Mosiah 8:17

LDS author J. N. Washburn writes, "Chapters 7 and 8 bring the first break in the continuity and lead into the most complicated and difficult part of the whole Book of Mormon. Here the story of the Nephites in Zarahemla is suddenly dropped-almost before it is well begun-for no good reason at all that is apparent, that we might follow, though briefly, an expedition up to the land of Nephi. This brings us to another story, but to the end rather than the beginning. To put it another way, the story of Zeniff begins with the end... it is in chapter 8 also that we first learn about the Twenty-four Gold Plates of the Jaredites who are known to us only through the prophet Ether. For Ether the date is probably about 600 B.C., and for the story we must go almost to the end of the Book of Mormon! Mention of the Gold Plates leads into another complication of the Book of Mosiah. Some little time before the appearance of Ammon and his fifteen friends in the land on Nephi, Limhi had sent out forty-three scouts to find Zarahemla... The forty-three scouts became lost in the wilderness. They went far northward, missing Zarahemla, and found the dead civilization of the Jaredites... The forty-three started back again, hoping, doubtless, to find Zarahemla this time. unless, indeed, they supposed they had already found it, in death and ruin. But once more they missed the city, and eventually found themselves again in their native Nephi. This whole circumstance is instructive, representative of much that is found throughout the book of Mormon. In its setting, people are always getting lost. Almost no one can go very far from his home with any assurance of finding his way back. The incident also indicates the discontinuousness of the record. At once now we run into more of this irregular material. Having met Ammon in chapters 7 and 8, we leave him suddenly, but only for a short time, that we might jump backward between seventy-five and eighty years to about 200 B.C., to Limhi's grandfather Zeniff, and to the beginning of the story of which we have already come to the end... To put it another way, from chapters 7-8 we go forward to chapters 9-22 in order to [go] backward from 121 B.C. to 200 B.C. All this is done without explanation or preparation and also without transition. We simply go from one story to another by passing from one paragraph to another...." -J.N. Washburn, The Contents, Structure and Authorship of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954), pp. 35-38.