The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ

Several prominent characters are named Nephi in The Book of Mormon, including three men at the center of the book’s narrative arc: Nephi, the son of the patriarch Lehi in the sixth century BCE (for whom 1 and 2 Nephi are named); Nephi the son of Helaman in the first century BCE; and Nephi the disciple in the first century CE (for whom 3 and 4 Nephi are named). The original Nephi is the most significant character in The Book of Mormon’s early sections, even eclipsing his father Lehi’s prominence. Nephi often takes the role of both prophet and leader in his extended family, reminding the others of God’s commandments and reproving his brothers for their waywardness. It is Nephi who ultimately succeeds in securing the sacred plates from Jerusalem and who later receives and implements the directives for building the ship that will bear them over the sea. If his father Lehi serves as the paradigmatic prophet for The Book of Mormon’s narrative, Nephi is the paradigmatic leader, and it is his name that the main body of faithful descendants bears going forward: the Nephites.

The second and third incidences of major characters going by the name of Nephi occur in relatively close chronological succession, in the late first century BCE and the early first century CE. Nephi the son of Helaman is a prophet who rules briefly as chief judge before resigning his office to go and preach to the Lamanites and to backsliding Nephites. His itinerant ministry encounters both wide successes and occasional setbacks, including an imprisonment and a miraculous deliverance. He exercises broad influence among the Nephites as a prophet until the end of the first century BCE, when he hands the guardianship of the sacred records over to his son, also called Nephi. This next Nephi becomes especially prominent because Jesus Christ appears in the Americas during his lifetime. He is active in ministry throughout the first three decades of the first century CE, when he preaches to the Nephites, encouraging them to repent and to prepare for the promised coming of Christ. When Jesus Christ appears after his resurrection, descending to the temple in the land called Bountiful, Nephi is one of the twelve men who are chosen to be his disciples.

The most prominent character by the name of Jacob in The Book of Mormon is a member of the original patriarchal family, a son of Lehi and brother to Nephi. Unlike Nephi’s older brothers, Laman and Lemuel, who are portrayed as rebellious and begrudging of their responsibility to God’s commandments, Jacob serves as a faithful brother throughout most of the narrative of 1 Nephi. In the Books of 2 Nephi and Jacob, his prominence rises still further, as he becomes the prophetic voice through which several important sermons are delivered, whose messages contain central treatments of LDS theology.

Jacob’s sermons explain the biblical theology of Isaiah the prophet, with reference to specific knowledge of the future coming of Jesus Christ. They also expound on foundational matters of LDS spirituality and ethics, focusing especially on matters of family and sexual morality and against the vices of pride, lust, and greed. To Jacob’s teaching also belongs the extended allegory of the Parable of the Olive Tree, which shares elements with several biblical allegories and explores prophetic messages about God’s plan of salvation for the nations.

There are two prominent kings in The Book of Mormon who go by the name of Mosiah. The first (often designated as King Mosiah I) oversees a major transition in Nephite history. Both a seer and a king, he leads the Nephites from their original settlement area in the land of Nephi to the land of Zarahemla, which would constitute the center of Nephite civilization for a significant portion of the following centuries. He is also notable for his divinely granted ability to translate the sacred records of the Jaredite people (later recounted in the Book of Ether).

The second Mosiah was a grandson of the first: King Mosiah II, son of King Benjamin. He is also a major transitional figure in Nephite history, for two reasons. First, he reestablishes contact with other groups of Nephites previously went back toward the land of Nephi. In doing so, he lays the groundwork for the prophet Alma and his religious movement—based on prophecies of Christ and the practice of baptism—to become the established church of the region of Zarahemla. Second, at the end of his reign, King Mosiah II encourages his government to become a republic led by judges rather than continuing as a monarchy. The period of judgeship later proves to be one of the most dynamic eras of Nephite history, leading up to the coming of Christ.

Benjamin is a king and prophet whose reign falls between the two Mosiahs mentioned above, as he is the son of Mosiah I and the father of Mosiah II. He stands out as one of the foremost monarchical figures in The Book of Mormon, a wise leader whose reign shares many of the qualities of the biblical King Solomon. He appears briefly in the Words of Mormon and prominently in the Book of Mosiah.

Beginning in the second chapter of the Book of Mosiah, Benjamin delivers an oration that stands as one of the most important representations of LDS spirituality and social philosophy. He characterizes service to God and service to community as being intimately bound together, mutually reinforcing aspects of a devout way of life. He also prophesies the coming of Jesus Christ and includes a clear exhortation to repent and believe in Jesus’s death and resurrection.

There are two major characters in The Book of Mormon who go by the name of Alma (often distinguished as Alma the Elder and Alma the Younger). Alma the Elder served as a priest in a small Nephite kingdom under the reign of the wicked king Noah, and he was converted to faith in Christ through the preaching of the prophet Abinadi. Alma begins to preach and baptize, gathering followers to a newly-established church movement, which eventually has to flee from the hostility of King Noah and ends up in Zarahemla, where the church is established under the reign of King Mosiah II.

Alma the Younger is the son of Alma the Elder and the namesake of the Book of Alma. He is initially rebellious against the faith of his father, and together with some sons of King Mosiah II, he tries to undermine the work of the church in Zarahemla. These young men are convinced to repent and convert back to faith in Christ only after experiencing an angelic visitation. Alma the Younger goes on to serve as the first chief judge of the Nephites in the period of the republic, also concurrently holding the office of chief priest. Eventually he resigns his post as judge and proceeds to travel and preach throughout Zarahemla and in adjoining provinces, meeting with both success and resistance in his missionary labors. The descendants of the family line, which begins with Alma the Elder and runs through Alma the Younger, includes many prominent judges and prophets leading up to the coming of Christ.

Jesus Christ is the central character in The Book of Mormon in the sense that his appearance signals the climax of the book’s overall narrative arc. While Jesus only appears directly in a small portion of the overall text—the Book of 3 Nephi—his coming had been prophesied in highly specific terms from the beginning of the narrative some six centuries beforehand. The Book of Mormon presents Jesus as the same character as the Jesus of Nazareth found in the Bible, for whom the biblical Gospels are the earliest and most direct primary sources. Similarly to Christian theology as developed in the New Testament, The Book of Mormon places emphasis on Jesus’s roles as the promised Messiah and as the sacrifice that atones for humanity’s sins and secures salvation.

Despite the similarities between the traditional biblical portrayal of Jesus and The Book of Mormon’s portrayal, there are differences between the Christian and LDS understandings of Jesus’s identity and role. Some of these differences are merely matters of emphasis, such as the traditional Christian theology of Jesus’s identity laying great stress on his death by crucifixion, whereas The Book of Mormon, while not ignoring the death of Jesus, tends to place slightly greater emphasis on his ethical teachings and his resurrection. This is due in part to the literary structure of 3 Nephi, in which Jesus’s resurrection has just taken place and thus dominates the lived experience of the Nephites who encounter him. This resurrected Jesus also offers long sections of ethical teaching during his time with the Nephites. More importantly for the differences between LDS and Christian theology, however, The Book of Mormon contains occasional references to the identity of Jesus that run counter to the traditional Christian understanding of God as Trinity (see, for instance, Mosiah 15:1-4), and it is partly due to this dispute, among other matters, that the LDS movement is usually not regarded as a Christian movement by those Christian groups that adhere to traditional Trinitarian theology.

Mormon, originally a placename (referring to the area in which Alma the Elder baptized adherents in the early days of the Nephite church), is also the name of the prophet and military leader who serves as the main compiler of the records in The Book of Mormon. According to the text, Mormon lives in the fourth century CE, and his life is portrayed in the smaller text, which also goes by the name of the Book of Mormon. Further traces of his writing and commentary appear throughout the entire collection, including in the Words of Mormon and in scattered verses in historical books like 3 and 4 Nephi.

Mormon serves as a military leader of the Nephites during the final series of conflicts in which they are eradicated by the Lamanites. He is also one of the last guardians of the sacred records of his people, and he buried the plates in the Hill Cumorah (a collection later added to by his son, Moroni), where Joseph Smith claims to have recovered them many centuries later. Mormon is further credited with making an abridgement of the original records that cover the 1,000-year cycle of Nephite history, and thus directly producing the form of many of the texts that would appear in The Book of Mormon.

There are two characters in The Book of Mormon who go by the name Moroni, the first being a Nephite military captain in the first century BCE. The more important figure by that name, however, is the final character in The Book of Mormon’s 1,000-year arc. This Moroni is the son of the prophet Mormon, living as one of the last survivors of the Nephites in the early fifth century CE. He is the final guardian of the sacred records, and he completes the collection of buried plates at the Hill Cumorah, where his father deposited them for safekeeping. He is credited as the author and compiler of three sections of The Book of Mormon: the closing chapters in his father’s text, the Book of Mormon; his own work, the Book of Moroni; and the record of the Jaredite civilization, the Book of Ether.

Outside of the narrative of The Book of Mormon, Moroni has yet another role. According to later LDS traditions, after his death Moroni was resurrected and became an angel, and in this form as the Angel Moroni, he appeared to Joseph Smith in upstate New York in the 1820s, revealing to him the buried plates of the sacred Nephite records.

The Nephites are one of four groups identified by The Book of Mormon as having emigrated from the ancient Near East to resettle in the Americas (The other groups are the Lamanites, the Jaredites, and the Mulekites, the latter are only briefly mentioned as fellow Jewish refugees flying from the imminent fall of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE). The Nephites constitute one branch of the family tree of Lehi, the original patriarch who led his family out from Jerusalem just prior to its fall to the Babylonians, as recorded in 1 Nephi (the other branch of the family is the Lamanites). The Nephites are named for Nephi, the pious son of Lehi who exercises a leading role as a prophet in the early community. While the Nephites are far from perfect in following God’s commandments, they tend to be the group most frequently portrayed as devout, and thus The Book of Mormon largely follows their story. Nephite prophets become the custodians of the sacred records throughout the span of their history.

They first settle in an area that becomes known as the land of Nephi, before moving under King Mosiah I to a new region, Zarahemla, which appears to be the ancestral settlement area of the Mulekites, also of Jewish descent. The Nephites experiment with different forms of political organization in their history, including as a monarchy and as a republic led by judges. Nephite prophets regularly have to entreat their own people to repentance in addition to their missionary efforts to convert the Lamanites. Eventually, despite the many prophetic ministries instituted in their midst, the Nephites fall to political instability and spiritual desolation, pursuing vices of pride and greed rather than keeping God’s commandments. They are eradicated by the Lamanites in a genocidal war in the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE.

The Lamanites, named after Nephi’s brother Laman, are the other branch of the original family tree that began with Lehi. The two branches separated very quickly after their settlement in the Americas, and gradually they came to create entirely different civilizations, though always near one another. Unlike the Nephites, the Lamanites are usually portrayed as being rebellious, warlike, and uninterested in following God’s commandments. This characterization, however, has its exceptions, and at various times during the period covered by The Book of Mormon, there are Lamanite converts who are convinced by the messages of the missionaries.

In many LDS traditions, the Lamanites have been thought of as the ancestors, at least in part, of modern Indigenous Americans, and some of The Book of Mormon’s depictions of Lamanite society have at times been criticized as echoing racist 19th-century stereotypes of Indigenous cultures. Nonetheless, the Lamanites are also lauded for their courage and their devotion to family, and some—like Samuel the Lamanite, a prophet—play a crucial role in preparing people in the Americas for the imminent coming of Jesus Christ. The relationship between the Lamanites and Nephites is characterized by repetitive cycles of warfare, which culminate in a final campaign in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, in which the Lamanites eliminate the Nephites after each side has committed atrocities against the other.