Were the Zeniffites Mulekites?

To expand on an earlier post, Mesoamerican theorists like to point to Alma 22:30 showing that the People of Zarahemla, who discovered the bones scattered in the Land Northward, were Mulekites and it was the place of their first landing. While this is not a correct reading of that scripture as has been pointed out in earlier posts, the point here is that those involved in the 43-man expedition to find Zarahemla for king Limhi in the city of Lehi-Nephi were not Mulekites at all, but Nephites. Let us consider:

After Mosiah discovered the city of Zarahemla and the people of Zarahemla, he found that they were the descendants of Mulek and those who came out of Jerusalem with him around 587 B.C. After four hundred years of living in the land (Zarahemla) where Mosiah found them, having been brought across the great sea by the hand of the Lord to that spot (Omni 1:15-16), the Mulekites joined with the Nephites and were never again referred to as a separate group as were the Jacobites, Josephites, and Zoramites (4 Nephi 1:36).

In addition, the Mulekites would have had no knowledge of the Lamanites, no knowledge or any involvement or hereditary connection with the Land of Nephi or the city of Lehi-Nephi (Nephi’s City of Nephi). Thus, when it says that some of the Nephites wanted to go back to reclaim “the land of our fathers' first inheritance” (Mosiah 9:1), we need to understand that only Nephites would have had any connection to this land, where their fathers (ancestors) had lived for some 400 years. The Mulekites, the people of Zarahemla, would have had no knowledge other than what the Nephites of Mosiah told them, and certainly have no ancestry connection to the Land of Nephi or the city of Lehi-Nephi.

Zeniff, who gathered as many as would go with him to inherit the land, was the grandfather of “Limhi, the son of Noah, who was the son of Zeniff, who came up out of the land of Zarahemla to inherit this land, which was the land of their fathers, who was made a king by the voice of the people” (Mosiah 7:9). Thus we see that from Zeniff, the first to lead the descendants of earlier Nephites back to reclaim the land of their inheritance through two descendant kings, Noah and Limhi, the latter “being over-zealous to inherit the land of his father,” was obviously a Nephite.

It would also stand to reason that those who went with Zeniff would have been Nephites for they went to reclaim the land, and the leader of this first group avidly wanted to kill Lamanites (Mosiah 9:2). Obviously, no Mulekite would have had such an interest in destroying Lamanites since they were not their hereditary enemy as the Lamanites were to the Nephites.

In addition, Zeniff recounted the history of the Lamanites’ mis-treatment of the Nephites (Mosiah 10:13), something the Mulekites would not have known about or had any interest in, but after Zeniff “told all these things unto my people concerning the Lamanites, I did stimulate them to go to battle with their might, putting their trust in the Lord; therefore, we did contend with them, face to face” (Mosiah 10:19) and drove them out of the land.

Thus, it seems obvious that the people who left Zarahemla and went back to reclaim the city of Lehi-Nephi in the Land of Nephi were Nephites, not Mulekites. This can also be seen in the speech of Abinadi, who would have been a Nephite because of his great knowledge of Jewish history in countering Noah’s false priests, and in Israelite history in quoting the life and history of Moses (Mosiah 12:19-27), something the Mulekites would not have known much about since they had no knowledge of anything on the Brass Plates when Mosiah arrived among them (Omni 1:17).

Obviously, then as a result, two generations later when Zeniff’s grandson, Limhi was named king, he considered those of Zarahemla his brethren (Mosiah 21:24), he recounted the story of the 43-man expedition he sent to find Zarahemla but who became lost and discovered a land full of bones of those who had peopled the land and been destroyed (Mosiah 21:25-26). It is also noteworthy to recognize that “Ammon and his brethren were filled with sorrow because so many of their brethren had been slain” (Mosiah 21:29) believing Limhi was talking about the people of Zarahemla (Mosiah 21:26).

Thus, we can see that those who returned to Lehi-Nephi, and Limhi’s 43-man expedition from there later, whom Mormon refers to as the “people of Zarahemla” (Alma 22:30), were actually Nephites, not Mulekites, and that any reference to this group would be to Nephites.