The name “Nephi” appears in some of the most important sections of doctrine and history in the Book of Mormon. In the Apocrypha, Nephi was a geographic name. Nephi was also the first part of two names in the King James Bible, “Nephish” and “Nephishesim” (1 Chron. 5:19; Neh. 7:52). Publications before 1830 specified that “Nephilim” (translated “giants” in Gen 6:4) was the term for the offspring of intercourse between angels and humans. Hugh Nibley note that this claim of angels having “carnal intercourse with the daughters of men” in the pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch was one reason why Protestant commentators condemned Laurence’s 1821 translation. That view of the Nephilim was in the encyclopedia on sale near Smith’s home, which also noted that “Nephin” was the name of a mountain in Ireland. Niblye also suggested that Nephi could be an English version of such Egyptian names as Nehi, Nehri, Neheb, Nehep, Nfy, or Nihpi, the original name of the Egyptian god Pa-nepi. However, the English language of Joseph Smith’s generation had several examples of “Nephi” as a name and prefix.

Nephi is also a name with several parallels to spirits and magic. “Nephiomaoth” was one of the magic names of God in early Christian Gnosticism, while “Nephum” and “Nephaton” were holy names in spirit incantation. The German publication of the widely circulated magic manuscript “The Key of Solomon” in 1686 referred to “Propheten (Nevijm).” This famous magic grimoire gave a German pronunciation of “Neef-eye-eem” for prophets; thus a pronunciation of “Neef-eye” for a single prophet.

Perhaps the most publicized magic parallel to Nephi was that of “Nephes” or “Nephesh” meant the disembodied spirit of men, according to the Cabala—the ancient Jewish system of magic. Published in English since 1694, this cabalistic term and its meaning also appeared in William Enfield’s 1791 History of Philosophy. Enfield’s book had three editions by 1819 and was advertise for sale from 1804 to 1828 near Smith’s home. John Beaumont specified the name’s application to magic: “The Third part of the Soul is that which dissolves this Harmony, and it is the Idol, Image, Shadow, and as the out-coat, drawn from the surface of the Body, the Cabalists call it Nephes, it wanders from Sepulchers, and it sometimes visible, but to the eyes of those whom God Illuminates . . . and this part of the Soul (if we believe the Doctrine of the Cabalists) is that which is called out by Magicians and Necromancers” (emphasis in original).

The necromantic parallel to the name Nephi may help to explain a historical puzzle in Mormon history. In the 1839 manuscript of Smith’s official history and its printed versions of 1842 and 1851, the name of the messenger who appeared three times in one night of 1823 was stated as Nephi rather than Moroni. Since Smith’s earliest autobiography (1832) gave the angel’s name as “Maroni,” LDS historians have defined the later use of Nephi as “a clerical error.”

However, clerical error is not a convincing explanation. As editor of Times and Seasons in 1842 Smith published the Nephi reference, which he could have easily corrected but did not. Clerical error cannot explain evidence from the Whitmer family, who were no longer affiliated with the LDS church after 1838: “I have heard my grandmother (Mary M. Whitmer) [mother of five Book of Mormon witnesses] say on several occasions that she was shown the plates of the Book of Mormon by an holy angel, whom she always called Brother Nephi.”

The evidence demonstrates that after 1830 Mary Musselman Whitmer and Joseph Smith himself intentionally referred to Moroni as Nephi. Since “Nephes” was a designation for departed spirits “called out by Magicians and Necromancers,” these Mormons may have used the cognate “Nephi” as a generic reference to the messenger Moroni. Documents of 1839 show that Joseph was using Nephi and Moroni interchangeably. At the same time a clerk recorded in the 1839 history that the angels’ name was Nephi, Smith himself published an account identifying the messenger as “Moroni, the person who deposited the plates.” Because the names sound nothing alike, clerical error is unlikely in the manuscript recording of Smith’s dictation. The use of Nephi in the manuscripts history about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon seems instead to be the prophet’s intentional substitution of another name for Moroni.

There are several factors to explain why Joseph Smith and other early Mormons made this substitution. First, as an allusion to the traditional term for spirit messenger “called out by Magicians and Necromancers, the name Nephi was consistent with early descriptions of the 1823 messenger as a spirit (see ch. 5). Second, that same reference also fits with the evidence that this messenger’s three nighttime appearances to Smith conformed with the necromantic purposes of spirit innovation in the Smith family’s magic parchments (see ch. 4). Also, as previously mentioned, “Nephilim” was published in American encyclopedias in the early 1800s as the name for the “giants” who were the offspring of the “sons of God” and the daughters of men in Genesis. In connection with statements of the Smiths to Palmyra neighbors (see ch. 5), the most famous English work on the salamander as an elemental spirit stated that it was actually the elemental spirits who cohabited with women to produce those giants.” Thus, as the third factor, interchanging the names Moroni and Nephi was consistent with the magic world view that the Nephilim of Genesis were the offspring of divine salamanders, known as “Moron” in books available in Palmyra (see ch. 5).