The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon's Missing Stories - Softcover

Bradley, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 158958760X ISBN 13: 9781589587601

Publisher: Greg Kofford Books, Inc., 2019

Synopsis

• “An extraordinary book.” — Jenny Webb, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies
• “A fresh, provocative viewpoint.” — Richard L. Bushman, author of Joseph Smith's Gold Plates: A Cultural History and Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
• “Extraordinary.” — Daniel C. Peterson, editor, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship
• “A landmark work.” — Phil Barlow, associate director of the BYU Maxwell Institute and a Neal A. Maxwell Research Associate
• “The perfect supplement for Latter-day Saints preparing to study the Book of Mormon.” — Book of Mormon Central
• “Invites me to think about the Book of Mormon in fresh and meaningful ways.” — Brad Wilcox, author of The Continuous Atonement

On a summer day in 1828, Book of Mormon scribe and witness Martin Harris was emptying drawers, upending furniture, and ripping apart mattresses as he desperately looked for a stack of papers he had sworn to God to protect. Those pages containing the only copy of the first three months of Joseph Smith’s translation of the golden plates were forever lost, and the detailed stories they held forgotten over the ensuing years—until now.

In this highly anticipated work, author Don Bradley presents over a decade of historical and scriptural research to not only tell the story of the lost pages but to reconstruct many of the detailed stories written on them. Questions explored and answered include:

• Was the lost manuscript actually 116 pages?
• How did Mormon’s abridgment of this period differ from the accounts in Nephi’s small plates?
• Where did the brass plates and Laban’s sword come from?
• How did Lehi’s family and their descendants live the Law of Moses without the temple and Aaronic priesthood?
• How did the Liahona operate?
• Why is Joseph of Egypt emphasized so much in the Book of Mormon?
• How were the first Nephites similar to the very last?
• What message did God write on the temple wall for Aminadi to translate?
• How did the Jaredite interpreters come into the hands of the Nephite kings?
• Why was King Benjamin so beloved by his people?

Despite the likely demise of those pages to the sands of time, the answers to these questions and many more are now available for the first time in nearly two centuries in The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories.

About this title

About the Author

Don Bradley is an author and independent historian specializing in the beginnings of the Latter-day Saint Restoration. He completed a Bachelor's in History at BYU and a Master's in History at Utah State University, where he wrote his thesis on "American Proto-Zionism and the 'Book of Lehi': Recontextualizing the Rise of Mormonism." Don has performed an internship with the Joseph Smith Papers Project working with the earliest Joseph Smith sources. He was the primary researcher for Brian C. Hales's Joseph Smith's Polygamy series. He has published on the translation of the Book of Mormon, plural marriage before Nauvoo, Joseph Smith's "grand fundamental principles of Mormonism," and the Kinderhook plates, and has forthcoming works on the Kinderhook plates and the First Vision. He lives in Springville, Utah.

Edition details

• Publisher: Greg Kofford Books, Inc.
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 158958760X
• ISBN 13: 9781589587601
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 350