View of the Hebrews, however, was only a basic source book for the Book of Mormon. The themes that Joseph borrowed he elaborated with a lavish fancy. This can be seen particularly in the story of Quetzalcoatl, whom Ethan Smith described as “the most mysterious being of the whole Mexican mythology,” the white, bearded Aztec god who taught his people their prized peaceful arts and for whose return the Aztecs were hoping when Cortes appeared. Ethan Smith described Quetzalcoatl as “a type of Christ,” but Joseph saw in the legend evidence that Christ Himself had come to the New World.* The occasional crucifixes found in the mounds gave further weight to this theory, since it was not until years later that scholars proved them to be French and Spanish in origin.

Jesus said: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice.” These other sheep, Joseph said in his Book of Mormon, were the Lamanites and the Nephites, whom Jesus had visited some time in the early weeks following his final ascension. Christ’s coming to America, he wrote, had been preceded by cataclysmic destruction which annihilated great portions of the population, and by three days of darkness, which brought the remainder to their knees in anguished repentance. The dramatic appearance of Jesus then made such an impact upon the devastated people that the red and white tribes accepted his gospel and lived together as brothers for several generations, before Satan’s wiles began again to split them asunder.

Thus, where View of the Hebrews was just bad scholarship, the Book of Mormon was highly original and imaginative fiction.

Between this pathetic piety deception and the Book of Mormon lies the difference between a painfully cramped imagination and an audacious and original mind. Joseph Smith took the whole Western Hemisphere as the setting for his book and a thousand years of history for his plot. Never having written a line of fiction, he laid out for himself a task that would have given the most experienced novelist pause. But possibly because of this very inexperience he plunged into it with surety.

Sagacious enough to realize that he could not possibly write a history of the Lost Ten Tribes, he chose instead to describe only the peregrinations of two Hebrew families, headed by Lehi and Ishmael, who became the founders of the American race. He began the book by focusing upon a single hero, Nephi, who like himself was peculiarly gifted of the Lord. This device launched him smoothly into his narrative and saved him from having bitten off more than he could chew.

...

By mid-June Harris was tired of taking dictation and begged to take the first 116 pages of the manuscript back to Palmyra to show his wife. This at first Joseph flatly forbade. But as Emma’s confinement approached, he became less adamant, and finally gave in. It was a grave strategic blunder, for Lucy Harris promptly stole the manuscript from her husband, and neither pleas nor blows could make her divulge its hiding-place.

For some weeks Joseph was too preoccupied to wonder why Harris did not return. Emma’s son died at birth, and for a fortnight thereafter Joseph was frantic lest he lose his wife as well. With her recovery, however, he began to be uneasy over Martin’s long delay. Emma, who by now had come to accept the Book of Mormon in full faith and was eager to see it published, begged him to go back to Manchester to recover the precious document.

Lucy Smith wrote that when Joseph confronted his scribe, Martin Harris confessed his folly, crying out in bitter remorse: “I have lost my soul; I have lost my soul!”

“Oh, my God,” Joseph cried. “All is lost! What shall I do?” He wept and groaned, and walked the floor continually, and after a while told Harris to go back and search once more.

“No,” he replied, “it is all in vain; for I have ripped open beds and pillows; and I know it is not there.”

“Then must I return to my wife with such a tale as this,” Joseph cried. “I dare not do it, lest I should kill her at once. And how shall I appear before the Lord? Of what rebuke am I not worthy from the angel of the Most High?”

Despairingly he realized that it was impossible for him to reproduce the story exactly, and that to rewrite it would be to invite devastating comparisons. Harris’s wife taunted him: “If this be a divine communication, the same being who revealed it to you can easily replace it.”

Apparently she had actually destroyed the manuscript, for it has never reappeared. But for weeks Joseph writhed in self-reproach for his folly. To admit that the whole story of the golden plates was a mere figment of his dreaming would be to destroy Emma’s faith in him forever. It would mean the end of Harris’s patronage and the undying contempt of his father-in-law, upon whom he would probably have to depend for a livelihood. His father’s family was counting on sales of the Book of Mormon to prevent foreclosure on their farm, since they had no money for the final payment. A retreat from the fantasy that he had created was impossible.

Some time in July he saw the solution. Like Jemima Wilkinson, he would simply inquire of the Lord for a “revelation” to clear him of his difficulty. Whereupon he looked into the Urim and Thummim and received two long communications, which said in part: “The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to nought. For God doth not walk in crooked paths. . . . Remember, remember, that it is not the work of God that is frustrated but the work of men. . . . Behold, thou art Joseph, and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord, but because of transgression, if thou art not aware thou wilt fall. . . . Nevertheless, my work shall go forth.”

The revelations then forbade Joseph to retranslate the first part of the plates because the devil was out to thwart the publication of the book and would see to it that the stolen version was published in altered form. In His boundless wisdom, however, the Lord had foreseen this contingency and had provided a set of small plates, called the plates of Nephi, which covered exactly the same period in Indian history as the lost manuscript. This record was primarily religious history, in contrast with the first version, which had been largely political. Once he had translated it, he could go back to the old plates and carry on, presumably from page 117.*