The Book of Mormon (first edition, 1830)
The book printed at Palmyra, New York, in 1830, which Joseph Smith said he translated from gold plates. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints receives it as the word of God beside the Bible. Cited here for its title page and its witnesses’ statements.
Read the text at josephsmithpapers.org ↗Title page of the 1830 edition (Joseph Smith Papers) ↗The current edition (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) ↗
The title page of the first edition calls the book an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, sealed up and hidden “to come forth by the gift and power of God”, and names “Joseph Smith, Junior, Author and Proprietor”; the imprint is Palmyra, printed by E. B. Grandin for the author, 1830. At the end of the volume stand two statements. In the first, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris say that an angel laid the plates before their eyes. In the second, eight men, four of them Whitmers and three of them Smiths, say that Joseph Smith showed them the plates and that they handled the leaves.
Joseph Smith’s own account of how the book came to him is in his history; see Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints. The wiki cites the book for what its title page and its witnesses say, and takes no position on its origin.
Cited in
- 6 April 1830, firm date