On the Nephi/Moroni "Problem"

On the issue of the name of the angel who appeared to Joseph Smith, Robert Bowman wrote:

In the 1839 manuscript of Joseph’s History and in the 1842 published version in Times and Seasons, which is the basis for the LDS scripture Joseph Smith-History, a new twist emerged. In this account, Joseph said about the angel that “his name was Nephi” (EMD 1:63; cf. Joseph Smith, History, circa June 1839-circa 1841 [Draft 2], 5; “History of Joseph Smith,” Times and Seasons 3.12, April 15, 1842, 753, both available at josephsmithpapers.org). The Joseph Smith Papers website has a note here acknowledging that LDS Church Historian Albert Carrington changed “Nephi” to “Moroni” in the manuscript, probably in 1871. Mormons have attributed the problem to a “clerical error,” but this seems unlikely in view of the fact that the names do not sound or look at all similar. If one wishes to consider the name Nephi here as an error, one should probably attribute the error to Joseph himself.

Later in 1842, just a few months after the publication of the History with the name Nephi, Joseph issued a letter to the LDS Church referring to the angel as Moroni: “Glad tidings from Cumorah! Moroni, an Angel from heaven, declaring the fulfilment of the prophets—the book to be revealed” (D&C 128:20) (52). These discrepancies in published statements in 1842 confirm the fact that the identity of the angel as the resurrected prophet Moroni was not well established even toward the end of Joseph’s life—not even, apparently, in Joseph’s mind. (Robert M. Bowman Jr., Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions: Examining the Foundations of Christianity and Mormonism [Tampa, Fla.: DeWard Publishing Company, 2020], 205-6)

As Bowman does not present anything new in this section and provides the reader with no meaningful interaction with LDS works addressing this issue, I will present some of the responses in print and online. Before I do, it should be noted that, according to some early Latter-day Saints, including some who were personally acquainted with Joseph, Nephi and other Book of Mormon figures did appear to Joseph Smith.

John Taylor:

And when Joseph Smith was raised up as a Prophet of God, Mormon, Moroni, Nephi and others of the ancient Prophets who formerly lived on this Continent, and Peter and John and others who lived on the Asiatic Continent, came to him and communicated to him certain principles pertaining to the Gospel of the Son of God. (JOD 17:374 | April 8, 1875)

Afterwards the Angel Moroni came to him and revealed to him the Book of Mormon, with the history of which you are generally familiar, and also with the statements that I am now making pertaining to these things. And then came Nephi, one of the ancient prophets, that had lived upon this continent, who had an interest in the welfare of the people that he had lived amongst in those days . . . Again who more likely than Mormon and Nephi, and some of those prophets who had ministered to the people upon this continent, under the influence of the same Gospel, to operate again as its representatives? Who more likely than those who had officiated in the holy Melchisedec priesthood to administer to Joseph Smith and reveal unto him the great principles which were developed. (JOD 21:161, 163 | December 7, 1879)

George Q. Cannon

If you will read the history of the Church from the beginning, you will find that Joseph was visited by various angelic beings, but not one of them professed to give him the keys until John the Baptist came to him. Moroni, who held the keys of the record of the stick of Ephraim, visited Joseph; he had doubtless, also, visits from Nephi and it may be from Alma and others, but though they came and had authority, holding the authority of the Priesthood, we have no account of their ordaining him, neither did Joseph ever profess, because of the ministration of these angels, to have authority to administer in any of the ordinances of the Kingdom of God. (JOD 13:47 | December 5, 1869)

Brigham Young

My friend, Jacob Vidrine, shared with me the following from Brigham Young where he addressed the Nephi/Moroni issue:

"In the history of Joseph Smith, the prophet, written by his mother, there is a quotation made from Joseph's own history, in which he describes the appearance of the messenger to him on the night of the 21st of September, 1823. Joseph says that the messenger told him that his name was Nephi. Bro. Orson [Pratt] puts a foot-note to the name of Nephi in the extract published in Mother Smith's book, and substitutes the name of Moroni therefor, and refers to several of our works to substantiate the correction. There is really no discrepancy in the history about these names. It was Moroni who delivered the sacred records and Urim and Thummim to Joseph; but Nephi also visited him. We have carefully examined the record, and find the mistake is in Bro. Orson and not in the history; at least we cannot find it there." (Brigham Young letter to Brigham Young Jr., 24 April 1866, LDS Archives)

LDS responses to the “Nephi/Moroni” Issue:

Brant Gardner

Joseph Smith, “The History of Joseph Smith,” Times and Seasons, 3, no. 12 (April 15, 1842): 753, records that the angel who appeared to Joseph is called Nephi, instead of Moroni. “When I first looked upon him I was afraid, but the fear soon left me. He called me by name and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Nephi.” Modern printings of that record correct the error as in the official JS-History 1:33.

D. Michel Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 157, provides some background and a speculation:

In the 1838 manuscript of Joseph Smith’s official history and its printed version of 1842 and 1851, the name of the messenger who appeared three times in 1823 is given as Nephi rather than Moroni. Since Joseph Smith’s dictated history in 1832 gave the angel’s name as “Moroni,” historians have usually attributed the later Nephi substitution to “clerical error.” However, clerical error it not a convincing explanation, since four years later the Times and Seasons, of which Smith was editor, published the Nephi reference, which Smith could have easily corrected but did not. Moreover, his mother, Lucy Mack Smith, also identifies the messenger as Nephi in her history. And clerical error cannot explain evidence from the Whitmer family, who were no longer affiliated with the LDS Church: “I have heard my grandmother (Mary M. Whitmer) [mother of five Book of Mormon witnesses] say on several occasions that she was shown the plates of the Book of Mormon by an holy angel, whom she always called Brother Nephi.”

Quinn speculates that the Book of Mormon name Nephi is somehow related to a mystical word with the generic meaning of “a spirit” (pp. 156-57). William J. Hamblin, “That Old Black Magic,” review of D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 248, discusses the tenuous threads Quinn uses for this particular speculation and finds them as having little merit. I agree with Hamblin’s assessment of Quinn’s argument.

Quinn believers that the idea of clerical error is “not a convincing explanation.” However, he simply cites multiple examples that were perpetuated from a single original into various print versions. The expectation that Joseph Smith would have altered the name if it were wrong supposes an editorial care that cannot be demonstrated.

Lucy Mack Smith’s apparent corroboration is simply another case of the “official” version being written into her history. It was not part of what she dictated from memory but was the Times and Seasons account that was incorporated into her manuscript, like other documents. See Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Luck Mack Smit’s Family Memoir, 335-36. The case of Mother Whitmer is interesting. It is possible that she was describing a different heavenly being that she remembered erroneously, or that her granddaughters reported the incident erroneously. It is doubtful that the early Saints had the familiarity with these unusual names that their modern counterparts do. Even if Joseph Smith had created the term “Nephi” to mask a term for a generic spirit, there is no reason to believe that Mother Whitmer would understand the term in precisely that way. The best conclusion is that “Nephi” really was a clerical error in the original manuscript that simply was not corrected in the printed versions. See the FAIR Wiki for more details, coming from the same conclusion. “Moroni’s Visit: Nephi or Moroni.” (Brant A. Garner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Book, 2011], 92-3 n. 7)

 Matthew B Brown

In his 2004 FairMormon Conference Presentation entitled Historical of Hysterical: Anti-Mormons and Documentary Sources, the late Matthew B. Brown wrote the following about the angel Nephi/Mormon "problem":

The next topic that we will take a look at is the Nephi vs. Moroni controversy. The primary document of concern in this case is Joseph Smiths 1838 manuscript history. In this handwritten record the angel that revealed the golden plates of the Book of Mormon is identified as Nephi instead of Moroni.⁷³ When the history of the Church was first published in the Times and Seasons newspaper in 1842 this designation was retained⁷⁴ and then there were several subsequent LDS sources that copied, and therefore repeated, the Times and Seasons designation.

The explanation for this anomaly is really quite simple. Joseph Smith did not write the section of his 1838 history where the angel is called Nephi. This section is in the handwriting of George W. Robinson who served as one of the Prophets scribes. As Apostle Orson Pratt explained, the Nephi designation represents either carelessness or ignorance on the part of the transcriber.⁷⁵ This explanation is supported by the information presented on this slide. It is clear from the entries seen here that Joseph Smith consistently identified the angel as Moroni in 1823, 1830, 1834, 1835, 1838, 1839 and 1842. The dates that are pointed out by the purple line show that only months after the angel was incorrectly identified in the manuscript history as Nephi by George Robinson he was correctly identified as Moroni by James Mulholland another scribe who was working on the Church history project.

Anti-Mormons think that since Joseph Smith was acting as the editor of the Times and Seasons newspaper when the Nephi designation was published he would have changed it if he had thought it was not correct. But a quick check of the History of the Church reveals that the Prophet probably didnt have sufficient time to scrutinize this portion of his history before it went to press. On the day before publication he was occupied with the legalities of a bankruptcy proceeding. On the day of publication he was busily engaged in the same type of activity plus he had to write a lengthy article on Baptism for the Dead for the very same edition of the paper that was about to incorrectly identify the angel as Nephi.⁷⁶

Critics of the Prophet believe that if he really thought the Nephi designation was incorrect then he would have published a retraction. But since none was ever forthcoming they think he changed his mind about the angels identity. A popular English dictionary from 1828 defines the word retraction as The act of withdrawing something advanced, or changing something done.⁷⁷ Based upon this definition I contend that Joseph Smith did indeed publish a retraction. The Nephi designation went out in the 15 April 1842 edition of the Times and Seasons and then in the 1 October 1842 edition of the same paper the Prophet (still acting as the editor) published a letter, written by himself, wherein he identified the angel as Moroni. This is most definitely a change from what had previously been done and thus qualifies, in the strict dictionary sense, as a retraction.

Notes for the Above

⁷³ Jessee, ed., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 199.

⁷⁴ See Times and Seasons, vol. 3, no. 12, 15 April 1842, 753.

⁷⁵ See Orson Pratt to John Christensen, 11 March 1876, Orson Pratt Papers, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

⁷⁶ HC, 4:594-600.

⁷⁷ Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York: S. Converse, 1828), s.v. retraction, emphasis added.

Finally, one cannot help but chuckle at how Bowman contradicts his earlier blanket statement that, in LDS theology, angels “are understood to be resurrected human beings possessing immortal, glorified physical bodies” (p. 198) when he writes this:

As LDS leaders and teachers worked to integrate Joseph’s later teaching about angels with other scriptural texts, they came to the position that the term angel could refer both to unembodied human spirits (either pre-moral humans or post-mortem humans awaiting resurrection) and to resurrected human beings (p. 203).