Mosiah 1

(August 22, 2014)

                I have always enjoyed Mosiah (it is my favorite book of scripture, containing my favorite verse of scripture), and I admit to feeling a certain excitement about reaching it this time.  There is comfort to be found in the book of Mosiah, and I am glad that I will be spending the next little while within its pages.

                One thing that struck me as I read, and it was a relatively minor thing, was the fact that Benjamin taught Mosiah the language of his fathers.  That raised an interesting idea for me – if teaching people the Nephite language was the common practice (even among Nephite families), then wouldn’t that have been something never mentioned?  After all, I don’t spend a lot of time mentioning that I teach my children English.

                The way that was phrased makes me believe that perhaps Mulekite had become, by this point, the default language of the people.  Or, perhaps, the language of the first Mosiah was already something corrupted by intermixing with indigenous people.  However it happened, I think that it is fair to say that Hebrew is not the (primary) language of Mosiah, which brings a number of interesting facts into play.