Angel Moroni - Angel's Name and Identity

Angel's Name and Identity

There have been two conflicting accounts as to whether the angel who appeared to Smith in 1823 and directed him to the golden plates was named Moroni or Nephi. Initially, Smith merely referred to "an angel" without identifying its name. Thus, in an 1831 letter from Lucy Mack Smith to her brother, she discusses Moroni as the person who buried the plates, but does not identify him as the unnamed "holy angel" that gave Smith the means to translate the golden plates (Morgan 1986, p. 349). In Smith's 1832 history, he said he was visited by "an angel of the Lord", who mentioned the Book of Mormon prophet "Moroni" as the last engraver of the golden plates; however, Smith's account did not say whether or not the angel was referring to himself as Moroni (Smith 1832, p. 4).

In 1835, Smith identified the angel as Moroni: In 1835, while preparing the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, he made additions to an earlier revelation regarding sacramental wine, and indicated a number of angels that would come to the earth after the Second Coming and drink wine with Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery (Smith et al. 1835, p. 180). Among those angels, the revelation listed "Moroni, whom I have sent unto you to reveal the book of Mormon, containing the fulness of my everlasting gospel; to whom I have committed the keys of the record of the stick of Ephraim" (id.). Around this time, Oliver Cowdery was writing a history of Joseph Smith in which he identified the angel as the prophet Moroni from the Book of Mormon (Cowdery 1835, p. 112). In July 1838, Smith wrote an article for the church periodical Elders' Journal, in the form of questions and answers, that stated the following:

"Question 4th. How, and where did you obtain the book of Mormon?

"Answer. Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the book of Mormon was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County, New York, as a resurrected being, appeared unto me, and told me where they were; and gave me directions how to obtain them." (Smith 1838b, pp. 42–43).

However, on May 2, 1838, a few months before Smith's statement in Elders' Journal, Smith began dictating a church history that included a detailed account of his visits from the angel (Smith 1838a, p. 7). Smith seems to have identified the angel as "Nephi", which is the name of the Book of Mormon's first narrator (Smith 1838a, p. 5). Smith's apparent 1838 identification as "Nephi" was left unchanged when the 1838 history was published in 1842 in Times and Seasons, which Smith edited himself (Smith 1842, p. 753), and in Millennial Star (Pratt 1842, p. 53). In the latter, an editorial referred to the 1823 vision and praised "the glorious ministry and message of the angel Nephi" (1842, p. 71). After Smith's death, the identification as "Nephi" was repeated when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published its first edition of the Pearl of Great Price (Richards 1851, p. 41). It was also repeated in 1853 when Smith's mother Lucy Mack Smith published a history of her son (Smith 1853, p. 79).

As a further complication, Mary Whitmer, mother to one of the Three Witnesses and four of the Eight Witnesses, said she had a vision of the golden plates, shown to her by an angel whom she always called "Brother Nephi" (Whitmer 1888, p. 621), who may or may not have been the same angel to which Smith referred.

Nevertheless, based on Smith's statement that the angel was "Moroni," and based on both prior and later publications, most Latter Day Saints view Smith's 1838 identification of the angel as Nephi as a mistake, perhaps on the part of the transcriber or a later editor. In the version of Smith's 1838 history published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as well as the portion canonized by that denomination as the Pearl of Great Price, the name "Nephi" has been changed by editors to read "Moroni". The Community of Christ publishes the original story, including the identification of "Nephi", but indicates "Moroni" in a footnote.

Throughout his life, Smith claimed to have been visited by a number of angels.