When was Words of Mormon written?

[JarMan]

Words of Mormon gives mixed messages about when it was written. Verses 1 and 2 make it sound like Mormon is preparing for the final battle with the Lamanites and is about to give his almost-finished record to Moroni, which would put it at 384 or shortly before (see Mormon 6:5-6). This would mean it was written after almost everything else Mormon wrote, it seems. 

But then we have WoM 1:9 in which Mormon proceeds to finish out his record, but he proceeds by mentioning King Benjamin next, which seems to indicate that he's not even half way done. It's tempting to think that maybe he finished WoM through Mormon really quickly in order to bring these two things into congruence. The problem with that idea, though, is that Mormon 5:6, 9 seems to indicate he's already essentially done with his abridgment up to Mormon 5 in 380.

Then we have WoM 1:5 which I can't make any sense of. I can't discern the antecedent to "these things" or to "them" and I don't know what to make of the phrase "which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi". Why the future tense if he's already essentially  finished with abridging the plates of Nephi?

And I haven't even asked yet how this all fits in with the 116 lost pages and at what point Joseph made the translation of WoM. 

But before we discuss that, who can help me understand when Mormon wrote WoM and where he intended to place it in relation to the other books?

[Robert F. Smith]

14 hours ago, JarMan said:

Words of Mormon gives mixed messages about when it was written. Verses 1 and 2 make it sound like Mormon is preparing for the final battle with the Lamanites and is about to give his almost-finished record to Moroni, which would put it at 384 or shortly before (see Mormon 6:5-6). This would mean it was written after almost everything else Mormon wrote, it seems. 

But then we have WoM 1:9 in which Mormon proceeds to finish out his record, but he proceeds by mentioning King Benjamin next, which seems to indicate that he's not even half way done. It's tempting to think that maybe he finished WoM through Mormon really quickly in order to bring these two things into congruence. The problem with that idea, though, is that Mormon 5:6, 9 seems to indicate he's already essentially done with his abridgment up to Mormon 5 in 380.

Then we have WoM 1:5 which I can't make any sense of. I can't discern the antecedent to "these things" or to "them" and I don't know what to make of the phrase "which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi". Why the future tense if he's already essentially  finished with abridging the plates of Nephi?

And I haven't even asked yet how this all fits in with the 116 lost pages and at what point Joseph made the translation of WoM. 

But before we discuss that, who can help me understand when Mormon wrote WoM and where he intended to place it in relation to the other books?

Using the Long Count calendar, Mormon speaks in WofM of delivering his completed, edited records to his son Moroni in about 375 AD.  He says that he is placing his short explanation at the end of the Small Plates of Nephi, which he did not edit.  And he takes cognizance of the completed efforts of King Benjamin to bring peace to the Land of Zarahemla.  We are missing one or two chapters of Mosiah, which immediately followed WofM -- because they were part of the so-called 116 lost pages.  For further analysis, see John Thomas, "Words of Mormon," in D. Largey, ed., Book of Mormon Reference Companion (SLC: Deseret, 2003), 793-794.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Robert F. Smith

[JarMan]

I don't understand what the long count calendar has to do with anything. Mormon 6:6 indicates that the records were delivered to Moroni (the first time) after 384 years had passed away while they were preparing for final battle. This would have apparently been after finishing Mormon 5.  After Mormon survived the battle with 23 others, including Moroni, he apparently obtained the records from Moroni and wrote Mormon 6&7. Then he gave the records to Moroni again and was later killed in battle. 

WoM 1:1 indicates it was written just before he gave the plates to Moroni, though it's not clear to me whether he is referring to the first time or second time. As an aside, he must have written these words on the actual small plates themselves or else they would have ended up just after Moroni 5 or Moroni 7. (Another possibility is that he used an entire new plate and inserted WoM right after the small plates, but this seems unlikely.)

My conundrum is three-fold. 1) When we get to WoM verse 5 he speaks of the remainder of his record in future tense when it seemed rather clear from verse 1 that his record was already essentially complete. 2) In verse 9 he does the same thing by telling us that he is proceeding to finish out his record from the large plates. 3) After verse 9 he tells us about King Benjamin. Why would he tell us about King Benjamin if he had already included that in his abridgment of the large plates? He clearly didn't know specifically about the future loss of the 116 pages (only that the small plates needed to be included for a wise purpose) and would have had no clue that this extra information would be necessary to help fill in a gap for the modern reader. 

Edited April 26, 2016 by JarMan

[Rivers]

14 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't understand what the long count calendar has to do with anything. Mormon 6:6 indicates that the records were delivered to Moroni (the first time) after 384 years had passed away while they were preparing for final battle. This would have apparently been after finishing Mormon 5.  After Mormon survived the battle with 23 others, including Moroni, he apparently obtained the records from Moroni and wrote Mormon 6&7. Then he gave the records to Moroni again and was later killed in battle. 

WoM 1:1 indicates it was written just before he gave the plates to Moroni, though it's not clear to me whether he is referring to the first time or second time. As an aside, he must have written these words on the actual small plates themselves or else they would have ended up just after Moroni 5 or Moroni 7. (Another possibility is that he used an entire new plate and inserted WoM right after the small plates, but this seems unlikely.)

My conundrum is three-fold. 1) When we get to WoM verse 5 he speaks of the remainder of his record in future tense when it seemed rather clear from verse 1 that his record was already essentially complete. 2) In verse 9 he does the same thing by telling us that he is proceeding to finish out his record from the large plates. 3) After verse 9 he tells us about King Benjamin. Why would he tell us about King Benjamin if he had already included that in his abridgment of the large plates? He clearly didn't know specifically about the future loss of the 116 pages (only that the small plates needed to be included for a wise purpose) and would have had no clue that this extra information would be necessary to help fill in a gap for the modern reader. 

Brandt Gardner discusses this in his book on the Book of Mormon translation.  IIRC, he theorizes that everything after verse nine is an inspired addition to the original text by Joseph Smith to fill in a gap left by loss of the 116 pages. Its essentially a summarization of the original  beginning of the book of Mosiah.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Rivers

[ksfisher]

6 hours ago, Rivers said:

Brandt Gardner discusses this in his book on the Book of Mormon translation.  IIRC, he theorizes that everything after verse nine is an inspired addition to original text by Joseph Smith to fill in a gap left by loss of the 116 pages. Its essentially a summarization of the original  beginning of the book of Mosiah.

This seems to make sense to me, except as I read it it looks like Joseph Smith's fill in starts with verse 12. 

[Bobbieaware]

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

Words of Mormon gives mixed messages about when it was written. Verses 1 and 2 make it sound like Mormon is preparing for the final battle with the Lamanites and is about to give his almost-finished record to Moroni, which would put it at 384 or shortly before (see Mormon 6:5-6). This would mean it was written after almost everything else Mormon wrote, it seems. 

But then we have WoM 1:9 in which Mormon proceeds to finish out his record, but he proceeds by mentioning King Benjamin next, which seems to indicate that he's not even half way done. It's tempting to think that maybe he finished WoM through Mormon really quickly in order to bring these two things into congruence. The problem with that idea, though, is that Mormon 5:6, 9 seems to indicate he's already essentially done with his abridgment up to Mormon 5 in 380.

Then we have WoM 1:5 which I can't make any sense of. I can't discern the antecedent to "these things" or to "them" and I don't know what to make of the phrase "which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi". Why the future tense if he's already essentially  finished with abridging the plates of Nephi?

And I haven't even asked yet how this all fits in with the 116 lost pages and at what point Joseph made the translation of WoM. 

But before we discuss that, who can help me understand when Mormon wrote WoM and where he intended to place it in relation to the other books?

I believe there's some overthinking going on here. It's perfectly plausible that at the point Mormon was writing the Words of Mormon he hadn't yet delivered the completed records to Moroni because he needed to tie up a loose end. The loose end that needed to be tied up is simply the portion of the large plates of Nephi which he briefly summarizes in verses 10 through 18. Very simply, the important content found in verses 10 through 18 is how he "finishishes out" the records so that they could finally be delivered to Moroni. Mormon wrote the very brief book called the Words of Mormon at a time of utter chaos, just before he was killed in battle, and this would have been no time for him to be deeply involved in abridging the records, except for the brief summation found in verses 10 through 18 that ties the missing portion of the Nephite history, as found in verses 10 - 18, together with all the other history that had been written prior to the inclusion of the Words of Mormon.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Bobbieaware

[ksfisher]

8 minutes ago, Bobbieaware said:

I believe there's some overthinking going on here. It's perfectly plausible that at the point Mormon was writing the Words of Mormon he hadn't yet delivered the completed records to Moroni because he needed to tie up a loose end. The loose end that needed to be tied up is simply the portion of the large plates of Nephi which he briefly summarizes in verses 10 through 18. Very simply, the important content found in verses 10 through 18 is how he "finishishes out" the records so that they could finally be delivered to Moroni. Mormon wrote the very brief book called the Words of Mormon at a time of utter chaos, just before he was killed in battle, and this would have been no time for him to be deeply involved in abridging the records, except for the brief summation found in verses 10 through 18 that ties the missing portion of the Nephite history, as found in verses 10 - 18, together with all the other history that had been written prior to the inclusion of the Words of Mormon.

12-18 would be redundant if we had the missing portion of Mosiah.

[Bobbieaware]

8 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

12-18 would be redundant if we had the missing portion of Mosiah.

We already know there was some redundancy in the Book of Mormon. Much of what was recorded in the Book of Lehi is also found in 1 Nephi. The inclusion of the words of Mormon enables the history found in the unabridged small plates of Nephi to seemlessly transition into the history found in the abridged Book of Mosiah.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Bobbieaware

[ksfisher]

12 minutes ago, Bobbieaware said:

We already know there was some redundancy in the Book of Mormon. Much of what was recorded in the Book of Lehi is also found in 1 Nephi. The inclusion of the words of Mormon enables the history found in the unabridged small plates of Nephi to seemlessly transition into the history found in the abridged Book of Mosiah.

Except that as originally planned by Mormon there was no need to transition between the small plates on Mosiah, as the transition was between the Book of Lehi and Mosiah.  The small plates would have formed an appendix much like Ether and Moroni do in the present book. 

The part of the Words of Mormon that were written by Mormon are an explanation as to why he is appending the small plates.

The need for a transition between the small plates and Mosiah only came into play only after Lehi and the first part of Mosiah was lost (the 116 pages).

[Robert F. Smith]

11 hours ago, JarMan said:

I don't understand what the long count calendar has to do with anything.

You mentioned 385 AD, so I thought you might be interested in a more accurate date.

Mormon 6:6 indicates that the records were delivered to Moroni (the first time) after 384 years had passed away while they were preparing for final battle. This would have apparently been after finishing Mormon 5.  After Mormon survived the battle with 23 others, including Moroni, he apparently obtained the records from Moroni and wrote Mormon 6&7. Then he gave the records to Moroni again and was later killed in battle. 

WoM 1:1 indicates it was written just before he gave the plates to Moroni, though it's not clear to me whether he is referring to the first time or second time. As an aside, he must have written these words on the actual small plates themselves or else they would have ended up just after Moroni 5 or Moroni 7. (Another possibility is that he used an entire new plate and inserted WoM right after the small plates, but this seems unlikely.)

My conundrum is three-fold. 1) When we get to WoM verse 5 he speaks of the remainder of his record in future tense when it seemed rather clear from verse 1 that his record was already essentially complete. 2) In verse 9 he does the same thing by telling us that he is proceeding to finish out his record from the large plates. 3) After verse 9 he tells us about King Benjamin. Why would he tell us about King Benjamin if he had already included that in his abridgment of the large plates? He clearly didn't know specifically about the future loss of the 116 pages (only that the small plates needed to be included for a wise purpose) and would have had no clue that this extra information would be necessary to help fill in a gap for the modern reader. 

He might have been inspired to include the small plates and his own commentary to accompany it, not knowing what purpose they might eventually fulfill.  Otherwise, you seem to have a pretty good handle on the matter.

 

[Guest]

It is not uncommon, especially with his task which took many years to abridge these works. Just as Moroni thought he was done more than once, and then we he had more time to add those things he felt needed to be added. Although most of my poems come to me at the same time, one I began and finished 10 years later. Also the Bbile nor any other religious text attempts to put a timeline at the bottom of each page. It seems and odd thing that so many try to put the BoM under a high powered spotlight, while leaving the Bible with a complete pass. Maybe it is because only the BoM under a microscope can be used to discredit Joseph Smith, the Church and the denial that miracles can still happen. But as the Bible points out, they had to kill the Prophets of old and Jesus himself could not perform miracles in his own hometown for the same reason...people can accept miracles in almost any place and any time, just not in their time, there city and by anyone they know. Which sadly means that so few have the faith to experience any miracles in their lives or lifetime.

[cinepro]

1 hour ago, Pa Pa said:

Also the Bible nor any other religious text attempts to put a timeline at the bottom of each page. It seems and odd thing that so many try to put the BoM under a high powered spotlight, while leaving the Bible with a complete pass. Maybe it is because only the BoM under a microscope can be used to discredit Joseph Smith, the Church and the denial that miracles can still happen.

I think if any other religious book had frequent and specific named time spans that anchored to a known event (the life of Christ), you would probably see similar dating. 

As it is, there are plenty of suggested timelines for the Bible based on the info contained therein.

[Bobbieaware]

5 hours ago, ksfisher said:

Except that as originally planned by Mormon there was no need to transition between the small plates on Mosiah, as the transition was between the Book of Lehi and Mosiah.  The small plates would have formed an appendix much like Ether and Moroni do in the present book. 

The part of the Words of Mormon that were written by Mormon are an explanation as to why he is appending the small plates.

The need for a transition between the small plates and Mosiah only came into play only after Lehi and the first part of Mosiah was lost (the 116 pages).

There would have seemed to be no need for the Words of Mormon's smooth transition between the Book of Omni and the Book of Mosiah, just as there was originally supposed to be no need to include the writings found on the small plates of Nephi. But it seems that for a wise purpose, -- admittedly not fully understood by the prophet himself --  Mormon did include his eight verse summation, just as he included the non-essential and redundant small plates of Nephi. I think it's very likely the highly intelligent prophet Mormon realized all he had to do was write eight verses of condensed history in order to provide a seamless transition between Omni and Mosiah, and so he went ahead and did it. It seems the Spirit was always whispering things to Mormon.

[ksfisher]

28 minutes ago, Bobbieaware said:

There would have seemed to be no need for the Words of Mormon's smooth transition between the Book of Omni and the Book of Mosiah, just as there was originally supposed to be no need to include the writings found on the small plates of Nephi. But it seems that for a wise purpose, -- admittedly not fully understood by the prophet himself --  Mormon did include his eight verse summation, just as he included the non-essential and redundant small plates of Nephi. I think it's very likely the highly intelligent prophet Mormon realized all he had to do was write eight verses of condensed history in order to provide a seamless transition between Omni and Mosiah, and so he went ahead and did it. It seems the Spirit was always whispering things to Mormon.

Agree to disagree then.  While I do agree that Mormon was very inspired, and that he was inspired to include the small plates, I don't think he had any idea that what he abridged as the Book of Lehi and first part of Mosiah would not survive and that any sort of transition would be needed between the small plates and Mosiah.

Words of Mormon 12-18 fit better as an inspired addition by Joseph Smith to summarize the missing beginning of Mosiah and provide a needed narrative bridge from the small plates account.

[Robert F. Smith]

18 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

.................................................................

Words of Mormon 12-18 fit better as an inspired addition by Joseph Smith to summarize the missing beginning of Mosiah and provide a needed narrative bridge from the small plates account.

Brant's theory is interesting, but the problem is that research by Skousen & Carmack shows that Joseph himself wrote nothing, but merely read an already prepared Early Modern English text to his scribes.  The translation itself into EME had to have been done a couple of centuries earlier, perhaps by someone like Dr. John Dee -- who also had a kind of seerstone (an Aztec obsidian mirror, now in the British Museum) -- who was a great scholar and polymath (and chief astrologer to Elizabeth I).

[Bobbieaware]

1 hour ago, ksfisher said:

Agree to disagree then.  While I do agree that Mormon was very inspired, and that he was inspired to include the small plates, I don't think he had any idea that what he abridged as the Book of Lehi and first part of Mosiah would not survive and that any sort of transition would be needed between the small plates and Mosiah.

Words of Mormon 12-18 fit better as an inspired addition by Joseph Smith to summarize the missing beginning of Mosiah and provide a needed narrative bridge from the small plates account.

One fine day it will be most interesting to learn exactly how it happened.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, cinepro said:

I think if any other religious book had frequent and specific named time spans that anchored to a known event (the life of Christ), you would probably see similar dating. 

As it is, there are plenty of suggested timelines for the Bible based on the info contained therein.

Who would do it, not mainstream Christanity, but having people living for 900+ years to fill in the information to creation might be a place to start. I believe that it is a possibility, but no one will question it as the OT accounts are believed or borrowed in every mono-God faith and every supporting book. 

[JarMan]

Let me see if I understand. When Mormon gave the plates to Moroni, they would have been in this order: 1) Lost 116 pages, 2) Mosiah through Mormon 7, 3) 1 Nephi through Omni, 4) Words of Mormon verses 1-11.

Then Moroni would have added Mormon 8&9, Ether, Moroni, and then put the small plates at the end with Words of Mormon being the very last book. So Joseph Smith would have done the translation in the following order: 1) 116 pages, 2) Mosiah through Moroni, 3) 1 Nephi through Omni, 4) Words of Mormon 1-11. Joseph would have then moved 1 Nephi through Words of Mormon to the front and added verses 12-18 to help the transition to Mosiah.

Do we have the original transcription of Words of Mormon? Is there any evidence verses 12-18 were added later? 

[ksfisher]

12 hours ago, JarMan said:

Let me see if I understand. When Mormon gave the plates to Moroni, they would have been in this order: 1) Lost 116 pages, 2) Mosiah through Mormon 7, 3) 1 Nephi through Omni, 4) Words of Mormon verses 1-11.

Then Moroni would have added Mormon 8&9, Ether, Moroni, and then put the small plates at the end with Words of Mormon being the very last book. So Joseph Smith would have done the translation in the following order: 1) 116 pages, 2) Mosiah through Moroni, 3) 1 Nephi through Omni, 4) Words of Mormon 1-11. Joseph would have then moved 1 Nephi through Words of Mormon to the front and added verses 12-18 to help the transition to Mosiah.

Do we have the original transcription of Words of Mormon? Is there any evidence verses 12-18 were added later? 

I don't think that there is any need for Words of Mormon to have been translated/transcribed in two parts.  After translating 1-11 I would think that the Lord could inspire Joseph to add 12-18.  No need to wait.