more on the title page....

As I continue my study of the title page, I find myself thinking a lot about the last couple of authors... Mormon and his son Moroni. They had extremely hard lives and spent a good part of it writing and protecting this record. While perusing Pres. D's notes, I came across a part that talked about the author of the title page. Apparently there has been some discussion about who wrote the title page - we know that it wasn't Joseph Smith because it is part of the translation (the title page was actually found on the last leaf of the plates) but we aren't quite sure if Moroni wrote the title page by himself or whether there were also parts from his dad. The main reason that people question this is because the first paragraph is a bit repetitive

"Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed--To come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof--Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by way of the Gentile--The interpretation thereof by the gift of God."

The conclusion was that it was all written by Moroni but he repeated himself only to "further illuminate the divine destiny of this ancient record." Mormon had previously stated his "purpose statement" for the Book of Mormon - "For behold, this [the Book of Mormon] is written for the intent that ye may believe that [the Bible]; and if ye believe that ye will believe this also; and if ye believe this ye will know concerning your fathers, and also the marvelous works which were wrought by the power of God among them. And ye will also know that ye are a remnant of the seed of Jacob; . . . and if it so be that ye believe in Christ, . . . following the example of our Savior, . . . it shall be well with you in the day of judgment. (Mormon 7:9–10; see 5:14–15)"

"Perhaps the most compelling evidence for Moroni's authorship of the entire title page comes from a study of two unusual words or word combinations that appear infrequently in the Book of Mormon. The word interpretation appears 7 times in the Book of Mormon text, written once by Nephi and 6 times in the writings of Moroni (Mormon 9:7, 34; Ether 2:3; 4:5; 15:8; Moroni 10:16). The words seal(ed) up occur only 14 times in the Book of Mormon, 5 times by Nephi and 9 times in Moroni's writings (Ether 3:22–23, 27–28; 4:5; 5:1; Moroni 10:2). Those expressions do not appear anywhere in Mormon's translated writings, yet they do occur in the very portions of the title page that some scholars have attributed to both Mormon and Moroni. The distribution of those expressions weighs heavily in favor of Moroni as the sole author."

Anyway, maybe that's not that important - but I thought it was interesting! I hadn't even thought about it before :)

Well... that's it for my study notes right now because I need to prepare my lesson for the MTC interview tomorrow! YIKES!