The lost 116 pages

[_Uncle Dale]

1. When did Mother Smith's "stranger" and Joseph first realize the pages were unrecoverable?

You're going to have to fill me in on some details here, though I will say that I think Mother Smith was in on it, so anything she may have said, to me, is read from that point of view.

Turning to Vogel, EMD-5, p. 410, we see that Joseph went to Manchester at some point in
"early June" 1828. Vogel does not mention the accompanying "stranger,"

2. When did "the angel" take "the plates" away from Joseph?

I think Rigdon took away the rest of the manuscript he had been working on, to include the Book of Moses, at around the time of this usurpation of Joseph.

According to Vogel, Joseph loses possession of "the plates" by the time he had returned to
Harmony -- "early July" 1828.

3. What was Joseph doing, during the period when he had no "plates?"

Compiling his own recollections to be included in the final project.

According to Vogel, this period must have been early July to mid-Sept., 1828 David Whitmer
agrees that Joseph went "three months" with no "plates." He evidently worked at being a
farmer at Harmony during that period.

4. When did Joseph (and Cowdery?) resume translating/writing?

I'm not sure. What is the accepted timeline for translation? i think there was a period where things got sorted out and an agreement was made between the parties.

According to Vogel, by "early September" 1828, Joseph again had "the plates" and Emma was
doing some writing for him. "Early September" might have been the first or second week.

5. Where was Sidney Rigdon, between the time the pages were found to be unrecoverable and the time when "the plates" were returned to Joseph?

I don't know - but one thing is for sure, in my mind, some agreement was reached. I think that agreement is explained in the "exchange of prisoners" between Ammoron and Moroni.

According to Fawn Brodie (copying from the RLDS "Saints Herald") From some point in June of
1828, until August, of the same year, Rigdon's whereabouts are unaccounted for. He then shows
up for a few days at the annual Mahoning Baptist Assoc. meeting, near the OH border with PA.
Then he is again missing in action until September 7, 1828, when he is back at Mentor, OH.

In other words, during the time that "the stranger" accompanied Joseph back to Manchester, and
during the time that "the plates" were removed from Joseph's keeping, the whereabouts of Elder
Sidney Rigdon are a mystery -- except for his one brief appearance near Pennsylvania.

UD

[_Ray A]

Elden Watson provides this Book of Mormon Translation Timeline.

[_cinepro]

I still have the question of Josephs perceived importance at this point in Mormon history.

Were "evil men" really so invested in bringing down Joseph that they would go to such extreme measures and great expense to do it? I have a hard time believing that Joseph was such a threat that anybody would take him seriously, let alone a throng of evil men looking for any opportunity to prove him wrong.

It seems to me that the people of the area at that time saw him as a minor crackpot who was doing something with a gold Bible. To hear Mormons tell it, evil men were everywhere looking for any chance, no matter how illegal or immoral, to bring the church down.

Exactly. I have no problem believing that local ruffians were interested in the "gold Bible". Gold = $$$. That's easy math.

But it takes a little more convincing that local ruffians were interested in stealing 116 pages of manuscript, painstakingly altering them to the degree that they would be noticeably different, waiting at least 2 months for Joseph to re-translate (using additional paper supplied by Martin), waiting additional time for Joseph to finish, waiting for the book to be published, then going to newspapers and publishers trying to get the word out that you have a manuscript that was stolen from Joseph months earlier, and it is the first draft of the Book of Mormon but it is different in these specific parts (which parts? the parts with smudges and the slightly different handwriting. Notice how "Lehi" in Joseph's book is "Behi" in our book!). So people shouldn't go out and buy Joseph's Book of Mormon because yours is slightly different.

If anything, after their plan had failed, they still had a perfectly valid manuscript of an alternate version of the Book of Mormon. If people were interested in the Joseph's book, they would probably be interested in this other version as well. Assuming they could remember which parts they had changed.


Weird, weird plan.

[_Uncle Dale]

Elden Watson provides this [url=http://www.eldenwatson.net/Book of Mormon.htm]Book of Mormon Translation Timeline
[/url].

Assuming Watson is correct -- and Vogel is incorrect -- we now have this starting point:

~Friday, July 11, 1828, Manchester : Joseph arrives in Manchester to see Martin Harris.

Lucy says that Joseph took the stage, which would have taken about 3 days. After Joseph left the stage, he still had 20 miles to walk. Larry Porter is probably correct in suggesting that Joseph took the stage to Genesee, which is one of the larger towns on the southeast of Palmyra and about 20 miles distant. With the assistance of a stranger whom Joseph met on the stage, Joseph arrived at the Joseph Smith Sr. farm about daybreak (which a footnote suggests would be about 4:15 or 4:30 a.m. in July). Under the existing conditions, a 20 mile walk, much of the way through woods at night, would probably have taken Joseph about 8 hours, so he would have left Genesee about 8:30 or 9:00 on Thursday night. Richard Bushman says the stage "stopped twenty miles from the Smith house at ten in the evening." [JSBM 91] Martin Harris was sent for (a distance of 1.5 miles) about 6:00 a.m., but did not show up until nearly 1:00 p.m., when he disclosed the terrible news that he had lost the manuscript. [REH 164-165]

~Saturday, July 12, 1828, Manchester Joseph Smith begins his return to Harmony.

"The next morning he went home." [REH 166]

Sunday, July 13, 1828, [Joseph traveling]
Monday, July 14, 1828, [Joseph traveling]
~Tuesday, July 15, 1828 Joseph arrives back at his home in Harmony

Another three day journey, assuming he also returned on the stage from Genesee.

~Wednesday, July 16, 1828 Joseph loses Book of Mormon plates and Urim and Thummim,
Receives D&C 3.

If "the stranger" accompanied Joseph back to Harmony, I wonder if it was "the stranger" who took
"the plates" from Joseph? If so, what did "the stranger" (or "the angel") do with those "plates?"

added: Had I been "the stranger" or "the angel," the first thing I would have insisted upon, once
Joseph had returned to Harmony, was for him to put "the plates" into somebody else's hands, for
safe-keeping, until it was clearly evident that he (Joseph) was trustworthy enough to receive them
back into his keeping. In the meanwhile, perhaps "the small plates of Nephi" could be moved to
the top of the stack, as a replacement for the lost "Book of Lehi."

Also -- I'm not sure how such things were accomplished, back in 1828, but it might have been a
good idea to see that Joseph "backed up his data files" (had access to a second copy of the text).

UD

[_Scottie]

Something else that just struck me...

Why would evil men be limited to changing the 116 pages?? Why couldn't they get ahold of the first Book of Mormon, forge Martin's handwriting for, say, 2 or 3 pages and claim that it was different than what the published Book of Mormon says? Apparently these men had no scruples at all, so this should have worked just as well as forging the 116 pages, right?

So, in Martin's handwriting, their version would be

I, Chin-Gow, having been born of goodly parents in the land of China, and having flown via dragon to the promised land, hereby write the story of my peoples.

They would then lie and claim that Martin gave them these pages earlier. Viola! Instant scandal and Mormonism fails!!

[_Jersey Girl]

Yes, there were 24 manuscript pages at first, and while UD probably has a lot more information and will hopefully fill us in, I've often wondered if there were some sort of correlation between those 24 manuscript pages and the 24 plates.

Of course, looking for these correlations has become somewhat of an odd hobby of mine, so it may not mean a thing. I just think it is interesting.

I need a storytime with AlmaBound. Tell me what happened to the 24 plates?

Liking your odd hobby,
Jersey Girl

[_harmony]

He evidently worked at being a
farmer at Harmony during that period.

Joseph worked? Holy Mary, I wonder if that's the reason we had to add a second to the clock on Jan 1, 2009? The earth stood still for a second!

[_Uncle Dale]

He evidently worked at being a
farmer at Harmony during that period.

Joseph worked? Holy Mary, I wonder if that's the reason we had to add a second to the clock on Jan 1, 2009? The earth stood still for a second!

His longsuffering father-in-law relates that Joseph promised to be a good boy and work for a living.

I imagine that he found some ways to "delegate" a bit of that sort of manual labor to the local rubes:



UD

[_AlmaBound]

In other words, during the time that "the stranger" accompanied Joseph back to Manchester, and
during the time that "the plates" were removed from Joseph's keeping, the whereabouts of Elder
Sidney Rigdon are a mystery -- except for his one brief appearance near Pennsylvania.

UD

I'm convinced that Rigdon played a large role in the authorship, through mostly internal evidence from the book itself. But I think Joseph wrote a considerable portion of the book as well. The trouble is, most of the evidence for what I see as his contribution is internal as well.

One thing is sure in my mind is that there was some sort of collaboration between them concerning the authorship, and I think the book itself largely tells us the story of that collaboration.

[_AlmaBound]

I need a storytime with AlmaBound. Tell me what happened to the 24 plates?

Liking your odd hobby,
Jersey Girl

I'm not convinced there were any such "golden plates." However, the "plates" the witnesses referred to may simply have been papers that were seen "with the spiritual eye."

Or, more intriguing to me, they may have been rolled copper printing plates, used as a prop, as Oliver Cowdery had some background as a printer's assistant.

I don't buy the "tin plates" theory, but that is possible too, I suppose.

What happened to them? If the plates were actually manuscript papers, then they ended up in the cornerstone of the temple.

I suspect if the plates were actually printing plates or tin plates, then they were probably destroyed.