[Editor’s Note: We are pleased to present the first installment from a book entitled Labor Diligently to Write: The Ancient Making of a Modern Scripture. It is being presented in serialized form as an aid to help readers prepare for the 2020 Come Follow Me course of study. This is a new approach for Interpreter, and we hope you find it helpful.]

 

 

Part 1: The Structuring of Nephite Style

The Book of Mormon tells the story of the Nephite people. That story began on plates the first writer, Nephi, made by hand. Their story ended on plates the last writer, Mormon, made by hand.1 Nephi created one record that chronicled the reigns of the kings and a second that covered the ministry.2 Mormon wrote in the official Nephite chronicle of the reigns of the kings3 but wrote a second work for a different and more sacred purpose.4

[Page 2]Mormon’s writing career was bracketed by plates buried in a hill. The same plates Mormon removed from the hill Shim at the beginning of his writing career (Mormon 1:3, 4:23), he interred in the hill Cumorah at the end (Mormon 6:6). In the intervening years, Mormon’s relationship to those plates shifted from recorder of events to interpreter of events. Mormon buried the Nephite archive in the hill Cumorah to preserve it, but he gave Moroni a more important set of plates to preserve. Those were later buried in a hill.5

Joseph Smith recovered the plates Moroni preserved — those Mormon entrusted to Moroni and to which Moroni added his addenda — and translated them into the Book of Mormon. Mormon’s ultimate masterwork has become the cornerstone of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

There are many ways to approach the Book of Mormon, and any number of books assist with those various approaches.