Reflections from Joseph Smith's First Vision

No ordinary history of the glorious vision of 1820 can ever be written. Every record of the revelation itself takes on the quality of scripture. The account of the Prophet Joseph, prepared in 1832, bursts into fruition as the Olive Leaf revelation of Christmastime 1832/33 (as a simple word tally will show): "I looked upon the sun, the glorious luminary of the earth, and also the moon, rolling in their majesty through the heavens, and also the stars shining in their courses; and the earth also upon which I stood; and the beast[s] of the field and the fowls of heaven and the fish of the waters; and also man walking forth upon the face of the earth, in majesty and in the strength of beauty, whose power and intelligence in governing the things which are so exceeding great and marvelous [is] even in the likeness of him who created them" (1832 History). Beauty and intelligence are the keywords here: The beauty of God is intelligence.

Young wisdom in an age of fools: "And when I considered upon these things, my heart exclaimed: 'Well hath the wise man said, It is a fool that saith in his heart, there is no God'" (1832 History).

Scripture cleaveth unto scripture: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no man that hath seen God. Because he showeth himself not unto us, therefore there is no God" (Joseph Smith Translation Psalms 14:1).

Sectarianism bears only corrupt logic: "Ye have taken away the key of knowledge, the fulness of the scriptures. . .O fools! for ye have said in your hearts, There is no God" (JST Luke 11:53; JST Luke 16:21).

A false syllogism: Since I have not seen God, no man has seen Him. Therefore there is no God. But God asks Job to review the wonders of nature preparatory to an understanding of God (Job 38--41). For he "who hath seen any or the least of these [kingdoms] hath seen God moving in his majesty and power. I say unto you he hath seen him" (D&C 88: 47-8). For God "is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made. As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made, as also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made; and the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand" (D&C 88: 7-10).

The earth is no second-rate vantage point for man; for all, all creation clusters about Joseph's star: "Behold I have dreamed a dream more; and behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance" (Gen. 37:9). "And he said unto me: My son, my son (and his hand was stretched out), behold I will show you all these. And he put his hand upon mine eyes" (Abraham 3:12).

The Prophet continues his story: "My heart exclaimed: 'All, all these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotent and omnipresent power, a being who maketh laws and decreeth and bindeth all things in their bounds, who filleth eternity'" (compare D&C 88: 38; Alma 29:4 ). "The scriptures are laid before thee," as is the writ of stars: "Yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator. And yet do ye [the fool] go about, leading away the hearts of this people, testifying unto them there is no God" (Alma 30:44-5)? Korihor, despising the loveliness of both book and star, is not "convinced that there is a God": "Yea, show unto me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced" (30: 43). Alma said: "In the name of God, ye shall be struck dumb, that ye shall have no more utterance" (30:49).

"For the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, and by his voice said unto his servant, Seek ye among the children of men, to see if there are any that do understand God. And he opened his mouth, and said, Behold, all these who say they are thine" (JST Psalms 14:2). "And again it shall come to pass that the Lord shall say unto him. . . This people draw near unto me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their hearts far from me" (2 Ne 27: 24-5; Joseph Smith--History 1:19; Isaiah 29:13).

"And Korihor put forth his hand and wrote, saying: I know that I am dumb, for I cannot speak; and I know that nothing save it were the power of God could bring this upon me; yea, and I always knew that there was a God" (30:55). But the devil "said unto me: There is no God. . .And I taught [his words] even until I had much success, insomuch that I verily believed that they were true" (30:53).

"The Lord answered and said. . .thou canst behold none of them that are doing good, no, not one. All they have for their teachers are workers of iniquity, and there is no knowledge in them" (JST Psalms 14:3).

"Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph" (D&C 1:17): Joseph, look upon me. I shall renew wonders upon this people to sanctify them. For wisdom shall be lost, and understanding as a sealed book. (see Hebrew MT Isaiah 29:11, 14).

"And Pharaoh awoke, and behold, it was a dream" (Gen. 41:7). And he called his wise men, and he called Joseph also, who explained the vision. "And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such an one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art" (Gen. 41:38-9).

"While in the attitude of calling upon the Lord, in the 16th year of my age, a pillar of light above the brightness of the sun at noonday came down from above and rested upon me, and I was filled with the Spirit of God. And the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw. . ." (1832).

Joseph entered heaven and read from the book of God "and I could not see the end thereof" (Abraham 3:12).


Notes: These reflections make up a slightly modified version of what I first wrote in 1991. Anyone who reads the scriptures surely has noted such intertextual weaving, including the foregoing instances, and more.

The surname Hinckley and J.R.R. Tolkien (and the Riders of Rohan)

Thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien we have not only Elvish (and paradisaical Lothlorien) but also the etymology of the surname Hinckley.

Tom Shippey (J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, page 57) shares the following: "Tolkien suggested to me once that the name of the village Hincksey, outside Oxford, might contain within it the name of the old hero Hengest, the founder of England (*Hengestes-ieg, 'Hengest's island')."

Hinckley (or Hincksley) must then derive from *Hengestes-leah (Hengest's wood or Hengest's meadow). (See also http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Leicestershire/Hinckley.)

And who was Hengest? Hengest and Horsa (Stallion and Horse), according to the Venerable Bede, England's earliest historian, were the first commanders of the Angles, or Saxons, against the Britons. Hengest and Horsa were brothers and in fact (and of course it's all a legend) the great-grandsons of the god Woden.

Hinckley: "Stallion's Lea."

Johan Söderholm (Sederholm) Journal and the Swedish Book of Enoch

It startles me to learn that my pioneer ancestor from Sweden, Johan Söderholm, of Brigham City, Utah, was familiar with a Swedish translation of the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. How little we know of the intellectual life of our forebears! The family loved to sing--his journal contains many hymns of Zion--both copies and originals--but how to picture them seated around the hearth reading about angels and the secrets of the heavens?

One wonders whether Johan Söderholm considered the apocryphal Book of Enoch to have been an inspired work like the Prophet Joseph Smith's Selections from the Book of Moses, a work which contains many of the visions and teachings of Enoch. These Selections from Moses have been published to the world in a volume of Scripture known as The Pearl of Great Price; though, of course, we don't know whether the Söderholm family ever knew of or read that Scripture, which was available only in English. The Book of Mormon was another matter: here was evidence abounding of Scripture found outside the biblical canon. A sunburst of new Revelation and new Scripture now bathed the world in light.

Three pages in Johan Söderholm's journal make up an extract taken from a Swedish version (1826) of the first English translation (1821) of the Book of Enoch, made by Richard Laurence from Ge'ez (Ethiopic). The Ethiopian Christian Church, at any rate, held the Book of Enoch as true Scripture.

The extract in the journal matches the first twelve verses of Chapter 69 (not LXVIII as written at the top of one of the pages). Chapter 69 of the Book of Enoch is said to be a fragment taken from the Book of Noah--prophetic books everywhere!--and includes a list of the names of the fallen angels and a description of their illicit revelation of the heavenly secrets to humankind.

After comparing the journal with the published version of the 1826 Swedish translation, I find only slight differences in spelling, punctuation, and abbreviation; in particular, there are some differences in the spelling of the angelic names. These are best explained by treating the journal entry as having been written from dictation. Perhaps father was reading aloud, his wife or daughter writing.

Chapter 69:1-12, The Book of Enoch (or I Enoch, the Ethiopic Enoch)

1 After this judgment they shall be astonished and irritated; for it shall be exhibited to the nations of the earth. 2 Behold the names of those angels. These are their names. The first of them is Samyaza; the second, Arstikapha; the third, Armen; the fourth, Kakabael; the fifth, Turel; the sixth, Rumyel; the seventh, Danyal; the eighth, Kael; the ninth, Barakel; the tenth, Azazel; the eleventh, Armers; the twelfth, Bataryal; the thirteenth, Basasael; the fourteenth, Ananel; the fifteenth, Turyal; the sixteenth, Simapiseel; the seventeenth, Yetarel; the eighteenth, Tumael; the nineteenth, Tarel; the twentieth, Rumel; the twenty-first, Azazyel.
3 There are the chiefs of their angels, and the names of the leaders of their hundreds, and the leaders of their fifties, and the leaders of their tens.
4 The name of the first is Yekun: he it was who seduced all the sons of the holy angels; and causing them to descend on earth, led astray the offspring of men.
5 The name of the second is Kesabel, who pointed out evil counsel to the sons of the holy angels, and induced them to corrupt their bodies by generating mankind.
6 The name of the third is Gadrel: he discovered every stroke of death to the children of men. He seduced Eve; and discovered to the children of men the instruments of death, the coat of mail, the shield, and the sword for slaughter; every instrument of death to the children of men [compare the use of the verb discover in Alma 37].
7 From his hand were these things derived to them who dwell upon earth, from that period for ever.
8 The name of the fourth is Penemue: he discovered to the children of men bitterness and sweetness; And pointed out to them every secret of their wisdom.
9 He taught men to understand writing, and the use of ink and paper. Therefore numerous have been those who have gone astray from every period of the world, even to this day.
10 For men were not born for this, thus with pen and with ink to confirm their faith;
11 Since they were not created, except that, like the angels, they might remain righteous and pure. Nor would death, which destroys everything have effected them; But by this their knowledge they perish, and by this also its power consumes them.
12 The name of the fifth is Kasyade: he discovered to the children of men every wicked stroke of spirits and of demons: The stroke of the embryo in the womb, to diminish it; the stroke of the spirit by the bite of the serpent, and the stroke which is given in the mid-day by the offspring of the serpent, the name of which is Tabaet [Tabaet calls to mind the Egyptian uraeus (the cobra worn on the royal crown or on the nemes headress). The uraeus is also known as tp.tj (Egyptian) or tepie (Old Coptic), "that which belongs to (is worn on) the head" = crown-with-uraeus].


Notes 

For both the Laurence Enoch (1821) and the Swedish translation (1826), under title of Propheten Enoch, please see Book of Enoch: 5 Translations with Interlinear at http://enoksbok.se/. Under the heading "Notes", a scanned copy of the title page of Propheten Enoch may be seen. A later translation into Swedish bears the title Henochs Bok (1901). Both Propheten Enoch and Henochs Bok happen to give the same translation for Chapter 69.

For Archbishop Richard Laurence and his translation of the Book of Enoch, see Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet (1986), 104ff; for how little known the Ethiopic Enoch was among Latter-day Saints, see p. 112.

Elder Cecil B. Samuelson of the Seventy, formerly president of BYU and currently president of the Salt Lake Temple, descends from Per Olof Pettersson, an older half-brother of Johan Söderholm, both sons of Daniel Pettersson of Östergötland County, Sweden. Daniel Pettersson passed the Pettersson surname to all his children. Johan is thus also known as Johan Danielsson (his birthname), Johan Danielsson Pettersson, and more simply, as Johan Söderholm, a name he chose for himself. In America, he was also simply known as John Sederholm. The name refers to the idealized setting of a little isle, or holm, as in the little islands, south of Stockholm, often visited on pleasure excursions.

Cove Fort and Ira Nathaniel Hinckley

Said Brigham Young: " 'The worst time was n[ot when we] were poor and struggling, for then w[e assisted] each other and shared everything [that we had] with each other, and rejoiced in each [other’s joys] and wept with each other in bereav[ement. Oh]! so many dear little children as we saw [die! The] wailing of the mothers rent the air of the [de]sert, and we had to comfort them and be a [stren]gth to them, we men with our own hearts a-[breaki]ng.

"Here President Young buried his [fa]ce in his hands and sobbed, and for a long time kept silence, overcome by the recollections of that first winter. 'When I think of all that, I feel full of unspeakable tenderness for my people. And when I look about me and see the multitude of children of that band of pilgrims, and their children’s children, I feel like him who found honey in the carcass of the lion' "("Brigham Young at Home," The Weekly Sun, 19 September 1877).

Thanks to President Gordon B. Hinckley, we no longer look at the pioneer story only as the triumph of man over nature but as the setting for God’s power of deliverance. The handcart story speaks to the rescue of hundreds from certain death, and of the dozens upon dozens who perished in the cold. Today I speak of the rescue of one.

President Hinckley often spoke of his grandfather. Crossing the plains, grandfather lost his young wife. He dug the grave; he tenderly laid the body into it; then he lifted his little daughter to his shoulder and marched on. The rescue of one. That makeshift grave of the one dearest to him stirs into memory the words of Ben Jonson: “Underneath this stone doth lie/As much beauty as could die.” Grandfather now lifted to his heart the one dearest to both and came home to the Valley.

There’s more to the story. Grandfather, a lonely blacksmith, with a lonely child, remarried, and with his children built a way station in the desert. The way station, home to the weary traveler, was an oasis enclosed by eighteen-foot walls of black volcanic rock. The smithy and the telegraph were ever ringing and humming. At the heart of everything was grandmother’s long table covered with beautiful white linen and set daily with twelve loaves of bread. It was order surrounded by nothingness, a point of contact, of rescue.

Through its broad gates there poured the grand pageantry of humanity: the Ute, the Paiute, the Navajo, the cowboy and his bronco. There were soldiers: the Grand Army of the Republic in its blue uniforms; the outlaw, and the lawman, his pursuer; the aristocrat from over the sea. There were wagons heavy with gold bullion, the twice-daily stagecoach pulled by six fine horses: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor.

And there were children, pioneer children.

A boy, sent out by his parents with a load of fruit, found himself with a broken-down wagon. He walked four miles to the station in a cold storm. Grandfather and grandmother took him in. “I told my story, and your grandfather said ‘that was nothing.’ In the morning he had a man take his wagon and team and unload everything from mine and sent me on to Salem with his wagon. When I got back, my wagon was all fixed up, and he said I was ‘just as welcome to it as sunshine.’”

Late one winter night, two of grandfather’s wee daughters, bored beyond endurance, slipped outside the gate in search of a game. There was no game; so they made one up. It was a game everyone has sometime played. Aunt Nervy, I guess it was, the oldest, took a deep breath, tilted her head and . . . yelled. Little Jean, not to be outdone, thrust back her little arms, clenched her fists, drew her breath, tossed her head, ponytails flying, opened her mouth, and . . .

“What was that?” The sisters looked at each other. Was it the wind? A wolf? Indians?

Then Nervy yelled again. Now they knew: something was out there; something had answered. They ran back through the gate. “Pa, pa, pa, Something, something, pa.” I see Grandfather in his rocking chair, blazing fire on the hearth, book in hand, half-asleep. But something was up, and he let the girls pull him outside into the cold. He listened. Then he knew. Someone was out there.

He ordered a team to be hitched to a big sleigh, grandmother loaded it with heavy blankets, and, then, as the girls stared, grandfather was gone––pursuing a lingering wail. Then he stopped. It was dark. He got out and walked closer. Was it a coyote? It was a boy, a shepherd boy. He was alive, but a brother was dead. He lifted the living boy to his shoulder, set him in the sleigh, and wrapped him in blankets; he lifted the body of the brother, and brought them home. I can picture what happened next. He laid one boy, also wrapped in blankets, on a bed. He set the other boy in his own rocking chair in front of the fire. He was alive. Soon grandmother came in with something hot to drink in a large cup that she held tight in both hands, as the boy sipped. Time passed, and then, as if squeezed from him, his story tumbled out. He was a shepherd boy. Two of his brothers once had been sent to herd sheep. They had frozen to death. Now two more.

The sisters, standing off to one side, heard his story.

The brothers had died.

But this boy would live.

Grandfather would see to that. Grandfather would take the boys home to their mother; he would give comfort; he would talk to the parents. And they would listen to grandfather.

This boy, this shepherd boy, would live.

The girls had played their game well.

Grandfather, and his girls, ran a way station in the desert.

And now, as President Monson so often says: “Brothers and Sisters, To the rescue.” To the rescue.




Notes: The source for the statement of Brigham Young is "Protea," an unidentified governess to Brigham Young's grandchildren. The original is damaged, and I've had to reconstruct some of the wording.

The story of the shepherd boy was told to Bryant S. Hinckley by his sister Jean (Emily Angelena Hinckley Holbrook); the story of the broken-down wagon was told by Edwin S. Hinckley. Both stories come from Parnell Hinckley's biographical sketch of his grandfather and may be found in The Life and Family of Ira Nathaniel Hinckley, eds. Arden and Lorraine Ashton (2000), pages 17-76 (and see especially ps. 37-38).

Photograph (October 1974): Harold Alonzo Hinckley, grandson of Ira Nathaniel Hinckley, and his grandson, Val Hinckley Sederholm, standing in front of the room in Cove Fort understood to be the birthplace of his father, Alonzo A. Hinckley.

Facsimile 2: Kolob, the Female Sun, and the cryptogram Lotus-Lion-Ram

March 27, 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of my teacher, Hugh Nibley. I post the following thoughts on Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham both in commemoration of that anniversary and in anticipation of the publication, also this month, of Brother Nibley's and Mike Rhodes's book on Facsimile 2: One Eternal Round.

I'm trying my hand at additional code-cracking for certain Ancient Egyptian cryptograms that name the mysterious self-renewing energies of the sun. A well-known example of these “solar trigrams” appears on Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham: Lotus—Lion—Ram, and vice-versa (srpt-m3wj-sr, ts-phr). Going beyond Marie-Louise Ryhiner’s acronymic reading of the cryptogram as s-m-s (= smsw, or Eldest), I crack it by considering homonyms.

The word for lion (m3j) sounds like the word for renewal (m3wj and sm3wj: to be renewed; to cause to renew). The word for Ram (zr; zjw), an image of the night sun, sounds like the name of Osiris (wsjr), the solar mummy. I therefore crack the cryptogram as follows: “The Lotus (morning sun) renews the Ram (the Osirian solar mummy) and the Ram (the Osirian mummy) renews the Lotus.”

The theme of renewal only matches the Ryhiner's acronymic reading: sms = sms, a palindrome (what the Egyptians call ts-phr). Sms answers to a) the one who (continually) causes to be born, or who (continually) causes to come into being (smsj) and b) Eldest (smsw).

Smsw as the Eldest finds a parallel in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers: Kolob there “signifies the wonder of Abraham, the eldest of all the stars, the greatest body of the heavenly bodies”; it also “signifies first beginning to the bodies of this creation, the first creation” and “the last or eldest.” Though the phrase “eldest of all the stars” does not appear in the Explanation of Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham, Kolob is described as “the first creation” and “First in government, the last [eldest?] pertaining to the measurement of time.”

The words first and eldest intrigue because not only might Lotus-Lion-Ram, when read acronymically, signify Eldest, other Egyptian texts name the feminine form of the sun god, Eldest or First. Hathor of Denderah, the mother cow, appears as “the Feminine Ra, manifest in her city as Eldest Disk of the Sun Disk" (tp.t = head, first, eldest, or even "the first creation"; Disk may also be rendered Globe). The cow, as female sun, is “the first or eldest of all first things,” a formulation recalling Kolob as “the greatest body of the heavenly bodies” and as "the first creation" and "first in government." The Egyptians, it must be remembered, considered the sun to be a star, and stars to be suns or Ra’s. . .

We find the cryptogram on Facsimile 2 next to the four sons of Horus, and thus also next to the cow—which cow, states the Prophet Joseph, “is said by the Egyptians to be the sun.” The one who (continually) causes to be born (smsj) thus suggests the mother bringing forth the sun at dawn (a dawning which in turn brings about all other things). To “hie to Kolob," as Eldest or First Star, is to translate the glory of the solar course to a higher sphere—that of the circling night sky.

Why a cryptogram? Knowledge of the solar course, which includes the workings of cosmic renewal--was the prerogative of the king: the king's secret. In the Amduat, a book of Egyptian cosmological speculation found in royal tombs, the heavens, at dead of night, open upon the revelation of the solar star.

Thoreau says it best: “The sun is but a morning star.”


Notes: Marie-Louise Ryhiner, "A propos de trigrammes pantheistes," Revue d'Egyptologie 29 (1977).

Joseph Smith's Polyglot New Testament

I'm intrigued by the Prophet's polyglot New Testament consulted in the 7 April 1844 general conference address (King Follett Sermon) and in a 12 May 1844 sermon. "A Bible in various tongues" is how visitor Josiah Quincy described it. For some Saints the book became an iconic way of remembering Brother Joseph. A lithograph depicting the April 1844 general conference shows the Prophet with his Testament on the pulpit; the book even surfaces in Wilford Woodruff’s dreams: "I met with Br Joseph Smith in the Congregation of the Saints. He had his old Hebrew and Jerman Bible, and preached to the Saints." As the dream continues, Joseph, "thronged by people," lifts a curtain into "another room and there he was going to teach the people" (19 August 1844; 2: 449, in ed., S. Kinney; Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past).

Note what Brother Woodruff calls the book: "his old Hebrew and Jerman Bible."

Thomas Bullock reports Joseph as saying: “I have an old book [Clayton: ‘N.T.’] in the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and German” (7 April 1844). The book comprises “the old German [Luther’s original], Latin, Greek, and Hebrew translations” (Bullock Report, 8 April 1844). The Prophet further terms his Testament “the oldest book in the world” (Woodruff Journal and Clayton Report for 7 April), which matches Samuel W. Richards’s characterization of it as “an ancient German Bible” (12 May 1844). Only one polyglot Testament fits the description and that is Elias Hutter’s Novum Testamentum harmonicum (Nuremberg, 1602).

I’ve examined the polyglot and compared its readings against published transcriptions of the sermons to understand how Joseph used this unique Testament to rhetorical effect. After giving a new interpretation of the first verse of Genesis, the Prophet turns to his Testament for evidence that English translators often got it wrong. The example chosen is simple: “James the son of Zebedee” should be rendered “Jacob the son of Zebedee” (Matthew 4:21). And to clinch the case, after giving the German form, Joseph reads the name from the three preceding columns: Hebrew, Greek, Latin. Now the rendering of Jacob varies from language to language, and the Clayton Report, which alone shows all four forms, transcribes these phonetically, but the evidence is conclusive: the Prophet was reading from a 1602 Hutter.

There’s some humor. A lithograph of Joseph Smith addressing the April 1844 conference was “respectfully dedicated” to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles by George Lloyd (Church History Library, catalog entry for Lloyd, George). The lithograph tells a story: Joseph, large Bible open before him, proclaims the pan-American Zion and the building of the temple. This story now becomes, as the dedication shows, the future story of the Twelve. But there’s something odd about the Clayton Report of 8 April 1844. Joseph, too weak in lungs to open the meeting, calls on Brigham Young to read 1 Corinthians 15. Brigham arises and announces: “[We] shall com[mence] by read[ing] [15] Cor.—from an old Bible—W. W. Phelps read[.] Prayer by E[lde]r B. Young.” What’s that all about? Brigham arose, took one look at the old Bible, remembered that Phelps was something of an adept—and voilà.


Update, 8 March 2010: Before publishing this post on the Prophet's polyglot Testament, I poked around BYU and the Joseph Smith Papers to see if others had already done research on the topic (I felt certain that such would indeed be the case), and even tried to search for posts about the polyglot on Google early last Fall. I also checked W.V. Smith's Book of Abraham Project Website, a fine resource for sermons of the Prophet Joseph and Book of Abraham studies. I was certain that if anyone had done research on the subject it would be he. I didn't find anything on the Web site but now see, on Google, under date of November 20, 2009, a note from Boap.org's Blog, entitled (just like my post!) "Joseph Smith's Polyglot New Testament," which states: "When Joseph Smith lived in Nauvoo, Ill., he had acquired a polyglot NT. One can narrow down which one it was by the languages it contained: Hebrew, Greek, German, Latin." Professor Smith further states that he has attempted to find the Prophet's own copy of the polyglot and asks: "Anyone out there know where this NT is?" I don't know where the Prophet's polyglot is but have confidence it will be located.

To narrow down the choices, by sorting through articles and bibliographies on the publications of European Bibles, including polyglots, is not overly difficult. The Novum Testamentum harmonicum quickly emerges as the only possibility. Today, anyone can examine a copy on Archive.org. 

Updates: 2012 and 2013: https://boaporg.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/joseph-smith-and-the-polyglot/ W.V. Smith, 16 April 2012, mentions finding my article on the polyglot in a Google search. He posts an image from the Gospel of Matthew. I was very glad to see W.V. Smith concur with my identification of the polyglot: "Joseph Smith had a polyglot New Testment, probably Elias Hutter's 1602 imprint. Here's an excerpt that figures in one of Joseph's sermons [two leaves from Matthew 24]." At the BYU Church History Symposium (2013), John Welch mentioned one of the editions of the Hutter Polyglot (in nine languages), that of 1599. He apparently did not know of the copy of the Hutter at BYU (1602): "Joseph Smith's Awareness of Greek and Latin," 317 ff. Talk published by BYU Religious Studies Center and found online. (Welch further quotes from a letter to the Nauvoo Neighbor. The letter refers to the polyglot used by the Prophet at the pulpit.) "It would be an interesting curiosity to know which polyglot Bible Joseph owned. One example of such multilanguage, parallel-columned printings is Elias Hutter’s remarkable polyglot Bible published in Nürnberg, Germany, in 1599, which gave parallel  texts of the New Testament in Syriac, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, Italian, Polish, English, and Danish," 318-319.

Many copies of the Hutter Polyglot can be found in America's libraries, so it's possible the copy owned by the Prophet may be found. Quincy, Illinois has a Hutter, but the likelihood of any connection to the Prophet is slim; I was intrigued by BYU's copy because the page next to Matthew 24, cited by the Prophet, had been torn and repaired, but BYU's copy was obtained fairly recently. As for W.V. Smith's suggestion that Alexander Neibaur was the original owner of the polyglot, we can deduce from the Prophet's discourses that the polyglot was his lesson book for readings in German and Hebrew, and we know that Brother Neibaur was his teacher.

A second printing of this particular polyglot was issued in Amsterdam in 1615.  https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1615-bible-novum-testamentum-vellum-1460633396


Notes: 1) The George Lloyd lithograph is featured on the dust jacket of Glen Leonard's Nauvoo (2002); see also pages 332-33. Because the lithograph is privately owned, the color image on Leonard's book is a rare view of a cultural treasure. Update: 5 April 2016: The lithograph is on display at the Church History Museum, Salt Lake City. The lender is Mr. Jim Ostvig.
2) Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU has a copy of the 1602 Hutter Polyglot.
3) The book I consulted and followed (with a few editorial additions for 8 April 1844) for the Nauvoo discourses was Lyndon Cook and Andrew Ehat, The Words of Joseph Smith. I also compared Cook and Ehat with W.V. Smith's transcriptions found on his Book of Abraham Project Website, a fine resource for students of The Book of Abraham.

2 Nephi 19:1 and the Red Sea

Some students have tried to explain why Nephi’s version of Isaiah 9:1 contains an error. Isaiah 9:1-2 reads “and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that have walked in darkness have seen a great light.” 2 Nephi 19:1 has “and afterwards did more grievously afflict by the way of the Red Sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.” The Prophet Joseph's New Translation of Isaiah 9:1-2, OT Manuscript 2, shows the same reading: "red sea."

Red Sea makes no sense when the sea in question is Galilee. But Isaiah 9 is not a geography lesson: Scripture teaches its readers about God’s dealings with humankind. Those dealings here unfold as light (miraculous deliverance) to those that walked in darkness (Egypt), and Light (the Messiah) to those who will walk in Judean apostasy. The Aramaic version (or Targum) of Isaiah 9:1 reads: “I shall cause them to remember the mighty wonders of the Red Sea, the miracles at the Jordan.”

Some, taking up Mormon’s disclaimer about errors, have too quickly labeled Red Sea a mistake, yet it is precisely where such “errors” occur that Joseph Smith is right on the money.


Notes: For the text of the Isaiah Targum, see the online textual databases found with the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (or CAL), housed at Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio. Another source for the Targum is Alexander Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic III: The Latter Prophets according to Targum Jonathan (1962). For a summary of earlier Mormon scholarship on the Red Sea in 2 Nephi 19:1, see Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon II, 731-3, and Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon II, 265-7.