Culture:These verses echo 2 Nephi 5:23 (or a similar statement on the large plates), stressing that the curse is, metaphorically speaking, contagious and continuous. The prohibition against intermarriage has continued to Alma’s time, continuing to protect the Nephites from these dangerous false traditions even though the definition of “Lamanite” has doubtless shifted over time. The early Nephites had accepted many local people into their community. When the Nephite “nation” consisted of a single city, being a “Lamanite” probably had something to do with lineal Lamanites and local people who harbored them. The need for marrying outside the Nephite community diminished the longer Nephites were in the New World and the more their population grew. By the time they reached Zarahemla, a cultural and linguistic division also probably marked the Nephite/Lamanite boundary.
Redaction: The text in Alma 3:6–10 (and through 12) comes from Mormon. He pauses in describing the Amlicites to detour into the Lamanite curse, almost certainly because he associates it with the Amlicites. He begins this train of thought in Alma 3:3, interjects the information on the curses, and then returns to his point in Alma 3:13–14.
Possibly Mormon could be alluding directly to 2 Nephi 5 since he definitely had read the small plates (W of M 1:1–5), but it is unclear whether Mormon found those records before or after he wrote Alma. In Words of Mormon 1:5, Mormon “finishes” his record with the small-plate text. However, in verses 14–17 (below), Mormon cites a specific prophecy of Nephi to support his statement. The prophecy does not match 2 Nephi 5 closely enough to assure that 2 Nephi was the source text. Rather, I hypothesize two independent records of Nephi’s prophecy about the Lamanites. Mormon quotes an “official” large-plate version (vv. 14–17), while 2 Nephi 5 is less official (because it wasn’t attached to the records of the rulers). Nephi does not phrase his prophecy definitely as a “word of the Lord” statement, but rather relates the word of the Lord. The literary structure of the two texts indicates a separate purpose and, therefore, a separate transmission of the source.
It is less important for us to know that the Nephites preserved a formal statement of how they differed from the Lamanites than to recognize that these differences were so engrained in their culture that it persisted, relatively unchanged, for nearly a thousand years. This fact suggests that a strong oral tradition existed, parallel to the textual transmission. The “myth” of the curse on the Lamanites, repeated to each generation, explains the existence of the two peoples and also their hostile relationship.