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| Accession of a Maya king, San Bartolo Murals, ca. 100 BC, as drawn Traci Wright |
As I previously noted, the book
of Mosiah (as we have it) begins with a polemic against certain aspects of kingship
ideology as likely found among the Nephites neighbors in ancient
Mesoamerica. At the same time, its opening chapters work to democratize
the kingship ideology they inherited from their Israelite ancestors. The book
of Mosiah concludes with an abolishment of the institution of kingship
altogether (Mosiah 29). In between these two points is a story about a king
that embodies the very worst aspects of kingship, the reason kings Benjamin and
Mosiah worked to undermine the royal ideologies of their time and place. I am
talking, of course, about King Noah.
King Noah as the Archetypal
Wicked King
One of the very first things we
are told about King Noah is that he had many wives and concubines, and that he
heavily taxed the people to enrich himself and his priests, using the excess
gained through taxation to build elaborate thrones and spacious palaces, and
literally exalted him and his high priests “above all the other[s]” (Mosiah
11:2–11). We’ve seen this combination of wealth, pride, and polygamy once before—Jacob
spoke out against it about 400 years earlier. And just as in Jacob’s time, these practices should
be understood against the backdrop of the law of the king in Deuteronomy
17:14–20.
Taylor Halverson has shown that
King Noah literally
checks every box of in terms of what not to do as king over Israel (or
a branch of Israel, as the case is here).[1]
In particular, law of the king says the
king should not “multiply wives to himself … greatly multiply to himself silver
and gold” or “his heart be not lifted up above his brethren” (Deuteronomy 17:17,
20). As Halverson concludes, “Noah was a spectacular failure in living as God
expected kings to live. In fact, it is striking how distinctly opposite all
Noah’s actions were from God’s ideal for kingship as set forth in Deuteronomy
17:14–20.”[2]
King Noah as the Archetypal
Maya King
When we look into the broader Mesoamerican
context in which the Nephites most probably lived, we discover a
description of the typical Maya king which fits Noah remarkably well.
William Carlson succinctly explained, “We know the holy lords [of the Classic
Maya] lived polygamous lives surrounded by wives and courtiers in royal
palaces. They sat on thrones covered with jaguar pelts, commanding their
subjects,” and “they wore finely dyed textiles with geometric designs and
flamboyant headdresses.” Carlson goes on, “They prized exotic goods brought
from the coasts and the mountains in trade or tribute,” and most of all, “nothing
demonstrated their supremacy like their ability to mobilize mass labor forces,
corps of engineers, artisans, and artists, to build and embellish monumental
centers devoted to their reigns and dynasties.”[3]
While this is a description of
Classic era (AD 250–600) Maya kings, the institutions of Maya kingship have
been shown to go back to ca. 100 BC, bringing it within a generation of Noah’s
time. It is uncanny how well this description fits
that of King Noah in Mosiah 11:1–15. And, significantly, the very things
that made Noah like kings in the Maya world are the things that make him the archetype
of a “wicked king” based on the Israelite law of the king, as discussed above.
Conclusion
In a significant way, the story
of Noah and his priests is a continuation of the
anti-kingship (and specifically, anti-Maya kingship) polemics that the
book of Mosiah started with. Noah’s story specifically helps us understand why
Benjamin critiqued the Maya institution of kingship in the first place—it was
the antithesis of what a righteous king was supposed to be according to God’s
law. Thus, Benjamin sought to undermine the credibility of such kings and
demonstrate the blasphemous nature of their ways.
This background also help us
understand why Mosiah was so concerned about “how much iniquity” and “great
destruction” just “one wicked king,” such as Noah, can “cause to be committed”
(Mosiah 29:18–19). Noah was merely an example—an archetype—of the nascent institution
of kingship emerging throughout Mesoamerica. Benjamin and Mosiah witnessed only
the beginnings of royal excess. As Carlson explained, “The building projects
increased in size, scope, and beauty throughout the Classic era and each
passing century required more and more investment of resources and human labor.”[4]
The recently translated Jaredite
record (Mosiah 28:11–19) likely helped
Mosiah understand the increasingly intensive costs of such kingship, and it’s
long term consequences. Clearly, as the example of Noah illustrates, the
Nephite people were not immune to the influences of such kingship. To prevent
this wicked royal institution from making further inroads amongst the Nephite
people, Mosiah abolished kingship altogether. Still, the pressures
for kings like those had among their neighbors would plague the next
several generations of Nephites.
[1]
Taylor Halverson, “Deuteronomy
17:14–20 as Criteria for Nephite Kingship,” Interpreter 24
(2017): 7–8.
[2]
Halverson, “Deuteronomy
17:14–20 as Criteria for Nephite Kingship,” 8.
[3]
William Carlson, Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their
Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
(New York, NY: William Morrow, 2016), 382–383.
[4]
Carlson, Jungle of Stone, 383.
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