I offer these suggestions for improvement in the spirit of "You can’t solve a problem you don’t know exists."
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Over the years, many people have asked me to annotate the Saints books for accuracy. I'm finally getting around to annotating the Saints book, volume 1.
We continually meet people who have read Saints and believe it is accurate.
I wish it was more accurate than it is now. It could easily be corrected, except no one in the Church History Department seems to care about correcting errors.
Here is an example from chapter 3:
Look at this last sentence:
Moroni said that God had chosen Joseph to renew the covenant, and that if he chose to be faithful to God’s commands, he would be the one to reveal the record on the plates.11
Notice that note 11 cites Letter IV.
Oliver Cowdery, “Letter IV,” LDS Messenger and Advocate, Feb. 1835, 1:78–79 (see also later version, in JSP, H1:59); Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–45, book 3, [11].
However, instead of linking to Letter IV in the Joseph Smith Papers, which would be easy and clear, the link goes to the cover of the Messenger and Advocate on archive.org!
Of the subset of readers who actually check footnotes and citations, some will give up when they go to the link and see this.
Those who persist have to figure out how to navigate archive.org and find pages 78-9 which looks like this:
Now get this: it is the wrong page!
Moroni's instructions to Joseph, paraphrased in Saints, are on page 80.
Below is the passage on page 80, which of course they would never actually quote verbatim in Saints because Moroni specifically told Joseph he had the privilege to translate with the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.
Instead, the historians want to make people think Moroni told Joseph he would "reveal the record;" i.e., that instead of using the Urim and Thummim and actually translating the engravings as Moroni told him, Joseph would instead read words that appeared on the stone-in-the-hat (SITH).
It would be far more accurate, and clearer to readers, if Saints simply quoted the reference instead of paraphrasing it and completely changing the meaning.
It is fascinating to see how the committee who wrote Saints chooses what to quote and what to paraphrase. When the original historical account contradicts a modern theory of scholars, they choose to paraphrase (or omit) the original account.
Here is the actual passage.
He said this history was written and deposited not far from that place, and that it was our brother’s privilege, if obedient to the commandments of the Lord, to obtain and translate the same by the means of the Urim and Thummim, which were deposited for that purpose with the record.
Correcting these errors and omissions would be simple for the digital versions, which is what most people read anyway. It would also be easy to translate.
I'm more than happy to volunteer to correct these errors if no one else in the Church History Department has the time or interest to do it.
I'm know many other Latter-day Saints who would help out.
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