The Book of Mormon

Week 17: The ministry of Alma₂ & Amulek

Alma 5–16

15 February 2024

• Robert A. Rees, “Alma the Younger’s Seminal Sermon at Zarahemla,” in Bountiful Harvest: Essays in Honor of S. Kent Brown, ed. Andrew C. Skinner, D. Morgan Davis, and Carl Griffin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 329–43.

• Why does Alma 7:10 say Jesus was born “at Jerusalem” when the Bible says he was born in Bethlehem? Robert F. Smith answers this question in “The Land of Jerusalem: The Place of Jesus’ Birth,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book / Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992), 170–72.

• Thomas A. Wayment, “The Hebrew Text of Alma 7:11,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 98–103. Wayment argues that the translation of Isaiah 53:4 in Alma 7:11 is closer to the Hebrew text than the English translation in the King James Bible is.

• BYU professor John W. Welch explains the Nephite system of weights and measures in Alma 11:3–19 in “Weighing and Measuring in the Worlds of the Book of Mormon,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 8, no. 2 (1999): 36–45, 86. (See also Robert F. Smith’s “Table of Relative Values” in the same issue.)

• Alma₂ forbade Amulek from using the power of God to save the believers in Ammonihah from being killed (Alma 14:11). Why does God permit evil to take place in the world? Elder Spencer W. Kimball gave some ideas in his article “Tragedy or Destiny,” Improvement Era 69, no. 3 (March 1966): 178–80, 210–12, 214, 216–17.