The Book of Mormon . . . is a record of a fallen people, compiled by inspired men for our blessing today.

—Ezra Taft Benson, Conference Report, April 1975

The Book of Mormon . . . contains a record of a fallen people.

—Doctrine and Covenants 20:8–9

Having set forth a broader context in which to view Mormon’s record, we are now in a better position to judge the nature and quality of his historiography. In part I we explored the nature of sacral thought in the archaic world, especially in the ancient Near East. In contrast to modern ways of thinking, the ancient worldview focused above all on the relationship between mankind and divinity. This perspective very much carried over into the field of historiography.

Through our rapid survey of historiography from earliest antiquity down to the modern age, we have seen that, in line with sacral thinking, the principal value of history—or at least a principal value—was its ability to furnish the reader with moral and even religious lessons. History for history’s sake is a very modern idea, an entirely secular one. And since Mormon was a man of the archaic world, we should now find nothing strange about his focus on matters of God and morality or even the explicit moralizing throughout his work. We have even seen that his notions about the destructive effects of pride on society are hardly unusual in the ancient world.

I stated at the beginning that while it would be wonderful to precisely place Mormon in a specific cultural milieu, because we know so little about the day-to-day realities of Nephite life, it is nearly impossible to do so. Although Mormon’s distant ancestors were Israelites, nearly a millennium had passed since the emigration of the Lehite peoples from Jerusalem, and countless changes would have taken place in their culture since that time. Still, it seems clear that to a considerable degree the Nephites’ way of life and especially their ways of thought remained rooted in the Hebraic traditions. We know that they appreciated the importance of retaining the connection with those roots from the very beginning. Nephi tells the story of the complex efforts he made to acquire the plates of brass, which contained holy writings. In the book of Omni, Amaleki directly contrasts the Nephite ability to maintain that cultural connection with the loss of those traditions by the Mulekites, who “had brought no records with them.” As a result, “their language had become corrupted” and they had lost the knowledge of God (1:17).

We cannot know with any precision the contents of the brass plates. Nephi tells us that they contained “the record of the Jews and also a genealogy of my forefathers”—specifically, “the genealogy of my father.”[1] In addition, they contained

the five books of Moses, which gave an account of the creation of the world, and also of Adam and Eve, who were our first parents; and also a record of the Jews from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah; and also of the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning, even down to the reign of Zedekiah; and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah.[2]

In addition to prophecies of Jeremiah, they contained prophecies of Isaiah, the patriarchs Joseph and Jacob, and the otherwise unknown Zenos and Zenock.[3] With respect to the historical “record of the Jews” down to the reign of Zedekiah, it may or may not have been substantially the same as the historical books in our modern Bible, most of which we have discussed above as the Deuteronomic History. If, as suggested above, the author of those books was the prophet Jeremiah or his scribe Baruch, an earlier version could have been included in the plates along with the “many prophecies” of Jeremiah, although the final version was probably not written until Jeremiah was in exile after the fall of Jerusalem. But we cannot simply assume that any of these writings were identical to their modern-day versions. It is possible that even the “five books of Moses” that Nephi mentions may have been substantially different from our modern-day books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. As we considered above, the dates of those books are still disputed by scholars today, and while the theories of dating generally accepted today are based on substantial evidence, they are still no more than theories. If the reconstructions of the Pentateuch and the DH discussed in the previous chapter are more or less accurate, the final redaction of those books was not made until the time of the exile or even the time of Ezra—some decades after Lehi left Jerusalem.

Mormon also tells us that the written language of the Nephites evolved over the centuries along with their spoken language.[4] How much of the rest of their culture evolved as well over the period of a millennium? How much influence might the scriptures on the brass plates have exercised over Mormon when he set about writing his record? We will see shortly that the book of Deuteronomy may have had an impact on Mormon’s record, and perhaps also an early version of the DH.

Mormon’s Purpose in Writing His Record

When Mormon was only a boy of ten, Ammaron, who had custody of the official sacred records known as the plates of Nephi (and had hid them up in a hill that he called Shim, together with numerous additional records), instructed Mormon to wait until he reached the age of twenty-four and then go to the hill Shim and take the plates of Nephi while leaving the remainder of the records behind. He was then to continue the official record on the “plates of Nephi” by writing all the things that he had observed himself concerning his people (4 Nephi 1:48–49; Mormon 1:2–4). Mormon followed these instructions and began writing his own book of Mormon as part of the plates of Nephi (Mormon 2:17–18). When he was approximately sixty-five, Mormon tells us, he took up all the records deposited in the hill, in order to protect them from falling into the hands of the Lamanites (Mormon 4:23). Later on, when he “began to be old,” he transferred all these writings to another hill, Cumorah, except for his own “abridged” record (i.e., what we are calling Mormon’s history), which he placed in the hands of his son Moroni (Mormon 6:6).

It is not entirely clear at what point or under what circumstances Mormon began to write his “abridgment” of the Nephite records, although it appears that he handed his record over to Moroni when he was about seventy-four years old (Mormon 6:6). He might have begun writing while still in his twenties after taking charge of the plates, but I would argue that his writings show the maturity and judgment of an older man. He actually seems to say that he had begun his record that same year that he handed it over to Moroni (Mormon 6:6, “therefore I made this record out of the plates of Nephi”), but we should not interpret this clause too strictly; it seems unlikely, (though certainly not impossible), that he wrote the entire work in less than a year. He tells us that he wrote it with the expectation that it, too, like the original records (the plates of Nephi), would be “hid up unto the Lord that they may come forth in his own due time” (Mormon 5:12). However, he makes clear that the idea of writing his history was prompted by God, in order to fulfill the prayers of the “holy ones” of the past that a record of the Nephite people might be preserved:

And it hath become expedient that I, according to the will of God, that the prayers of those who have gone hence, who were the holy ones, should be fulfilled according to their faith, should make a record of these things which have been done—yea, a small record of that which hath taken place from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem, even down until the present time. Therefore I do make my record from the accounts which have been given by those who were before me, until the commencement of my day; and then I do make a record of the things which I have seen with mine own eyes. (3 Nephi 5:14–17)

Enos had prayed most explicitly for the preservation of these records:

And now behold, this was the desire which I desired of him—that if it should so be, that my people, the Nephites, should fall into transgression, and by any means be destroyed, and the Lamanites should not be destroyed, that the Lord God would preserve a record of my people, the Nephites; even if it so be by the power of his holy arm, that it might be brought forth at some future day unto the Lamanites, that, perhaps, they might be brought unto salvation. . . .

Wherefore, I knowing that the Lord God was able to preserve our records, I cried into him continually, for he had said unto me: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it. And I had faith, and I did cry unto God that he would preserve the records; and he covenanted with me that he would bring them forth unto the Lamanites in his own due time. (Enos 1:13, 15–16; see Words of Mormon 1:11)

It is therefore reasonable to ask what Mormon was attempting to do when he wrote the history of his people—what was his intent or his purposes in writing this account? With respect to his book, he states:

Now these things are written unto the remnant of the House of Jacob. . . . And behold, they shall go unto the unbelieving of the Jews; and for this intent shall they go—that they may be persuaded that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. (Mormon 5:12, 14)

The historians of the Greco-Roman world invariably wrote a preface to their works, outlining at least in brief their purposes in writing. The biblical histories possess no such introduction but merely begin with their narrative in medias res. Therefore, we cannot be absolutely certain that Mormon would have included such an introduction.[5] Nevertheless, in light of his tendency to step outside his narrative occasionally to address his audience directly, it seems likely that Mormon might have written some sort of preface to his whole work. If he did, we clearly do not possess it. Therefore we must try to infer from what remains of the book what his actual intent was. Moroni states (Mormon 8:5) that his father “hath made this record, and he hath written the intent thereof,” and adds that he would restate this himself, except that there was not room in the existing plates and he had no ore (at that time) to create additional plates.

That there was a distinct lack of space on the plates to explain the intent of the book suggests that it was not something that could be summarized in a sentence or two. It may well be that Moroni was referring to his father’s preface or another section in the lost portion of the plates. Moroni himself wrote the title page to the Book of Mormon, which speaks briefly of purpose.[6] I think we can feel confident that Moroni would have had a good understanding of his father’s intentions; initially he states clearly that he was writing (only) those things that he had specifically been commanded by his father to write (Mormon 8:1). But he was clearly his own person with his own mind, and he might have had a slightly different understanding of the meaning and purposes of his father’s work. The entire book of Moroni, for example, seems to consist of material that Moroni decided on his own to include.

The title page gives three specific purposes behind the book. First, it is intended “to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel [i.e., the Lamanites] what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers”; in addition, “that they may know the covenants of the Lord,” specifically “that they are not cast off forever.” The final purpose is to convince “Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” The Jews, in a nutshell, are those who reject Jesus as the Messiah, while the Gentiles are those who largely reject the idea of God and the need for commandments and miracles at all.[7]

The title page is helpful in our determination to identify Mormon’s main purposes, but it by no means exhausts the matter. We also lack a proper conclusion to the book, which Mormon clearly did not have time to write. The closest thing we have to a summing up of his purposes is in Mormon 7, where Mormon directly addresses the descendants of the Lamanites, telling them various things he wants them to know:

• the things of their fathers
• they are of the house of Israel
• they must repent in order to be saved
• they must lay down their weapons of war
• they must come to the knowledge of their fathers, repent, be baptized, and believe in Jesus Christ and his resurrection
• this record (Mormon’s record) is written “for the intent that ye may believe” the record of the Jews that will be preserved through the Gentiles (the Bible)—and vice versa.[8]

Yet it would appear that most of these items could be declared and testified of in a much shorter book. Why was it necessary to write a five-hundred-plus-page book to communicate these things? Was it merely to describe “the things of their fathers”? That is a vague description, but perhaps it refers simply to the “the things that happened to their fathers over a thousand-year period,” with the general purpose of giving them a sense of where they came from. It may also be a way of expressing “what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers,” as stated in the title page. Yet again, it seems like there must have been a more specific purpose (or purposes) in providing such an extensive history of this people. I would argue that the history itself—the story as Mormon relates it—constitutes an important part of Mormon’s message. But what is that message?

We will examine below the major themes of Mormon’s history. If we look at his record in its broad outlines, however, it must be true that the fall and destruction of the Nephite nation was a key component of that message. There is an implicit question that runs throughout Mormon’s history, which is to try to explain—perhaps to himself as much as to the later Lamanites, Jews, and Gentiles—how it happened that his own people, the Nephites, came to be totally destroyed after having been blessed by the Lord with perhaps the clearest understanding of the gospel and the covenants of the Lord of any people at any time.

Mormon pens a great lamentation following his account of the final apocalyptic battle and mournfully poses this very question:

And my soul was rent with anguish, because of the slain of my people, and I cried: O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you! Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss. O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen! But behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return. (Mormon 6:16–20)[9]

The word fallen refers in the first instance to the physical deaths of the “slain,” but Mormon clearly has more in mind than that. His elemental grief mostly appertained to how his people could have fallen from their former state of grace, resulting inevitably in their physical destruction. In truth, however, the fall of the Nephites is only half the story—the other half is why the Lamanites were not destroyed!

The destruction of the Nephites as a people could not have come as a complete surprise to Mormon, for it had been repeatedly prophesied from the time of Nephi. The great vision of Nephi is filled with prophecies of war and destruction:

And it came to pass that I beheld multitudes gathered together to battle, one against the other; and I beheld wars, and rumors of wars, and great slaughters with the sword among my people. And it came to pass that I beheld many generations pass away, after the manner of wars and contentions in the land. . . .

And it came to pass that I saw the multitudes of the earth gathered together. And the angel said unto me: Behold thy seed, and also the seed of thy brethren. And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the people of my seed gathered together in multitudes against the seed of my brethren; and they were gathered together to battle. . . .

And while the angel spake these words, I beheld and saw that the seed of my brethren did contend against my seed, according to the word of the angel; and because of the pride of my seed, and the temptations of the devil, I beheld that the seed of my brethren did overpower the people of my seed. And it came to pass that I beheld, and saw the people of the seed of my brethren that they had overcome my seed; and they went forth in multitudes upon the face of the land. And I saw them gathered together in multitudes; and I saw wars and rumors of wars among them; and in wars and rumors of wars I saw many generations pass away. And the angel said unto me: behold these shall dwindle in unbelief. And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.[10] (1 Nephi 12:2–3; 13–15; 19–23)

The prophecy included a tiny reassurance that in fact that descendants of Nephi would not be utterly destroyed, because some of them would be mixed in with the surviving Lamanites:

Wherefore, thou seest that the Lord God will not suffer that the Gentiles will utterly destroy the mixture of thy seed, which are among thy brethren. Neither will he suffer that the Gentiles shall destroy the seed of thy brethren.[11] (1 Nephi 13:30)

Lehi had expressed his deep concerns about the ultimate fate of his descendants:

But behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blessings from the hand of the Lord . . . behold, I say, if the day shall come that they will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, behold, the judgments of him that is just shall rest upon them. . . . For I have feared, lest for the hardness of your hearts the Lord your God should come out in the fulness of his wrath upon you, that ye be cut off and destroyed forever. (2 Nephi 1:10, 17)

Mormon himself records the same prophecy of destruction from the writings of Alma (speaking privately to his son Helaman):

But behold, I have somewhat to prophesy unto thee; but what I prophesy unto thee ye shall not make known; yea, what I prophesy unto thee shall not be made known, even until the prophecy is fulfilled; therefore write the words which I shall say. And these are the words: Behold, I perceive that this very people, the Nephites, according to the spirit of revelation which is in me, in four hundred years from the time that Jesus Christ shall manifest himself unto them, shall dwindle in unbelief. Yea, and then shall they see wars and pestilences, yea, famines and bloodshed, even until the people of Nephi shall become extinct—yea, and this because they shall dwindle in unbelief and fall into the works of darkness . . . and all manner of iniquities; yea, I say unto you, that because they shall sin against so great light and knowledge, yea, I say unto you, that from that day, even the fourth generation shall not all pass away before this great iniquity shall come. (Alma 45:9–12)

The same prediction is made repeatedly in the book of Helaman:

The sword of justice hangeth over this people; and four hundred years pass not away save the sword of justice falleth upon this people. Yea, heavy destruction awaiteth this people, and it surely cometh unto this people, and nothing can save this people save it be repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, who surely shall come into the world, and shall suffer many things and shall be slain for his people. . . .

Because of the hardness of the hearts of the people of the Nephites, except they repent I will take away my word from them, and I will withdraw my Spirit from them, and I will suffer them no longer, and I will turn the hearts of their brethren against them. And four hundred years shall not pass away before I will cause that they shall be smitten; yea, I will visit them with the sword and with famine and with pestilence.

Yea, I will visit them in my fierce anger, and there shall be those of the fourth generation who shall live, of your enemies, to behold your utter destruction; and this shall surely come except ye repent, saith the Lord; and those of the fourth generation shall visit your destruction. But if ye will repent and return unto the Lord your God I will turn away mine anger, saith the Lord; yea, thus saith the Lord, blessed are they who will repent and turn unto me, but wo unto him that repenteth not. . . .

Yea, even if they should dwindle in unbelief the Lord shall prolong their days, until the time shall come which hath been spoken of by our fathers, and also by the prophet Zenos, and many other prophets, concerning the restoration of our brethren, the Lamanites, again to the knowledge of the truth—yea, I say unto you, that in the latter times the promises of the Lord have been extended to our brethren, the Lamanites; and notwithstanding the many afflictions which they shall have, and notwithstanding they shall be driven to and fro upon the face of the earth, and be hunted, and shall be smitten and scattered abroad, having no place for refuge, the Lord shall be merciful unto them. And this is according to the prophecy, that they shall again be brought to the true knowledge, which is the knowledge of their Redeemer, and their great and true shepherd, and be numbered among his sheep.

Therefore I say unto you, it shall be better for them than for you except ye repent. For behold, had the mighty works been shown unto them which have been shown unto you, yea, unto them who have dwindled in unbelief because of the traditions of their fathers, ye can see of yourselves that they never would again have dwindled in unbelief. Therefore, saith the Lord: I will not utterly destroy them, but I will cause that in the day of my wisdom they shall return again unto me, saith the Lord. And now behold, saith the Lord, concerning the people of the Nephites: If they will not repent, and observe to do my will, I will utterly destroy them, saith the Lord, because of their unbelief notwithstanding the many mighty works which I have done among them; and as surely as the Lord liveth shall these things be, saith the Lord. (Helaman 13:5–6, 8–11; 15:11–16)

Yet despite his awareness of these prophecies, it could not but have been traumatic for Mormon when he beheld the reality of their fulfillment before his eyes. “My soul was rent with anguish,” he tells us (Mormon 6:16). Yet even at the very end, Mormon still held out hope in his heart that his people might repent and be spared the ultimate fate, writing to Moroni:

I pray unto God that he will spare thy life, to witness the return of his people unto him, or their utter destruction; for I know that they must perish except they repent and return unto him. And if they perish it will be like unto the Jaredites, because of the wilfulness of their hearts, seeking for blood and revenge.” (Moroni 9:22–23)

Mormon was killed in battle before he could finish his opus, leaving it to his son to “write the sad tale of the destruction of my people.” (Mormon 8:3; see 6:1). Moroni relates the final end of the Nephites as a people, saying that they were all destroyed (except of course for those who had deserted and joined with the Lamanites). He echoes his father’s feeling of incredulity about the devastation of his people: “And great has been their fall; yea, great and marvelous is the destruction of my people, the Nephites. And behold, it is the hand of the Lord which hath done it” (Mormon 8:7–8).

The inclusion of the story of the Jaredites was part of Mormon’s plan for his record (Mosiah 28:19: “for behold, it is expedient that all people should know the things which are written in this account [i.e., the gold plates translated by Mosiah]”), but, unable to complete this part of his plan, he left instructions for Moroni to do so if he were able (Mormon 8:1). Why was the story of the Jaredites important to Mormon in his telling of the story of the Nephites? Without a doubt it was because of the close parallels between the fates of both civilizations. And the parallel was not merely interesting from the perspective of a curious historian, but because the destruction of the Jaredites supported his thesis that both civilizations were destroyed for essentially the same reason, “because of the wilfulness of their hearts, seeking for blood and revenge” (Moroni 9:23).

Thus, the history of the Nephites was not important to Mormon merely because they were his people, nor simply because he wanted to provide the Lamanites with a history of their ancestors, but because the Nephites’ fate was intended as a warning to his future readers. He was fully aware that no one would read his account until long after his death. A great part of his purpose in writing was to try to warn the modern world that a similar fate was in store for them if they would not repent. This explains why he chose to emphasize the failures of the Nephite people and their repeated falls rather than just highlight their successes or record uplifting doctrines. And for all his interest in the concept of personal salvation, it is clear that Mormon is concerned about the fate of the Nephites (and the Jaredites) as a people—specifically as a covenant people. Steven Olsen notes that “the term people is the most frequently used noun” in the Book of Mormon, “appearing some 1,800 times.” And “in the Book of Mormon, the primary connotation of people is a group that is united, defined and governed by sacred covenants.”[12] A people, or a society, is not merely a collection of disparate individuals. Eternal salvation may, to some extent, be an individual spiritual matter, but the reality of our lives is that we are as much members of a society or community as we are distinct individuals. And the Lord looks upon his people primarily as a collective. In both the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, the focal point of the idea of covenant is the covenant God makes with his people, rather than the covenant that individuals make with God, as we conceive of it in the modern church. Kerry Muhlestein points out in his important book God Will Prevail: Ancient Covenants, Modern Blessings, and the Gathering of Israel that “the covenant does not just bind each of us to God, it binds us to each other.” Moreover, the covenant is primarily portrayed in scripture as a matter of “corporate salvation”: “[God’s] covenant promises and prophecies supersede individuals; they are about the covenant community, the chosen people.”[13]

Mormon’s history should thus be seen not merely as a story of a gathering of individuals who were separately disobedient and came to grief as a result. It is about a covenant people that fell and was destroyed because of its behavior as a community, a common enterprise. They both thrived as a people (e.g., during the two centuries following the visit of Christ, they had all things in common) and were destroyed as a people.[14]

Mormon’s Sources and Methods

A major part of my argument in this book is that Mormon should be considered a legitimate ancient historian and that his record should be viewed as a valid and original work of historiography, not something else. Yet frequently, discussions of Mormon’s work refer to him as an editor or an abridger rather than as an author or historian.[15] David Honey, for example, refers to Mormon’s opus as “a condensation of many historical records written upon plates. . . . The fact that the work has been edited out of various other records leads us to conclude that the redactor, Mormon, must have been guided by certain editorial principles by which he decided which records were important to copy, excerpt, or summarize and which data were judged either essential, superfluous, or unnecessary to include.”[16]

The impression this description leaves with us is that Mormon merely condensed a series of Nephite writings, selecting certain parts to copy word for word into his book, other parts to paraphrase, others merely to summarize, while many details were of course omitted entirely. This view of Mormon’s activities is not unreasonable given some of the terminology used in our modern translation of the Book of Mormon. But I believe that such description incorrectly minimizes Mormon’s role as the original author of his record.

Honey’s description of Mormon as editor is based specifically on the title page of the Book of Mormon, which refers to the book as “an account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi. Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi. . . . An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also.” Mormon also refers to his work as abridgment in Words of Mormon 1:3 and in Mormon 5:9.[17] However, the word Mormon uses most frequently for his work is record. In Words of Mormon 1:5 he states, “I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi” (see Words of Mormon 1:6, 9; 3 Nephi 5:17–18). Old Testament scholar Robert Alter notes that the Hebrew word sefer can be translated as “book,” “record,” “letter,” “scroll,” or any other type of writing.[18] There was, of course, no word in Mormon’s language for “history” (in the sense of historiography), just as there was no such word in Egyptian, Akkadian, or Hebrew—or even Greek, until it developed from Herodotus’s use of the word historia, as discussed earlier. Mormon also refers to his work as an “account” (Helaman 3:17), as does Moroni in the title page.

Confusion naturally results, however, from the use of the word abridgment. To the modern reader it communicates the idea that Mormon found most of his material in the plates of Nephi and merely abbreviated that material but did little original writing or analysis. As Susan Taber states, “We often refer to ‘Mormon’s abridgment’ as if it were some sort of Reader’s Digest Condensed Scripture, actually written by others.”[19] We can compare the word epitome, which is a summary of a longer piece of writing but written mostly or completely in the epitomator’s own words. In other words, in modern English usage, an abridgment is simply a shortened version of a longer work. The abridger takes passages from the original and “glues” them together—hopefully in an artful way—to create a shorter work. One famous example in the field of historiography is D. C. Somervell’s two-volume abridgment, or condensation, of Arnold Toynbee’s grand ten-volume A Study of History. Somervell’s version greatly shortened the original edition by editing out many details while still preserving the overall argument of the original work, but Somervell added almost nothing of his own words.[20] It became a common practice in the Hellenistic era of the ancient Greek world to “epitomize” long works—and even to epitomize prior epitomes! For example, the lexicographer Pamphilus of Alexandria wrote an extensive glossary in ninety-five books, which was later reduced by an epitomator to thirty books, then by a later epitomator to five books. These abbreviations might preserve some of the original texts but commonly consisted of summaries of the original in the epitomator’s own words.[21]

How do these terms apply to Mormon? Did he write an abridgment in the modern sense, an epitome, or something else? In order to answer that question, we need to explore the nature of his sources and how he treated them.

First off, we should note how Mormon uses the word abridgment. In Mormon 5:9 he says that he is writing “a small abridgment” of all the things he has been eyewitness to—“daring not to give a full account” because of the extent of the “blood and carnage as was laid before mine eyes” (Mormon 5:8–9). Here Mormon appears to refer to an abridgment (i.e., an abbreviated version) of events rather than an abbreviated text. This statement of his must be read in the context of his previous assertion (2:17–18) that he had earlier written a full account of his own times on the plates of Nephi, but “upon these plates [i.e., Mormon’s record] I did forbear to make a full account of their wickedness and abominations.” Thus it is clear that Mormon wrote two accounts of the events of his own times, a “full account” on the official plates and a “small abridgment”—that is, a much shortened version, leaving out many details—in his own book of Mormon. However, we have no way of knowing how similar the two accounts were, whether he completely rewrote the original for his abridged account or whether he preserved most of the original wording but merely deleted a large number of details. At a bare minimum, we can be certain that he added many passages to his “abridgment” that were not in the longer text. For example, neither the sentences just cited regarding his abridgment nor the passages where he addresses his future Gentile readers (Mormon 3:17–22; 5:10–24; 7:1–10) would have been part of his official record written many years previously. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that Mormon’s idea of an abridgment is simply a shortened account that omits many details but is not merely a redacted version of a longer text.

What were his actual sources, and how did he draw from them? The simple answer is that he had only one source—the so-called plates of Nephi. In Helaman 2:13–14 he states,

And behold, in the end of this book ye shall see that this Gadianton did prove the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi. Behold I do not mean the end of the book of Helaman, but I mean the end of the book of Nephi, from which I have taken all the account which I have written.

The phrase “book of Nephi” must refer to what he normally calls the “plates of Nephi.” The title page states that Mormon’s account was “taken from the plates of Nephi.” In Words of Mormon 1:5 he states that he will take the remainder of his record “from the plates of Nephi.” In 3 Nephi 5:9–10 he refers to “records which do contain all the proceedings of this people. . . . Therefore I have made my record of these things according to the record of Nephi, which was engraven on the plates which were called the plates of Nephi.”[22]

But must we take Mormon strictly literally when he says that he has taken “all” his account from the plates of Nephi? And even if we do take him strictly at his word, we must try to understand what the plates of Nephi were. What did they consist of? Were they just an official court record? Or did they include other materials? Were they written in a narrative form or more in the form of factual annals?

Even a quick reading of the Book of Mormon reveals that Mormon frequently makes explicit reference to specific, discrete records that he makes use of, paraphrasing them and even quoting from them at length. For example, Mosiah 9–22 consist of “The Record of Zeniff,” an account of the people of Zeniff. Chapters 9 and 10 are clearly a lengthy quotation from Zeniff’s own personal record in the first person. The rest of this section (Mosiah 11–22), which begins with the reign of Noah, is written in third person, and it is not clear to what extent it might consist of direct quotation from the official record kept by Zeniff’s successors or, instead, a summary, abridgment, or paraphrase of that record by Mormon. Those chapters are followed by chapters 23–24, “an account of Alma and the people of the Lord” (see Mosiah 23 headnote), also written in third person, which must have been taken in some fashion from a record written by Alma. Alma 5 consists of a direct quotation of the words of the younger Alma delivered to the people of Zarahemla, “according to his own record” (v. 2).

Alma 9–14 contain “the words of Alma, and also the words of Amulek, which were declared unto the people who were in the land of Ammonihah . . . , according to the record of Alma” (see Alma 9 headnote). Chapter 9 consists entirely of the first-person account of Alma, of which the first verse reads:

And again, I, Alma, having been commanded of God that I should take Amulek and go forth and preach again unto this people, or the people who were in the city of Ammonihah, it came to pass as I began to preach under them, they began to contend with me.

Since this quotation begins “And again,” it clearly bears the marks of an excerpt from a longer record; it seems logical to assume that at least a portion of the intervening chapters (Alma 2–8) was also taken from Alma’s record but not clearly identified as such. Alma 10:1 states, “Now these are the words which Amulek preached unto the people who were in the land of Ammonihah,” followed by a direct quotation of Amulek’s words, apparently all taken directly from Alma’s own record. Alma 17 headnote indicates that chapters 17–26 comprise “an account of the sons of Mosiah . . . according to the record of Alma.” Alma 35:16 states that “we have an account of his commandments, which he gave unto [his sons] according to his own record.” This is followed by direct quotations from Alma to each of his three sons, comprising chapters 36–42. Thus it seems clear that Mormon made extensive use of writings by the two Almas.

The book of Helaman is prefaced by a major heading that begins, “An account of the Nephites. Their wars and contentions, and their dissension,” as though this were somehow a separate source from what had come before. It continues, “And also the prophecies of many holy prophets, before the coming of Christ, according to the record of Helaman[23] . . . and also according to the records of his sons. . . . An account of the righteousness of the Lamanites, and the wickedness and abominations of the Nephites, according to the record of Helaman and his sons, . . . which is called the book of Helaman.” Note that it first makes reference to “the record of Helaman” and “the records of his sons,” both in the plural, and shortly thereafter “the record [singular] of Helaman and his sons.”

How then should we make sense of these details? We are left to question whether any or all of these seemingly independent sources were somehow considered part of the plates of Nephi—if we are to take Mormon at his word that he took all of his record from that “book”—or were some of them in fact separate sources? In Alma 44:24 he states, “And thus ended the record of Alma, which was written upon the plates of Nephi,” suggesting that Alma wrote his own account as part of the official record. That is not at all surprising, because we know that Alma was custodian of the sacred plates for much of his life, and it is quite plausible that he might have included his own account in those plates, just as we know Mormon did for the events of his own lifetime. But should we therefore infer that all the “outside” sources were necessarily also included in the plates of Nephi? It depends greatly on how we conceive of what Nephi means by “the plates of Nephi.”

Part of the difficulty comes from the common assumption that the plates of Nephi were a single continuous record on plates. Some commentators seem to think of the plates as being in essence a longer version of Mormon’s record. This is in keeping with the idea that all Mormon did was abbreviate (abridge) the record he found in the plates. In other words, the plates of Nephi were one record, consisting of a “book of Lehi,” a “book of Mosiah,” a “book of Alma,” and so on, and Mormon followed this same organization as he rewrote the record in shorter form—essentially what we have referred to above as an epitome.[24] It’s quite possible, however, that the term “plates of Nephi” may have been more of a collective term that included a variety of materials—essentially whatever the custodians of the plates chose to include. Certain portions, to be sure, consisted of transcripts of speeches—Benjamin’s speech, for example, or Alma’s preaching to the church at Zarahemla (Alma 5). Other portions may have consisted of narratives of certain specific events or even broader narratives like the record of the people of Zeniff.

Other sections may have comprised annalistic type writings with relatively few details. Mormon’s scrupulous attention to chronology is the most obvious indication of this.[25] But we must not forget that the book of Mosiah contains very few precise dates—indeed, few dates of any kind.[26] In contrast, during the period of the reign of the judges he keeps a highly strict chronology, year by year, and only a handful of years are passed by unmentioned. The richness of detail of these annals is nearly impossible to determine. John Sorenson has pointed out that some of these annalistic records may have been spare indeed. For example, Helaman 6:15 states: “And it came to pass that in the sixty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, behold, Cezoram was murdered by an unknown hand as he sat upon the judgment seat. And it came to pass that in the same year, that his son, who had been appointed by the people in his stead, was also murdered. And thus ended the sixty and sixth year.”

It is conceivable, as Sorenson argues, that that is all the detail that Mormon found in the record for that year.[27] But there is no way to know. We have to assume that Mormon, like any author and historian, had to pick and choose from among the details that were available in his sources what to include and what to exclude. He would have been mindful of the limitations of his account, that he could not include everything without the book becoming completely unwieldly. We also have to assume that he took certain liberties in interpreting those facts that he found in his sources and generalizing from them.[28]

However, even if we conclude that the “plates of Nephi” included a wide variety of types of historical materials, there is still clear evidence that he must have at least consulted other materials outside the sacred official record. There were many other types of sources among the records that Ammaron, and later Mormon himself, were attempting to preserve from destruction by the Lamanites:

And now there are many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people, which are particular and very large, concerning them. But behold, a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea, the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites, and their wars, and contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of ships, and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work.

But behold, there are many books and many records of every kind, and they have been kept chiefly by the Nephites. And they have been handed down from one generation to another by the Nephites, even until they have fallen into transgression and have been murdered, plundered, and hunted, and driven forth, and slain, and scattered upon the face of the earth, and mixed with the Lamanites until they are no more called the Nephites, becoming wicked, and wild, and ferocious, yea, even becoming Lamanites. (Helaman 3:15–16)

We can make several reasonable inferences from this passage: (1) Mormon was familiar with a wide variety of written materials apart from the official plates of Nephi; (2) some of these records were secular in nature; (3) at least a few of them may have been Lamanite in origin (they were kept “chiefly” by the Nephites); (4) many of these records, perhaps most of them, were not written on metal plates but on some other medium;[29] (5) these materials must have influenced Mormon to some extent, even if he mostly followed the plates of Nephi in reconstructing Nephite history; and (6) they may well have been among the records that Ammaron and Mormon were attempting to preserve.

With respect to item (5) above, it seems highly unlikely that Mormon would have mentioned all these records if he had made no use of them whatsoever. He stresses again and again that his account contains only a tiny fraction (not even the hundredth part!)[30] of all that could have been included. Surely he did not mean that he was including less than 1 percent of what is in the book of Nephi. That would imply that the text of those plates (when translated into English) would amount to over 50,000 pages—and all written on metal plates! Also note that in the Words of Mormon 1:3 he refers to “search[ing] among the records which had been delivered into my hands” before discovering the small plates. That suggests that he really had possession of a wide variety of materials.[31]

But finally, and most importantly, Mormon must have composed large sections of his book that he did not find in any specific source. There is much summary narrative and discussion in Mormon’s record, and we cannot say exactly what he based such generalities on. For one example, in 3 Nephi 6:10–16 he describes in very broad terms what was going on in the twenty-ninth year after the birth of Christ:

But it came to pass in the twenty and ninth year there began to be some disputings among the people; and some were lifted up unto pride and boastings because of their exceedingly great riches, yea, even unto great persecutions; for there were many merchants in the land, and also many lawyers, and many officers. And the people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning; yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches. Some were lifted up in pride, and others were exceedingly humble; some did return railing for railing, while others would receive railing and persecution and all manner of afflictions, and would not turn and revile again, but were humble and penitent before God. And thus there became a great inequality in all the land, insomuch that the church began to be broken up; yea, insomuch that in the thirtieth year the church was broken up in all the land save it were among a few of the Lamanites who were converted unto the true faith; and they would not depart from it, for they were firm, and steadfast, and immovable, willing with all diligence to keep the commandments of the Lord. Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this—Satan had great power, unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity, and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the world. And thus Satan did lead away the hearts of the people to do all manner of iniquity; therefore they had enjoyed peace but a few years.

This passage, and many others like it, manifests numerous telltale signs of Mormon’s authorship, most notably the emphasis on strict chronology and the common themes that he dwells on throughout his record, such as riches, pride, power, and inequality. Nevertheless, the question naturally arises, on what evidentiary basis did Mormon determine that in that particular year “some were lifted up unto pride and boastings because of their exceedingly great riches”? There is no way to know, but it is highly likely that this type of analysis, of which there is much, was written by Mormon alone, not taken directly from any specific source. Like any competent historian, he read through everything available to him at the time, selected those facts that were relevant to his account, and shaped them into a smooth, continuous narrative carefully crafted around a limited number of themes and in general mentioning only those details (out of many others he might have mentioned) that were essential to the account and message he wanted to communicate to his future readers. At times he quoted from or paraphrased his sources; such quotations he often identified.[32] Like any other historian, he at times found it necessary to generalize beyond the specific facts at his command in order to convey certain ideas and themes to his reader. His fundamental message was, of course, primarily spiritual and moral in nature, which sets him apart from modern historians but not so much from the many ancient historians who came before and after him.

Mormon’s Organization of His History

One of the most notable aspects of Mormon’s record that has not been given sufficient attention is how it is organized chronologically into the various books—that is, the time span covered by each book. Brant Gardner has pointed out the highly uneven timespans covered by each book, but in my opinion he drew erroneous conclusions therefrom regarding the significance for the overall meaning of Mormon’s history.[33] Consider the following:

• The Book of Lehi covered about four hundred years of Nephite history.[34]
• The book of Mosiah covers about a hundred years, a drastic slowing of narrative time.
• The book of Alma covers even less time—about thirty-five years—while the book of Helaman covers approximately forty-eight years.
• The next book, 3 Nephi, describes the Messiah’s coming and covers about thirty-five years with 57 percent of its fifty-six pages detailing two days of Christ’s visit.
• Then the book of 4 Nephi speeds through four hundred years in forty-nine verses.

To understand the reason for this “speeding up” and “slowing down,” it is important also to note the approximate length of each of the books (using our current edition):

• Book of Lehi 150 pp.[35]
• Mosiah 62 pp.
• Alma 161 pp.
• Helaman 39 pp.
• 3 Nephi 21 pp. (chapters 1 to 10 only)[36]

Another way of looking at this is that the books of Alma, Helaman, and 3 Nephi cover approximately 124 years out of the nearly 1,000 years covered by the book as a whole but use 283 pages to do so, approximately 53 percent of the text. This period corresponds to the age of the reign of the judges. What this tells us is that this period—roughly 90 BC to AD 34—is for Mormon the core period of his history, the period that he is most interested in. The reason he greatly slows down his narration is because he has a great deal to tell the reader and wants to focus our attention on the developments of that period. One might even say that the real story that Mormon wishes to tell his readers takes place during that period. Nearly everything that precedes that period is in large part intended to lead up to the core period, to provide necessary background so that the core period could be understood in its appropriate context. Everything that follows the visit of Christ is massively speeded up, seemingly to get to the conclusion of the story.

One very peculiar characteristic of the book of Mosiah is that very little of its historical content has to do with the main body of the people of Zarahemla. Mosiah 1–6 is taken up entirely by King Benjamin’s speech and the consecration of his son Mosiah as king. Mosiah 7 immediately launches into the expedition led by Ammon to attempt to discover what had become of the prior expedition, led by Zeniff, to locate the land of Nephi. Mosiah 9–22 consists of the record of the Zeniff and his people, while Mosiah 23–24 treats the people of Alma, who themselves were part of that people. In Mosiah 25 all these groups make it back to Zarahemla and are united politically, and only at that point does the reader find out anything that was going on among the main body of the Nephites. In other words, although the book of Mosiah covers one hundred years, only about twenty-nine years, which comprises only about twelve pages of text, deals with the story of the nation of Zarahemla. If Mormon was simply writing a straightforward history of the Nephites, why did he choose to ignore roughly seventy years of Nephite history? Did nothing important happen during that time? That is hard to believe.[37] Rather, Mormon must have judged that the things that did occur in Zarahemla during those years were less essential to the story he wanted to tell.

On the other hand, consider just how crucial the events that he does cover in the book of Mosiah are to assisting the reader in attaining a clear understanding of the following era of the reign of the judges.

• In the book of Alma and later, there was a much greater degree of contact and intercourse between the Nephites and Lamanites than there had been previously. There was apparently no social contact between the two nations from the time of the first Mosiah’s departure from the land of Nephi until Zeniff’s attempt to reclaim the land of their inheritance.[38] The interaction of the people of Limhi with the Lamanites seems to have been a major stimulus in this direction, which then created an opportunity for the Nephite mission to the Lamanites and eventually for the complete assimilation of the two peoples after the coming of Christ. Among the important developments following Zeniff’s expedition were that the people of Amulon taught literacy to the Lamanites (Mosiah 24:4–6) and, as a result, Lamanites began to increase in riches (v. 7) and built cities that the missionaries were able to visit and convert (Alma 23:8–15).
• It was essential for Mormon to explain who Alma was and how the Church came to be established by Alma and brought to Zarahemla. The story of King Noah and the prophecies of Abinadi were crucial in telling the story of Alma.
• The account of Mosiah’s abolition of the kingship and the establishment of an entirely new form of government is key to understanding the era of the judges. The decision to terminate the sacral kingship and to convert the government to a less centralized and semidemocratic form played a major role in the growing chaos of the period of the judges.[39]
• The kingship of Noah was key to understanding the origins of the church as established by Alma as well as certain reasons why Mosiah established the kingship (Mosiah 29:16–18).

I am not suggesting that laying out a context for later developments was the only criteria that Mormon used in composing the book of Mosiah. He may well have felt, for example, that the story of Abinadi, as one of the greatest of the Nephite prophets, deserved by its own merits to be told. Nonetheless, I believe that the central criterion that he used to shape the book was in preparation for relating the core period of his history.

In sum, we should consider Mormon not as a mere abridger of a longer history that already existed, but a true historian who did his best with limited resources under trying circumstances. He may have simultaneously been functioning as chief captain to the Nephite forces (though it seems more likely that he wrote most of his account during the seventeen or eighteen years in which he was not leading the Nephite forces).[40] If the available source material was anywhere as extensive as he seems to indicate, he may not have had all the necessary leisure time to go through it in detail and integrate it as thoroughly as he might have done. He seems to have stuck mostly to the official records and the records of well-known leaders like the two Almas. Yet most—at the very least, a large percentage—of the language of Mormon’s book (apart from those passages where he is clearly quoting or paraphrasing his sources) is his own. Most importantly, the choice of themes and the ideas he wished to communicate were his own, and he shaped the narrative around those themes. The following chapter will clarify the nature of his most prominent themes.

Notes

[1] 1 Nephi 3:3, 12; 5:14.

[2] 1 Nephi 5:11–13.

[3] 1 Nephi 19:23; 2 Nephi 4:2; 3 Nephi 10:16–17; see Omni 1:14; Alma 37:3. In his great vision Nephi is told that the plates of brass contain more writings than the Bible possessed by the Gentiles (1 Nephi 13:23). Nephi also mentions that a main teaching of the writings was that “a man must be obedient to the commandments of God” (2 Nephi 5:31). It is also worth noting that these writings were in the “language of the Egyptians” (Mosiah 1:4). John Sorenson argued that the brass plates, including the prophecies of Zenos and Zenock, had a northern Israelite (Josephite) origin. See John L. Sorenson, “The Brass Plates and Biblical Scholarship,” Nephite Culture and Society: Collected Papers (Salt Lake City: New Sage Books, 1997), 25–39, https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/sites/default/files/archive-files/pdf/sorenson/2018-04-25/02_john_l._sorenson_nephite_culture_and_society_1997.pdf.

[4] Mormon says it was altered specifically “according to our manner of speech” (Mormon 9:32).

[5] One could also argue that Mormon probably did not introduce himself to the reader at the beginning of his record, because he seems to do this for the first time in 3 Nephi 5:12–13. But that does not necessarily mean that he did not provide some kind of introduction to his history and describe his purpose in writing.

[6] Daniel H. Ludlow argues that Mormon in fact wrote the first part of the title page and that Moroni later added his own contribution, beginning with “Sealed by the hand of Moroni.” This interpretation helps explain the repetition in the wording: the phrase “Sealed by the hand of Moroni and hid up unto the Lord” is very similar to the earlier phrase, “Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed.” See Ludlow’s study “The Title Page,” in The Book of Mormon: First Nephi, the Doctrinal Foundation, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1988). But the matter is anything but certain. Since we know that the title page was the very last plate translated by Joseph Smith, the most straightforward scenario is that Moroni wrote the entire page as the last thing before burying the plates. He may have repeated himself slightly, but that is not unheard of by authors, and in any case the emphasis in the second sentence is different: he identifies himself, Moroni, as the person sealing up the record (as a kind of colophon) and then emphasizes that the record is nevertheless destined to come forth in the due time of the Lord. See further the discussion in Brant Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, (Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 51–52.

[7] See Mormon 8.

[8] Mormon 7:9.

[9] The term fair ones may be directly related to the name “Nephites.” The name of Nephi is very possibly related to the Egyptian word nfr, which meant, among other things, good, goodly, fine, or fair. If this is correct, Nephi himself was engaging in a play on words when he stated, “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents . . .” Mormon, similarly, in this verse, would be playing up the irony of how such a blessed people could turn so evil that they would be destroyed. See Matthew L. Bowen, “Nephi’s Good Inclusio,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 17 (2016): 182; and KnoWhy #445, “What Is So Good about Nephi’s Name? (1 Nephi 1:1),” Book of Mormon Central, 2018, https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/knowhy-445-what-so-good-about-nephi%E2%80%99s-name-1-nephi-11.

[10] One could also keep in mind the reference to the Lamanites being “smitten” by the Gentiles because of the “wrath of God” (1 Nephi 13:14).

[11] See 1 Nephi 15:5; 2 Nephi 5:25; 26:2–3, 9–10; and Enos 1:13. For the mixing of Nephites with Lamanites, see Moroni 9:24; compare Helaman 11:24; 3 Nephi 2:14; 4 Nephi 1:20, 36.

[12] Steven L. Olsen, “Memory and Identity in the Book of Mormon,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 45.

[13] Kerry Muhlestein, God Will Prevail: Ancient Covenants, Modern Blessings, and the Gathering of Israel (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications), 80, 81.

[14] Robert J. Matthews focuses on what he calls the “group apostasy” in the final decades before the coming of Christ. “Patterns of Apostasy in the Book of Helaman,” in The Book of Mormon: Helaman Through 3 Nephi 8, According to Thy Word, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1992), 65–80. The ancient world in general was a much more group-oriented society than the modern world. See, for example, Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1963), 58ff. We moderns tend to be obsessed with the needs and rights of the individual, while in antiquity there was a much greater focus on the family, the tribe, and the state. Aristotle famously declared that man is a “political animal” who by nature belongs to a state or community. A man in isolation is either a beast or a god (see Aristotle, Politics 1.2). For Aristotle, society preceded the individual. Hobbes, in contrast, saw the state as the result of men in a “state of nature” coming together and creating a state for their security (from each other!). For Locke, the state was created (again, by a group of individuals) to protect their property. See R. F. Stalley’s introduction to Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Ernest Baker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). There have been various attempts to argue that the individual as a concept was “invented” in the Renaissance or, alternatively, in the later Middle Ages. See Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1987); and Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Note that in both the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon the focus for the idea of covenant is the covenant God makes with his people, rather than the covenant that individuals make with God, as we conceive of it in the modern Church.

[15] This usage is very common. Both Thomas W. Mackay and Grant Hardy refer explicitly to Mormon in their respective titles as an “editor” rather than an “author,” although Mackay also describes him as a “historian.” See Thomas W. Mackay, “Mormon’s Philosophy of History: Helaman 12 in the Perspective of Mormon’s Editing Procedure,” in The Book of Mormon: Helaman Through 3 Nephi 8, According to Thy Word, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1992), 129–46; and Grant Hardy, “Mormon as Editor,” in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon: Insights You May Have Missed Before, ed. John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne (Provo, UT, FARMS, 1991), 15–28. Steven Olsen refers to “structuring the abridgment of the Nephite records” in his article “Prophecy and History: Structuring the Abridgment of the Nephite Records,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 15, no. 1 (2006): 18–29. Many more instances could be cited.

[16] David B. Honey, “The Secular as Sacred: The Historiography of the Title Page,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 3, no. 1, (1994): 95 (emphasis added). Compare Eric C. Olson, “The ‘Perfect Pattern’: The Book of Mormon as a Model for the Writing of Sacred History,” BYU Studies Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1991): 7–18, wherein Olson states first that “we have Mormon’s abridgment of the large plates” but later clarifies that “Mormon was a historian . . . [who] fashioned a narrative”; he then immediately refers again to his “abridgment” and his “editorial choices.”

[17] See Don Bradley, The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories (Greg Kofford Books, 2019), citing Doctrine and Covenants 10:44.

[18] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commnetary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018), 1:285, 678. See Richard Elliot Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1997), 215.

[19] Susan B. Taber, “Mormon’s Literary Technique,” Mormon Letters Annual 1983 (Salt Lake City: Association for Mormon Letters, 1984), 117.

[20] A few small alterations were made by Somervell and a few by Toynbee himself before publication.

[21] See Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), s.v. epitome.

[22] Keep in mind that in Hebrew, sefer can mean both “book” and “record.” See note 16 above.

[23] I am here following the original (1830) version of the Book of Mormon; the wording in the current official version has been modified to read “records of Helaman.”

[24] See Brant A. Gardner, “Mormon’s Editorial Message and Meta-Message,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 21, no. 1 (2009): 87–90.

[25] See Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 91.

[26] See, for example, Mosiah 6:4: Mosiah “began to reign in the thirtieth year of his age, making in the whole, about four hundred and seventy-six years from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem.”

[27] John L. Sorenson, “Mormon’s Sources,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 20, no. 2 (2011): 4.

[28] The account in 3 Nephi 23:9–13 presents an interesting insight into what kinds of things were included in the official record. The Lord reprimands the Nephites for failing to record the fact that Samuel the Lamanite’s prophecy was fulfilled in that, following Christ’s resurrection, many resurrected saints appeared to many people and ministered to them.

[29] It is worth noting that paper existed in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. It was called amatl in Nahuatl (amate in Spanish) and was used to make codices (books).

[30] Words of Mormon 1:5; Helaman 3:14; 3 Nephi 5:8; 26:6.

[31] See the comments of Gardner, Second Witness, 3:73.

[32] Mormon’s practice of quoting documents at great length is a little surprising, but only a little. Short quotations from sources were not uncommon in ancient historical writings. Lengthy quotations are much rarer, but they do occur. Thucydides quotes a lengthy letter from the general Nicias in 7.10–15. Josephus quotes at length repeatedly from such writers as Berosus and Manetho. Eusebius, in his groundbreaking history of the Christian church, quotes almost constantly from a wide variety of early Christian authors. Grant Hardy notes that “Chinese historians since Sima Qian (ca. 100 BC) have always quoted extensively from edicts, memorials, letters, essays, reports, and other documents found in the imperial archives” (299n3). With respect to identification of Mormon’s sources, keep in mind that few ancient or medieval historians identified their sources. Even in the eighteenth century, as we noted in the last chapter, Voltaire was criticized for his lack of footnotes.

[33] See Brant Gardner, “Mormon’s Editorial Message,”: 103–4.

[34] Joseph Smith, in the introduction to the 1830 edition, identified the content of the 116 lost pages as coming from the Book of Lehi. See Brant Gardner, Second Witness, 1:11. Capitalization of the title “Book of Lehi” follows the styling in Joseph Smith’s preface to the Book of Mormon (August 1829 ) and in much modern scholarship.

[35] The current edition of the small plates, consisting of 1 Nephi through Omni, comprises 143 pages. Don Bradley has argued at length that the lost 116 pages were actually much more than 116 pages in the original manuscript, perhaps between 200 and 300 pages or even close to 400 pages, in which case, of course, the translation of the text covering this period of time would take up some 250 or more pages. (The number 116, he contends, was the length of the manuscript of the translation that replaced the manuscript that had been lost by Martin Harris, and so that number was used as a useful placeholder, since no one really knew how long the lost manuscript was.) I do not find his arguments particularly convincing, as they require far too many assumptions, although it is true that we cannot be entirely confident that it was precisely 116 pages that were lost (see pp. 85–103). I do agree that the current book of Mosiah is probably missing the first two chapters, so that the book in its entirety was slightly longer than our current book of Mosiah, perhaps by ten pages. (The mean chapter length in the book of Mosiah (in the original 1830 edition) is just over five pages, although the individual chapter lengths vary greatly from less than a page to over twelve pages.) See Bradley, Lost 116 Pages, 276–78. On the missing chapters, see Royal Skousen, “Critical Methodology and the Text of the Book of Mormon,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, 1989–2011 6, no. 1 (1994): 138; and Gardner, Second Witness, 3:97.

[36] Because 3 Nephi 11–30 consists almost exclusively of the teachings of Christ delivered over merely two days, I have excluded them from my calculations regarding the length of the “historical narrative” of the period of the judgeship.

[37] As mentioned above in note 32, the original book of Mosiah probably had two more chapters that perhaps told us a little more about the reign of Benjamin than our current edition does. Gary L. Sturgess, in “The Book of Mosiah: Thoughts about Its Structure, Purposes, Themes, and Authorship,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 4, no. 2 (1995): 107–35, has argued at length that the book of Mosiah was originally a “ceremonial history of Mosiah’s reign” that Mormon abridged into our current book of Mosiah. This “cultic history” was structured around “three great political and religious ceremonies that punctuate Mosiah’s rule over the people of Nephi.” These three ceremonies were (1) the consecration of Mosiah (Mosiah 1–6); (2) the unification ceremony of the various peoples (those of Zarahemla, of Limhi, of Alma, etc.; see Mosiah 25:12–13); and (3) the (unmentioned) national assembly in which Mosiah, originally intending to consecrate one of his sons as his successor, ended up dissolving the kingship entirely and proposing a new government organized around judges. This ingenious thesis has several weaknesses, most notably that the second ceremony is treated in a total of two verses, and in the third instance no national assembly is ever specifically mentioned. If the hypothetical original book of Mosiah was organized around these three ritual occasions, it seems more than surprising that Mormon would have given them such short shrift. I agree that all three of these occasions were important events in Nephite history and that there undoubtedly was some sort of national assembly in the third instance, but there is no need to hypothesize an original book of Mosiah that Mormon simply abbreviated into his account. When the book of Mosiah is placed in its natural narrative context, as preparatory to the account of the core period of the judges, it becomes clear why most of its content takes place outside the kingdom of Mosiah.

[38] Some Lamanites apparently found their way to Zarahemla and engaged in warfare for a short period (Omni 1:24).

[39] See the discussion in Gregory Steven Dundas, “Kingship, Democracy, and the Message of the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2017).

[40] See Mormon 3:11; 5:1.