The Lost Writings

Two revelations of this range treat a single event: part of a translated text was delivered into other hands and lost. The first rebukes; the second forbids re-translating the lost part, states the reason, and directs the translator to a different set of plates instead.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. The revelations state what was lost and what was to be done; they do not state how much was lost, when, or where, and neither does this page — the current edition’s section headnotes are outside this wiki’s source text, so date, place, and occasion are external material held out of scope. No count of the lost pages appears in the verse text, and none appears here.

Account

What the revelations say was lost

D&C 3 states the loss as a transfer into hostile hands: “when thou deliveredst up that which God had given thee sight and power to translate, thou deliveredst up that which was sacred into the hands of a wicked man” (D&C 3:12), a man “Who has set at naught the counsels of God, and has broken the most sacred promises which were made before God” (D&C 3:13). The consequence is stated as temporary: “this is the reason that thou hast lost thy privileges for a season” (D&C 3:14).

D&C 10 restates the same event in the second person and adds the instrument: “because you delivered up those writings which you had power given unto you to translate by the means of the Urim and Thummim, into the hands of a wicked man, you have lost them” (D&C 10:1); “And you also lost your gift at the same time, and your mind became darkened” (D&C 10:2). Restoration follows immediately: “Nevertheless, it is now restored unto you again” (D&C 10:3), with a pacing instruction attached — “Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength and means provided to enable you to translate; but be diligent unto the end” (D&C 10:4).

The stated reason not to re-translate

The distinctive content of D&C 10 is a plan the revelation attributes to an adversary, and a counter-instruction. The plan: “Satan hath put it into their hearts to alter the words which you have caused to be written, or which you have translated, which have gone out of your hands” (D&C 10:10); “because they have altered the words, they read contrary from that which you translated and caused to be written” (D&C 10:11). The revelation then puts the trap in the adversaries’ own reported words: “We will see if God has given him power to translate; if so, he will also give him power again” (D&C 10:16); “if he bringeth forth the same words, behold, we have the same with us, and we have altered them” (D&C 10:17); “Therefore they will not agree, and we will say that he has lied in his words, and that he has no gift, and that he has no power” (D&C 10:18).

The counter-instruction is flat: “you shall not translate again those words which have gone forth out of your hands” (D&C 10:30) — with the reason given, that producing the same words would be met with “you have lied and that you have pretended to translate, but that you have contradicted yourself” (D&C 10:31).

The substitution

In place of re-translation the revelation names a different source: “an account of those things that you have written, which have gone out of your hands, is engraven upon the plates of Nephi” (D&C 10:38); “you remember it was said in those writings that a more particular account was given of these things upon the plates of Nephi” (D&C 10:39). Then the instruction and its stated outcome: “you shall publish it as the record of Nephi; and thus I will confound those who have altered my words” (D&C 10:42).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The substitution instruction names the same source and the same stopping point that the Book of Mormon’s own editorial preface names: - D&C 10:41: “Therefore, you shall translate the engravings which are on the plates of Nephi, down even till you come to the reign of king Benjamin, or until you come to that which you have translated, which you have retained;” - Words of Mormon 1:3: “…for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates…”

Both name the plates of Nephi and both terminate the span at the reign of king Benjamin. Divergences reported: “down even till you come to” for “down to”; “the reign of king Benjamin” (D&C 10:41) for “the reign of this king Benjamin” (Words of Mormon 1:3); and the direction of the act differs — the revelation commands a translation forward to that point, the preface describes an abridgment already made to that point. The Book of Mormon’s own account of two record sets, one “for the more part of the ministry” and one “for the more part of the reign of the kings” (1 Nephi 9:4), is treated on Record Transmission and the Plates and Small Plates and is not re-registered here.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. () The revelation appeals to something the reader is expected to remember from the lost text: “you remember it was said in those writings that a more particular account was given of these things upon the plates of Nephi” (D&C 10:39). The Book of Mormon does carry such a statement, in Nephi’s own record-keeping notice: “the things which transpired before I made these plates are, of a truth, more particularly made mention upon the first plates” (1 Nephi 19:2). The two share the claim — a fuller account stands on another set of plates — and share the more-particular vocabulary, though not verbatim (“a more particular account was given” / “more particularly made mention”). But the revelation attributes the remembered statement to “those writings,” the lost text, which this wiki does not have and cannot read. That the remembered statement is the one at 1 Nephi 19:2 is a reading offered to weigh, not a settled identification.

The record’s addressees

D&C 3 closes by naming the peoples the preserved record is for, using the record’s own seven-part nomenclature across two verses.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The four Nephite-side names, in the same order: - D&C 3:17: “And to the Nephites, and the Jacobites, and the Josephites, and the Zoramites, through the testimony of their fathers—” - Jacob 1:13: “Now the people which were not Lamanites were Nephites; nevertheless, they were called Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites.”

The sequence is identical; the revelation supplies “and” between each name where Jacob’s list is comma-separated. Jacob’s verse gives all seven names in one series; the revelation splits them across two verses, the Nephite-side four here and the Lamanite-side three at D&C 3:18 (next record).

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The three Lamanite-side names, in the same order: - D&C 3:18: “And this testimony shall come to the knowledge of the Lamanites, and the Lemuelites, and the Ishmaelites, who dwindled in unbelief because of the iniquity of their fathers…” - Mormon 1:8: “…and this war was between the Nephites, and the Lamanites and the Lemuelites and the Ishmaelites.”

Word-for-word but for the revelation’s serial commas. The three-name run stands at five corpus verses: these two, Mormon 1:9, Alma 47:35, and — in comma-separated form — Jacob 1:13 (counting rule: distinct frozen verses in the corpus, case-insensitive, punctuation-normalized, word-bounded).

The doctrine clause, and the church defined

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The more-or-less clause: - D&C 10:68: “Whosoever declareth more or less than this, the same is not of me, but is against me; therefore he is not of my church.” - 3 Nephi 11:40: “And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil, and is not built upon my rock; but he buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them.”

Divergences: “Whosoever declareth” for “whoso shall declare”; the revelation’s verdict is membership (“he is not of my church” — D&C 10:68), 3 Nephi’s is origin and foundation (“cometh of evil… a sandy foundation”). The referent of “this” also differs: in the revelation it is the definition just given — “whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church” (D&C 10:67); in 3 Nephi it is the doctrine set out in the preceding verses (3 Nephi 11:32–39). The wiki reports the shared clause and the differing referents as textual facts and does not harmonize them.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The next verse carries the rock-and-gates formula: - D&C 10:69: “And now, behold, whosoever is of my church, and endureth of my church to the end, him will I establish upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.” - 3 Nephi 11:39: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and whoso buildeth upon this buildeth upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.”

The run is identical. Divergence: the revelation makes the establishing the speaker’s act (“him will I establish” — D&C 10:69), 3 Nephi the hearer’s (“whoso buildeth”). “the gates of hell shall not prevail” stands at nine corpus verses; besides these two, at D&C 17:8, D&C 18:5, D&C 21:6, D&C 33:13, D&C 98:22, D&C 128:10, and Matthew 16:18.

The other sheep

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 10:59: “I am he who said—Other sheep have I which are not of this fold—unto my disciples, and many there were that understood me not.” - John 10:16: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

One divergence: the revelation inverts subject and verb, “Other sheep have I” for “other sheep I have.” The revelation also supplies an audience the Johannine verse does not name at that point — “unto my disciples” — and a reception it does not record: “many there were that understood me not.”

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () The same clause stands in the risen Lord’s Book of Mormon discourse, where it is quoted back as a prior saying and then applied: - D&C 10:59: “I am he who said—Other sheep have I which are not of this fold—unto my disciples, and many there were that understood me not.” - 3 Nephi 15:21: “And verily I say unto you, that ye are they of whom I said: Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

Both texts quote the clause as something already said. The word-order divergence is the same one as against John. The clause stands at four corpus verses: these two, 3 Nephi 15:17, and John 10:16. **This record was minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review.

Two further clauses

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 10:65: “For, behold, I will gather them as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if they will not harden their hearts;” - 3 Nephi 10:6: “O ye house of Israel whom I have spared, how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart.”

Both attach the figure to a condition — the revelation’s stated negatively (“if they will not harden their hearts” — D&C 10:65), 3 Nephi’s positively (“if ye will repent and return” — 3 Nephi 10:6). The hen figure stands at seven corpus verses: these two, 3 Nephi 10:4, 3 Nephi 10:5, D&C 29:2, D&C 43:24, and Matthew 23:37.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 10:66: “Yea, if they will come, they may, and partake of the waters of life freely.” - Alma 42:27: “Therefore, O my son, whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come…”

The six-word run stands at exactly these two corpus verses. Both frame the invitation around willingness to come; Alma adds the negative half explicitly, the revelation leaves it implied.

Significance

The two revelations treat a loss and then decline to reverse it. The instruction is not to recover the lost text but to publish a different one — “you shall publish it as the record of Nephi” (D&C 10:42) — and the stated ground is that re-producing the words would serve the alteration rather than defeat it (D&C 10:30–31). What a reader can verify is narrower and firmer than any account of how the surviving book came to have its shape: the substituted source the revelation names, and the stopping point it names, match the Book of Mormon’s own editorial notice at Words of Mormon 1:3, phrase for phrase. Whether the surviving book’s shape is the outcome of this instruction is a question about the text’s history rather than about its wording, and this wiki does not enter it.

Key references

D&C 3:5–15 — the trust, the transfer into a wicked man’s hands, privileges lost “for a season”
D&C 3:16–20 — the work goes forth; the seven-name list; the record’s purpose
D&C 10:1–4 — the writings lost, the gift lost and restored
D&C 10:10–19 — the altered words and the reported plan
D&C 10:30–31 — the prohibition on re-translating
D&C 10:38–45 — the plates of Nephi; “down even till you come to the reign of king Benjamin”
D&C 10:57–69 — the speaker’s self-identification; the other sheep; “this is my doctrine”
Words of Mormon 1:3–5 — the abridgment to the reign of king Benjamin, and the plates found

Joseph Smith · Record Transmission and the Plates · Small Plates · The Coming Forth of Scripture / the Sealed Book · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 3 and 10 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). Cross-references quoted from Words of Mormon 1, Jacob 1, Mormon 1, 3 Nephi 10, 3 Nephi 11, 3 Nephi 15, John 10, Alma 42, 1 Nephi 9, and 1 Nephi 19.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. Ten connection records are registered here — nine [textual] and one ⚖️ interpretive (the more-particular-account remembrance). One record, the other-sheep pairing with 3 Nephi 15:21, was minted asserted_by: "source" at the 2026-08-10 editorial review; the rest carry asserted_by: wiki. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing. The revelations give no page count, date, place, or occasion for the loss, and none is supplied here; those are external questions outside this wiki’s scope.