2017 Study Schedule

In 2017, my strategy was to study the Book of Mormon by author.
The book is called the Book of Mormon for a good reason: Mormon selected all of the content except for Mormon 8-9, Ether, and Moroni, which were selected by his son Moroni after Mormon’s death. In selecting content, he sometimes quoted other authors and speakers, sometimes paraphrased them, and sometimes acted as the narrator, telling us what happened in his own words.
As Mormon explains to us in the short editorial comment entitled Words of Mormon, he found the small plates of Nephi partway through his compiling of the Nephite record. He was so impressed with these writings that he decided to include them in the record without editing them at all. Therefore, the first 6 books of the Book of Mormon are in the voice of the original authors, mostly Nephi. Even so, approximately 40% of the text of the Book of Mormon is apparently in Mormon’s voice (although he doesn’t always tell us when he’s quoting someone else. See, for example Alma 29.)
As I study Mormon during the first part of the year, I’m particularly interested in the indications he gives us as to his choice of content. As he tells us a number of times that he can only include a fraction of the history which he had available to him (Words of Mormon 1:5; Helaman 3:14; 3 Nephi 5:8; 3 Nephi 26:6). Sometimes, he explicitly tells us what he wants us to learn from the stories he has chosen to include. Other times, he hints at the lesson by the way he tells the story. I’m interested in documenting the principles that Mormon wanted us to understand as evidenced by the portion of his people’s history which he selected for us to read.

Here is my proposed schedule: