Question about the Golden Plates' authors

[apexviper13]

I didn't think about this until earlier when I was going over some notes for my New Testament class I'm taking college. Many of the books of the New Testament were written years after the events took place. For example, it's believed that the tax collector that wrote the book of Matthew. I was wondering if it's possible that the same could have happened with some of the books of the Golden Plates.

[Blackmarch]

I didn't think about this until earlier when I was going over some notes for my New Testament class I'm taking college. Many of the books of the New Testament were written years after the events took place. For example, it's believed that the tax collector that wrote the book of Matthew. I was wondering if it's possible that the same could have happened with some of the books of the Golden Plates.

Some parts are.. mainly in the midddle and the last half of the book (more or less).

almost all of Mormon's abridgement and comments are written many years after the actual events.. altho he's using other writings to compile it which were written a lot closer to the events they cover.

[RipplecutBuddha]

Allow me to quote from The Book of Mormon-The Earliest Text edited by Royal Skousen. This part comes from the introduction, and explains the situation far better than I could

"The first six books, from the first book of Nephi through the book of Omni, constitute the small plates of Nephi, an eyewitness account of the first generations of the Nephites that was written on thin metal plates. Mormon, the much later editor, then interrupts with the Words of Mormon to explain that he has added this intependant, first person document to his own comprehensive abridgement of the large plates of Nephi, another set of thin metal plates but more of them. These more extensive plates consist of the book of Mosiah and four subsequent books (from the book of Alma to the fourth book of Nephi) and end with Mormon's own autobiography, the book of Mormon (a separate book within the book of Mormon). At the eighth chapter of this autobiography, Moroni takes over his father's record and finishes it. Then at the end he adds his own book to the record (the book of Moroni), yet only after writing anabbreviate history of a pre-Hebraic people, the Jaredites, who had been led to the New World from the tower of Babel and had subsequently destroyed themselves...(in the book of Ether.)

So we have three main narrators, Nephi, Mormon, and his son Moroni. In the Bulk of Mormon's abridgement (As well as in Moroni's work in the book of Ether) he quotes the authors and writers often, so we get to hear their voices as well.

A useful comparison would be if Paul had edited the four Gospels and Acts in the New Testament.

I hope this helps

[Traveler]

I didn't think about this until earlier when I was going over some notes for my New Testament class I'm taking college. Many of the books of the New Testament were written years after the events took place. For example, it's believed that the tax collector that wrote the book of Matthew. I was wondering if it's possible that the same could have happened with some of the books of the Golden Plates.

In general scriptures are written decades and even centuries after the events recorded. In the case of the book of Genesis some of the events recorded occurred thousands of years previously. It is also interesting that in almost all cases the original “autograph” copies are lost somewhere in time. This is true of even recent scripture. For example our Doctrine and Covenants would have been lost during a mob attack and burning of the press making the first copies - all that was saved were printed version (copies) of the manuscripts that were saved by a couple of brave young girls that risks their lives to save the manuscripts.

It is as though war has been declared on sacred scripture. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls was a complete library of the scriptures used during the time of Christ - perhaps even the very copies studied by many of the first Christians, including Apostles. Not only has the fact that the most complete collection of Old Testament scriptures ever found heavily discounted but it is also attributed to an Essen society despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

In the year 1849 a library of New Testament scriptures was discovered in a hidden chamber of an ancient Christian church (second century construction). Not only have the manuscripts never been translated but to this day even the books of scripture that comprise the collection have been kept a secret. One none-scripture at the scene described how sacred scripture was being systematically altered and destroyed - thus the reason the scriptures were being hidden.

The Story thickens with a find of ancient Biblical Scripture in China that were also hidden with the same excuse - Christian scripture being sought for and destroyed by Christians. This is interesting to me because these hidden scriptures date back into time around 350 AD to 400 AD which was the time the Nephite scriptures (Book of Mormon) were hidden for the same reason which also correlates in time to the rise of the Trinitarian tradition which has defined “Christianity” since and plunged the world into what is known as the Dark Ages.

The Traveler

[Just_A_Guy]

Of course, the Church would have argued that the texts it sought to destroy were spurious in origin and would only serve to propagate false doctrine.