What parts of the translation of The Book of Mormon were left out of the story? Couldn’t Joseph Smith and Olivery Cowdery have simply burned their notes and drafts when they were done with them? Just because people said he didn’t use notes or references, doesn’t mean he didn’t use notes or references, as we know from the lengthy King James Bible quotes, including translation errors specific to the 1769 edition, an edition which Joseph Smith would have had access to.

It is often ignored that Joseph Smith himself never said he didn’t use any notes or references, that he never said much about it at all but that he did it through the power of God. That could mean an awful lot of different things.

If Joseph didn’t always, but only sometimes or often produced the text of The Book of Mormon in the way that witnesses described, then their descriptions of the process could still be truthful, and even they themselves might not realize how much they left out in their descriptions, or if they did realize it, not give it much thought at all. I think human nature is often to focus on what is most interesting or important to the individual telling or hearing a story, to the exclusion of other potentialy important information.

If I am someone who smiles and laughs alot at work, then those who meet and work with me might describe me to other people as someone who is always smiling and laughing, when in fact they also spend quite a bit of time with me when I’m not smiling and laughing, but it doesn’t impress them enough to mention it. Me smiling and laughing makes it into their mental movie of our experiences. Everything else about me gets edited out onto the cutting room floor.