Summary: Abstract: Nephite apostates turned away from true worship in consistent and predictable ways throughout the Book of Mormon. Their beliefs and practices may have been the result of influence from the larger socioreligious context in which the Nephites lived. A Mesoamerican setting provides a plausible cultural background that explains why Nephite apostasy took the particular form it did and may help us gain a deeper understanding of some specific references that Nephite prophets used when combating that apostasy. We propose that apostate Nephite religion resulted from the syncretization of certain beliefs and practices from normative Nephite religion with those attested in ancient Mesoamerica. We suggest that orthodox Nephite expectations of the “heavenly king” were supplanted by the more present and tangible “divine king.” Scriptures frequently call us back to walking in the Lord’s way. Ancient Israel received repeated prophetic calls to return from a specific type of apostasy. A typical report of Israelite apostasy is found in Judges 2:13: “And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.” ((See also, among others, Judges 2:11; 3:7; 6:25, 30; 8:33; 10:6–10; 1 Samuel 7:3–4; 12:10; 1 Kings 16:31–32; 18:18–26; 22:53; 2 Kings 3:2; 10:18–28; 11:18; 17:16; 21:3–5; Jeremiah 2:23; 7:9; Hosea 2:8; Zephaniah 1:4. )) Israelite apostasy typically occurred when Israel embraced certain religious and cultural elements from a nearby people with whom they shared similar traits and merged them with their own. ((See, for example, Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).)) [Page 26]In the New World, Nephites frequently received similar calls to repentance. For them there was no Baal to lure them away from the God of Israel. Nevertheless, something tempted them to turn away from their covenantal obligations. This influence was strong enough that within perhaps only forty years in the New World, Jacob was moved to call his people to repentance: “I can tell you concerning your thoughts how that ye are beginning to labor in sin, which sin appeareth very abominable unto me, yea, and abominable unto God” (Jacob 2:2, 5). After some 320 years, this early Nephite apostasy eventually had become sufficiently generalized that, as Omni noted, “the more wicked part of the Nephites were destroyed” (Omni 1:5). The record of the reign of Alma2 (as the first chief judge) began not with preaching the “pleasing word of God” (Jacob 2:8), but with exhortations against the apostate teachings of Nehor, who “did teach these things so much that many did believe on his words” (Alma 1:5). The New World scriptures, like the Bible, trace a history of apostasy and consequent calls to repentance. We do not suggest that all instances of syncretism invariably result in apostasy. To the contrary, the Lord typically manifests himself and his will to the faithful according to the cultural context in which they find themselves. ((Mark Alan Wright, “‘According to Their Language, Unto Their Understanding’: The Cultural Context of Hierophanies and Theophanies in Latter-day Saint Canon,” Studies in the Bible and Antiquity 3 (2011): 51–65.)) Our concern here is with those cultural borrowings that allow some to distort truth and lead people away from correct beliefs and proper worship. Apostasy (from the Greek ἀποστασία) literally means “defection” or “revolt” and typically refers to the renunciation of a religious or political belief system. The word apostasy never appears in the Book of Mormon, but the process is described throughout the text by expressions such as “dwindling in unbelief” (occurring in some form twenty-six times) or being in [Page 27]“open rebellion against God” (occurring in some form fifteen times).
