And now, verily I say
unto you, that an account of those things that you have written, which have
gone out of your hands, is engraven upon the plates of Nephi; Yea, and you
remember it was said in those writings that a more particular account was given
of these things upon the plates of Nephi. And now, because the account which is
engraven upon the plates of Nephi is more particular concerning the things
which, in my wisdom, I would bring to the knowledge of the people in this
account-- Therefore, you shall translate the engravings which are on the plates
of Nephi, down even till you come to the reign of king Benjamin, or until you
come to that which you have translated, which you have retained; And behold,
you shall publish it as the record of Nephi; and thus I will confound those who
have altered my words. I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil. Behold, they have only got a part, or an abridgment of the account of Nephi. Behold, there are many things engraven upon the plates of Nephi which do throw greater views upon my gospel; therefore, it is wisdom in me that you should translate this first part of the engravings of Nephi, and send forth in this work. (D&C 10:38-45)
Commenting on this pericope, J.B. Haws
noted the following:
The passage just
quoted seems to refer to only one set of plates: the plates of Nephi.
However, today’s readers of the Book of Mormon are accustomed to thinking in
terms of two sets of “plates of Nephi”—a large set and a small set.
Because of that common contemporary reading, it is not unexpected that a recent
and important commentary on Doctrine and Covenants 10 suggested this about the
passage just quoted: “The two references to ‘the plates of Nephi’ in this
paragraph [the paragraph now Doctrine and Covenants 10:38-39] actually point to
two different sets of plates.” But what if the repeated “plates of Nephi” phrases
in Doctrine and Covenants 10:38-45 really do refer to only one set of “plates
of Nephi,” as they seem to do at first glance—and that is the set we know now as
the “small plates”? This is the alternative (and perhaps more straightforward)
reading suggested here. This reading would give the phrase more consistency and
believability, this reading fits with what Joseph Smith likely would have known
(and not known) about the composition of the gold plates before translating
what is now 1 Nephi through Words of Mormon—remembering that he received
Doctrine and Covenants 10:38-45 therefore avoids a possible anachronism and
adds credence to Joseph Smith’s account about the resolution of the lost 116
pages episode.
From everything we
can glean about the plates that Joseph Smith possessed, only one section could
accurately be called “the plates of Nephi,” and that is the “small plates”
section. All the other plates that Joseph translated from, based on internal
descriptions from the Book of Mormon, consisted of Mormon’s and Moroni’s
abridgements and writings on plates of their own making. Therefore,
contemporary students of the Book of Mormon understand the lost manuscript
(what Joseph Smith in the preface to the first edition of the Book of Mormon
called the “Book of Lehi”) as comprising a significant portion of Mormon’s abridgement
of what we now know as “the large plates of Nephi” rather than a
translation of the large plates of Nephi themselves. But it is doubtful that
Joseph Smith and his scribes would have even thought yet in those terms. From
one thing, the descriptors large and small do not come from Nephi
or Mormon, but from Jacob’s writings that were included on the small plates
(see Jacob 1:1; 3:13)—and Joseph had not yet translated the small plates at the
time he received the revelation that is now Doctrine and Covenants 10.
How might Joseph have
conceived of the source document for the 116 pages? In the preface to the first
edition of the Book of Mormon, he described the contents of the 116 pages as “the
Book of Lehi, which was an account abridged from the plates of Lehi”—not the
plates of Nephi (Historical introduction to Preface to the Book of Mormon,
circa August 1829, in JSP, D1:93; emphasis added). This characterization
suggests a couple of key points. First, it is not unreasonable to infer that
Joseph drew his understanding of this from Mormon’s own characterization of, or
introduction to, the opening portion of his abridgement. That is, since Lehi’s
story opened the record, it would have been natural for Mormon to designate
that portion as the book or plates of Lehi; this fits, for example, the way
Mormon introduced and grouped together books like Alma or Helaman, even though
those books include abridged records of other custodial authors after Alma or
Helaman. And Nephi himself wrote that he began his record (what we now call the
“larger plates”) by documenting the account of his father, Lehi (see 1 Nephi
19:1). Second, up to this point in the Book of Mormon translation process—that is,
up to the receipt of Doctrine and Covenants 10—Joseph and Martin had never
translated directly from Nephi’s writings (or Jacob’s or Enos’s) or from Nephi’s
plates, but rather from Mormon’s abridgement of those writings—unless Mormon
had included quoted passages or excerpts on his own plates from Nephi or Jacob
or Enos, as he did with writings and sermons of, say, King Benjamin or Alma.
But even those passages would not have come from what we know as “the small
plates of Nephi,” since before Benjamin’s day, the “large plates of Nephi” were
apparently kept by a different line of authors than were the small plates (see
Jarom 1:14; Omni 1:25)—and Mormon reported that he did not even search out the
small plates until he had finished abridging the account “down to the
reign of this King Benjamin” (Words of Mormon 1:3).
Therefore, if all of
the references to the “plates of Nephi” in the revelation that is now section
10 of the Doctrine and Covenants refer to what modern Book of Mormon readers
think of as the small plates of Nephi, the revelation reads very
coherently. Here is a possible reading of the earlier extant copy of the revelation—chapter
IX of the Book of Commandments—from that perspective, with suggested
parenthetical interpretations: “And now, verily I say unto you, that an account
of those things that you have written, which have gone out of your hands [the
116 pages], are engraved upon the plates of Nephji [small plates of Nephi]”—in other
words, ‘The same basic story elements that you have already covered in
translating the Book of Lehi (“an account of those things that you have written”)
are also narrated (“engraven”) on the small plates of Nephi.’ The
revelation continues:
Yea, and you remember,
it was said in those writings [the now-lost writings, or Mormon’s abridgement
of the Book of Lehi] that a more particular account was given of these things
upon the plates of Nephi [the small plates]. And now, because the account which
is engraven upon the plates of Nephi [the small plates] is more particular
concerning these things, which in my wisdom I would bring to the knowledge of
the people in this [more particular] account: therefore, you shall translate
the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi [the small plates], down even
till you come to the reign of king Benjamin.
(the wording here is
another indication that when Joseph recommenced translating after the loss of
the 116 pages, he “apparently picked up where he and Harris had stopped, in the
book of Mosiah,” and then he translated the books o the “small plates” last,
based on the instructions in this revelation.) (JSP, H1:38)
As if to underscore
the differences between the Book of Lehi and the plates of Nephi, the revelation
makes this point: “Behold, they [those who stole the Book of Lehi manuscript]
have only got a part, or an abridgment of the account [notice: not plates]
of Nephi. Behold there are many things engraven on the plates of Nephi [the small
plates of Npehi] which do throw great views upon my gospel.”
This suggested reading
matters because the complexity of the relationship between the two sets of
plates of Nephi likely became clear to Joseph Smith only after translating
the small plates. Hence, it might very well have been anachronistic for a revelation
in the spring of 1829 (Doctrine and Covenants 10) to refer to anything other
than one set of the “plates of Nephi,” since Joseph would not yet have
been thinking in terms of having more than one record of Nephi, because Mormon included
in his compilation only one set of records that appropriately bore the title “the
plates of Nephi”; the small plates. The phrasing of Doctrine and
Covenants 10 thus fits with what Joseph Smith would have likely learned “line
upon line” as he translated the plates, such that it also fits with a principle
outlined in 2 Nephi and elsewhere: the Lord “speaketh unto men according to
their language, unto their understanding” (2 Nephi 31:3; see Doctrine and Covenants
1:24). (J.B. Haws, “The Lost 116 Pages Story: What We Do Know, What We Don’t
Know, and What We Mgiht Know,” in Scott C. Esplin, ed., Raising the Standard
of Truth: Exploring the History and Teachings of the Early Restoration [Provo,
Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book, 2020], 33-54, here, pp. 43-46)
