1 Niphi 5:5 I should depart from them and flee into the wilderness. Did they sneak off in the middle of the night? or were things not quite to that point? perhaps he actually went to them and said, "Hey, guys, I'm thinking about taking off. I can tell I'm not really wanted around here, so I'll just go." I doubt it - or he'd never have gotten away with the plates of brass, sword of laban, and all the rest of the people. If Laman and Lemuel were actually power-hungry, they wouldn't want to lose any of their subjects.
5: 6 I did take my family...Zoram...Sam...Jacob and Joseph...my sisters and all those who would go with me. This is the part that makes the sneak off look less likely. He took all these people and their families, leaving Laman and Lemuel, the sons of Ishmael, and their families, minus anybody from those families who wanted to go with him.
Unless they had moved in with some indigenous peoples, there wasn't really a whole lot of people who stayed behind. And how would you give everyone the option if you kept it a secret? So it may well have been a real slap in the face to Laman and Lemuel to go from, "we're going to kill Nephi" to standing on the playground like two team captains, only you don't pick which players are on your team, the players pick and the captain with the most team members wins. Nephi clearly won in this case. It makes the traditions handed down to Lamoni about the Nephites a little more believable - it makes sense that they would have told the few who remained with them that Nephi had lied, stolen stuff that was rightfully theirs, and perpetuated that until Ammon's time.
5:14 Nephi did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords. Has anyone found steel swords in the Americas? How does a society go from great steel swords to sticks with rocks in the sides?
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