Difference between revisions of "Specific works/Christopher Marc Nemelka"

Revision as of 20:11, 8 October 2006

This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.

Question

Mr. Nemelka claims to have been commanded to translate the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, as well as the lost 116 pages. What can you tell me about this?

Answer

History of Nemelka

Biographical dates of interest for Christopher Nemelka

• 1980 - Nemelka graduates from high school
• Summer 1984 - Nemelka claims that as an employee of LDS Church security, he was in the Salt Lake Temple. He reports there being called as a prophet.
• 1986 - Nemelka divorces from first wife, Paula Blades. They have two children.
• June 1991 - Ex-wife's family gets Nemelka's two children placed under care of Montana's Division of Family services; Nemelka takes one child unlawfully, and is charged with kidnapping. He eventually returns the child, who returns to his mother's custody, and charges are dropped.
• 1993 - Nemelka divorces from second wife, Jackie Stoll. He eventually finishes "the sealed portion," and markets it to some LDS fundamentalist groups. This leads to marriage with two plural wives, who also eventually leave him.
• 1996 - Vicky Prunty, one of the plural wives, cuts ties from from Nemelka.
• Fall 2000 - Nemelka tells LDS member Christine Marie that he is an atheist; they later begin dating, and Nemelka announces that this was only a test. He tells Marie that he is a prophet, called to translate the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon. She eventually gives him at least $5000.
• March 2001 - After visting the home of an ex-wife, Nemelka sentenced to one year in the Salt Lake County jail for violating a restraining order.
• 20 April 2001 - Nemelka reports receiving a revelation in jail instructing him to take a plural wife
• 21 December 2001 - Interview with Salt Lake City Weekly published, in which he admits to forging the Sealed Portion, lying, and exploiting the religious hopes of others (see quotes below).
• March 2002 - scheduled release from prison for violation of restraining order.
• Mr. Nemelka was also excommunicated on an unspecified date for writing a paper about LDS temple ceremonies.

Quotes from Nemelka

• "What I did do was I deceived her [Christine Marie] religiously. I played with her religious beliefs and mind, which I do not think a person should do..." [Salt Lake City weekly, 27 Dec 2001]
• "My whole purpose, though, was to write the sealed portion. Get the sealed portion done. Sell it to the church. My whole idea was to sell it to the LDS church. I was going to sell it to them, because all the Mormons are looking for the sealed portion to come back. I thought I had a good talent for writing. I was going to write it up and sell it to them. They could do with it what they wanted. They probably would have kept it off the market." [Salt Lake City Weekly, 27 Dec 2001]
• "I set about in my own mischievous and arrogant way, of which I’m not proud of now, to prove that a person could actually write scripture and present it to people who were looking for certain scripture...I was playing on the belief that LDS people have that one day the gold plates would be returned and the sealed portion would be translated. Basically, I set about to write a fictitious version of the sealed portion as I thought Joseph Smith would have written it had he continued to perpetuate his translation of the gold plates. Much to the chagrin of the LDS church and others, what I wrote was indeed well versed and quite appropriate for the scripture I was trying to portray. Anybody who reads it would just be totally amazed." [Salt Lake City Weekly, 27 Dec 2001]
• “My true intent was to somehow perpetuate a religion that would be based on true Christian principals of Christ-like love...Where I made my greatest mistake, for which I’m now extremely sorry for, is that I used deception to perpetuate what I proposed as the truth, assuming at the time that Joseph Smith had done the same thing.” [Salt Lake City Weekly, 27 Dec 2001]
• “See, when I did that thing with the fundamentalist group, there were people who wanted to kill me. They were so mad. When I came out and told these other polygamists, fundamentalist guys, that I had really written the sealed portion, that I had done it just to show people that it could be done—they were very upset.” [Salt Lake City Weekly, 27 Dec 2001]
• “When I deal with people, I am amazed at the ignorance and stupidity of most. People are so easily manipulated and deceived. Knowing this has made me a near master of manipulation. I try only to use this art, however, to help people. Sometimes the things I do seem terrible at the time, but usually the manipulation works to accomplish that which I intended.” [Letter to wife, dated 2 April 1993, cited in Salt Lake City Weekly, 27 Dec 2001]
• “Yeah that’s, that’s all bull****,” Nemelka said from jail. “All the revelations are bull****, of course. I made ‘em up.” [Salt Lake City Weekly, 27 Dec 2001, obcenities present in the original]
• “I’m even glad you’re doing the article, in a way...I am, so that the sealed portion will never go anywhere. There’s a lot to it, a lot more than what you’ve got. In the wrong hands it could really wreak havoc on a Mormon church, which I don’t want to do.” [Salt Lake City Weekly, 27 Dec 2001]

Later Developments

Since his release from prison, Mr. Nemelka has resumed his prophetic claims and is again insisting that the "sealed portion" is a true prophetic translation. He insists that his confession for the newspaper interview was all a lie to deceive the judge in charge of his case:

I knew I had to portray something to [Judge] Lindberg that would appease her personal opinion that I thought I was "above her law", and more especially, above the laws of the powerful LDS Church to which she belonged. With her legal power, she could have easily had me confined to a mental institution, if she actual thought I was serious about my calling as the revelator of the sealed portion of the plates of Mormon. I was in her grasp and I wanted out.

The conclusion I came up with was simple: Lie to Ben Fulton and get him to write something that would impress Lindberg into thinking that I was done with The Sealed Portion and would have nothing further to do with it in the future...Everything I said to [reporter] Ben Fulton of The City Weekly was an attempted manipulation to attempt to ease the mind of Judge Denise Lindberg...

— The Sealed Portion Website, Questions, last accessed 5 July 2005.

It would seem that Nemelka has a habit of changing his story repeatedly, lying for his own benefit, and attempting to deceive others.

The remainder of the article demonstrates that his 'translation' work shows the same tendencies.

The "Book of Lehi"

As part of his 'prophetic call,' Nemelka produced what he claims is a translation of the lost 116 pages, or "Book of Lehi." This portion of Mormon's abridgement (from Lehi to King Benjamin, roughly) was lost by Martin Harris after the manuscript was loaned to him by Joseph Smith (See D&C 3, D&C 10).

Nemelka's decision to produce the "Book of Lehi" was unwise, since his claims about it can be easily checked against what is known about Joseph Smith's translation of the same material.

Problems with Length

There are two extant Book of Mormon manuscripts. The original, dictated by Joseph Smith to his scribes, was probably about 480 pages long; we have fragments from 236 of these pages. A copy was made of the original manuscript—the so-called "printer's manuscript"—and is completely extant save three lines on the first page. This version occupied 464 manuscript pages. Thus, the two manuscript lengths agree within 3-4%.

A computerized count of the original 1830 publication of the Book of Mormon yields 270,745 words. Thus, each original manuscript page would have held about 564 words; the printer's manuscript about 583.

Nemelka's "Book of Lehi" contains 26,709 words when the italicized chapter summaries are excluded. Dividing by 116 pages, we get 230 words per page. The "Book of Lehi" seems, therefore, to contain only about 41% (at best) of the material which one would expect.

Mr. Nemelka includes an introduction to his "translation" of the "Book of Lehi", in which he indicates that

It depended on the particular writing style of each individual scribe, but generally, there were about 225 words per page that were translated by the prophet and written down by his scribe…

— The Sealed Portion Website, "Lost 116 Pages," last accessed 5 July 2005.

Unfortunately for his plan to produce the 116 pages, Nemelka has his details wrong. The paper was folded either lengthwise or widthwise before being written on. Both methods were used during the Book of Mormon translation, though widthwise was more common.

Count of lengthwise pages: Page seven of the manuscript (corresponding to 1 Nephi 4:20-37) contains 580 words, which matches the estimate of 583 words per page nicely.

Count of widthwise pages: Alma 45:17-46:6, Helaman 1:5-17, and Alma 42:29-43:10 are all extant widthwise pages from the original manuscript. Word counts in the 1830 edition give values of 523, 526, and 511 respectively, again much closer to the estimate of 583 from the actual Book of Mormon text than Nemelka's claimed 225.

This discrepancy demonstrates that Nemelka is missing at least half of the material that should be present. One might not expect his translation to match Joseph Smith's word-for-word, but the Book of Mormon text produced by Joseph is not so wordy that one could simply eliminate over half of it and retain the same meaning. Mr. Nemelka has underestimated how much material he needed to produce, and so his work is revealed for what it is—an amateurish forgery.

Problems with Missing Material

Hugh Nibley was the first to note that the Book of Mormon contains "colophons." As one review explained:

A colophon--Greek for "summit, top, finishing"--is a title or header, before or after a text, that may identify an author (such as by name, parentage, origin, education, etc.), the title of text, book, or section…

— Thomas W. Mackay, "Mormon as Editor: A Study in Colophons, Headers, and Source Indicators," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2:2 (1993): 90-109.

Such colophons can be seen throughout the Book of Mormon—in the English scriptures, they are the italicized portions which precede the chapter heading at the beginning of 1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, Jacob, Alma, Helaman, 3 Nephi, 4 Nephi, and Ether. The Book of Mosiah is the only large book without such an introduction. The books of Mormon and Moroni have no colophons, but they are the editors and authors throughout the abridgement, and so have already "given" their colophons initially, as well as identified themselves throughout the text. It's another subtle but authentic touch that no one of Joseph Smith's day knew anything about, or remarked upon until our century.

The lack of a colophon for Mosiah is not surprising, since the first two 'chapters' of Mosiah were part of the lost 116 pages.

Mr. Nemelka betrays himself here by being almost "too clever." He properly includes a colophon at the beginning of his Book of Lehi (imitating, perhaps, 1 Nephi's beginning). But, by the time he has reached the end of his "translation," he has forgotten (if he ever knew) that he needed a Book of Mosiah division with its own colophon.

Contradictions with the Book of Mormon text

Mr. Nemelka's offering has thus already been exposed as a forgery, and we haven't even looked at the text itself. He has tripped himself up on merely technical matters—things which are not present betray him. This illustrates the challenge of creating a lengthy, believable forgery.

The Book of Lehi was Mormon's abridged account of the material contained on the small plates, i.e. 1 Nephi - Omni. Therefore, the information in the Book of Lehi should agree with what is on the small plates.

Lineage Problems

Nemelka makes two fatal errors in genealogy (one within the first chapter), in family lines of unquestioned importance for the Nephite record keepers:

Is the reader to believe that the Israelite Nephites, who put so much stock in genealogy and descent, really don't know the difference between two tribes of Israel? Would they really insist one needed to be a descendant of Nephi to rule, when Mosiah—from whom all subsequent kings and rulers derived their legitimacy, including the judges established by his grandson—wasn't even descended from Lehi, much less Nephi?

When this error was pointed out to him, Nemelka responded by claiming that the Book of Mormon is in error on this point, and that this is a "stumblingblock" to "fools" who would challenge the authenticity of his work. (He even concludes with the helpful admonition to "get over yourselves!")

Unfortunately for Nemelka's scramble to save his forgery, he also has the "Book of Lehi" say this: "Behold, no revelation that cometh forth from the mouth of God by the power of His Spirit shall contradict or add to the words that Jesus spoke both to the Jews at Jerusalem, and also to the Nephites and Lamanites that were spared in the land of Bountiful." (TSP, “Book of Lehi,” 5:73)

So, Nemelka's "Book of Lehi" claims that it won't contradict anything in the Bible or Book of Mormon. But, when he does contradict the Book of Mormon a crucial point, he claims the Book of Mormon is in error. So, he doesn't contradict—but if he contradicts, it isn't a contradiction!

How was the ship built?

The Problem of Multiple High Priests

In the "Book of Lehi," Lehi is identified as a High Priest after the order of Aaron. He is not the only contemporaneous High Priest, either, as Nemelka mentions how there were an unspecified number of them present in Jerusalem at the time, in chapter 1, verse 15: "And many of these prophets were bound by the Jews and carried forth unto the High Priests to see what should be done with them." According to Nemelka, these High Priests were called to serve by their lineage and "also by the laying on of hands by those who were in authority." Laban, who was later slain by Nephi, is identified as the chief High Priest.

From the time of Aaron until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, there was always only one High Priest, who held that office due only to his status as a Levite and to his descent from Aaron, the first High Priest. Lehi was a Mannasehite, as was Laban, and was thus ineligible. Tellingly, Nemelka's words "...also by the laying on of hands by those who were in authority..." make clear the source for his apparent Quorum of High Priests: his knowledge of modern-day priesthood government. Nemelka's "High Priests" are a clear anachronism.

Conclusion

The "Book of Lehi" is a clumsy forgery that fails even a cursory analysis. The author is a self-confessed liar and con man, who also practiced unauthorized plural marriage. Readers should be cautious in trusting such a source.

Many other examples of Nemelka's errors are available from the FAIR mail list, pending the completion of a more detailed final article.

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

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FAIR web site

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External links

• Ben Fulton, "True Believer," Salt Lake City Weekly (27 December 2001) on-line off-site (Hard copy also in FAIR author's possession.)

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Printed material

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