Angel Moroni

thumb|[[Bern Switzerland Temple statue of Angel Moroni]]

The angel Moroni () is an angel whom Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, reported as having visited him on numerous occasions, beginning on September 21, 1823. According to Smith, the angel Moroni was the guardian of the golden plates buried near his home in western New York, which Latter Day Saints believe were the source of the Book of Mormon. An important figure in the theology of the Latter Day Saint movement, Moroni is featured prominently in its architecture and art. Besides Smith, the Three Witnesses and several other witnesses also reported that they saw Moroni in visions in 1829.

Moroni is thought by Latter Day Saints to be the same person as a Book of Mormon prophet-warrior named Moroni, who was the last to write in the golden plates. According to the Book of Mormon, the angel Moroni was a pre-Columbian warrior who buried the golden plates. After he died, he became an angel who was tasked with directing Smith to their location in the 1820s. According to Smith, he then returned the golden plates to Moroni after they were translated and, as of 1838, Moroni still had the plates in his possession.

Angel's name and identity

Initially, Smith said he received the golden plates from "an angel" but gave no 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 them. In Smith's 1832 (second-hand, but officially authorized) 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. Similarly, on May 2, 1838, Smith began dictating a church history in which the angel is identified as "Nephi", which is the name of the Book of Mormon's first narrator. This was left unchanged when the 1838 history was published in 1842 in Times and Seasons, which Smith edited himself, and in Millennial Star. In 1851, after Smith's death (1844), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) published its first edition of the Pearl of Great Price, also identifying the angel as Nephi. In 1853, Smith's mother Lucy Mack Smith published a history of her son and also used the name Nephi.

Smith first identified the angel as Moroni in 1835, while preparing the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, in which he indicated a number of angels who would come to the earth after the Second Coming and drink sacramental wine with himself and Oliver Cowdery. Around this time, Cowdery was writing a history of Smith in which he identified the angel as the prophet Moroni from the Book of Mormon. In July 1838, Smith wrote in the church periodical Elders' Journal that "Moroni [was] the person who deposited the plates, from whence the book of Mormon was translated [...] and gave me directions how to obtain them". 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".

Based on Smith's other statements 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 on the part of the transcriber. In the version of Smith's 1838 history published by the LDS Church, 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.

Theorized origin of the name

Commenting on the name of the angel Moroni, Grant H. Palmer speculates that Smith had read of the city Moroni on the island Comoros from either a map or tales of Captain William Kidd, popular at the time. According to Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh Nibley, the use of "mor" in the Book of Mormon is an Egyptian word, and means "beloved, good, everything nice and desirable."

Description

In one of Smith's histories, he described him as an "angel of light" who "had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness. It was a whiteness beyond anything earthly I had ever seen .… His hands were naked and his arms also a little above the wrists .… Not only was his robe exceedingly white but his whole person was glorious beyond description". According to Smith's sister Katharine, the angel "was dressed in white raiment, of whiteness beyond anything Joseph had ever seen in his life, and had a girdle about his waist. He saw his hands and wrists, and they were pure and white".

Appearances to Joseph Smith and others

thumb|upright|The angel Moroni directs Joseph Smith to the plates of the Book of Mormon.

Smith said that on the night of September 21, 1823, Moroni appeared to him and told him about the golden plates that were buried in a stone box a few miles from Smith's home. Smith said that the same angel visited him various times over the course of the next six years; Smith also said that the angel visited him to retrieve the golden plates after Smith had finished translating a portion of the writing on the plates into the Book of Mormon.

Luke S. Johnson
Zera Pulsipher, later disputed.
W. W. Phelps;
John P. Greene and his wife Rhoda
John Taylor
Oliver Granger
Heber C. Kimball
Lucy Harris
Harrison Burgess

Mary Whitmer may also have seen Moroni, although she referred to the angel she saw as "Brother Nephi". the prophet for whom the Book of Mormon is named. Moroni may have been named after Captain Moroni, an earlier Book of Mormon figure. Before Mormon's death in battle, he passed the golden plates to Moroni. Moroni then finished writing on the plates and concluded the record, presumably burying them in the hill Cumorah in western New York. He is the namesake of the Book of Moroni in the Book of Mormon.

Theological significance

thumb|150px|left|Angel Moroni [[United States Department of Veterans Affairs emblems for headstones and markers|USVA headstone symbol]]

Because of his instrumentality in the restoration of the gospel, Moroni is commonly identified by Latter Day Saints as the angel mentioned in , "having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people."

The image of the angel Moroni blowing a trumpet is commonly used as an unofficial symbol of the LDS Church. Moroni appears on the cover of some editions of the Book of Mormon. Statues of the angel stand atop many LDS temples, with most statues facing east.

In 2007, the LDS Church stated that an image of the angel Moroni in an advertisement violated one of the church's registered trademarks.

Sculptors

The Nauvoo Temple was the first Latter Day Saint temple to be crowned with a figure of an angel. This angel, not officially identified as Moroni, was a metal weathervane with gold leaf on the trumpet. It was designed by William Weeks (architect of the Nauvoo temple) and installed in January 1846. This figure was positioned in a flying horizontal position holding an open book in one hand and a trumpet in the other.

Cyrus Dallin sculpted the first angel which was identified as Moroni. This angel was placed on the Salt Lake Temple during the capstone ceremony on April 6, 1892, one year to the day before the temple was dedicated. Dallin's design is a neoclassical angel in robe and cap, standing upright with a trumpet in hand. It stands 3.8 meters high, was molded in hammered copper from the plaster original, and was covered with 22-karat gold leaf. On March 18, 2020, the trumpet held by the statue of Angel Moroni on the Salt Lake Temple fell to the ground as a result of a 5.7 magnitude earthquake.

Torleif S. Knaphus fashioned a replica of the Dallin angel in the 1930s, but the casting of his angel wasn't placed on a temple until many years later. In 1983, castings of this angel were placed on the Idaho Falls Temple and the Atlanta Temple.

Millard F. Malin's angel, which was placed on the Los Angeles Temple in 1953, is known as the second Angel Moroni statue. His angel was cast in aluminum, stands 4.7 meters high, and weighs 953 kilograms. Malin depicted Moroni with Native American features, wearing a Mayan style cloak, and holding the golden plates in its left hand.

Avard Fairbanks sculpted the third Angel Moroni statue, which was placed on the Washington D.C. Temple, dedicated in 1974. This angel was created as a one-meter model which was sent to Italy where it was enlarged, cast in bronze, and gilded. The finished statue is 5.5 meters high and weighs over . The Seattle Washington, Jordan River Utah, and Mexico City Mexico temples each have a 4.6-meter casting of this statue.

Notes

References

External links

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