Comments on: The Lost 116 Pages

By: don

don — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:03:41 +0000

Roasted, So would I. I don’t know if Mormon actually compiled the small plates with the large plates. It’s my understanding that the large plates were his actual abridgement and the small plates were the original writer’s actual plates with no abridgement.

I don’t know if Mormon had them together per se as part of the stack of gold plates joseph had or how that worked exactly.

By: a random John

a random John — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 06:11:09 +0000

don,

I’ve reread your original post and I can see how we’re missing each other. I didn’t know that the 116 pages came from the large plates. I’d be interested in understanding how Mormon compiled the book better.

By: don

don — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:02:22 +0000

random, No, my figures are correct. The 116 pages that were lost were replaced in the printers manuscript with 1Nephi – Words of Mormon. The total printers manuscript which our current BOM was taken from was 488 pages. The 488 pages included the replacement for the lost 116 pages, not an addition to the lost pages.

By: a random John

a random John — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 23:20:28 +0000

don,

I think we’ve miscommunicated. My point is that the total number of manuscript pages is the lost pages (116) plus the pages that weren’t lost (480). You need to add those together for your denominator. If they had lost 1,000 pages would you say that they lost 208% of the BoM? I’m being anal, but your math seems off to me, especially when you throw percentages around.

By: Justin H

Justin H — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 02:28:21 +0000

Oops, Don. Sorry, I didn’t read carefully enough.

By: don

don — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 01:38:09 +0000

Bret,

How many pages in the 1830 edition for 1Nephi thru Words of Mormon?

By: Bret

Bret — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 20:50:01 +0000

There were 588 pages in the 1830 edition

By: don

don — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 09:54:04 +0000

Justin, the 116 pages weren’t typeset on a 1:1 ratio. The lost 116 pages took 134 pages in the edition I’m reading now.

Roasted, Emma was Joseph’s first scribe. She helped from the time they started including their move to Harmony and up until Martin arrived in April. If I remember right that would have been at least 3 or 4 months….obviously not as intense as when Martin was scribe.

A Random John, the complete printer’s manuscript was 480 pages, not 480 plus 116 lost. So my calculations are accurate…I think.

It would be interesting to know what Nephi really wrote on the large plates. Did he quote Isaiah as much or at all. The small plates were supposed to be the more spiritual matters, so maybe the large plates were more wars and problems.

By: a random John

a random John — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 08:00:11 +0000

Assuming that there were a total of 596 manuscript pages (116+480) then the 116 pages is a little less than 20%.
This raises an interesting question though. Would Nephi had written as much detail as he did if Joseph weren’t going to lose the pages? Oddly, he didn’t write very much of his own story after Lehi died anyhow. Much of 2 Nephi after Lehi dies is Nephi quoting Isaiah rather then narrating the story in detail. What would he have written if he didn’t have the burden of recounting the journey to the promised land in detail?
I guess this could even raise more questions about the process of the translation interacting with the events in the story, but I don’t have the energy to go there now.

By: NFlanders

NFlanders — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 07:18:41 +0000

D’oh! I forgot he was the scribe. You’re right, he would have pointed out any differences.

I remember reading in “By the Hand of Mormon” by Givens that Martin’s wife almost certainly burned the 116 pages. I wonder how people feel about D&C 10 in light of this.