The wacky world of Martin Harris

[Hagoth]

The Mormonism Live discussion of Martin Harris is very entertaining and well worth the listen. There are some interesting points they overlooked regarding the Harris/Anthon encounter that I think are worth mentioning:

-The story we have in church history is not Martin's first person account. It is a retelling, most likely dictated by Joseph Smith.

-The Isaiah fulfillment part about Anthon saying "I cannot read a sealed book" was not part of the original account, but was written in later between the lines in another hand.

-The account says Anthon verified that the document Harris brought him included, among other ancient characters, Arabic. This was reiterated by Harris himself in later interviews. The BIG problem here is that Arabic script was not invented until around 100-400 BCE, centuries after Lehi left Jerusalem. Oops!

[Linked]

Thanks for all the interesting history Hagoth. It seems to me that Martin Harris' support for the early church is a big blow to it's credibility.

Like my conspiracy theory-believing dad's support for the current church was a big blow to my view of it's credibility...

[Hagoth]

Thanks for all the interesting history Hagoth. It seems to me that Martin Harris' support for the early church is a big blow to it's credibility.

Like my conspiracy theory-believing dad's support for the current church was a big blow to my view of it's credibility...

Yeah, church members never hear that Martin was also a witness of plates, angels and magical books for several other movements, followed other prophets, and joined pretty much every wacky group he encountered. He also got way into spiritualism and seances in his later years. A conspiracy-prone person, if you told them the whole zany Martin Harris story, would think YOU were the one falling for conspiracy misinformation.

[nibbler]

-The Isaiah fulfillment part about Anthon saying "I cannot read a sealed book" was not part of the original account, but was written in later between the lines in another hand.

If google is correct, Harris went to Anthon in February of 1828. The BoM was translated between early April and late June of 1829.

The passage in the BoM that talks about a sealed book is 2 Nephi 27, which is largely a copy of Isaiah 29, so it predates any of that.

I had assumed that Joseph wrote the incident between Harris and Anthon into the BoM (2 Nephi 27) to put forth as a prophesy that had been fulfilled. In other words, Joseph set Harris on a task to intentionally "fulfill" an ambiguous scripture in Isaiah. Bonus, Joseph's suggestion also served as a way to satisfy Harris' doubts about Joseph's story.

It's probably challenging to bait someone into saying, "I can't read a sealed book" so they took what they had to work with and added that line in later.

If any of that conjecture is true, it certainly is interesting to see Joseph's working knowledge of the Bible and how he could quickly turn a situation to his advantage.

I'm guessing that maybe Harris wanted some validation of Joseph's story before he ponied up any more money, he twisted Joseph's arm into allowing him to take the caractors document to Anthon, and then a little lightbulb went off in Joseph's head about a scripture he was familiar with. I wonder whether the scripture came immediately to Joseph's mind or whether it was a realization after some time had passed and then the event got reinterpreted sometime later.

I also wonder whether that's one of the reasons why there are Isaiah chapters in the BoM to begin with. One, it's a book padder; two, he had already recontextualized one or more events recorded in Isaiah to match events he was orchestrating with his peers.