Smith and Cowdery, in their early twenties were not dumb and had fanciful storytelling abilities. It is not clear what Smith originally had in mind when he first brought up the possibility of two or three stories of two or three different people back in the book of Mosiah. There was the second sketchy account of a voyage of Jews from Jerusalem with an unknown son of Jerusalem’s King Zedekiah, who lived apart from the Nephites in the area of present day Columbia and grew unbeknownst to the Nephites into a great nation...but that is a different discussion.
Smith brings up the discovery of the 24 gold plates in Chapter 8 of Mosiah in this unknown tongue. At one point Smith was going to have Mormon translate the record and presumably include it in the book of Mosiah. Smith decides to have king Mosiah be a Seer and translator and has him translate this unknown (Adamic tongue) into reformed Egyptian at about 92 BC. (Mosiah 28:11) Whether Smith forgot the Jaredite record was already translated by a Seer, or not, he had Moroni who was not a Seer, translate the 24 gold plates again in the book of Ether.
It is remarkable that Smith did as well as he did keeping the story with all these records covering over 3,000 years in at least three unrelated languages as believable as he did. Its just that the mind of the average person gets tired of following it all. The only thing consistent about the ‘writers’ is that someone had to know the whole convoluted story and that someone was Smith. But, with the loss of the book of Lehi containing the first 475 years, it presented real logistical problems for Smith and required all of his creative thinking. (maybe with some help from Cowdery)
Smith fails in getting a credible scenario for the winding up scene. He does have a couple of ‘flash backs’ to establish a relationship between Mormon and his newly found son discovered in 385 AD. The story by Moroni saying his father was slain in battle is patently false. (Mormon 8:5) This chapter 8 of his father’s small book is written 15 years after Mormon’s description of the last battle where only he and his son and 22 others survived. Smith has him say in Mormon 6:6 that Mormon had hid up all the records except the few plates that he was going to give his son, Moroni before the last big battle. This is where the story, logistically, bogs down. Mormon could conceivably have made a record of the things he had observed on a few plates as he was commanded to do in Mormon 1:4 and might have wanted to hand those few plates to his son before the battle, but the abridgment of the whole Nephite record supposedly done by Mormon required Mormon to have all the tons of records at his disposal with plenty of time to study to find the 1% that he felt was worthy to include in his abridgment.
The only time this could possibly happen would be if there had been a cave in the Hill Cumorah that both Smith and Cowdery described that contained tons of records that even Brigham Young characterized as being many wagon loads of records, and Mormon felt safe to peruse and find time and a spot to mine ore and make dozens of fresh gold plates to engrave his abridgment on.
This could only have happened after the big battle where Mormon hid in this cave with all the records. His son and the 23 others deserted him until Smith had Moroni return 15 years later to find the complete abridgment his father had made during those 15 years. He of course had to find the 24 gold plated Jaredite record as well. He could have looked for Mosiah’s translation, but since Smith was going to turn Moroni into an angel he thought making him a Seer first while still in this life was a good twist. It just made God look impractical and not cost effective.
Smith thought the insertion of the Words of Mormon into the record right after the replacement record and before the book of Mosiah would clarify and not make him or his God look like they were inept. Unfortunately, the dating is wrong and Mormon could not have possibly have made the abridgment of the book of Lehi down to the reign of king Benjamin before the big battle. He goes on to say that, at this point, he was still perusing the records and lo and behold he just magically lays his hands on what will be Smith’s ‘replacement record’ that God had Nephi start about 950 years earlier and was never mentioned by any of the record keepers after it was finished, even though Amaleki was to deliver it to king Benjamin, the keeper of the records. (WOM vs. 9) Smith forgot to modify his drafts of the book of Mosiah to cover this important change of events and the new character, Amaleki who Smith let live to be about 300. (Smith needed about 8-10 more father-to-son writers in his replacement record to keep age and dating more in line. The same problem occurs again with Smith in the book called 4 Nephi.)
Smith/God wasn’t thinking clearly when he had Moroni return to hill Cumorah 15 years after the last battle and say his father had been slain in battle, and then insert the WOM saying Mormon was in the big cave with all the records waiting for his son and in the middle of his abridgment. Mormon certainly had a long wait for his son. (15 years to 400 AD!)
No comments:
Post a Comment