Textual: The 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon has a chapter break in this location. The story of Benjamin has ended, and Mormon moves to a new topic. The next major event Mormon wants to include in his recounting of the spiritual history of his people is that of the people who left Zarahemla for the Land of Nephi, and eventually returned. This story is the pivotal incident around which several significant events revolve, of which a major religious conversion of the Lamanites and the emergence of Alma the Elder as a spiritual leader are the two most important.
We received our first notice of this event in Omni 1:27-30:
Omni 1:27
27 And now I would speak somewhat concerning a certain number who went up into the wilderness to return to the land of Nephi; for there was a large number who were desirous to possess the land of their inheritance.
Omni 1:28
28 Wherefore, they went up into the wilderness. And their leader being a strong and mighty man, and a stiffnecked man, wherefore he caused a contention among them; and they were all slain, save fifty, in the wilderness, and they returned again to the land of Zarahemla.
Omni 1:29
29 And it came to pass that they also took others to a considerable number, and took their journey again into the wilderness.
Omni 1:30
30 And I, Amaleki, had a brother, who also went with them; and I have not since known concerning them.
The reference in Mosiah is to the second of the two expeditions Omni mentions. We have a little more information about the first expedition in Mosiah 9:1-2. Those verses begin Zeniff’s own account, and he treats that first expedition only briefly. Omni gives us the number of fifty as those who were not slain, a number not specified in Zeniff’s account.
This second expedition was also a considerable number, apparently enough for a small village, according to the account of Zeniff. The basic chronology of the event requires that they leave during the reign of Benjamin, based on when Omni describes the departure. Therefore, during the reign of Mosiah the people managed to stay together. At some time after that, however, the desire for the ancestral land, and no doubt remembrances of a better life there, caused many to leave.
At this point, however, Mormon is simply editing inside a general chronological framework. This we begin this story three years after the coronation, at some point during the year Benjamin dies, and most likely after that great man passed away.
Geography: While there is no specific geographic information in this passage there is nevertheless an important inference, which is that the land of Nephi is not within easy communication lines from Zarahemla. Either through terrain or distance, there is no easy communication between Zarahemla and those o their people who left for the Land of Nephi.
Historical: Deciphering the Chronology from Mosiah I to the Zeniffite/Nephite Reunion
As noted in the discussion of Omni, we have a difficult span of years between dates. We have a fixed dated of 320 years after the departure from Jerusalem (approximately 266 BC) for the destruction of the "more wicked part of the Nephites (Omni 1:5), and no other firm date until the coronation of Mosiah 476 years after the departure from Jerusalem (approximately 110 BC, see Mosiah 6:4). Although we are left without any clear dates in between, there are some approximations that can be calculated based on other data in the text.
The next important date following the coronation of Mosiah is 509 years after Jerusalem, and 33 years after the coronation (Mosiah 29:46). In this year three important things occur: a) King Mosiah dies (Mosiah 29:46), Alma the Elder dies (Mosiah 29:45), and the reign of the judges begins (Mosiah 29:44). The reign of the judges will change some of the dating practices in the Book of Mormon. The other two pieces of information can help with dating. Along with the date, we understand that Mosiah is 63 years old, and Alma the Elder is 82 years old. This has Mosiah born in 140 BC, and Alma 159 BC.
We can place the departure of Ammon to find the missing Zeniffites at 107 BC. It is mentioned specifically as three years after the coronation. Since this story kicks off the eventual reuniting of the people of Limhi and Alma with those of Zarahemla, we know that those events take place after 107 BC. Of course we cannot tell how much time passed from the time Ammon left to the time Limhi and Alma’s people arrived, but those events appear to occur in fairly rapid order, so the reuniting probably took place no later than 106-5 BC (Alma would be around 53 years old at the time of the reuniting).
Our next chronological problem is attempting to date Zeniff’s departure from Zarahemla. There are no particularly firm dates, but there are some indications that we can use. Zeniff unfortunately dates events from the foundation of his “dynasty” in the land of Lehi-Nephi. We have numbers of years, we simply cannot easily correlate them to the “years from Jerusalem” style of dating. We find Zeniff specifically noting an event 12 years after beginning his reign (Mosiah 9:11) and another in the 13th year (Mosiah 9:14). The last date he gives is 22 years after beginning his reign when king Laman of the Lamanites dies (Mosiah 10:3). It appears that the death of king Laman triggered unrest between the Lamanites and the Zeniffites, and a war ensued. The Zeniffites were victorious in that war, and some time after that, Zeniff dies. We do not know how many years, if any, passed between the defeat of the Lamanites and the death of Zeniff.
We know that after the death of Noah, Limhi has peace for two years (Mosiah 19:29), and that the death of Noah occurs just previous to that, along with the martyrdom of Abinidi. The martyrdom took place 2 years after Abinidi had first come among the people (Mosiah 12:1). Prior to Abinidi’s first visit, the record tells us that Noah had gone on a building spree. That had to have taken some time, but we have no information as to how long the interval was between the death of Zeniff and the arrival of Abinidi (his first mission).
The first measuring stick we have is an absolute minimum number of years from the time Zeniff left to the time that his descendants returned. Adding up the stated numbers of years, we have 22 years mentioned for Zeniff, 2 years between Abinidi’s visits, and 2 years of peace under Limhi. Therefore, the Zeniffites were in the land of Lehi-Nephi for no less than 26 years.
While that is a good starting point, the actual number of years must have been larger. Our “fuzzy” time periods are between the Zeniffite victory and the first arrival of Abinidi, and the end of the peace for Limhi’s people, the end of which comes very soon before the arrival of Ammon. To fill in these times we must provide guesses.
It would appear that while some time was required for the final subjugation of Limhi’s people by the Lamanites after the two years of peace that are mentioned, it would seem than one year would be ample. Perhaps those events took place in less than a full year. Given the way the text moves, it would seem unlikely were there more than a year of subjugation before Ammon arrives. This gives us now 27 years of time in Lehi-Nephi.
The next place where we must look at time is between the Zeniffite victory and Abinidi’s first visit. We have two major events in that time period. The first is the death of Zeniff/anointing of Noah. While this may have occurred some time after the Zeniffite victory, the text appears to move quickly to that event. It may have occurred in the same year, with only months separating the two. Indeed, the stress of the battle may have been the factor that weakened Zeniff sufficiently to bring him to his death bed (he notes that he is “in my old age” in Mosiah 10:10). For this reason, there is no compelling reason to add time here.
The next problematic area is the time period between Noah’s anointing as king and the first visit of Abinidi. In the text we are given no time period, but are told that Noah went on a building spree (Mosiah 11:8-13). The building of so many projects with manual labor had to have taken time, and all of these things must precede Abinidi’s second visit, as things deteriorated rapidly from there. We might be able to allow for five years, but ten seems to be a better guess, given the numbers of buildings, the materials, and the spread of the locations (he built many buildings in Shilom – Mosiah 11:13). This gives us 37 years of separation.
Plugging these dates into the mix, we would have the original separation of the Zeniffites from Zarahemla in approximately 143 BC. Since we cannot tell how long a time passed between the arrival of Mosiah’s people in Zarahemla and the desire of Zeniff to return to the land of inheritance, we have little to go on for the dating of the arrival in Zarahemla. However, we would expect that a few years would have passed before nostalgia would have become a factor. Five years might be on the high end. This would give the date of Mosiah’s arrival in Zarahemla as no earlier than 148BC.
Zeniff would have died in approximately 123BC. Zeniff was probably one of the Nephites who left the City of Nephi with Mosiah, since he claims a special knowledge of that area, a knowledge that must have come from growing up there (see Mosiah 9:1). As a probable generational contemporary of Mosiah I, his death “in my old age” helps us form some type of guess as to the length of reign of Mosiah I and Benjamin. Zeniff would have died approximately 13 years before the anointing of Mosiah II. If Mosiah I had died in the precise year as Zeniff, Mosiah I would have been king for 27 years, and Benjamin for 13. Amaleki is apparently also one who left the City of Nephi. He notes that he was born “in the days of Mosiah” and has lived to see the anointing of Benjamin (Omni 1:23). Since Amaleki considered himself to be old (Omni 1:25) we would suppose him to be at least 50 when he died., with Mosiah I being older than that, so Amaleki could be “born in the days of Mosiah.”
Verses 27-30 present something of a chronological problem as they follow the anointing of Benjamin. This would place the death of Mosiah very early in the chronology, within the estimated five years prior to the departure of the Zeniffites. While this is possible, increasing Benjamin’s reign to 35 years, it is also possible that the party departed earlier than Benjamin’s coronation, and that Omni simply enters this information as an aside. That text in Omni has the feel of an appended text, as so it may or may not be in chronological order.
One reason for seeing the departure as prior to Benjamin’s reign is trying to fit Amaleki’s life span into the reconstructed time period. If Amaleki is born after Mosiah (he says “born in the days of Mosiah” which would seem to indicate that he was born after Mosiah) and was an old man when Benjamin is crowned, then Mosiah would have been quite old when he escaped from the City of Nephi. Similarly, Amaleki’s brother who left with Zeniff would not only have to be a younger brother, but a significantly younger brother to find it worth the time to return to the land of Lehi-Nephi. While Mosiah I certainly could have been old, and was obviously in his maturity since he was accepted as a king by a foreign people, the probable chronology of Amaleki and his brother would argue for the departure of the Zeniffite expedition prior to Benjamin’s coronation rather than after it, as might be read into Amaleki’s account in Omni. Combined with Omni’s inclusion of his brother’s expedition, but complete silence on Benjamin’s speech and Mosiah’s coronation, we may be reasonably certain that the expedition left prior to the speech/coronation.