LDS Perspectives Podcast The Lost 116 Pages – Don Bradley This is not a verbatim transcript. Some grammar and wording has been modified for clarity. Brian Hales: Hi, this is Brian Hales here with LDS Perspectives Podcast. We are here with Don Bradley who is a professional researcher who has recently finished his master’s thesis in history from Utah State University. He has presented at many scholarly conferences and has co-authored chapters in books like Persistence of Polygamy on the topic of polygamy. He’s also co-authored a chapter in Laura Harris Hales’s A Reason for Faith, but that chapter was on the Kinderhook plates. Now, we are here with Don to talk about the Book of Mormon’s lost 116 pages, which he is using for the title of his new book that will be published by Greg Kofford books. There aren’t too many LDS scholars who could talk authoritatively on three such diverse topics, but Don can do it, and we’re excited to have him here with us today. Don, why don’t you give us a little background on what got you interested in the lost 116 pages. Don Bradley: Sure. Hey there, Brian, my friend, it’s good to be with you. Brian Hales: Yes, it’s great. Don Bradley: This project has a long history. I’ve actually done research on the lost 116 pages for about 13 years, and my interest in the lost pages goes back much further, actually to when I was a kid. The lost 116 pages are what you might call a “conspicuous sacred absence,” so every Mormon primary child knows about the lost 116 pages, but nobody knows what was in them. This has become kind of natural to us because that’s just the way that it is. But really, if you think about it, there’s nothing natural about that, right? I remember recognizing that when I was a kid before I’d gotten used to this idea, “Oh, we just don’t have these pages.” I was about 11 years old and in primary, and we had a unit on presidents of the church. When we talked about Joseph Smith, we talked about Joseph and Martin and the loss of the LDS Perspectives Podcast The Lost 116 Pages – Don Bradley manuscript. I remember thinking, “We’re missing part of the Book of Mormon? What was in it?” The Book of Mormon is so fundamental to our scripture, and it’s so fundamental to what it is to be a Latter-day Saint and to know we’re missing a substantial part of it is this bizarre, fascinating mystery. About 13 years ago, when I started on the research, the reason why I got into it actually is just that I wanted to understand the Book of Mormon text that we have. I recognized that the later parts of the Book of Mormon are written in such a way that they often echo or refer back to earlier parts, and if you don’t know what happened earlier – if you don’t know what was written earlier – it’s hard to understand what is being said later. I thought about that, and I thought, “Well, if we have Mormon’s abridgment – the later part – but we don’t have the earlier part, then we don’t fully understand what’s being said to us sometimes.” So I culled together all the evidence I could find from inside the Book of Mormon, from other sources, and everything that I could find written and published on the subject, which wasn’t much – we’re talking 15 to 20 pages of scholarship over nearly 200 years. That’s how I got started. Brian Hales: Almost nothing has been written on the lost 116 pages, and you are writing a book. People are just excited about it, so how do you come up with enough information to create an actual book. How long is this book going to be? [Jokes] Is it going to be a pamphlet? Don Bradley: I get that question. I have people say, “Isn’t that going to be a really short book?” Actually, no; it’s going to be surprisingly long – it’s surprising to me, in fact, how long it’s going to be. We’ve got multiple kinds of evidence for what was in the lost 116 pages. It might be natural to think that we don’t have much evidence, but we’ve actually got a good deal. Some of that evidence is in the Book of Mormon text that we already have. Broadly, there are these two kinds of evidence: there’s the internal evidence in the available text of the Book of Mormon – or what scholars call the “extant” text – and then there’s external evidence where we’ve got statements or other sources outside of the available text of the Book of Mormon. Internal evidence would be things like how the small plates of Nephi – from 1 Nephi through Omni or Words of Mormon – cover the same period Page 2 of 26 The Lost 116 Pages – Don Bradley as the lost pages. Even though the small plates are rather light on history, they give us at least a thumbnail sketch of what was in the lost 116 pages. Then you’ve also got echoes or flashbacks, if you will, later in the Book of Mormon text that are flashing back to an earlier narrative that we don’t have. A great example of this would be in Mosiah 11. King Noah, it says, built a tower on this hill that was north of the land Shilom. It says that when he built this tower, it was on the same hill that the children of Nephi had used as a resort – or a place of refuge – at the time they fled out of the land. Now what in the world is that talking about? You’re supposed to know what’s it’s talking about. You remember, don’t you, Brian,that the children of Nephi fled out of the land? Brian Hales: No, I don’t. Don Bradley: You don’t because it’s not in the Book of Mormon text that we have. You’re supposed to know it, though, which means it was in the Book of Mormon text; it was in the lost pages. So that, even though it’s about a missing story, gives us a clue – multiple clues, actually – about that story. Then we can combine that with evidence actually from the small plates – from Omni – and get a better picture of what that story is that it’s talking about. There are multiple flashbacks like that in the Book of Mormon text. Then you’ve got external evidence. In Joseph Smith’s earliest revelations, some of them also have allusions back to the lost pages. The most obvious of those is in section 10 of the Doctrine and Covenants where it actually says to Joseph Smith explicitly, “You’ll remember that it was said in what you translated before, that the plates of Nephi had a more extensive account of these things referring to the large plates.” We know there that the lost pages talked about how the large plates had a more extensive account. The lost pages were apparently an abridgement from the large plates. There are other clues also that are a little more subtle but identifiable in those very early revelations where it’s referring back to something – narratives that had come before that we don’t have. The most significant type of external evidence—there are a few others— is direct statements. The only one of these that’s been very widely known is by apostle Franklin D. Richards, who left an account that when he was in Nauvoo, he heard the prophet Joseph Smith explaining to someone how the Book of Mormon could be the stick of Ephraim. His explanation was that it said in the lost pages that although Lehi was a descendent of Manasseh, Ishmael was a descendent of Ephraim. Page 3 of 26 The Lost 116 Pages – Don Bradley There are other sources like that that give much more significant details than that. Sometimes they’re extra details about narratives that we already have and sometimes whole narratives that we don’t have – and we’ll talk about a couple of those sources later. Brian Hales: You’ve compiled information from the small plates, which would be 1 Nephi through Words of Mormon, then there are flashbacks in the rest of the Book of Mormon, external sources from the revelations, and then other external sources that we’re going to talk about. That’s exciting! Don Bradley: So on that question, Brian, about what it was that got me interested in the lost 116 pages, I have one more note on that. The lost 116 pages are actually the earliest LDS scripture. They’re the earliest scripture given to Joseph Smith in this dispensation. The earliest scripture after the lost pages is section 3 of the Doctrine and Covenants, given in summer of 1828. That’s given in response to the loss of the 116 pages. The 116 pages were before that. They were the foundational scripture, if you will, of the Restoration and they’re gone. That’s another thing that’s really intrigued me: wanting to understand what was in this earliest, first foundational scripture of the Restoration. Brian Hales: Okay, let’s just shift for a minute to the history.