why me wrote:This would imply that Smith did not have a copy of the manuscript and yet, he freely gave his only copy to Martin Harris. That was quite a risk to take for a conman, knowing the risk of loss. However, if Smith was a conartist I just can't see him not having a copy of the manuscript. And he certainly would not give out his only copy.
Now if he was under the impression that if portions of the manuscript were lost he could just go back and rely on god's help in re-translating them he was sorely disappointed but that would explain his carelessness of which he was sorely punished. Also, he seemed to have no problem in picking up the story. I don't see just where the lost pages could have fit into the Book of Mormon because I see no break in the story.
First, I don’t see Joseph Smith as a simple conman. Second, Joseph Smith understood the risk for theft of the MS. Harris put pressure on him, and he was denied two times. On the third, Harris got permission. Joseph Smith gave in probably because Harris had already given financial support to the project, and he needed help publishing the book when finished. Joseph Smith made Harris sware to show the MS only to a select few, mostly family members. There was no time to make another copy. When the MS was lost, it was a crisis for Joseph Smith. Nevertheless, he learned his lesson. Before giving the MS to the printer a second copy was made, mostly by Cowdery, and a section at a time was taken daily to the printing office.
Your last statement tells me you don’t know your Book of Mormon very well. When Joseph Smith lost the MS, he continued with Mosiah, now chap. 1, to the end of the Book of Mormon, that is, the book of Moroni. This was in May 1829. He waited until the last possible moment before giving up on getting the lost MS back; he now had to resolve the problem of a book without a beginning. It was at this time he got the revelation that told him to replace the previous record, which had been taken from the large plates of Nephi, with a duplicate record called the small plates of Nephi (D&C 10; date of May 1829 per Book of Commandments). Also about this time, Joseph Smith and OC moved from Harmony, PA, to Fayette, NY, with the Whitmers. Thus the first part—First Book of Nephi to The Words of Mormon—were produced last, during June 1829.
This new record had to be knitted together—hence the awkward Words of Mormon, which supplied the missing beginning of the Book of Mosiah. Note that Mosiah is the only book abridge by Mormon that doesn’t have a superscription and it begins “And now there was no more contention in all the land of Zarahemla ….” This missing information was supplied in Words of Mormon 1:12-18. Amazing how Mormon would know exactly what portion would be lost. There are so many problems Joseph Smith created by the introduction of the small plates and his writing them last that this would become a very long discussion. One example is the discovery of Coriantumr, the last surviving Jaredite, by the people of Zarahemla, his carving a record in stone, and Mosiah I translating it and learning that the Jaredites came from the “tower … and their bones lay scattered in the land northward,” as discussed in Omni 1:12-22). Yet, when the bones were discovered in the land northward, along with copper breastplates and a record engraved on gold plates, Mosiah II, Mosiah I’s grandson, was mystified as to who they could be until he translated the plates (Mosiah 28:11-19). When Joseph Smith was dictating this portion of Mosiah in April 1829, he probably had no idea that he would later have Coriantumr survive the Jaredite annihilation at the end of the Book of Ether. When he dictated Omni he was probably unaware of the problem he was creating. There are others like this.
