Text: This chapter opening constitutes what a modern reader would consider a conclusion to the previous chapter. After the sermon’s end in chapter 7, Mormon reports the “history” of what happened next. The modern mind attaches this information to the episode in Gideon, but Mormon opens a new chapter with it, suggesting how completely his editorial custom of breaking at the end of inserted sermons affects the structure of his text. Similarly, chapter 6, also original to the 1830 edition, was extremely short because a sermon followed in the next chapter. Now the conclusion to chapter 7’s sermon in Gideon begins chapter 8. 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 lies in the process Mormon used to create the text. A modern novelist would be inventing both the linking narratives and the included sermons. Such a writer would see only 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. He created the linking narratives based on his source texts; but the sermons are direct quotations. In a very real sense, Mormon is shifting sources, which he marks by changing chapters. Inserted quotations tend to open and close chapters because he must consult the plates for that material; he can write the narrative from memory, perhaps checking an event or two. In other words, the sermons come directly from the plates. The history comes from Mormon’s understanding and interpretation of the plates.
Chronology/History: The ninth year of the reign of the judges was approximately 84 B.C. During this year, Alma “established the order of the church” in Gideon, just as he had in Zarahemla. This phrase suggests that Alma was continuing to implant an administrative structure that was 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 continues to establish a separate ecclesiastical administration that is different from the political order, but which probably paralleled it in logic and perhaps hierarchy. (See Alma, Part 1: Context, Chapter 2, “Alma’s Ecclesiastical Organization.”)