By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

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Some people have told us that we should be patient with the Church Historian’s Office and they will eventually make all of the Church records available. Judging from past experience, however, we feel that they will not make these documents available until a great deal of pressure has been applied by members of the Church. Take for instance the “strange” accounts of the First Vision. These documents were “located and analyzed” only after a great deal of pressure was applied. Another example is the fragment of papyrus which the Church Historian’s Office suppressed for 130 years. Jay M. Todd, an editor and staff writer for the Church’s Improvement Era, states that Dr. Clark, of BYU, knew about this fragment for thirty years but was told to suppress this information:

Outside of a few associates, Dr. Clark had kept the fragment a matter of confidence, under instructions from the historian’s office, for over 30 years. (The Sage of the Book of Abraham, Salt Lake City, 1969, page 364)

An Egyptologist told us that he wrote to the Historian’s Office and asked if they had any of Joseph Smith’s papyri. They replied that they did not. In 1966 we printed Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, which included a photograph of this fragment. Grant Heward identified it as an actual fragment of papyrus, and in the Salt Lake City Messenger for April, 1966, we stated that the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar included “a photograph of an actual piece of papyrus which may be part of the ‘Book of Abraham’ or the ‘Book of Joseph’!” Almost two years after we published a photograph of this fragment of papyrus, the Church leaders decided that it was time to “find” it. The LDS Church Section of the Deseret News carried this statement on February 10, 1968:

An interesting development in the work going on at BYU by Dr. Hugh Nibley on the papyri fragments turned over to the Church by the New York Museum of Art is the locating of another fragment in the vaults at the Church Historian’s Office.

The latest fragment “find” has been in the vaults as long as . . . assistant Church historians, can remember . . .

The fragment is part of a collection the Church has regarding the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar prepared by the Prophet Joseph Smith. (Deseret News, Church Section, February 10, 1968, page 5)

It would appear, then, that these men do not “find” anything that would put the Church in an unfavorable light until after many people become aware of it and pressure is applied. There is no telling how many other “strange” accounts or other documents they are still suppressing.

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