Does the Anthon episode date 2 Nephi 27?

The KJV language about a sealed book and a person unable to read appears in both. Second Nephi develops that image into a scene where a learned man and an unlearned man are asked to read the record.

You identify both the close English parallel and the added narrative detail.

Isaiah already describes a messenger bringing a copy and a learned man asking to see the original. Second Nephi just repeats the scene.

Isaiah compares a vision to a sealed book. The request to see the original after receiving copied words is a detail added in 2 Nephi.

They support that Harris visited language scholars in New York, including Anthon. But the accounts were recorded later and differ: Harris’s reported version has Anthon initially affirm the characters, while Anthon’s 1834 letter says he rejected the document and denied giving a favorable certificate.

You separate evidence for an encounter from certainty about its dialogue. The visit is much better supported than any single verbatim reconstruction.

Because the visit happened, Harris’s version of every exchange is independently confirmed.

Evidence that a visit occurred does not verify the exact conversation. The surviving retrospective accounts disagree on important details.

It makes a post-1828 reading plausible: the learned/unlearned exchange resembles the later story. But resemblance and a fulfillment reading do not by themselves date the underlying text; an LDS reading can treat it as prophetic typology. The passage’s close KJV English also needs its own explanation.

You take the proposed connection seriously while distinguishing interpretation from independent chronological proof.

The earliest copy comes after the visit, so Joseph must have first written the passage in response to the visit.

The copy dates when that wording was already in circulation. It does not give an independent date for when the scene was composed.