Book of Mormon Evidence: Mosiah-First Translation

Besides making clear sense of the manuscript and historical data, this understanding of the translation sequence (sometimes called the Mosiah-First theory) also provides evidence for the Book of Mormon’s complexity. This is because many passages from Mormon’s abridgment of the Large Plates, as well as from the books of Mormon, Ether and Moroni, refer back to content from the Small Plates (see Appendix), even though the Small Plates hadn’t even been translated yet.

For instance, in Alma 3 Mormon referred to prophecies about a curse upon the Lamanites and those who would mix with their seed. This prophecy can be found in 2 Nephi 5: 

In Alma 36:22, Alma referred to a vision given to the prophet Lehi. Alma’s specific phrasing is a verbatim quote from 1 Nephi 1:8:

 And, in a final sample, language from Alma’s famous sermon on faith in Alma 32, and also from a description of Jesus and his followers in 3 Nephi 19, clearly allude to the Tree of Life imagery found in 1 Nephi 8 and 1 Nephi 15: 

 These relatively frequent allusions and references back to content from the Small Plates make sense if the Book of Mormon is truly a compilation of ancient prophetic writings, as the text itself claims. Mormon, Alma, and other later prophets would have had Lehi’s and Nephi’s earlier writings to refer to and quote from, whether from the Small Plates themselves or from related texts (or versions of the same texts) on the Large Plates. On the other hand, these sometimes complex textual allusions are difficult to explain if Joseph Smith was simply making up the Book of Mormon’s content, as some have supposed. This is because, according to the witnesses of the translation, he rapidly dictated the Book of Mormon without relying on any outlines, notes, or reference materials.²

Commenting upon the allusions to the visions of the Tree of Life recorded in the Small Plates, literary scholar Alan Goff has argued, “It seems overly complicated to posit that a whole web of allusions to these tree of life images is created first and then later the coherent story that ties them all together.” Likewise, in regard to Mormon’s reference to 2 Nephi 5:21–24, as found in Alma 3:14, Goff explained,

If the Alma passage were written prior to the 2 Nephi passage, then Joseph Smith not only would have had to remember to pen the Nephi text without being able to refer back to the other passage but would also have had to build the specific reference to Nephi as the original source long before Nephi became the original source.

Further analysis suggests the task may have been even more difficult than Goff has proposed. Not only does Mormon’s abridgment repeatedly refer or allude to content in the Small Plates, but it seems that some of its major narratives were specifically designed to show the fulfillment of Nephi’s earlier prophecies. In other words, not only minor textual elements, but the core design and undergirding structure of Mormon’s abridgment may be based on passages that, if Joseph were just making things up, hadn’t yet been written.