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Mulekite Hebrew

The Mulekites are expected to have left Jerusalem shortly after the Lehites. A popular model for this departure has Mulek and a group of relatives departing with Phoenicians, leaving the Mediteranean sea, and then traveling north to Ireland and/or Scotland, before crossing to the Americas in the north, and then making his way south some ways. This model of thinking is most popular in conjunction with Heartland models of Book of Mormon geography.

When the Nephites encountered the descendants of the Mulekites, the two groups had lost the ability to be mutually intelligible. This difference is attributed to the Mulekites' lack of records. This would have created a strong founder effect and provided more opportunity for linguistic drift. However, we can also easily imagine that their journey put them in contact with many additional languages which may have influenced their language.

The Mulekites are said to have been taught Nephite in a process that probably affected the language of both peoples, resulting in what I call Middle Nephite. Hence we may find that Middle Nephite provides some clue as to how the Mulekite language had changed.

The greatest and most obvious evidence we have for the Mulekite language is the instances of distinct Mulekite names. While Jaredite names were probably only used in wordplay by being fit into a Nephite Hebrew perceptual framework, the mixing of Mulekite and Nephite peoples, along with the close affinity of their languages means that we should expect some Mulekite names to have changed the Nephite Hebrew linguistic framework enough that wordplay based directly on the Mulekite name meanings is likely. (Much like how Nephi, despite being an Egyptian word, sees wordplay directly on its Egyptian meaning because it was clearly adopted as a part of the popular and ecclesiastic Nephite languages.)

Distinct Mulekite Names

Possible Mulekite Names

Notes

The most distinct idea I have is that "Zarahemla" might be a Mulekite Hebrew form of "Jerusalem" ("yerushalayim"). This suggests a couple of different transitions.

  1. initial Y -> ZH -> Z
    • Perhaps only in important words for which an effort is being made to maintain a syllable that would otherwise be dropped.
  2. SH/S -> H
    • Much like Greek

This then suggests some interesting possibilities for some names that might be of Mulekite origin:

Two of these figures are Jewish kings, which, considering the origin of the Mulekites, feels very appropriate.

Cross-References