Review of David F. Holland, Moroni: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2021). 147 pages. $9.95 (paperback).

Abstract: David Holland, the youngest son of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, is the John Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School. Consistent with his training and focus, Holland has approached Moroni as an historian. Hence, despite the subtitle to this series about books in the Book of Mormon, Holland has done neither systematic nor dogmatic theology in his contribution.

Latter-day Saints are aware that Moroni visited Joseph Smith and instructed him on the recovery of the Book of Mormon. Why Moroni? With the death of his father, Moroni had become the keeper of the precious Lehite history inscribed on various metal plates. Moroni also added to his father’s account (see Mormon 1–7) his own understanding of how this entire record would eventually be used by the Lord to counter the absence of genuine faith — that is, it would bring genuine light to a people ground down by sin and hence the absence of genuine faith in God. These people were then indifferent, even hostile, to new divine revelations (see Mormon 8‒9). This was also Moroni’s first attempt to conclude the entire Book of Mormon. He did this while cautiously wandering and carefully hiding from the slaughter and moral debauchery that was taking place around him, as he also sought to close and carefully hide the sacred text for an unknown time and also a wise purpose known only to God.

Then Moroni abridged the book of Ether, and thereby provided a history of the Jaredites, a very ancient people, that was engraved on [Page 166]24 plates found by the people of Limhi in the days of King Mosiah. In her Ether, Rosalynde Welch provides an excellent account of Moroni’s treatment of the strange record found earlier among the debris of an ancient people.1 The book of Ether also includes Moroni’s second farewell (Ether 12:38‒41).

Finding that he “had not yet perished,” even while “wandering” in fear of being murdered in the terrible war in which the Lamanites were about to destroy each other and also the last of the Nephites, Moroni finds that, since he had not perished, he could “write a few more things, that perhaps they may be of worth to my brethren, the Lamanites, in some future day, according to the will of the Lord” (Moroni 1:4). He must also, among other things, testify of his own faith at the end of his final assortment of carefully chosen items which includes his own last farewell (Moroni 10:34).

David Holland’s Splendid Moroni

My first reason for reviewing Moroni: A Brief Theological Introduction — what I now believe is the very best in the excellent series — is that the author, David Holland, is both a former student and friend.2 I am also pleased that there is not even a slight hint in Moroni that the Book of Mormon is not an authentic history of real people who began in Jerusalem and ended up somewhere in America — most likely in Mesoamerica.

This historical record of the Lehite colony, which also came eventually to absorb a people known as Mulekites, was finally buried in a small hill in what would later be known as the State of New York.