The presence of this superscription inside the book of Helaman has led to speculation that it indicates a formal transition in the author of the original plates. Sidney B. Sperry suggested:
“Mormon did not write much of what was recorded by Helaman II, because in 3:37 we are informed of Helaman’s death and of the accession of his eldest son, Nephi, to the judgeship. It may be assumed, therefore, that Nephi took over the sacred records from his father. This supposition is correct, as 3 Nephi 1:2 makes clear. Inasmuch as Nephi had the plates, it may be taken for granted that he did most of the writing, though is it not improbable that he instructed his brother Lehi to do part of it. That part of the text for which Lehi may have been responsible was not indicated by Mormon when he made his abridgment.
The second superscription, over Chapter 7, refers to the content of chapters 7 to 16 as the “prophecy of Nephi, the son of Helaman.” If the reader will examine 3:37, he will find that the formal responsibility of Helaman’s son, Nephi, begins at that point. That would probably include the keeping of records. For that reason one wonders why chapters 4 to 6 are not also included under the caption of Nephi’s “prophecy.” Perhaps Mormon may have used the writings of Nephi’s brother Lehi in preparing these chapters. If he did, it would be the answer to our problem, but unfortunately he doesn’t indicate the fact, as was pointed out in the previous paragraph.” (Sidney B. Sperry, Book of Mormon Compendium [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1968], 372.)
Sperry has two speculations that appear to be related to this superscription. The first is that it marks the formal beginning of the record of Nephi. The second is that the gap between the record of Helaman and this formal record of Nephi leaves space for a putative authorship by Lehi, the brother of Nephi. While this is an interesting approach to dealing with the presence of this superscription, it cannot be the correct answer. First, there is no textual indication that Lehi wrote any of the text, and it would be foreign to Mormon’s mode of attribution to miss the shift in formal writers. The plates were given to Nephi, and we must assume that Nephi is the one who writes. We will see that Lehi was also an important spiritual figure, but it was not his responsibility to write on the plates.
This leaves us with the question of why we have this introductory superscription in the middle of the text written by Nephi. Sperry suggested that it was related to formal writing on the plates, but we have seen transitions of plate authors in Alma without the superscription. The answer to this question lies in the superscription itself. It specifically begins by noting that this is the prophecy of Nephi. This emphasis on the prophecy of Nephi suggests that the author of the superscription believed that the prophecy was the most important information communicated in the section following. What is this prophecy? It is the prophecy of the murderer of the sitting chief judge, an act that is laid at the feet of the Gadianton robbers. While this is one of the items discussed in this original chapter, it is not the only one, so the question should be asked why this stands out. This is not a spiritual prophecy, but a rather mundane one. What it does, however, is continue the emphasis on the role of the Gadianton robbers in murder and political upheaval. These are Mormon’s themes, and therefore we may be confident that it is Mormon who wrote the superscription, and did so to emphasize the issue of the Gadianton robbers, not to indicate a change in the original plate author.
Textual: This introduction is part of the 1830 edition, minus the information on the chapter numbers, which are part of the present edition. There are two original chapters in this section of the 1830 edition, comprising our 7-12 and 13-16.