I maintain that the best way to understand Joseph Smith and Mormonism is to learn about the lost 116 pages.
Joseph Smith was dictating the Book of Levi claiming that he was translating it by looking at the golden plates through transparent “seer stones” at the bottom of his hat. A guy called Martin Harris was transcribing what Smith said. Harris took these 116 pages home and then lost them.
So, what could Smith do? If he was really using some legitimate method to translate the golden plates, all he needed to do was translate them again. But Smith didn’t do that.
Harris was dragged into the Smith family home in distress and without the pages. Smith urged Harris to search his house again, but Harris told him he had already ripped open beds and pillows. Smith moaned, “Oh, my God! … All is lost! all is lost! What shall I do? I have sinned—it is I who tempted the wrath of God”.
After returning to Harmony without Harris, Smith dictated to Emma his first written revelation, which both rebuked Smith and denounced Harris as “a wicked man.” The revelation assured Smith that if he was penitent he would regain his ability to translate.
A very weird reaction. He didn’t lose anything except a translation. Smith still should have had the seer stones and gold plates. Why would he be upset? Why would he attract the wrath of god and lose the ability to translate?
Surely, either god would understand and create a miracle to exactly reproduce the pages, in which case Smith would never have lost his ability to translate, or if god actually got angry at him, then somebody else would be selected to translate the rest, right? It’s hard to see how it could ever make sense that Smith would lose the ability to translate, and then gain it back. That idea simply doesn’t make any sense. So, what happened?
According to Smith, he did not retranslate the material that Harris had lost because he said that if he did, evil men would alter the manuscript in an effort to discredit him. Smith said that instead, he had been divinely ordered to replace the lost material with Nephi’s account of the same events. When Smith reached the end of the book, he said he was told that God had foreseen the loss of the early manuscript and had prepared the same history in an abridged format that emphasized religious history, the Small Plates of Nephi.
Everything becomes clear. Smith was afraid that if he retranslated the pages, that the original pages would suddenly appear again, and everybody would see that the two translations were very different. It would be impossible to claim that they were two translations of the same source material.
The fact that Smith was talking about an effort to discredit him is extremely telling. It’s the way a con artist thinks. A person who was actually religious, or even simply delusional and honestly thought they were translating would not think of this. They’d simply expect the second copy to match the first one, and would be shocked when the copies were different.
If Smith had been a really intelligent con man, he’d have predicted something like this and pre-written the story so that he could produce a “miracle” if challenged. Instead, it was all pulled out of his ass in real time. It’s hard to imagine that any rational person could look at this series of events and believe anything except that Smith was a run-of-the-mill con man who invented a religion for his own benefit. (Usually, power, money, and women.)
I maintain that the best way to understand Joseph Smith and Mormonism is to learn about the lost 116 pages.
Joseph Smith was dictating the Book of Levi claiming that he was translating it by looking at the golden plates through transparent “seer stones” at the bottom of his hat. A guy called Martin Harris was transcribing what Smith said. Harris took these 116 pages home and then lost them.
So, what could Smith do? If he was really using some legitimate method to translate the golden plates, all he needed to do was translate them again. But Smith didn’t do that.
A very weird reaction. He didn’t lose anything except a translation. Smith still should have had the seer stones and gold plates. Why would he be upset? Why would he attract the wrath of god and lose the ability to translate?
Surely, either god would understand and create a miracle to exactly reproduce the pages, in which case Smith would never have lost his ability to translate, or if god actually got angry at him, then somebody else would be selected to translate the rest, right? It’s hard to see how it could ever make sense that Smith would lose the ability to translate, and then gain it back. That idea simply doesn’t make any sense. So, what happened?
Everything becomes clear. Smith was afraid that if he retranslated the pages, that the original pages would suddenly appear again, and everybody would see that the two translations were very different. It would be impossible to claim that they were two translations of the same source material.
The fact that Smith was talking about an effort to discredit him is extremely telling. It’s the way a con artist thinks. A person who was actually religious, or even simply delusional and honestly thought they were translating would not think of this. They’d simply expect the second copy to match the first one, and would be shocked when the copies were different.
If Smith had been a really intelligent con man, he’d have predicted something like this and pre-written the story so that he could produce a “miracle” if challenged. Instead, it was all pulled out of his ass in real time. It’s hard to imagine that any rational person could look at this series of events and believe anything except that Smith was a run-of-the-mill con man who invented a religion for his own benefit. (Usually, power, money, and women.)
Lucy Harris smart smart smart smart smart
Martin Harris dum-da-dum