“The conspirators then swore an oath of silence. Intriguingly, the Nephite record tells us that it was a religious oath, ‘swearing by their everlasting Maker.’ (Hel. 1:11.) This seems odd to those of us unaccustomed to thinking of murder as a religious act. But the very word assassin was given to us by a religious sect of the medieval Near East who bore it as a name. The ‘Assassins’ carried out daring murders for many years from mixed religious and political motives. And it would seem, from the story of Cain and Abel as recorded in the book of Moses, that such ‘religious’ oaths go back to the very beginning of human history” (Peterson, “Their Own Worst Enemies,” 94).