When Joseph Smith began translating the plates of gold, Martin Harris acted as his scribe.  Joseph dictated the Book of Lehi through the use of the Urim and Thummim while Martin wrote.  When they completed the translation of the Book of Lehi, they had 116 handwritten pages.  These were the first ancient Nephite writings to be translated, and Joseph and Martin were thrilled with the information and stories they contained.

Martin’s wife was less thrilled.  She couldn’t understand why her husband was neglecting his farm work to do some mysterious thing with his young neighbor every day.  We can understand why Martin was anxious to show his wife the manuscript.  He wanted her to understand, and to be as excited about the work as he was.

Martin asked Joseph for permission to borrow the manuscript so that he could show it to his wife.  Joseph asked the Lord if it would be all right.  The Lord said, “No.”

Martin asked again.  Joseph inquired a second time of the Lord.  The Lord again said, “No.”

Martin was desperate to have peace at home and to have his wife understand the activities in which he was involved, so he begged Joseph a third time to allow him to take the manuscript to his wife so that she could see and read it, and be as excited about it as he was.

Joseph asked the Lord a third time.  This time the Lord granted permission provided Martin would covenant to safeguard the manuscript and agree to show it to none other than five individuals that Martin would name in a signed contract.  Martin made the covenant and signed the agreement.  But when people learned he had the manuscript, others badgered him to see it.  He forgot about his covenant and showed it to anyone who asked, the result being that he lost it.  He was grief-stricken.

Even more grief-stricken was Joseph.  Joseph understood the far-reaching consequences of the loss better than Martin did.  Not only was all of that work a wasted effort, but perhaps Joseph wouldn’t be allowed by the Lord to ever translate again.  The Lord did, indeed, withdraw permission, and Moroni took the plates of gold from Joseph until he had suffered through deep repentance and made himself worthy again to do the work.

I’d like to focus on the loss of that manuscript.  I’ve written books before, and I’m hard pressed to imagine a worse thing than to lose such a labor of love.  You’re proud of your accomplishment.  You read it again and again.  You’ve produced something that never existed before.  Total concentration of mind and time goes into producing such a work.  To lose it would be to lose a portion of your life.  To lose a manuscript is to lose all those carefully-crafted thoughts, and to have spent those weeks and months or years in vain.  There would be no way that you could ever reproduce those thoughts.

In Joseph’s case he could have done the work again, but the Lord told him not to.  The Lord had foreseen this very event and had provided a remedy.  Instead of the Book of Lehi, which might have given us 50 or 60 printed pages, we now have the writings of Lehi’s sons, Nephi and Jacob, and of Jacob’s descendants Enos, Jarom, Omni and others.  We got 143 pages that covered much of the same material that the shorter Book of Lehi would have provided.

Others have lost manuscripts.  It happened to the prophet Jeremiah.  You can read the account in Jeremiah, chapter 36.  The Lord told Jeremiah to “Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee.”  (Jeremiah 36:2).

Jeremiah took his scribe, Baruch, and began dictating.  Baruch wrote on a roll of parchment, like they wrote books back in those days.  When Jeremiah was through he “commanded Baruch, saying, I am shut up (he was possibly under house arrest); I cannot go into the house of the Lord:  therefore go thou, and read in the roll, which thou hast written from my mouth, the words of the Lord in the ears of the people in the Lord’s house upon the fasting day:  and also thou shalt read them in the ears of all Judah that come out of their cities.”  (vs. 5, 6).

Micaiah the son of Gemariah heard the reading and was impressed.  He went to the princes and scribes and the king’s counselors and told them what he’d heard.  These important, powerful men sent for Baruch and had him come read the book to them.  They were impressed.  They were afraid.  The book set forth “the anger and the fury that the Lord…pronounced against this people.”  (v. 7).  It said “The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land.”  (v. 29).

This was in the days of Lehi.  Lehi and Jeremiah were contemporaries.  Lehi very probably heard Baruch read the book.  It was these very conditions which portended the destruction of Jerusalem, and which caused Lehi to leave and to begin his epic journey.

The scribes and princes told Baruch to take Jeremiah and hide, and then they took the book to the king Jehoiakim and began reading it to him.  Jehoiakim listened to three or four pages and said, “Give me the book.”  “He cut it with a penknife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth until all the roll was consumed.”  (v. 23).  He then commanded that Baruch and Jeremiah be taken, “but the Lord hid them.”  (v. 26).

All that work went up in smoke.  How did Jeremiah feel?  In this case the Lord said, “Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned.”  (v. 28).

“Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe…who wrote therein all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire:  and there were added besides unto them many like words.”  (v. 32).

Thanks to Jehoiakim the king, and thanks to Jeremiah’s willingness to do the work over again, just like with the situation concerning the Book of Lehi, we ended up with more than we would have if the original manuscripts had survived.

Thomas Carlyle was a famous and prolific Scottish writer.  He was 10 years older than Joseph Smith, and lived four decades beyond Joseph’s death.  He wrote some 30 books, including a 3-volume work entitled The French Revolution.  He loaned the manuscript to his friend.  While the manuscript was in his friend’s possession, the housemaid burned it, thinking it was waste paper.  There were three horrified people when the mistake was discovered.  The friend offered to pay Carlyle 200 pounds for the error.  Carlyle accepted 100 pounds; and after what was probably a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, sat down to do it all over again.  I can’t imagine how hard that was.

And then there was William Tyndale.  Tyndale was obsessed with his self-imposed mission to translate the Bible from its original Hebrew and Greek into English.  He wanted English commoners to have the privilege of reading and understanding the Bible in their own language.  Most of his work was done in unheated rooms while moving from place to place and hiding from church authorities who wanted to reward his efforts by burning him at the stake.  They eventually got to do so.

To prepare himself for the work he learned seven languages, and was fluent in reading, writing and speaking them all.  He mastered English, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, French and Spanish.

First he translated the entire New Testament from Greek.  The committee which put together our King James Version relied heavily upon Tyndale’s translation.  It is estimated that 83% of our current New Testament in the King James Version is the words and work of William Tyndale.  He is the father of the King James Version.

After completing the translation of the New Testament, Tyndale tackled the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Old Testament.  These he translated from Hebrew, so as to be able to translate from as near the original documents as he could get.

Our current King James Version of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy consists of 308 pages.  Nearly all of it is William Tyndale’s work.  I can’t imagine what it required to translate all of that from Hebrew.

Tyndale finished the Pentateuch, and set sail with his manuscript from Antwerp, Belgium to go by ship to Hamburg, Germany to have it printed.  He was shipwrecked off Holland, and lost his precious manuscript.  I’m sure he was sick over the loss; but he swallowed his hurt, and retranslated the whole thing in about nine months.

Tyndale didn’t finish translating the whole Old Testament before his martyrdom, which is a huge loss for us.  Had he not suffered the setback of having to retranslate the Pentateuch, perhaps today we’d have Isaiah and the Psalms in Tyndale’s words.

One year when wildfires raged in Southern California, as they do from time to time, I heard about an LDS man who lost his 30 journals when his home burned.

That story horrifies me.  I had about that many volumes of journals when I heard the story.  The number has grown since then.  I’ve instructed my family that if our house ever catches fire, they’re to save the people first, and then get my journals.

The only consolation I can think to give the brother who lost his journals is the scriptural statement that “all things are written by the Father.”  (3 Nephi 27:26).  Hopefully, there’s a copy in heaven; but chances are he won’t be needing his journals there since our memories will be perfected, and our desire to remember earth life will be dim.

I can’t think of a good gospel principle to which I can apply these stories of lost manuscripts, but the stories needed to be brought together into one place.