Introduction to Revelations and Translations: Volume 5
Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon
In the
earliest hours of 22 September 1827, Joseph Smith left his parents’ home
in , New York, with his wife and traveled a few miles to a
nearby hill. He later
recounted that while at the hill, he unearthed a set of “,” whose existence had been revealed to him
four years earlier by an angel. During his first encounter with the
angel, Smith saw in a vision the location of the plates and was told
that they contained an ancient record that God intended to bring
forth to the world. When Smith attempted to acquire the plates after
the angel’s first visit, the angel informed him that he must wait to
receive them and should return to the same spot annually for further
instruction. Finally, in 1827, Joseph Smith was allowed to take
possession of the plates.
Within two and a half years of obtaining them, he had produced a
manuscript and published the Book of
Mormon, an account of ancient inhabitants of the Western
Hemisphere. A little over a decade after the publication of the Book
of Mormon, the manuscript was deposited in the cornerstone of a then being built in , Illinois.
When the manuscript was retrieved several decades later, it had
sustained significant damage from water seepage. What was left of the manuscript
was parceled out to various individuals in the final decades of the
nineteenth century.
This volume of The Joseph Smith Papers
features what remains of the original manuscript of the Book of
Mormon dictated by Joseph Smith. Of the nearly 500
pages that were placed in the cornerstone, portions of 232 pages survive,
amounting to roughly 28 percent of the text. Some of what remains is
badly faded, obscured, or otherwise damaged. This volume presents
photographic and typographic facsimiles of each Book of Mormon
fragment that can be identified and placed among the other leaves or
fragments. This presentation allows researchers unprecedented access
to the earliest text of the Book of Mormon. The transcripts and
annotation in this volume rely upon years of earlier work by volume
editor Royal Skousen as part of the Book of Mormon Critical Text
Project. This volume adds to
that work by presenting high-resolution photographs of every page or
identifiable fragment of the manuscript. The statement
of editorial method on page xxvii herein provides a description of
the differences between the transcription approach used in this
volume and the approach followed in Skousen’s earlier work.
Joseph Smith and his contemporaries
often spoke of his work dictating the Book of Mormon text from the
plates as a divine or miraculous “translation.” Smith and his
supporters testified that his ability to translate was a gift from
God, which allowed him to dictate in English the text of an ancient
history written in a forgotten language, even though he had no
scholarly training. When
mentioning the translation process, Joseph Smith stated on several
occasions that he had translated the Book of Mormon “by the gift and
power of God.”
If anyone directly involved in the translation
described it in a contemporaneous diary, letter, or other record,
that documentation has not been discovered. Though in this same
period Joseph Smith dictated revelations that addressed the translation process, he
presented those texts as containing the thoughts and words of God on
the Book of Mormon translation, rather than his own. Smith himself never gave a detailed account of the
translation, and all the available historical sources describing the
process are imperfect—some are later recollections of those who
participated in or observed the process, others are rumors that were
reported shortly after the translation, and still others are
secondhand accounts, preserved either in documents from the time
period or in later reminiscences. Such sources are incomplete in
part because Smith was assisted by at least seven scribes, meaning
that he himself was the only person present for the entire
translation. Because elements of
the process—including the use of an instrument, the location of
translation work, and the scribe assisting Smith—evidently changed
over time, a witness who observed the translation only at a certain
point in the process would be unable to describe what the process
looked like at other stages. Nevertheless, the contours of Joseph
Smith’s translation process can be discerned by studying the
accounts of Smith and his associates and by comparing their
assertions against one another’s and against the evidence in the
original manuscript itself.
Translation
Begins
Joseph Smith’s mother, , recorded that her
son acquired the plates in the early morning of 22 September
1827.
, a friend and early
supporter, reported that Joseph Smith spoke that same morning of
plates “writen in Caracters” and of his desire that they be
translated. Knight also remembered the troubles that arose after
Smith obtained the plates: “He [Smith] was Commanded not to let no
one see those things [the plates]. . . . But many insisted and oferd
money and Property to see them[.] But for keeping them from the
Peopel they persecuted and abused them [the Smith family] and they
ware obliged to hide them.” Many people in rural in Joseph Smith’s time believed they could exercise
supernatural power—to find buried treasure, for instance—through the
use of or divining rods or through
prescribed rituals. Joseph Smith spent time in his youth digging
for treasure with neighbors and friends, and many of his former
treasure-digging associates felt they had a claim to the
plates.
Neighbors in and nearby , New York, made “the most strenious exertions” to
steal the plates from Joseph Smith.
If Smith tried to translate the plates in Manchester during the
final months of 1827, that activity is lost to history. According to
family and friends, his main focus at that time was protecting and
hiding the plates from those who sought to steal them. Eventually, the disruptions
proved too great to bear; in late 1827, he and moved about 150 miles southeast
to live near her family in , Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where
he could focus on translating the ancient record.
Once in , Joseph Smith began
studying the plates closely. He recalled in 1832 that his
neighbor arrived in Harmony and
said that God “had shown him that he must go to
with some of the characters” from the plates. Smith and Harris
“proceeded to coppy some of them and he [Harris] took his Journy to
the Eastern Cittys.” Smith
recalled years later that when he arrived in Harmony, he “copyed a
considerable number” of characters, along with translations of some
of the characters, and Harris then arrived and took them to New York
City. While in New York City, Harris
visited scholars who were skilled with languages. He met with , a linguist
who had studied several Native American languages, and Mitchill
referred him to , a specialist in Latin
and Greek.
and gave differing accounts of their encounter. Harris
recalled that Anthon told him that the “translation was correct,”
affirmed that the characters were “true characters,” and supplied a
written certificate attesting to that. But when Harris told Anthon
about the characters’ origin, Anthon retrieved the note he had just
written and tore it up, “saying that there was no such thing now as
ministring of angels.”
Anthon’s accounts, however, suggest that he questioned the document
and its origin story from the beginning and feared Smith was defrauding Harris of his
money. Harris left
empty-handed, having obtained neither an independent translation of
the characters nor written confirmation of their authenticity.
Nevertheless, Harris returned to with conviction that the work was divinely
inspired, and he left behind his own family and farm in for a time in order to assist Smith in the
translation effort.
Translation in
Harmony
After returned to in April 1828, Joseph Smith began
translating in earnest. He apparently spent about two months
dictating a sizable portion of text.
, , and Reuben Hale acted as
scribes for this earliest portion of the manuscript. One
source states that Harris wrote this portion, while Emma Smith
recalled that she wrote “a part of it.” Because this portion of the
manuscript was later lost, it is impossible to determine how much
each scribe assisted.
and both stated that Joseph Smith used an object or
instrument to assist in translation: he would place the instrument
into a hat and, burying his face in the hat, would peer into the
instrument. One of the instruments Smith used was
apparently a set of two stones, at times called “spectacles” in
early sources, that he said were recovered from the hill along with
the plates.
These spectacles were thought to be the “interpreters” that the Book
of Mormon text says would be preserved with the plates. Decades later,
Harris described these objects: “Two stones set in a bow of silver
were about two inches in diameter, perfectly round. . . . The stones
were white, like polished marble, with a few gray streaks.” Joseph Smith himself described the
instrument as consisting of “two transparent stones.”
, who remembered
seeing the spectacles before her son’s move to , gave a description of the instrument that is
similar to Harris’s: “2 smooth 3 cornered diamonds set in glass and
the glass was set in silver bows conected with each other in the
same way that old fashioned spectacles are made.”
In the course of the translation, Smith also used a seer stone that
was in his possession before he obtained the plates. Both the
spectacles and the seer stone were at times called interpreters, and the biblical term was later
used to refer to both instruments as well. Before Joseph
Smith switched to using primarily the seer stone for translation,
recalled that Smith often
used the stone instead of the spectacles “for convenience.” Harris
also remembered that only the specific stone Smith used would work
for translating. An interviewer later recorded Harris’s account of a
time when he tested Smith by replacing the instrument Smith
ordinarily used with a similar-looking stone. During a break in the
translation work, Harris “found a stone very much resembling the one
used for translating, and on resuming their labor of translation,
Martin put in place the stone that he had found.” When they resumed
translating, Smith was silent for some time and then exclaimed,
“Martin! What is the matter? All is as dark as Egypt.” Harris
confessed to switching the stones and explained that “he had done so
. . . to stop the mouths of fools, who had told him that the Prophet
had learned those sentences and was merely repeating them.”
Some accounts discuss the mechanics of this earliest
translation work. told her son later in her life,
“I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close
by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone
in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.” She
continued, “When acting as his scribe, your father would dictate to
me hour after hour; and when returning after meals, or after
interruptions, he would at once begin where he had left off, without
either seeing the manuscript or having any portion of it read to
him.” In another interview, she
added more details: “When he came to proper names he could not
pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out, and while I was
writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me
and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see
how I was writing them down at the time.” A particular memory
remained with Emma throughout her life: “One time while he was
translating he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, ‘Emma,
did Jerusalem have walls around it?’ When I answered ‘Yes’, he
replied, ‘Oh! I was afraid I had been deceived.’”
An 1881 article based on ’s reminiscences recounted what he had
observed and inferred of the translation process: “By aid of the
seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet and
written by Martin, and when finished he would say, ‘Written,’ and if
correctly written, that sentence would disappear and another appear
in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until
corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraven on
the plates, precisely in the language then used.” Both Harris and
testified the translation
was given to Joseph Smith by divine means.
Several accounts from other observers suggest that a
partition separated Smith from his
scribes during an early phase of the translation process but that
later they worked with nothing separating them. Sallie
McKune, a neighbor to the Hale and Smith families in
, recalled “nails used for hooks to hang blankets
on during the translation of the golden bible.” Sources that relate ’s experiences also mention a sheet dividing the
translator from the scribe. “Harris declares,” reported one local
newspaper, “that when he acted as amanuenses,
and wrote the translation, as Smith dictated, such was his fear of
the Divine displeasure, that a screen (sheet) was suspended between
the prophet and himself.” It is possible that these
accounts refer to the time Smith spent copying characters from the
plates before the actual translation began. He took care that no one
else saw the plates, as he said the angel commanded. Accounts from either do not mention or
specifically refute the presence of a sheet or other barrier between
translator and scribe. While Joseph Smith appears to have
ceased separating himself from his scribes at some point in the
process, there are no accounts that report the plates being visible
to the scribe during translation; indeed, one account states that
the plates themselves were wrapped in a cloth when there was no
barrier present.
Shortly before was to give
birth to her first child, felt driven to
prove to his family the legitimacy of the translation. He convinced
Joseph Smith to allow him to return
to with
the pages of translated English text to show to his wife, parents,
brother, and sister-in-law.
Smith was initially reluctant to let Harris take the manuscript.
Harris asked Smith several times to take his request to God in
prayer, and finally Harris was given permission. On 15 June 1828,
shortly after Harris departed with the manuscript, Emma Smith
delivered a who either was
stillborn or died shortly after birth, and the labor left her near
death. Over the next three weeks, as the Smiths grieved the loss of
their child and Emma slowly began to recover, Joseph Smith grew
increasingly concerned that he had not heard from Harris. Once her
condition started to stabilize, Emma encouraged her husband to
travel to to determine what had become of the
manuscript. In
Manchester, Joseph Smith discovered that the fruit of their
collective efforts—the single copy of the manuscript—had been stolen
during Harris’s stay in Palmyra. Neither the circumstances of the loss nor the
ultimate fate of the manuscript is known.
, who was still living
in when the loss occurred, recalled in her 1845
history that her son returned to almost immediately after learning the manuscript
had been lost: “We parted with heavy hearts; for it now appeared
that all which we had so fondly anticipated, and which had been the
source of so much secret gratification was in a moment fled, and
fled forever.” She further stated, “I well remember that day of
darkness, both within and without: to us at least the heavens seemed
clothed with blackness, and the earth shrouded with gloom.”
Following the loss of the manuscript in the summer of
1828, Joseph Smith recalled, “The Plates
was taken from me by the power of God and I was not able to obtain
them for a season.” He also
recalled that the interpreters he had unearthed with the plates were
taken from him at this time.
It was apparent to Smith’s family and friends that his ability to
translate was tied not just to his obedience but also to his
possession of the plates and the interpreters.
The period following the loss of the manuscript was a
time of mourning the lost text but also, as Smith reported later, a time of
repentance and divine forgiveness. He stated that shortly after the
manuscript was lost, an angel, whom he identified in later records
as Moroni, came to him, temporarily returning the interpreters so
that he could seek divine guidance by revelation.
The resulting communication told Smith that while he was “chosen to
do the work of the Lord,” it was possible that he could fall. His
responsibility was to “repent of that which thou hast done & he
[God] will only cause thee to be afflicted for a season & thou
art still chosen & will again be called to the work.” The angel then took the interpreters back,
according to Smith’s account, and later returned both the
interpreters and the plates after a period of “much humility and
affliction of Soul.”
did not learn that
her son had received the plates again until she and her husband,
, visited in early September 1828. Immediately upon
seeing her son, she sensed his easy and relaxed manner, which she
interpreted to mean that “something agreeable” had occurred. Indeed,
Smith told his mother that he had
been “humble and penitent” and had received the ability and
opportunity to translate again. Lucy Mack Smith recorded that it was
with delight that her son stated he had “commenced translating,”
with ’s assistance.
During the latter part of 1828, however, Smith’s financial obligations and
duty to provide for his family prevented him from doing much
translating. A friend and
believer stated that Smith “could not translate But little Being
poor and nobody to write for him But his wife and she Could not do
much and take Care of her house.” Winter 1828–1829 appears to have passed with
less translation than Smith had hoped for. According to several
entries in an account book belonging to ’s brother David Hale, Joseph Smith spent several days in fall 1828
and winter 1828–1829 laboring to pay off debts.
Still, Joseph Smith
expected that a way would be opened for him to translate the plates.
recorded that when
the angel returned the plates to Smith, he also promised “that the
Lord would send [him] a scribe.” Smith may
have looked for fulfillment of that promise in the arrival of his
father and brother in early 1829. The
Smith men came from to by way of the , New York, home of believers and . Joseph Knight
Sr. recalled accompanying and
Samuel to Harmony in January and giving Joseph Smith “a little money
to Buoy [buy] paper to translate.” Samuel remained in Harmony, apparently serving
as a scribe for the translation. Knight returned to
Harmony in March and spoke with Smith “about his translating and
some revelations he had Received.” Perhaps one of the revelations he referred to
was the one instructing Smith that “when thou hast translated a few
more pages . . . then shalt thou stop for a season even untill I
command thee again.”
It is impossible to tell from what remains of the
manuscript how much was translated during the fall of 1828 and the
ensuing winter. Textual evidence suggests that when work resumed
after the loss of the initial portion of the manuscript, Joseph Smith and scribes and began in the book
of Mosiah, roughly a third of the way into what was later published
as the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, the original manuscript for the book
of Mosiah is no longer extant, making it impossible to determine who
was serving as scribe when work resumed. By the next point in the
surviving manuscript—the tenth chapter of the book of Alma, which
immediately follows Mosiah—the text is in the handwriting of an
individual whom Joseph Smith would meet in early April 1829: .
Translating with Oliver
Cowdery in Harmony
In the fall of 1828, a young schoolteacher named was appointed to fill a
teaching position in the area. Upon finding that other responsibilities
prevented him from fulfilling the appointment, he asked the school
board if his brother could take his
place. The board agreed, and Oliver Cowdery began teaching sometime
in October 1828, taking lodging for a time with the and family. Cowdery soon heard rumors of gold plates.
When he asked Palmyra residents how they knew that the plates
existed, they stated that they had seen the place where the plates
were unearthed. Cowdery took advantage of his access to the
Smith family and asked them to explain.
Given the antagonism of their neighbors, and her husband were
reluctant to share their son’s experiences with their new
acquaintance. According to Lucy Mack Smith’s reminiscence, eventually gained the trust of the Smiths, who
explained to him “the facts which related to the plates.” What Cowdery heard so resonated with him that
he told “that he had been
in a deep study upon the subject all day, and that it was impressed
upon his mind, that he should yet have the privilege of writing for
Joseph.” Cowdery
stated that this feeling was “working in [his] very bones.” Cowdery
told Lucy Mack Smith and her husband, “There is a work for me to do
in this thing and I am determined if there is to attend to it.”
journeyed to beginning in late March 1829, arriving there on
Sunday, 5 April 1829. Though Cowdery and Joseph Smith had never met, Cowdery
explained to Smith his interest in the plates and was quickly taken
into Smith’s confidence—on 6 April, he helped Smith with the
paperwork to complete the purchase of a home, and on 7 April, he
began assisting with the translation of the Book of Mormon.
In an 1834 letter to leader , recalled his experience with the translating
process: “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the
sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration
of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom!” Besides
affirming that the translation was done under divine influence,
Cowdery added a brief description of the process: “Day after day I
continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated,
with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites whould have said,
‘Interpreters,’ the history, or record, called ‘The book of
Mormon.’”
Sometime in April, at a time when Smith and were working “with little cessation,” Cowdery
“became exceedingly anxious to have the power to translate bestowed
upon him.”
He believed that such a power was acquired not through study but
through the bestowal of a gift from God. In response to Cowdery’s
desire, Smith dictated a revelation that promised Cowdery that he
could “translate all those ancient Records which have been hid up
which are Sacred.” Smith dictated another revelation in April that explained to Cowdery that
translation was not what he had first supposed: “Behold I say unto
you, my son, that, because you did not translate according to that
which you desired of me, and did commence again to write for my
servant Joseph, even so I would that you should continue until you
have finished this record.” The revelation informed Cowdery that God
removed the gift of translation from Cowdery because “you did not
continue as you commenced,” or he supposed that God “would give it
unto you, when you took no thought, save it was to ask me.” The
revelation continued, “You must study it out in your mind; then you
must ask me if it be right, and if it is right, I will cause that
your bosom shall burn.”
The days of Smith and working in with few interruptions were productive but
short-lived. Cowdery remembered that after about five weeks, Smith
had completed the books of Mosiah, Alma, and Helaman, plus some of 3
Nephi.
The productivity would not last. stated
later that “evil designing people were seeking to take away Joseph’s
life in order to prevent the work of God from going forth among the
world.” Cowdery, who had previously written to his
friend regarding his involvement
in the work, wrote again, this time asking Whitmer for a place where
he and Smith could translate. Whitmer arrived in Harmony shortly
after he received the letter and offered to allow Smith and Cowdery
to translate in his parents’ home, free of charge. Leaving , who would join them at
some later time, the three men journeyed about one hundred miles
north to , New
York, arriving about 1 June 1829.
Translating in
Fayette
The Whitmers welcomed Joseph Smith and . remembered
that arrived in “a
short time after Joseph and Oliver came.” The Whitmers’ early
belief and support were important to Joseph Smith, and they provided
connections to neighbors who were “friendly, and disposed to enquire
in to the truth of these strange matters, which now began to be
noised abroad.” In fact, Smith recalled that “many opened their
houses to us, in order that we might have an opportunity of meeting
with their friends for the purpose of instruction, and
explanation.”
At least two additional scribes, ’s older brothers and , assisted Joseph Smith with
translation in . Because so many leaves of the manuscript have
been lost or severely damaged, it is unclear where Smith and were in their translation work at the time they
moved to Fayette. Analysis of the original manuscript suggests that
after completing the translation through the book of Moroni, Smith
returned to the beginning of the story, translating what are now the
books of 1 Nephi through the Words of Mormon. The portion of the
mansucript now called 1 Nephi includes the first text with
handwriting from any Whitmer scribe.
Hosting the Book of Mormon translation efforts proved
challenging to the Whitmers. Supporting two or three additional
individuals was not without expense and added to the domestic
burdens of the matriarch, . Her grandson John C. Whitmer said that she once
encountered a stranger while doing her chores. This man, who she
later concluded was an angel, “explain[ed] to her the nature of the
work which was going on in her house,” whereupon “she was filled
with unexpressible joy and satisfaction.”
recalled that his mother told him the words of the
angel served as recompense for her sacrifices: “You have been very
faithful and diligent in your labors, but you are tried because of
the increase of your toil,” she was told. “It is propper therefore
that you should receive a witness that your faith may be
strengthened.” The messenger
then showed her the gold plates containing the text of the Book of
Mormon.
The work of translation at was
observed by several members of the Whitmer family. , who
was present in the family home and was later married to , recalled that she “was familiar with the
manner of Joseph Smith’s translating the book
of Mormon. . . . I often sat by and saw and heard them translate and
write for hours together. Joseph never had a curtain drawn between
him and his scribe while he was translating. He would place the
director in his hat, and then place his face in his hat, so as to
exclude the light,” and then read the words “as they appeared before
him.”
, who was frequently interviewed later in
his life, was fairly consistent in his description of the
translation as he observed it: “Joseph Smith would put the seer
stone into a hat,” Whitmer wrote, “and put his face in the hat,
drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the
darkness the spiritual light would shine.” What Smith
saw in the stone, of course, was not observable by Whitmer, but
Smith may have explained the process to him. “A piece of something
resembling parchment would appear,” Whitmer continued, “and on that
appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and
under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would
read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal
scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph
to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another
character with the interpretation would appear.” Like other
believers, Whitmer understood this process as divine, concluding,
“Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of
God, and not by any power of man.”
As work on the original Book of Mormon manuscript
neared completion, Smith began preparing for the
book’s publication. On 11 June 1829 he secured a copyright for the work, and by the end of that month, the
title page was published in a newspaper, the Wayne
Sentinel. Also in June, three men—, , and —testified that they were shown the plates
by an angel of the Lord and that they heard the voice of God declare
that the Book of Mormon had been translated by divine power.
At about the same time, eight individuals—three Smith men and four
Whitmer men, plus (the husband of )—testified
that Smith had shown them the plates. He allowed them to handle the
plates and examine the engraved characters.
Formal statements that recorded the experiences and bore the names
of all eleven men were published with the Book of Mormon.
These shared experiences, along with more private experiences such
as those of , gave new
believers confidence that the plates were genuine and the
translation was of God.
About a month after Smith and moved from to , they completed the translation. A month later,
in early August 1829, Smith asked Cowdery to begin making a complete
copy of the Book of Mormon text. It was
mostly from this second manuscript—often called the printer’s
manuscript—that printers set type for the published Book
of Mormon in late 1829 and early 1830.
Use and Legacy of the
Manuscript
The creation of the original manuscript of the Book of
Mormon ushered in important changes for early believers in Joseph Smith’s religious message
and became an important symbol for those who would join the church.
The manuscript is a crucial source for scholars and others
interested in better understanding the translation, publication
process, and text of the Book of Mormon.
Before the Book of Mormon was translated, Joseph Smith and those who believed
in the accounts of his religious experiences interacted mainly
through informal conversations. Their small gatherings may have
begun with spoken stories of heavenly messengers, supernatural
visions, and buried plates. But the written text gave new power to
the young religious movement. The written text allowed the network
of believers to grow as more people became familiar with the Book of
Mormon text through copied excerpts or private readings. The Book of
Mormon translation not only created a text on which the body of
early believers could rely—it also shaped the record keeping of the
nascent church.
Even before the Book of Mormon was completely
translated, the original manuscript was used in early proselytizing
efforts. recalled that wrote several letters to him while
translation was underway in . The first apparently included Cowdery’s witness
of the truth of Smith’s stories and informed
Whitmer that Cowdery planned to act as scribe for Smith. In the
second letter, Cowdery gave Whitmer “a few lines of what they had
translated.” Whitmer showed the letters to his family, who all
became convinced that the work was divinely inspired. One report stated that Joseph Smith visited
George Crane, “a Quaker of intelligence,
property, and high repectability,” and showed him “several foolscap
quires of these so-called translations, for his perusal and
opinion.” Around the same time,
a man named Solomon Chamberlin heard rumors of
the Book of Mormon and sought out the Smith home in , New York. Chamberlin remained for two days
with the Smith family, who instructed him “in the manuscripts of the
Book of Mormon.” In these encounters, the Book of
Mormon manuscript served as evidence of Joseph Smith’s divine
calling well before the printed book could be shared by
missionary-minded followers.
As the translation neared completion, Smith dictated a revelation in which God told , “I have manifested unto you, by my Spirit in
many instances, that the things which you have written are true:
Wherefore you know that they are true; and if you know that they are
true, behold I give unto you a commandment, that you rely upon the
things which are written; for in them are all things written,
concerning my church, my gospel, and my rock.” The revelation implied not only that the Book of
Mormon contains divine wisdom but also that the book would serve as
a foundation for the church, which had yet to be organized. When
received word that
the translation was complete, she, her husband, and traveled to the Whitmer home. Once
gathered, they spent the evening “in reading the manuscript.” She
later recalled that they “were greatly rejoiced for it then appeared
to us who did not realize the magnitude of the work which could
hardly be said at that time to have begining; as though the greatest
difficulty was then surmounted.” For early supporters of Joseph Smith, the
original manuscript was recognized as the culmination of years of
collective effort. But the manuscript of the Book of Mormon also
pointed to the future, when the growing faith community would depend
not only on a seer who saw visions and a prophet who spoke the will
of God but also on a revelator who recorded scripture for the
direction and use of a growing church.
Latter-day Saints continued to venerate the manuscript
itself long after the text of that manuscript was available in
print. A reminiscent account described the day in 1841 when Joseph Smith placed it in the cornerstone, saying that Smith “came up with the
manuscript of the Book of Mormon and said that he wanted to put that
in [the cornerstone], as he had had trouble enough with it.”
, who observed the
cornerstone ceremony, was struck “with amasement” by Smith’s comment
about the manuscript because Robinson “looked upon it as a sacred
treasure.” The
original manuscript of the Book of Mormon may have reminded Smith of
the persecution that had hounded him much of his life, but for
Robinson and others like him, the manuscript represented faith in
the prophet who translated it.
Over forty years after the original manuscript was
placed in the cornerstone, Lewis Bidamon, ’s second husband,
retrieved it. Unfortunately, the care that had been taken to make
the cornerstone watertight proved insufficient. reported that
told him, “Major
Bidamon had taken down the wall and opened the stone, and found the
manuscript ruined. It had gathered moisture, and much of it had
become a mass of pulp, and only small portions of it were
legible.” As
members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Utah
passed through the Midwest, they visited and often
acquired portions of the manuscript from Bidamon. Pieces of the
manuscript survived through the efforts of these individuals and
some of their descendants, who preserved various pages and
fragments.
The original manuscript of the Book of Mormon is the
only surviving firsthand, contemporaneous testament to events of the
translation. The manuscript offers invaluable evidence that can be
compared with secondhand accounts and later reminiscences or
suppositions about the translation process. For instance, several
individuals recalled Smith correcting the spelling of the scribes
during the dictation process.
, who observed the translation process in
his home, stated that Smith was able to
discern mistakes scribes made while taking dictation. Certainly some spelling was corrected at the
time of dictation; for instance, in the book of Alma, “Zenock” was
changed to “Zenoch” by . But analysis of the
manuscript itself suggests that such corrections were rare;
moreover, not all errors and inconsistencies were corrected. For
instance, the name “Amalickiah” in the book of Alma was not
consistently spelled the same way. As another example of the value of the original
manuscript, lengthy quotations from the Bible in the Book of Mormon
text raise the question of whether Joseph Smith’s scribes copied
some passages directly from the Bible. Close study of the manuscript
indicates that the Bible passages that appear in the extant pages
were dictated, not copied.
The manuscript also confirms or supports numerous
details from accounts of the translation. Textual evidence in the
manuscript shows that acted as scribe
for the majority of the extant manuscript, which matches his own
description of the process.
recalled years later that his brother served as scribe for Joseph Smith as well, and John
Whitmer’s handwriting does in fact appear in what is now the book of
1 Nephi.
, an early believer
in Joseph Smith’s message, recorded that he supplied lined paper for
the translation effort. The surviving portions of
the manuscript reveal several different types of lined paper, which
supports the idea that Smith was procuring paper in the midst of the
translation process. Such correctives and confirmations of
reminiscent accounts and scholarly theories illustrate the primacy
of the original manuscript in establishing the history of the Book
of Mormon translation.
Finally, the original manuscript offers a crucial data
point in understanding the evolution of the Book of Mormon text. It
is impossible to know how carefully the scribes captured the words
of the Book of Mormon first spoken by Joseph Smith. Having access to the
extant portions of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon,
however, allows readers the chance to assess the accuracy of the
textual transmission through all subsequent editions. Even though
the majority of the original manuscript is no longer extant,
comparison of the extant text with the printer’s
manuscript shows the care with which the copyists did
their work. And while some scribal errors were introduced to the
printer’s manuscript, the text shows virtually no signs of editing
between the initial dictation of the original manuscript and the
printing of the 1830 edition, except for
spelling corrections, minor word changes, and the introduction of
punctuation and capitalization. The majority of the 1830 edition was
typeset from the printer’s manuscript, so the printed text was
already one step removed from the original manuscript. This distance
was only increased when the second
edition (1837) was set from the 1830 edition, with some
consultation of the printer’s manuscript but no known reference to
the original manuscript.
As more editions were printed—particularly after the original
manuscript was deposited into the cornerstone and became unavailable to those
publishing later editions of the text—a number of small, unintended
errors made their way into the Book of Mormon text. In spite of these errors, the text
has remained remarkably stable up to the present day.
The same autumn that Joseph Smith placed
the manuscript into the cornerstone of the , he said that “the Book of Mormon was the most
correct of any Book on earth & the keystone of our religion
& a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than
any other Book.” The original manuscript
of the Book of Mormon offered a touchstone to a nascent faith
community, and what remains of the manuscript continues to provide
an irreplaceable witness to Joseph Smith’s most consequential work
of translation.