Variant: The printer’s manuscript and the 1830 edition
of the Book of Mormon read “that king Benjamin had a gift from God. . . .” “Benjamin”
became “Mosiah” beginning in the 1837 edition. Ammon left Zarahemla after the
coronation of Mosiah (Mosiah 7:2-3) but perhaps before Benjamin’s death three
years after the coronation (Mosiah 6:5). Skousen notes that Benjamin lives three
years after Mosiah’s coronation and Ammon’s party departs after three years of
peace at the beginning of Mosiah’s reign. The timeline is close enough that “some
overlap is possible. Perhaps Ammon and his men left not knowing that Benjamin
had died, or perhaps he was still alive when they left.”
Part of the coronation was Benjamin’s
transmittal to Mosiah of religious and royal objects: “And moreover, he also
gave him charge concerning the records which were engraven on the plates of
brass; and also the plates of Nephi; and also, the sword of Laban, and the ball
or director, which led our fathers through the wilderness, which was prepared
by the hand of the Lord that thereby they might be led, every one according to
the heed and diligence which they gave unto him” (Mosiah 1:16). The
interpreters do not appear on this list. Perhaps they were not part of the
transfer of kingship. Benjamin may have retained the interpreters and his
prophetic functions, passing only the governing function to his son. Therefore,
the printer’s manuscript’s mention of “Benjamin” would have been correct in
identifying the interpreters as being in his possession, not Mosiah’s (at least
when Ammon left Zarahemla). All of this is plausible, but perhaps not the best
explanation for this particular variant.
Looking past the modern manuscript
text and its variants, we must also deal with the sources Mormon used to
compile his plate text. In this case, there are two possible records, that of
Limhi and that of Ammon. Most of chapter 21 must come from the records of Limhi’s
people, even though it is quite probable that Mormon supplemented his sources with
some record from Ammon, which is imputed from what must have been available but
is never explicitly mentioned. I suggest that the original conversation from
Ammon was that “the king” had the “gift from God, whereby he could interpret
such engravings” (Mosiah 21:28) and did not mention the name of the king. The
people of Limhi would remember only Benjamin, their first leader, Zeniff,
having departed during Benjamin’s reign (Omni 1:24-29). The recorders for Limhi’s
records entered their own idea of who the unnamed king was and wrote Benjamin
into the record. Mormon used that record and therefore that name.
This same issue also occurs in Ether
4:1, where Moroni writes Benjamin and the text has been emended to read Mosiah.
Of that textual issue, Skousen notes:
The passage in Ether 4:1 causes more
difficulties than this one on Mosiah 21:28. The Ether passage implies that king
Benjamin had some control over the Jaredite record, which means, of course, that
he must have still been alive when king Limhi handed over these newly found
records to king Mosiah (Mosiah 22:13-14). (Royal Skousen, Analysis of
Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 3:1419)
Rather than a significant textual
issue, however, I see Moroni’s reference as a reflection of the presence of Benjamin
in Mosiah 21:28. Rather than an independent witness, Moroni is a dependent
witness. Moroni simply uses the information as it appeared in his father’s text
on the plates that Moroni had with him. (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness:
Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. [Salt
Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007], 3:374-76)
Skousen’s final comment is: “The
occurrence of Benjamin instead of Mosiah cannot be readily explained
as an error in the early transmission of the text; moreover, the text can be interpreted
so that Benjamin was still alive when the plates of Ether were delivered by
king Limhi to king Mosiah, who then gave the Jaredite record to his father,
king Benjamin, for his examination and safekeeping.” Ibid., 3:1420-21. As I
noted above, I disagree with this conclusion. (Ibid., 376 n. 4)