In this relatively new city of Jerusalem, Aaron finds two major groups: the Amalekites and the Amulonites. The Amulonites are followers of Amulon, chief of Noah’s priests (Mosiah 23:31–32), who established a “place” called Amulon (v. 32). Possibly this city was renamed Jerusalem, but it is also possible that the Amulonites received a better location from their Lamanite overlords.
The Amalekites, like the Amulonites, were Nephite dissenters (Alma 43:13). The fact that they also live in Jerusalem suggests that the Lamanites gave this location to Nephite dissenters and that neither the Amulonites nor the Amalekites were so numerous that they could not be subsumed into a single population.
Culture: Both the Amalekites and the Amulonites are described as being “after the order of the Nehors.” This designation for the Amulonites, in particular, confirms that a religion of the Nehors existed prior to the time it was named for Nehor. (See “Excursus: Religion of the Nehors,” following Alma 1.) The timing of his arrival in Zarahemla necessarily postdates the creation of the Amulonites, as the Amulonites became a “people” before Alma left the land of Nephi and before Nehor appeared before Alma2 in Zarahemla. Thus the Amulonites were “Nehors” before Nehor. This gives us two possibilities for the origin of the Nehors.
The first possibility is that Nehor was a Nephite living in the land of Lehi-Nephi under Noah and was instrumental in establishing the order among the Noahites. However, circumstances argue against this possibility. He would have had to have been old enough for Alma1 to have known him as part of Noah’s court, yet Alma1 had died at the age of eighty-two (Mosiah 29:45) before the story of Nehor begins. Nehor fights the aged Gideon, but there is no indication that Nehor is similarly aged. If he is younger, he could not have been in Noah’s court.
The second and more likely scenario is that Nehor was a particularly prominent proponent of a religious movement that had been developing among the Nephites for some time. His preaching coalesced the understanding of mainstream Nephite believers about this opposing cult, and his name was attached to what was already a wider movement, possibly by Mormon as a way to negatively mark it by association with a convicted murderer. (See commentary accompanying Alma 1:15.)
This new religious movement maintained some elements of Nephite belief, including acceptance of the Mosaic laws. (See “Excursus: Religion of the Nehors,” following Alma 1.) However, it also embraced a number of the area’s pagan religious beliefs. Such a combination is called a syncretic religion, or one that blends religious elements from different sources.
Syncretic religions often arise when two well-established traditions conflict. The particular quality of native Catholicism in Mexico contains well-known elements blended in from the pre-Contact native religions. What has emerged is neither the pre-Hispanic pagan religion nor European Catholicism, but a hybrid whose rituals and beliefs have been mixed into a new way of seeing and understanding the world. The result is more complex and hardy than a simple blending of elements.