Dale Caswell, a student in my fall 1997 textual criticism class, suggested in his term paper for the class that this passage incorrectly states that the city of Mulek was “in the land of Nephi”. Drawing upon usage throughout the rest of the text, he shows that this Nephite city would have been “in the land of the Nephites”, while the land of Nephi was further south and had been under Lamanite control for at least a hundred years.
Caswell also points out that there are 56 other occurrences of “the land (of) Nephi” in the text and that every one of them refers either specifically to the land that Nephi originally settled when he separated from his brothers Laman and Lemuel or generally to the traditional Lamanite territory as a whole (see the discussion under Alma 22:28 regarding the phrase “on the west in the land of Nephi”). Later, as described in the book of Omni, Mosiah (the father of king Benjamin) and his followers abandoned the original land of Nephi and migrated to the land of Zarahemla. The people of Zeniff returned to the original land of Nephi but were eventually forced to abandon it (as described in the book of Mosiah). On the other hand, the city of Mulek is listed as one of several Nephite cities captured by the Lamanites:
(The earliest text here actually reads “the city of Nephihah” rather than “the city of Moroni”, but internal evidence argues that Nephihah here is a mistake for Moroni. See the discussion under Alma 51:25–26.) Given the order of capture for this list of cities, we may presume that the city of Moroni was the most southern of these cities (and thus nearest to Lamanite territory), while the city of Mulek was the most northern. John L. Sorenson, in his book Mormon’s Map (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2000), comes to the same conclusion regarding the location of Mulek (see his map 3 on page 40 and the nearby discussion). Moreover, the narrative in Alma 52:15–19 shows that the city of Mulek was near the city of Bountiful (which was in the north and near the narrow neck of land, as described in Alma 22:29–34). Teancum, when he realizes he doesn’t have enough forces to attack the city of Mulek, now in Lamanite hands, returns to the city of Bountiful to await the arrival of Moroni and his army. All of this means that it is quite improbable for the city of Mulek to be “in the land of Nephi”.
Later the expression “the land of the Nephites” turns up twice in the text:
In both passages, the text refers to the entire Nephite territory, not “the land of Nephi” (neither the original land of Nephi nor the more general Lamanite territory).
One possibility here in Alma 53:6 is that the original text actually read “the land of Nephi”; that is, this reading was a mistake that Mormon himself made when he made his record. The original manuscript is extant here, and it reads “the land of Nephi”. Perhaps the plates did too. Since Mormon had just written that the city of Mulek “was one of the strongest holds of the Lamanites”, he might have been influenced by the reference to the Lamanite strong holds to write “in the land of Nephi” since for some time in the past the Lamanites’ territory had included the original land of Nephi.
But there is also considerable evidence that Oliver Cowdery sometimes mixed up Nephi and Nephite(s) in the manuscripts. We have cases where he initially wrote (or started to write) Nephites instead of Nephi:
And there are also cases where Oliver mistakenly wrote (or started to write) Nephi for the Nephites:
All these examples involve the word people rather than land (that is, here we have mix-ups between “the people of Nephi” and “the people of the Nephites”), but the difficulty would have been similar with “the land of Nephi” and “the land of the Nephites”. In other words, there is indirect scribal evidence to support the proposal that Oliver Cowdery could have accidentally written in Alma 53:6 “the land of Nephi” (the more common expression) instead of “the land of the Nephites”. Since “the land of Nephi” in this one instance is quite improbable, the critical text will accept the emendation “the land of the Nephites”.
For some alternative explanations of why the original text may have actually read “in the land of Nephi”, see page 236 in Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1976). Basically, these various proposals argue that there must have been some different interpretation or use of the term “the land of Nephi” in Alma 53:6.
Summary: Emend Alma 53:6 to read “in the land of the Nephites” since the city of Mulek was in Nephite territory and had been only temporarily under Lamanite control; all other occurrences of “the land (of) Nephi” refer specifically to the original land settled by Nephi or, more generally, to the traditional Lamanite territory.