One of the most fascinating stories in the entire Book of Mormon is the account of Moroni and the Title of Liberty in which he "rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it" (Alma 46:12), and used this standard to rally the Nephites in defense of their lands and liberty. This story is filled with types, shadows and idiomatic expressions foreign to most of us who live in the modern world, but they were not strange to the ancient eastern mind as is indicated in the following quotation from Dr. Hugh Nibley:
To the modern and the western mind all this over-obvious dwelling on types and shadows seems a bit overdone, but not to the ancient or Oriental mind. The whole Arabic language is one long commentary on the deepseated feeling, so foreign to us but so characteristic of people who speak synthetic languages, that if things are alike they are the same. . . .
One of the most remarkable aspects of the story is the manner in which Moroni sought to stir up patriotic fervor by appealing to ancient and traditional devices. He connected the whole business of the rent garment with the story of the tribal ancestors Jacob and Joseph, and suggested that ". . . those who have dissented from us . . ." were the very ". . . remnant of the seed of Joseph . . ." to which the dying Jacob prophetically referred (Alma 46:27). It was not merely a resemblance or a type, but the very event foreseen by the patriarch of old. . . .
In the tenth century of our era the greatest antiquarian of the Moslem world, Muhammad ibn-Ibrahim ath-Tha'labi, collected in Persia a great many old tales and legends about the prophets of Israel. . . . Among other things, Tha'labi tells a number of stories, which we have not found anywhere else, about Jacob and the garment of Joseph. In one, Joseph's brethren bring his torn garment to their father as proof that he is dead, but Jacob after examining the garment, ("and there were in the garment of Joseph three marks or tokens when they brought it to his father") declares that the way the cloth is torn shows him that their story is not true. . . .
Aside from the great symbolic force of the tale, there can be no doubt that the story told by Moroni as one familiar to all the people actually was one that circulated among the Jews in ancient times . . . It was totally unknown to the world in which Joseph Smith lived.
These interesting little details are typical apocryphal variations on a single theme, and the theme is the one Moroni mentions; the rent garment of Joseph is the symbol both of his suffering and his deliverance, misfortune and preservation. Such things in the Book of Mormon illustrate the widespread ramifications of the Book of Mormon culture, and the recent declaration of Albright and other scholars that the ancient Hebrews had cultural roots in every civilization of the Near East. This is an acid test that no forgery could pass; it not only opens a window on a world we dreamed not of, but it brings to our unsuspecting and uninitiated minds a first glimmering suspicion of the true scope and vastness of a book nobody knows. [Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, pp. 180-189] [See the commentary on Alma 46:24]