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The "lost 116 pages" were the original manuscript pages of what Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, said was the translation of the Book of Lehi, the first portion of the golden plates revealed to him by an angel in 1827. These pages, which had not been copied, were lost by Smith's scribe, Martin Harris, during the summer of 1828 and are presumed to have been destroyed. Smith completed the
Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude dat ...
without retranslating the Book of Lehi, replacing it with what he said was an abridgment taken from the
Plates of Nephi According to the Book of Mormon, the plates of Nephi, consisting of the large plates of Nephi and the small plates of Nephi, are a portion of the collection of inscribed metal plates which make up the record of the Nephites. This record was later ...
.


Background

Joseph Smith said that on September 22, 1827, he had recovered a set of buried golden plates in a prominent hill near his parents' farm in
Manchester, New York Manchester is a town in Ontario County, New York, United States. The population was 9,406 at the 2020 census. The town was named after one of its villages, which in turn was named after the original Manchester in England. It was formed in 1822 ...
. Martin Harris, a respectable but superstitious farmer from nearby Palmyra, became an early believer and gave Smith $50 to finance the translation of the plates.
Lucy Harris Lucy Harris (May 1, 1792–1836) was the wife of Martin Harris (Latter Day Saints), Martin Harris, and an early skeptic of the translation of the Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon's golden plates. Biography Early life Lucy Harris was born on May 1 ...
, Martin's wife, also donated some of her own money and offered to give more, even though Smith denied her request to see the plates and told her that "in relation to assistance, I always prefer dealing with men rather than their wives." Smith and his wife, Emma, moved to her hometown of
Harmony, Pennsylvania Harmony is a borough in Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 890 at the 2010 census. It is located approximately north of Pittsburgh. Geography Harmony is located in southwestern Butler County, along the northeastern ...
, in late October 1827, where he began transcribing the writing on the plates. When Harris left Palmyra to visit Smith without taking his wife along, she became suspicious that Smith intended to defraud her and her husband. When Harris returned, Lucy refused to share his bed, and she had a suitor of her daughter surreptitiously copy the characters on the
Anthon transcript The "Anthon Transcript" (often identified with the "Caractors document") is a piece of paper on which Joseph Smith wrote several lines of characters. According to Smith, these characters were from the golden plates (the ancient record from which S ...
that Smith had given to Harris. Lucy then accompanied her husband back to Harmony in April 1828, when Martin agreed to serve as Smith's scribe. Before returning home after two weeks, Lucy searched the Smith house and grounds for the plates but was unable to locate them. Smith said he did not need their physical presence to create the transcription and that they were hidden in nearby woods.


Harris as Smith's scribe

From April to June 1828, Harris acted as Smith's scribe as Smith dictated the manuscript using the Urim and Thummim and seer stones. By the middle of June, Smith had dictated about 116 manuscript pages of text. Harris continued to have doubts about the authenticity of the manuscript, and he "could not forget his wife's skepticism or the hostile queries of Palmyra's tavern crowd." Smith's mother,
Lucy Lucy is an English feminine given name derived from the Latin masculine given name Lucius with the meaning ''as of light'' (''born at dawn or daylight'', maybe also ''shiny'', or ''of light complexion''). Alternative spellings are Luci, Luce, Lu ...
, "said that Harris asked Joseph for a look at the plates, for 'a further witness of their actual existence and that he might be better able to give a reason for the hope that was within him.' When that request was denied, he asked about the manuscript. Could he at least take it home to reassure his wife?" After denying his request twice, Smith, with a great deal of uneasiness, said that the Lord had given permission, and he allowed Harris to take the manuscript pages back to Palmyra on condition that he show them to only five named family members. He even made Harris bind himself in a solemn oath.


The manuscript disappears

When Harris returned home, he showed the manuscript to his wife, who allowed him to lock them in her bureau. Harris then showed the pages not only to the named relatives but "to any friend who came along." On one occasion Harris picked the lock of the bureau and damaged it, irritating his wife. The manuscript then disappeared. Shortly after Harris left Harmony, Smith's wife gave birth to Smith's firstborn son, who was "very much deformed" and died less than a day after delivery.
Emma Smith Emma Hale Smith Bidamon (July 10, 1804 – April 30, 1879) was an American homesteader, the official wife of Joseph Smith, and a prominent leader in the early days of the Latter Day Saint movement, both during Smith's lifetime and afterward as ...
nearly died herself, and Smith tended her for two weeks. As she slowly gained strength, Smith left her in the care of her mother and went back to Palmyra in search of Harris and the manuscript. The following day Harris was dragged into the Smith family home in distress and without the pages. Smith urged Harris to search his house again, but Harris told him he had already ripped open beds and pillows. Smith moaned, "Oh, my God! ... All is lost! all is lost! What shall I do? I have sinned—it is I who tempted the wrath of God". After returning to
Harmony In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring Audio frequency, frequencies, pitch (music), pitches (timb ...
without Harris, Smith dictated to Emma his first written revelation, which both rebuked Smith and denounced Harris as "a wicked man." The revelation assured Smith that if he was penitent he would regain his ability to translate. It is unclear if or when the angel returned the interpreters to Smith. In 1838, Smith said, "Immediately after my return home o Harmony, Pennsylvania, in about July,I was walking out a little distance, when Behold the former heavenly messenger appeared and handed to me the Urim and Thummin." Smith said he used the interpreters to receive a revelation (today known as Section 3 of the
Doctrine and Covenants The Doctrine and Covenants (sometimes abbreviated and cited as D&C or D. and C.) is a part of the open scriptural canon of several denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement. Originally published in 1835 as Doctrine and Covenants of the Chur ...
); then the angel again took away the plates and interpreters before returning them a few days later. Nevertheless, Lucy Smith's recollection was that an angel had promised that the plates and interpreters would be returned to Smith on September 22, 1828, if he were sufficiently worthy, and David Whitmer and Emma Smith said that the interpreters were not returned at all but that Smith thereafter used one of his seer stones to interpret the plates.


Resumed transcription and the witnesses

Between the loss of the pages during the summer of 1828 and the rapid completion of the Book of Mormon in the spring of 1829, there was a period of quiescence as if Smith were waiting "for help or direction." In April 1829, Smith was joined by Oliver Cowdery, a fellow Vermonter and a distant relation who replaced Harris as scribe. The pace of the transcription then increased so dramatically that, within two months, nearly the entire remainder of the manuscript of the
Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude dat ...
was completed. According to Smith, he did not retranslate the material that Harris had lost because he said that if he did, evil men would alter the manuscript in an effort to discredit him. Smith said that instead, he had been divinely ordered to replace the lost material with Nephi's account of the same events. When Smith reached the end of the book, he said he was told that God had foreseen the loss of the early manuscript and had prepared the same history in an abridged format that emphasized religious history, the Small Plates of Nephi. Smith transcribed this portion, and it appears as the first part of the book. When published in 1830, the Book of Mormon contained a statement about the lost 116 pages, as well as the Testimony of
Three Witnesses The Three Witnesses is the collective name for three men connected with the early Latter Day Saint movement who stated that an angel had shown them the golden plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon; they also stated that t ...
and the Testimony of Eight Witnesses, who claimed to have seen and handled the golden plates. According to
Jeffrey R. Holland Jeffrey Roy Holland (born December 3, 1940) is an American educator and religious leader. He served as the ninth President of Brigham Young University (BYU) and is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of L ...
, an
apostle An apostle (), in its literal sense, is an emissary, from Ancient Greek ἀπόστολος (''apóstolos''), literally "one who is sent off", from the verb ἀποστέλλειν (''apostéllein''), "to send off". The purpose of such sending ...
in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), "it was not tit for tat, this for that — you give me 116 pages of manuscript and I'll give you 142 pages of printed text. Not so: We got back more than we lost. And it was known from the beginning that it would be so." Nevertheless, the loss of the manuscript provided opponents of Mormonism, such as the 19th century clergyman M.T. Lamb, with additional reasons to dismiss the religion as a fraud.
Fawn Brodie Fawn McKay Brodie (September 15, 1915 – January 10, 1981) was an American biographer and one of the first female professors of history at UCLA, who is best known for ''Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History'' (1974), a work of psychobiography, ...
has written that Smith "realized that it was impossible for him to reproduce the story exactly, and that to redictate it would be to invite devastating comparisons. Harris's wife taunted him: 'If this be a divine communication, the same being who revealed it to you can easily replace it.'" Ex-Mormons
Jerald and Sandra Tanner Jerald Dee Tanner (June 1, 1938 – October 1, 2006) and Sandra McGee Tanner (born January 14, 1941) are American writers and researchers who publish archival and evidential materials about the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day S ...
argued that the lost manuscript suggested that Smith was not a misguided individual who believed in his own creative imagination but was at least minimally aware of his own deception. Martin Harris was permitted by Smith to be one of the
Three Witnesses The Three Witnesses is the collective name for three men connected with the early Latter Day Saint movement who stated that an angel had shown them the golden plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon; they also stated that t ...
. He mortgaged his farm for $3000 () as security in the event that the Book of Mormon did not sell, and when in fact, it did not, he lost both his farm and his wife. He later disavowed Joseph Smith, left the church, joined several different varieties of early Mormon-related congregations, then at 87 joined the LDS Church and recanted what he'd earlier said about Smith. He never disavowed the gold plates, however.On his death bed, Harris said,"The Book of Mormon is no fake. I know what I know. I have seen what I have seen, and I have heard what I have heard. I have seen the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon is written. An angel appeared to me and others and testified to the truthfulness of the record, and had I been willing to have perjured myself and sworn falsely to the testimony I now bear I could have been a rich man, but I could not have testified other than I have done and am now doing for these things are true."Martin Harris Cited by George Godfrey as "Testimony of Martin Harris", from an unpublished manuscript copy in the possession of his descendants, quoted in Eldin Ricks, ''The Case of the Book of Mormon Witnesses'' (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1971), 65–66.


See also

* "
All About Mormons "All About Mormons", also known as "All About the Mormons?", is the 12th episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series ''South Park'', and the 108th overall episode of the series. It was originally broadcast on Comedy Ce ...
" * Lehi (Book of Mormon prophet) *
Mosiah priority Mosiah priority is a theory about the creation of the Book of Mormon arguing that the original manuscript began not with 1 Nephi (found at the beginning of the Book of Mormon), but midway through, starting with Book of Mosiah, Mosiah. According to M ...


Notes


References

#. See also:
Mormonism Unvailed ''Mormonism Unvailed'' is a book published in 1834 by Eber D. Howe. The title page proclaims the book to be a contemporary exposé of Mormonism, and makes the claim that the historical portion of the Book of Mormon text was based upon a manusc ...
#. # ; republished in . # . #. #. See also: History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints #. See also: Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations #. #. #. #. #


Further reading

* * *. *A chapter fro
M. T. Lamb, ''The Golden Bible'' (1887)
an early skeptical view of the lost manuscript problem. *A modern skeptical analysis of th

*An apologetic response from FAIR to criticism
about the 116 lost pages


External links

{{Latter Day Saint movement 1828 documents 1828 in Christianity 1828 in the United States 19th-century Christian texts 19th-century manuscripts Book of Mormon artifacts Book of Mormon studies Books of the Book of Mormon History of the Latter Day Saint movement Latter Day Saint terms Mormonism-related controversies Lost documents