In Isaiah 29:11, we read:

And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed.

2 Nephi 27:6–24 as well as JST Isaiah 29:11–13 dramatically and creatively expand and reapply this verse to refer to the latter-day coming forth of the Book of Mormon (see #26 A VOICE ‘FROM OUT OF THE DUST’). It is not known whether the the passage as rendered in the Joseph Smith Translation reflects a restoration of a now lost prophecy of Isaiah or merely Joseph Smith trying to bring KJV Isaiah into conformance with truths taught in the Book of Mormon.⁶⁰ This particular verse is reinterpreted to refer to what would become Martin Harris’ visit to Charles Anthon. 

The story is well-known to Latter-day Saints. In Joseph Smith – History 1:63–65, Joseph Smith recounts that, after retrieving the gold plates and bringing them home, he translated some of the characters as well as copied some of them and gave them to Martin Harris, who went to New York to visit with Charles Anthon. Anthon apparently affirmed the translation as correct and, for those characters that were not translated, “he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic” and that they were “true characters.” Anthon gave a certificate to Martin saying that the translation was correct and the characters authentic. Martin began to leave Anthon’s house when Anthon called Martin back into his office. When Anthon found out that they came from a set of gold plates that Joseph Smith received, he tore up the certificate–saying that there was no such thing as the ministering of angels. Anthon told Martin that if Martin would bring Anthon the plates, Anthon would translate them. Martin informed Anthon that the plates were sealed. Anthon allegedly replied: “I cannot read a sealed book.” Contradictory accounts of this visit were left by Martin and Anthon, but historical research continues to support Martin’s rather than Anthon’s report of events.⁶¹

Less known to Latter-day Saints is that Martin visited with at least two other men before meeting with Anthon. These were Luther Bradish and Samuel Mitchill.⁶² “Bradish had lived in Egypt as a special agent for the American government not many years before during the ‘War of the Consuls’ between the British and French expeditions of the Upper Nile. Consequently he knew more than a little about zodiacs, manuscripts, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the current state of research in Egypt. Any transcript purporting to show characters of Reformed or ancient Egyptian would have been of interest to Harris’s fellow Palmyran.”⁶³ Unfortunately, we do not know the details regarding the visit between Harris and Bradish. Harris then went to Mitchill. Mitchill initially referred Harris to Anthon where we get the accounts as we know them today. Harris then went back to Mitchill. Scholar and historian Richard L. Bennett explains:

[Mitchill’s] scientific interests knew no bounds. John Randolph called him “a chaos of knowledge,” and Felix Pascali described him as “an umpire of all merits, inventions, discoveries, projects, arts [and] sciences.” He was known among his colleagues as the “nestor of American science,” a “stalking library,” and “the Delphic Oracle of New York,” Even President Thomas Jefferson referred to him as “the Congressional Dictionary,” greatly admiring him for his knowledge of the natural sciences.⁶⁴

Of the meeting between Harris and Mitchill, one contemporary source reports the following:

He [Harris] carried the engravings from the plates to New York—shewed them to Professor Anthon who said that he did not know what language they were—Told him to carry them to Dr. Mitchell. Doctor Mitchell examined them and compared them with other hieroglyphs—thought them very curious— said they were the characters of a nation now extinct which he named.⁶⁵

The actual characters that Martin carried to these scholars is of some interest. One scholar has proposed that Martin took two sheets of paper with him: one with characters and a translation and the other simply a copy of characters. The first document’s characters were probably Egyptian since Nephi says that he wrote in “the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2). The other document probably had characters from later writers since they wrote in reformed Egyptian.⁶⁶

There is a document that survives today known as the Caractors Document. It purports to be a copy of the original characters shown to Anthon. There has been an attempt at translating this document with some fascinating results,⁶⁷ and at least two non-Latter-day Saint Egpytologists, William Hayes and Richard Parker, have affirmed that the document could be derived from demotic or hieratic–forms of “reformed” Egyptian;⁶⁸ but it is not known that these are actually characters from the gold plates.⁶⁹ Thus caution should be used when studied..

Harris’ visits with scholars provided him with the fulfillment of Book of Mormon prophecy. Today, the Anthon Transcript serves as another piece of evidence in the cumulative case for the Book of Mormon’s authenticity–the chiefest evidence being the witness of the Holy Ghost to the honest and sincere seeker who prays to God to know the Book of Mormon’s divinity.