To see the context for this and other questions in this series, please see the introduction, parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
What’s Going on with the Words of Mormon?
Warning: This is a long and
convoluted post because the Words of Mormon present quite a can of worms, and I
will be drawing on a few different sources.
I
In 2012, we published an article
in BYU Studies Quarterly by Jack M. Lyon and Kent R. Minson about the
disconnect between verses 1–11
and verses 12–18 in
the Words of Mormon.1 Lyon and Minson make a decent case that the
first eleven verses are Mormon’s explanation for his adding the so-called small
plates of Nephi to his record as a sort of appendage, but that the next seven
verses are actually the end of Mosiah chapter 2, which talks about King
Benjamin. They begin their analysis with Oliver Cowdery copying the text from
the original manuscript onto the printer’s manuscript and running into a
problem when he came to Mosiah. He first copied “Chapter III,” but since there
was no chapter 1 or 2, he crossed out two characters, leaving “Chapter III.”
There is also no introduction to the book of Mosiah, as there is for all other
books taken from Mormon’s abridgment, suggesting that some text is missing.
This is likely because Martin
Harris took the first 116 pages home to show his suspicious wife, and those
pages were stolen. More on this later, but for now let’s assume, as Lyon and
Minton do, that the 116 lost pages included not just Mormon’s abridgment of the
book of Lehi, but also the introductory paragraph to Mosiah, all of Mosiah
chapter 1, and part of chapter 2. The rest of chapter two was in a separate
“gathering” of manuscript pages that Joseph was still working on. The
disconnect between verses 11 and 12 is quite stark, and Lyon and Minton list twelve
pieces of textual evidence to support their theory, including a switch in style
from personal to narrative, no first-person pronouns after verse 11, and verses
12–18 not
mentioning Mormon’s editorial method and purpose as the preceding eleven verses
do.
Lyon and Minton mention what
others have suggested: that verse 12 was not in either Mormon’s commentary or
his abridgment of Mosiah but was instead added by Joseph Smith to bridge a gap
created by the loss of the 116 pages. Whatever the case, it appears that Words
of Mormon is two (or maybe three) different pieces that have been glued
together to both explain the addition of the material from the small plates and
create a bridge between that material and Mormon’s abridgment starting in the
middle of chapter 2 of Mosiah.
II
Last week, I cracked open my copy
of the latest issue of BYU Studies. I had already been gathering some
thoughts on this post, and lo and behold, what should I find but a new article
by Don Bradley about the small plates of Nephi.2 In this article,
Bradley presents a theory that the small plates (containing 1 and 2 Nephi,
Jacob, Enos, Jarom, and Omni) were not included in the bound stack of gold
plates Moroni delivered initially to Joseph Smith but were separate and were
delivered upon Joseph’s arrival at the Whitmer farm in Fayette, New York.
Bradley’s main points are as
follows. First, the Book of Mormon text never explicitly states that Mormon
included the small plates with his abridgment, and they are not mentioned on
the title page, which was purportedly written by Moroni and was on the final
plate in the collection, even though the book of Ether is mentioned.
Second, Mormon says in Words of
Mormon 1:6, “I shall take these plates [the small plates of Nephi] which
contain these prophesyings and revelations and put them with the remainder of
my record.”3 Bradley points out that the phrase “put them with”
occurs only one other time in the Book of Mormon, where he describes just four
verses later what King Benjamin did with these small plates after receiving
them from Amaleki: “Wherefore . . . after Amaleki had delivered up these plates
into the hands of king Benjamin, he took them and put them with the other
plates, which contained records which had been handed down by the kings” (WofM
1:10). Benjamin obviously didn’t bind these plates together with all the other
records.
Third, historical evidence
suggests that after the 116 pages were stolen, Joseph didn’t immediately resume
translating. He lost his gift for a while (D&C 3:14), but when it was
restored and the plates were returned to him, he started translating where he
left off, with Mosiah, and carried on through the end of Mormon’s abridgment
and Moroni’s additions (including Ether). Some scholars have proposed that
Joseph finished this portion of the translation in Harmony and then moved to
Fayette. Bradley suggests that at this point, Joseph returned the plates to
Moroni, because he was finished with them. David Whitmer, who transported
Joseph to Fayette, reported that the messenger [Moroni] had taken the plates
just before they left Harmony for Fayette. Along the way, they came upon a man
who was carrying a knapsack. He told them he was going to Cumorah. After he
disappeared (somewhat mysteriously), Joseph told Whitmer that he was one of the
Nephites and was carrying the plates. Bradley then recounts the appearance of
Moroni to David Whitmer’s mother, Mary. He showed her the plates. But what
plates? Bradley surmises that Moroni had gone to Cumorah, deposited Mormon’s
plates, picked up the small plates of Nephi, and delivered those to Joseph at
Fayette. So, the plates Mary Whitmer saw would have been the small plates of
Nephi.
This theory raises some questions
in my mind. First is, of course, why Joseph would need two sets of plates or
even one set, since he did not look at them when he was “translating.” He had
his head in a hat, was looking at his seer stone, and the plates were either on
a table, covered with a cloth, or were hidden in the woods. Why did Joseph need
plates at all? They seem perfectly ancillary to the whole “translation”
process. Joseph couldn’t read what was on the plates. He was not studying it
out in his mind (see D&C 9:8), as Joseph’s revelation to Oliver indicated
he must do in order to translate. At least he wasn’t studying the characters on
the plates and working mentally to render what those characters said into
English. Joseph was looking at a seer stone in a hat. If the plates were not
instrumental in the translation process, as it appears they were not, then why
bother at all with possessing them and having to hide and protect them? Second,
if the small plates of Nephi were not bound together with the gold plates
containing Mormon’s abridgment, why would Mormon feel a need to write an
explanation (Words of Mormon 1:1–11)
for why he was including these plates with his others?
III
Let’s take a look at the actual
text of the Words of Mormon and some questions it raises. The first verse
establishes the time and circumstances Mormon finds himself in: “And now I
Mormon being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the
hands of my son Moroni, behold, I have witnessed almost all the destruction of
my people, the Nephites.” It appears that as Mormon begins this short
explanation about the small plates of Nephi, he has pretty much finished his abridgment
and is ready to give the plates to Moroni. This raises the question of when
Mormon actually made his abridgment. Did he work on it for years? Or was it a
project he started late in his life?
Let’s look at what he says in his
own book about the records of the Nephites. He starts in chapter 1 by
explaining how Ammaron, the keeper of the records, approached him when he was
ten years old, because he was a “sober child, . . . quick to observe” (Morm. 1:3),
and instructed him to go to a certain hill Shim in the land Antum at about age
twenty-four, where Ammaron had hidden the records. Mormon was then to take the
plates of Nephi to himself and leave all the rest hidden. He was to engrave on
the plates the things he had observed.
Mormon, however, was taken by his
father to Zarahemla, where, at age fifteen, he was recruited to lead the
Nephite armies. He says he was “large in stature” (Morm. 2:1), but there must
have been something special about him because I’ve seen a lot of big
fifteen-year-olds whom I wouldn’t trust to run to the grocery store for me, let
alone lead an army of grown and hardened men.
As an aside here, I can’t help but
wonder where Mormon got his education, because he didn’t just learn to read and
write; he learned how to read and understand the language of his ancestors from
many hundreds of years before his time. Think about the education it would
require for one of our young people today to become expert in English from the
1200s or 1300s. Languages change drastically over time. Have you read any good
Old English tomes lately? But it wasn’t just the spoken (and we presume
written) language of the Nephites we are talking about. Mormon had to learn the
language Nephi engraved on his plates, which Moroni informs us was something
called reformed Egyptian (Morm. 9:32). That would have required years of
specialized learning. And Mormon was being chased around by the Lamanites his
whole life, to boot. Who taught him all the necessary linguistic skills? Not
Ammaron. He disappeared immediately from the story.
When Mormon was about thirty-five
years old, his armies had been driven to the city of Jashon, which was near the
place where Ammaron had hidden the records. At that time, Mormon retrieved the
plates of Nephi, as instructed, and we must assume he left all the other plates
hidden. He then made a record of the things he had observed, as Ammaron had
directed him (Morm. 2:17–18).
Mormon says nothing more about the
records until he is sixty-five years old. Then, because the Lamanites were
about to overthrow the land, he went to the hill Shim and retrieved all the
records Ammaron had hidden up to the Lord (Morm. 4:23). This would have
probably been a lot of heavy plates to lug around while being chased by the
Lamanites, but apparently this is what Mormon did. When he was seventy, the
Lamanites came upon his people in such great numbers “that they did tread the
people of the Nephites under their feet. And . . . we did again take to flight.
And those whose flight were swifter than the Lamanites did escape; and they
whose flight did not exceed the Lamanites were swept down and destroyed” (Morm.
5:6–7).
Mormon then speaks of creating “a
small abridgment, daring not to give a full account of the things which I have
seen because of the commandment which I have received [from Ammaron?]—and also that ye might
not have too great sorrow because of the wickedness of this people” (Morm.
5:9). Speaking of this abridgment, he says, “These things are written unto the
remnant of the house of Jacob. . . . And they are to be hid up unto the Lord,
that they may come forth in his own due time. And this is the commandment which
I have received. And behold, they shall come forth according to the commandment
of the Lord when he shall see fit in his wisdom” (Morm. 5:12–13).
Mormon then tells us he is
finishing his record “concerning the destruction of [his] people the Nephites”
(Morm. 6:1). At this point, he wrote an epistle to the king of the Lamanites,
asking for time to gather all his people to the land of Cumorah, which the king
allowed. It apparently took four years to gather all the people together for
one final battle, so by this time Mormon was seventy-four years old. “And it
came to pass that when we had gathered in all our people in one to the land of
Cumorah, behold, I Mormon began to be old” (Morm. 6:6). I suppose sixty years
of fighting the Lamanites and being chased from place to place would wear on
anyone. Mormon then says that because he knows “it to be the last struggle of
my people and having been commanded of the Lord that I should not suffer that the
records which had been handed down by our fathers, which were sacred, to fall
into the hands of the Lamanites—for
the Lamanites would destroy them—therefore
I made this record out of the plates of Nephi and hid up in the hill Cumorah
all the records which had been entrusted to me by the hand of the Lord, save it
were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni” (Morm. 6:6). From this
account, it appears that Mormon did not begin his abridgment of the plates of
Nephi until, at earliest, he was seventy, but it is also possible that he
waited until all his people were gathered together, which would put him at
seventy-four. I am assuming the former, because it would take some time to
engrave an abridgment the length of the Book of Mormon on metal plates. He likely
also had to produce a lot of new plates, which would not have been easy.
We must assume that by “this
record” he is now talking about his abridgment of the plates of Nephi, not the
shorter abridgment of what he himself had observed. But what does he mean by
“these few plates” that he passed along to Moroni? Was he referring to his
entire abridgment? That would certainly have been far more than a “few plates.”
Was it just his own account, which was an abridgment of his longer, more
complete account? We don’t know. But Mormon was killed, and only Moroni was
left to finish the record and hide the plates up in the earth.
Moroni says, “Behold, my father
hath made this record [the abridgment], and he hath written the intent thereof.
And behold, I would write it [the intent?] also if I had room upon the plates,
but I have not. And ore I have none, for I am alone” (Morm. 8:5). In spite of
not having space on the plates, Moroni somehow managed to engrave two full
chapters (seventy-eight verses) before bidding us farewell.
Moroni was not finished yet,
though. He apparently lived at least another sixteen years after the final
battle and found both time and ore to make new plates, because he somehow
managed to abridge the whole account of the Jaredites and complete ten chapters
in his own book. He undoubtedly also had access to the records his father
buried because he took his account of the Jaredites from the twenty-four plates
that were found by the people of Limhi, centuries earlier. And this raises
another question. How was Moroni able to read and understand the Jaredite
record? Maybe the interpreters (Urim and Thummim) were also hidden up with the
records?
Now that we have traced Mormon’s
association with the records, let’s go back to the Words of Mormon. In verse 1,
as noted at the beginning of this section, Mormon tells us that he was about to
deliver up the record to his son Moroni. So, at this point, he was seventy-four
years old, had finished his abridgment, and had “witnessed almost all the
destruction of my people” (WofM 1:1). He has also never mentioned two sets of
plates of Nephi, a large set and a small set—not from the end of the original Mosiah chapter 2
(which is now Words of Mormon 1:13–18)
through the end of his own account in Mormon 7:10. In Mormon’s writing, we
first learn about the small plates in the Words of Mormon, which becomes
significant in the next section because it was likely translated last. Verse 3
reads as follows:
“And now I speak somewhat
concerning that which I have written. For after that I had made an abridgment
from the [large] plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin of which
Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my
hands, and I found these [small] plates which contained this small account of
the prophets from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many
of the words of Nephi.”
Because Mormon thinks these
writings were valuable, he says he will include them with his abridgment, but
he makes a rather strange statement: “Wherefore I choose these things to finish
my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates
of Nephi. And I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people”
(WofM 1:5). This is a bit confusing. He is writing after having completed his
abridgment, but he says he “choose[s]” them “to finish my record upon them” (as
if he engraved the remainder of his abridgment on the small plates), “which
remainder of my record I shall take” (future tense) “from the [large] plates of
Nephi” (which remainder he has told us in verse 1 he has already finished). He
then goes on to explain, “But behold I shall take” (future tense) “these plates
which contain these prophesyings and revelations and put them with the
remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me” (WofM 1:6). So, he includes
the small plates of Nephi with his abridgment, either bound together with the
metal rings or somehow separate, if we are to believe Don Bradley.
Mormon then says he does this for
a wise purpose, which he does not understand, but which we do, because we know
that Martin Harris lost the translation of Mormon’s abridgment of the large
plates of Nephi down through the first part of Mosiah chapter 2 (see WofM 1:8).
In verse 9, Mormon apparently forgets that he has already completed his
abridgment, for he says, “I Mormon proceed to finish out my record which I take
from the [large] plates of Nephi.”
In verse 10, we start to get the
transition from the small plates back to the abridgment of the large plates,
which is only necessary because the first 116 pages of the translation have
been stolen: “Wherefore it came to pass that after Amaleki had delivered up
these plates into the hands of king Benjamin, he took them and put them with
the other plates, which contained records which had been handed down by the
kings from generation to generation until the days of king Benjamin. And they
were handed down from king Benjamin from generation to generation until they
have fallen into my hands” (WofM 1:10–11).
Read carefully, the text in the
Word of Mormon is somewhat problematic. It appears that Mormon is a bit bewildered
about when he is writing the various verses. He seems to be chronologically confused
about his own timeline. Or, maybe someone else is putting words into Mormon’s
stylus and is trying to create a complicated solution to an unexpected
latter-day dilemma.
This is all a bit confusing, but
an old Dialogue article from 1998 sheds some light on what may be going
on here with the translation and the plates.
IV
In 1998, Quinn Brewster had an
article in Dialogue that attempted to show how Joseph Smith’s
understanding of the structure of the Book of Mormon unfolded over time and
also, perhaps, how that understanding affected some of the content of the book.4
The article is long and complex, but let me see if I can summarize his main
argument briefly. Let me make a few comments, though, before I dive into Brewster’s
argument.
If Martin Harris had not lost the
infamous 116 pages, the structure of the Book of Mormon would be quite
straightforward: an abridgment of the plates of Nephi from Lehi to Mormon, with
the book of Ether and Moroni’s final additions appended to the end. But the
theft of the 116 pages created a problem for Joseph, or at least a perceived
problem. As an April 1829 revelation now known as Doctrine and Covenants
section 10 tells Joseph, “Because you have delivered the writings into his
[Martin’s] hands, behold they [the wicked men] have taken them from you. . . .
And behold, satan has put it into their hearts to alter the words which you
have caused to be written, or which you have translated . . . ; and behold I
say unto you, that because they have altered the words, they read contrary from
that which you translated and caused to be written; and on this wise the devil
has sought to lay a cunning plan, that he may destroy this work” (D&C 10:8,
10–12).5
I have always questioned this
explanation. I have wondered how these “wicked men” could alter the words. The
manuscript pages were written in ink, after all. It would have been very
difficult to make substantial changes without making a mess of the writing. The
stolen 116 pages have also never turned up anywhere. One would think that such
a document, if preserved for nefarious purposes, would have fallen into the
hands of children or grandchildren of the “wicked men” who would have very
little incentive to either hide them or use them to prove the Book of Mormon
false. Eventually, one would think, they would turn up at a garage sale
somewhere. Unless—and
this is my own preferred theory of what happened to the lost pages—unless Lucy Harris
tossed them in the fire and burned them up. She was spiteful enough to do just
that. But we have no evidence of that either.
What is important here, however,
is what Joseph believed. And he believed that wicked men were scheming to
undermine his translation. Royal Skousen has presented a lot of evidence that
Joseph did not “translate” the characters on the plates. I have tended to agree.
However, the mess I am exploring today does make me wonder. Still, I find it
hard to believe that a book as complex as the Book of Mormon could just pop out
of Joseph’s rather uneducated mind. Which leaves the question of who did
translate the characters on the plates, if there were plates that contained
ancient engravings. I have my own theory, which Royal has pooh-poohed. But that’s
a topic for another day. Now, if Royal is right, and Joseph was just reading
someone else’s translation that he received through either the interpreters or
his seer stone, we must assume that he could do the same again and receive the
same text (likely with minor differences because of the human element in
dictating and scribing) a second time. But maybe that’s now how the reception
of the text worked. Maybe there was some input from Joseph, which would have
made an exact duplicate of the 116 lost pages impossible. We will never know.
But Joseph, for one reason or another, felt he could not simply retranslate the
first part of Mormon’s abridgment.
So, he found himself in a predicament,
and Quinn Brewster digs into this dilemma and offers a theory that I find quite
fascinating. He proposes that our current understanding of the plates (large
plates of Nephi, the small plates of Nephi, the record of Lehi, Mormon’s
abridgment, Moroni’s additions, and the Words of Mormon) was unknown to Joseph
when Martin Harris lost the pages and developed during the course of the
remaining translation (or dictation). Brewster begins with the problems
presented by D&C 10. Verses 38 through 42 refer to “the plates of Nephi,” but
while this term, to us, refers to two sets of plates, to Joseph, it would have
referred only to the plates Mormon was abridging, because Joseph didn’t know
about the small plates yet. Here is the text from the Book of Commandments,
divided into verses according to our current D&C:
38 An account of those things that
you have written, which have gone out of your hands [lost pages], are engraven
upon the plates of Nephi;
39 Yea and you remember it was
said in those writings [the lost pages] that a more particular account was
given of these things upon the plates of Nephi.
40 And now, because the account
which is engraven upon the plates of Nephi is more particular concerning the
things, which in my wisdom I would bring to the knowledge of the people in this
account:
41 Therefore, you shall translate
the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi, down even till you come to the
reign of king Benjamin, or until you come to that which you have translated,
which you have retained [the latter portion of Mosiah 2];
42 And behold, you shall publish
it as the record of Nephi; . . .
This is a bit confusing, but
Brewster gives the following explanation:
“Since there were two distinct
sets of plates of Nephi, large and small, one may wonder which set was being
indicated by the ambiguous phrase “plates of Nephi” used uniformly throughout
this passage. In verses 40 and 41 “plates of Nephi” must mean small plates only
since the first chapters of the Book of Mormon (the replacement chapters 1 Ne.–Omni) were derived from
the small plates. This interpretation, however, places the revelation at odds
with the Book of Mormon itself. Verse 39 would imply that Mormon in abridging
the large plates, was referring to the small plates when he spoke of a “more
particular account.” Yet the Book of Mormon stipulates that Mormon did not know
about the small plates until after he had finished the abridgment of that
portion of the large plates (Words of Mormon 1:3). Thus verse 39 of D&C 10
contradicts verses 40 and 41” (p. 113). There is no reference to “a more
particular account” in Mormon’s abridgment that survives.
Brewster eventually concludes,
“Apparently there is no reasonable way to reconcile this discrepancy in
Mormon’s knowledge of the small plates of Nephi with the assumption that Joseph
Smith had a correct understanding of the final structure of the Book of Mormon
at the time he recorded this portion of D&C 10. Joseph’s understanding at
this time must have been incomplete” (p. 114). So, Brewster proposes “four
plans,” which I view more as four stages, to depict Joseph’s unfolding
understanding of the structure of the Book of Mormon during the remainder of
the translation (dictation) process.
Plan 1. In the early
translation period (before Martin lost the 116 pages), there were probably
references to the “plates of Nephi,” without distinguishing between large and
small plates, because Mormon, by his own admission, did not know about the
small plates until after he had abridged the large plates down to the reign of
Benjamin. This is consistent with the usage in D&C 10. So, Joseph would
also not have understood that there were two sets of plates named after Nephi.
Apparently, the 116 pages contained detailed historical accounts and
name-by-name genealogies not included in Nephi’s small plates.
Plan 2. In this stage,
Joseph would have still understood that the plates of Nephi were the plates
from which Mormon made his abridgment. To replace the stolen pages, Joseph
understood from the revelation in D&C 10 that he was to translate directly
from these plates of Nephi, and verses 41 and 45 suggest that these plates of
Nephi contained a history of the Nephites that extended past the time of king
Benjamin. Verse 45 reads: “Behold there are many things engraven on the plates
of Nephi, which do throw greater views upon my gospel: therefore, it is wisdom
in me, that you should translate this first part of the engravings of Nephi,
and send forth in this work.” Since these plates, Joseph understood, contained “a
more particular account” of what Joseph had dictated and lost, nothing would be
omitted from the history, including the genealogy of Lehi and his revelations.
Joseph then continued with his dictation
of the text from Mosiah 3 (now Mosiah 1) through the end of Mormon’s
abridgment. He then dictated the books of Ether and Moroni. And although Mormon
purportedly knew about the small plates after he had abridged the record to the
time of king Benjamin, there is nothing from Mosiah through Mormon 7 that
refers specifically to the small plates.
When Joseph began dictating text
from what he assumed were the plates of Nephi that Mormon had abridged, perhaps
right after moving to Fayette, he would have expected the text to cover the
same material contained in the lost pages, except with more detail. He would
have been surprised, then, to learn that that this was not true. For instance,
he would have expected to find Lehi’s genealogy and more detailed accounts of
his prophecies—at
least until he reached 1 Nephi 6:1, although 1 Nephi 1:16–17 hints that this
record did not contain a full account of Lehi’s prophecies. At this point,
Joseph would have begun to understand that the structure of the plates was more
complex than he had thought.
Plan 3. In 1 Nephi 1:16,
Joseph would have learned that Lehi kept his own record: “I Nephi do not make a
full account of the things which my father hath written, for he hath written
many things which he saw in visions and dreams. And he also hath written many
things which he prophesied and spake unto his children, of which I shall not
make a full account.” “This record,” says Brewster, “could have been the source
from which Mormon got Lehi’s genealogy and prophecies” (p. 123). If so, this
information contradicts what was said in D&C 10, where there is no mention
of a record of Lehi. Also, Mormon was told by Ammaron to take only the plates
of Nephi. However, as we have seen, Mormon did remove all the records Ammaron
had hidden in the hill Shim (Morm. 4:23).
Once Joseph started to dictate
from the small plates, his understanding of the structure of the Book of Mormon
would have expanded, then, in two ways: first, he would have realized there
were two sets of plates of Nephi; and second, he would have realized that Lehi
created a record that Mormon may have used to include Lehi’s genealogy and
prophecies in his abridgment that Martin Harris lost. He also would have
realized that the small plates included less historical information than the
plates from which Mormon had made his abridgment.
Plan 4. According to Brewster, “If
Joseph puzzled over the scarcity of early Nephite history (NH) on the plates of
Nephi, the answer was eventually forthcoming. In 1 Nephi 9 Nephi finally makes
clear that the record his is writing is actually the second of two records,
both of which are called ‘the plates of Nephi’” (p. 126). Chapter 9 in 1 Nephi
is the first place where Nephi’s small plates are identified as a separate
record.
“Plan 4 represents the basic
structure of the Book of Mormon that eventually came to be understood by Joseph
and that we understand now. An unabridged version of Lehi’s record, including
his genealogy and prophecies (LG), was engraved on Nephi’s large plates (1 Ne.
19:1–2). An
abridged version (not including LG) was engraved on Nephi’s small plates (1 Ne.
1:16–17, 6:1). . .
. Since the small plates were kept separately from the large plates by prophets
instead of kings (1 Ne. 9:4, Jarom 1:14), there was no reason to expect much
correlation between the two records except for Nephi’s part. When the brief
narrative reached the time of Benjamin, the record ended because Amaleki had no
more seed (Omni 1:25) and the plates were full” (p. 127). Is it coincidence
that the small plates end at just the right time, exactly the point where Joseph
had reached at the time Martin Harris lost the 116 pages?
Brewster asks a pertinent question:
“Having gained this new insight about dual plates of Nephi, what kind of final
description did [Joseph] give relative to the lost manuscript, the replacement
solution, and the Book of Mormon structure, and to what degree did his final
description clarify points left undefined, ambiguous and even contradictory in
the initial one (D&C 10)? Interestingly, Joseph’s final description of
these matters was still incomplete as far as what could have been said to
clarify explicitly the structure of the Book of Mormon and its system of source
plate” (p. 128).
Joseph’s final description of the
Martin Harris fiasco and its solution appears in the preface to the 1830
edition of the Book of Mormon, when Joseph was still worried about the missing
pages turning up in altered form. Perhaps not surprisingly, this preface was
not printed in the 1837 edition, when the crisis appeared to have passed. The
relevant portions of this preface are as follows:
“To the reader—As many false reports
have been circulated respecting the following work, and also many unlawful
measures taken by evil designing persons to destroy me, and also the work, I
would inform you that I translated, by the gift and power of God, and caused to
be written, one hundred and sixteen pages, the which I took from the Book of
Lehi, which was an account abridged from the plates of Lehi, by the hand of
Mormon; which said account some person or persons have stolen and kept from me,
notwithstanding my utmost exertions to recover it again—and being commanded of the Lord that I should not translate
the same over again, for Satan had put it into their hearts to tempt the Lord
their God, by altering the words, that they did read contrary from that which I
translated and caused to be written; and if I should bring forth the same words
again, or, in other words, if I should translate the same over again, they
would publish that which they had stolen, and Satan would stir up the hearts of
this generation that they might not receive this work: but behold the Lord said
unto me, I will not suffer that Satan shall accomplish his evil design in this
thing: therefore thou shalt translate from the plates of Nephi, until ye come
to that which ye have translated, which ye have retained; and behold ye shall publish
it as the record of Nephi; and thus I will confound those who have altered my
words.”
Two points of interest here.
First, this is the first mention of the plates of Lehi. It is certainly possible
that Mormon had plates that Lehi had engraved among all the records he took
from the hill Shim, but odd that this is the first mention of them. There is no
mention of these plates in the Book of Mormon, except by inference. Second, there
is no mention of two sets of plates of Nephi, just as in D&C 10. One would
think that by this time, Joseph would make clear that he is translating from a
different set of Nephi’s plates.
Brewster next raises a question of
causality. To introduce this question, he asks several others: “Why did Mormon
never mention the small plates of Nephi in his post-Benjamin abridgment, when
he had by then acquired knowledge of them? Why would Nephi not mention his more
important small plates in his large plates, when he consistently did the
reverse? Why were Nephi’s, Mormon’s, and Joseph Smith’s knowledge of the small
plates all significantly delayed relative to their knowledge of the large plates?”
(p. 132). He concludes that coincidence may be the answer to each question, but
he brings up another possibility. “Rather than thinking in terms of Joseph’s
understanding of the Book of Mormon being limited by and progressing according
to what he learned from Mormon’s and later Nephi’s writings, it may be more
correct to think in terms of Mormon’s and Nephi’s descriptions of the Book of
Mormon records being limited by and progressing according to what Joseph
understood or imagined” (p. 133). Then he adds, somewhat slyly, “Perhaps the
mind of Nephi, the mind of Mormon, and the mind of Joseph Smith were to some
degree one and the same. . . . Both Nephi’s and Mormon’s awareness of the small
plates could have been delayed because Joseph’s was. This interpretation need
not be seen as attributing devious motives to Joseph . . . But it does mean
attributing to him more the role of author than of translator” (p. 133).
I have generally agreed with Royal
Skousen that Joseph was not the source of the Book of Mormon text, that he was
instead receiving a text through some revelatory means, but Brewster’s argument
makes a lot of sense. When viewed in conjunction with the textual inconsistencies
in the Words of Mormon (raised earlier), we must ask why Nephi (in his large
plates), Mormon (in his abridgment), and Joseph Smith (in the 1830 preface) never
acknowledged the existence of the small plates, even after Joseph had dictated
verses referring specifically to them.
Brewster points out that from
Mosiah through Mormon, only plan 2 passages are found, which mention only one
set of Nephi’s plates. The only plan 3 passages in the Book of Mormon appear in
1 Nephi 1:16–17 and
1 Nephi 6:1. The first mention of the two sets of plates is in 1 Nephi 9:2, 4. “In
one place Mormon even makes the statement that ‘all the account which
[he has] written’ has been taken from the ‘book’ (i.e., record or plates) of
Nephi, thus making no reference to a record of Lehi or any other source record (see
Hel. 2:13–14)” (p.
136). This confusion by Mormon and Joseph Smith about where Mormon’s abridgment
comes from seems to be more than a simple flub by the abridger and the “translator.”
A more convincing explanation is that Joseph was confronting a problem because
of the lost 116 pages and was working through a strategy for replacing the text
with something else and couldn’t quite keep the explanation straight, either in
D&C 10 or his 1830 preface or the text attributed to Mormon.
This argument must also be viewed
in conjunction with some of the oddities of the text supposedly taken from the
small plates: long passages more or less copied from Isaiah, the strange
encounter between Sherem and Jacob (which I’ll have to tackle in a different
post), the extraordinarily long life of Enos, the rapid winding up of the
record resulting in more than four hundred years of mostly missing history
(from the beginning of Jacob’s sparse account to the time when Amaleki gave the
small plates to Benjamin). During this period, the Nephites obviously had
conflicts with the Lamanites, had many kings, and finally fled with king Mosiah
I to the north, where they discovered the people of Zarahemla. That’s a lot of
history, temporal and spiritual, to simply gloss over in a couple of pages. It
is probable that the kings during this blank interim period were righteous,
perhaps even prophets, because Mosiah I, Benjamin, and Mosiah II were all apparently
prophet kings. Mosiah I, for instance, must have been a towering spiritual
leader, because the people of Zarahemla, whose leader was likely a direct
descendant of Mulek, son of the king of Judah, accepted Mosiah as their king.
So, we can assume that many significant events and prophecies occurred during this
missing historical period.
We must assume much of that interim
history was included in Mormon’s abridgment of the book of Lehi (the lost pages),
but that brings up yet another question. Apparently, that lost portion of
Mormon’s abridgment, which covered about 470 years, was all contained in a book
called the book of Lehi. That doesn’t follow the pattern Mormon maintains
through the rest of his abridgment, where books cover the life of the prophet
the books are named after and maybe a son (or a father). Why would the book of
Lehi cover 470 years of history? That is a question we cannot answer, unless by
some unexpected twist of events, the lost 116 pages are someday discovered.
Well, this has been a long and messy
post, but the fact remains that the Words of Mormon are problematic. They raise
many questions, largely because they seem to be a hasty and often inconsistent
fix for a problem created by Martin Harris’s carelessness and Joseph’s mistake
in trusting him with the only copy of the first 116 pages of his dictation. In
the end, I will just have to admit that I’m not satisfied with the traditional
answer to the questions raised by the Words of Mormon.
_______________
1. Jack M. Lyon and Kent R. Minson, “When Pages Collide:
Dissecting the Words of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 4 (2012):
120–36. Note: In 2012, editor in chief Jack Welch renamed the
journal BYU Studies Quarterly because many people were confused about
what it was, often mistaking it for BYU’s Independent Studies program. In 2023,
Steve Harper, Jack’s replacement, restored the original name, BYU Studies.
A bit of history, for what it’s worth.
2. Donald Patrick
Bradley Sr., “Were Nephi’s Small Plates Contained in Mormon’s Gold Plates?” BYU
Studies 64, no. 4 (2025): 38–57.
3. All Book of Mormon
quotations taken from Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest
Text (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).
4. Quinn Brewster,
“The Structure of the Book of Mormon: A Theory of Evolutionary Development,” Dialogue:
A Journal of Mormon Thought 29, no. 2 (1998), 109–40.
5. Because the earliest
version of this revelation is partially missing from Revelation Book 1, I will
quote from the Book of Commandments, published in 1833, transcript available at
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/book-of-commandments-1833/1#full-transcript.
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