Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?

Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon is a collection of books written by kings and prophets under inspiration from God.  It covers 1000 years of history from 600 B.C. at the time of the Babylonian conquest until 400 A.D. when the Nephites were destroyed as a people.  As with the Bible, there are many of the writings of these prophets to which we have no access in our current Book of Mormon.  

Unlike the Bible, these texts were not translated by hand over those centuries.  They existed in their original form until about 322 AD.  The guardian of the plates and the prophet among the Nephites at that time was a man named Ammaron. By then, the Nephites had rebelled against God and had degenerated into a state of wickedness such that Ammaron hid all of the Nephite records in a cave in a hill called Shim for fear they would be destroyed (i.e., it was a common practice in Mesoamerica for conquering people to destroy all the records of the conquered people.) Ammaron knew that he had to entrust the secret of the plates to someone else before he died.  After prayerful consideration, he found a ten-year-old boy that he found to be “sober” and “quick to observe.”  That boy’s name was Mormon.  Ammaron told Mormon where the records were hidden and instructed him to wait until he was 24-years-old before seeking the plates.

 

Mormon did as he was told. Under guidance from the Lord, Mormon spent the rest of his life abridging the records of the Nephites until he had a set of plates which, although heavy, could be carried by one man.  He may not have known the significance of that when he began, but he certainly did by the time he concluded his task.  By 385 A.D., the Nephites had been almost completely destroyed.  Only twenty-four individuals remained.  Mormon was an old man by then.  He hid up the Nephite records in a hill named Cumorah, but gave his abridgment along with a few other things, like the Liahona, to his son, Moroni. 

Moroni took those sacred things and traveled northward, avoiding their enemies, the Lamanites, because the Lamanites would kill any Nephite who would not deny Jesus Christ and Moroni would not deny Jesus Christ. (Moroni 1: 1-3) He wandered northward for 30 years, stopping when possible to add his own thoughts and feelings to the record.  He then hid up those things in a stone box in another hill whose name is not given in the Book of Mormon. (Tradition talks about the hill in upstate New York as Cumorah, but that is not the same hill spoken of by Mormon.  The hill in New York has been called the Hill Cumorah since Oliver Cowdery gave it that name.)

It was Moroni, as a resurrected being, who led Joseph Smith to the records. Joseph translated the plates through the guidance of the Lord.  The Book of Mormon was published in English in March of 1830.  The first edition was for 5,000 copies.  Now the Book is available in dozens of languages and millions of copies.

Text copyright July 2013, Gebara Education

 

All pictures from www.lds.org

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Picture of First Edition Book of Mormon which is from www.ldsseminary.wordpress.com