Tuesday, November 12, 2019

References to Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon

It has been pointed out that the name "Christ" is not used in the Small Plates of Nephi until Jacob learns the name from an angel (see 2 Nephi 10:3).

Stisa's recent post got me thinking about commonly used names for Christ in the Book of Mormon, and how it might look to map out how the most common names are used throughout the book.

Here is the result.  The chart below shows a band each time the name on the left is used, beginning in Mosiah (I'm using the order of dictation here rather than the order of the Book of Mormon as printed) and ending with the Small Plates on the right (as labelled).


What do we learn from this?  I see a few points worth making:

1) "Christ" is by far the most common name for the Son of God throughout the book as a whole, but three other names are used in the early part of the Small Plates.
2) In the 2 instances where "Messiah" is used outside of the Small Plates, the name "Moses" is also mentioned in the same verse (see Mosiah 13:33 and Helaman 8:13).  This is an interesting and unexpected finding that I'll be looking into in more depth in the near future.
3) The vast majority of the references to "the Lamb of God" occur in 1 Nephi 10-14.

As I ponder this additional layer of complexity as it relates to the dictation of the Book of Mormon, it occurs to me that Joseph Smith would need to remember to stop referring to Christ by that name at the end of his translation process, for ~30 chapters, using other names for Him during that phase, and then later resuming for the final 25 chapters.

ANNOUNCEMENT - new hosting service for BookofMormonNotes.com

We're excited to announce that this blog has a new home at WordPress.  Use  this link  to get there.  New projects, content, and feature...