Harris As Smith's Scribe
From April to June 1828, Martin Harris acted as Joseph Smith's scribe as Smith dictated the manuscript using the Urim and Thummim and seer stones. By the middle of June, Smith had dictated about 116 manuscript pages of text.
Harris continued to have doubts about the authenticity of the manuscript, and he "could not forget his wife's skepticism or the hostile queries of Palmyra's tavern crowd." Smith's mother, Lucy, "said that Harris asked Joseph for a look at the plates, for 'a further witness of their actual existence and that he might be better able to give a reason for the hope that was within him.' When that request was denied, he asked about the manuscript. Could he at least take it home to reassure his wife?" After denying his request twice, Smith, with a great deal of uneasiness, said that the Lord had given permission, and he allowed Harris to take the manuscript pages back to Palmyra on condition that he show them to only five named family members. He even made Harris bind himself in a solemn oath.
Read more about this topic: Lost 116 Pages
Famous quotes containing the words harris, smith and/or scribe:
“A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.”
—Sydney J. Harris (b. 1917)
“Growing old is no gradual decline, but a series of tumbles, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another. Yet when we pick ourselves up we find no bones are broken; while not unpleasing is the new terrace which stretches out unexplored before us.”
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946)
““Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents. . . . The end of the world is evidently approaching.” Sound familiar? It is, in fact, the lament of a scribe in one of the earliest inscriptions to be unearthed in Mesopotamia, where Western civilization was born.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)