Read Isaiah and Nephi in order
Isaiah 29 begins with Ariel, the city where David lived. Verses 9–14 describe people unable to see or understand the Lord’s message. The vision is like a sealed book. The learned person says it is sealed, and the unlearned person says he cannot read. God answers the people’s spiritual blindness with a marvelous work. The immediate setting is Jerusalem and its people. Isaiah 29:1–14
Second Nephi 27 gives the image a more detailed setting. A messenger takes words from a record to the learned. The learned ask for the book itself, which the messenger says he cannot bring because it is sealed. Their reply is “I cannot read it.” God tells the unlearned man to read what He gives him. The chapter also speaks of witnesses and of sealing the remaining words for a later day. The dialogue is already in the printer’s manuscript and the 1830 edition. 2 Nephi 27:6–22 · Printer’s manuscript, p. 86 · 1830 Book of Mormon, p. 111
What the reports of the visit establish
- 1829 newspaper report. A Rochester paper reprinted a Palmyra Freeman report that Harris took copied characters to people he hoped could interpret them. It names Samuel Mitchill. It gives no sealed-book dialogue with Anthon. Rochester Advertiser and Daily Telegraph, August 31, 1829
- Joseph Smith’s 1832 history. Joseph says Harris visited learned men who wanted to see the plates. He explicitly identifies the trip as a fulfillment of Isaiah 29. He gives neither Anthon’s name nor the familiar line about a sealed book. 1832 history, p. 5
- Anthon’s 1834 and 1841 letters. Both say he examined the characters and thought they were a hoax. In 1834 he says he refused to give a written opinion. In 1841 he says he did give one and that it was negative. Both reject the claim that he authenticated the characters. 1834 letter to Eber D. Howe · 1841 letter to Thomas W. Coit
- The later history attributed to Harris. The draft begun in 1839 records that Anthon issued a favorable certificate and tore it up. An inserted passage gives his reply as “I cannot read a sealed book.” The editors say the origin of the Harris account quoted in the draft is unknown. This is the version that appears in Joseph Smith—History 1:63–65. History draft, p. 9 · Joseph Smith—History 1:63–65
Does the parallel date the chapter?
Ryan Thomas argues that the expanded scene in 2 Nephi makes sense as a reading of the King James Isaiah shaped by the 1828 visit. The sequence is specific. A messenger takes copied material to a learned person, who asks to see the original. Thomas takes that as evidence of composition after the encounter. The earliest surviving manuscript containing this passage comes after the visit, so its date fits that explanation. The later history’s wording cannot independently establish what Anthon said in 1828 because the Book of Mormon account was already in print. Thomas’s argument · Printer’s manuscript, p. 86
Latter-day Saints can read the encounter as a later fulfillment of a scriptural pattern that has meaning in Isaiah’s own setting. Nephi says he applies Isaiah’s words to his own people. The New Testament gives a parallel way of reading earlier scripture. Hosea recalls God bringing Israel out of Egypt, and Matthew applies the words to Jesus. That shows how an earlier text can have a later application in a believing reading. For this particular case, the surviving sources establish the early use of Isaiah to interpret Harris’s trip. Whether 2 Nephi’s expanded scene anticipated the visit or was written in light of it is the disputed inference. 1 Nephi 19:23–24 · Hosea 11:1 · Matthew 2:13–15 · Church history topic on Harris’s visit