Near the end of his life, Mormon conceived of writing a focused history of his people, the Nephites. He believed that by writing that history, the future descendants of the New World house of Israel would be able to believe that Jesus Christ was the very eternal God, and that the lessons of Nephite history would be beneficial to those future readers.
Joseph Smith received the plates that Mormon wrote, and that were then finished by Mormon’s son, Moroni. The loss of the 116 manuscript pages of the translation means that we are missing a large portion of Mormon’s work. In its place, we have a different record, written for a different reason, and written by different writers. We have what we call the small plates of Nephi.
Nephi created the Nephite tradition of record keeping. The most important record he created was an official governmental history that included the information about the reigns of the kings. Subsequent to Nephi, scribes were appointed to maintain that record. The tradition of recording the deeds of the kings, and their wars, and their contentions continued to the time when Ammaron chose Mormon to become the next and (probably unknown to Ammaron) final Nephite official scribe. This record was Mormon’s principal source for the Book of Mormon.
At some later time, Nephi was inspired to create a different record, which followed a different purpose, and a different line of transmission. The small plates of Nephi were called “small” not because they were physically smaller, but because there were fewer. The large plates were clearly added to throughout history, while the small plates appear to have been created by Nephi, and never had new plates added. They were given to king Benjamin when they were full.
Nephi declared that the small plates would contain the ministry of his people. Even so, only the books of Second Nephi and Jacob say much about ministry. The other books are heavily historical. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that there was no clear division between religion and politics in the ancient world. Men governed according to the will and direction of deity, in Israel as well as in most other nations of the earth. Thus, even the history found in First Nephi can be seen as part of the ministry, because it establishes the rule of a king who governed by Jehovah’s grace, and according to Jehovah’s law.
In the Book of Mormon Minute, we will make succinct comments to, at most, a few verses at a time. These will be comments that look at the text from the perspectives of the times and purposes in which they were written, as well as the purposes for which they were written.