DiscussMormonism.com

can someone explain to me in a simple way what the issues are for the lost manuscipts.

Martin Harriss took the pages for his wife to see and they were reportedly lost. Joseph Smith didn't want to re translate them because he said they would change the manuscript and it wouldn't match and he would be accused of being a fraud.

what are the other views, the skeptics view. I starting to work my way out of what appears to be a smoke filled room and am seeing about what other's are saying about the early history of the church, which is nothing like what is portrayed.

I would appreicate your thoughts.

also, I found a great article on the web about the church in ohio and wanted to pass on the link. Very fair didn't seem to have an agenda.

Link

The bottom line is that Joseph Smith couldn't translate the same portion over again, and he was afraid that Harris's wife had stashed the manuscript away somewhere and would compare it to any new version he tried to produce (the truth is she probably burned it), so he made up a phony explanation about how now he was going to translate "the small plates of Nephi," (where did those come from?) which conveniently were just a slightly different version of the same general material.

You should watch the South Park version of the Joseph Smith story. It captures the irony of this whole missing 116 pages thing pretty well.