Understanding the Words of Mormon

I’ve been trying to better understand the Words of Mormon, how this section fits in with the rest of the Book of Mormon, and when it was actually written.  The short book contains two very different sections.  From verses 1-11, it is basically an explanation of the small plates and why Mormon decided to include them in his record.  Verses 12-18, on the other hand, give specific historical details about King Benjamin and what he did among his people.  The first section is generally what we think about when we talk about the Words of Mormon—a high level bridge between the small plates and the large plates that teaches us about the plates themselves.  The first section tells us a lot about Mormon and what he has chosen to do with the various plates, with the word I appearing over twenty times (i.e. Mormon referring to himself and his work in the compilation of the records).  But in the second section there is no reference to Mormon, either directly or with pronouns, and the text reads much more like the rest of the Book of Mormon (an abridgement of the large plates).

It seems to me that Mormon wrote his summary material—at least verses 1-11—on the small plates himself.  When Amaleki finished his record on the small plates he wrote, “These plates are full. And I make an end of my speaking” (Omni 1:30).  I’m guessing however, that they weren’t totally full and that there was enough room for Mormon to make a few comments at the very end.  He told us, “I chose these things, to finish my record upon them,” suggesting that he was writing those words on the small plates themselves and that they would become the end of his record (v5).  In the first verse he told us, “And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni,” which suggests that he was ready to give his entire abridgement of the large plates to Moroni.  In other words, he had already completed the portion of the Book of Mormon from Mosiah through Mormon 8 (as well as the Book of Lehi from the 116 pages that we don’t have).  This means that he already had written the book of Mosiah which comes next in our current Book of Mormon.  Given that, I see at least two different possible explanations for the odd second historical section of the Words of Mormon giving us information about King Benjamin. 

The first explanation is consistent with how we currently have the book laid out.  That is, Mormon continued writing on the small plates and verses 1-18 really were one piece of writing from Mormon at the very end of his record.  If that’s the case, then that means he must have wanted to create some kind of bridge between the small plates and the large plates.  One author suggested this explanation: “As we probe further into the abbreviated historical notes that Mormon added to the small plates of Nephi, we see that they carry the reader from the point in the early lifetime of king Benjamin where the small plates of Nephi end to the point late in Benjamin’s lifetime where the book of Mosiah begins. Mormon’s appendage leads one smoothly and directly into his abridgment of the book of Mosiah.”  The major challenge to this explanation is the fact that Mormon already had a single, uniform account from the time of Lehi to his own time (with, presumably, a seamless transition from the time of Mosiah I to King Benjamin), and so why would he create a bridge between the small plates and his abridgement of the book of Mosiah?  In his mind what he was passing on was the entire abridgement of the large plates plus this spiritual record of the small plates of Nephi.  He was placing the small plates at the end of his abridgement of the large plates, which means that when he handed the records over to Moroni, it would be in two parts: his abridgement of the large plates (ending in our current Mormon 7) and the separate small plates with his summary information (Words of Mormon) at the end.  And yet, despite these two distinct records, the last verse in the Words of Mormon and the first verse in the book of Mosiah appear as if there were no break in the record at all: “Wherefore, with the help of these, king Benjamin, by laboring with all the might of his body and the faculty of his whole soul, and also the prophets, did once more establish peace in the land.  And now there was no more contention in all the land of Zarahemla, among all the people who belonged to king Benjamin, so that king Benjamin had continual peace all the remainder of his days.”  Those two sentences don’t appear to even be in different paragraphs, let alone on completely different records.  So this explanation would have to assume that Mormon was inspired to create this bridge for us so that in the modern record we would have a seamless transition.  Tomorrow I’ll write about what I see as the second explanation of where verses 12-18 came from.