Commenting on the evidence for “others” in
the Book of Mormon, Blake Ostler provided the following example based on a
careful reading of Helaman 5-7:
In Helaman 5, Mormon notes that
“the more part of the Lamanites were convinced of [the truth] because of the
greatness of the evidences which they had received.” (Helaman 5:50) As a
result, “the Lamanites had become the more righteous part of them, a righteous
people, insomuch that their righteousness did exceed that of the Nephites,
because of their firmness and their steadfastness in faith” (Helaman 6:1). The
Lamanites began to move freely among the Nephites, traveling to the Nephite
city of Zarahemla so that “the Lamanites did also go withersoever they would,
whether it were among the Lamanites or among the Nephites, and thus they did
have free intercourse one with another” (Helaman 6:8).
In the midst of this openness
among the Lamanites and Nephites, Nephi, the son of Helaman, goes northward
among an unnamed people to preach to them. Indeed, not only Nephi but also the Lamanites
go to the “people in the land northward” to preach: “And it came to pass that
many of the Lamanites did go into the land northward; and also Nephi and Lehi
went into the land northward, to preach to the people” (Helaman 6:6). However,
these “people in the land northward” are so wicked that Nephi cannot remain
among them.
There are two crucial points
about Nephi’s missionary activities: (1) the text does not name the people to
whom he preached but was rejected; and (2) these people are neither Nephites
nor Lamanites because the Lamanites had become righteous and willingly accepted
the gospel and went to preach to these people also. While the Nephites and
Lamanites move freely through each other’s lands in a climate of peace, the
people to whom Nephi goes are so antagonistic that he cannot remain among them:
Now it came to pass in the sixty
and ninth year of the reign of the judges over the people of the Nephites, that
Nephi, the son of Helaman, returned to the land of Zarahemla from the land
northward. For he had been forth among the people who were in the land northward,
and did preach the word of God unto them, and did prophecy many things unto
them; And they did reject all his words, insomuch that he could not stay among
them, but returned again unto the land of his nativity. (Helaman 7:1–3,
emphasis added)
The text twice refers to those to whom Nephi and the Lamanites preached not as Lamanites but as “the people in the land northward.” Why doesn’t the text just say that Nephi went to the Lamanites and that the Lamanites rejected him as it does virtually every other time that a Nephite goes to preach to Lamanites? It is fairly clear that in this instance, “the people who were in the land northward” are not Lamanites. We know this because the text states that the Lamanites had become righteous and many had accepted the gospel, and the Nephites had great missionary success among them. So who are these “other” people in the land northward who had rejected Nephi and the Lamanites? The text doesn’t say—but because those who rejected Nephi are neither Nephites nor Lamanites, it has to be a third group of people that remains unnamed in the text. (Blake Ostler, DNA Strands in the Book of Mormon, Sunstone 137 [May 2005]: 63-71, here, p. 65)
