A Timeline of the Book of Mosiah

One of the most challenging parts of the Book of Mormon to follow the chronology in is the Book of Mosiah that tells the story of several peoples and doesn’t always do it in order.  There aren’t a lot of dates given in the recounting of this period, but here is a rough outline of the order and dates that some of these events happened (assuming Lehi left Jerusalem in 600 BC as the chapter headings with dates do):

•       Amaron wrote in the small plates about 280 BC: “Behold, it came to pass that three hundred and twenty years had passed away” (Omni 1:5).
•       He passed the record on to Chemish his brother and then it went to Abinadom, the son of Chemish.  It appears that Mosiah I took the righteous Nephites and traveled to the land of Zarahemla while Abinadom kept the record. The Nephites were then joined together with the people of Zarahemla.
•       Amaleki, the son of Abinadom, “was born in the days of Mosiah” and he “lived to see his death” and the start of the reign of King Benjamin (Omni 1:23).
•       Sometime in the lifetime of Amaleki, there were “a certain number who went up into the wilderness to return to the land of Nephi…. They were all slain, save fifty, in the wilderness” (Omni 1:27). 
•       A second group, still in the lifetime of Amaleki, “took their journey again into the wilderness” (Omni 1:29).  Zeniff was the leader of this group, and they made it to the land of Lehi-Nephi, possessed it, and had peace for 13 years until their first battle with the Lamanites (Mosiah 9:14). The people of Zeniff continued to live there, and he recorded, “We did inherit the land of our fathers for many years, yea, for the space of twenty and two years” (Mosiah 10:3).
•       Noah then took over and led the people of his father to wickedness.  After some time Abinadi came in among them.  He was rejected, and then “after the space of two years” he came among them again (Mosiah 12:1).  Abinadi preached to them, helped convert Alma, and was eventually burned for his testimony of the Savior.
•       Alma continued on the work of Abinadi, taught the people at the Waters of Mormon, and then ultimately fled from King Noah with 450 others to the land of Helam.    
•       Shortly thereafter, the Lamanites came upon the people of King Noah, and the latter fled in fright and was subsequently burned by his people.  His son Limhi became the leader of the people, but they were in bondage under the Lamanites. 
•       King Benjamin gave his famous sermon and announced that his son Mosiah II would be king in 124 BC: “And Mosiah began to reign in his father’s stead. And he began to reign in the thirtieth year of his age, making in the whole, about four hundred and seventy-six years from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem” (Mosiah 6:4).  King Benjamin then died three years later in 121 BC. 
•       Also in 121 BC (“three years” after the start of his reign), Mosiah II sent a group of 16 “strong men” including Ammon to go and find their brethren who had left with Zeniff (Mosiah 7:1-2).
•       They found the people of Limhi and came up with a plan to help the people escape to go back to the land of Zarahemla.  There’s no sense in the text that this took an extremely long among of time, and so the chapter heading to Mosiah 22 suggests that this was in 121-120 BC.
•       The Lamanites who unsuccessfully chased the people of Limhi found the people of Alma at Helam, and they went under bondage for some time.  It doesn’t appear to have been a long time, though, and they soon were able to escape and find their way back to Zarahemla as well.  So by about 120 BC, all the Nephite groups were back in Zarahemla. 
•       Mosiah died “in the thirty and third year of his reign, being sixty and three years old; making in the whole, five hundred and nine years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem” (Mosiah 29:46).  The reign of kings ended about 91 BC and that’s when the book of Alma started. 

 One of the themes of the book of Mosiah is that of unity and gathering.  The book starts with the story of King Benjamin unifying his people under the name of Christ, includes the stories of Alma’s people and Limhi’s people being united with the Nephites a few years later, and then ends with the Nephites uniting under a new system of government with the reign of the judges.  Perhaps this description of the people of Nephi describes best the unity that we should seek in the gospel: “they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another” (Mosiah 18:21).