Textual: This is a most unusual chapter beginning for the typical way a modern writer would begin a chapter. What we have as the opening of chapter 8 is what a modern writer would consider a conclusion. After the end of the sermon in chapter 7, we have the final “history” of what happened after the sermon in Gideon.
The modern mind attaches this information to the episode in Gideon. Mormon places it at the beginning of a new chapter. This suggests how completely his editorial rule of breaking at the end of inserted sermons effects the structure of his text. We saw a very short chapter in chapter 6 that was also original to the 1830 edition, then an inserted sermon, and now a chapter that begins with what we would determine to be a conclusion to the sermon in Gideon.
For the modern reader, there is nothing about a sermon that particularly dictates a chapter change. Why would it have been such a powerful conceptual unit for Mormon?
The answer comes from the examination of the process that Mormon used to create the text as opposed to what a modern novelist would use to create a similar work. The modern writer would be inventing both the linking narratives as well as the cited sermons. For such a writer, there is a minimal distinction between event and sermon. Both are part of the “history” and both are part of the same creative process.
Mormon’s process was different. Mormon created the linking texts himself based upon his reading, but when the sermons were inserted he was citing directly from the sources. In a very real sense, Mormon is shifting conceptual sources, and this conceptual shift is reflected in the change of chapters. Inserted citations tend to open and close chapters precisely because he must directly consult his source for that material, while linking text may be done from his memory (with perhaps a check of an event or two, though it is more likely that he understands the historical sections and simply retells those parts of the history that provide the structural bedding into which he may lay the sermons that are more the point of his text.
Historical: The ninth year of the reign of the judges figures to be approximately 84 BC. During this year, Alma “established the order of the church” in Gideon, just as he had in Zarahemla. This suggests that Alma continues to innovate an administrative structure to the church that is not necessarily part of past Nephite practice. Just as his father apparently innovated the concept of a “church” as separate from the political organization of Zarahemla, so Alma the Younger continues to establish a separate ruling organization for the church that is separate from the political order, but probably paralleling that order in logic and perhaps hierarchy. The particular organization is discussed following Alma 6:1.