Words of Mormon 1
The way Mormon writes here makes me wonder what order the plates were in. I had always assumed that Mormon’s abridgment of the time from Nephi to Mosiah came first followed by the small plates then the remainder of the the Book of Mormon from the Words of Mormon to the book of Moroni. The way the beginning of the Words of Mormon sound I would have expected it to be an introduction after his abridgment of the years before Mosiah and before he included the small plates. Joseph Smith might then have been instructed to move the Words of Mormon to be after the small plates. The more likely scenario seems to be the first with Mormon trusting that the names of the books would help the reader make sense of his explanation after the fact and his explanation being for the purpose of explaining to any reader who was confused at seeing many of the same stories retold and obviously covering the same time period from multiple perspectives for a few generations.
This makes me wonder another thing: could Joseph Smith visually distinguish between the small plates and the rest of the plates in color or handwriting or size? They may have been a different alloy or the fact that they were nearly 1000 years older may have worn them more or Mormon may have written his characters larger or smaller than Nephi, Jacob, and the other keepers of the small plates.
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