Reference: Nephi had seen Jesus’s birth in vision but had not named Mary (1 Ne. 11:15–18), who is first mentioned by Benjamin (Mosiah 3:8). Alma may have had first-hand information from the Spirit or could have learned her name by reading the plates of Nephi. He could also have read it and then received a spiritual confirmation. Since Alma is writing in the large plates, he was unquestionably familiar with them. They may have contained another account of Nephi’s vision of which we receive our account from the small plates.
Alma indicates that Mary “shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost.” Benjamin does not mention the mode of conception. Nephi’s “small” plates, however, state: “And it came to pass that I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit; and after she had been carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time the angel spake unto me, saying: Look! And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms” (1 Ne. 11:19–20). The language is not identical with Alma’s description, although both mention the Holy Ghost. It is not conclusive, therefore, whether Alma had read Nephi’s account. However, Alma’s language clearly owes a debt to Luke 1:35: “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Once again, Joseph used the New Testament when similar ideas appeared on the plates. Alma may have been quoting Nephi, but Joseph used the more familiar (to him) language of Luke.
Place of birth: This verse suggests that Jesus was born “at Jerusalem.” If Joseph Smith was citing Luke, why did he get the words right, but place the birth in Jerusalem rather than Bethlehem? Bethlehem was a village under the political purvey (or in the polity) of Jerusalem, a fact attested to in the Amarna letters. A specific reference to the “land of Jerusalem” appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, significantly near the Jerusalem of Lehi’s time. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, in The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, discuss a document that they provisionally named “Pseudo-Jeremiah” (scroll 4Q385). The beginning of the damaged text reads as follows: “… Jeremiah the Prophet before the Lord [. . . w]ho were taken captive from the land of Jerusalem [Eretz Yerushalayim, column 1, line 2].” They see “land of Jerusalem” as equivalent to Judah (Yehud): “Another interesting reference is to the ‘land of Jerusalem’ in Line 2 of Fragment 1,” they comment. “This greatly enhances the sense of historicity of the whole, since Judah or ‘Yehud’ (the name of the area on coins from the Persian period) by this time consisted of little more than Jerusalem and its immediate environs.” Based on the evidence from Qumran, and in the words of Eisenman and Wise, we can conclude that such language among a people who fled from Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah also “greatly enhances the sense of historicity” of the Book of Mormon.