Solomon Spalding

Solomon Spalding (according to some sources Spaulding) (* February 20, 1761 , † October 20, 1816 ) was the author of two texts. One was the incomplete manuscript called "Manuscript Story - Conneaut Creek". The second text was the unpublished historical romance about the extinct Civilization of the builders of the monuments of North America - called the "Manuscript Found". It is uncertain whether these texts differed.

After Spalding's death, a number of people took oaths that the Book of Mormon was based on Spalding's story. From the Book of Mormon, the movement of Latter-day Saints, says Joseph Smith had this religious scripture received from an angel.

biography

Spalding was born in Ashford, Connecticut . He served in the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War . In 1782 he entered Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire . This concluded in 1785. In October 1787 he was appointed Congregationalist minister in Windham, Connecticut .

In 1795 Spalding married Matilda Sabin and opened a shop with his brother Josiah in Cherry Valley, New York. In 1799 they relocated the business to Richfield, New York. Around that time, Spalding acquired land near Conneaut, Ohio . This is where his text " Manuscript, Found" was written . In 1812, during the War of 1812 , Spalding moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . In 1814 he moved to Amity, Pennsylvania, where he died two years later.

The Oberlin manuscript

From 1809 to 1812, Spalding wrote a historical story. It was about a group of Romans who went off course in a boat and discovered America. An unfinished manuscript of it, the "Oberlin Manuscript" or "Honolulu Manuscript" exists to this day. It is a historical romance "allegedly found on 24 rolls of parchment in a cave on the banks of Conneaut Creek and translated from Latin".

The text of the Oberlin manuscript was published by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS) in 1885 and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in 1886 and 1910 under the name "Manuscript, Found". Eber D. Howe wrote in his 1834 anti-Mormon book "Mormonism Unvailed", family members and others testified that the actual title of the Oberlin manuscript's story was "Manuscript Story - Conneaut Creek" and that Spalding wrote another manuscript entitled "Manuscript, Found ", which is not a copy of the Oberlin manuscript.

The other manuscript

Around 1812 Spalding finished writing a historical romance that differed from the Oberlin manuscript, "purported to have been a record found buried in the earth". Spalding handed the work over to the book publisher Patterson & Lambdin in Pittsburgh. In 1816 Spalding died before the book was published.

In contrast to the Oberlin manuscript, there is no surviving text of the first manuscript so that the information about the first manuscript is based only on the affidavits that were included in the book " Mormonism Unvailed" published in 1834 .

Alleged content of the second manuscript

action

According to John Spalding, Solomon's brother, Manuscript Found told that "Indians, being the first colonizers of America, are the descendants of the Jews or the lost tribes of Israel. There was a detailed account of their journey from Jerusalem by land and water until they did." Arrived in America under the command of Nephi and Lehi. After that, these tribes fell into two nations, one formed the Nephites and the other the Lamanites. There were cruel and bloody wars in which great numbers of people died. Man buried the dead in great heaps, which created the hills so common in this country. " Spalding's affidavit appeared in Eber D. Howe's Anti- Mormon Book of Mormonism Unvailed .

writing style

Those who claimed to have seen the second manuscript stated that the "writing style was conspicuously peculiar due to the frequent use of phrases such as" and it happened "or" now it happened "and the repeated beginning of the sentence" I Nephi ".

Reliability of testimony of a second manuscript

Some modern scholars question the credibility of the eyewitness accounts in the second manuscript. Fawn Brodie dismissed testimony in 'No Man Knows My History' for witness manipulation and false memory syndrome.

Theoretical Use of Spalding's Book of Mormon Work

Main article: Spalding-Rigdon theory on the authorship of the Book of Mormon

In 1832 in Conneaut, Ohio, Samuel H. Smith and Orson Hyde read the Book of Mormon as missionaries to the Latter-day Church of Jesus Christ . Nehemiah King, known as a resident of Conneaut Spalding, as he had lived there. In the text he had read he recognized the story that Spalding had written down years earlier. In 1833, Spalding's Brother John and seven other residents of the town swore that Spalding had written a manuscript that - with the exception of religious statements - was identical to the Book of Mormon. These statements were published by Ed Howe in the Book of Mormonism Unvailed in 1834. In it he accused the author of the Book of Mormon of plagiarism . A few years later, Spalding's widow and daughter and other residents of Conneaut and Amity signed statements that Spalding wrote a manuscript that resembled the Book of Mormon:

"I remember this ancient style well. The sentences started with 'and it happened' or 'now it happened', just like in the Book of Mormon. It's the same as my brother Solomon wrote, except for the religious statements."

In 1927, Prof. Azariah S. Root, who directed the library at Oberlin College, wrote in a letter about the origins of the Spalding Manuscript and its relationship to the Book of Mormon that the Spalding Document that he knew was the Oberlin Manuscript, "does not appear to have been the manuscript from which the Book of Mormon was copied". Since neither Root nor anyone else has Spalding's alleged second manuscript, he stated that the Oberlin manuscript "does not seem to shed much light" on whether the second manuscript served as the basis for the Book of Mormon.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matthew Roper: The Mythical Manuscript Found . In: The FARMS Review 17.2 . Retrieved November 21, 2014.
2. ↑ David Persuitte: Joseph Smith and the origins of the Book of Mormon . 2nd Edition. McFarland, Jefferson 2000, ISBN 0-7864-0826-X (English).
3. ^ Spaulding Manuscript Collection, 1811-12, 1885-86, 1927, 1977, 1985, nd - Oberlin College Archives . Archived from the original on May 7, 2016. Retrieved November 29, 2018.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} E. D. Howe's Mormonism Unvailed, Part 5 of 5) .
5. ↑ Rebecca J. Eichbaum's 1879 statement & Isaac Craig's 1882 letter .
6. ^ Spaulding Manuscript - The Encyclopedia of Mormonism . In: eom.byu.edu . Archived from the original on August 2, 2008. Retrieved September 21, 2016.
7. ↑ ED Howe's Mormonism Unvailed, Part 5 of 5) .
8. ↑ 2008 Jockers et al. Word print study .