Where did the people in the Book of Mormon come from?

Q: Where did the people in the Book of Mormon come from?

A: The people who wrote the Book of Mormon record came from Jerusalem, the capital city of the Kingdom of Judah. The record starts with a good man named “Lehi” who strove to keep the commandments of God and loved his people. In the year 600 B.C., he heard many prophets tell the people that if they didn’t change their evil ways the city would be destroyed. After hearing this, he prayed fervently to God for his countrymen, and as a result the Lord called him to be a prophet and showed him what would happen to the city.

Like the other prophets, Lehi warned the people of the approaching catastrophe, and also prophesied of the coming of the Messiah. The people didn’t believe him; in fact, they became angry, and some even sought to kill him. Things looked grim. Then, in a dream, the Lord mercifully warned Lehi to leave Jerusalem. He and his family quickly gathered only what they needed and headed into the wilderness to the south, toward Arabia and the Red Sea.  It appears they told no one they were leaving, lest their enemies should follow them and kill them. Lehi’s family consisted of his wife, Sariah, and his four sons, whose names were Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi.

Background Notes

Interestingly, Lemuel is an ancient Arabic name, and Sam (not to be confused with "Samuel") is an ancient Egyptian name.These facts were unknown when the Book of Mormon was translated and published in 1830.

Who buried the metal plates, and why?

Q: Who buried the metal plates, and why?
 

A: A man named “Moroni” buried the plates which had the record of his people engraved on them. Like his father, Mormon, he was a prophet of God. He and his father had witnessed the entire destruction of their people, and then for many years Moroni hid himself from his enemies wherever he could. Around the year 421 AD, he built a “box” by laying stones in cement, and then setting the box into a square hole he'd dug in the ground. Into this box he carefully deposited the plates along with an instrument the Lord had prepared anciently to allow his prophets or “seers” to translate ancient—read “dead”—languages into their own tongue. He then placed a large stone over the box to conceal it from view.

Why did Moroni carefully hide the record of his people? Because the same enemies that had destroyed his civilization and now sought his life would destroy the record if they found it. They no longer believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and would kill anyone who did not deny His existence, so they certainly would destroy a record that over and over again bore witness of Him.  Moroni also knew that many centuries down the road, the Lord would reveal the record to a modern prophet and give him the means to translate it into his own language and publish it so all could read it—including the descendants of the people who were Moroni’s mortal enemies.

Who wrote the Book of Mormon?

Q: Who wrote the Book of Mormon?

A: The Book of Mormon was written by prophets of God who lived a long, long time ago. Many of them lived in a world not unlike our own: full of conflict and confusion, doubts about whether God really exists, how to be truly happy, and so forth. These prophets exercised great faith in the Lord and loved their people, and God called them to teach the people and counsel them to keep His commandments. Some heeded their advice, others did not, and still more fought against them.

The Book of Mormon contains accounts of a) conflicts between the faithful and those who put worldly things such as power and material possessions at the center of their lives, b) great miracles brought to pass by prophets and others through faith in Jesus Christ, c) individual counsel by prophets to their children regarding how to live their lives to be happy and resist the temptations of the devil, and d) an account of Jesus Christ’s visit to the people who lived on the American continent after His resurrection in Jerusalem and the wonderful works He did among them. Of course, the book contains much more, and is best appreciated by reading it for one’s self.

Background Notes

The prophets who wrote the book used a stylus to engrave their words onto metal so they would last for centuries. They knew what they were writing was sacred, and the Lord commanded them to do it, so they did the painstaking work of writing their words, laboriously forming the characters onto metal plates; they did so using a script known as “reformed Egyptian,” which is akin to Hieratic or Demotic, which were also stylized and abbreviated versions of the original hieroglyphs (i.e., characters) that were highly detailed and expansive, and thus very difficult to write long documents with. By being more compact, the reformed version allowed these ancient prophets to place more words into the limited space on the plates and relate the important points of their accounts to the fullest.