According to the beliefs of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ch ...

, Zarahemla () refers to a large city in the ancient Americas which is described in the

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude d ...

. Archaeologists and historians have not been able to archaeologically verify a location for any such city. (See Archaeology and the Book of Mormon for more detail about the archaeological debate between Mormons and archaeologists.)

Mormon studies

Some Mormons speculate that the name "Zarahemla" is a compound Biblical Hebrew name זֶרַע חֶמְלָה Zéraʻ Ḥemlah meaning "seed of compassion". Others interpret the name differently. Hugh Nibley relates the name to a 'red city' :

It always got me because there's an important trading centre in the middle of the Sahara that goes by the name of ' Dar Al-Hamra' which means 'the Red City'. Of course it depends on the dialect. Zarahemla means 'red city', but what attracts me about it is that the Hopis say that their people came from the 'great red city of the south' when it was destroyed.

Narrative

According to the Book of Mormon, the

Nephite According to the Book of Mormon, the Nephites () are one of four groups (along with the Lamanites, Jaredites, and Mulekites) to have settled in the ancient Americas. The term is used throughout the Book of Mormon to describe the religious, p ...

Mosiah and his followers "discovered that the people of Zarahemla came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon" (about 587 B.C.). The Book of Mormon relates that the surviving seed of

Zedekiah Zedekiah (), was the 20th and last king of Judah before the destruction of the kingdom by King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. His birth name was Mattaniah/Mattanyahu ( he, מַתַּנְיָהוּ, ''Mattanyāhū'', "Gift of God"; el, Μαθ� ...

"journeyed in the wilderness, and were brought by the hand of the Lord across the great waters" to the Western Hemisphere. The book of Omni in the Book of Mormon tells how Zarahemla and his people came to settle the land of Zarahemla in the New World. Mosiah and his refugee people presumably united with the people of Zarahemla sometime between 279 and 130 B.C. "Mosiah was appointed to be their king." Mosiah thereafter presided in the land of Zarahemla over a people called collectively "the Nephites". The Land of Zarahemla was the

capital for many years. Notable Book of Mormon descendants of the leader Zarahemla include Ammon the venturer and

Coriantumr In the Book of Mormon, Coriantumr () is the name of three figures that appear throughout the book's narrative. Chronologically, they are one of the sons of Omer, a deposed Jaredite king who was later restored to his throne by his sons Esrom and ...

the dissenter. Ammon led a quest in search of a colony that had left the land of Zarahemla in order to resettle a city named

Lehi-Nephi In the Book of Mormon, the land of Lehi-Nephi (; also referred to as the land of Nephi) is the homeland of the Nephites in the early times of the Book of Mormon. The land is later conquered by the Lamanites, and the remaining Nephites flee to the ...

. The dissenter

led the Lamanites in battle against the Nephites in the first century B.C. At some point before Mosiah discovered Zarahemla, the people of Zarahemla had discovered

(not to be confused with the later Nephite dissenter of the same name). According to the Book of Mormon, Coriantumr was the last of a destroyed nation called the

Jaredites The Jaredites () are one of four peoples (along with the Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites) that the Latter-day Saints believe settled in ancient America. The Book of Mormon (mainly its Book of Ether) describes the Jaredites as the descenda ...

. Coriantumr stayed with the people of Zarahemla "for the space of nine moons" ( Omni 1:21) before dying and being buried by them (

Ether In organic chemistry, ethers are a class of compounds that contain an ether group—an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups. They have the general formula , where R and R′ represent the alkyl or aryl groups. Ethers can again be ...

13:21). Benjamin succeeded his father Mosiah as the second Nephite king of Zarahemla.

King Benjamin According to the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin, son of King Mosiah the first, was the second Nephite king to rule over Zarahemla. An account of his life and teachings are recorded in both the Words of Mormon and the Book of Mosiah. He was consi ...

was victorious in driving Lamanites enemies from the Zarahemla region. At the time of the crucifixion of

Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

, the Book of Mormon records that "there were exceedingly sharp lightnings, such as never had been known in all the land. And the city of Zarahemla did take fire." "And it came to pass that there was a voice heard among all the inhabitants of the earth ... 'because of their iniquity and abominations ... that great city Zarahemla have I burned with fire, and the inhabitants thereof ... I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God.'" (3 Nephi, 9: 1, 2, 3, 15.) The Book of Mormon indicates that "the great city of Zarahemla" was rebuilt sometime in the first century A.D. As his doomed nation retreated northward from their enemies, the 4th century prophet and historian

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into severa ...

recorded that Nephite "towns, and villages, and cities were burned with fire." The Book of Mormon does not indicate whether the city of Zarahemla survived to be occupied by Lamanites after the destruction of the Nephite nation.

In Mormon culture

The name "Zarahemla" was given to a small Mormon settlement across the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

from Nauvoo. In August 1841 a conference was held there during which John Smith was sustained as president of the stake in Iowa, with David Pettigrew and M. C. Nickerson as his counselors. The stake was dissolved three years later; a second stake for

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...

would not be organized until 1966.Deseret News Church Almanac Zarahemla was the original name of

Blanchardville, Wisconsin Blanchardville is a village in Iowa and Lafayette counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 825 at the 2010 census. Of this, 648 were in Lafayette County, and 177 were in Iowa County. The Iowa County portion of Blanchardville ...

, founded in the 1840s by

James Strang James Jesse Strang (March 21, 1813 – July 9, 1856) was an American religious leader, politician and self-proclaimed monarch. In 1844 he claimed to have been appointed to be the successor of Joseph Smith as leader of the Church of Jesus Christ o ...

's Strangite Mormons. The village received its present name after it was platted in 1857.

References

{{Reflist, 2 Book of Mormon places