What are "wonderful contentions"? Alma 2:5

What are "wonderful contentions"? Alma 2:5

(Sorry for the long delay in writing - lots of stuff in my world. I have not given up this project, and although it's not so visible as when I'm blogging, I actually do read my scriptures every single day. Right now I'm reading the Old Testament and Book of Mormon. The OT is so weird and awesome. The BoM is less weird and even more awesome in most measurable ways.)

Amlici wants to be king. He's an evil guy. He was after the order of Nehor, this secret society of people that included the guy who killed Gideon, a war hero, by the sword and was later executed for it.

Amlici was convincing. People wanted to make him king. He had followers. If the people voted for him to be king, he would totally overthrow the democracy they had and destroy the liberty of the people. The people would no longer be able to worship freely.

So it comes the day for the big vote. The people assembled themselves for or against Amlici in separate bodies, "having much dispute and wonderful contentions one with another."

I was wondering what the heck is a "wonderful" contention? I mean, usually contention is uncountable, first of all. But second of all, what does it mean to be "wonderful"? That word has distinctly positive connotations for a 21st century reader.


This n-gram of the use of the word "wonderful" over time certainly seems to show that this word has experienced diachronic change.

In Joseph Smith's day, and according to this data, it was ~30% more frequent.

My gut tells me that "wonderful" from the 1830's is kinda like "awesome." It probably doesn't have a strictly positive connotation, but it's more connected to the root words: wonder and awe.

Certainly Mormon, the great historian of the Book of Mormon who lived in a time totally lacking religious freedom or democratic values or processes would have been in awe of a system like what existed in the day of Amlici. I imagine that in a nascent America, one in which Joseph Smith's known (and probably some living!) relatives served in a war to secure basic liberties and rights, political discourse would have also been pretty awe-inspiring and wondrous (the adjectives we use nowadays to mean awesome and wonderful).

Answer:
The reason the contentions were remarkable was because a. enough had been written about them in the history for centuries later Mormon to be able to imagine/contrast them vividly when he was writing the abridgment and b. democratic processes are always somewhat amazing. The fact that we don't have to resort to "might is right", that we, as human beings, can listen to reason at all, is incredible. It is "wonderful." I don't think it's a tacit endorsement by Mormon of fighting or contending with others, it's more of a remark that sometimes arguments, especially when it comes to politics, aren't fully evil.

They sure aren't my most favorite cup of tea, though.