Omni

From CleanPosts

Omni

The "Book" of Omni is another very short "book" where Joseph Smith hurries the plot along to get to the good stuff. In 361 BCE Jarom gave the metal plates to his son Omni, who keeps them until 317 BCE and aside from the usual mention of seasons of war and peace between the Nephites and Lamanites, Omni records only that he was a wicked man who did not keep the statutes and commandments of the Lord. Since he knew that these plates would constitute the only record of his times, he is refreshingly candid and honest. Usually it is a third-party biographer that says so-and-so did not keep the statutes of the Lord.

In 279 BCE, Amaron records that the wicked part of the Nephites had been destroyed. It's still the "Book of Omni" but Amaron writes that one blurb in it. I suppose a "Book of Amaron" with one verse would have been silly.

Between 279 and 130 the book passes to several other guys. First is Chemish, the brother of Amaron. He asserts that it is a commandment from their fathers to keep the records and append them, but they are doing the barest minimum to fulfull that commandment. So that's it. Chemish records no news, only a restatement that they are supposed to put the news in the plates.

His son Abinadom inherits the plates. He says he saw much contention between the Nephites and Lamanites, and slew many Lamanites with his own sword, but he has received no revelation from God, so he lets the plates be, and passes them down to his son Amaleki.

Only when Amaleki gets the plates does anything happen. He writes that one Mosiah was told by God to flee out of the land of Nephi, just as Lehi had been told to flee out of the land of Judah. Mosiah took a group of people through the wilderness to a place called Zarahemla, where they bumped into a second colony of Jews who left Jerusalem after the fall of that city when King Zedekiah was taken captive into Babylon.

But how Mosiah knew all that was a mystery, because the people of Zarahemla had gone native, they had brought no records with them, their language had shifted, and the people of Mosiah could not understand a single word they said. I suppose God explained it all to Mosiah. At any rate, he taught the Zarahemlans his own language and the Zarahemians recorded somewhere (not on the plates) the oral history of their fathers, but it couldn't have been very long, going by what the Nephites had managed to record even with the ability to write.

The people of Zarahemla united with the people of Mosiah, and Mosiah became their king, with hardly a peep from King Zarahemla. Who was King Zarahemla? He was not explicitly mentioned, but Joseph Smith got confused about whether Zarahemla was a people or a person. He wrote, Zarahemla gave a genealogy of his fathers, according to his memory. Now just as all the kings of the Nephites were named Nephi I, Nephi II, etc, it makes sense that all the kings of the Zarahemlans followed the same convention. So it was King Zarahemla that gave Mosiah the genealogy of his fathers from his memory, and then surrendered his authority over the Zarahemlans without a fuss.

The Zarahemlans had spent centuries fighting amongst themselves just as the Nephites and Lamanites did, but here comes Mosiah and they ditch their tribal identity and move in with him, becoming part of the People of Mosiah, without protest. Apparently Mosiah told them he would retain the name Zarahemla for his new kingdom, and that was enough.