The Book of Mormon printer’s manuscript has been published virtually in its entirety, but what LDS historians consider the “crown jewel” of the book’s origin — the original manuscript handwritten as Joseph Smith dictated to scribes his translation of the Nephite record preserved on gold plates — exists only in fragmentary form.
Now, the history department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced the acquisition within the past two months of yet more fragments from that priceless document.
These will be combined with the approximately 28 percent of the manuscript in the department’s possession for publication within the next three or four years as part of the Joseph Smith Papers project, according to department officials. Photographic images of the existing pages or fragments will be published in the forthcoming volume with a typescript copy of the content of each page presented on the facing page in the book.
Bear in mind that the content of the Book of Mormon was given verbatim to Joseph and written down word for word by his scribes. So, barring perhaps a couple of printer type set errors, it should be pretty exact and not require much amendment beyond correcting those typos.
What are the odds? Given its divine origin - shouldn’t the canonical Book of Mormon be as close to that manuscript as humanly possible?
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
I think this is interesting. It probably won't be different in any significant way, but there may be some cross outs, etc. that could fuel speculation.
Don't you think the good folks at the history department and the papers project have already edited out the controverial parts, if there were any? Controversial fragments were probably "too illegible" to work with and already tossed?
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen