Here king Limhi is referring to the Jaredite record (described in Mosiah 8:9 as 24 engravened plates of pure gold) that his men had found while searching for the land of Zarahemla. This passage clearly implies that king Benjamin is still alive. Yet earlier in Mosiah 6–7 it states (1) that king Benjamin lived three years after turning the kingdom over to his son Mosiah, and (2) that after three years of reigning as king, Mosiah sent Ammon and his men to search for the people of Zeniff (known later as the people of Noah and ultimately as the people of Limhi):
The timing of these two events is so close that some overlap is possible. Perhaps Ammon and his men left not knowing that Benjamin had died, or perhaps he was still alive when they left. This interpretation requires that we not literally read the sequencing of the description in Mosiah 6–7 as precisely reflecting the actual chronology. Another possibility, of course, is that the original record read Benjamin simply because of Mormon’s own mistake in abridging the record—or because the large plates of Nephi which Mormon abridged from were defective here.
Here in Mosiah 21:28, the 1837 edition made the change from Benjamin to Mosiah to avoid the apparent contradiction. Presumably, this emendation was made by Joseph Smith, although the change is not marked in the printer’s manuscript. Quite clearly, this 1837 change is not an accident since Benjamin and Mosiah are so different visually, nor is there any nearby occurrence of Mosiah in Mosiah 21 that might have triggered an accidental replacement of Benjamin with Mosiah in the 1837 edition. In fact, the nearest preceding occurrence of Mosiah is in Mosiah 7:2, cited above. Nor can we consider the occurrence of Benjamin here in Mosiah 21:28 as an error prompted by an earlier occurrence of Benjamin since the nearest preceding occurrence of Benjamin is also some distance away, in Mosiah 8:3 (“and he also rehearsed unto them the last words which king Benjamin had taught them”).
A similar change from Benjamin to Mosiah has been made in the book of Ether; as in Mosiah 21:28, the text refers to the Jaredite record:
In the 1849 LDS edition, Orson Pratt emended Benjamin to Mosiah in Ether 4:1. The RLDS text, from the 1908 edition on, has parenthetically suggested the possibility that the name Benjamin in Ether 4:1 might be an error for Mosiah (there is even an added question mark), but no such suggestion, however, is provided in the RLDS text for Mosiah 21:28. The original text in Ether 4:1 undoubtedly read Benjamin, just as in Mosiah 21:28. There is virtually no possibility of visually misreading or miscopying Mosiah as Benjamin; nor is there any nearby occurrence of Benjamin to serve as the source for miscopying.
The passage in Ether 4:1 causes more difficulties than the one in Mosiah 21:28. The Ether passage implies that king Benjamin had some control over the Jaredite record, which means, of course, that he must have still been alive when king Limhi handed over these newly found records to king Mosiah:
Although king Benjamin had earlier put Mosiah in charge of the Nephite records and other artifacts (as described in Mosiah 1:16), it is reasonable to assume that king Benjamin, while yet alive, would have had access to the Nephite records as well as the Jaredite record and the records of the people of Limhi. In fact, king Benjamin may have still exercised some monarchical prerogatives as long as he was alive. For instance, the pronoun his that occurs twice in Mosiah 22:13 (“they arrived in the land of Zarahemla and joined his people and became his subjects”) may actually refer to king Benjamin, not king Mosiah—that is, the people of Limhi joined the people of king Benjamin and became his subjects. For discussion of this possibility, see Mosiah 22:13–14.
In other words, these seeming contradictions can be reconciled. King Benjamin could have still been alive when the people of Limhi arrived in the land of Zarahemla, and he could have later had access to the records, including the Jaredite record. If king Limhi and Ammon arrived in Zarahemla before the end of the fourth year of king Mosiah’s reign, then we could interpret the statement in Mosiah 6:5 that “king Benjamin lived three years and he died” as meaning that king Benjamin did not live to see the completion of four years of retirement. Prior to his death, king Benjamin still had access to the records, and the Lord could have told him that the prophesies in those records were not to be revealed at that time. Later king Mosiah translated the Jaredite record (presumably after king Benjamin’s death). This translation process is described in some detail later on in Mosiah 28:10–19, but the account there specifically mentions that king Mosiah revealed to his people the history of the Jaredites and their destruction, but there is no mention about him telling the people about the prophecies that had been revealed to the brother of Jared.
Hugh Nibley, in the 1960s, proposed a similar solution to this problem, as indicated on page 7 of his Since Cumorah: The Book of Mormon in the Modern World (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1967):
And was it necessary to change the name of Benjamin (in the first edition) to Mosiah in later editions of Ether 4:1? Probably not, for though it is certain that Mosiah kept the records in question, it is by no means certain that his father, Benjamin, did not also have a share in keeping them. It was Benjamin who displayed the zeal of a lifelong book-lover in the keeping and studying of records; and after he handed over the throne to his son Mosiah he lived on and may well have spent many days among his beloved records. And among these records could have been the Jaredite plates, which were brought to Zarahemla early in the reign of Mosiah, when his father could have still been living.
We also have an earlier statement from Nibley in a 1963 letter to Stan Larson:
The time schedule is a tight one ... but since we have no means of exact dating we cannot say that Benjamin was dead before the records were brought to Zarahemla, and we are not told how long he kept them. When Ammon told Limhi that Benjamin could read the stuff, Benjamin was still alive, or Ammon certainly thought he was.
For this citation (as well as further discussion of this problem regarding the name Benjamin), see pages 271–272 of Stan Larson, A Study of Some Textual Variations in the Book of Mormon Comparing the Original and the Printer’s Manuscripts and the 1830, the 1837, and the 1840 Editions (Brigham Young University master’s thesis, 1974).
Despite the difficulties of the earliest readings, the critical text will maintain the original name Benjamin in Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1 rather than the emended Mosiah, the reading in the current LDS text (and in the current RLDS text for Mosiah 21:28). If Benjamin is an error, the error occurred in the original plates and not during the early transmission of the English language text. Internal analysis suggests, however, that the identification of Benjamin in these passages is actually correct and not a mistake.
Summary: Despite the apparent difficulties with the original reading, the critical text will restore the name Benjamin in Mosiah 21:28 and Ether 4:1; the occurrence of Benjamin instead of Mosiah cannot be readily explained as an error in the early transmission of the text; moreover, the text can be interpreted so that Benjamin was still alive when the plates of Ether were delivered by king Limhi to king Mosiah, who then gave the Jaredite record to his father, king Benjamin, for his examination and perhaps safekeeping.