The Amalekites

I read an interesting article yesterday about the potential of the Amlicites and Amalekites really being the same group in the Book of Mormon.  The author Benjamin McMurtry concludes that they are in fact two distinct groups, and I agree with his conclusion—the chronology of the groups simply doesn’t allow for it in my opinion.  What I found interesting in his comments was the suggestion of where the Amalekites may have come from.  We are first introduced to them in the Book of Mormon in Alma 21 when we learn that they, along with the Amulonites, had built a great city called Jerusalem.  We aren’t really given any explanation of who they are, as if Mormon expects us to already know that.  We learn in a later chapter that the Amalekites “had dissented from the Nephites” at some point, just like the Amulonites whose origin we do know (Alma 43:13).  The Amlicites were also Nephite dissenters, but they came on the scene around the fifth year of the reign of the judges which in all likelihood is after the time when Aaron started preaching to the Amalekites among the Lamanites.  So where did they come from? 

               McMurtry gives this suggestion about the origin of the Amalekites: “Perhaps the Amalekites were these Mulekites, and after losing the struggle in the capitol city, they ‘[dissented] away unto the Lamanites’ (Words of Mormon 1:16).  They then built a new city for themselves in Lamanite territory. Could there be a better name for the city in which the rightful heir to the throne ruled than Jerusalem, the name the Amalekites chose for their city?  Perhaps the leader of this group was named Amalek, a name found throughout the Old Testament.”  I don’t know that I had ever really noticed that small detail in the Words of Mormon that around the time of King Benjamin there were those who, after much contention, dissented away unto the Lamanites.  It certainly is plausible that after the Mulekites and the Nephites were integrated together and the Mulekites started to truly understand their own history and their heritage back to the king of the Jews—Zedekiah—that some of them felt they should lead instead of the Nephites.  They were the Jewish descendants of the king, they perhaps thought.  Whether that was the reason or not for their contention, we know that some of them left and went to the Lamanites, and it certainly could have been the group that became known as the Amalekites.  McMurtry suggests that if this is the correct origin of the group, then it makes sense that we don’t have the information from Mormon in the Book of Mormon.  “If the scenario… is true, the Amalekites originated in the time before our current Book of Mosiah begins. That means Mormon did not leave this out of his record. The most likely scenario is that he included it in what came to be known as ‘the lost 116 pages.’ In other words, it is likely we don’t know of their origins today because their origin story was in the chapter(s) lost from the Book of Mosiah.”  The details certainly seem to fit together to make this at least a plausible explanation.

             One detail about the Amalekites that we learn is that they had “built synagogues after the order of the Nehors; for many of the Amalekites and the Amulonites were after the order of the Nehors” (Alma 21:4).  This is a bit perplexing because Aaron was meeting these Amalekites right around the time that Nehor was preaching in Zarahemla.  One author suggested that Mormon used the term to connote a general religious movement and that “Nehor was not the earliest practitioner nor even the most infamous.”  So it could be that the Amalekites at Jerusalem simply followed the same kind of religious beliefs as Nehor and had no real connection with him, so Mormon told us that they were “after the order of the Nehors.”  At any rate, the important part about all of this is that there were many different groups who dissented from the true faith, and surely Mormon’s telling us about them is a warning to not follow after their ways in our day.