was controlled by this king, who had sub-kings under him, such as his son, Lamoni. Because this land was very extensive and covered the Land of Promise from the seat east to the sea west, and from southward toward the north to a narrow strip of wilderness separating the Land of Nephi from the Land of Zarahemla, Mormon decides to insert a better understanding or description of the overall Land of Promise for the benefit of the future reeader.

Beginning in verse 29, Mormon writes that the Nephites controlled all the land to the north of the Land of Nephi, beginning with the Land of Zarahemla and continuing “on the north even until they came to the land which they called Bountiful” (Alma 22:29). And that Bountiful “bordered upon the land which they called Desolaton, it being so far northward that it came into the land which had been people and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken: (Alma 22:30). Thus, the Nephites controlled all the land from the south where the Land of Zarahemla bordered on the Land of Nephi (with a narrow strip of wilderness in between) all the way to the north and the Land of Many Waters, far north of the Land of Desolation.

This Land of Desolation on the north and the Land of Bountiful on the south was separated by a narrow neck of land (Alma 22:32), causing the Land of Zarahemla and the Land of Nephi to nearly be surrounded by water except for this narrow neck (Alma 22:32). Within this information, Mormon draws attention to the bones that were found by Limhi’s expedition: “came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken, which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla” (Alma 22:30).

At this point we need to understand who the people of Zarahemla were—and that is, in 90 to 77 B.C., they were Nephites who occupied the city of Zarahemla since around 200 B.C. when Mosiah discovered the city. This fact was certainly known and understood by Mormon. He knew that by this last century B.C., the Nephites and Mulekites many years earlier had joined into one group. He also knew that Zeniff, a Nephite, was the first “king” of this group of Nephites leaving Zarahemla to “to inherit the land which was the land of their fathers” (Mosiah 7:9). No Mulekite would have called the city of Nephi in the Land of Nephi “the land of their fathers.” Only a Nephite would have said this. And the inhabitants of the city of Nephi (Lehi-Nephi) under king Zeniff, king Noah, and king Limhi, were obviously Nephites from the lineage of Lehi—not Mulekites from the lineage of Mulek or his friends. It was Ammon, who King Mosiah sent to find out what happened to this three-generations of Nephites who went into the Land of Nephi to “inherit the land,” that was a Mulekite—a descendant of Zarahemla (Mosiah 7:13)--not those who went with Zeniff some fifty years earlier to “inherit the land of his fathers” (Mosiah 7:21)

Thus we understand that the term “people of Zarahemla” at the time of Mormon’s insertion into Alma’s record (about 385 A.D., some 500 years after the Mulekites had joined with the Nephites) referred to the Nephites who had occupied Zarahemla since about 200 B.C. With this in mind, we can correctly understand the phrase that scholars and theorists of Mesoamerica misunderstand:

”So far northward that it came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken, which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla, it being the place of their first landing” (Alma 22:30).

Obviously, then, no Mulekites landed in the Land Northward.

(See the next post, “The Mulekites—Who Were They? Part VIII” showing contrary to most Book of Mormon scholars beliefs, where the scriptures tell us the Mulekites actually landed and what part of the Land of Promise they occupied between 600 B.C. and 200 B.C. when they joined with the Nephites)