LESSON 4:  “REMEMBER THE NEW COVENANT, EVEN THE BOOK OF MORMON”

There are two manuscripts of the Book of Mormon.  The “Original Manuscript,” is that which was dictated to Oliver Cowdery and other scribes by Joseph Smith.  This manuscript was later placed in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House.  In the 1870s, Lewis Bidamon, Emma’s second husband, removed the manuscript from the cornerstone.   Some of the manuscript had been damaged by the elements.  Bidamon gave out much of the remaining pages and pieces to visitors as souvenirs.  Less than 30% of the original manuscript survives today.

A copy of the original manuscript was made by Oliver Cowdery and two others, and carried a few pages at a time to the printer for typesetting.  This “Printer’s Manuscript,” is owned today by the Community of Christ.

Below is a brief synopsis of some significant editions of the Book of Mormon, with emphasis on their textual changes.

1830:  5,000 copies; published by E. B. Grandin in Palmyra, New York. In general, the first edition is a faithful copy of the printer's manuscript (although on one occasion the original manuscript rather than the printer's was used for typesetting). For the most part, this edition reproduces what the typesetter, John H. Gilbert, considered grammatical "errors." Gilbert added punctuation and determined the paragraphing for the first edition. In the Preface, Joseph Smith explains the loss of the Book of Lehi—116 pages of manuscript loaned to Martin Harris. The testimonies of the Three and the Eight Witnesses were placed at the end of the book. In this and all other early editions, there is no versification.

1837:  Either 3,000 or 5,000 copies; published by Parley P. Pratt and John Goodson, Kirtland, Ohio. For this edition, hundreds of grammatical changes were made in the text. The 1830 edition and the printer's manuscript were used as the basis for this edition.

1840:  2,000 copies; published for Ebenezer Robinson and Don Carlos Smith (by Shepard and Stearns, Cincinnati, Ohio), Nauvoo, Illinois. Joseph Smith compared the printed text with the original manuscript and discovered a number of errors made in copying the printer's manuscript from the original. Thus the 1840 edition restores some of the readings of the original manuscript.

1841:  4,050 copies (5,000 contracted); published for Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Parley P. Pratt (by J. Tompkins, Liverpool, England). This first European edition was printed with the permission of Joseph Smith; it is essentially a reprinting of the 1837 edition with British spellings.
Two additional British editions, one in 1849 (edited by Orson Pratt) and the other in 1852 (edited by Franklin D. Richards), show minor editing of the text. In the 1852 edition, Richards added numbers to the paragraphs to aid in finding passages, thereby creating the first—although primitive—versification for the Book of Mormon.
Three other important LDS editions have involved major changes in format as well as minor editing:
IMPORTANT NOTE:  This 1841 edition provided the basis for all subsequent editions until 1981.  Since it is based on the 1837 edition, those changes that had been made by Joseph Smith in the 1840 edition were lost until they were restored in the 1981 edition.

1879:  Edited by Orson Pratt. Major changes in the format of the text included division of the long chapters in the original text, a true versification system (which has been followed in all subsequent LDS editions), and footnotes (mostly scriptural references).

1920:  Edited by James E. Talmage. Further changes in format included introductory material, double columns, chapter summaries, and new footnotes. Some of the minor editing found in this edition appeared earlier in the 1905 and 1911 editions, also under the editorship of Talmage.

1981:  Edited by a committee headed by members of the Quorum of the Twelve. This edition is a major reworking of the 1920 edition: The text appears again in double columns, but new introductory material, chapter summaries, and footnotes are provided. About twenty significant textual errors that had entered the printer's manuscript are corrected by reference to the original manuscript. Other corrections were made from comparison with the printer's manuscript and the 1840 Nauvoo edition.