The problem in this passage is that the word ceremony does not seem appropriate. The larger context seems to imply that their discourse was simply over:
The Oxford English Dictionary lists no meaning for ceremony that would work reasonably well for this passage.
Over the years I have had some of my students and research assistants try to find another word that might work better in Mosiah 19:22–24, one that would perhaps sound or look like ceremony. The idea behind this approach is that such a word might have been miscopied or misheard as ceremony. The most plausible suggestion proposed thus far comes from Renee Bangerter. On pages 16–18 of her 1998 BYU master’s thesis (Since Joseph Smith’s Time: Lexical Semantic Shifts in the Book of Mormon), she proposes that the original word in Mosiah 19:24 might have been sermon. Although the current meanings for this word will not work in this passage, Bangerter notes that the Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest meaning for sermon as ‘something that is said; talk, discourse’, which would exactly fit the context described in Mosiah 19:22–24. This meaning is, however, obsolete; the last citation in the OED with this meaning dates from 1594: “Desiring Don Infeligo with very mild sermon to be friends with Medesimo again.” The latest example I could find on Literature Online comes from Giles Fletcher and dates from 1593: “Out of my braine I made his Sermon flow”.
One might think that an archaic meaning for the word sermon would be strong evidence against accepting it as the reading of the original text for Mosiah 19:24. Yet there is considerable evidence in the earliest Book of Mormon text that its vocabulary and expressions date from the 1500s and 1600s rather than from the 1800s of Joseph Smith’s time. In other words, the original text contained a number of words or combinations of words with meanings that were lost from the English language by 1700, including the following (with the date of their last citation in the OED given in parentheses):
require ‘request’ (1665)
but if ‘unless’ (1596)
counsel ‘counsel with’ (1547)
extinct ‘dead’ (1675) [referring to the death of a person, not the end of a species or race]
cast arrows ‘shoot arrows’ (1609)
depart ‘part’ (1677)
Some of these archaic word uses have been edited out of the text; see the discussion under Mosiah 3:19, Alma 37:37, and Helaman 8:11. For one more example (one that involves conjectural emendation like Mosiah 19:24), see the discussion regarding “the pleading bar of God” under Jacob 6:13. Also see the extensive discussion in volume 3 regarding the archaic language of the original text of the Book of Mormon. In volume 3, I also consider the possibility that the ungrammatical usage in the original text is due more to archaic language from the 1500–1600s than to upstate New York English dialect from the early 1800s.
The original manuscript is not extant for the book of Mosiah, but one possibility is that the scribe in 𝓞 spelled sermon as cermon, which could have easily led Oliver Cowdery, the scribe for the printer’s manuscript, to mistake this word as ceremony (spelled as cerimony in 𝓟). There is considerable evidence that the scribes sometimes misspelled s as c when followed by the letter e, i, or y:
| standard spelling | manuscript spelling | scribe |
| cease | ceace | scribe 3 of 𝓞 |
| seace | scribe 3 of 𝓞 | |
| seace | Oliver Cowdery | |
| seaced | Oliver Cowdery | |
| consecrate | concecrated | Oliver Cowdery |
| consist | concist | Oliver Cowdery |
| converse | converce | Oliver Cowdery |
| disperse | disperce | Oliver Cowdery |
| disperced | Oliver Cowdery |
| standard spelling | manuscript spelling | scribe |
| hypocrisy | hypocracy | Oliver Cowdery |
| immense | immence | Oliver Cowdery |
| paradise | paridice | scribe 2 of 𝓟 |
| responsibility | responcibility | Oliver Cowdery |
| sincere | Cinsere | Hyrum Smith |
| sincerity | cincerity | Oliver Cowdery |
So if sermon had been spelled as cermon in 𝓞, Oliver Cowdery could have misinterpreted the word as ceremony, a word that he was familiar with, even though this word didn’t make much sense in this passage (of course, sermon wouldn’t have made much sense to him either). There is considerable evidence that Oliver sometimes substituted more common words for unfamiliar words, even when the substitution itself made little or no sense. For a list of examples, see the discussion under Jacob 6:13.
Interestingly, modern nouns that might be synonymous with the archaic meaning of sermon are not found at all in the text of the Book of Mormon—namely, nouns such as conversation, discussion, and discourse. The word conversation was accidentally, but incorrectly, introduced into the 1841 and 1852 editions for Alma 27:25 (see the discussion there). One theoretical possibility for Mosiah 19:24 is that a nominalized form of the verb converse could have been used, as in “after they had ended the conversing”. The Book of Mormon does have instances of the verb converse with the meaning ‘to convey the thoughts reciprocally in talk’ (Samuel Johnson’s definition):
Although the verb converse earlier meant ‘to associate with’, the modern meaning referring to mutual communication dates from around 1600, with the OED giving these first citations for the verb converse and its associated noun conversation:
In any event, neither conversation nor conversing were used in Mosiah 19:24, although they could have been (even under the hypothesis that the vocabulary of the original text of the Book of Mormon dates from the 1500s and 1600s).
One argument that has been frequently made in support of ceremony here in Mosiah 19:24 is that in many cultures conversation is ceremonial, so the conveying of information between these two parties in Mosiah 19:22–23 could have been a ceremony. But by this standard, every event in the Book of Mormon could be shown to be ceremonial, cultic, or ritualistic in some way— whether launching ships, engraving scriptures, preaching, fighting battles, planting crops, taking journeys, or dying: anything can be explained as a ceremony. Yet it should be noted that the Book of Mormon itself seems to avoid using words like ceremony, rite, and cult. The word ceremony occurs nowhere else in the Book of Mormon text. And although the scribal spelling rites has been maintained in a few places in the text, it is almost certain that in every case the original text read rights rather than rites (see the discussion under Alma 43:45).
Besides the general proposal that conversation is a ceremony, some scholars have found different ceremonial aspects that could be linked to the conversation described in Mosiah 19:22–23. John Sorensen, for instance, has argued that the reference to a ceremony in verse 24 has something to do with the earlier killing of king Noah, described in verses 19–21: “Mosiah 19:24 speaks of a ‘ceremony’ in connection with the slaying of king Noah by his rebellious subjects, but there is no hint of the nature or purpose of that ceremony”; see page 189 of Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1998). John Tvedtnes, on the other hand, has argued that the ceremony referred to in Mosiah 19:24 is “one of purification associated with the onset of the fall festivals of the month of Tishre, at which time citizen-soldiers in the ancient Near East returned home to engage in the fall harvest”; see pages 176–186 of The Most Correct Book: Insights from a Book of Mormon Scholar (Salt Lake City, Utah: Cornerstone, 1999), with the quote on page 186.
There is a more general problem with searching for cultural arguments as evidence for strange readings in a text—namely, there is no limit on the use of such arguments. If we hunt long enough, we can always find some culture somewhere with a practice that will support virtually any given reading (although for Book of Mormon work we might prefer that the evidence come from Mesoamerica or the Middle East). As an example, consider the case of Mosiah 17:3, where all the (extant) textual sources read “and scourged his skin with fagots”. Although the textual and linguistic evidence is very clear that in Mosiah 17:13 scourged is a mishearing for scorched (see the discussion for that passage), yet some have defended the current reading scourged by hunting for examples of people being beaten with burning sticks or of people being beaten prior to being burned at the stake. For one example, see Brant Gardner’s “Scourging with Faggots”, published in volume 21 (2001) of FARMS’s Insights (number 7, pages 2–3). In my own textual analyses of the Book of Mormon, I avoid using cultural evidence simply because it can always be found. In some cases, specific evidence from the Mosaic law and its practice may be appropriate, as in the discussion regarding whether striped, the reading of the printer’s manuscript in Alma 11:2, should read stripped or striped. But even there that evidence is restricted to practices that are explicitly referred to in the biblical text.
I have also found that the original text of the Book of Mormon always makes linguistic sense, although not necessarily for modern-day speakers of English. There are Hebrew-like constructions that seem strange, even unacceptable, in English, yet these constructions make sense from the point of view of Hebrew. There is vocabulary that is strange today but would have been perfectly understandable to English speakers living in the 1500s and 1600s. And the biblically styled language of the text seems to date from this same time period, yet it does not imitate the specific language of the King James Bible (of course, the biblical quotes in the Book of Mormon do follow the King James text for the most part). So when we run up against strange uses like ceremony in Mosiah 19:24, the most probable explanation is that ceremony stands for some kind of error, providing the error can be explained as textually derivable from an appropriate emendation, one that is consistent with language elsewhere in the Book of Mormon. The proposed sermon does fit if we allow the possibility that the original vocabulary of the Book of Mormon derives from the 1500s and 1600s, not the 1800s.
The critical text will therefore accept the proposed emendation sermon for Mosiah 19:24, not with the modern meaning but instead with the earlier meaning of ‘talk, discourse’. The reading ceremony is most likely the result of an early error in the transmission of the text, beginning with the misspelling of sermon as cermon in 𝓞 and followed by the misinterpretation of cermon as ceremony when Oliver Cowdery could not recognize cermon as sermon, since for him a sermon would have been either a minister’s prepared discourse on a religious subject or, more generally speaking, an exhortation or even an harangue (see definitions 2 and 3 in the OED).
One might object that emending ceremony to sermon here in Mosiah 19:24 goes against the principles of textual criticism that I have been using elsewhere to determine the original text of the Book of Mormon. It could be argued that since one can make some sense out of “after they had ended the ceremony” (namely, their discourse must have involved some ceremonial aspect), the earliest extant reading should be accepted, especially since there are no other uses of the word ceremony in the text to provide evidence either for or against the strange use of ceremony in this passage. But it should be pointed out that there are other passages where I have rejected the earliest reading despite the fact that one can make sense out of that reading:
| earliest extant reading | emended reading | |
| 1 Nephi 17:48 | wither even as a dried weed | wither even as a dried reed |
| Alma 58:36 | some fraction in the government | some faction in the government |
Moreover, there are no other occurrences in the text of the words weed or reed, or of the words fraction or faction, which means that we have no information elsewhere in the text on the use of these words in the Book of Mormon. Yet for both of these cases, it is easy enough for readers to recognize the error and accept the emendation, mainly because the original words reed and faction, as used in the text, have retained their meanings in the language. (In fact, these two emendations were originally made by the 1830 typesetter and have been maintained in all subsequent editions.) But when an archaic word (or a word with an archaic use or meaning) has been replaced by a different word, it has been difficult for readers to recover the original word, not only here in Mosiah 19:24 but elsewhere in the text:
| earliest extant reading | emended reading | |
| Jacob 6:13 | the pleasing bar of God | the pleading bar of God |
| Mosiah 17:13 | scourged his skin with fagots | scorched his skin with fagots |
The question of accepting sermon in Mosiah 19:24 essentially comes down to whether the original vocabulary of the Book of Mormon dates from the 1500s and 1600s rather than from the 1800s.
Don Brugger has suggested (personal communication, 6 July 2005) another possible emendation here—namely, the word ceremony may be an error for testimony (thus “after they had ended the testimony”). Such an error in 𝓟 could have been the result of a mishearing or misreading, either in 𝓞 as the scribe took down Joseph Smith’s dictation or in 𝓟 as Oliver Cowdery copied the text from 𝓞. Of course, the similarity between the two words would be restricted to how both words end. In fact, as a misreading, the spelling of ceremony with an i in 𝓟 (that is, cerimony) could be explained as the result of 𝓞 having the word testimony. Despite its initial attractiveness, there are several problematic aspects with this proposed emendation. First of all, evidence from actually recorded mishearings and misreadings in the Book of Mormon text shows general similarity across the entire word; the similarity is never restricted to only the last half of the word. In other words, the first syllable of the two words testimony and ceremony are sufficiently distinct (test versus cer) that it would be quite unusual if these two words were ever mixed up aurally or visually. A second difficulty with this proposed emendation is that this instance of testimony would be the only time in the text where the word would refer to giving or hearing testimony regarding some event. In fact, the use of testimony here in Mosiah 19:24 would be about as strange as ceremony is in the current text. And finally, the word testimony in the Book of Mormon text normally has some kind of postmodification, as in the following examples:
The only time the word testimony occurs without any postmodification is in Isaiah quotations:
Of course, the uniqueness of expression and form for this proposed emendation does not necessarily invalidate it, but the unique nature of the similarity between the two words ceremony and testimony (that is, the similarity is restricted to only the last half of the word) makes the proposed emendation testimony rather doubtful.
Summary: Emend Mosiah 19:24 to read “after they had ended the sermon”, with the understanding that sermon takes the obsolete meaning ‘talk or discourse’.