A Second Anthon Transcript

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The Second Anthon Transcript is a hypothesized document in Latter Day Saint history. Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, sent his scribe, Martin Harris, a respectable but superstitious farmer,^[1] to New York City to have classical scholar Charles Anthon examine characters Smith said were taken from the Golden Plates from which he said he was translating the Book of Mormon. A document called the "Caractors" document, supposedly presented to Anthon, is extant, but the testimony of both Harris and Anthon strongly suggest that there was another document which Harris took to Anthon.

"Caractors" document. Charles Anthon described a very different document.

Anthon's remembrance of the transcript is that it "consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calender given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived. I am thus particular as to the contents of the paper, inasmuch as I have frequently conversed with my friends on the subject, since the Mormonite excitement began, and well remember that the paper contained any thing else but 'Egyptian Hieroglyphics.'"^[2] Harris also said that Anthon had called the figures "Egyptian, Chaldeac, Assyriac, and Arabac."^[3]

Anthon's description of the transcript he saw as being written in long "perpendicular columns" may be inaccurate; the "Carators" document may not have been the one taken to Anthon, or the Whitmer transcription (now in custody of the Community of Christ) may only be a portion of the material that Harris took to Anthon.^[4]

[edit] References

^ Harris had changed his religion at least five times before he became a Mormon and had been a Quaker, a Universalist, a Restorationist, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, and perhaps a Methodist. Ronald W. Walker, "Martin Harris: Mormonism's Early Convert," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19 (Winter 1986):30–33). Like the other Witnesses, he had a magical world view. A biographer wrote that his "imagination was excitable and fecund." He once thought that a candle sputtering was the work of the devil. He told a friend that he had met Jesus in the shape of a deer and walked and talked with him for two or three miles. John A. Clark letter, August 31, 1840 in Early Mormon Documents, 2: 271. The local Presbyterian minister called him "a visionary fanatic." Walker, 34–35. A friend, who praised Harris as a "universally esteemed as an honest man," also declared that Harris's mind "was overbalanced by 'marvellousness'" and that his belief in earthly visitations of angels and ghosts gave him the local reputation of being crazy. Pomroy Tucker Reminiscence, 1858 in Early Mormon Documents 3: 71. Another friend said, "Martin was a man that would do just as he agreed with you. But, he was a great man for seeing spooks." Lorenzo Saunders Interview, November 12, 1884, Early Mormon Documents 2: 149.
^ Charles Anthon to E. D. Howe, February 17, 1834, in Early Mormon Documents, 4: 380.
^ "I went to the city of New York and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof to Professor Anthony (sic), a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments;-Professor Anthony (sic) stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldeac, Assyriac, and Arabac [Arabic], and he said that they were true characters. He gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters, and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct." Martin Harris, "Times and Seasons," III, 773.
^ EMD, 4: 417.