Reference: Mormon makes an interesting reference here that is difficult to assess because of the translation. The obvious reference is to the ultimate power of God. The problem is not in the idea, but in the presentation of the idea. The idea that something should be rolled as a scroll is certainly a Biblical image, as there were no scrolls in Mormon’s world. Therefore we understand that this is a reference to Biblical text such as we have seen before. However, this reference is not quite the way we have seen it before.
The ultimate reference is Isaiah. It is a passage that was also intentionally referenced in Revelation, and that reference from the New Testament to the earlier Isaianic passage highlights the curiosity of the Book of Mormon passage:
Isaiah 34:4
4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.
Revelation 6:14
14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
In both the original and in the reference in Revelation, there is a comparability of elements. Not only is the rolling of the scroll similar, but there is an agreement that it is the heavens that will be rolled, and that it will cause the disappearance of the heavens. The Biblical reference uses the imagery of the flexible scroll as a counterpart to the cosmic image of the tent over the world, which is also flexible. When the tent-heavens are rolled up, they disappear as a barrier between the upper world and the earth. The imagery is one of removing that which separates us from God. Note that when this tent-heaven is removed in the Isaiah passage, “all their host shall fall down.” There is nothing holding the hosts of heaven up away from us any more.
Now we contrast that to the usage in Mormon. Of course the rolled scroll imagery is there, but out of cultural place, as noted. The second “problem” is that it is the earth that is being rolled, not the heavens. There is no indication that the earth will disappear.
What we have is Joseph Smith mixing his contexts. The plate context had one set of meanings, and the translation used imagery from a different context, although Biblical and understandable to Joseph. The common thread here is the end of the world. In that context both usages fit comfortably. It would appear, however, that in Mormon’s original writing the reference should have been to the earthquakes as destruction, as that would be the culturally bound notion of “rolling” in a Mesoamerican context. Joseph translated the right ideas with something that was out of place in a cultural sense. This suggests that unlike the very clear reference in Revelation that takes the full meaning and context, Joseph’s borrowing was lexical only.