Specific works/Christopher Marc Nemelka

Christopher Marc Nemelka

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 tranlate the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, as well as the lost 116 pages. What can you tell me about this?

Answer

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…

— <www.thesealedportion.com/tsp/lost116.htm>, 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 over 580 words by my count, 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. 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

Within the first chapter, Mr. Nemelka makes a fatal error in genealogy, and then goes for the hat-trick by adding two other howlers later.

Nemelka – "Book of Lehi" Claim	Book of Mormon
1. Lehi is descended from Ephraim, son of Joseph (1:11-12)	Lehi is a descendant of Manasseh (Alma 10:3).
2. "And Mosiah was a direct descendent of Zoram, the servant of Laban who delivered the brass plates unto Nephi and his brethren." (8:25).	Mosiah is a Nephi descendant, and only Nephi descendants are eligible for the kingship. (Mosiah 25:13-14)
3. Mr. Nemelka gets Mulek's descent right—from Zedekiah (9:7, 10) though he has the king of Babylon being Mulek's "nephew," which is bizarre. But, two verses later one reads: "And Mulek had a son and called his name Mattaniah after the name of his father. And Mattaniah begot Timrah." (9:12, emphasis added)	Mulek claimed descent from Zedekiah; that was the whole basis of his claim for kingship. (Helaman 8:21) Mr. Nemelka has now fouled up all three lineages of importance to the Nephite record keepers.

How was the ship built?

Nemelka – "Book of Lehi" Claim	Book of Mormon
8. Nephi built the ship "according to the promptings of the spirit." (6:11)	Lord shows Nephi in revelation at the mountain how to build the ship. (1 Nephi 18:1-3)
9. Laman and Lemuel abandon plans to thwart Nephi's shipbuilding because they're so impressed by the ship's "curious" form. (6:12)	Laman and Lemuel won't even help begin the ship's construction, and consider Nephi foolish. (1 Nephi 17:17-18) This prevents the work from progressing at all, and they then taunt Nephi for being unable to do what he proposed. (17:19) They only start helping when they are shocked by the power of the Lord (17:54-55, 18:1) There is no impressive ship to motivate them until after they begin helping.

Many other examples of Nemelka's errors can be downloaded in PDF form [here].

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FAIR Topical Guide: