Abstract: Although unable to write more than a hundredth part of his people’s history, Mormon seemingly found the time and plate-space to deliver literary justice on behalf of Gideon, who suffered a martyr’s death at the hand of the wicked Nehor. This article applies a literary approach buttressed by evidence from the Book of Mormon to suggest that Mormon intentionally supplied tightly-controlled repetitive elements, like the repetition of names, to point the reader to discover multiple literary sub-narratives connected by a carefully crafted network of themes running under the main narratives of the scriptures. The theories espoused in this work may have begun with the recognition of the reader-arresting repetition of Gideon’s name in Alma 6:7-8, but driven by scriptural data points soon connected Gideon with Abinadi, the Ammonites, and others. The repetitive and referential use of the moniker Nehor, Gideon’s murderer, on various peoples by Mormon seemed to connect thematically and organically to a justice prophesied by Abinadi. In parallel with the theme of justice laid upon the Nehor-populations, evidence is marshaled to also suggest that Mormon referenced the place-name of Gideon to intentionally hearken back to the man Gideon. Following the role of Gideon, as a place, we propose Mormon constructed a path for the martyr Gideon via proxy to meet the resurrected Lord in Bountiful. Mormon’s concern for the individual and his technique for rewriting Gideon’s story through proxy ultimately symbolizes the role Christ’s atoning power can take in each of our lives to save us.

Under the hands of its authors, the Book of Mormon creatively blends stringent didacticism and literary artistry into a piercing message of hope in the face of the tragedy of its own narrative. Mormon, the principle of three main authors of the book that bears his name, lived at the end-time of his people, a time of harsh brutality where he was [Page 168]exposed to “a continual scene of wickedness” (Mormon 2:18) and “blood and carnage” (Mormon 4:11). Somehow, surrounded by a people who “[had] lost their love, one towards another” and were “without mercy” (Moroni 9:5, 18), Mormon, in contrast, was miraculously “filled with charity” (Moroni 8:17). Rising above the cruel injustices of his own time, Mormon was able to revisit the records of his ancestors and pity their comparatively lesser injustices. On at least one occasion, this paper will suggest that Mormon’s sentimentality and compassion may have even moved him to mete out justice through literary means for injustices met on a man named Gideon. It is in this spirit of a narrator-focused approach that I attempt to discover the meaning behind Mormon’s repeated references to Gideon’s martyrdom at the hands of Nehor.

Increased attention to the narrators of the Book of Mormon has been a noteworthy trend in Book of Mormon scholarship since roughly 2010.1 This paper proposes that Mormon’s repetition of the names of Gideon and Nehor throughout the Book of Mormon are not coincidental, but serve as markers for the reader to discover authorial intent. Therefore, these repetitive and possibly intentional markers are catalogued as part of a methodology to read the Book of Mormon as the narrators intended and to uncover as much meaning as possible. These findings suggest that these narrators, like Mormon,