A generally well known yet little explored detail about the Book of Mormon is that it contained a sealed portion. It is conventionally understood that the Book of Mormon came packaged with some material that the Saints were obviously not prepared to receive, and as such, we can only patiently wait for it to one day be revealed, but until then, we should leave the matter alone, and not speculate idly.

Idle speculation can indeed be counterproductive, but it might come as a surprise that the Book of Mormon actually contains a considerable amount of information regarding the contents, origin, and purpose of the sealed portion. The pedigree of what became the sealed portion can roughly be characterized as follows:

Before the information age, text and writings were intrinsically attached to the medium upon which they were written or printed. Now, text takes on a much more intangible and ethereal nature, and allows such features as instant transferability, searchability, database indexibility, and duplicability.

This website serves as evidence of the realm of possibilities that come with digital text, in this case, the text of the Book of Mormon. But these possibilities were not always so. The Book of Mormon as we know it was once nothing more than ink on a manuscript, then ink on printed pages. With the ease of copying and pasting that we now enjoy, it is easy to forget the original nature of our scriptural texts.

With that in mind, it is with great pleasure that I present to you five online facsimiles of historical editions of the Book of Mormon, brought to you on the latest technology in online documents, iPaper.

• 1828 Printer’s Manuscript
• 1830 Palmyra Edition
• 1837 Kirtland Edition
• 1840 Nauvoo Edition
• 1920 Salt Lake City Edition
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