Long Count Date 1.1 and Mulek the Conqueror

[Ntrw]

 

In my last two posts, I recreated a very basic cyclical paradigm of time, as it may have been had by the Nephite prophet-historians. The cycle looks like this;
 

I also cut and pasted some material from a previous post, on what appears to be a Nephite  familiarity with the Long Count and also had a cyclical view of history:

One of the intriguing features of the Book of Mormon is the use of the baktun, or 400 year cycle, is it is attested several times in the text (Alma 45:10; Helaman 13:5,9; Mormon 8:6). It also appears that the baktun and the katun are both attested in Moroni 10:1, when Moroni states that "more than four hundred and twenty years have passed away since the sign was given of the coming of Christ". What's most interesting in this verse is that Moroni specifically says he wants his brethren the Lamanites to know that it had been four hundred and twenty years, because that number would carry much more meaning to the Lamanites than it would to the Gentiles.

 

The Maya "Long Count" records the elapsed number of periods of 400 years + periods of 20 years + years + periods of 20 days + days since the "creation" day of 13 August 3114 BC (although it's unclear exactly what happened on that day; the accounts differ from site to site). Moroni is basically giving an abbreviated Long Count date of 1.1 (1 period of 400 years + 1 period of 20 years).

So for Moroni, the Long Count date of 1.1(1 period of 400 years + 1 period of 20 years) is important but why? For that we have to go back to the year 20 AD and see what happened.

3 Nephi 4:15 
And it came to pass that the armies of the Nephites did return again to their place of security. And it came to pass that this nineteenth year did pass away, and the robbers did not come again to battle; neither did they come again in the twentieth year.

Also of interest are the following occurrences for the same year, according to the second Nephite calendar, which counted time from the beginning of the reign of the judges.

 

Alma 49:29-30

 And thus ended the nineteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. Yea, and there was continual peace among them, and exceedingly great prosperity in the church because of their heed and diligence which they gave unto the word of God, which was declared unto them by Helaman, and Shiblon, and Corianton, and Ammon and his brethren, yea, and by all those who had been ordained by the aholy order of God, being baptized unto repentance, and sent forth to preach among the people.

Alma 50: 1, 16 
And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the *commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed by the Nephites.
...
And thus ended the twentieth year.

For Moroni, the 20th year is a year of peace, peace following prolonged warfare. For the purposes of this post, I call it Pax 20. This makes the cyclical view of Nephite history look something like this:
 

 

With the twentieth year being the year of peace, following prolonged warfare, it is precisely the time that Moroni decides to bury his father's record in the earth. His last words to us reveal his hopes for peace in Paradise.

Moroni 10:34
And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen.

What is interesting here is that although the Nephites have a cyclical view of history, like other mesoamericans, the prophet-historians seem to take a uniquely Christ centered view of cyclical time, with the incarnation of their God, Jehovah(Jesus Christ), being at the center of it all. In The Nephite Religions, I argued for the existence of Nephite folk religion and Nephite book religion. Nephite folk religion was distinctly "pagan" or mesoamerican; Nephite book religion, the religion of the prophet-historians, was Judeo-Christian, for lack of a better word. This is analogous to the Mormon Endowment rite, where the Prophet Joseph Smith redacts and repurposes the elements of Masonic fraternal initiation into a christo-centric theophanic mystery.

So what we have in the case of 3 Nephi 1:1-18, is a situation not unlike that of Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Israelite folk religion included the worship of Baal, Asherah and other gods; Israelite book religion, as it's depicted in the Bible, centered exclusively on the worship of Jehovah. Similarly, the cyclical history in Nephite folk religion necessitated  a genocidal act, four hundred years after the end of the Jaredites and four hundred years before the Nephite genocide prophesied by Alma, Samuel and others. However, the Nephite book religion disrupts the rhythm of the calendar cycle by abrogating the second genocide and replacing it with incarnation of Jehovah(Jesus Christ), at the meridian of time. This vaguely chiastic structure, which puts Jehovah(Jesus Christ) at the center of everything can be found elsewhere in the Book of Mormon(Alma 36). 

La Venta as the City of Mulek
 In Helaman 8:12, we read: 

 

And now will you dispute that Jerusalem was destroyed? Will ye say that the sons of Zedekiah were not slain, all except it were Mulek? Yea, and do ye not behold that the seed of Zedekiah are with us, and they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem?

 

 

In Jeremiah 38:6, the Hebrew phrase that is mistranslated as "Malchiah son of Hammelech" is actually Malkiyahu ben-ha-melek(מַלְכִּיָּהוּ בֶן־הַמֶּלֶךְ). In Hebrew, this means "Malkiyahu, son of the King". But was this Malkiyahu(מַלְכִּיָּהוּ) the same person as Mulek? In the case of Baruch, the scribe of Jeremiah(Jeremiah 32:12), the long form of his name is Berekyahu. If Berekyahu can be shortened to Baruch then Mulek is a plausible hypocorism of Malkiyahu. 

 

 

 

John L. Sorenson identifies the city of Mulek with La Venta. However, La Venta was an Olmec site that was abandoned in 400 BC. Mormon tells us that the Nephites named their cities "after the name of him who first possessed them". Notice he uses the word possessed and not established, discovered or founded.  In 1828, when the Book of Mormon was translated into English, possess could mean to seize; to gain; to obtain the occupation of, to affect by some power; to seize; to gain; to obtain the occupation of. This meaning is also reflected in the Hebrew Bible. This implies that Mulek did not build the city but rather conquered it, in or around 600 BC.

Furthermore, his distant descendant, Zarahemla, was the leader of a group of people who did not live in the land northward but rather lived in the "land southward"; they had a "corrupted" language and "denied the being of their Creator", a spiritual situation similar to that of Laman's descendants. It is also important to note that only after Zarahemla and Mosiah I's groups meld into one, that distinctly Jaredite names, like Coriantumr and Morianton, appear in the Nephite onomasticon. Furthermore, The Nephite Coriantumr is a descendant of Mulek and the Nephite Morianton wanted to take over the land northward, the former Jaredite heartland. Could Morianton have been attempting something similar to what Zeniff did in retaking the Lehite land of "first inheritance"? Mulek is also said to have arrived in the north, as opposed to Lehi who arrived from the south(Helaman 6:10).

From the above evidence it seems likely that the people of Zarahemla were at least part Jaredite in ancestry. Being contemporaries, Mulek left the old world, presumably at the same time Lehi did, 600 BC. If the city of Mulek is La Venta then Mulek would have had to take it over from the Olmec who were living there. He or his descendants would also have had to leave city, possibly under duress, for the history in Omni 1;16-17 to make sense. However, is there any evidence for this in the Book of Mormon?

In my last post, I made an case for the Jaredites being Olmec in the same sense that Puerto Ricans are Americans. Just as it would be inaccurate to say Americans are Puerto Rican, it would be inaccurate to say that the Olmec were Jaredites. So let's apply the same model to see what happened to the Jaredites at around 600 BC.

The last three men in Ether's lineage history are Ether, Coriantor and Moron. Per my last post, which was not intended to be rigorous or exact, this would have Moron be born at around 595 BC. We don't know how long it took Mulek to reach the New World; Nephi didn't do it in less than eight years. Moron is described as ruling in his father's stead, meaning he didn't ascend to the throne after his death. If this is correct, and it may not be, at the time of Mulek's arrival, Moron would have been a very young, inexperienced and possibly vulnerable ruler.

In Ether 11:14-18, we learn that there was dissension in Moron's kingdom, such that it proved to be an opportune time for the rise of "a mighty man among them in iniquity", who "gave battle unto Moron, in which he did overthrow the half of the kingdom; and he did maintain the half of the kingdom for many years." Moron then overthrows this unnamed usurper only to be overthrown again by another mighty man; only this second time, Moroni makes the point of stating that this second usurper was a descendant of the brother of Jared.

Moron was a descendant of Jared, the second usurper a descendant of the brother of Jared but what about the first man to usurp Moron? We know nothing about his ancestry; we only know he was wicked. It may or may not have been Mulek but we can at least say that a Jaredite king was deposed by an unnamed man at around the same time Mulek would have conquered the land he conquered, and in the same general area. It would also explain how an Olmec site like La Venta, would in the writing of the prophet-historians be named after Mulek and why Mulek's descendants were down in the central depression of Chiapas and not in their ancestral homeland of Tabasco. It would also explain the apparently Jaredite roots of Zarahemla's people and Nephite names like Moroni, which might mean Moronite. But was Mulek a mighty man "among them in iniquity"?
 

 

Muloch > Muleh > Mulek
In the earliest extant manuscripts of the Book of Mormon, the name Mulek actually appears as Muloch and Muleh(See Royal Skousen's analysis of Mosiah 25:2). This is very similar to the Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, Molech(מֹלֶךְ) or Moloch(מֶלֶךְ). If Muloch(Mulek) really is "Malchiah, son of Hammelech" then Muloch might represent a sort of dysphemism.
 

Paul Hoskisson describes dysphemisms in the Hebrew Bible. He showed how a name like Nebuchadnezzar could function as an insulting scribal redaction. In Jeremiah 21;12, the name is rendered Nebuchadrezzar(נְבוּכַדְרֶאצַּר); in Esther 2:6, the Babylonian king is called Nebuchadnezzar(נְבוּכַדְנֶאצַּר), possibly meaning “Nebu protect the donkey”. Hoskisson explains:

Dysphemisms take a perfectly good word and make something disreputable out of it. Dysphemisms are not common in English, except perhaps in political rhetoric. Even Latter-day Saints might indulge in a dysphemism or two when not overcome by our typical Latter-day Saint niceness. But the writers of the Old Testament were not handicapped by fits of niceness and therefore indulged themselves in dysphemisms and other forms of maculate wordplays.

If "Malchiah, son of Hammelech" was the mighty man in iniquity mentioned in Ether 11 then it is possible that Muloch or Muleh, as it appears in the earliest text of the Book of Mormon translation, was a dysphemism used by the Nephite prophet-historians to not only connote his iniquity but the resultant spiritual state of Zarahemla's people. When Mosiah I came to Zarahemla, he essentially usurped him as ruler of that city, even if peacefully. Hence the prophet-historians who write of Mosiah I's descendants glowingly might have a reason to mock the founder of the rival lineage.

Edited March 18, 2017 by Ntrw

[Darren10]

That was a superb read. 

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What is interesting here is that although the Nephites have a cyclical view of history, like other mesoamericans, the prophet-historians seem to take a uniquely Christ centered view of cyclical time, with the incarnation of their God, Jehovah(Jesus Christ), being at the center of it all. In The Nephite Religions, I argued for the existence of Nephite folk religion and Nephite book religion. Nephite folk religion was distinctly "pagan" or mesoamerican; Nephite book religion, the religion of the prophet-historians, was Judeo-Christian, for lack of a better word. This is analogous to the Mormon Endowment rite, where the Prophet Joseph Smith redacts and repurposes the elements of Masonic fraternal initiation into a christo-centric theophanic mystery.

You've no doubt read and studied many materials to formulate an insightful article as read above. This portion reminds me orpf Brant A. Gardner's Mormon Interpreter article: The Cultural Context of Nephite Apostasy

Quote

So what we have in the case of 3 Nephi 1:1-18, is a situation not unlike that of Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Israelite folk religion included the worship of Baal, Asherah and other gods; Israelite book religion, as it's depicted in the Bible, centered exclusively on the worship of Jehovah. Similarly, the cyclical history in Nephite folk religion necessitated  a genocidal act, four hundred years after the end of the Jaredites and four hundred years before the Nephite genocide prophesied by Alma, Samuel and others. However, the Nephite book religion disrupts the rhythm of the calendar cycle by abrogating the second genocide and replacing it with incarnation of Jehovah(Jesus Christ), at the meridian of time. This vaguely chiastic structure, which puts Jehovah(Jesus Christ) at the center of everything can be found elsewhere in the Book of Mormon(Alma 36).

Now this perspective blew me away. It makes my ponder on the symbolic nature of this event. In replacing a mass carnage inflicted by slaughter by an adversary, Jesus was born. Isn't Jesus the very one to by slaughtered for all mankind? Isn't He the one to carry out the great and eternal sacrifice? Very interesting! 

Edited March 18, 2017 by Darren10

[Darren10]

Just read from another post that you're Pedro. The same Pedro Averroes? If so, hi Pedro, I like your stuff.

Edited March 18, 2017 by Darren10

[Ntrw]

Thank buddy and yep it's me.

[Darren10]

7 hours ago, Ntrw said:

Thank buddy and yep it's me.

Now I know to look for Ntrw.