Many theorists have tried to
make a point that the Nephites did write about other people in and upon the
Land of Promise because they were only interested in their own lineage. In his
book An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, John L. Sorenson
writes (p53):
”The keepers of Nephi’s records put down no more than a selective
fraction of even what they were aware had happened. Obviously, this is why the
Nephite scripture is so silent about “the people of Zarahemla.” They are
mentioned when their presence occasionally touches upon the fortunes of Nephi’s
lineage headed by the “Nephis” or kings, but we would have to have the
Zarahemlaites’ own records to learn anything significant about their history.”
Sorenson also wrote: “Another thing is important about the nature of
the Nephite record. All those who kept it were from the powerful and wealthy
level of society.”
It is interesting that this
attitude shows up continually in Sorenson’s writing, yet we know of no
instances where the Nephites were “narrow” in their thinking. They included
everyone and everything surrounding their lives, even if touched on briefly,
since only one-hundredth part of the record could be edited or abridged making
up the 500 pages of the scriptural record.
As though this was a continual
problem among the Nephites, Sorenson writes (p54): “some were ignorant because
of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their
riches” (3 Nephi 6:12).” However, this does not take place until around 30
A.D., after being in the Land of Promise for about 600 years! And it only
lasted for about 4 years, for in 34 A.D., the terrible destruction that shook
the land and killed so many, destroying some twenty cities and much of the
land.
While Sorenson for some reason
wants us to believe this was the typical condition of the Nephites, in support
of his other claim of their singular attentive condition to themselves, one can only wonder why Sorenson
makes such an issue of a four-year period of time that was followed by more
than 200 years of unrivaled Nephite accomplishments (4 Nephi 1:22), where “every
man did deal justly one with another” (4 Nephi 1:2), at a time when “they had
all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and
free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift” (4 Nephi
1:3). In fact, “there was no contention
among all the people, in all the land; but there were mighty miracles wrought”
(4 Nephi 1:13), and were described as having “No robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner
of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the
kingdom of God” (4 Nephi 1:17).
Sometimes one must
wonder what scriptural record Sorenson reads, when he wrote (p55): “All
this boils down to the fact that the Book of Mormon is a partial record of
events, emphasizing what happened to one group of people, put in their own
ethnocentric terms, in the midst of other peoples each with its own version of
events.” Yet, it is not that the Nephite did not write about others—in fact
that was about all they did write about, how others impacted on them and what
their teachings and lack of spiritual development caused—and we have a lengthy
progression of those events along with their causes and effects.
What Sorenson blames on lack of
writing about other people is, in reality, a lack of information about other
people, i.e., except for a few rare circumstances, there were no other
people—there were no myriads of people in the Land of Promise as
Mesoamericanist theorists want to claim, since the historical record shows
there were people in Mesoamerica—just not in the Land of Promise. In fact, we
don’t even know there were people in Mesoamerica, only that historians claim
there were. Certainly nothing in the record in any way verifies that point.
Consider, that
1. “There shall none come into
this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the lord (2 Nephi 1:6)—note
the future tense statement;
2. Lehi and his seed acquired
the Land of Promise, as a promise
from the Lord (2 Nephi 1:5)—such a promise is unbreakable on the part of the
Lord;
3. All other countries would not
know of the Nephites or the land (2 Nephi 1:8)—a total secret from the world,
which precludes others in the land;
4. The Land of Promise was to be
kept for only the Nephites (2 Nephi 1:9)—again precluding all other people;
5. No one else in the Land of
Promise to molest the Nephites (2 Nephi 1:8,9)—there would be no one in the
Land of Promise to molest them or take away their land.
All the children of Lehi had to
do in order to receive this “first blessing,” that is, the five outlined above,
was to listen to their younger brother, Nephi (2 Nephi 1:31) and keep the
commandments of the Lord (2 Nephi 1:32).
Now, as for Sorenson’s singling
out, let’s take a look at these different groups who Sorenson says we know
nothing about and that the Nephi elite did not want to discuss:
1. Sam—he became part of Nephi’s lineage (2 Nephi 4:11);
2. Zoram—he became part of Nephi’s lineage (2 Nephi 1:32);
3. Zarahemla (Mulekites)—they became part of Nephi’s lineage (Mosiah
25:13);
As such, all three of these
groups did not have a separate lineage, and whenever it is mentioned Nephites
or children of Nephi, they are included. At the same time, every time a new
group of people were encountered, we learned sufficiently about them to
understand who they were and why they were included:
1. Jaredites – quite a bit is
told about the Jaredites, included from their first encounter in Omni, to their
final inclusion into the Nephite lineage and were no longer a separate entity.
The fact this bothers Mesoamericanists is that they can not place the Jaredites
exactly into any interaction with the Nephites or later groups. They invented a
connection between the Jaredfites and Mulekites by changing the meaning of Alma
22:30—“which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla, it being the place of
their first landing”—from the subject matter of the Jaredites, to that of the
Mulekites.
This simple parenthetical
statement of the Jaredites first landing place is changed by Mesoamericanists
to put the Mulekites in contact with the ancient civilization from
Mesopotamia, instead of understanding the the statement had to do with the
43-man expedition finding the Jaredite bones, not the first landing place of
the Mulekites, i.e., “And it bordered upon the land which they
called Desolation, it being 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,” which should be read:
“And it (Bountiful)
bordered upon the land which they called Desolation, it (Land of Desolation)
being so far northward that it (Land of Desolation) came into the land which
had been peopled and been destroyed (Jaredites), of whose bones we have spoken
(Jaredites already introduced), which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla
(discovered the bones), it (the land where the bones were found) being the
place (location) of their (Jaredites) first landing.”
(See the next post, “The
Zarahemla Encounter– Part II,” for more information on the people discovered by
the Nephites and how they were introduced into the scriptural record as opposed
to Sorenson claiming they were ignored by the Nephite elite)
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