Book of Mormon Commentary
Book of I Nephi

An account of Lehi and his wife Sariah and his four sons, being called, (beginning at the eldest) Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi. The Lord warns Lehi to depart out of the land of Jerusalem, because he prophesieth unto the people concerning their iniquity and they seek to destroy his life. He taketh three days’ journey into the wilderness with his family. Nephi taketh his brethren and returneth to the land of Jerusalem after the record of the Jews. The account of their sufferings. They take the daughters of Ishmael to wife. They take their families and depart into the wilderness. Their sufferings and afflictions in the wilderness. The course of their travels. They come to the large waters. Nephi’s brethren rebel against him. He confoundeth them, and buildeth a ship. They call the name of the place Bountiful. They cross the large waters into the promised land, and so forth. This is according to the account of Nephi; or in other words, I, Nephi, wrote this record.

This explanation was contained in the original first publication of the 1830 Book of Mormon. As such and per the last clarifying pharse of it, we can presume it was written by the hand of Nephi himself as his own introduction to the first book of Nephi of the Small Plates of Nephi.

Lehi, Nephi's father, was a young man during the reign of the most righteous King of the Jews, Josiah (See: 2 Kings 23:25). Under such a righteous king, is when Lehi would have married and began his family. By the time that Nephi, his fourth son and sixth child, reached the age of about 12, the kingdom of the Jews had again dwindled into corruption and wickedness. Nephi's 'Small Plates' record concerned only Nephi and his reign and ministry. It did not go into any pre-history other than to state that it began in the first year of the reign of King Zedekiah. Any other history was contained in the writings of Lehi, upon Nephi's 'Large Plates' and upon the brass plates of Laban. The brass plates of Laban contained many of the same records of the Old Testament Bible up to and including many of the writings of Jeremiah, with addition genealogies and some other ancient prophets as well, including some of the prophecies of Joseph of Egypt which had been lost from the first book of Moses, called Genesis today. And Nephi did not see to duplicate any such history on his 'Small Plates' record, which dealt primarily with the more spiritually related events of his own life beginning about 601-600 BC in the first year of Zedekiah's reign. Nephi's small but plain and precious record of his own began with what was most important to Nephi, his family.