CHAPTER VI. — TRANSLATION AND PUBLICATION OF THE BIBLE
The only one of his New York neighbors who seems to have taken a practical interest in Joe's alleged discovery was a farmer named Martin Harris, who lived a little north of Palmyra. Harris was a religious enthusiast, who had been a Quaker (as his wife was still), a Universalist, a Baptist, and a Presbyterian, and whose sanity it would have been difficult to establish in a surrogate's court. The Rev. Dr. Clark, who knew him intimately, says, "He had always been a firm believer in dreams, visions, and ghosts."
Howe describes him as often declaring that he had talked with Jesus Christ, angels, and the devil, and saying that "Christ was the handsomest man he ever saw, and the devil looked like a jackass, with very short, smooth hair similar to that of a mouse." Daniel Hendrix relates that as he and Harris were riding to the village one evening, and he remarked on the beauty of the moon, Harris replied that if his companion could only see it as he had, he might well call it beautiful, explaining that he had actually visited the moon, and adding that it "was only the faithful who were permitted to visit the celestial regions." Jesse Townsend, a resident of Palmyra, in a letter written in 1833, describes him as a visionary fanatic, unhappily married, who "is considered here to this day a brute in his domestic relations, a fool and a dupe to Smith in religion, and an unlearned, conceited hypocrite generally." His wife, in an affidavit printed in Howe's book (p. 255), says: "He has whipped, kicked, and turned me out of the house." Harris, like Joe's mother, was a constant reader of and a literal believer in the Bible. Tucker says that he "could probably repeat from memory every text from the Bible, giving the chapter and verse in each case." This seems to be an exaggeration.*
* "Gleanings by the Way."
Mother Smith's account of Harris's early connection with the Bible enterprise says that her husband told Harris of the existence of the plates two or three years before Joe got possession of them; that when Joe secured them he asked her to go and tell Harris that he wanted to see him on the subject, an errand not to her liking, because "Mr. Harris's wife was a very peculiar woman," that is, she did not share in her husband's superstition. Mrs. Smith did not succeed in seeing Harris, but he soon afterward voluntarily offered Joe fifty dollars "for the purpose of helping Mr. Smith do the Lord's work." As Harris was very "close" in money matters, it is probable that Joe offered him a partnership in the scheme at the start. Harris seems to have placed much faith in the selling quality of the new Bible. He is said to have replied to his wife's early declaration of disbelief in it: "What if it is a lie. If you will let me alone I will make money out of it."* The Rev. Ezra Booth said: "Harris informed me [after his removal to Ohio] that he went to the place where Joseph resided [in Pennsylvania], and Joseph had given it [the translation] up on account of the opposition of his wife and others; and he told Joseph, 'I have not come down here for nothing, and we will go on with it.'"**
* Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," p. 254.
** Ibid., p. 182.
Just at this time Joe was preparing to move to the neighborhood of Harmony, Pennsylvania, having made a trip there after his marriage, during which, Mr. Hale's affidavit says, "Smith stated to me that he had given up what he called 'glass-looking,' and that he expected to work hard for a living and was willing to do so." Smith's brother-in-law Alva, in accordance with arrangements then made, went to Palmyra and helped move his effects to a house near Mr. Hale's. Joe acknowledges that Harris's gift or loan of fifty dollars enabled him to meet the expenses of moving.
Parley P. Pratt, in a statement published by him in London in 1854, set forth that Smith was driven to Pennsylvania from Palmyra through fear of his life, and that he took the plates with him concealed in a barrel of beans, thus eluding the efforts of persons who tried to secure them by means of a search warrant. Tucker says that this story rests only on the sending of a constable after Smith by a man to whom he owed a small debt. The great interest manifested in the plates in the neighborhood of Palmyra existed only in Mormon imagination developed in later years.
According to some accounts, all the work of what was called "translating" the writing on the plates into what became the "Book of Mormon" was done at Joe's home in New York State, and most of it in a cave, but this was not the case. Smith himself says: "Immediately after my arrival [in Pennsylvania] I commenced copying the characters off the plates. I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of them, which I did between the time I arrived, at the house of my wife's father in the month of December (1827) and the February following."