Historical: Aaron comes to this relatively new city of Jerusalem and finds two major groups of people represented, the Amalekites and the Amulonites. We have seen the Amulonites before as the followers of Amulon, chief of the priests of Noah (Mosiah 23:31-32). In verse 32 we find that Amulon established a “place” called Amulon. It is possible that this location of Amulon became the location or Jerusalem, but it is also possible that the Amulonites were given a better location by their Lamanite overlords.
We know very little about the history of the Amalekites. This is the first mention of this people, in the Book of Mormon, but we do know that they, like the Amulonites, were dissenters from the Nephites (see Alma 43:13). The location of the Amalekites in Jerusalem suggests that the Lamanites gave this location to dissenters from the Nephites, and that neither the Amulonites nor the Amalekites were so numerous a people that they could not be subsumed into a single population.
Cultural: Both the Amalekites and the Amulonites are described as being “after the order of the Nehors.” This designation to the Amulonites in particular tells us something about the order of the Nehors. It is named for Nehor, a man who arrives on the scene in Alma 1. The timing of his arrival forcibly postdates the creation of the Amulonites, as the Amulonites begin their separate existence prior to the departure of Alma the Elder from the land of Nephi, and Nehor appears before Alma the Elder in Zarahemla. Thus the Amulonites where “Nehors” before Nehor. This gives us two possibilities for the origin of the Nehors.
The first possibility for the origin of the Nehors is that Nehor was a Nephite who lived in the land of Nephi-Lehi under Noah’s reign, and was instrumental in establishing the nature of the religious order among the Noahites. While this is possible, circumstances argue against it. Had Nehor been instrumental in developing the religion of the Noahite court, Alma the Elder would surely have been very familiar with him since Alma had been a priest in that court. There is no indication in the Book of Mormon text that Alma had previously known Nehor, a situation that would be rather unlikely had Nehor begun his religion in the court of Noah.
The second, and more likely, scenario for Nehor and the religion of the Nehors is that Nehor was a particular proponent of a religious movement that had been developing among the Nephites. His preaching coalesced the understanding of the mainstream Nephite religion about this opposing cult, and thus his name was attached to what was already a wider movement.
What was the nature of this movement? As we have previously seen, this new religion maintained some of the religion of the Nephites in that there was a belief in the Laws of Moses (particularly witnessed in Noah’s court in the trial of Abinadi). While there were some of the Nephite beliefs, there were also a number of facets of the religion that we have identified as coming from the pagan religions that existed in the area. In the study of
Religions, this is called a syncretic religion, or one that blends religious elements from different sources.
Syncretic religions often arise from the conflict of two well established traditions. In Mexico, the particular flavor of native Catholicism is well known to have elements blended in from the pre-Contact native religions. What has emerged is not the pre-Hispanic pagan religion, nor a European Catholicism, but rather some new hybrid of the two religions, where rituals and elements have been remixed into a new way of seeing and understanding the world that is more complex than a simple blending of elements. The order of the Nehors appears to be a particularly Nephite religion, showing up as the religion of Nephite dissenters, but not being given as a Lamanite religion. It would appear that the order of the Nehors was a name given to a widespread phenomenon that probably had slightly different elements, but maintained in common the retention of certain Nephite religious principles coupled with imported ideas from the surrounding areas.