It was probably the biggest fear of the original church: that the so-called book of Lehi would be found and expose how bad of a "translation" Joseph Smith did, and how he was making it up out of his head.

I mean, it was such a worry that they made a huge story about how "wicked" men would change it, preemptively starting an apologetic story from the getgo.

But what happened to those pages? Does anyone have them, and why has nobody ever come forth with the real ones? Or was it just another lie that they even existed, but then, why such a strange and potentially damaging lie?


My honest guess is that they were literally lost and fell off a cart or something, seen as trash and burned. :/

Those pages are in Mark Hoffman's basement.

I have read on here that Martin Harris' wife burnt them when she knew that Joseph couldn't re-translate them.

I think that they ended up in some jakes or privy, hanging on a wire hook for the comfort of a person needing a good wipe.

I do not think that Joseph Smith feared that the manuscript would be found. In fact, he likely suspected that it would be exposed after the BoM was published, which is why he came up with the small plates of Nephi to tell the same basic story, but in someone else's words and without the pesky family lineage details that could not be recreated (funny how we do not have the begat, begat, who begat lineage for Lehi, Ishmael, or Mulek--which would have been part of the lost manuscript--but we do have it for Jared).

Thats been the rumor.
The problem with the 116 pages incident for we critics is that if Smith were copying from a hidden source...say a Spalding text...he should have been able to readily duplicate the 116 pages.
We are therefore stuck hypothesizing why he didnt. The evil-men-will-adulterate-them doesnt make sense. How? Likely he was ad-libbing or disposed of the source.

Except that it's obvious he never really "copied" per se. He just used different bits and pieces and then added lots of his own juicy ideas (or Sydney's ideas).

There never was a copied source. It was all mish mashed from multiple sources.