Mormon Mentality - Thoughts and Asides by Peculiar People » Teancum, Amalickiah and the New Year

By danithew

Dec. 31st, 2008 at 3:48 pm

Tonight and tomorrow, Mormons should be thinking about Teancum and Amalickiah.

And now, it came to pass in the twenty and sixth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, behold, when the Lamanites awoke on the first morning of the first month, behold, they found Amalickiah was dead in his own tent; and they also saw that Teancum was ready to give them battle on that day. (Alma 52:1)

Have a Happy New Year!

8 Comments

| leave a comment

RSS 2.0 for this post | trackback

1. ed42

Wed, Dec 31, 2008 @ 5:01pm

You do know, don’t you, that their first morning of the first month was/is not our Jan 1?

2. Clark

Wed, Dec 31, 2008 @ 5:32pm

It probably wasn’t. I seem to recall a very interesting paper in Warfare and the Book of Mormon making an argument from times of battles for what the calendar was like. Unfortunately I’m not at home to lookup what exactly the claim was… I do recall it not mapping onto our calendar. Short of that the Hebrew new year varies relative to our year but is typically in September. (This year it was on the 29th and next year it is on the 18th)

3. danithew

Wed, Dec 31, 2008 @ 5:37pm

Of course their calendar wasn’t the Gregorian calendar. I’m not trying to argue that the Nephite calendar was the same as ours.

I just wonder if Teancum was thinking that he would like to get rid of a major Nephite problem on his calendar’s version of New Year’s Eve.

4. Clark

Wed, Dec 31, 2008 @ 5:44pm

Actually I found this very interesting article on the Nephite calendar.

Regarding Teancum’s motivations, I don’t know. It’s an interesting question if it was also a Lamanite significant day. It might be a bit more devastating to them.

5. danithew

Wed, Dec 31, 2008 @ 5:59pm

It’s entirely speculative as to whether Teancum was motivated by the date in the year. I would be surprised though if the timing was entirely coincidental.

What Teancum did shows an unusual level of personal initiative, determination – perhaps even ruthlessness.

Maybe the last day of the year, or the evening of the last day of the year, should be a time of unique and special dedication to completing some kind of important task(?). That’s the type of application I’m grasping for here.

6. Bookslinger

Fri, Jan 2, 2009 @ 7:44pm

Didn’t Teancum try that trick one too many times?

It’s going to be so cool to talk to those people in the Millennium, or afterwards, and get their stories first hand.

7. queuno

Sat, Jan 3, 2009 @ 9:09pm

Maybe we’re missing the detail that there was a ragin’ NYE party, completely with photos being taken for Facebook (Faceplates?), and that they found Amalickiah drunk…

8. Bookslinger

Sun, Jan 4, 2009 @ 11:27pm

Ah, the old “let’s get the Lamanites drunk” trick. That worked most of the time too.