Hello and welcome to the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies podcast.

I'm here today with the amazing Kim Matheson, who is the Laura F. Willis Research Fellow and my colleague here at the Neil A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

Kim is an amazing Book of Mormon scholar. I'm so happy that she was willing to be here today

and start us off on this new Book of Mormon Studies podcast with actually a very little

known book, Kim, right? The book of first and five most people have never heard of

it really aren't familiar with it at all right so right let's dive right in um what context

kim should we have in mind as we open the book and start to read well it's a little tricky with

context because as we have the book of Mormon, First Nephi is the very first book.

So it's not like we come with a whole lot of narrative background to discuss.

But there are some things we can say that might be useful to people.

First Nephi is the first book of what Latter-day Saints know as the small plates.

So these are the books from First Nephi through the

words of Mormon. And we call them the small plates based on some internal clues. Nephives will tell

readers that he made two sets of plates, one, a kind of historical record that we think of as

his large plates. But then he made what he calls his small plates, specifically designed for

spiritual things, more spiritually focused matters, he says. And these are what got passed down

to his brother Jacob, and then through Jacob's line to a variety of other authors. They conclude

with some explanatory comments editorially from Mormon at the very end in words of Mormon.

And this is the first book that inaugurates that small plates tradition.

And it's interesting, isn't it, Kim, but in the small plates, whereas in the large plates,

we always have Mormon's perspective overlaid over the text, right?

Because Mormon has been abridging these.

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