The Difficulty of the Plates

Moroni wrote frequently about his weaknesses in being able to write on the plates that would become the Book of Mormon.  He said, “Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him.”  He then gave us a clue as to why he felt so inadequate.  He said, “And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.  And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record” (Mormon 9:31-33).  I think realized this morning why Moroni said that there wouldn’t be imperfections in the record if they could have written in Hebrew (or their version of it): that’s the language that he and the Nephites spoke.  When Nephi started his writing he told us the record would be “in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2).  I understand that to mean that he was writing in Egyptian characters, but the manner of speech would be what the Jews spoke, or Hebrew.  It would be like me writing using Chinese characters but staying true to English grammar since that’s what I speak.  From Moroni’s comments I think we understand that both the Hebrew and the Egyptian were altered over their 1000 year history—which we would expect—and that what the Nephites spoke was a derivation of the original Hebrew that Lehi and his family spoke.  This means, I believe, that Moroni was telling us that he was not writing in the language that he spoke: he wrote in this reformed Egyptian that the other prophets had used because it was apparently more concise and required less plates.  But that meant that it was much harder for him to write because it was not the language he was used to speaking.  No wonder he told us that they did “stumble because of the placing of [their] words”—I feel the same way whenever I try to write in French; the effort is far greater than when writing in English (Ether 12:25).  And Moroni likely had much less training in writing than others before him because he grew up in such a tumultuous time as his people were on the brink of destruction.

               The takeaway perhaps from this is that it took great effort to write the plates of the Book of Mormon, and thus it merits all the more appreciation and study on our part.  Not only were they writing in a language that was difficult because they didn’t speak it, but the physical task itself was hard.  Jacob told us, “Now behold, it came to pass that I, Jacob, having ministered much unto my people in word, (and I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates) and we know that the things which we write upon plates must remain” (Jacob 4:1).  Writing by putting marks in metals plates was understandably a difficult task for them.  Nephi told us, “We labor diligently to write,” and I don’t think he was just talking about the mental effort but the physical task as well (2 Nephi 25:23).  Not only was it hard to engrave each character on the metal, but it was also difficult because there was no eraser or back button.  What they put down on the plates stayed and there was no changing it.  Perhaps they even wrote drafts first on less permanent materials to help them.  I think we even see evidence of the permanent nature of the writing in some places.  For example, when describing the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, Mormon wrote, “And thus we see that, when these Lamanites were brought to believe and to know the truth, they were firm, and would suffer even unto death rather than commit sin; and thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace” (Alma 24:19).  The way I interpret this verse, Mormon wrote “they buried their weapons of peace” and looked at it and said to himself something like, “Wait, that doesn’t make any sense.  That’s not the right way to put it—there is no such thing as a weapon of peace.”  And so he corrected it by restating it, not by erasing and fixing it because he couldn’t. 

Surely it took indeed a great effort indeed for Mormon, Moroni, and the others to engrave on the plates of gold the words of what is now the Book of Mormon.  The labors they made should be a motivation for us to have an even greater appreciation for it.  The Lord said to our generation about the Jews who similarly worked to bring us the Bible: “And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?” (2 Nephi 29:4)  Perhaps we will hear a similar condemnation about the “travails, and the labors, and the pains” of the Nephites in bringing forth their record to us if we do not adequately “remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon” (D&C 84:57).