The Size of the Plates of Brass

In his vision of the latter days, Nephi saw that the Gentiles in America carried a book among them. The angel asked him, “Knowest thou the meaning of the book?” When Nephi confirmed that he did not, the angel explained, “Behold it proceedeth out of the mouth of a Jew. And I, Nephi, beheld it; and he said unto me: The book that thou beholdest is a record of the Jews, which contains the covenants of the Lord, which he hath made unto the house of Israel; and it also containeth many of the prophecies of the holy prophets; and it is a record like unto the engravings which are upon the plates of brass, save there are not so many; nevertheless, they contain the covenants of the Lord, which he hath made unto the house of Israel; wherefore, they are of great worth unto the Gentiles” (1 Nephi 13:20-23). The book of course is the Bible as we know it today, and I’m intrigued by this phrase “save there are not so many.” As I read it, the angel was saying that there are not so many “engravings” in the Bible as there were on the plates of brass. If that is correct, then this would suggest that there was more content in the plates of brass than in our current Bible. This is particularly interesting because the plates of brass cover a time period much shorter than that of the Bible. It goes from Adam down to about 600 BC, a period covered in the Bible approximately from Genesis to Jeremiah 20 (though that’s not quite accurate because some of the books between those two were written later, and some after were perhaps written earlier, but that’s close enough). That range is about 970 pages in our current text out of the 1590 pages in the Bible itself. If the angel was indeed referring to the quantity of words on the plates as compared to the Bible, this would suggest that the plates of brass contained more than 1600 pages (as we would currently measure them) to cover the same time period as our 970 pages. In other words, there would be more than 65% more content than the Old Testament for the same time period. So, it is no wonder that we have plenty of text from the plates of brass recorded in the Book of Mormon that is not in our Bible such as the teachings of Zenos and Zenock.

                With this interpretation, though, it would suggest that the plates of brass were very large. I have typically thought of the plates of brass as a single entity; i.e. one set of brass plates with engravings all connected together. But I don’t think anything in the text suggests that it had to be so; there may have been multiple groups of plates that Nephi brought out Jerusalem. The only limitation, it seems, is that they had to carry the plates of brass from the treasury of Laban: “And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without the walls” (1 Nephi 4:24). But carrying them together, Nephi and Zoram could have carried at least a few sections of plates (i.e. 3-4x as large as we might normally think they were) to their brethren. At any rate, whatever their size, their value was in their content that was more pure and complete than what we have in the Bible today. What is important is that even though our current Bible may not be complete with all the teachings it could have had, it does contain “the covenants of the Lord, which he hath made unto the house of Israel; wherefore, they are of great worth unto the Gentiles” (1 Nephi 13:23). The fact that Nephi would risk his life to get the plates of brass is an indication to us that the Bible, in addition to the Book of Mormon, should similarly be of great value unto us. We should consider it essential to our lives just as the plates of brass were to the Nephite civilization, and we should seek to understand the covenants of the Lord that are contained therein, especially in the words of the prophets of the Old Testament that were likely also on the plates of brass.