Dr. Peterson, why do you think the Church chose to omit ...

[_mms]

...only the following portion of the Wentworth Letter in Chapter 38 of the Joseph Smith Priesthood/Relief Society Manual? I know this has been brought up before, but I am interested in your take on why this was omitted and whether you think it should have been. After all, Joseph Smith felt every bit of the letter was important, which is why he requested that no portion be omitted in its publication and now his own Church is doing the omitting. Why?

Here is the omitted portion:

In this important and interesting book the history of ancient
America is unfolded, from its first settlement by a colony that came
from the Tower of Babel, at the confusion of languages to the
beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed
by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by
two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites and
came directly from the Tower of Babel. The second race came directly
from the city of Jerusalem, about six hundred years before Christ.
They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The
Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came
from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the
country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle
towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians
that now inhabit this country.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I have no inside information on that matter, and would only be speculating.

Others here are at least as good as I am at speculating, and, since we would be speculating from different assumptions, the only result would be a conflict of speculations. (I'm sure that, like me, you can easily foresee the directions that the exchanges would take.)

The entire Joseph Smith manual, of course, like its predecessors, is an anthology of selected quotations.

[_mms]

Can you get inside information? I truly want to know what the motivation was and I thought that maybe your view (speculation) would be closer to the mark than some. Want to take a shot at it?

Re your "selected quotations" comment, I am pretty sure the whole letter is in there except for what I quoted. It is a lesson called "The Wentworth Letter".

[_beastie]

Now, isn't that telling.

[_mms]

Here's a link to the manual if you want to peruse it. Drop down the page to Chapter 38 and you can check out "The Wentworth Letter" lesson:

http://LDS.org/library/display/0,4945,8009-1-4374-1,00.html

If you want to read the unedited version of the Letter, you can read it here:

http://www.lightplanet.com/Mormons/people/joseph_smith/wentworth_letter.html

Pretty sure all that is missing in the version printed in the manual is what I quoted above, which is just the top half of one of the paragraphs.

In the first paragraph of the letter, Joseph Smith states:

As Mr. Bastow has taken the proper steps to obtain correct information, all that I shall ask at his hands, is, that he publish the account entire, ungarnished, and without misrepresentation.

My bolding. Chapter 38 of the manual includes this statement but then deletes the part of the letter I have quoted in the OP.

[_SatanWasSetUp]

In the first paragraph of the letter, Joseph Smith states:

As Mr. Bastow has taken the proper steps to obtain correct information, all that I shall ask at his hands, is, that he publish the account entire, ungarnished, and without misrepresentation.

My bolding. Chapter 38 of the manual includes this statement but then deletes the part of the letter I have quoted in the OP.

That's kinda funny. Of course, Joseph only requested Mr. Bastow to publish the entire account ungarnished. He said nothing about future church manual writers.

The Wentworth letter as presented in the current official church manual is the only true Wentworth letter. Previous versions of the Wentworth letter were presented without the light and knowledge that is currently possessed by the church correlation committee. Through continuing revelation the Wentworth letter has been updated to its proper form.

All joking aside, since that is the only part that was ommitted, I can only speculate that the LGT is taking over as the consensus interpretation of the Book of Mormon. I imagine there are some old-timer HGT believers in high positions that are preventing it from being taught openly from the pulpit, but I imagine within the next 20 years or so the LGT will be the approved interpretation of the Book of Mormon and will be adopted into the Correlated Lesson manuals. In the meantime, they are slowly removing references to the Hemispheric model from the lesson manuals. That's my theory, and I would be interested to hear from someon like DCP if the LGT is becoming the consensus belief within the church leadership.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I would be interested to hear from someon like DCP if the LGT is becoming the consensus belief within the church leadership.

I suspect it's on its way.

[_SUAS]

On a bad day you can still see the mountains...Can you still see the BYU written on the Mountains..in PROVO

[_moksha]

Mms, my guess is that they wished to deemphasize those ideas presented in the omitted portions of the text. The conclusion that there were only those two groups and that the remnants of the Nephite people became solely today's Native Americans, would seem both untenable and embarrassing nowadays.

[_harmony]

My problem is not that they omitted part of the letter. My problem is that they didn't say they omitted part of the letter.

(and yes, I have the book, and yes, I've read Chapter 38).