We do not know precisely when Emma Smith first read the newly printed Book of Mormon, nor can we recover her thoughts upon reading the opening lines of the work she helped produce. The archival traces of such events do not survive. We can, however, infer a few things. When she read about Nephi, his goodly parents, and his rebellious brothers, she was reading a second opening to the narrative. For Smith, scribe to the earliest portions of the text, the Book of Mormon was a book with two beginnings—one printed with the book and one remembered from her earliest scribal work on that text before that portion was lost or stolen.
In attempting to imagine Smith's unique reading, it is a useful reminder to know that the Book of Mormon was (and is) read differently by a variety of individuals with differing backgrounds or experiences. Members of the Church...