Of course Tvedtnes’s argument is more subtle than calling Mormon’s chronology into error. Tvedtnes is simply altering the meaning of “the ending” in terms of time. However, his effort to do so violates the structural argument with which he had countered Horowitz. Mormon does indeed mark the years, but he consistently uses the year markers as ending notes. The most frequent usage of the year markers in the text is to note whole years. We do have a special case here where Mormon is indicating relative timing of events that occurred within the same year, but to assume that he means “before the end” contradicts the rather detailed information that he gives for the date at the beginning of the year. We are safest when we take Mormon at his word that it was near the end of the thirty-fourth year.
Meanwhile, another text complicates this issue. 3 Nephi 10:18 states: “And it came to pass that in the ending of the thirty and fourth year, behold, I will show unto you that the people of Nephi who were spared, and also those who had been called Lamanites, who had been spared, did have great favors shown unto them, and great blessings poured out upon their heads, insomuch that soon after the ascension of Christ into heaven he did truly manifest himself unto them.”
In the same passage that we have “in the ending of the thirty and fourth year,” we have “soon after the ascension.” Those two statements appear to contradict each other. Tvedtnes reconciles them by reading the first as the less determinate time. The problem, however, really lies in the second. We understand the timing of the ascension from the New Testament, obviously an Old World document. Nothing in the Book of Mormon reveals anything like a Nephite date for the ascension. The only way they could known about its timing was for the Savior to tell them, and it seems to be an inconsequential detail.
Certainly Mormon knew that the Messiah had ascended, but not the timing—at least, not from the historical record. In other words, he makes a statement about the timing relative to the ending of the year (which he certainly knew); “soon after” an event whose exact date he probably did not know. Given his difference in knowledge, the balance of credibility clearly tilts toward the date that he would indubitably have known from the annals. (See commentary accompanying 3 Nephi 11:12.)
Both Tvedtnes and Brown discuss circumstantial evidence that might suggest a longer or shorter time, with Brown holding out for the longer period and Tvedtnes discounting Brown’s evidence. In the end, both miss the constructed nature of Nephi3’s text—not, in this case, Mormon’s editing. Nephi, writing perhaps a month or more after the fact, collapses events that occurred at widespread points in time and space. Using this constructed text to determine precise timing without attempting to discern what is constructed and what is reported leads to arguments that might be supported on either side, but either approach is inherently weak. Each rests on a text that has clearly been constructed, not recorded close to the events themselves.
Mormon’s editing of Nephi’s text further obscures the time boundaries within which Nephi was working. In the absence of the original, we have only Mormon’s statement describing how Nephi positioned these events in the record. Mormon places them at the end of the year. That should be good enough for us.
Text: This is the end of a chapter in the 1830 edition and one of Mormon’s most logical, since the new chapter begins with the Savior’s appearance. This event literally opens a new chapter in Nephite history; the Nephites, who had been destroyed as a people, will be renewed as a people through the Messiah’s ministry.
1. Susan Toby Evans, Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004), 19. The common assumption is that chickens were a post-conquest introduction into the Americas. Some data dispute that finding and place a pre-Columbian presence of chickens in the Americas, though still without significant archaeological evidence in the areas assumed for the Book of Mormon to posit them there. For a summary of the evidence, see George F. Carter, “Pre-Columbian Chickens in America,” in Man across the Sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian Contacts, edited by Carrol L. Riley, J. Charles Kelley, Campbell W. Pennington, and Robert L. Rands (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 178–218.
2. Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 260.
3. Sidney B. Sperry, Book of Mormon Compendium (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1968), 401–2. Monte S. Nyman places this event “only a few weeks after the sign of his death.” He cites as support the fact that “after his ascension, when Jesus did appear, the multitude remembered it (3 Ne. 11:12). If it had been months later, it does not appear that it would have come into their minds.” Monte S. Nyman, Divine Ministry—The First Gospel: Jesus Among the Nephites (Orem, Utah: Granite Publishing and Distribution, 2003), 127. Unfortunately, this argument assumes that people will forget a terrible disaster and a miraculous voice from heaven, but those are not the sorts of things one forgets, even a lifetime later.
4. John A. Tvedtnes, The Most Correct Book: Insights from a Book of Mormon Scholar (Salt Lake City: Cornerstone Publishing, 1999), 256–57. Nyman, Divine Ministry,128 note 1, reads the text similarly: “The word ‘ending’ is sometimes interpreted to mean the end of the year, but since Mormon had been abridging what happened in the beginning of the year, ‘ending’ could also be interpreted to mean that which followed the beginning or in the rest of the remainder of the year. This interpretation of ‘ending’ would be consistent with Mormon’s statement of Christ’s visit to the Nephites being ‘soon after the ascension.’” Unfortunately, this argument requires both a creative reading of “ending” and another for “soon.” That Nyman believes it is certain. That this is evidence for his case is less certain.
5. Tvedtnes, The Most Correct Book, 258.
6. S. Kent Brown, From Jerusalem to Zarahemla: Literary and Historical Studies of the Book of Mormon (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1998), 148–49.
3 Nephi 11
Jesus Christ did show himself unto the people of Nephi, as the multitude were gathered together in the land Bountiful, and did minister unto them; and on this wise did he show himself unto them. [Comprising chapters 11 to 26 inclusive.]
Text: This chapter heading comes from the original text, except for the comment in brackets. Modern editions of the Book of Mormon show synoptic statements in italics as headnotes to each chapter. These are modern additions, beginning first with the 1879 edition and most recently revised for the 1981 edition. These modern synoptic chapter notes can easily camouflage synoptic data that were apparently part of the plate text and which therefore appeared in the 1830 edition. The extant portion of the original manuscript preserves such introductory synoptic headnotes for Helaman and 3 Nephi. This confirms that the presence of the headnotes in the 1830 edition was due to the translation and not a later insertion by an editor.
The majority of the introductory headnotes are at the beginning of named books. In the small plates, they appear only at the beginning of 1 and 2 Nephi and Jacob. In Mormon’s editing of the large plates, they appear at the beginning of every book but Mosiah. A headnote’s absence there is understandable because the lost 116 pages apparently included at least the first chapter of Mosiah. I feel fairly safe in concluding that Mosiah would have had such a headnote, given Mormon’s consistency in the remainder of the books he edited.
In contrast, there are no headnotes for Mormon, Ether, or Moroni—three books he did not edit. Each of the synoptic headings indicates some of the text that will appear within the book. Joseph Smith apparently followed some visible signal of noting chapter breaks and book beginnings in the original; therefore, these synoptic headnotes must have been at the beginning of texts in the original just as they are in our translation, which naturally means that the writer had to know the contents of each book prior to inscribing it on the plates. This scenario fits both Nephi1 and Jacob1. Both had the time to construct texts and write according to a plan. The other books translated from the small plates may not have been written with such forethought. The books of Jarom and Omni certainly have the feeling of texts composed during writing. Interestingly, we have a synoptic headnote for 2 Nephi, but it covers only events through our 2 Nephi 5. At that point, Nephi apparently caught his record up to his present. From that point on in 2 Nephi, there is little narrative history. Instead, the text consists of a sermon Jacob gave at Nephi’s request, the Isaiah chapters, and Nephi’s final prophecy and testimony. The planned material seems to end with the close of Chapter 5, while Chapter 6 continues with a series of important documents. The synopsis seems to confirm that the original plan included only the events through our Chapter 5.
Mormon’s consistency in adding these introductory headnotes to the books that he is editing suggests (and is corroborated by other types of internal evidence) that he had some clear plan of what he was going to include in each book he edited. When Mormon switches to his own record, it is no longer a part of the planned text and therefore does not have the synopsis in a headnote.
Moroni’s book does not have a synopsis for the same reason. In fact, it seems to have been an unplanned addition to the plates. The absence of a headnote for Ether may be explained either by Moroni’s personal preference to omit it or by the possibility that he was reacting to the text he was translating and had not made a plan for its contents.
The introductory headnotes have two functions. At the beginnings of named books, they outline the contents. Mormon also uses internal headnotes to indicate a change in major source material or conceptual units.
Mormon is the only author who supplies internal headnotes as chapter divisions, rather than book divisions. Mormon uses them in the following locations:
• Mosiah 9: Before Zeniff’s record
• Alma 7: Alma’s address at Gideon “according to his own record”
• Alma 9: Alma and Amulek’s addresses at Ammonihah
• Alma 17: The account of the sons of Mosiah
• Alma 21: Aaron and Muloki’s mission to the Lamanites
• Alma 36, 38-39: Alma’s discourses to his sons
• Helaman 7: The prophecy of Nephi about the murder of the chief judge
• Helaman 14: The prophecy of Samuel the Lamanite (more of a title than a textual headnote)
• 3 Nephi 11: Christ’s appearance to the Nephites in Bountiful
Mormon appears to use these internal chapter headers to indicate when he has changed the main source of his text or to make major conceptual sections. While many of these separate records were probably incorporated into the large plates of Nephi, Mormon saw them as independent records and notes them as such. The headnotes to Alma 9, Helaman 7, and 3 Nephi 11 appear to mark conceptual units rather than changes in source records.