All the Random Observations on Zeniff’s People You Ever Wanted

And  more!
(The Book of Mormon version, not the Arizona ruin.)

When I was young, the war chapters in Alma were my favorite.  I read them over and over of a Sunday.  Today I would say its the story of Zeniff and his people.  There is something about being surrounded and hanging on that hits me.  You can see it it in my favorite talk.  You can see it in my enthusiasm for Hodgson’s The Night Lands and John C. Wright’s superb Awake in the Night Land.

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It’s good clean fun to treat the Book of Mormon like you would any other ancient historical document to try to tease out clues about the people and their world view.  The old FARMS was known for it.

When you do, one thing that attracts your attention is the demographics.  There seem to be way more Nephites and way, way more Lamanites than endogenous growth of the known peoples can account for.  Just like theories of why the Universe is expanding posit unobserved ‘dark matter’, the Book of Mormon seems to have unrecorded ‘dark people’–locals who were part of the civilization but don’t explicitly show up as such in the record.  Though there are hints (see footnote 2 here for a list).  Smart people (not me) have gotten quite a bit out of it.  Our own suggestions:

• jacob 2 concubines imply a larger population and a class divide, possibly an ethnic class divide
• Was the Nephite crop package not as successful as the chroniclers patriotically claimed? (read the comments for rebuttal)

Now, the Zeniffite population were Nephite purists and irredentists so if any group were going to be pure Nephite you would think it would be them.  But curiously enough the chronicler sees fit to note that Alma was the descendant of Nephi.  See Mosiah 17:2.  What’s the explanation?  it could be that by the time of Zeniff most “Nephites” were not actually descendants of Nephi if a large local population had been assimilated in–or that only certain elite groups kept sufficient track of their genealogy to be able to say.  It could be that a number of Zeniff’s Nephite purists were not actually Nephite by blood line, much like how nowadays a lot of online white nationalists turn out to be Mexicanish.  It could be that Zeniff’s people actually came in as an elite group and ruled over a native population, so when we read that the King of the Lamanites evacuated his people it means he was actually evacuating his own elites.  It could be that the chronicler was writing for his Zarahemla audience for whom traceable Nephite descent would have been noteworthy even if it would not have stood out among the Zeniffites.

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There’s this odd thing that King Noah does where he sets up a huge watchtower to see the whole borders of his country.  He sets up a watchtower and goes on an infrastructure spending spree.  I speculate that part of the spending spree was reduced expenditures on border guards.  The thing has all the hallmarks of a classic move to use technology to reduce military expenditures to sue the money on other favored programs.  Also classic–the watchtower is central so it allows King Noah to have a centralized military force under his direct observation instead of one spread out.

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Let’s say you are King Mosiah.  Your father had this big speech that transformed your society into a covenant relationship but since then every year things get a little worse.  You are trying your hardest but your best efforts just slow the rate of decline.

An intelligent observer might see the trend lines and predict a coming disaster.

Imagine another intelligent observer responding.  “Oh, no, your analysis is too superficial.  What you overlooked is the obvious factor that decades ago an adventurer called Zeniff took a band of irredentists in the wilderness where they are clearing going to experience a civilizational cycle in miniature along with the Lord’s intervention in the form of a prophet and we’re sending out a guy to look for them and they’re all in a bad way so they are going to flee back  here and we’ll have all these new people who’ve suffered deeply the consequences of sin and have new convert zeal are going to flood our land.  Leading to a renewal!  Also my calculations show that they will have pioneered a new style where the priestly office and the kingly office are separate, so, yeah, big changes coming.

God’s plans do not suffer from an excess of scrutability.

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Is there any value in likening non-heroes to ourselves?  I think there’s a lot of value in likening Abinadi and Alma to ourselves.  Is there any value in likening to ourselves King Limhi, Gideon,  Ammon (the expeditionary leader who discovered the Zeniffites), or even King Noah or his wicked priests?

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It is incredible the extent to which migrations make up the story of the Book of Mormon.  We have Lehi’s dream, which is about wandering in the wilderness’ Lehi’s migration into the desert’ the trip across the sea; Nephi’s migration from his brothers; the later migration to join up with Mulek’s migration; Zeniff’s counter-migration; King Limhi’s migration back to Zarahemla; Alma’s migration to the wilderness and then to Zarahemla; and soon a variety of migrations by wicked Nephites to the Lamanite lands.  Is there any message for us in all of this?