Mosiah 29
I still wonder why Mosiah decided to give charge of the records to someone outside the government. I figure there are two possible explanations (not mutually exclusive) – he recognized the possibility that Alma could be chosen by the people, or he recognized that the real purpose of the records was spiritual more than temporal record keeping. I also wonder if Mosiah knew that he would not live to see his sons return from their mission among the Lamanites. I do believe that Mosiah was thinking of the Jaredite record he had translated when he warned the people of the potential for contention. The people listening to Mosiah would have been focused on the events among the people of Noah and Limhi, but I have no doubt that Mosiah was thinking about the Jaredite history. In fact, that probably explains why he gave the records to Alma the younger – they now contained a translation of the Jaredite record which he knew should not go forth among the people until much later and he knew that the civil government was more likely to become corrupted than the church leadership – that if the leadership of the church were corrupted it would likely already be too late to hide the records.
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