I have to admit, I’m going to be a little sad if this week’s Sunday School lesson doesn’t start with Earth Wind and Fire‘s “September.”
Added bonus: after last night’s scripture study (and subsequent Spotify listen and Just Dance game) my family’s never going to forget the date Moroni came to visit Joseph Smith for the first time.
Best BCC post ever.
According to the earliest documents it was Nephi who visited Joseph.
According to the earliest documents, such as the Articles and Covenants (1830), it was “an holy angel”. >_> Don’t conflate post-1835 naming of angels with pre-1835 practices!
Aurelius the earliest documents do not indicate Nephi. Moroni is named early and frequently. There was a scribal error in the late JS History that had Nephi.
How is it that I’ve never noticed this before? Thank you!
AK Transplanted, I wondered the same thing. I’d never noticed until reading it this week.
My teenage daughters broke into the song as we dug into this section during Seminary earlier this week.
@J. Stapley, thanks for clearing that up, I’ve been hearing that rumor for sometime now, and wondered where it came from.
For whatever reason, the name of Nephi written instead of Moroni wasn’t noticed when Joseph Smith was alive, or maybe he could have set us all straight then. Unfortunately, he had already been dead for a couple of years before those early documents were called into question. At that point, it was studied and researched extensively, compared to other accounts, and thoroughly discussed, and it was concluded that the scribe who wrote “Nephi” did so in error. I believe that he was a fairly new scribe, not as familiar with Joseph Smith as some of the other scribes were (btw, I use the term scribe to define the guy called to write stuff down for the Prophet… whether or not that’s the official name, I have no idea). I do not recall where I got that information from, it’s just something I remember learning throughout the years. I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to find it online, though. It’s just never been a question I found worth pursuing.
Some day I would like to know if Moroni’s appearances on the autumn equinox every year had some symbolic significance. In the meantime, celebrating 22 September as Book of Mormon Day is on my LDS liturgical calendar.