Driving Out The Bad Guys

[Magyar]

This is sheer speculation, perhaps without any merit whatsoever ...

But I was intrigued last night in my study by the verb chosen for the account of invading Lamanites and leftover Amlicites being, umm, forcibly removed from Nephite territory around Zarahemla.

"Now it came to pass that not many days after the battle which was fought in the land of Zarahemla, by the Lamanites and the Amlicites, that there was another army of the Lamanites came in upon the people of Nephi, in the same place where the first army met the Amlicites.

21And it came to pass that there was an army sent to drive them out of their land.

22Now Alma himself being afflicted with a awound did not go up to battle at this time against the Lamanites;

23But he sent up a numerous army against them; and they went up and slew many of the Lamanites, and drove the remainder of them out of the borders of their land.

"Driven out," in the Old Testament at least, most of the time, derives from the Hebrew yrsh. It seems to refer to ousting the native folk and taking their territory. We know of course that that is precisely the divinely sanctioned narrative of the Old Testament.

Could the use of "driven out" in the Book of Mormon narrative, here, be a subtle clue that the Nephites had at some point commited "yrsh" against indigenous peoples, believing themselves justified like their Israelite ancestors? Was the war of Alma 3 not a simple tale of good guy vs. bad guy, but rather the story of an insurgent uprising against occupiers? They would certainly find a sympathetic audience in the Lamanites, who themselves constantly nursed a grudge of their own against the Nephites for supposedly usurping the government, taking the records, etc.

Edited June 20, 2011 by Magyar

[cinepro]

Alma 3 was written 500 years after the Lehites arrived in the New World. I suppose it's possible that a precise knowledge of Biblical Hebrew was preserved to be passed down and used in such a way, but I'm inclined to doubt it.

[Questing Beast]

The BoM text is aping KJV English, that's all. There was no "revised Hebrew" original....

[Nathair/|\]

The BoM text is aping KJV English, that's all. There was no "revised Hebrew" original....

CFR

[frankenstein]

I would say No.

In the OT, there is explanation as to why the Isrealites are to commit what amounts to genocide while invading a land. If the two were the same, it would seem the that Book of Mormon would contain similar explanations.

[Questing Beast]

@Nathair:

Joseph Smith said that the "Caractors" were "reformed Egyptian", an alphabet that does not exist anywhere in the known world. But the Nephite language had altered in 980 years: So that supposedly the more efficient "reformed Egyptian" could convey the "altered" or (in my words) "revised Hebrew": Moroni 9:33... the Hebrew hath been altered by us also....

[alter idem]

This is sheer speculation, perhaps without any merit whatsoever ...

But I was intrigued last night in my study by the verb chosen for the account of invading Lamanites and leftover Amlicites being, umm, forcibly removed from Nephite territory around Zarahemla.

"Now it came to pass that not many days after the battle which was fought in the land of Zarahemla, by the Lamanites and the Amlicites, that there was another army of the Lamanites came in upon the people of Nephi, in the same place where the first army met the Amlicites.

21And it came to pass that there was an army sent to drive them out of their land.

22Now Alma himself being afflicted with a awound did not go up to battle at this time against the Lamanites;

23But he sent up a numerous army against them; and they went up and slew many of the Lamanites, and drove the remainder of them out of the borders of their land.

"Driven out," in the Old Testament at least, most of the time, derives from the Hebrew yrsh. It seems to refer to ousting the native folk and taking their territory. We know of course that that is precisely the divinely sanctioned narrative of the Old Testament.

Could the use of "driven out" in the Book of Mormon narrative, here, be a subtle clue that the Nephites had at some point commited "yrsh" against indigenous peoples, believing themselves justified like their Israelite ancestors? Was the war of Alma 3 not a simple tale of good guy vs. bad guy, but rather the story of an insurgent uprising against occupiers? They would certainly find a sympathetic audience in the Lamanites, who themselves constantly nursed a grudge of their own against the Nephites for supposedly usurping the government, taking the records, etc.

I think this is a stretch. There is no reason to infer from this situation that the Nephites drove native peoples from their land. For one thing, the people you cite, the Amlicites were Nephites--they were dissenters who teamed up with the Lamanites to fight the Nephites because they wanted to overthrow the government. It's clear from the record that they were 'driven out' because they threatened the existence of the Nephite nation.

Is it possible that that Nephites drove Natives off at their coming? Possible, but not probable if you look at the Nephites as a people and their dealings with the Anti-Nephi-Lehis as well as the Mulekites. From the record we know that the Nephites did in fact meet up with an 'indigenous people'(at least they were there before them) in the promised land--the Mulekites. And the two groups ended up melding together, not fighting. And, given the record they left us, it seems to me that if there had been any other indigenous groups which they came in contact with, the Prophet recorders would have told us.

Natives being driven off is still possible when we remember that Lehi's group split sometime after Lehi's death and the two groups went their separate ways. We only have a record of the Nephites dealings in the promised land. We have little information on the Lamanites and their history--in fact, we only know about them when their paths cross with the Nephites, who were keeping the record.

Could the Lamanites have driven indigenous peoples out? Given the description of them, it's possible though, I don't think the Hebrew term you cite is evidence of this. If there is anything that supports this position, it is that the Lamanites seemed capable of this. We actually have an example in Mosiah 9 of how the Lamanites turned on a group of Nephites who had returned to live in the land of Nephi-they'd received permission to possess the land, the King of the Lamanites moved his own people out, but then after the Nephites became prosperous, the Lamanites moved in to drive them out and take their land.