Saturday, June 14, 2014

Mormon Explains Why He Used the Small Plates

Today I read the Words of Mormon.  I remember the first time I was old enough to really read the Book of Mormon on my own I was kind of shocked how it jumped from about 200 B.C. to 385 A.D in one page.  I mean that is almost a thousand year gap right there.  As I was reading this morning I was struck that Mormon started with his own record and worked backwards in his abridgement.  To me personally it seems like that is the opposite way I would do an abridgement.  I would start at the beginning and work my way back.  I wonder if that was a cultural thing, or the Lord told Mormon to do it that way? 

I also can't help but wonder what Mormon though when he read the plates of Nephi?  To read all those prophecies and know they have come true already?  Would it have been fulfilling for him?  I know he said he found them pleasing.  Also, knowing the rest of the Book of Mormon and how Mormon always focused on the spiritual aspects of the records as opposed to the historical, I am sure that he enjoyed the small plates of Nephi very much.  It might have also been a relief too that for the last 400 or so years, he did not need to do any abridging, because Nephi and Jacob and their descendents had done it for him already.  I know I would have been pleased if I had just finished condensing almost 600 years of history!  What ever else his reasons, I am glad Moroni included them in their entirety for us to have.  Until tomorrow.

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