According to Alan Goff, ancient people looked back to foundational events or creation events in a way that transformed the present and the future as they came into contact with the past; these events served as the beginning of time for their people. Not only did past events serve as interpretive guides, but the people conceived themselves as reliving those events. Goff calls this repetition.
According to Goff, readers of the Book of Mormon need to reconsider their conclusion that because the Book of Mormon contains some repetitions from the Bible, Joseph Smith merely plagiarized the book. Plagiaristic claims specifically ignore a genuinely biblical manner of writing. One must look deeper to show the sophisticated nature of the Book of Mormon narrative.
Nephi builds a ship "according to the word of the Lord" (1 Nephi 18:4). His family is about to embark on a voyage across an unknown sea. This event qualifies in a number of ways as a type of primordial creation. The ideological battle over who will be the ruler has been taking place and will continue; the group sees itself as a new people and will soon take upon them the names of Nephites, Lamanites, and others; the group has undergone a topological exodus through the wilderness [and will continue to repeat this process]. This is a time of creation that relives the creation of the world, just as the building of Noah's ark and the Tabernacle in the wilderness relived this cosmogony.
All of the work of building a ship or tabernacle follows the same cycle: the Lord gives the pattern and the command, the order is executed exactly, the finished result is viewed and pronounced good. The Book of Mormon narrative fits the pattern as well as the narratives from the Bible do. . . . So the Exodus (specifically the tabernacle construction) is connected to the Deluge and both are connected to the Creation. And Nephi's construction of the ship is connected to all three of these biblical archetypes of new creations (see the chart below).
Among the cosmic connotations of the many waters and the sea voyage, Nephi will also tell us something about the journey to the promised land. "Settlement in a new, unknown, uncultivated country is equivalent to an act of Creation." The act of creating is exactly what the Lehi colony does. We should not be surprised then when the settlers finish their sea voyage and begin fulfilling the creation injunction to subdue the earth: "And it came to pass that we did begin to till the earth, and we began to plant seeds; yea, we did put all our seeds into the earth, which we had brought from the land of Jerusalem. And it came to pass that they did grow exceedingly; wherefore, we were blessed in abundance" (1 Nephi 18:24). The creation of the earth ends with the command that man go forth on the earth, multiply and be fruitful (Genesis 1:28); The parallel incident in the Bible of the conquering of the promised land and the subsequent partitioning of it also ends with the same subduing (Joshua 18:1, 19:51). Noah and his group are commanded likewise to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 8:17). Nephi's cosmogony ends [and begins] with the going forth on the land, planting the seeds (they carried with them from Jerusalem) in the earth as God did, and exercising dominion.
In summary, the Book of Mormon narrative that tells us about Nephi's building his ship is much more sophisticated and deserves far more analysis than has previously been given. [Alan Goff, "Boats, Beginnings, and Repetitions" in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 1/1, F.A.R.M.S., Fall 1992, pp. 67-81]
1 Nephi 18:4 I had finished the ship according to the word of the Lord ([Illustration]): Chart: Three Biblical Archetypes Compared to Nephi's Construction of the Ship. [John Welch and Morgan Ashton, "Three Biblical Archetypes Compared t Nephi's Construction of the Ship," in Charting the Book of Mormon, F.A.R.M.S., Packet 1.