Terms such as "multitude," "numerous," "exceedingly great," "innumerable," and "as the sands of the sea" are tossed about in the Book of Mormon quite frequently in an effort to impress upon the reader how many people were present for any number of events, usually battles or mass religious conversions. However, nowhere in the Book of Mormon is a complete census reported. Perhaps the closest we come to a complete accounting of the population of the people written about in the Book of Mormon is at the very beginning.
The Book of Mormon mentions two pioneering groups as forerunners of the Nephite and Lamanite nations: the peoples of Lehi and Mulek. I do not include the Jaredites because they became extinct (except for Coriantumr) and failed to contribute to Nephite-Lamanite colonizations (Ether 15:12-34).
When Lehi's group sailed from the Old World in about 591 B.C.E., it consisted of the following men: Lehi; his sons Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph; Zoram; and the two unnamed sons of Ishmael (1 Ne. 7:6; 16:7). Ishmael himself died before they began their ocean voyage (16:34). Because of female anonymity in the Book of Mormon, we know the name of only one of the seafaring women: Lehi's wife Sariah (1 Ne. 2:5). But we are told that Ishmael's five daughters also made the trip as the wives of Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, and Zoram. Finally, Ishmael's wife and the families of Ishmael's two sons—as well as an ambiguous reference to Nephi's "sisters"—formed Lehi's band (1 Ne. 18:9; 2 Ne. 5:6).
Some of this group were relatively old with grown children of their own (Lehi, Sariah, and Ishmael's wife). Others, at least Jacob and Joseph, were born "in the wilderness" following Lehi's exodus from Jerusalem but prior to the ocean voyage and thus were very young (1 Ne. 18:7, 19; 2 Ne. 2:1; 3:1, 25). There were apparently other small children, perhaps the "family" or children of the sons of Ishmael and the children of Laman and Lemuel (1 Ne. 7:6; 2 Ne. 4:3, 8-9). It is unlikely there were other passengers on Lehi's vessel. Jacob, Joseph, and other children were too young to have wives.
Lehi's group apparently consisted of at least seventeen and as many as nineteen adults. Jacob and Joseph could not have had spouses until their nieces or the daughters of Ishmael's sons reached marriageable age. It is also important that Lehi, Sariah, and Ishmael's wife were elderly or spouseless or both and therefore probably not capable of reproduction. Thus we are told of only fourteen emigrants capable of reproduction when they arrived in the New World: Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, Zoram, the two sons of Ishmael, and the wives of each.
We have little information on Mulek's colonists. They left Jerusalem a few years after Lehi's group, when Zedekiah was taken captive, and eventually became "very numerous" before joining the Nephites (Omni 1:14-19; Mosiah 25:12-13). The only specific population information is for 120 B.C.E. At that time the Mulekites reportedly outnumbered the Nephites, but both groups combined totalled less than half the size of the Lamanite population (Mosiah 25:2-30).
Although Mulek's group began multiplying in the New World shortly after Lehi's, both events may be considered effectively simultaneous. If we assume a roughly equal reproductive rate for the Mulek and Lehi populations, the size of Mulek's original reproductively capable group must have been less than half that of Lehi's emigrants given the information about the comparative size of the two populations in 120 B.C.E. This means there were probably fewer than seven members of Mulek's group capable of reproduction. Certainly there may have been additional voyagers who were not producing off-spring—the elderly, young, and/or unmarried.
From these two small clusters of pioneering emigrants came the population growth which resulted in the Nephite and Lamanite nations. That story comprises most of the Book of Mormon.
The problem
Population growth during this pre-agricultural period was virtually nonexistent, roughly .0001 percent per year or less. This is an established fact that can easily be confirmed. (Parsons, Jack. Population versus Liberty. London: Pemberton, 1971, 33; Miller, G. Tyler. Living in the Environment. 4th Ed. Belmont, MA: Belmont, 1985, 88-91; Ehrlich, Paul R., and Anne H. Ehrlich. Population Resources Environment. 2d ed. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1970, 6)
Starvation and severe malnutrition were the rule rather than the exception. Cities were virtually out of the question; people roamed in small bands to follow the food supply. Because our hunting/gathering ancestors had no reliable medicines, no inoculations, no climate control, no rapid transportation, and no modern hygiene, infant mortality was extremely high. Life for those who survived infancy was difficult, dirty, and short. As a result, the earth's population increased with glacier-like slowness through all but the last 1 or 2 percent of humankind's existence on the planet.
However, when one takes a close look at the numbers given in the Book of Mormon, we see figures that would have to be supported by unheard of annual growth rates.
Consider the battle in 187 B.C.E. in which 3,043 Lamanites and 279 of Zeniff's people were slain in a single day and night (Mosiah 9:18-19). Obviously the total Book of Mormon population at that time was much larger than 3,322 because numerous warriors were left alive after the battle as were women and male noncombatants. But even to produce a total population as large as the fatality figures for this one day would have required an average annual growth rate of 1.2 percent during the preceding four centuries. To put this in perspective, a growth rate of 1.2 percent was never achieved on a global basis or in the industrialized regions of the world as a whole until C.E. 1950-60 and was not reached in the developing regions as a whole until the 1930's (Bogue, Donald J. Principles of Demography. New York: Wiley and Sons, 1969, pg. 48-49). The Nephite-Lehite rate is thirty times the rate that existed in the world as a whole during the same era. Moreover if, as is far more likely, the total population in 187 B.C.E. was in excess of 35,000, it would have taken an average annual growth rate of 1.8 percent to multiply the original thirty pioneers to that level at that time. This is a rate that has never been reached in the industrialized world and has only been achieved in the world overall since 1950.
A second example only confirms the problems associated with Book of Mormon population figures. For the Amlicite-Nephite war of 87 B.C.E., Alma 2:17-19 reports a total of 19,094 fatalities. On the basis of these figures John Sorenson, a professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University , estimated the total Nephite-Lamanite population to be over 600,000 at that time (about 200,000 Nephites-Amlicites and over 400,000 Lamanites). For an original band of thirty reproductive individuals in 590 B.C.E. to proliferate even to 19,094 by 87 B.C.E. would require an average annual growth rate of 1.3 percent sustained over the span of five centuries. To reach the 600,000 level Sorenson determined to have existed at that point, the growth rate would have had to be 2 percent, again maintained for five centuries. This is a level never reached on a global scale until C.E. 1960 and fifty times the actual world rate of the pre-industrial epoch. It is a rate that, even when attained, can only persist briefly.
Less specific information from the scriptures also produce some startling results when viewed in the light of even the most generous population growth. For example, Nephites and Lamanites had already waged wars against one another by 560 B.C.E. (2 Ne. 5:34). Even if the original colonists had been multiplying at the unheard-of-rate of 2 percent annually, the total number of reproductive-age Nephite and Lamanite men and women alive in 560 B.C.E. would have been a mere fifty-five. If half of those fifty-five people were women and some of the males were too old, too young, or too infirm to fight or were occupied with agriculture or other tasks, then the total number of combatants on both sides in these "wars" must have been fewer than twenty.
Similarly, between 588 and 570 B.C.E., Nephi and his people constructed a replica of Solomon's temple (2 Ne. 5:16). By 570 B.C.E., the total reproductive-age Nephite-Lamanite population would have been forty-five people, even at the C.E. 1960 growth rate of 2 percent. If about half of these were Nephites, fewer than two dozen people—including people busy with farming or hunting, infirm persons, and pregnant women—were available to build a structure that required thousands of skilled workers and a great deal of time in the Old World.
These last two issues were noted as long ago as 1887 by M. T. Lamb. Without benefit of modern demographic methods, he saw serious problems with the rapid growth and major accomplishments of the Nephites and Lamanites at such an early stage in their colonizing efforts. Although his writings bear scant evidence of objectivity, he identified significant problems which have been overlooked by many others. Lamb commented on the improbability of their early division into two nations complete with kings, success in subduing the forests, becoming wealthy in flocks and herds, constructing buildings, and working in wood and metals.
If the Lehi-Mulek groups reproduced at the .04 percent average annual rate which prevailed in the world as a whole during their era, they would have numbered only fifty-four individuals in C.E. 390, 980 years after they landed. Keep in mind that population growth by modern standards was virtually nonexistent during those thousands of years between the invention of agriculture and the dawning of the industrial period. It took well over a thousand years for the world's population to double during that era. This seems counter-intuitive to us who have known nothing but the population explosion during our lifetime, but the evidence is clear. Rapid population growth is a recent phenomenon.
Another way of viewing the same principle is to note what would have happened had the thirty people of Lehi-Mulek multiplied at 2 percent annually. Those thirty individuals would have exploded into 9,756,500,000 people by the time of the Nephites' destruction in C.E. 390—almost double the total population of the planet earth today. Such a rate of growth has only existed very recently and only for very short spans of time. It cannot continue for long.
In his "Speculations on Book of Mormon Populations," Vern Elefson (1984) briefly discussed population figures contained in the Book of Mormon, and then reverse-engineered them to estimate the growth rate that must have prevailed for those figures to be reached. His "best guess" was an average annual rate of increase of 1.5 percent. Although he admitted that this is a high rate of population growth, particularly compared to a global rate of increase of less than .3 percent prior to C.E. 1650, he accepted it because of his preconceived assumption that the Book of Mormon is a true record of real people and events. His only explanation for the accelerated explosion of Nephite-Lamanite numbers is the supposedly salutary effects of abundant space and natural resources and absence of other disease-carrying people. However, the Book of Mormon itself provides ample reasons for believing that the uninhabited wilderness encountered by the ocean voyagers was anything but an ideal breeding ground for humans, especially given the warlike proclivities of the immigrants.
Even the most unbiased person must look at the facts and numbers that history and demographics provide and come to the undeniable conclusion that the numbers just don't add up. One can prove the Book of Mormon wrong by using a simple $1.99 calculator and a few books on world demographics. Sadly, even in the light of such obvious facts, some of the best and brightest and most sincere people the world has to offer have fallen for the lies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This should come as no surprise to students of the Bible. The Savior himself warned us this would happen when he said,
"For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."--Matt. 24:24
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