If you are like most church members, you read the Words of Mormon like any other book of scripture, focusing on the spiritual insight to gain from it. In this case, for instance, you rejoice in the "workings of the Spirit of the Lord" (WoM 1:7) who prepared a remedy for the loss of the 116 pages many centuries in advance. In that regard, I am also like most church members. But being a bit of a geek, I am also awfully curious about details such as
- Where did Mormon write this? (Not where was he located at the time, even though I would really have liked to know that too, but on what plates)
- When did Mormon write this?
- Were the small plates of Nephi physically attached to the large?
- Where exactly do the small plates end and the large plates start?
This is not just my academic inclination, but for me, going into details such as these make Book of Mormon authors come alive. What exactly were they doing and when? Can we get inside their heads somehow? Having read several articles on the subject, I will try to summarize the main theories and add my own thoughts.
But first a little bit of background. As most readers probably know, Martin Harris lost a large number of translated pages after the first period of Book of Mormon translation. They are known as the 116 lost pages but Don Bradley argued persuasively in his book on the subject that there were many more pages than that. Fortunately, the Lord who knows the end from the beginning, had a backup plan. He had asked Nephi to make two sets of plates. In the Words of Mormon, Mormon explains how he found that other set of plates (the small plates of Nephi) and was inspired to add it to the other plates (his abridgement of the large plates of Nephi).
The portion that was lost covered the beginning of Mormon's abridgement until somewhere into the Book of Mosiah. As divine intervention would have it, the small plates covered approximately the same time period. Instead of retranslating the same text over again, as Joseph Smith was warned not to do by the Lord, he could translate the small plates instead.
This is what happens in the translation period with Oliver Cowdery that resulted in the Book of Mormon we have today. But research shows that they first translated the rest of Mormon's abridgement (Mosiah - Moroni) and then went on to translate the content on the small plates (1 Nephi - Words of Mormon). Words of Mormon is his inserted commentary working as a bridge between the small and large plates.
So far so good. Many readers would know this already. Some may even know that our current Book of Mosiah is likely incomplete. Our current chapter 1 used to be chapter 3 in the original manuscript. So the first two chapters are missing. The original chapter division was different with generally longer chapters so they might have comprised a substantial portion. Most likely, the Book of Mosiah is named after Mosiah-I, King Benjamin's father, not his son. One can only imagine that the original chapter 1 was about Mosiah-I and much more details about what is only briefly mentioned in the Book of Omni, whereas chapter 2 was about his son Benjamin and his reign. Because in the original chapter 3, which is our Mosiah chapter 1, King Benjamin is already at the end of his reign.
There are several things in the Words of Mormon that have long puzzled me and this leads me to one of them. If Mormon doesn't know why he is asked to include the small plates and if the lost pages ended at a random point in Mosiah, why do the Words of Mormon transition so smoothly into our current Book of Mosiah? The second half of the Words of Mormon is all about king Benjamin, somewhat detached from Mormon's commentary on the large and small plates in the first half. Of course, the small plates end with Amaleki saying that the plates are full and giving them to King Benjamin, so King Benjamin is central to the transition. But that does not explain the smooth transition into our Book of Mosiah. The Book of Mosiah starts with "and now there was no more contentions in all the land" just after the end of the Words of Mormon describing contention and King Benjamin establishing peace. Mormon did not know that pages would be lost and this is what he needed to transition into, so perhaps this was just another evidence of inspiration?
I am not the only one with these questions. Brant Gardner has proposed that the latter part of the Words of Mormon was not found on any plates but was more of an inspired commentary by Joseph Smith. This fits with his views of a loose translation process where Joseph himself was responsible for the wording. This is a view I don't share and think has been weakened by the great work of Royal Skousen.
But the theory presented in
this paper from 2012 by Jack Lyon and Kent Minson caught my attention. Their interesting hypothesis is that half of the Words of Mormon are his addendum to the small plates while the other half is actually a part of his abridgment of the Book of Mosiah from the large plates. It is in fact the end of the original chapter 2 leading up to chapter 3, which is where our Book of Mosiah starts.
To explain this, we need to go back to the story of the lost pages. Martin Harris did not take a large stack of separate papers with him back to Palmyra. They consisted of gatherings of (usually) six large sheets of paper
folded lengthwise and held together with string. Lyon and Minson's theory is that Martin did not take everything with him. It seems in fact more than a theory because D&C 10 says in clear terms
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
It easily gets confusing when there are two sets of plates both called the plates of Nephi, but in D&C 10 that term generally refers to the small plates of Nephi. So Joseph is asked to translate the small plates until he gets to that which he had translated already, which he had retained. If Martin brought bundles with a fixed set of pages, it is reasonable to think that there were one or more extra sheets that may have been left behind. An extra page of translation or two certainly would not have been a crucial factor in convincing his family and friends as he set out to do. The suggestion is then that Words of Mormon 1:12 is the start of the next page that Martin did not bring that had already been translated. But what is that part doing in our current Words of Mormon and not in the Book of Mosiah?
It would have been a lot easier to verify these speculations if we had the original manuscript. We only have about 28% extant and the interesting part in this regard (Omni to the beginning of Mosiah) is missing completely. The transition between the small and large plates was probably not seamless. Even in the printer's manuscript, Oliver Cowdery inserted "the Book of Mosiah" and changed the "III" to "I" after "Chapter". (See the top of this page).
Through Royal Skousen's research, we have learned some details about the translation process. When a chapter had ended, Joseph would see some sort of marker or at least tell Oliver that the chapter had ended, after which Oliver would write "Chapter" as a heading before the translation continued. Later, after the Book of Mormon was written, Oliver would go through and number all the chapters. This may have been the procedure also before Oliver came into the picture. Perhaps part of that "which [was] retained" even included the beginning of Mosiah 3, according to the old chapter division. Consequently, on the "retained" part, there was a bit of chapter 2, the heading of chapter 3 and some more text under that heading. Before Oliver came to Joseph in Harmony, Pennsylvania, we know that a little more translation had been done with Emma as scribe after the lost pages. So it is reasonable that Oliver and Joseph continued from there, likely in Mosiah somewhere.
When they had finished Moroni, they started on the small plates from 1 Nephi and ended with Words of Mormon 1:11 (if Lyon and Minson's theory is correct). Oliver would then place the part of the manuscript corresponding to the small plates on top of the rest that started with the leftovers from the previous translation period. If that part started in the middle of the original Mosiah chapter 2, there would be no heading, so in the printer's manuscript, Oliver would add "the Book of Mosiah" where "Chapter 3" was found, and the parts of Mosiah leading up to that heading ended up in the Words of Mormon instead because that was the previous heading.
I hope this was not too confusing, but it is a complex topic. Perhaps this illustration helps:
*I label these the Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery translation periods, respectively, even though there were also other scribes in both of those periods.
In my next post I will go into more details of the text and some alternative theories. To be continued...
