Item Detail
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25831
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8
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10
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English
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When Pages Collide : Dissecting the Words of Mormon
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BYU Studies Quarterly
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51
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4
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Provo, UT
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Brigham Young University
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120-136
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Careful readers of the Book of Mormon have probably found verses 12–18 of the Words of Mormon to be a bit of a puzzle. For stylistic and other reasons, they do not really fit with verses 1–11, so commentators have tried to explain their presence as a sort of "bridge" or "transition" that Mormon wrote to connect the record of the small plates with his abridgment from the large plates. This paper proposes a different explanation: Rather than being a bridge into the book of Mosiah, these verses were originally part of the book of Mosiah and should be included with it.
This article presents both documentary and textual evidence to show that (1) Joseph Smith had translated some text that he did not give to Martin Harris (the lost 116 pages), (2) Oliver Cowdery, Joseph's scribe, copied from the original manuscript onto the printer's manuscript at the beginning of the book of Mosiah the chapter designation "Chapter III," (3) verses 12–18 of Words of Mormon do not use the first-person pronoun "I" and do not speak of the small plates, as verses 1–11 do, and (4) the book of Mosiah begins abruptly, without an introductory heading and without any mention of the person for whom the book was likely named (Benjamin's father, Mosiah). These and other pieces of evidence support the idea that the last seven verse in Words of Mormon were actually the last verses of what should have been Mosiah chapter 2, but chapter 1 and most of chapter 2 must have been part of the 116 pages lost by Martin Harris.
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American Proto- Zionism and the "Book of Lehi" : Recontextualizing the Rise of Mormonism
"It is not an easy task, but it cannot be avoided": On the Contribution of Royal Skousen
Joseph Smith's Gold Plates: A Cultural History
Knowing Why: 137 Evidences that the Book of Mormon is True
Labor Diligently to Write : The Ancient Making of a Modern Scripture
That Which You Have Translated, Which You Have Retained
The Lost 116 Pages : Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories
Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon : “Days [and Hours] Never to Be Forgotten” -
Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited : The Evidence for Ancient Origins
Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism
Mormon as Editor : A Study in Colophons, Headers, and Source Indicators
Opening the Heavens : Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820-1844
The Gift and Power : Translating the Book of Mormon
The Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon
The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon : Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text
The Papers of Joseph Smith, Volume 1 : Autobiographical and Historical Writings
The Printer's Manuscript of the Book of Mormon : Typographical Facsimile of the Entire Text in Two Parts
Translating the Book of Mormon : Evidence from the Original Manuscript