Writings: Latter-day SaintsThe printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon1 of 10

Writings: Latter-day Saints

The printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon

The printer's manuscript is the copy of the Book of Mormon that three scribes made for the 1830 edition's typesetter between about August 1829 and about January 1830, the Joseph Smith Papers say. Community of Christ, then called the Reorganized Church, bought it in 1903, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acquired it in 2017.

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Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    about 600 BCE, the church's date for one group's departure from Jerusalem, to about 421 CE, the church's date for Moroni, the last Nephite prophet in the Book of Mormon (neither date marks when a prophet wrote: the church's Introduction to the Book of Mormon says another group came much earlier and gives no year, and the sources used date neither the writing nor the abridgment within the span; the translation into English, mostly April to June 1829 in the church's account, is a second event that this bar does not draw and that the critical row marks)

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    April 7, 1829, which Fawn Brodie gives as the start of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery's work on the Book of Mormon, to the first week in July 1829, by which she writes the manuscript was finished (she holds Joseph Smith produced the text and adds that Martin Harris may have taken dictation for as much as four months before Cowdery, which this bar does not draw; Dan Vogel, as Kyle Walker reports, also holds that Smith produced the text and dates a 'Book of Mormon Project' to 1828 to 1830 and Smith's rehearsal of the stories to 1823 on; the bar draws 1829 only, the year of Brodie's dates; Klaus Hansen reports that modern scholars concluded Smith was the author, and Brent Metcalfe's essay describes critical method without dating the text, so neither gives a date here)

  3. This copy made

    circa August 1829 to circa January 1830, the printer's manuscript, copied from the dictated manuscript for the typesetter by three scribes (the dates are the Joseph Smith Papers editors', who are employed by the church's Church History Library and date it from the written record; the sources used report no physical test of the paper or ink)

  4. This copy found

    Not a find: the copy was made in 1829 and 1830, and the Joseph Smith Papers editors trace its owners from Oliver Cowdery to 2017 (they name Cowdery, David Whitmer before 1850, the Whitmer family, George Schweich from 1895, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now Community of Christ, from April 1903, and the Latter-day Saint church from 2017; they write that after the 1830 printing it likely stayed with Joseph Smith and his associates)

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

The printer's manuscript is a virtually complete copy of the Book of Mormon in English, made for the typesetters who set the first edition. It is written in ink on paper and runs to 466 pages in twenty-one gatherings, folded bundles of leaves.1 Three scribes, or copyists, wrote it, say the Joseph Smith Papers. This is the scholarly edition of Smith's records that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publishes through its Church Historian's Press. Oliver Cowdery, Smith's chief scribe in 1829, wrote 84 percent, an unidentified scribe about 15 percent, and Hyrum Smith less than 1 percent.123

The editors write that only three lines are missing.4

How the copy was dated

No physical test of the paper or ink is reported in the sources used, so the dating rests on the written record. The editors of the church's own Joseph Smith Papers date the copying to about August 1829 through about January 1830. It came after the translation ended, by early July 1829, and before printing ended, in mid-March 1830.1

Typesetting is unlikely to have begun before Martin Harris, an early supporter of Smith, agreed on 25 August 1829 to pay the printer, E. B. Grandin, $3,000 for 5,000 copies. If printing waited for Grandin's return from a trip, the editors write, Cowdery must have begun copying by the time Grandin was away, if not earlier.1

Cowdery's letter of 6 November 1829, which says copying had reached the first 261 pages, is the editors' only certain milepost. A Palmyra newspaper's reprint of part of the book on 22 January 1830 is an approximate point of reference. From it the editors infer that the copy had reached at least page 308.1 The sources used report no dispute over these dates. For the methods, see how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The strip marks the Book of Mormon's text, not this copy. The tradition's bar runs from the church's date for one group's departure from Jerusalem, about 600 BCE, to its date for Moroni, the last Nephite prophet in the book, about 421 CE. Neither marks when a prophet wrote.56 The critical bar marks 1829: Brodie gives April 7 as the start of Smith and Cowdery's work and writes that the manuscript was finished by the first week in July.7

The tradition's view

This column gives the church's Introduction to the Book of Mormon and its Gospel Topics essay on the translation, then one scholar tied to the church's university and press. The church teaches that many ancient prophets wrote the book on gold plates, abridged by a prophet-historian. It teaches that Joseph Smith translated the plates by the gift and power of God2, almost all of it between April and June 1829.52 The essay reports Emma Smith's statement that at the time he could not dictate even a coherent letter, let alone a book like this one.2

Royal Skousen is an emeritus professor at Brigham Young University, which the church founded, supports, and guides. He edited the Joseph Smith Papers volume on this manuscript with Robin Scott Jensen, a historian for the church's Church History Department. Skousen has led since 1988 the project to reconstruct the book's earliest text. He argues that the manuscript evidence does not support theories that Smith composed the text or took it from another source.89104

Scholars of the Book of Mormon's origins: Hansen, Brodie, Metcalfe, and, at second hand, Vogel

Klaus Hansen writes, in an undated encyclopedia entry, that controversy over the book's authorship began almost from the day it was published. He reports Alexander Campbell's charge that the book was a figment of Smith's imagination, which Fawn Brodie supported in 1945. Modern scholars, he says, rejected the charge of plagiarism and concluded that Smith was the author.11 Brodie wrote that Smith and Cowdery began on April 7, 1829, that the 275,000-word manuscript was finished by the first week in July, and that the speed was evidence of Smith's ability.7

Kyle Walker, then a faculty member at BYU-Idaho, reports in BYU Studies that Dan Vogel, in a psychobiography of Smith, holds that Smith rehearsed stories from 1823 and dictated them from memory.12 A Sunstone session description describes Vogel's biography as naturalistic, with a close reading of the Book of Mormon as reflecting Smith's life and concerns.13 Brent Metcalfe writes in Dialogue, an independent journal, that critical scholars find ultimate authority not so much in statements made by and for scripture as in the text's broad historical and literary framework.1415

Brodie and Skousen each argue one thesis in the works cited here. Hansen and Walker report others' views at second hand, and the sources used include none of Vogel's own writing.

How it was found

The Joseph Smith Papers editors trace its owners. After the 1830 printing it likely stayed with Smith and his associates. Before he died in 1850, Cowdery passed it to David Whitmer, a fellow Book of Mormon witness, and charged him to preserve it.1 After Whitmer died in 1888, it passed through his family to George Schweich in 1895. He offered it to buyers, among them the Latter-day Saint church, but Joseph F. Smith, of its First Presidency, declined, reasoning that it was only a copy.1

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now Community of Christ, bought it with other documents in April 1903 for $2,450 and held it until 2017.1 The church's newsroom said it had recently acquired the manuscript and linked to Community of Christ's announcement of 20 September 2017. The Church News reported in December 2020 that it is stored in the Church History Library, as the Papers' source note lists.16171

What it shows, and what it does not

It shows that the Book of Mormon existed as a virtually complete second written text within months of the dictation. Only about 28 percent of the dictated original survives, so the church's newsroom calls this the earliest surviving copy of about 72 percent of the text.16 Pages of it went to the print shop in batches, and it was the typesetters' main source for the first edition, with the dictated manuscript used for one stretch.41

It does not show where the words came from, since it is a copy of a dictation, not the dictation itself. The church holds that the words came by translation of ancient plates. Brodie argues that Smith produced them, as Vogel does by Walker's report, and Hansen reports that modern scholars concluded he did. Nor does the copy record exactly what was said: Cowdery's pages differ from the surviving original by an average of three scribal errors or changes a page.1

See also

Sources

  1. Joseph Smith Papers (Church Historian's Press). Printer's Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, circa August 1829 to circa January 1830 (source note). The Joseph Smith Papers, Church History Department, source note. Accessed 2026-11-05.
  2. Book of Mormon Translation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Gospel Topics Essays), 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.
  3. About the Project. The Joseph Smith Papers (The Church Historian's Press). Accessed 2026-11-04.
  4. The Joseph Smith Papers (volume editors Royal Skousen and Robin Scott Jensen). Revelations and Translations, Volume 3: Printer's Manuscript of the Book of Mormon (volume page). The Joseph Smith Papers (Church Historian's Press), the "About This Volume" section. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  5. The Book of Mormon: Introduction. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Accessed 2026-11-03.
  6. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Moroni, Son of Mormon (Guide to the Scriptures). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the entry's first line. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  7. Fawn M. Brodie. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, second edition, revised and enlarged. Alfred A. Knopf (Vintage Books printing), 1971, pp. 61 to 62 (chapter 4), p. 79, and p. 80. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  8. Royal Skousen. Translating the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript. In Noel B. Reynolds, ed., Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), chapter 4, 1997, pp. 61 to 93 (cited at pp. 61 to 62, 67, 72, 82, and 90 to 91). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  9. About BYU (mission statement). Brigham Young University. Accessed 2026-11-04.
  10. Christine Rappleye (Church News). Full pages to fragments: see the original Book of Mormon manuscript in the new Joseph Smith Papers print volume. Church News, 2022, article of 25 January 2022. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  11. Klaus J. Hansen. Mormonism, Origins of. Encyclopedia of the New American Nation (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com, section "Authorship and Sources of the Book of Mormon". Accessed 2026-11-03.
  12. Kyle R. Walker. Review of Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004). BYU Studies 45, no. 4, p. 169. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  13. Sunstone (session description). Author Meets Critics. Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet by Dan Vogel. Sunstone, 2004, the session description. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  14. Brent Lee Metcalfe. Apologetic and Critical Assumptions about Book of Mormon Historicity. Dialogue, A Journal of Mormon Thought 26, no. 3, 1993, pp. 153 to 184 (cited at pp. 155, 156, and 174). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  15. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (home page). Dialogue Foundation. Accessed 2026-11-04.
  16. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Newsroom). Church Acquires Printer's Manuscript of Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Newsroom), 2017, the news release (no release date in the saved text). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  17. Church News. First editions of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price. Church News, 2020, the section "Book of Mormon, 190 years". Accessed 2026-11-06.