Culture: When Amulek describes Alma’s blessing upon
his relatives, he suggests an interesting pattern of kin connections. First, he
differentiates between a list of separate relatives from the generic “all my
kindred.” Structurally, the sentence progresses from named categories to a
generalization (“all my kindred”) that is the largest and most inclusive
category. The interjection “yea” appears to extend the specifics of the first
set of named categories. It is possible, therefore, that Alma’s blessing was
direct and immediate for the first (present) set and indirect for the second
(extended) set.
Possibly
“all my kindred” may be better defined in Nephite society than in ours. Among
the Aztecs, certain penalties could be applied to all of one’s relatives, [5]
and, depending on the source, it could apply to either the fifth or the fourth generation.
[6] Although the Aztecs had a different language and lived in a different
time period, the same necessity of defining a maximum kin group may also have
dictated Amulek’s definition of “all my kindred.”
The
first list of specific kindred contains even more specific suggestions about
Nephite kin relationships. The first clue is the reference to “my house.” For
kin-based societies, a literal house typically symbolizes the family. Groups of
kin frequently live in compounds. Anthropologists have reconstructed a picture
of some Aztec households close to the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Aztec
term for the “family” was cencaltin, “all the people of the house.” One
account from 1580 indicates that the “house” typically contained six or seven
married couples and their unmarried children. [7]
The
archaeological excavation of living structures consisting of multiple buildings
led archaeologists to conclude that such structures were family compounds, a
very common feature of Maya archaeological sites dating to the time period of
the Book of Mormon. For example, the site of Salinas La Blanca (which predates
the Book of Mormon Nephites) has two household mounds with multiple thatched
houses, one with three houses and one with four. [8] It seems likely Amulek’s
“house” was a typical Mesoamerican household compound. When Amulek speaks of
Alma blessing his “house” and then lists specific relatives, these are almost
certainly people living in the same “house” or entire compound, not a single structure.
Associated
with Amulek’s “house” are “me, and my women, and my children, and my father and
my kinsfolk.” Clearly Amulek is the head of the household, as he describes all
of his kin by their relation to him. “My children” and “my father” are almost
certainly terms that we ourselves would use. However, a more problematic term is
“my women.” John A. Tvedtnes has suggested that
the Hebrew word used for wife really
means woman. In three Book of Mormon passages, the word women appears to mean
wives:
“our women did bear children” (1 Ne.
17:1).
“Our women have toiled, being big with
child; and they have borne children” (1 Ne. 17:20).
“For behold, he hath blessed mine
house, he hath blessed me, and my women, and my children, and my father and my
kinsfolk; yea, even all my kindred hath he blessed” (Alma 10:11). [9]
A
similar linguistic convention exists in Spanish (mi mujer, “my woman”)
and Nahuatl (nocihua, “my woman”) and certainly other languages. Thus
Amulek is speaking of wives, of whom he had more than one. [10] Was
Amulek a polygamist? It seems likely that he was.
Amulek
had been a much more worldly man before his conversion (v. 6). The people of
Noah, as we have seen, practiced polygamy (Mosiah 11:2). Given the resemblances
between the order of the Nehors and the apostate religion of the people of
Noah, it seems likely that polygamy was also part of the set of objectionable religious/political
“innovations” condemned by the Nephite prophets for both groups; the desire for
kings, the desire for a hierarchical society (some not working with their own
hands), costly apparel, and apparently plural wives. While Jacob is the last to
dwell in detail on this aspect of apostasy (Jacob 2:23-27), it clearly enters
the Nephite cultural experience at various points, including here in Ammonihah.
A city that has quickly adopted the order of the Nehors could, logically, also include
multiple wives—yet another cultural tradition picked up from the world around
them. (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual
Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford
Books, 2007], 4:168-70)
Notes
for the Above:
[5] Bartólome de Las Casas, Apologética
Historia Sumaria, edited by Edmundo O’Gorman (Mexico: Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1967), 2:401.
[6] See Diego Muñoz Camargo, Historia de Tlaxcala
(Mexico: Atenéo Nacional de Ciencias y Artes, 1947), 95 and Edward E.
Calneck, “The Sahagún Texts as a Source of Sociological Information,” in Sixteenth-Century
Mexico, edited by Munro S. Edmonson (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1974), 200.
[7] Francisco de Casteñeda, “Official Reports on
the Towers of Tequizistlán, Tepechpán, Acolman, and San Juan Teotihuacán sent
by Francisco de Casteñda to His Majesty, Philip II, and the Council of the Indies
in 1580,” translated and edited by Zelia Nuttal. Papers of the Peabody Museum
of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University 11, no. 4
(Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum, 1926), 11:255.
[8] Kent V. Flannery, “The Early Formative
Household Cluster on the Guatemalan Pacific Coast,” in The Early
Mesoamerican Village, edited by Kent V. Flannery (New York: Academic Press,
1976), 32.
[9] John A. Tvedtnes, “The Hebrew Background of
the Book of Mormon,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon, edited by John
L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Throne (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research
and Mormon Studies, 1991), 91.
[10] Carol Pratt Bradley, a BYU student with a
minor in ancient Near Eastern studies also considers the presence of “women” in
this sense as a possible indication of Amulek’s multiple wives. Carol Pratt Bradley,
“Women, the Book of Mormon, and the Law of Moses,” Studia Antiqua: The
Journal of the Student Society for Ancient Studies, Summer 2004, 143.
