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I'm sure this topic has been discussed before, but I have not seen it. Can anyone tell me why my eyebrows shouldn't be raised regarding the lost 116 pages of the BoM?

Respectfully,

Balzer

Good question, do you have some kind of a medical condition?

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Balzar please pose a more specific question about the loss of the manuscript. There are details in the Doctrine and Covenants and several Church History sources.

What is is specifically that you would like to know?

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They were written and the written copy disappeared and has never been found. If eyebrows are to be raised by that part of the story, it would be about Joseph's desire to please or the nature of Martin Harriss's wife's anger about the manuscript. Neither is much of an eyebrow lift, though it makes for a good story.

The lost part was not retranslated. Joseph gave his reason. I have my opinion. I'm not sure why that would raise an eyebrow either, however.

The small plates, which the text appears to have originally treated as an appendix, become the text of the introduction. One might raise an eyebrow at the good fortune to have a backup, but then one might raise an eyebrow only by disbelieving God's ability to foresee. As for the content of the plates, my eyebrows raise at anyone suggesting that Joseph might have been so ingenious as to not only create a duplicate story, but to do so in such a way that it was sufficiently similar but qualitatively different and conceptually foreign to the rest of the text. That indeed raises my eyebrows.

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Balzar please pose a more specific question about the loss of the manuscript. There are details in the Doctrine and Covenants and several Church History sources.

What is is specifically that you would like to know?

I guess what I don't understand is that if the work was of God, why couldn't it have been reproduced, word for word, without a mistake?

Respectfully,

Balzer

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I guess what I don't understand is that if the work was of God, why couldn't it have been reproduced, word for word, without a mistake?

Respectfully,

Balzer

A pretty good analysis from FAIR http://www.fairwiki...._lost_116_pages

I personally think that if Joseph had reproduced the original manuscript there is a strong possibility his enemies could have "magically" produced the lost version with alterations to cast dispersions on him.

Either way Joseph was disobedient and suffered the consequences. The Lord provided a way to restore the inforamtion we needed without the original pages.

Edited by DaddyG
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Whether or not a true prophet, we have to agree he was indeed quite ingenious.

Respectfully,

Balzer

Yes, at doing so at a young age with very little education. l lot of coincidences and they can all be done away with IF we ignore facts.

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I guess what I don't understand is that if the work was of God, why couldn't it have been reproduced, word for word, without a mistake?

Respectfully,

Balzer

And why would you think that the translation was originally produced word for word, without a mistake? Do you know of any translations of that length that fit that description? If you raise your eyebrows because Joseph didn't do what you expected him to, and your expectation is incorrect, where lies the problem?

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Whether or not a true prophet, we have to agree he was indeed quite ingenious.

Actually, you have missed the fundamental issue. He was ingenious as a prophet, or as a person. As a person, he would have had to have been remarkably ingenious and have done so in ways he never recognized, never discovered, and never understood. He had to have been ingenious in ways that have no precedence in his life prior to his calling.

So - based on the evidence, I would say that the nature of his genius is completely dependent upon his calling as a prophet. Only if you deny that must you decide that it was only he who had the genius, and when it comes to the historical and literary complexity of the Book of Mormon, he never again rivaled it.

I suspect that you are not aware of exactly how intricate the differences are in the text that replaced the 116 pages and the rest of the Book of Mormon that was produced from the same source. There are subtleties in this change of source that either require an amazingly talented author with a firm grasp of ancient authorship, or something outside of the normal. The best explanation is that it was the result of his translation, not his authorship.

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I'm sure this topic has been discussed before, but I have not seen it. Can anyone tell me why my eyebrows shouldn't be raised regarding the lost 116 pages of the BoM?

I cannot see why anyone's eyebrows should be raised by them.

Throughout history, people have tried to control the publishing of ideas. Either they have hidden or "revised" them, or they have simply forbidden them. What is different in this case?

Lehi

Edited by LeSellers
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Brant,

You wrote:

They were written and the written copy disappeared and has never been found. If eyebrows are to be raised by that part of the story, it would be about Joseph's desire to please or the nature of Martin Harriss's wife's anger about the manuscript.

One big problem you don't mention here is that according to Joseph, God gave him permission to let Martin take the manuscript home to show his wife and other family members (History of the Church 1:21). Yet Joseph also claimed that the Lord severely chastised him for letting Martin take the manuscript home (History of the Church 1:22; D&C 3). That is an inconsistency in Joseph's own accounts of what happened.

You wrote:

The small plates, which the text appears to have originally treated as an appendix, become the text of the introduction. One might raise an eyebrow at the good fortune to have a backup, but then one might raise an eyebrow only by disbelieving God's ability to foresee.

Apparently, given the story as we have it, God's supernatural knowledge is highly selective. On the one hand, God knew, two thousand years before it would happen, that Joseph would spend two months dictating a translation of one set of plates and then lose the manuscript. On the other hand, God did not think or bother to warn Joseph that this would happen if he let Martin take the manuscript, and when the manuscript became lost, God did not know who had it or where it was. I say that God (according to this story) did not know what happened to it for two reasons. First, Joseph claimed that he made every effort to locate the manuscript but to no avail (see his preface to the original 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon). How is it that Joseph could be shown the location of gold plates that had been buried for 1400 years but could not be shown the location of a manuscript that had been missing only for a matter of days? Second, the Lord supposedly revealed to Joseph that wicked men had stolen the manuscript and altered it so that, when the Book of Mormon made its appearance, they could go public with the earlier manuscript in order to discredit Joseph's translation (D&C 10). However, it is reasonably certain this is not what happened, since (a) there is credible testimony that Lucy Harris destroyed the manuscript and (b) had wicked men stolen the manuscript they would surely have made it public after the Book of Mormon came out, Joseph's ingenious solution of a parallel version from a second set of plates notwithstanding. We have good reasons, then, to think that the revelation in D&C 10 is a false revelation.

Furthermore, the issue with the story about the plates including a "backup" account of the same history from a different perspective is not merely God's ability to foresee. The problem with this claim is that it is incredible not because it attributes foreknowledge to God but because it is suspiciously convenient. I believe that God is absolutely omniscient and foreknows all things, but the appeal to foreknowledge in this instance appears awfully ad hoc. If God had truly foreknown that the manuscript would be lost if Martin took it home, a much simpler solution would have been to inform Joseph of this outcome so that Joseph would make sure Martin didn't take the manuscript. Instead we have this elaborate story about the production of a second set of plates that have a parallel but different account of more or less the same events as the material in the lost 116 pages, all supposedly so that Joseph could have a backup when he lost those pages -- and not just a backup, but one that supposedly could not be faulted for any differences with the lost pages, should they turn up. The difficulty with this claim has nothing to do with questioning divine omniscience! And when one takes these considerations together with the fact that the story implies some lack of knowledge on God's part, as explained above, the whole story strains credulity.

You wrote:

And why would you think that the translation was originally produced word for word, without a mistake? Do you know of any translations of that length that fit that description? If you raise your eyebrows because Joseph didn't do what you expected him to, and your expectation is incorrect, where lies the problem?

D&C 10 itself testifies that both Joseph and his enemies understood that what he was claiming to produce was a translation that was inspired word for word. If the possibility of mistakes in his translations was not worrisome to Joseph Smith, why the worry about the possibility that the lost manuscript had been altered? Any differences between the original 116 pages and a re-translation of the same material would be explained as due to the fact that the translation was not revealed word for word and that neither the text nor the translation was purported to be without mistakes or errors. Clearly, the dilemma that D&C 10 describes and the solution that is presented are based on the assumption that any differences between the lost pages and a re-translation of the same material would undermine the credibility of the work. This assumption makes no sense unless the claim was that God was revealing the correct translation to Joseph word for word. And of course this is what we are told by Joseph's family and associates.

There are some very serious problems here.

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One big problem you don't mention here is that according to Joseph, God gave him permission to let Martin take the manuscript home to show his wife and other family members (History of the Church 1:21). Yet Joseph also claimed that the Lord severely chastised him for letting Martin take the manuscript home (History of the Church 1:22; D&C 3). That is an inconsistency in Joseph's own accounts of what happened.

Rob, Joseph asked for permission after he was told no. Sometimes the Lord will allow us to do something against His wisdom in order that we learn a valuable lesson. I beleive "allowing" Joseph to let Martin take the manuscript home was one of those lessons.

Understanding agency and God's way of teaching us obedience and wisdom is a key to understanding this event.

In a more general sense this is the answer to "why does God allow..." questions. He could force His will upon mortals but that would be Satans plan according to the LDS. Instead he guides us, delegates His authority to us and allows us to learn and grow from those experiences.

I'll butt out now and let Brant respond to the body of your post.

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I've always wondered what the nephite prophets felt like if they learned in this life about the loss..."I spent HOW much time on these and they will be 'lost'? All to teach someone a lesson? You're kidding me, right?" Or in a similar vein, Moroni saying "You want me to BURY them?"

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I've always wondered what the nephite prophets felt like if they learned in this life about the loss..."I spent HOW much time on these and they will be 'lost'? All to teach someone a lesson? You're kidding me, right?" Or in a similar vein, Moroni saying "You want me to BURY them?"

I suspect after dragging them across a continent being followed by an army bent on his extinction Moroni was rather relieved to store them up for the Lord. ;)

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There is this, from Isaiah 55:8-11, which I think should provoke a little more introspection on the whole situation.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

One could fuss that God knew that Jesus would be betrayed by Judas, and still permit Judas to be selected as an apostle. Why didn't God warn Jesus about Judas and prevent all the trouble that came from it? Or any number of situations. One could complain about Abraham being commanded to offer up his son Isaac, and then being told not to do so. It's all a matter of deciding that God's ways ought to conform to our ways.

I do notice that however traumatic the experience for Joseph Smith, he learned from the experience. D&C 3 is one profound evidence of that:

"Remember, remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men;"

I find D&C 3 one of the most impressive revelations because Joseph received it when he had nothing going for him in his life but failure.

Nevertheless, my work shall go forth, for inasmuch as the knowledge of a Savior has come unto the world, through the testimony of the Jews, even so shall the knowledge of a Savior come unto my people...

And for this very purpose are these plates preserved, which contain these records—that the promises of the Lord might be fulfilled, which he made to his people;

20 And that the Lamanites might come to the knowledge of their fathers, and that they might know the promises of the Lord, and that they may believe the gospel and rely upon the merits of Jesus Christ, and be glorified through faith in his name, and that through their repentance they might be saved. Amen.

The confidence and assurance in the revelation has since been amply justified by the subsequent production of the Book of Mormon and the world wide growth of the church. But Joseph Smith at that point in his life?

And it would only be a few years before similar tales of wicked men stealing and altering a manuscript re-emerged in the form of the Spaulding theory.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

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DaddyG,

Thanks for your comment.

In the Gospels, Jesus taught his disciples that it was a good thing to ask God more than once for something. Even Jesus asked the Father three times to take the cup away if it were possible. So in principle there is nothing wrong with making repeated requests to God for the same thing. If the answer was still No, then God tricked Joseph by saying Yes. Sorry, but this explanation only makes matters worse.

God telling Joseph "No" would not take away his "agency." Assuming Joseph prayed about it and was told no, at any time Joseph could have ignored what God said and let Martin take the manuscript home.

Rob, Joseph asked for permission after he was told no. Sometimes the Lord will allow us to do something against His wisdom in order that we learn a valuable lesson. I beleive "allowing" Joseph to let Martin take the manuscript home was one of those lessons.

Understanding agency and God's way of teaching us obedience and wisdom is a key to understanding this event.

In a more general sense this is the answer to "why does God allow..." questions. He could force His will upon mortals but that would be Satans plan according to the LDS. Instead he guides us, delegates His authority to us and allows us to learn and grow from those experiences.

I'll butt out now and let Brant respond to the body of your post.

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DaddyG,

Thanks for your comment.

In the Gospels, Jesus taught his disciples that it was a good thing to ask God more than once for something. Even Jesus asked the Father three times to take the cup away if it were possible. So in principle there is nothing wrong with making repeated requests to God for the same thing. If the answer was still No, then God tricked Joseph by saying Yes. Sorry, but this explanation only makes matters worse.

God telling Joseph "No" would not take away his "agency." Assuming Joseph prayed about it and was told no, at any time Joseph could have ignored what God said and let Martin take the manuscript home.

No where in my comments did I evey imply that God was tricked. That was a bad assumption on your part. I think you lack sufficient understanding of the LDS notion of agency and how God works with His children.

It is a good thing to pray unceasingly and fervently for good gifts. It is a bad thing to beg for that which we ought not ask for in the first place. Nevertheless God respects our agency to choose for ourselves be it for our blessing or condemnation.

Doctrine and Covenants 88:64Whatsoever ye aask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is bexpedient for you;

65And if ye ask anything that is not aexpedient for you, it shall turn unto your bcondemnation.

Fortunately for Joseph, although he erred, the mercy of the Lord's atonement was sufficient for him to learn, repent and move on.

Edited by DaddyG
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Kevin,

You wrote:

One could fuss that God knew that Jesus would be betrayed by Judas, and still permit Judas to be selected as an apostle. Why didn't God warn Jesus about Judas and prevent all the trouble that came from it?

Actually, Jesus knew all along that Judas was evil (John 6:70) and knew ahead of time that Judas would betray him (as all four Gospels report).

You wrote:

Or any number of situations. One could complain about Abraham being commanded to offer up his son Isaac, and then being told not to do so. It's all a matter of deciding that God's ways ought to conform to our ways.

The issue here is not whether God is free to do whatever he chooses, but whether someone's claim about what God did is plausible.

You wrote:

I do notice that however traumatic the experience for Joseph Smith, he learned from the experience. D&C 3 is one profound evidence of that:

"Remember, remember that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men;"

I find D&C 3 one of the most impressive revelations because Joseph received it when he had nothing going for him in his life but failure.... The confidence and assurance in the revelation has since been amply justified by the subsequent production of the Book of Mormon and the world wide growth of the church. But Joseph Smith at that point in his life?

From an outsider's perspective, D&C 3 shows only that Joseph was very skillful at stringing together pious statements that sounded religiously profound. He knew that he had made a huge mistake and that his whole enterprise was in crisis. His "revelation" in D&C 3 was an attempt at damage control. It may feel subjectively impressive to you, but objectively it contradicts his claim that the Lord gave him permission for Martin to take the manuscript. And D&C 10, frankly, smacks of desperation.

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From an outsider's perspective, D&C 3 shows only that Joseph was very skillful at stringing together pious statements that sounded religiously profound. He knew that he had made a huge mistake and that his whole enterprise was in crisis. His "revelation" in D&C 3 was an attempt at damage control. It may feel subjectively impressive to you, but objectively it contradicts his claim that the Lord gave him permission for Martin to take the manuscript. And D&C 10, frankly, smacks of desperation.

You are free to discuss LDS doctrine but not free to cast dispersions on the character of their entire religion. Please keep your opinions respectful as you would like others to be respectful of your faith.

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Ares,

I don't wish to cause offense, but if it is legitimate for a Mormon to counter my argument by making claims about Joseph's state of mind, I would hope it would be legitimate for me to express a different point of view. Although I tried to express that perspective in a way that was not inflammatory, there is no getting around the fact that I don't accept Joseph's claims.

You are free to discuss LDS doctrine but not free to cast dispersions on the character of their entire religion. Please keep your opinions respectful as you would like others to be respectful of your faith.

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Ares,

I don't wish to cause offense, but if it is legitimate for a Mormon to counter my argument by making claims about Joseph's state of mind, I would hope it would be legitimate for me to express a different point of view. Although I tried to express that perspective in a way that was not inflammatory, there is no getting around the fact that I don't accept Joseph's claims.

Do I really need to explain why when referring to the written doctrines of someone's religion, expressions like "smacks of desparation" and "an attempt at damage control" are not appropriate substitutes for "I don't accept Joseph's claims".

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."

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Ares,

Thanks for the warning. I will attempt to articulate my opinions in such a way as to avoid unnecessary offense.

Do I really need to explain why when referring to the written doctrines of someone's religion, expressions like "smacks of desparation" and "an attempt at damage control" are not appropriate substitutes for "I don't accept Joseph's claims".

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."

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Kevin,

Actually, Jesus knew all along that Judas was evil (John 6:70) and knew ahead of time that Judas would betray him (as all four Gospels report).

Which provides precedent for what happened with the 116 pages.

The issue here is not whether God is free to do whatever he chooses, but whether someone's claim about what God did is plausible.

Of course. Which is why I cited Isaiah. As a caution on presuming that our thoughts about what is plausible for God are the same as God's thoughts.

From an outsider's perspective, D&C 3 shows only that Joseph was very skillful at stringing together pious statements that sounded religiously profound.

Two points. Left to himself, at that stage in his life, his wife observed that he could not dictate a well worded letter, let alone anything like the Book of Mormon.

And however skillful your interpretation of Joseph Smith might be in stringing together a few sentences, in 1828, what about not only stringing them together, but fulfilling their prophesy?

He knew that he had made a huge mistake and that his whole enterprise was in crisis. His "revelation" in D&C 3 was an attempt at damage control. It may feel subjectively impressive to you, but objectively it contradicts his claim that the Lord gave him permission for Martin to take the manuscript. And D&C 10, frankly, smacks of desperation.

I don't see the objective contradiction. Israel wanted a king. God said no. Israel pestered God till they got one. Israel got the consequences. That is okay. Joseph Smith gets pestered by Martin Harris. Joseph says no and God says no. More pestering. More no. More pestering. A highly conditional permission, clearly reluctant permission, including many and warning, cautions. Nothing like, "Good idea. It will be great. What could go wrong?" Martin violates the cautions, showing the ms to people outside the conditions. Martin and Joseph get the consequences.

And since I see the way the Spaulding theory emerged as not all that far removed from the kind of thing that D&C 10 sees as being proposed a few years earlier. They need not provide the originals, only insist that they had seen them, just as Hulburt provided all sorts of witnesses, and withheld the manuscript that he had.

And not all that far removed from what happened later with the Kinderhook plates, or Caswall and the Greek Psalter, D&C 10 strikes me as describing quite plausible behavior on the part of Joseph Smith's opponents.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

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