The Gold Plates as Foundational Text

Richard Bushman’s “The Gold Plates as Foundational Text” focuses on the making of the Book of Mormon. In contrast to the controversies over the recovery and translation of the gold plates, the translated text is detailed and precise in explaining its own construction. Even the complicated insertion of the “small plates” into a narrative based on the “large plates” is explained and rationalized as a cultural and political force within the story. First, Nephi was clearly a political document created to justify the division of the family and the nation. Furthermore, its spiritual and prophetic emphasis made it a model for Mormon’s abridgment of the large plates. The Book of Mormon, Bushman argues, comes through as a human text pieced together by human hands out of many parts.