BOM Mosiah 25

Among other things, Mosiah 25 is interesting for what it tells us about the demographics of the Book of Mormon peoples.

For example, we learn from verses two and three that the descendants of Mulek outnumbered the people of Nephi, but that, even taken together, the Nephites and Mulekites were  less than half as numerous as the Lamanites.  Which allows us to deduce that the Nephites proper were outnumbered more than four to one by the Lamanites. Which, in turn, strongly suggests, since the Lamanites began as a group not significantly larger than the Nephites, that the Lamanites, too, had most likely merged with other peoples, just as the Nephites had.  (We simply don’t have a solid history of the Lamanites.)  And, by the way, this is turn strongly implies the presence of other peoples in the Americas who go unmentioned in the Nephite record.

From verse four, we can probably safely infer that the division between Nephites and Mulekites persisted under King Mosiah.

In verses 19-23, we sense that the combined Nephite/Mulekite population is still fairly small, because, for the first time, they have to divide the group up so that everybody can hear the unamplified teaching of the priests.  Even so, however, only seven sub-units are formed.  We can’t know exactly how big they are, but, knowing the limits of the human voice, we can comfortably assume that they aren’t enormous.