To fully appreciate the milieu of the Book of Mormon, you need to know who the Lamanites and Nephites are. The saga of how these two nations came to be is worthy of any super hero origin story. They are named after two sons of a prophet, Lehi, who lived in Jerusalem in the years leading up to it’s fall to Nebuchadnezzar. Lehi had six sons, Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Jacob and Joseph. The story begins before the birth of Jacob and Joseph. (Lehi also had some daughters, though the record doesn’t say how many.)
Lehi sees a vision. In it God gives him a mission to preach to the people of Jerusalem to warn them to repent or the city will be destroyed and they will be carried away into captivity. This does not sit well with them. They are so angered by what he said, they threaten to kill him. (If you think it absurd that people would threaten him this way, consider for a moment how vitriolic our political discourse has become. The Jews anger at Lehi is comparable to what we see motivating Antifa.)
So, Lehi is warned of the Lord to flee Jerusalem with his family into the wilderness. His flight didn’t completely deliver him from criticism and anger however, for Laman and Lemuel were critical of and offended by what Lehi was saying. Nephi and Sam supported their father’s position. This schism in Lehi’s family creates the two nations and became the seed bed of the animosity that festered between them.
Laman and Lemuel were unwilling to accept the divine origin of Lehi’s teachings and decisions. Blinded by anger at being forced to leave their wealth behind, they regarded their father’s flight into the Arabian wilderness as a quixotic, life threatening, fool’s errand.
Lehi sees a vision. In it God gives him a mission to preach to the people of Jerusalem to warn them to repent or the city will be destroyed and they will be carried away into captivity. This does not sit well with them. They are so angered by what he said, they threaten to kill him. (If you think it absurd that people would threaten him this way, consider for a moment how vitriolic our political discourse has become. The Jews anger at Lehi is comparable to what we see motivating Antifa.)
So, Lehi is warned of the Lord to flee Jerusalem with his family into the wilderness. His flight didn’t completely deliver him from criticism and anger however, for Laman and Lemuel were critical of and offended by what Lehi was saying. Nephi and Sam supported their father’s position. This schism in Lehi’s family creates the two nations and became the seed bed of the animosity that festered between them.
Laman and Lemuel were unwilling to accept the divine origin of Lehi’s teachings and decisions. Blinded by anger at being forced to leave their wealth behind, they regarded their father’s flight into the Arabian wilderness as a quixotic, life threatening, fool’s errand.
Once Lehi died, Laman, along with those who accepted him as the rightful leader of the colony tried to kill Nephi. Rather than fight, Nephi fled. Only those who accepted him as the legitimate leader went with him. He also took the scriptures and several items which were vital to retaining their religion, culture, learning, and language. His knowledge and skills of metal smithing and metallurgy, which his brothers didn’t have, forever put the Nephites in a position of technological and military superiority over those who remained behind.
This fratricidal hatred endured throughout the nearly 1000 year history of the Nephite and Lamanite nations. In the end, it led to a genocidal war in which the Lamanites eradicated the Nephites a little less than 400 years after the birth of Christ.
This is the backdrop of the Book of Mormon. It’s a family history writ large. Lehi’s family was no different from our own — it was filled with imperfect human beings. There was greatness and pettiness, mercy and selfishness, and charity and hatred in this story. Because of its frank honesty and the unchanged nature of human beings, it’s relatable and relevant even now. Said differently, it is “written for our day.”