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City of Ammonihah
An 1888 illustration of Alma 14:8, in which women and children among the city's Christian minority are "cast into the fire".
First appearance	Alma 8:6
Last appearance	Alma 25:3

Ammonihah (/ˌæməˈnaɪhɑː/) is a city mentioned in the Book of Mormon. It is the setting of "one of the most disturbing episodes in the Book of Mormon" in which the prophet Alma's ministerial visit ends in his imprisonment and the mass death of women and children converts at the hands of Ammonihah's governing elite.

Background

Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is the primary religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Joseph Smith, the founder of the movement, claimed that the book tells an actual history of a people whose ancient record he translated by a miraculous gift from God.

In the book, a family flees Jerusalem in approximately 600 BCE, prophetically directed to escape the Babylonian captivity. Led by God, they arrive in the Americas and establish a society which, due to a deepening fraternal disputation, splits into two: the Nephites and the Lamanites. Despite preceding the advent of Jesus, the Nephites have a Christian society with prophets among them. The majority of the narrative is framed as the retrospective work of its principal narrator, Mormon, a Nephite who lives near the end of the chronological narrative and reflexively describes creating the text that is the Book of Mormon by abridging and quoting from Nephite history.

Book of Alma

The Book of Mormon is further divided into fifteen internal books, named after prophets in the text in a manner reminiscent of the prophetic books of the Bible. The ninth book is the book of Alma, named after Alma, a prophet who is the son of the late founder of the then-current incarnation of the Nephite church. In this sub-book, Mormon narrates Alma's ministry and that of his son Helaman during the "reign of the judges", a period in which rule by judges has replaced monarchy in Nephite society.

The book of Alma structurally divides into four quarters that alternatively parallel each other. In the first and third quarters (Alma 1–16 and 30–44), Alma encounters dissent among Nephites and responds; in the second and fourth quarters (Alma 17–29 and 45–63), Mormon narrates Nephite–Lamanite interactions.

The majority of the Ammonihah narrative is framed by an inclusio spanning Alma 9–16.

Nephite dissenters and Alma

Prior to the Ammonihah narrative, the Book of Mormon develops an ongoing plot depicting a series of dissident movements in Nephite society whose participants persecute members of the Nephite church and reject its orthodoxy on the need for a Redeemer. The first of these are called "unbelievers"; in addition to being one of their number, Alma is an active and highly persuasive advocate who convinces "many of the people to do after the manner of his iniquities". Alma's life drastically changes when an angel appears and commands him to repent. In a reversal that is intertextual with the apostle Paul's story in the New Testament, Alma does repent, and his transformation is so complete he goes on to become high priest of the Nephite church.

In addition to being high priest of the church, Alma spends some time ruling as chief judge. The first case the narrative describes him overseeing is for a man named Nehor who, during a debate about religion, murders a Nephite church member. Nehor is also the founder of a new church whose teachings are similar to the ideas of the unbeliever movement Alma was part of. Despite the resemblance to his past self, Alma sentences Nehor to death for the murder.

Despite Nehor's death, his ideas retain popularity. In the narrative, Ammonihah is a community that accepts the teachings of Nehor.

Narrative

Ministry

The Ammonihah narrative begins while Alma is on a preaching tour throughout Nephite cities, having stepped down as chief judge in order to focus on spiritual ministry. Ammonihah is one of these cities, but when Alma arrives the people abruptly refuse to give him an audience, and they aggressively mock him and "his" church.

"I say unto you then cometh a death, even a second death, which is a spiritual death; then is a time that whosoever dieth in his sins, as to a temporal death, shall also die a spiritual death; yea, he shall die as to things pertaining unto righteousness.

"Then is the time when their torments shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone".

In response to this rejection, Alma leaves, but once he is outside the city, an angel directs him to return and preach repentance to Ammonihah. The angel warns Alma that Ammonihah is not only doctrinally heterodox but also plotting political sedition, as some "study at this time that they may destroy the liberty of thy people". When Alma reenters the city, he meets Amulek, who offers Alma food and a place to stay, which Alma accepts. Alma invokes a blessing on Amulek's home and family, and Amulek joins Alma in his preaching to Ammonihah.

An elite class of judges and lawyers, unique in the Book of Mormon to Ammonihah, confront Alma and Amulek. The lawyers and judges accuse the pair of trying to undermine Ammonihah's aristocratic and materialistic political order. Among these interlocutors are the lawyer Zeezrom and the chief judge Antionah. Alma uses stark imagery in his Ammonihah sermonizing. He warns the people that those who for those who fail to repent and therefore experience "spiritual death", their "torments shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever".

Some residents of Ammonihah respond to Alma and Amulek's preaching by repenting and reading the scriptures. Others, however, are outraged, and these eventually seize the pair and imprison them. The plot escalates into a mass persecution as the Ammonihah majority drive male Christian converts out of the city, arrest their wives and children, and seize any scripture in their possession.

"Now it came to pass that when the bodies of those who had been cast into the fire were consumed, and also the records which were cast in with them, the chief judge of the land came and stood before Alma and Amulek, as they were bound; and he smote them with his hand upon their cheeks, and said unto them: After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?"

Martyrdoms

After gathering Christian scriptures and prisoners, the people of Ammonihah create a fire in which they destroy scriptures and burn women and children alive. The narrative states that any who believed Alma and Amulek's teachings or even listened to them at all become victims in Ammonihah. A chief judge brings Amulek and Alma to the "place of martyrdom" and forces them to watch, and he asks, "After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?" As Kylie Nielson Turley explains, the judge "ensures that Alma understands the brutal irony at the heart of this horror. Alma's unfortunate gospel metaphor about a lake of fire and brimstone prompts the literal lake of fire and brimstone that burns before his eyes".

The people of Ammonihah keep Alma and Amulek imprisoned. The jailers take away their clothing, mock them, starve them, and even beat them. After days spent in this manner, Alma and Amulek finally escape through miraculous deliverance. They leave Ammonihah and reunite with survivors in a place called Sidom. There, Alma and Amulek encounter an ailing Zeezrom, who has survived and repented, and Alma miraculously heals him. Amulek is no longer in possession of any of the wealth he had while living in Ammonihah, and he has implicitly lost his immediate family to the fires. The story closes with Alma taking Amulek into his home where he "did administer unto him in his tribulations".

Aftermath

As the narrator of the book and the compiler in the framing narrative, Mormon follows up the Ammonihah story by describing its destruction amid the outbreak of unexpected Nephite–Lamanite war, casting the leveling of the city and its people as divine retribution for the violence committed in the narrative.

Ammonihah briefly reappears in the Book of Mormon in Alma 25, when Mormon recapitulates its destruction as part of an overlapping plot involving war and politics.

Interpretation

Kylie Nielson Turley writes that the Ammonihah story is "one of the most disturbing episodes in the Book of Mormon" on account of its abruptly graphic violence and the twisted, personal motives behind that violence. Joseph Spencer calls the martyrdom "one of the grisliest scenes in the Book of Mormon". Charles Swift calls the story "one of the most poignant in all of scripture", observing that what starts as an uplifting story about Alma and Amulek becoming friends and colleagues "ends with the horrible death of innocent women and children and Amulek’s having lost everything".

The narrative set in Ammonihah marks a turning point in the Book of Mormon's vocabulary. "Lake of fire and brimstone" is a relatively common metaphor for spiritual suffering throughout the Book of Mormon up to Alma's journey to Ammonihah. However, after Alma and Amulek escape Ammonihah, the phrase "lake of fire and brimstone" is never repeated for the remainder of the book. Within the context of the book's narrative, this may be a Nephite cultural response to the tragedy. In the context of the framing narrative, it might be part of Mormon's character as the internal editor-historian, responding to his own experience reading the Ammonihah story.

The narrative set in Ammonihah invites readers to ponder questions about why God allows suffering and why it is that miracles sometimes seem to come too late. In the story, God delivers Alma and Amulek from prison but does not deliver the women and children burned by Ammonihah. Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming explain, "The text does not necessarily answer the question; it simply invites us to sit with it."

References

Notes

1. churchofjesuschrist.org: "Book of Mormon Pronunciation Guide" (retrieved 2012-02-25), IPA-ified from «ăm-a-nī´hä»
2. Shipps 1985, pp. 26, 33.
3. Bushman, Richard Lyman (2005). Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 85–87. ISBN 978-1-4000-4270-8. OL 22860366M.
4. Bushman, Richard Lyman (2008). Mormonism: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. Vol. 183. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-19-531030-6. OL 10135005M.
5. Thomas 2016, p. 18.
6. Spencer, Joseph M. (2017). "The Structure of the Book of Alma". Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. 26: 273–283. doi:10.18809/jbms.2017.0116.
7. ^ Turley, Kylie Nielson (2019). "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone". Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. 28: 1–41.
8. ^ Clark, John L. (2002). "Painting Out the Messiah: The Theologies of Dissidents". Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. 11: 16–27, 107–8. eISSN 2168-3158. ISSN 1065-9366.
9. Turley 2020, pp. 20–26. Quotation is Mosiah 27:8.
10. Austin, Michael (April 7, 2016). "Alma the Younger on the Road to Damascus: How the Book of Mormon Reads and Re-reads the Bible". By Common Consent.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
11. Turley 2020, pp. 32–34.
12. Turley 2020, pp. 37–39.
13. Salleh & Olsen Hemming 2022, p. 147–149.
14. Turley 2020, pp. 42–44.
15. ^ Thomas 2016, p. 91.
16. ^ Bowman, Matthew (2018). "The Profession of Nehor and the Holy Order of God: Theology and Society in Ammonihah". In Bowman, Matthew; Demos, Rosemary (eds.). A Preparatory Redemption: Reading Alma 12–13. Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute. pp. 1–12. ISBN 978-0-8425-3025-5.
17. Salleh & Olsen Hemming 2022, pp. 162–163.
18. Bowman, Matthew; Demos, Rosemary, eds. (2018). "Introduction". A Preparatory Redemption: Readings Alma 12–13. Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. pp. vi–xiii. ISBN 978-0-8425-3025-5.
19. Turley, Kylie Nielson (2019). "Alma's Hell: Repentance, Consequence, and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone". Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. 28: 1–41. Quotation is Alma 12:17.
20. ^ Thomas 2016, p. 93.
21. Salleh & Olsen Hemming, p. 183. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSallehOlsen_Hemming (help)
22. Stott, G. St. John (2009). "The Martyrdoms at Ammonihah and the Foreknowledge of God". International Journal of Mormon Studies. 2: 169–196.
23. Quotation is from Turley 2020, p. 128.
24. ^ Swift, Charles (2012). "When Less Is More: The Reticent Narrator in the Story of Alma and Amulek". Religious Educator. 13 (1): 89–101.
25. Alma 14:9, 14.
26. Turley 2020, p. 88.
27. Salleh & Olsen Hemming 2022, pp. 188–189.
28. Salleh & Olsen Hemming 2022, p. 193.
29. Alma 15:18.
30. Hardy 2010, p. 116.
31. Hardy 2010, pp. 117–119.
32. Spencer, Joseph M. (2019). "Women and Nephite Men: Lessons from the Book of Alma". In Hull, Kerry; Frederick, Nicholas J.; Smith, Hank R. (eds.). Give Ear to My Words: Text and Context of Alma 36–42. Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book. pp. 235–254. ISBN 978-1-9443-9484-4.
33. Turley 2020, p. 92.
34. Salleh & Olsen Hemming 2022, p. 186.
35. Salleh & Olsen Hemming 2022, pp. 189–190.

General sources

• Bushman, Richard Lyman (2005). Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-4270-8. OL 22860366M.
• Hardy, Grant (2010). Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199745449 – via Internet Archive.
• Salleh, Fatimah; Olsen Hemming, Margaret (2022). The Book of Mormon for the Least of These. Vol. 2, Mosiah–Alma. Newburgh, IN: By Common Consent Press. ISBN 978-1-948218-58-0.
• Shipps, Jan (1985). Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01159-7. OL 22277694M – via Internet Archive.
• Thomas, John Christopher (2016). A Pentecostal Reads the Book of Mormon: A Literary and Theological Introduction. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press. ISBN 9781935931553.
• Turley, Kylie Nielson (2020). Alma 1–29: A Brief Theological Introduction. The Book of Mormon: brief theological introductions. Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. ISBN 978-0-8425-0024-1. OL 32598669M.

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