translating from any specific known text.

Moreover, the experts have strangely and stubbornly overlooked hundreds of passages from the Old and New Testaments that Joseph Smith translated in a way that does not agree with the translations of the scholars. Why dont they nail him on that? Because such a demonstration ends in proving nothing against the Prophet: manuscripts and translations of the Bible differ so widely, and so many baffling issues are being raised today about the nature of the original text that there is no way of proving that any of his interpretations is completely out of the question. Always in these cases the discussion comes back to the original manuscripts. But with the book of Enoch the question of an original manuscript never arises. Although chapters two through eight of the book of Moses are entitled The Writings of Moses, the Prophet nowhere indicates that he ever had the manuscript in his hands. Eighteen months earlier he recorded a revelation concerning John the Apostle, Translated from parchment, written and hid up by himself. (See D&C 7: heading.) 5 Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know that writing revelations on parchment and hiding them up in caves was standard practice among the ancient saints, thereby confirming this remarkable passage of modern revelation. But even more significant is the idea that though Joseph Smith saw and translated the document in question, he never had it in his hands, and for that matter it may have long since ceased to exist. The whole thing, document and translation, was given to Joseph Smith the Prophet, and Oliver Cowdery by revelation when they inquired through the Urim and Thummim. (D&C 7: heading.) So it was with the book of Enoch, transmitted to us by Joseph as it was given to him. Though his work was far more demanding and probably required far more concentration and sheer mental effort than we can even imagine, that task did not include searching for a lost manuscript or working out a translation. So we are forced back on the one and only really valid test of the authenticity of an ancient record, which does not depend on the writing materials used, nor the language in which it was written, nor the method of translation, but simply asks the question, How does it compare with other records known to be authentic? This is what the critics of the Book of Mormon and the book of Abraham have never been willing to face up to; with the book of Enoch they have no other choiceand so, through the years, they have simply ignored the book of Enoch. Yet there never was a more delightfully vulnerable and testable object. It offers the nearest thing to a perfectly foolproof testneat, clear-cut, and decisiveof Joseph Smiths claim to inspiration. The problem is perfectly simple and straightforward: There was once indeed an ancient book of Enoch, but it became lost and was not discovered until our own time, when it can be reliably reconstructed from some hundreds of manuscripts in a dozen different languages. How does this Enoch redivivus compare with Joseph Smiths highly condensed but astonishingly specific and detailed version? That is the question to which we must address ourselves. We do not have the golden plates nor the original text of the book of Abraham, but we do have at last, in newly discovered documents, a book which is the book of Enoch if there ever was one. And so we have only to place the Joseph Smith version of the book of EnochMoses 6:25 through 8:3 [Moses 6:25-8:3] with associated textsside by side with the Enoch texts, which have come forth since 1830, to see what they have in common and to judge of its significance. For those who seek divine guidance in troubled times, the book of Enoch has a special significance, not merely by virtue of its pertinent and powerful message, but also because of the circumstances under which it was received. As the History of the Church records: