Usually, when people talk about sealing something, they are thinking of licking and sealing an envelope. Perhaps Moroni’s closing up the stone box would have been considered a kind of sealing, but the phrase “to seal” has a lot more to do with authority than closure. When people are sealed in the temple, it does not mean they are glued together forever; rather, they are authenticated as part of the eternal family.
In the ancient world, court or state officials often had a unique seal, which may have been a little cylinder seal or a signet ring that left an impression when rolled onto clay or wax. When a seal of approval was placed on something, it became official. Jewish law required three witnesses to sign and put their seal on a lump of clay that was then attached to the document. This was necessary in order for a document to be legally binding. Only a judge could break the seal and if the seal was otherwise broken, the integrity of the document was compromised. A broken seal indicated someone may have tampered with the contents. Without sealing a document, someone could rub a character out of a metal plate and scratch in a new one, changing the original intent of the document.
Two Roman brass plates from AD 109, which we acquired in 2005, were witnessed in this ancient manner and now reside in the BYU Special Collections Library. They are an official decree of the Roman Emperor Trajan granting citizenship to a retiring Roman soldier who had fought for 25 years in the Roman Army. This doubled, sealed, witnessed document served as the soldier’s retirement passport, giving him Roman citizenship and privileges as a retiree. Fragments of such plates are found all over the old Roman Empire. However, there are less than twenty such sets of two plates—and one of them is archived at BYU. These ancient sealed Roman plates are interesting because they are composed of two bronze plates connected by a ring so that they open like a book. The full text is written on the outside (equivalent to the front cover) and then the same text is replicated on the inside. On the back are listed the official names of seven witnesses, as required by Roman law. These witnesses are officials of the Roman Empire. All such documents have not only the names of seven Roman officials, but also the personal seals of these seven witnesses.
When the Book of Revelation chapter 5 talks about John seeing a book that was written on the inside and on the outside, sealed with seven seals, and given to the judge who can then break the seal, he may well have been using this standard kind of authentication of documents. A similar mode of authenticating a real estate deed is found in Jeremiah 32. This authentication method is evident in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin. It was used in Mesopotamia for over 2000 years before the time of Christ. There are numerous ancient legal documents authenticated this way.
Putting on the official binder with the seal of the witnesses would have been an important part of closing up an official document in Moroni’s mind. This was standard operating procedure for any legal documentation in the ancient world.
In addition, Moroni knew Isaiah’s prophecy about “a book that is sealed” (Isaiah 29:11) that would come forth “out from the dust” (Isaiah 29:4), as it was quoted by Nephi in 2 Nephi 27:7–9. No doubt Moroni had Isaiah 29 in mind when he finally sealed up the final record.
Evidence Central, “Book of Mormon Evidence: Doubled, Sealed, and Witnessed Documents,” September 19, 2020, online at evidencecentral.org.
Book of Mormon Central, “Why Was the Heavenly Book Sealed with Seven Seals? (2 Nephi 27:17),” KnoWhy 541 (December 12, 2019).
Book of Mormon Central, “Why Would a Book Be Sealed? (2 Nephi 27:10),” KnoWhy 53 (March 14, 2016).
John W. Welch and Kelsey D. Lambert, “Two Ancient Roman Plates,” BYU Studies 45, no. 2 (2006): 55–76.
John A. Tvedtnes, “Sealed Books,” in The Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Books: “Out of Darkness Unto Light” (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2000), 59–73.
John W. Welch, “Doubled, Sealed, Witnessed Documents: From the Ancient World to the Book of Mormon,” in Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World: Studies in Honor of John L. Sorenson, ed. Davis Bitton (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), 391–444.