A First Person Record Opening The Small Plates

1 Nephi belongs to what is called the small plates of Nephi, a set of plates Nephi says he made specifically for spiritual and prophetic material, distinct from a fuller political and military record he also kept. This distinction matters for how the Book of Mormon as a whole is put together: everything from 1 Nephi through Omni descends from these small plates, written directly by their original authors, while most of the rest of the book is presented as Mormon's later abridgment of the larger record, compiled centuries afterward.

Because Nephi is writing in his own voice about events he lived through, 1 Nephi has a personal, testimonial quality that distinguishes it from the historical narration found later in the book. Latter-day Saints hold this record to be an authentic ancient document engraved on metal plates and translated by Joseph Smith; historians and scholars outside the tradition generally treat the text as Smith's own nineteenth century composition, drawing on the religious and literary culture of his time. The atlas records both positions rather than adjudicating between them, since the question is a matter of religious commitment and historical argument rather than a fact that further philology alone can settle.