The Puzzle of the 116 Lost Pages
I don’t understand the reason Joseph Smith didn’t retranslate the 116 lost pages. Since we are reading D&C 10 today, it is probably time to take the problem off the shelf for another look.
You wise ones, your thoughts would be much appreciated.
Here’s the set-up
Joseph Smith loses the 116 pages.
The Lord tells him not to retranslate.
Because wicked men have their hands on the lost pages and will tamper with it to make the new translation seem false.
The last part, the reason, is the part that puzzles me.
The tampering would have to be in different handwriting and messing with an existing manuscript. I would think it would be obvious probably even then. If not then, then certainly now. Even if the original tampered manuscript didn’t survive, I would expect that even literary analysis would show signs of tampering. I would also expect that the new translation and the altered translation would show a remarkable degree of overlap even after the alterations and it would be another testimony of the book.
So let me think of some possible reasons and arguments.
1. It is the effect on the nascent Church that counts–they didn’t know translation back then.
In Joseph Smith’s relatively unsophisticated milieu, even a crude alteration may have passed muster and even the word that there was a translation with different stuff in it may have posed a real stumbling block. It is possible that the early Church trajectory was fragile enough that this extra opposition would have required a lot more miracles to overcome than the Lord wished to provide, since the divine economy requires leaving space for belief between self evident falsity and self evident truth.
It is also possible that whereas now a few surface-level alterations in a long manuscript would now be evidence for the translation, the unsophisticated audience in Joseph Smith’s time and place would be expecting exactness.
sed contra Why couldn’t the translation happen but be kept back until after the first few years?
2. It is the effect on the nascent Church that counts–organized opposition.
Joseph Smith faced a lot of opposition, but it wasn’t organized. The opposition organization energy seems to have been focused on trying to get the gold plates. On the other hand, the 116-page alteration was a group that came together for a purpose. Publishing the new retranslation would have played into their game and given them a lot of impetus to have continued as an oppositional organization. The early nascent Church may not have been able to stand that level of opposition. Instead, with Joseph Smith doing nothing, this nascent opposition group seems to have popped.
sed contra Why couldn’t the translation happen but be kept back until after the first few years?
3. loose translation
Joseph Smith was doing a loose translation, not a tight word-for-word translation. Which meant the 116 pages even without tampering would look substantially different. It’s possible Joseph Smith didn’t even realize he was.
sed contra Why would it matter if we knew Joseph Smith was doing a loose translation?
4. Consequences
There needed to be consequences for Joseph Smith and Martin Harris and Lucy Harris’ choices. Jehovah doesn’t just wave a hand and make the bad results of our sins go away. It is much more the divine style to leave the absence that we caused but already have prepared something different but perhaps better when we repent.
Justice and mercy require consequences.
sed contra I like this explanation a lot but it doesn’t match very well with the explanation the Lord gave to Joseph.
General Thoughts
There could be other explanations. Add yours below
Some of these explanations could work in tandem.
Some of these explanations wander pretty far from the stated one and require that the Lord was being, ah, remarkably coy. Which is a strike against them.
Filed under: Deseret Review | Tags: Responsibility and meaning
outoftime
February 1, 2021
Perhaps it was a warning for the future when technology would enable forgers to do a really good job.
JimD
February 1, 2021
Some disconnected observations:
1). It doesn’t necessarily matter what handwriting is *in* the manuscript—in 1828-29 the technology doesn’t exist to photographically reproduce those pages for inspection of the handwriting by all and sundry, anyways. What matters is someone being able to credibly claim that they *possess* the manuscript, and then being willing to lie about its contents. We’ve seen how much mischief was wrought by Solomon Spaulding manuscript theorists over a manuscript that they *didn’t* have . . .
2) Joseph Smith had a very limited social circle—and a very small set of enemies —at this point in his life. If, as Lucy Smith said, the primary suspect for the pages’ disappearance was Lucy Harris—we know she had a very particular motive, which was to prevent Martin Harris from contributing additional resources to the translation and publication of the book; and it’s difficult to envision anyone else coming up with the capital needed to publish the book. It may be that we need to look at the list 116 pages less in terms of how the public at large would have reacted to them; and more in terms of how a frontier (divorce?) court or specific allies like the Stowells, Knights, Whitney’s, etc. would have reacted to them.
Bookslinger
February 1, 2021
My $.02: The affair was a lesson for Joseph, his contemporaries, and all of us. Seek not to counsel the Lord. It was, and still is, about trust and obedience of Joseph (and all of us) towards the Lord. Trust that the Lord knows what He is doing, and not demanding reasons/explanations prior to obedience.
The “don’t retranslate” is still a stumbling block to many today — the thought “how convenient” immediately comes to mind.
It bugged me for many years, until I recognized my own whiny attempts to counsel the Lord, and justify the way I want to do things. Joseph and Martin, and all of us needed and need this lesson. I still need it. Being canonized, it is a contant reminder to us.
It’s not really about the machinations of enemies or the logistics of retranslating. If it were about logistics, the Lord could have just explained, or showed Joseph what would have happend.
It’s about not pestering/counseling the Lord until He says “OK, have it your way. But….” That is the take-away, and where our focus should be.
[]
February 1, 2021
I’ve been wondering how much of Martin Harris’s sin really was pestering the Lord and how much was that, having successfully changed the Lord’s mind, he could not hold on to the pages.
el oso
February 1, 2021
I wonder if the solution to retranslate and then hold back the lost pages for years before publishing would have been an acceptable solution had Joseph proposed it to the Lord once translation was underway again.
Obviously, this was not a required solution. Joseph lived 15 more years after finishing and worked on many other revelations but never went back to the plates.
Wm Jas Tychonievich
February 1, 2021
If JS had retranslated the 116 pages, and the new translation had differed from the old one, it would have looked as if he couldn’t really translate. But the decision not to retranslate *also* made it look as if he couldn’t really translate, so it’s hard to see what the point was. Then there are the remarkably convenient Small Plates, with their many suspicious characteristics (all the filler from Isaiah, kings not having individual names, the Book of Omni). At times I’ve even entertained the hypothesis that while the Book of Mormon proper is legit, the Small Plates never really existed. (There’s a lot of good stuff in the Small Plates, but then we already knew JS himself was more inspired than any of the Nephites he translated.)
Vader
February 1, 2021
I find myself thinking of Moses and the original tables of stone. It was taught early in the Church that the original tables carried the higher law, and when Moses shattered them, God gave him a lesser law on the replacement plates.
G.
February 2, 2021
Excellent comments, all.
[], there are some decisions that only success can justify. Pestering the Lord is one of them.
Marilyn
February 2, 2021
I’ve wondered a lot about this too. Mostly because it seems like the Lord has allowed PLENTY of other things to happen that might make us question if the Book of Mormon is really an ancient record. Of course there are lots of evidences for its truth and reality, but it seems like the Lord has WANTED there to be almost an equal number of things that could shake our faith, if we let them. So, why not just put “alternate translation of the manuscript, done by wicked men, but some people think it proves JS wasn’t really translating” on that side of the column with the Mark Hoffman forgeries and the early anti-Mormon testimonies etc?
I guess I’ve decided mostly on your option 1 as the answer. And as to “why not let it happen after the church isn’t nascent anymore”–well–maybe it still WILL happen someday? I don’t know.
Bookslinger
February 2, 2021
The Wikipedia entries on Martin Harris and Lucy Harris have some interesting tidbits — not to be taken entirely at face value, it being Wikipedia. But still, I think you can tease out some views on the personalities of the two.
Lucy died in 1836. Martin married a niece of Brigham Young in 1839. Martin went on to make a round-robin almost, of the various split-offs of the church, before rejoining the saints in Utah and living out his days there.
Ugly Mahana
February 2, 2021
I just had a thought.
Joseph was given an explanation fitted to Joseph’s understanding, i.e., “given in his language.” The command was “do not look back, do not retranslate.” The explanation was less important than the command. We were not there, so the explanation does not have to make sense to us. The lesson for Joseph and for us is less the specific reason why God did not want Joseph to retranslate and more that God prepares a way, if we will repent, even when we mess up. And, while that way does not always mean redoing what we messed up, it always means coming to God – who can make always make it right – and has done so, before we went wrong, “from the foundation of the world.”
Kind of makes it irrelevant whether Adam was supposed to partake fo the fruit or not. God knows, and we can trust Him.