Junior Ganymede
Servants to folly, creation, and the Lord JESUS CHRIST. We endeavor to give satisfaction

Nephites and Lamanites

October 26th, 2020 by G.

The Nephites and the Lamanites have a complex history. They split, they merge, they have dissenters, they have converts, they split again…

In 4th Nephi they apparently completely merge and become just one people.  Then when they become wicked again they become Nephites and Lamanites again.  But it’s even more specific, they split into their individual varieties of Lamanites and Nephites–the old tribes that they used to belong to.

 

It’s tempting to view these new identities as just a LARP.  People just picked them, in other words.  But the prophecies from earlier in the book of Mormon about the eventual fates of the Nephites and the Lamanites, the descendants of Nephi and the descendants of Laman and Lemuel, suggest there is some actual continuity involved.

How is that possible, if they all were one people?

There may have been a racial component. Physical differences, even if subtle, would be a natural fault line for when things fall back apart.

Or there may have been some sort of continued difference in cultural practices that did not disappear during the period of unity because they were compatible with the gospel.  Different languages or even just different dialects or accents would do it.  We usually think that unity brings homogeneity and it does but only in the fallen world that we are familiar with where unity involves hegemony and commercial expansion.  it’s not clear that either one of those would happen in a gospel unity.

Or we should interpret descent from Nephi or descent from Laman as metaphorical.

Comments (10)
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October 26th, 2020 07:50:00
10 comments

the_archduke
October 26, 2020

4th Nephi says that they didn’t have any more -ites for 4 generations. People being people, that would mean significant intermarriage in that period. If they spent ~300 years intermarrying, then at the end they would all be the descendants of Nephi and Laman. I don’t see any way to interpret this other than metaphorical.

Intermarriage probably starts earlier as well. When the Anti-Nephi Lehis convert, why wouldn’t their have been intermarriage with the Nephites in the ~3-4 generations between them and 4th Nephi?


nakedrat
October 26, 2020

“And I, Mormon, being a descendant of Nephi, (and my father’s name was Mormon)….”

Mormon 1:5

I think they kept genealogical records and everyone knew their family line(s).

The removal of political -ites was likely an effect, not a cause, of being one people. A little like the transition from ‘these united states’ to ‘the United States’.


Will
October 26, 2020

I have an Israeli friend whose father is Sephardic Mizrahi and whose mother is Ashkenazi. Like his father, he married an Ashkenazi woman. Though his children are 3/4 Ashkenazi they are ritually (and on their Israeli citizenship documents) Mizrahi.


the_archduke
October 26, 2020

Mormon absolutely had his family history, no question. But if any of his ancestors married a Lamanite, he’s have been a descendant of Laman as well. If everyone was living the law of consecration, what basis could they have had to not intermarry?

I know my lines really well too. Most of my ancestors came from the North, and many fought in the Civil War for the North, but I just found one line that might have been slaveholders in the South. Guess which ones I brag about?


Ugly Mahana
October 26, 2020

I noticed the same thing. I also noticed that there were not any Mulekites.


Bookslinger
October 26, 2020

My take: 4 Nephi 1:36-45. This passage starts out with the division being believers versus non-believers, attaching the name Nephites to the believers in vv 36-37, and Lamanites to those who rejected the gospel, v 38. The latter actively rejected it, but the next generation disbelieved because of how they were taught by their parents, vv 38-39.

By verse 45, both sides were wicked.

What it leaves unsaid, is what happened to the false churches from vv 26-34. Were there then false churches in both Nephite and Lamanite factions, or just one? (Mormon eventually preached to the wicked Nephites, who formerly were the true believers back in v 36. )

So my guess is that by chapter 1 of Mormon, the Lamanite factions were outside of any church (false or true), with no pretense of any belief. But the Nephite factions were mostly corrupt, and in the false churches, claiming to be on God’s side.

I suppose Mormon’s and Moroni’s inner circle were the true believing remnant minority within the overall Nephite faction.


Bookslinger
October 26, 2020

IOW, the names of the new religio-political parties were just taken from ancestral names. No genealogy required.


[]
October 27, 2020

People being people, they probably intermarried with the people that were nearby, rather than walking many days’ journey into old Lamanite territory. That they didn’t consider themselves children of just Nephi or just Laman politically doesn’t mean they physically moved to the same place (an enormous undertaking that got special attention in 3 Nephi when they got together and when they went home).

We like to think of this in a racial lens because we’re an intensely race-focused people, but the open wound throughout Lehite history was the family division right at the outset. I’m fairly convinced by Grant Hardy’s theory that Lehi’s final words to Nephi were about uniting his children again, at least that that was Lehi’s priority, and the only person that could finally do that was Christ. That’s what Mormon is concerned with and that’s why he describes himself as a descendant of Lehi, regardless of his ethnic background.


JRL in AZ
October 27, 2020

I agree with Bookslinger that they were not actual genealogical groups. They must have just chosen those names the way that people today would choose to call themselves Federalists or Jeffersonians or whatever else.
Or perhaps it is the like how some Americans like to identify themselves as Scottish or Irish or whatever, when they have ancestors from at least 12 different parts of Europe…


Bookslinger
October 27, 2020

Jacob 1:13-14 also seems to support the religious/political use of Nephites vis-a-vis Lamanites.

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