The priests of Noah were the priests King Noah consecrated after putting down the priests his father Zeniff had ordained, choosing men “lifted up in the pride of their hearts.” They taught the people flattering things and led them into idolatry, and were supported in their idleness, idolatry, and whoredoms by the taxes Noah laid on the people (Mosiah 11:5-7). The taxes that maintained them were a fifth of the people’s possessions (Mosiah 11:6).
When Noah imprisoned the prophet Abinadi and gathered the priests to question him, they questioned him not merely in debate but “that thereby they might have wherewith to accuse him” (Mosiah 12:19). Abinadi withstood and confounded them; pressed on whether they kept the law of Moses they claimed to teach, he charged them with perverting the ways of the Lord, setting their hearts on riches, and committing whoredoms (Mosiah 12:17-37). One priest, Alma, a descendant of Nephi, believed Abinadi and pleaded for his life; the king cast him out and sent servants to kill him, but he fled and hid (Mosiah 17:1-20; Mosiah 17:2-4). When their questioning failed to trap him, the priests “began to accuse him” before the king, charging that he had reviled Noah, which provoked the king to deliver Abinadi to be slain (Mosiah 17:12).
Afraid to return to the city of Nephi and to their own families, the priests stayed in the wilderness and seized twenty-four Lamanite daughters who had gathered to dance at Shemlon (Mosiah 20:1-5). Their leader was Amulon. When Lamanite armies found them, Amulon’s group joined the Lamanites, and the Lamanite king made Amulon a ruler over Alma’s people in the land of Helam (Mosiah 23:30-39). Amulon persecuted Alma, whom he recognized as a former priest of Noah, set taskmasters over his people, and forbade prayer on pain of death (Mosiah 24:8-11).
Abinadi had prophesied that the priests’ seed would cause many to suffer death by fire as he had (Mosiah 17:15). Almost all the descendants of Amulon and his brethren were later slain by the Nephites; the survivors fled into the east wilderness, put converted Lamanites to death by fire, and were in turn hunted and killed by the Lamanites (Alma 25:4-12).