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Kish - in another thread you asked if I had an abstract for my project. I wouldn’t know how to submit the work, or to whom for that matter, but here it is:

Abstract

Encoding Revelation: A Literary-Theological Methodology for Reading the Book of Mormon as Confessional Allegory

This Codex Project advances a literary-theological approach to interpreting the Book of Mormon as a symbolic and confessional text rather than an ancient record. It argues that the work functions as a layered allegory encoding the spiritual, interpersonal, and institutional struggles of early nineteenth-century religious figures.

The methodology unfolds in five parts. Symbolic mapping aligns historical actors—Joseph and Alvin Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, and Martin Harris—with scriptural counterparts such as Nephi, Laban, Alma, and the sons of Mosiah, revealing recurring motifs of rivalry, betrayal, and restoration. Narrative reframing rereads the text as a “living codex” chronicling events between 1823 and 1829, including Alvin Smith’s death, early conversion movements, and Rigdon’s theological contests. Layered redaction traces multiple editorial voices paralleling the Book of Mormon’s own record-keeping, while allegorical geography situates sacred narrative within sites such as Palmyra and Kirtland.

The project’s interpretive synthesis presents the Book of Mormon as a tragic-sacred creation—an artifact of grief, ambition, and revelation that functions simultaneously as scripture, allegory, and encrypted diary of its creators.

Perhaps you’ve used this term and I just missed it, but in case not: a term that might be useful in conveying this project’s idea is roman à clef (“novel with a key”). The concept of writing a sort of allegory, not to illustrate abstract principles but to represent real history, is well enough known that it has this technical term.

The Book of Mormon isn’t exactly a novel. And its series of purportedly different writers may allow it to be a series of separate romans à clef. Perhaps one could say Écritures à clef, “Scriptures with a key”. (I think it might be important to keep the “s” in this case, because singular écriture just means “writing”.)

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 18, 2025 6:50 am

Perhaps you’ve used this term and I just missed it, but in case not: a term that might be useful in conveying this project’s idea is roman à clef (“novel with a key”). The concept of writing a sort of allegory, not to illustrate abstract principles but to represent real history, is well enough known that it has this technical term.

The Book of Mormon isn’t exactly a novel. And its series of purportedly different writers may allow it to be a series of separate romans à clef. Perhaps one could say Écritures à clef, “Scriptures with a key”. (I think it might be important to keep the “s” in this case, because singular écriture just means “writing”.)

Excellent addition, thank you!

Limnor, I might wonder if I am being a bit slow here missing something but I am puzzled as to why Joseph would create hidden confessions. To whom is this communication directed?

I find it easier to think Joseph saw spiritual meaning in his recent past so could use them as a pattern to tell stories with spiritual weight. If this is the reason I would imagine reading a confession of real hidden history would be a hit and miss sort of thing.

Perhaps you are meaning that certain portions of the book are messages to people associated to encourage unity or perhaps loyalty. Would Rigdon need a special communication? If he was co author or a knowing contributor he gave away his leadership claim by having Joseph be the presenter of the revelation.

huckelberry wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 18, 2025 10:50 pm

Limnor, I might wonder if I am being a bit slow here missing something but I am puzzled as to why Joseph would create hidden confessions. To whom is this communication directed?

I find it easier to think Joseph saw spiritual meaning in his recent past so could use them as a pattern to tell stories with spiritual weight. If this is the reason I would imagine reading a confession of real hidden history would be a hit and miss sort of thing.

Perhaps you are meaning that certain portions of the book are messages to people associated to encourage unity or perhaps loyalty. Would Rigdon need a special communication? If he was co author or a knowing contributor he gave away his leadership claim by having Joseph be the presenter of the revelation.

These are good questions, Huck. It is a difficult problem, to be sure.

I want to be very clear: Rigdon didn’t give it away, Joseph seized control. I see the book as essentially explaining how he did so.

I don’t believe in the “pious fraud” explanations.

The book can be read as consolidating two intersecting aims: Rigdon’s theological framework to support his claims and Joseph Smith’s consolidation of authority to support his thirst for power.

The “ancient record” motif: the plates, the lost prophets, the King James language, originated as a continuation of Sidney Rigdon’s Restorationist methodology from his “Epistle of Peter” sermons, which proposed that truth would return through the rediscovery of apostolic writings. Within that logic, Rigdon’s, and later Joseph’s, ancient voice was aimed at proof of divine continuity. Joseph seized on this concept and filled it with his own experience, taking advantage of Rigdon’s Restorationist concept in the form of a recovered scripture to achieve Joseph’s own ends.

The conspiratorial dimension arose not in the language of antiquity but in the question of authorship and control. By casting himself as translator rather than collaborator, Joseph effectively usurped Rigdon’s theological platform. What had begun as a communal theology of recovery became a single-prophet revelation.

The act of translation relocated the source of divine speech from the shared interpretive circle to Joseph’s person alone. The “plates,” once metaphoric emblems of restored truth, became literal under his hand; and in that literalization, he claimed sole stewardship over the sacred narrative. Rigdon’s principle of “ancient record” endured, but Joseph’s use of it made him its living guardian and gatekeeper.

This transformation crystallized in the Harmony–Fayette period of 1828–1829, when the act of dictation after the lost manuscript gave Joseph both opportunity and motive to redefine the record’s ownership. Joseph had purposefully ensured the original 116 pages (book of Lehi) were “lost” and Joseph’s 1-2 Nephi were cemented - inserting Joseph, as Nephi, as the inheritor of the kingdom.

Here the confessional emerges. Joseph’s “confession” is not a plea for forgiveness but a stratagem: he employs the rhetoric of penitence, lamentation, and divine commission to mask the very transgression it describes. He is not sincere in this, but the theology offers him a loophole - as long as he “confesses” he will be forgiven. It doesn’t matter if he is truly penitent or reborn.

The confession becomes a tool to power. It is control disguised as repentance.

Here you go, Huck - a stylized summary of the book, decoded:

And it came to pass in the year of our Lord 1823, in the hills and fields near Palmyra and Manchester, New York—the Wilderness of Ether—that Sidney Rigdon, called in symbol the Lord of the Record, spake unto Alvin, saying: “Write what thou hast seen, for the day will come when another shall claim thy vision and bear it before the nations.”

And Alvin, faithful to that unseen Lord, took up the charge and began to write the first record upon the hills east of Palmyra, where the mists rose from the drumlins like smoke upon the waters. There, in that Wilderness of Zeniff, he wrote the Book of Ether, and Martin Harris served as his scribe. Together they inscribed Joseph Smith Sr. as Noah, the patriarch who built a sacred order and fell beneath the weight of his own zeal. And Alvin was both Zeniff and Abinadi—builder and prophet, founder and martyr—the one who sought to renew the covenant and was slain for proclaiming that God Himself should be made visible among men. His death sealed the plates; his words fell silent among the trees of Palmyra.

And it came to pass that after Alvin’s passing, Oliver Cowdery—called Alma in the record (not the Younger)—departed into the land of Vermont, which is Ammonihah in type: a place of learning, skepticism, and eventual renewal. There he became a teacher among the children of men, yet his heart was heavy with memory of the fallen prophet. In due season the same voice that had once commanded Alvin stirred the field again—and Joseph would arise as Alma the Younger, the repentant reformer and recorder who would take up the spiritual mantle in its appointed hour.

And behold, in the year of our Lord 1824, there arose Ammon, the herald from the north—Parley P. Pratt in likeness—who traveled through the lands of Ishmael, stretching across western New York and Ohio, to seek those who yet believed. He found Limhi, even Martin Harris, burdened by debt and ridicule, yet still guarding the memory of the plates in Palmyra, which is Zarahemla reborn. From their meeting sprang the first glimmer of restoration, and soon the sons of Mosiah—Rigdon’s disciples and kindred spirits—took up the wandering ministry between 1824 and 1828. They preached from Mentor and Kirtland to the western frontier, crying repentance to the people and enduring hardship, that the land might again remember the God of its fathers.

And it came to pass in the year of our Lord 1828, that the scattered faithful gathered in Palmyra-Zarahemla in a great Conference of the Record. There they covenanted anew; and Rigdon the Theologian, he who had first commanded Alvin to write, ordered the scattered writings into a sacred architecture. He framed the Codex from Ether to Lehi to Nephi to Mosiah to the Books of Peace. His Lehi and Nephi invoked Zenock, Zenos, and Neum, linking the ancient prophets of Israel to the awakening in America. Around this design he placed the missionary journeys of the sons of Mosiah and the conversion of Amulek, binding their trials into one theological symphony—while Joseph, as Alma the Younger, began to gather, reform, and record, that the churches might be one.

And it came to pass in the years of our Lord 1828 and 1829, that Rigdon, as Moroni, believing the record complete, made his final redaction and abridgment in Mentor, Ohio—his symbolic Land of Cumorah. Yet even as he sealed, Joseph, the younger seer dwelling in Harmony, Pennsylvania—the Land of Nephi—held back what he would reveal. He declared the Book of Lehi lost and replaced it with his own 1 and 2 Nephi: a new beginning in which he himself took the plates by divine command. Thus he rewrote the birth of prophecy, placing his own reflection within the sacred lineage as Nephi the Seer and Mormon the Compiler.

And when Rigdon-Moroni beheld the printed book brought by Pratt and the brethren from Palmyra to Ohio, he saw not the manuscript he had sealed. The names were his, but the heart belonged to another. Joseph had written himself both first and last—Nephi and Mormon, prophet and redeemer; Alma the Younger, reformer and recorder. The Lord who had once commanded Alvin to write now saw His word transfigured; the servant had become the master. Thus the Codex closed as it began—in revelation and betrayal, in brotherhood and grief—the sacred tragedy of the builders of the record, whose many voices were gathered into one by the final seer. And so the hills of Palmyra became Cumorah, and the hidden word of Harmony and Vermont became the scripture of the nations.

Limnor wrote:And Alvin, faithful to that unseen Lord, took up the charge and began to write the first record upon the hills east of Palmyra, where the mists rose from the drumlins like smoke upon the waters. There, in that Wilderness of Zeniff, he wrote the Book of Ether, and Martin Harris served as his scribe. Together they inscribed Joseph Smith Sr. as Noah, the patriarch who built a sacred order and fell beneath the weight of his own zeal. And Alvin was both Zeniff and Abinadi—builder and prophet, founder and martyr—the one who sought to renew the covenant and was slain for proclaiming that God Himself should be made visible among men. His death sealed the plates; his words fell silent among the trees of Palmyra.

Can you explain (again, assuming I missed it) how Alvin got caught up in this? You have him as a central figure in the beginning but I recall basically nothing about Alvin from either Sunday School or these boards.

Gadianton wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 25, 2026 12:49 am

Limnor wrote:And Alvin, faithful to that unseen Lord, took up the charge and began to write the first record upon the hills east of Palmyra, where the mists rose from the drumlins like smoke upon the waters. There, in that Wilderness of Zeniff, he wrote the Book of Ether, and Martin Harris served as his scribe. Together they inscribed Joseph Smith Sr. as Noah, the patriarch who built a sacred order and fell beneath the weight of his own zeal. And Alvin was both Zeniff and Abinadi—builder and prophet, founder and martyr—the one who sought to renew the covenant and was slain for proclaiming that God Himself should be made visible among men. His death sealed the plates; his words fell silent among the trees of Palmyra.

Can you explain (again, assuming I missed it) how Alvin got caught up in this? You have him as a central figure in the beginning but I recall basically nothing about Alvin from either Sunday School or these boards.

I read it within the book.

Alvin died in 1823, right before everything kicks off. Joseph later says Alvin would have received the plates if he had lived. Alvin is consistently described as: the responsible one, the moral and family center. The Cain and Abel motif.

And within the book itself:

Alma 39: 1 And now, my son, I have somewhat more to say unto thee than what I said unto thy brother; for behold, have ye not observed the steadiness of thy brother, his faithfulness, and his diligence in keeping the commandments of God? Behold, has he not set a good example for thee?

Helaman 9:29 And ye shall say unto him: Have ye murdered your brother?

Ether 9:8 And now the brother of him that suffered death, (and his name was Nimrah) was angry with his father because of that which his father had done unto his brother.

Alma 19:2 Now, one of them, whose brother had been slain with the sword of Ammon, being exceedingly angry with Ammon, drew his sword and went forth that he might let it fall upon Ammon, to slay him; and as he lifted the sword to smite him, behold, he fell dead.



Alma 54:22 And if it so be that there is a devil and a hell, behold will he not send you there to dwell with my brother whom ye have murdered, whom ye have hinted that he hath gone to such a place? But behold these things matter not.

Omni 1:30 And I, Amaleki, had a brother, who also went with them; and I have not since known concerning them. And I am about to lie down in my grave; and these plates are full. And I make an end of my speaking.

3 Nephi 7:19 And in the name of Jesus did he cast out devils and unclean spirits; and even his brother did he raise from the dead, after he had been stoned and suffered death by the people.

The story is in there—I think it’s told from 2-3 different points of view.

The motive is in the story of Abinadi.

Edit: one that I missed: the brother of Jared is Alvin. He is given stones and told to write.

The other day you mentioned letters—I think this may be what you were talking about:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=160669&p=2915114#p2915114

Also, what I see as the origin story within Ether:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=160633

huckelberry wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 18, 2025 10:50 pm

Limnor, I might wonder if I am being a bit slow here missing something but I am puzzled as to why Joseph would create hidden confessions. To whom is this communication directed?

I find it easier to think Joseph saw spiritual meaning in his recent past so could use them as a pattern to tell stories with spiritual weight. If this is the reason I would imagine reading a confession of real hidden history would be a hit and miss sort of thing. . .

I feel like Smith would have used any technique possible to consistently tell his stories, given he had to present them as "scripture" from "plates."

What better strategy than using real life events as a prompt?

According to what I've read of limnor's theory it doesn't seem like Joseph Smith left much out, but I do need to read more. This is a great thread for getting caught up on that, thanks Limnor!!