The Mission of Moroni

Several years ago I ran across a statement from a witness to the translation of the Book of Mormon. Some searching of the Internet led me to several more. (This was several years before Opening The Heavens came out with their excellent collection of witnesses statements.) As I studied and compared them, I realized that none of the current ideas about how the translation was done agreed with what the witnesses said. I also realized that what they saw was so unusual and unexplainable that the memory of that experience would remain clear for their life, and thus could be relied upon.

Using the statements of the witnesses, along with a knowledge of how God works with his servants as seen by the Church organization, I realized what the translation process had to be, including supervision of the process from beyond the veil. This paper discusses what the witnesses said, and how the parts of the process that they could not see had to proceed. Joseph Smith had no input to the translation process, as recent studies have verified, particularly the finding that the translation into English used Early Modern English, circa 1470 AD, with impeccable use of the language at that time. Moroni evidently was given the assignment to oversee getting the translation in a form where necessary parts of the translation were correct, and other errors such as spelling and grammar could be corrected by knowledgeable people.

This paper discusses the statements of the witnesses, and the process of translation they were witnessing.