Martin Harris- why did Jos. Smith trust him with the 116 pages?

[Gatorbait]

Re-reading "Rough Stone Rolling" by Bushman, a book that I quite like, but one that gets me wondering about a lot of things in the early days of the church that make little of no sense.

In regard to the lost 116 pages- my mental list of things I don't understand is why JS did not:

1. Make a copy of the original 116 page document he loaned out to Martin Harris?
2. Why did he let him take the entire document instead of a few pages?
3. Why JS was not able to translate or transcribe the pages again. Seems so iron clad in church history that he transcribed the entirety of the BOM through the seer stone or urim and thummin stone, able to take up where he left off and so forth, between sessions.
4. If Martin Harris was so worried about his wife accepting the BOM, why didn't he invite her to see the script as it was being created instead of the document being taken to her?

Puzzled over this. Your thoughts?

[dogbite]

I don't think we have anything like the full story. It was heavily spun after the fact for face saving purposes. And probably before hand for general scam purposes.

Based on no evidence, just my understanding of human nature, I suspect that:

Martin Harris had his own doubts about JS the scammer, thus the Anthon manuscript games. While it seems Anthon wouldn't authenticate in writing, he seemed to have given MH enough confidence that JS could dupe the general public.

Martin Harris wanted to show his wife that his unpaid labors for 4 or 5 months with the known scammer and ne'er-do-well JS were producing something of value they could make money off of.

Martin Harris' wife had a good nose for crap, both written and social. She wanted her husband back, income, and social standing from his earlier more regular work. Seeing the document and it's poor quality, and knowing the likelihood of the scam, she thought that dumping it would get her husband out of it. Maybe by shaming him to JS, maybe by having to waste the months unpaid re-creating it. And it seems to have worked.

Why did JS trust him with it?

JS was incredibly lazy. He rarely ever worked in the sense of that word of that time. He couldn't be bothered to write it down himself. He very rarely wrote things himself, preferring a scribe or secretary across his life.

JS investment in the document was low. Martin Harris did most of the actual work. So I don't think JS placed much value in it besides how it made is life easy from day to day. Losing it wouldn't prevent the scam and JS probably had deceived himself to a degree about how things were really going. He seems to have routinely blundered into situation after situation because he didn't think ahead much. He relied on his stories to get away with everything all along.

Martin Harris was a scapegoat for the failure of the scam to that point and he plays that role even today in Mormonism.

[alas]

What is there to lose? (1) Martin shows his wife and his wife is convinced. (2) Martin shows his wife and spends hours trying to convince her, thus convincing himself. (3) Martin takes the transcript home after being refused several times and Martin feels a huge dose of being trusted and special, (4) wife destroys the manuscript, and Martin is thus given a huge guilt complex that he will do anything to fix, even mortgage his farm and end up losing everything.

Part of being a good conman was Joseph knew who to make feel guilty, who to flatter, who to badmouth and discredit. He was constantly upping the heavenly reward for those who were susceptible, flattering those who responded to that, guilting those with a complex, shaming, and playing people. He wasn’t a very good prophet, but he knew how to manipulate people.

[Just This Guy]

The LDS Discussion website and the podcast gives a very detailed dive into the 116 lost pages and the issue with the story.

https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/116pages
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/l ... scussions/

[Gatorbait]

Thanks for the responses, and the website. Very interesting.

With all due respect to Jos Smith being lazy, I'm not sure if I agree with that one. The scribes seemed to be fairly knowledgeable people, but I'm not sure of their personalities apart from the bits and pieces of information on them in scrubbed Mormon history. Who knows?

Joseph was persuasive, but not with everyone, and his wife Emma was proof of that. She didn't seemed to bend much, to say it kindly. I'm not sure of how much we can believe of what she wrote, or his mom, or anyone else. With Emma, and not to judge here, but she held on to the end that the Book of Mormon was "translated" or transposed by someone who was incapable of doing it himself. Joseph Smith was no scholar, and I think we can all agree on that.

How'd he get it done? Why did it take so long for him to start after he purportedly had the plates? Why would he use a seer stone that he glommed from someone else who wanted it back?

What's with the small plates that he purportedly used to transpose the books of first and second Nephi? Did he have them in his possession? I've heard that, I seem to remember from Dan Ludlow. Your thoughts?

[Just This Guy]

The simplest explanation is that the idea of the small plates were created after the loss of the 116 pages as a way for JSjr to replace the lost work of the 116 pages, but not have to recreate them word for word which he would be incapable of doing. In a way, it is a surprisingly effective literary device to address the problems that the lost pages creates.

There is no actual verifiable evidence that the gold plates actually existed. No one other than JSjr actually recorded that they really saw them. Many people saw them with their "spiritual eyes" or they saw something covered with a cloth or a barrel of beans that they were supposedly inside.

[jfro18]

I find the Lost 116 Pages to be absolutely fascinating and in my opinion one of the BIGGEST problems with the Book of Mormon's historicity that most people don't talk about.

How'd he get it done? Why did it take so long for him to start after he purportedly had the plates? Why would he use a seer stone that he glommed from someone else who wanted it back?

There are a lot of things that don't add up about the translation timeline and process and I think that any real answer here is speculative. It does seem odd to wait 6-7 months to start 'translating' after claiming to receive the plates for sure.

What's with the small plates that he purportedly used to transpose the books of first and second Nephi? Did he have them in his possession? I've heard that, I seem to remember from Dan Ludlow. Your thoughts?

This part I cover on the website that's linked above, but if you look at how the Book of Mormon text develops you can see that the small plates are a late invention by Joseph Smith to backfill the lost text. Because he continued where the Lost 116 Pages left off, I would argue that Joseph was still hoping to get those pages back and didn't want to replace them until he had to... and once he did you can see that 'small plates' narrative start up where the rest of the Book of Mormon makes absolutely no mention of them and I'd argue is contrary to them existing.

It gets into the weeds a bit, but here are two links for that:
https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/116pages - the overview I did about the 116 pages overall
https://lecturesondoubt.com/2019/07/25/ ... -of-nephi/ - Specifically about the late invention of the small plates and it's really well done

[nibbler]

I don't know whether Joseph Smith trusted Harris. He may have felt obligated because Harris was bankrolling the operation. Harris may have threatened to pull funding after the first several rejections.

[wtfluff]

dum dum dum dum dum

SMART!

[Hagoth]

I suspect Joseph and Martin knew that presenting a page or two to Lucy would be underwhelming. They needed to show her a stack of paper that they considered very impressive and inspiring. It did not affect Lucy that way.

Earl Wunderli wrote a book called An Imperfect Book in which he does a detailed wordprint analysis (manual - not computer generated!) of the vocabulary and sentence structure used in the BoM compared to contemporary revelations Joseph was receiving. He demonstrates that the the books of Nephi were composed after all of the other books, which supports the hypothesis that they were invented after the fact to fill the gap left by Martin's screw up.

There is a report by someone (can't remember who) who shared a stagecoach ride back to Palmyra with Joseph after he learned of the loss of the 116 pages. Joseph was beside himself with distress. I believe Joseph either believed some of what he was doing (which would explain why he couldn't give the Chase stone back) or he thought he was producing a work of genius that would win acclaim and make him rich. His original intent was not to start a church, but to sell a book. His "revelations" gave him authority to win over credulous investors like Harris. He even delivered a revelation that said his only calling was to translate the book, but then when the book turned out to be a flop, God changed his mind and made Joseph the most important prophet in the history of the world, which allowed Joseph to refocus his skills on manipulating people in other ways.

[Gatorbait]

I find the Lost 116 Pages to be absolutely fascinating and in my opinion one of the BIGGEST problems with the Book of Mormon's historicity that most people don't talk about.

How'd he get it done? Why did it take so long for him to start after he purportedly had the plates? Why would he use a seer stone that he glommed from someone else who wanted it back?

There are a lot of things that don't add up about the translation timeline and process and I think that any real answer here is speculative. It does seem odd to wait 6-7 months to start 'translating' after claiming to receive the plates for sure.

What's with the small plates that he purportedly used to transpose the books of first and second Nephi? Did he have them in his possession? I've heard that, I seem to remember from Dan Ludlow. Your thoughts?

This part I cover on the website that's linked above, but if you look at how the Book of Mormon text develops you can see that the small plates are a late invention by Joseph Smith to backfill the lost text. Because he continued where the Lost 116 Pages left off, I would argue that Joseph was still hoping to get those pages back and didn't want to replace them until he had to... and once he did you can see that 'small plates' narrative start up where the rest of the Book of Mormon makes absolutely no mention of them and I'd argue is contrary to them existing.

It gets into the weeds a bit, but here are two links for that:
https://www.ldsdiscussions.com/116pages - the overview I did about the 116 pages overall
https://lecturesondoubt.com/2019/07/25/ ... -of-nephi/ - Specifically about the late invention of the small plates and it's really well done

Thanks for the answers and the links. Really informative. Never knew any of that stuff, or given it much thought. Very interesting.