Helaman Notes
* Some decisions only success can justify. We don’t like that because we want the rightness of our acts to be judged by our intentions. Even so. Power is good, and holding power only lends more weight to preaching, so giving up power in order to preach is one of those decisions. In the case of Nephi Helaman’s son the decision succeeded spectacularly. He and his brother converted thousands in areas they could not have gone to had they still been Nephite leaders
– they converted thousands of Nephite dissenters. Ammon and the four sons of King Mosiah converted one. Why? One has the impression that dissent had started to happen over more and more trivial issues. It looks like the barriers between being a Nephite and a Lamanite were lower, thus easier to jump over. It fits with the other evidence that in this era we are seeing the Lamanites get absorbed into the Nephite cultural era.
-something about the very flat way the scriptures describe Nephi turning over the judgment seat to Cezoram makes me wonder if the two were not particularly close. There seems to be real trouble in the Book of Mormon in finding groups of people to trust beyond family. That, combined with the way their society fractures at the drop of a hat, gives me the impression of clannish groups.
* What happened to the Anti-Nephi-Lehis?
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Zen
September 1, 2024
Reading between the lines, there appears to be a lot of conflict between minorities. We see names that appear to be Mulekite (Zerahemnah) and Jaredite (Gadianton, Morianton, Coriantumr, etc.) And of course, we see plenty of trouble from the Nephites themselves, with apostate groups.
I expect we will see a lot of this in our future as well.
[]
September 1, 2024
Descendants of Anti-Nephi-Lehies hit the frontier, hit the ships too probably, remnant could be the Lamanites that lose the curse (become completely assimilated) in the beginning of 3 Nephi. Actions of the Lamanite state drop off after Coriantumr’s invasion, yielding up land at the end of Helaman 5 is the last thing it’s described as doing.
One could imagine the damage a dynasty of Nephite or Mulekite dissenters would have done to Lamanite institutions – what happened to Tubaloth? He’s unusually mentioned by name sending Coriantumr, then it’s just “the king of the Lamanites” in Helaman 4, and that’s when they win, but they are seemingly satisfied with that and bow out of the record.
the_archduke
September 2, 2024
We also have the issue that Mormon is almost completely uninterested in Lamanite internal politics. The only time he mentions them is when Nephites are instigating something. He says at the beginning that anyone who isn’t a Nephite he is just going to lump together as a Lamanite.
Imagine such a history of Europe from the French perspective. Anyone not a Frenchman was a “German”. The 100 Years war was rampaging “Germans” invading by sea. The Thirty Years was was benevolent Frenchmen stopping a civil war amongst a bunch of “Germans”. The Napoleonic wars against the Holy Roman Empire was the French bringing civilization to the “Germans”. A hundred years later the “Germans” unprovoked, attacked them and were beaten by the French with minor help from some “German” tribes. A generation later the “Germans” were at it again and only defeated the French with a cowardly surprise attack.
Mormon was not, and never claimed to be, writing a political history of the region. His first and only concern was a ethno-religious history. Other peoples only get mentioned as they interact with the Nephites. It is entirely probable that some of the peoples called Lamanites would not have used that name for themselves.