Kishkumen wrote: ↑Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:34 amIf Mormon transcribes something written by the hand of someone else earlier, and yet he includes their testimony to have written it by their own hand much earlier, then doesn’t it stand to reason that all this language really stands as is a testimony that the statement at one time came from the claimed author and not that the artifact is an autograph?
Yes in a sense. When Mormon finished his own record he was able to read everything that everyone else originally wrote or etched on earlier plates. Once that information was transferred on to Mormon's plates then it's no longer an original autograph per se but a copy of the original letter. Mormon's plates were a master copy of everything that had been said previous.
But in the case of Saint Paul whose letters were delivered to the churches abroad, they are autographs and original letters written by his own hand. Those letters were in physical contact with the original author. They were delivered in Paul's time and were received as actual letters written by his own physical hand.
Joseph Smith led the saints to believe the papyri were autographs and originals of the Patriarchs. They were written by their own hands and buried or sealed up during that era in time. Smith would have rejected the idea of the papyri having originated in Ptolemaic times as copies of copies. Everything Smith said was that they were originals manuscripts that had been preserved for 3,500 years in Thebes.
