For those who don’t know about the
issue of Martin Harris and his meeting with Charles Anthon, the FAIRMormon wiki has a good summary here.
David Wright, a long-time critic of the
Book of Mormon, made the following comment in an article that was overall
critical of the Book of Mormon, “Joseph Smith’s Interpretation of Isaiah in the
Book of Mormon” in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 31/4, pp.181-206. However, on
page 201 n. 47, he makes the following comments that are favourable towards
Martin Harris’ recollection of events:
Anthon is
contradictory on this matter; in the Howe letter he denies giving a written report,
but in the Coit letter he says he gave Harris a document. In the latter letter
he says that he gave the note to Harris to warn him and others of the fraud,
but interestingly when he recalls what he wrote, it had a much more limited
scope: "The import of what I wrote was, and far as I can now recollect,
simply this, that the marks in the paper [i.e., the transcript] appeared to be
merely an imitation of various alphabetical characters, and had, in my opinion,
no meaning at all connected with them." This is quite reserved if Anthon
considered the matter bunk from the beginning. It may indicate that he
expressed a more positive opinion before he found out about the mystical
aspects of the BM.
