“At the Place of Mormon”

Brant Gardner

Geographical: The people go to a place called Mormon. This is an appellation give to an entire region, as we later hear: Mosiah 18:30 "And now it came to pass that all this was done in Mormon, yea, by the waters of Mormon, in the forest that was near the waters of Mormon; yea, the place of Mormon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon…"

This verse contains several important pieces of information. The first is that the people who believe Alma leave their homes and go to a place of gathering. The descriptions of Mormon appear to support the idea that these people did not leave for another organized city, but rather for a wilderness life. They gave up their material lives for the sake of the gospel, and placed themselves under condemnation of their government, witnessed by the fact that they went to the "place which was called Mormon" to avoid detection.

Second, we learn that this land was called Mormon "having received its name from the king." We can read this two different ways. One would be that the king declared the name to be Mormon, and second that the king's name was Mormon, which he gave to the area. We know that Mormon is can be a man's name, and so it is possible that the king was named Mormon (though our Mormon-the-abridger was named after the land, not specifically a person - see 3 Nephi 5:12). If the king were named Mormon, which king was it? I was no king of Zarahemla, as Mosiah I leaves the area and our genealogies since Mosiah I have no Mormon.

It was probably not a pre-Mosiah I Nephite king, as those kings should have been called Nephi's (see Jacob 1:11, though Mormon might have been the birth name). It is quite probable that Mormon was the name of a Lamanite king, and that Alma deliberately leads his people out of the lands controlled by Noah. They may have been lands unassociated with the ancestral Nephites - in other words, a territory into which Noah was not likely to follow for long, both because of a lesser knowledge of the area and the possibility of angering neighboring Lamanite populations.

Third, it is described as "having been infested, by times or at seasons, by wild beasts." The word "infested" suggests that this was not the same as a hunting ground. These wild beasts were not for food. In fact, the connotation might be rather that the wild beasts might hunt people for food. Mesoamerica is home to a number of larger cats, with the most powerful being the jaguar. The jaguar was sacred to most of the peoples of Mesoamerica. While it would probably not have been common for the jaguar to take human prey, it also would not have been unlikely that it had ever happened. The forests of Mormon might easily have been home to jaguars or other large cats, such as the ocelot. For these reasons, it may have been an unfavorable location for much population, characteristics that would make it idea for Alma's purposes.

Multidimensional Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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