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Book of Mormon Manuscript Excerpt, circa June 1829 [1 Nephi 2:2b–3:18a]
Source Note
Source Note
Book of Mormon, original manuscript excerpt, [3]–[4]; [likely , Seneca Co., NY; ca.June 1829]; handwriting of , , and one unidentified scribe; CHL.
Leaf measuring approximately 16⅜ × 7 inches (42 × 17 cm). The original manuscript of the Book of Mormon was placed in the cornerstone of the in 1841. In 1882 the manuscript was removed, but it had suffered considerable damage from water. Lewis Bidamon, second husband of , gave portions of the manuscript to visitors to . Through the years, many of these have been collected or donated to several different repositories, including the Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, and the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Additionally, some fragments of the manuscript are in private possession. Only about 28 percent of the original manuscript is now known to be extant, and much of that is in the form of fragments. The excerpt featured below was acquired with about twenty other pages by Sarah M. Kimball in September 1883 and given to Joseph F. Smith, a member of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in October 1883. It is unknown when the fragment came into the possession of the Church Historian’s Office. The excerpt below—not a complete text, but included to provide a sense of the Book of Mormon text—is featured because it contains the work of the three scribes whose handwriting is found in the extant portion of the manuscript and because the document is in relatively good condition.
Footnotes
- [1]
The handwriting of this scribe matches handwriting of a partially extant copy of a 9 December 1830 revelation created in Ohio around early 1831. Thus, the unidentified scribe is narrowed to someone who served as scribe both in Fayette in 1829 and Ohio in 1831. Unfortunately, no known identifiable or significant samples of Martin Harris’s or Christian Whitmer’s handwriting have been found. According to his brother David Whitmer, Christian assisted Oliver Cowdery in writing the Book of Mormon as JS dictated the text. (Revelation, 9 Dec. 1830, Revelations Collection, CHL [D&C 36:3–8]; “The Last Man,” Times [Chicago], 17 Oct. 1881, 5.)
Revelations Collection, 1831–ca. 1844, 1847, 1861, ca. 1876. CHL. MS 4583.
Times. Chicago. 1854–1895.
- [2]
JS, Journal, 29 Dec. 1841; see also Foote, Autobiography, 2 Oct. 1841; and Ebenezer Robinson, “Items of Personal History of the Editor,” Return, Aug. 1890, 315.
Foote, Warren. Autobiography, not before 1903. Warren Foote, Papers, 1837–1941. CHL. MS 1123, fd. 1.
The Return. Davis City, IA, 1889–1891; Richmond, MO, 1892–1893; Davis City, 1895–1896; Denver, 1898; Independence, MO, 1899–1900.
- [3]
“Relics of the Old Nauvoo House,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 4 Oct. 1882, 577.
Deseret News. Salt Lake City. 1850–.
- [4]
Skousen, Original Manuscript, 6–7; see also 33–37.
Skousen, Royal, ed. The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Brigham Young University, 2001.
- [5]
Sarah M. Kimball, Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to George Reynolds, [Salt Lake City, Utah Territory], 19 July 1884, in George Reynolds, “History of the Book of Mormon,” Contributor, July 1884, 366; see also “Editorial Notes,” Woman’s Exponent, 1 July 1883, 20.
Reynolds, George. “History of the Book of Mormon.” Contributor, July 1884, 361–367.
Woman’s Exponent. Salt Lake City. 1872–1914.
- [6]
Jessee, “Original Book of Mormon Manuscript,” 266.
Jessee, Dean C. “The Original Book of Mormon Manuscript.” BYU Studies 10 (Spring 1970): 259–278.
Historical Introduction
Historical Introduction
JS’s history recounts that on the night of 21–22 September 1823, “a messenger sent from the presence of God” visited JS and “said there was a book deposited written upon , giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent.” JS found the plates in a stone box embedded in a hill not far from the Smith residence, “under a stone of considerable size.” On 22 September 1827, after yearly visits to the spot, JS obtained the plates. He moved from , New York, to , Pennsylvania, a few months later, and his wife and her brother Reuben Hale began recording JS’s dictation from the plates. From mid-April to mid-June 1828, , a supporter from Palmyra, was JS’s primary scribe and finished a considerable portion of the , but he then lost the transcription. A messenger sent from God chastised JS for allowing the manuscript to be lost and took the plates from JS, but returned them “in a few days.” Rather than retranslating the lost pages, JS was directed to finish “the remainder of the work” and apparently picked up where he and Harris had stopped, in the book of Mosiah. Although Emma Smith, JS’s brother , and possibly others served as scribes for JS over the next several months, progress was slow and sporadic. JS moved forward in earnest only after arrived to serve as his full-time scribe in early April 1829. During April and May 1829, JS and Cowdery apparently translated the portion of the Book of Mormon from Mosiah through the concluding book of Moroni.
JS and relocated to the home in , New York, in early June 1829 and promptly resumed the translation. “It was a laborious work,” recalled , “for the weather was very warm, and the days were long and they worked from morning till night.” While the timetable of the translation is not known with certainty, analysis of the manuscript suggests that JS translated the portion from the first book of Nephi through Words of Mormon—what became the first part of the Book of Mormon—at the Whitmer home during June. This was in accordance with a revelation that had instructed JS to translate “the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi,” which covered the same time period as the pages lost by , a manuscript that JS made no effort to retranslate. The representative sample selected for inclusion in this volume is taken from this portion of the manuscript JS and Cowdery produced, now known as the “original manuscript.”
The featured text is primarily in the handwriting of , but it also contains short passages inscribed by and one unidentified scribe, who replaced Cowdery for brief periods. This selection exhibits the traits typical of the original Book of Mormon manuscript, most noticeably a lack of punctuation. After the translation, scribes added chapter numbers and the typesetter added paragraph breaks and punctuation to the printer’s manuscript as it was being prepared for publication. The text transcribed here, as with other extant portions of the original manuscript, exhibits very few signs of editing. It contains spelling errors characteristic of each particular scribe. The Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith Papers will extend this analysis and present the complete text of the extant portions of the original manuscript and the complete text of a second manuscript, the “printer’s manuscript” that was copied from the original for use by the typesetter.
The text featured here begins on the third manuscript page (second leaf) of what in the published Book of Mormon was titled “The First Book of Nephi: His Reign and Ministry.” The first leaf is no longer extant. Page 3 picks up the narrative of the record at the point when Nephi’s father, Lehi, acting under inspiration, departs the Jerusalem area with the assurance that if he and his family are righteous they will be led to a promised land. This is the inaugural event in the multigenerational family saga that dominates most of the Book of Mormon. In the lost manuscript, the story was presumably told from the perspective of the father, Lehi, whereas here it is told from the perspective of the son, Nephi.
Footnotes
- [1]
JS History, vol. A-1, 5, 7; see also Oliver Cowdery, “Letter VI,” LDS Messenger and Advocate, Apr. 1835, 1:108–112; and Oliver Cowdery, “Letter VII,” LDS Messenger and Advocate, July 1835, 1:155–159.
Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate. Kirtland, OH. Oct. 1834–Sept. 1837.
- [2]
Knight, Reminiscences, 4; Joseph Smith III, “Last Testimony of Sister Emma,” Saints’ Herald, 1 Oct. 1879, 289; JS History, vol. A-1, 9–10. JS and Harris stopped translating on 14 June, the day before Emma Smith gave birth to a son who either was stillborn or died shortly after birth.
Knight, Joseph, Sr. Reminiscences, no date. CHL. MS 3470.
Saints’ Herald. Independence, MO. 1860–.
- [3]
JS History, vol. A-1, 11.
- [4]
Revelation, Spring 1829 [D&C 10:3]; see also Historical Introduction to Revelation, July 1828 [D&C 3].
- [5]
- [6]
Not all of the plates were translated. According to Oliver Cowdery, a heavenly messenger had previously told JS that “a part of the book was sealed, and was not to be opened” until “the people of the Lord are prepared, and found worthy” to receive it. (Oliver Cowdery, “Letter IV,” LDS Messenger and Advocate, Feb. 1835, 1:80; see also Book of Mormon, 1830 ed., 111 [2 Nephi 27:21–22].)
Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate. Kirtland, OH. Oct. 1834–Sept. 1837.
- [7]
James H. Hart, “About the Book of Mormon,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 9 Apr. 1884, 190.
Deseret News. Salt Lake City. 1850–.
- [8]
Revelation, Spring 1829 [D&C 10:41]; see also JS History, vol. A-1, 21–22. Most scholars of the Book of Mormon believe that JS and Cowdery translated the portion from Mosiah to Moroni first, and the portion from the first book of Nephi to Words of Mormon second. (See, for example, Welch, Opening the Heavens, 100–101, 115–117; and Metcalfe, “Priority of Mosiah,” 396–399.)
Welch, John W., ed. Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820–1844. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005.
Metcalfe, Brent Lee. “The Priority of Mosiah: A Prelude to Book of Mormon Exegesis.” In New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology, edited by Brent Lee Metcalfe, 395–444. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993.
- [9]
A complete transcript of the extant parts of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon has been published as Royal Skousen, ed., The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Brigham Young University, 2001).
- [10]
Skousen, “Translating the Book of Mormon,” 75–82, 85–87; Skousen, Original Manuscript, 1:25. Decades later, eyewitnesses Emma Smith, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer recalled details about the translation process, mentioning, for example, that JS spelled out difficult proper names when necessary. (Joseph Smith III, “Last Testimony of Sister Emma,” Saints’ Herald, 1 Oct. 1879, 289–290; Edward Stevenson, “One of the Three Witnesses,” Deseret News [Salt Lake City], 28 Dec. 1881, 762–763; “Mormonism,” Kansas City Daily Journal, 5 June 1881, 1; see also “Joseph Smith Documents Dating through June 1831.”)
Skousen, Royal. “Translating the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript.” In Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, edited by Noel B. Reynolds, 61–93. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997.
Skousen, Royal, ed. The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Brigham Young University, 2001.
Saints’ Herald. Independence, MO. 1860–.
Deseret News. Salt Lake City. 1850–.
Kansas City Daily Journal. Kansas City, MO. 1878–1891.
<◊a◊er◊◊◊◊ ◊ereth◊◊ [2 words illegible]> [that he Should] ta[k]e his family & dep[a]rt into the wilder[n]ess [and it ca]me to [p]ass that he was obediant unto the word of the Lord wherefo[re he] did as the Lord commanded him & it came to pass that he depart[e]d into the wilderness & he left his house & the land of his in heritance [and] his gold & his silver & his precious things & took nothing with him save it were his family & provisions & tents & he departed into the wilder[n]ess & he came dow[n] by the borders near the shores of the Red Sea & he traveled in the wilderness in the borders which was nearer the Red Sea [and] he did travel<d> in the wilderness with his family which consisted of my mother Sariah & my elder Brethren which were Laman Lemuel & Sam & it came to pass that when he had traveled three days in the wilderness he pitched his tent in a vally beside a river of water & it came to pass that he built an altar of stones & he made an offering unto the Lord & gave thanks unto the Lord our God & it came to pass that he called the name of the River Laman & it empted into the Read Sea & the vally was in the borders near the mouth thereof & when my father saw that the waters of the River empted into the fountain of the Red sea he spake unto Laman saying O that thou mightest be like unto this River continually runn[in]g into <the fountain of> all righteousness & he also spake unto Lemuel saying O that thou mightest be like unto this vally firm & steadfast & immoveable in keeping the commandments of the Lord now this he spake because of the stiffneckedness of Laman & Lemuel for behold they did murmur in many thinngs against their father because that he was a visionary man & that he had lead them out of the land of Jerusalem to leave the land of their in heritance & their gold & their silver & their precious things & to perish in the wilderness & this they said that he had done because of the foolish immagionations of his heart & thus Laman & Lemuel being the eldest did murmur against their father & they did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them neither did they believe that Jerusalem that great City could be destroid according to the words of the prophets & they were like unto the Jews which were at Jerusalem which saught to take away the life of my father & it came to pass that my father did speak unto them in the vally of Lemuel with power being filled with the spirit untill their frame[s] di[d] [sh]ake before him & he did confound them that they ◊e◊◊st [durst] not utte[r] ag[a]inst him where[for]e they did do as he commanded them & my father dwelt in a tent & it came [to] [p]as[s] that I Nephi being exceding young nevertheless being large in stature & also haveing great desires to Know of the mysteries <of God> wherefore I cried unto the Lord & behold he did visit me & did soften my heart that I did believe all the words which ha[d] been spoken by my father wherefore I did not rebell against him like unto my Brothers & I spake unto Sam makeing known unto him the things which the Lord had manifested unto me by his Holy spirit & it came to pass that he believed in my words but behold Laman & Lemuel would not hearken unto my words & being grieved because of the heardness of their hearts I cried unto the Lord fo[r] them & it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me saying blessed art thou <[N]ephi> because of thy faith for thou hast saught me diligently with lowliness of heart & in as much as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in & shall be lead to a land of promise yea even a land which I have prepared for you a land which is choice above all other lands & in as much as thy Brethren shall rebell against the<e> they shall be cut off from the presance of the Lord & in as much as thou shalt keep my commandments thou [s]halt be made a ruler [and a] teacher over thy Brethren for behold in that day that they shall rebell against me I will curse them even with a sor[e] curse & they shall have no power over thy seed except they shall [p. [3]]
Source Note
Source Note
Document Transcript
Document Information
Document Information
Footnotes
Footnotes
Insertion in unidentified handwriting. This largely illegible line was added to describe the content of the page and was not part of the original dictation. (See Skousen, Original Manuscript, 25.)
Skousen, Royal, ed. The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Brigham Young University, 2001.
Oliver Cowdery handwriting begins. This excerpt begins midnarrative because the previous leaf of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon is missing.
- [1]
TEXT: Portions of text are missing or illegible because of fading, water damage, or page tears. Supplied text in this transcript comes from the Book of Mormon, 1830 edition.