The Lost 116 Pages, by Don Bradley

[_Dr. Shades]

I did see the claim you about the lost pages being in a safe deposit box. And in fact the person making this claim contacted me. I didn't follow up on it. But that's a story in itself.

By all means, do tell.

[_DonBradley]

It's from a faithful perspective. So, any coverage of this issue will be from nothing to just believe the obvious smoking gun lie, is my guess.

In my experience, Don does not shy away from controversial topics. While he may be trying to provide a faithful explanation, I would expect him to do so with some evidence to back it up. Remember he was the one who pointed out that Joseph Smith actually did produce a translation of the Kinderhook plates.

Ah, thanks, Fence Sitter!

If people knew all the things I've dug into in my research, I don't think anyone would accuse me of shying away from controversial topics! =D

The idea that we can reconstruct what was in the lost pages would be a controversial topic for many people, and you have to be Don Quixote, er, Bradley to even attempt such a thing! ;-)

Every study has parameters, and I spell out in the introduction to this book that I expect my audience will probably be mostly (though not entirely), and so, as a Latter-day Saint, I speak to them in our shared language of faith (e.g., describing Joseph Smith as translating the Book of Mormon rather than, say, "claiming to translate," etc.). The book brackets some questions (e.g., what Joseph Smith's exact process for working out the Book of Mormon text is) in order to focus on others (what was in the lost manuscript he dictated).

That said, the evidence I have chosen to present to my readers was compiled with both Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint readers in mind. The arguments are intended to work for readers regardless of their worldview or religious beliefs.

Don

[_DonBradley]

In my experience, Don does not shy away from controversial topics. While he may be trying to provide a faithful explanation, I would expect him to do so with some evidence to back it up. Remember he was the one who pointed out that Joseph Smith actually did produce a translation of the Kinderhook plates.

I'm not trying to disparage Mr. Bradley. I'm just pointing out that he didn't want to wade into controversial topics (I think he said as much in one of his responses) and so probably didn't cover this issue.

Hey Exiled,

I don't shy away from controversy in this book--the whole premise of the book--that we can reconstruct what was in the lost pages--is going to be controversial to some, and my argument that the lost manuscript was way longer than the 116 pages figure given by Joseph Smith is certain to set off a lot of disagreement. I do, however, choose carefully which controversies I want to engage. I've got my hands full with just the potential controversy surrounding the lost pages themselves.

About Joseph Smith's explanation that Satan inspired wicked men to alter the manuscript's words--this is entirely a matter of faith and therefore isn't something I either argue for or argue against. Rather, I try to provide historical context to make sense of Smith's explanation. As I say in the book:

The tools of history are ill-suited to answering questions like “Were those who stole the Book of Mormon manuscript inspired by Satan to discredit the book?” or “Was the theft foreseen by God and factored into His plan for the book?” ... However, it is within the scope of scholarship to assess why those involved in the emergence of the Book of Mormon found this explanation quite believable.

By the time the idea of a conspiracy to alter the manuscript was introduced there had already been three known conspiracies against the Book of Mormon: the attempts by the treasure seekers to steal the plates; the theft of the Anthon transcript; and a collusion among Palmyra locals in support of a lawsuit against Joseph Smith. In light of these activities, particularly the second one, involving the theft of another document related to the Book of Mormon, it's understandable why the idea of yet another conspiracy against the book, this time involving the manuscript theft, was fully believable to early Mormons, however bizarre it sounds to us now.

Some of my specific findings about the contents of the lost pages are bound to spark a lot of discussion, including questions about how these contents relate to Book of Mormon historicity debates.

Don

[_I have a question]

Don, have you asked the Church if they have the missing pages? I consider this the other possibility (in the event they haven’t been destroyed), because who else could or would keep them a secret for 200 years?

[_Dr Exiled]

Don:

This sounds like a great book and I am certainly going to read it during the christmas holiday.

As for the story Joseph Smith concocted about why he wouldn't translate the 116 pages over again is specious at best. If he truly had plates that actually had actual writing on them, it wouldn't have been too difficult to translate them again word for word. Also, the supposed alterations he so feared would have been easy to detect as alterations by use of a handwriting expert and through testimony from his scribes. It actually would have been faith promoting to translate them again and reveal the scheme to discredit him. However, Joseph Smith chose to claim what he did, because he made up the whole thing, panicked when the pages were lost, and knew he couldn't come close to re-inventing what was lost. But of course it was Satan all along.

[_Dr Moore]

Don,

I am enjoying this book so far, at Chapter 5.

Your estimation methods for the actual number of the "lost 116 pages" (somewhere in the 200-400 page range) is remarkably interesting!!

I have a question about translation rate and a related question about what Givens refers to as "bricolage" with reference to Joseph's "prophetic imagination".

First, a bit of math. I'm using a handful of your figures here. Correct me if I've missed something.

1. Final manuscript length: 460 written pages
2. At ~273,000 words, I calculate ~600 words per written page
3. Working days of translation (after the 116 pages incident): 65
4. Your estimate of normalized translation pace: about 6.5 pages per day (noting 6.5ppd * 65 working days = 423 pages... I get 7.1 pages per day taking 460 written pages / 65 working days. But this isn't the point, close enough for government work. I'll use 7.1 pages per day below.

Therefore
5. Estimated dictated words per day: 4,260 = 7.1ppd * 600wpp

Various accounts suggest long working days. What do you think the actual time spent dictating & writing per day was? 8 hours? 10 hours? More?

6. At 10 hours per day, we get 426 words per hour or 7.1 dictated words per minute or 1 word every 8.5 seconds.

This translation rate shouldn't be a problem. The average speed of copying words on paper is approximately 13 words per minute. Almost double the realized rate of translation.

My question is how a figure in this ballpark -- 7.1 words per minute, 1 word per 8.5 seconds -- comports with translation being more like "reading" illuminated text (spiritual light, I believe you called it, potentially not made of photons but appearing in Joseph's mind's eye like a vision/revelation).

Now not all words are equal. So let's take a verse, for example. Alma 5:26.

And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?

Using http://www.wordcounttools.com, I see that this verse has 37 words, average word consisting of 3.7 characters and 1.3 syllables. 22 (59%) of the words are 3 characters or less.

At the above translation rate, this verse required 5.2 minutes to translate.

Intuitively, 5.2 minutes is a VERY long time for that interpreter stone to illuminate spiritual light onto Joseph's mind in readable words. It takes me, reading slowly, no more than 20 seconds to read the verse. What was Joseph doing for the other 5 minutes? Where in the process was so much time required? If he saw phrases at a time, as some reports suggest, then we are talking whole minutes passing in silence in between each phrase.

With so much time between being shown which words to read -- more than 5 whole minutes for a representative short verse -- did Joseph's mind simply have too much time to wander about in his own memories, ideas, experiences, past readings, and theories of the day? Is THAT how we are to explain the presence of 19th century material and abundant borrowings from New Testament verses, as most other scholars have observed is everywhere in the Book of Mormon? Does this make Joseph, at the final analysis, an impatient translator who wouldn't wait for God's words to appear, so he added his own instead?

Which brings me back to Givens and his bricolage theory.

The idea is that while translation occurred by the gift and power of God, what came out was clearly influenced by the man and his interpretation of the stories through his contemporary surroundings. Do you agree with this theory?

I'm trying to connect, I suppose, tight and loose translation theories, in a long winded way.

Taking the verse above, again, and adding a layer of bricolage. It is well known that "Redeeming Love" and "Singing Redeeming Love" featured prominently in Christian hymns of Joseph's day. He very likely sang one of those hymns and felt Christ in his heart while singing the chorus. So how, with spiritual light showing him the correct words, did that Redeeming Love part get into Alma 5, set in the pre-Christian era Americas?

It seems, when we examine the process, either Givens is flat wrong, or else what Joseph did for those 5+ minutes (Alma 5:26 above, as one example) is indistinguishable from a curious, observant bricoleur simply making it up while his scribe waited eagerly for the words. Which is the same as the pious fraud theory. He may have believed God was showing him the words, but the words would have been functions of his own experience imprinting in his mind's eye, as he said them aloud.

I am very curious how you make sense of this. If it's later in your book, then I apologize for asking before finishing!

[_DonBradley]

Hey Dr. Moore,

I'm not aware of any source that specifies just how much of the day they spent on the transcription of the text. I suspect it was just a few hours a day. Since we don't have any detailed information on that it would be difficult to state a words per minute rate, even within a ballpark range.

One thing to take into account regarding the speed of their work is that it wasn't just a matter of Joseph dictating the text. The text had to be dictated, recorded, read back to Joseph, and approved.

If there are any extant accounts of how long it took for Joseph to dictate a revelatory text, this would help us arrive at an estimate. For example, I believe William Clayton said it took Joseph about three hours to dictate D&C 132. We'd want to double check that and see if Clayton indicates that he read each phrase back to Joseph after recording it. If so, then this would be a comparable process to that of the Book of Mormon translation and we could then use the episode to get an average wpm estimate.

About Terry'ls "bricolage" idea - fascinating.

I think you'd enjoy the recent podcast interview I did with Bryce Blankenagel: https://nakedmormonismpodcast.com/episo ... n-bradley/

Here is snippet I gave on Joseph Smith in that interview:

He believes that divine providence is all over his life, the hand of God is everywhere. Including in picking the scribes and choosing the people around him helping him, that all becomes part of his process of “studying it out” in his mind of what should go into translation of the Book of Mormon. So I think for Joseph Smith there’s not a dichotomy between things in his environment entering into his mental hopper as he’s working through this process of translating of bringing out text. There’s not a dichotomy for him between environmental influence and the divine working through him. Part of the way the divine influence works through him is by putting certain influences into his environment.

This certainly would allow for a "bricolage" approach to revelation, including translation.

Don

[_Jersey Girl]

Hell

[_DonBradley]

Hell, Jersey!

[_Dr Moore]

I'm not aware of any source that specifies just how much of the day they spent on the transcription of the text. I suspect it was just a few hours a day. Since we don't have any detailed information on that it would be difficult to state a words per minute rate, even within a ballpark range.

One thing to take into account regarding the speed of their work is that it wasn't just a matter of Joseph dictating the text. The text had to be dictated, recorded, read back to Joseph, and approved.

We do have a few data points:

1. Emma reported "hour after hour" of translation work, "returning after meals" to pick up where they left off. This implies a whole day affair, spanning across "meals".

2. Hart's About the Book of Mormon quotes David Whitmer, recalling the work of translation, "it was a laborious work for the weather was very warm, and the days were long and they [Joseph and Oliver] worked from morning till night. But they were both young and strong and were soon able to complete the work"

Sounds like these were very arduous days. They took meal breaks, but were otherwise consumed by the task. Certainly well more than a few hours. These testimonies evoke an image more like: 3-4 hours between breakfast and lunch, another 3-4 hours mid day, and 2-3 hours after dinner, for a long 8-11 hour day. We don't have hourly diaries, which would help, but 8-11 hours a day fits the eyewitness accounts far better than "just a few hours a day."

Keep in mind, this all occurred in New England in the late Spring / early Summer months. I lived in New England for many years -- that time of year, first of all it's beautiful outside, though does begin to get hot in June; sunlight is strong by 6-7am and it remains light until 8-9pm. With 16 waking hours, working for 10 hours leaves 6 hours for eating, rest, meditation/prayer, family time, study, chores.

So again, then, per the above, take Alma 5:26.

And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?

We've got a little more than 5 minutes to translate the verse amidst a 10 hour workday. Reading, writing, reading back and approving takes, what, a full minute? What are the other 4+ minutes used for?

If the the other 4 minutes are Joseph "studying it out in his mind" then what does he even need the interpreters for? How can a single word of the Book of Mormon be trusted to be a translation, when every word and phrase may be a corruption from Joseph's mind imprinted on the original?

We know that many, many elements from Joseph's contemporary world view found their way into the book. If there was an original, true record, then why should we not exclude every piece of 19th century material, including pre-Christian era New Testament passages and themes, borrowed song verses and common theological phrases, as a corruption of the original?

Or are we really to believe that Alma did, in fact, teach his people to sing Redeeming Love? Did Alma teach that, or did Joseph put those heart-stirring words into Alma's mouth?

Did he corrupt Alma's original words by studying things out too much in those 4 extra minutes? Did he make Alma up as a vehicle to add Redeeming Love into the story line? Or did he dutifully record exactly what Alma said, as shown in lighted words on the interpreters, and it's just a coincidence that Alma pulled hymnal words from the 19th century?

Another example from Alma: the Zoramites and the Rameumptom. Did Joseph, while studying things out, decide to go a little overboard by parodying the Episcopalian practices, as detailed in the Book of Common Prayer? At least 3 contemporary ministers of his day thought so. Did Alma really find Zoramites acting like heretical Episcopals, or was that Joseph's bricolage imprinted on the story? Or did he make up the story scaffolding in order to mock his father-in-law's Methodist Episcopal congregation?

I find Givens' bricolage theory a better explanation for the pace of translation and the content of the Book of Mormon. A savant bricoleur. History is full of such people, in all disciplines.

But bricolage is, in essence, idea theft. It may be artful, beautiful and inspiring, but marketed as translation by the gift and power of God, that is either a pious fraud or a deliberate fraud.

Here is snippet I gave on Joseph Smith in that interview:

He believes that divine providence is all over his life, the hand of God is everywhere. Including in picking the scribes and choosing the people around him helping him, that all becomes part of his process of “studying it out” in his mind of what should go into translation of the Book of Mormon. So I think for Joseph Smith there’s not a dichotomy between things in his environment entering into his mental hopper as he’s working through this process of translating of bringing out text. There’s not a dichotomy for him between environmental influence and the divine working through him. Part of the way the divine influence works through him is by putting certain influences into his environment.

This certainly would allow for a "bricolage" approach to revelation, including translation.

Candidly I tire of the "studying it out" explanation. It's kind of a cop out, a convenient exit door when one explanation of Joseph's translation projects contradicts another explanation. Such as, when one road leads us to "he read it" and another road leads us to "he pulled it from his bricolage." #Error results, so let's drop some lubricating "studying it out" on the situation and all will be right again.

It really is like a huge blob of jelly on the conversation, but doesn't change the fact that mutually exclusive definitions of translation can not be squared, cannot both exist, and yet we find that both definitions are required in order for (a) Joseph to not be a fraud, (b) eye witnesses to not be frauds (c) God to not be a fraud and (d) the "translated" text itself to not be a fraud. It may soothe some minds, and it must because church officials pull this ace of spades out constantly when presented with hard questions on all of Joseph's translation projects -- Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, and JST. But it is comes off as more a dismissal. I suppose walking away is the best course when the data leads, inexorably, to the unacceptable conclusion that he may, in fact, have made it all up.

I was puzzled about all of this because in your book, you investigated the science of optical perception and neurological imaging functions, eliminating for the first time the notion that literal photons had to emanate from the chocolate stone (awesome stuff, by the way!). You show that the "gift and power" as he puts it, could be a spiritual light in the darkness, writing words in Joseph's mind as if he were seeing them in the hat or on a screen -- you get all the way there, but leave the hanging chad right at the climax! All of this miracle so Joseph could literally SEE the words, phrases, correct names spelled in spiritual light in his mind, and Joseph just goes ahead and mucks it all up because he couldn't help himself but "study it out."

It was supposed to be an unknown language, on plates he didn't have in front of him. What was there to study out?

Was Joseph obedient or not?
Was he translating a record, or not?
Did he wait for God to show him the next words, or not?

And if we excuse Joseph for literally anything if it appears he "studied it out" then where is God in any of it? God cannot be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere Joseph's work.