Physics Guy wrote: I'm not sure any extra motivation from the 116 pages episode is even needed
I totally agree. However, although that ice cream sandwich was great on its own terms, the fact it was 116 degrees outside might also explain why I ate it.
I'm a rube when it comes to the Book of Mormon, to be honest. The Rev among other things, is friends with Don Bradly, who is the world's foremost expert on the lost 116 pages. I won't pretend to account for his reasons for making his suggestion.
If I were trying to figure out if the 116 played a role, I'd hone in on any differences in the project prior to and after the 116 pages were lost. From my primitive understanding, I do think there are a couple of clues in the Rev's favor.
The first is that I have not seen evidence that Smith distinguished between the small and large plates prior to the 116; you know, multiple sources within the gold plates, which from a DH standpoint is a pretty interesting suggestion. Imagine that the Gold Plates had two totally redundant accounts at the beginning! (and only at the beginning). Well, THAT almost sounds too good to be true until you realize it's anachronistic, and only happened because God foresaw the lost 116 episode.
So I don't think it's terribly ad hoc to suggest that Joseph Smith did not contemplate the need for redundant sets of plates until after the fact. And having those thoughts forced in his mind, and having to come up with that explanation, it's very possible he hadn't thought through at all, how various sub-records would come together to produce the Book of Mormon. After covering his tracks; now he was committed.
In browsing around, it's said that the 116 hadn't been identified by Smith as the "Book of Lehi" until much later. According to Don, the real length of the lost manuscript is over 300 pages. Alma, the longest book, is less than 200 pages (I think). So it's likely, to me, that the lost manuscript wasn't segmented by authors the way the rest of the book is.
And I found this little gem pretty much by accident, from the wiki entry on 116 pages:
Along with the Book of Lehi, Royal Skousen, editor of The Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, says that in the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mosiah, the first chapter is listed as Chapter 3. Skousen proposes that all or part of the first two chapters were lost with the 116 pages. Skousen notes that every other book in the Book of Mormon is named for its primary author; but the Book of Mosiah begins with King Benjamin and is not named for him. Also, Mosiah does not begin with an introduction of the author or an explanatory introduction as is typical with other Book of Mormon books but "begins in the middle of things." Skousen speculates that the original first chapter related Mosiah's flight from the land of Nephi to Zarahemla and that the second chapter discussed King Benjamin's early reign and wars
Since it's commonly believed that translation began with Mosiah, is it possible that Skousen is totally wrong here? Maybe he hadn't found his groove yet. He wouldn't, in fact, need to come up with the small and large plates until much later, as the Books of Nephi would nearly be last. So at some point, well into continuing on, he landed upon the personal diary theme and retroactively named the entire corpus of lost writings "the book of Lehi"