The small plates of Nephi are an abridgment, Brother Neville

On June 10, 2019, Jonathan Neville published a blog post critical of Book of Mormon Central’s KnoWhy #519, “Why Is the Book of Mormon Called an ‘Abridgment’?”

The Title Page of the Book of Mormon states that the work is “an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites,” as well as “an abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also.” There were two primary records included in the plates of Mormon:

• Mormon²’s abridgment of the history of the Nephites, from the time of king Benjamin down to his own time, followed by the writings of his son, Moroni² and Moroni’s abridgment of the record of the Jaredites.
• The small plates of Nephi, which were written by Nephi¹, Jacob¹, and Jacob’s descendants down the time of king Benjamin. Mormon was inspired by the Holy Spirit to take the small plates and “put them with the remainder of [his] record” (Words of Mormon 1:3–7).

Despite Mormon’s clear statement, Jonathan Neville doesn’t believe the small plates were with Mormon’s set of plates when Joseph Smith received the completed record from the angel Moroni. Instead, he believes that

[the] small plates of Nephi were not in Moroni’s stone box. Joseph got those later, as we know from D&C 9 and 10. Accounts in Church history show us that the messenger to whom Joseph gave the Harmony plates took those plates to Cumorah. From the depository of Nephite records in Cumorah, the messenger found the small plates of Nephi and took them to Fayette.

This is a very unusual theory that no one besides Neville has ever suggested—including Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, or any of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon. (Neville continually criticizes his opponents for “censoring the teachings of the prophets,” yet here we have an example of him inventing things that no prophet has ever taught.) “You won’t know about” his two-sets-of-plates theory “if you only read material published by the M2C* citation cartel and the revisionist historians” (or literally anyone else, I should add); you can only find it in Neville’s writings.

Based on his theory, Neville criticizes the Book of Mormon Central KnoWhy, which claims that both sets of plates, together, were “abridgments.” He argues:

The Title Page [of the Book of Mormon] refers to all its contents as abridgments. BMC wants people to believe the original, unabridged plates of Nephi were in the stone box because they reject Oliver Cowdery’s testimony that he and Joseph and others had entered the depository of Nephite records in the Hill Cumorah.

Actually, Book of Mormon claims that plates of Nephi were in the stone box because there is no testimony—zero, nada, zilch—from Joseph Smith or anyone connected with him that Joseph had two different sets of plates. But Neville is a die-hard believer in the late, third-hand accounts of the “cave of plates,” which for him prove that the hill in New York is the same hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon. (That there is no contempory account of “Oliver Cowdery’s testimony” of this cave doesn’t phase him, let alone stop him from making the false claim that such a testimony exists.)

His two-sets-of-plates theory in hand, Neville argues that the small plates of Nephi couldn’t be an abridgment, as stated on the Title Page, even though Nephi “referred to a portion of his writings as ‘an abridgment of the record of my father.’” (1 Nephi 1:17). Why?

If you read the whole verse [1 Nephi 1:17] in context, Nephi tells us he’s writing his own original account, starting with an abridgment of his father’s record to explain how the events in his father’s record affected him, Nephi, personally. This “abridgment” consists mainly of his father’s dream. The rest of his account includes his journeys to Jerusalem (which could not have been part of his father’s record unless his father wrote what Nephi told him), his building a ship, sailing to America, separating from his brothers, etc.

What Neville overlooks, however, is that Nephi and Jacob both declared that the writings on the small plates were an abridgment of the more comprehensive history on the large plates of Nephi. They explained:

• “And now, as I have spoken concerning these [small] plates, behold they are not the [large] plates upon which I make a full account of the history of my people; for the [large] plates upon which I make a full account of my people I have given the name of Nephi; wherefore, they are called the plates of Nephi, after mine own name; and these [small] plates also are called the plates of Nephi.” (1 Nephi 9:2; emphasis added)
• “For I, Nephi, was constrained to speak unto them [Laman and Lemuel and the sons of Ishmael], according to his [Lehi’s] word; for I had spoken many things unto them, and also my father, before his death; many of which sayings are written upon mine other [large] plates; for a more history part are written upon mine other [large] plates.” (2 Nephi 4:14; emphasis added)
• “Wherefore, I, Nephi, to be obedient to the commandments of the Lord, went and made these [small] plates upon which I have engraven these things. And I engraved that which is pleasing unto God. And if my people are pleased with the things of God they will be pleased with mine engravings which are upon these [small] plates. And if my people desire to know the more particular part of the history of my people they must search mine other [large] plates.” (2 Nephi 5:31–33; emphasis added)
• “And he [Nephi] gave me, Jacob, a commandment that I should write upon these [small] plates a few of the things which I considered to be most precious; that I should not touch, save it were lightly, concerning the history of this people which are called the people of Nephi. For he said that the history of his people should be engraven upon his other [large] plates, and that I should preserve these [small] plates and hand them down unto my seed, from generation to generation.” (Jacob 1:2–3; emphasis added)

Neville himself defines an abridgment as “a shortened version of a text, which means that the abridgments found in the Book of Mormon are only summaries of larger recorded histories.” That is exactly what the small plates of Nephi were—a shortened version of the longer history on the large plates, a summary of “the more particular part of the history” of Nephi’s people.

When the Title Page of the Book of Mormon claims that the text is “an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi,” Moroni wasn’t just referring to his father’s abridgment of the large plates of Nephi from the time of king Benjamin, he was also referring to the abridgment of the early history of the Nephites on the small plates—the small plates which Mormon “put…with the remainder of [his] record” and which, together, were given to Joseph Smith by the resurrected Moroni on September 21, 1827.

Joseph Smith did not receive two separate sets of plates. Jonathan Neville’s theory that he did is simply a creative version of Church history that supports his obsessive belief in the New York location of the hill Cumorah.

—Peter Pan

* “M2C” is Jonathan Neville’s acronym for the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica and that the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is not the same hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon.