11 Therefore he took
the records which were engraven on the plates of brass, and also the plates of Nephi,
and all the things which he had kept and preserved according to the
commandments of God, after having translated and caused to be written the
records which were on the plates of gold which had been found by the people of
Limhi, which were delivered to him by the hand of Limhi;
12 And this he did
because of the great anxiety of his people; for they were desirous beyond
measure to know concerning those people who had been destroyed.
13 And now he
translated them by the means of those two stones which were fastened into the
two rims of a bow.
14 Now these things
were prepared from the beginning, and were handed down from generation to
generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages;
15 And they have been
kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord, that he should discover to every
creature who should possess the land the iniquities and abominations of his
people;
16 And whosoever has
these things is called seer, after the manner of old times.
17 Now after Mosiah
had finished translating these records, behold, it gave an account of the
people who were destroyed, from the time that they were destroyed back to the
building of the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of
the people and they were scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth, yea,
and even from that time back until the creation of Adam.
18 Now this account
did cause the people of Mosiah to mourn exceedingly, yea, they were filled with
sorrow; nevertheless it gave them much knowledge, in the which they did
rejoice.
19 And this account
shall be written hereafter; for behold, it is expedient that all people should
know the things which are written in this account.
20 And now, as I said
unto you, that after king Mosiah had done these things, he took the plates of brass,
and all the things which he had kept, and conferred them upon Alma, who was the
son of Alma; yea, all the records, and also the interpreters, and conferred them
upon him, and commanded him that he should keep and preserve them, and also
keep a record of the people, handing them down from one generation to another,
even as they had been handed down from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem.
Mosiah 28:11-20
King Mosiah2 takes the brass plates and the
plates of Nephi. He preserved these
according to God’s commandments. These
were the plates Amaleki gave King Mosiah1. “Wherefore,
it came to pass that after Amaleki had delivered up these plates into the hands
of king Benjamin, he took them and put them with the other plates, which
contained records which had been handed down by the kings, from generation to
generation until the days of king Benjamin.” (Words of Mormon 1:10).
He turns to the twenty-four plates which had been found by
Limhi’s people.
26
Nevertheless, they did find a land which had been peopled; yea, a land which
was covered with dry bones; yea, a land which had been peopled and which had
been destroyed; and they, having supposed it to be the land of Zarahemla,
returned to the land of Nephi, having arrived in the borders of the land not
many days before the coming of Ammon.
27
And they brought a record with them, even a record of the people whose bones
they had found; and it was engraven on plates of ore.
Mosiah 21:26-27
His people wanted to know what the records contained about
this society which had been destroyed. Using
the Urim and Thummim, he translated the plates.
Mormon describes the Urim and Thummim as two stones.
Incidentally, the particular
wording of the passage in Mosiah is especially interesting, pointedly referring
to "those two stones" as though the reader should already know about
them, yet there is no previous mention in the Book of Mormon to any such
"two stones." This anomaly may be the consequence of the Book of Mormon
being an abridgment or perhaps of the lost 116 pages of manuscript, which may
have mentioned the stones.[1]
The interpreters had been prepared “from the beginning” and were passed on from one generation to the
next. These are referred to in
Exodus. “And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the
Thummim [HEB Light and Perfection]; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart, when
he goeth in before the LORD: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children
of Israel upon his heart before the LORD continually” (Exodus 28:30).
We learn what it means to be called a seer. “[W]hosoever
has [the Urim and Thummim] is called a seer.”
The record translated by Mosiah contained an account of
people whose history goes back to the tower of Babel. The Lord confounded their language and people
were scattered throughout the Earth. The
record went back to the beginning, the creation of Adam.
The reading of the record cause the people to mourn. Still, they rejoiced because of the knowledge
they had received.
While no specific mention is made
of an assembly in the final chapters of Mosiah, conferring the sacred symbols
of leadership on a successor would only have taken place at a public ceremony.
The ritualized responses of the people to the reading of the book of Ether,
described in Mosiah 28:18, also suggest some kind of formal gathering in
92 or 91 BC.[2]
Mormon tells us he will give us the account of the Jaredites
at a later time. “[A]ll people should know the things which are written in this account.”
Writing in Mosiah 28:11-19, Mormon
said that he would later give the story of the Jaredites. He made this
statement at the point where he mentioned that King Mosiah had translated the
record of that people. Apparently the problems he faced in his role as
commander of the Nephite armies in his people's battles against the Lamanites
kept him from abridging the Jaredite record. But his son, Moroni, fulfilled the
promise by giving us the Book of Ether. So Moroni preserved the Book of Mormon
editorial pattern of not failing to cover what was promised, even though it
took a generation.[3]
As Mosiah had no heir to whom he could pass the records, he
gave them to Alma2. This included all the records (brass plates,
small and large plates of Nephi, and the Jaredite record), the interpreters,
and, we assume, the Liahona and the sword of Laban.
[1] Joseph
Smith and the Text of the Book of Mormon, Robert J. Matthews, Maxwell
Institute, accessed December 28, 2014.
[2] The
Book of Mosiah: Thoughts about Its Structure, Purposes, Themes, and Authorship,
Gary L. Sturgess, Maxwell Institute, accessed December 28, 2014.
[3] Mormon's
Editorial Promises, John A. Tvedtnes, Maxwell Institute, accessed December
28, 2014.
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