Spalding-Rigdon Theory of the Authorship of the Book of Mormon

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The Spalding-Rigdon Theory of the Authorship of the Book of Mormon states that the major non-religious statements in the Book of Mormon were plagiarized by Solomon Spalding and other authors. The theory was first explained in writing by Ed Howe in 1834 in the Book of Mormonism Unvailed . At the center is Sidney Rigdon , who, according to the theory , wrote the Book of Mormon with Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery . Rigdon professed that by reading that book he would become the first converted follower of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Howe views this affirmation as an afterthought to obscure the true origins of the Book of Mormon.

LDS officials today regard the theory as refuted and discredited because "few historians - friendly or hostile to the claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - support the Spalding-Rigdon theory."

Spalding's manuscripts

By 1812 Spalding wrote a historical romance entitled Manuscript, Found . In 1812 Spalding gave his font Manuscript, Found in Pittsburgh to the book publisher Patterson & Lambdin to have it printed. Spalding died in 1816 without having received the manuscript, Found back. Nothing was printed back then either.

The Oberlin manuscript

A copy of a not completely finished manuscript of a historical story by Spalding from 1809 to 1812 about the discovery of America by the Romans exists under the names "Oberlin Manuscript" or "Honolulu Manuscript". The text begins with the introduction that it is about a report "which was found on 24 pegament rolls in a cave on the banks of Conneaut Creek and translated".

In 1884 this text was found and published as Manuscript Story - Conneaut Creek. The manuscript is in the possession of Oberlin College , Ohio. Various authors see many parallels between the Book of Mormon and that manuscript.

This Spalding manuscript told the story of a group of Roman seafarers who were expelled on their way to the British province in the fourth century and discovered a strange land - North America. One recorded his experience with Indian tribes in the east and the Midwest.

In 1885, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS) published the Oberlin manuscript in the library of Oberlin College verbatim, as well as the correspondence relating to that manuscript, its storage and transmission until it came into the hands of the publisher.

The hypothetical lost manuscript

Although the Oberlin manuscript, Manuscript Story - Conneaut Creek, is not the same story as Manuscript Found, Vernon Holley pointed to multiple similarities between the earlier manuscript and the Book of Mormon. In 1977 graphologists claimed to have discovered similarities between Spaulding's handwriting and that of a scribe transcribing portions of the Book of Mormon from Joseph Smith's dictation. After receiving significant media attention and scrutiny from anti-Mormon professionals, they prematurely announced their verdict. The manuscripts reveal no relation between Solomon Spaulding and Joseph Smith.

Similarities to the Book of Mormon

When Samuel H. Smith and Orson Hyde, Latter-day Saint missionaries in Conneaut, Ohio, read from the Book of Mormon in 1832, Nehemiah King, a Conneaut resident who knew Spalding, realized that what was heard was the text resembled the one he knew from Spalding.

Therefore, in 1833, Spalding's brother John, along with seven of Conneaut's residents, sworn that Spalding was writing a manuscript identical to the non-religious parts of the Book of Mormon. Spalding's widow said she remembers "the names of Nephi and Lehi as the main heroes of his story." Ed Howe included these statements in his Book of Mormonism Unvailed in 1834 .

In June 1834 appeared in the magazine Observer in Hudson (Ohio) interviews with some of Conneaut-witnesses.

Sidney Rigdon

Sidney Rigdon

The theory that Sidney Rigdon was the lead author of the Book of Mormon first appeared in writing in an article dated February 15, 1831. Rigdon's role as a writer also paid tribute to an article by James Gordon Bennett in August 1831 after exploring the Palmyra – Manchester area visited and interviewed residents.

Rigdon's denial

In 1839, in a letter to the editor, Rigdon denied having anything to do with the making of the Book of Mormon. Rigdon admitted that he knew the publisher Robert Patterson but denied any firsthand knowledge of the printer. He expressly denied knowing Solomon Spalding or his manuscripts.

Later confirmations of the theory

In January 1841, Adamson Bentley made a statement in which he said: "I know how Sydney Rigdon told me about a book (the manuscript of which was engraved on gold plates) two years before the Book of Mormon appeared or I heard about it in this country . "

In 1873 Darwin Atwater stated: "That [Rigdon] knew before the coming of the Book of Mormon I am certain, since he spoke of it when he first visited my father in late January 1827. He gave a wonderful description of the hills and others in America found antiquities and said they must have been made by the Aborigines and said that a book should be published with an account of these things.

In 1879, Rebecca Eichbaum made a statement relating Rigdon to the Patterson & Lambdin printing company.

A July 1816 notice in the Pittsburgh Commonwealth reports mail to be picked up from the Pittsburgh post office for Sidney Rigdon - and in the same note for Solomon Spalding.

Who Wrote the Book of Mormon? by Robert Patterson, son of the book publisher Patterson of Patterson and Lambdin, explained with testimony from about 30 eyewitnesses who knew the people involved that they knew the Spalding story was true.

Sidney Rigdon's grandson, Walter Rigdon, said in an interview that the family knew that the "Golden Bible" was a joke that Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith Jr. made up to make money - and that it was based on Spalding's manuscript.

JH Beadle's version of the theory

In the book Life in Utah in 1870, JH Beadle also explained that Spalding presented the manuscript Found to the bookseller Patterson in Pittsburgh in 1812 because he wanted to publish it as "a historical romance to explain the settlement of America." He asked if Patterson wrote a fictional preface that the script "came from plates excavated in Ohio". Patterson declined because he "didn't expect any need for it". Beadle states that Sidney Rigdon was then employed in Patterson's office, who died in 1826. Spalding died in 1816. Apparently the manuscript was not returned because the later fate of the copy of the manuscript was unknown, according to Beadle. According to Beadle, Spalding's widow "had another complete copy, but that copy was also lost in 1825 when she lived in Ontario Co., NY, next to a man named Stroude for whom Joe Smith was digging. Mrs. Spalding believes that it was stolen from her suitcase.

Responses from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Most Mormons consider the Spalding-Rigdon theory to be implausible and believe that, as the Maxwell Institute claims, it "got into difficult times."

In The Mythical 'Manuscript Found' article, Matthew Roper concluded:

“Whether you accept the Spalding Declaration or any other theory, you have to explain not just whether, but how Joseph Smith or another candidate could write such a book. The critics never and probably never will agree on this point. The Book of Mormon will always be a mystery to the unbeliever. The Latter-day Saint, of course, has an explanation that well circumvents this mystery. For those who do not want to believe Joseph Smith's explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon, but still cannot find the ignorant Palmyra plowboy responsible for its content, a variation on the Spalding theory with its mythical "manuscript found" is probably best Fiction they can make up.

In 1840, Benjamin Winchester, a Mormon defense attorney assigned to investigate the Hurlbut case, published a book in which he rejected the Spalding theory as "pure invention". Winchester attributed the making of the story to Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, one of Howe's collaborators. Regarding Sidney Rigdon's alleged involvement, Rigdon's son John recounted an interview with his father in 1865:

"My father looked at me for a moment, lifted his hand over his head and said slowly with tears in his eyes, 'My son, I can testify before Heaven that what I said about the origin [of the Book of Mormon] is true Your mother and sister, Ms. Athalia Robinson, were with me when I was given the book in Mentor, Ohio, and everything I ever knew about its origins [the Book of Mormon] was told by Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery 'Joseph Smith and the Witnesses who said they saw the plates. For all my familiarity with Joseph Smith, he only told me this one story.' "

Daniel C. Peterson contends that little or nothing supports the Spalding-Rigdon theory. Even "very sophisticated statistical analyzes" make this deeply unlikely. "

Machine text comparisons

Computer analysis of the authorship of the Book of Mormon varies depending on the methodology used.

Previous analysis by the Foundation for Apologetic Information & amp; Research claimed that the Spalding-Rigdon theory was poorly supported by such analysis. In 1980, a study conducted by Mormon John Hilton with non-Mormon colleagues in Berkeley rated the likelihood that Spalding was the sole author of Book One of Nephi as less than 7.29 × 10 −28 and less than 3 × 10 −11 for the book Alma.

The Jockers Study

The 2008 Stanford study (Jockers et al.) Comparing the Book of Mormon with writings by possible authors found a high probability that significant parts of the Book of Mormon were by Spalding, Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery . "Our analysis supports the theory that several 19th-century authors wrote the Book of Mormon. In particular, there is strong evidence for the Spalding-Rigdon theory of authorship. In all of the data we find Rigdon as a unifying force. His work dominates the book. Where other candidates are more likely, Rigdon often hides in the shadows. " The study did not include Joseph Smith as one of the possible authors. Through Smith's use of co-authors, no text can be identified with certainty as being written by Smith alone.

Mormon critics of the study stressed that the "naive application of the NSC methodology" produced "misleading results" because they used a closed group of seven authors for their study. In their own study (Schaalje et al., 2009), those critics at Brigham Young University found that an open group of candidate authors "produced completely different results from a closed NSC analysis."

The Jockers study found striking matches with Spalding's texts for the books Mosiah, Alma and Ether as well as for the first half of the book Helaman. Correspondence with Spalding's texts was poor in the parts of the Book of Mormon believed to be related to the lost pages (1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, and the middle section of 3 Nephi and Moroni) after the incident. Correspondences to Rigdon texts are found throughout the Book of Mormon (with the exception of the familiar chapters on Isaiah). In addition, there were references to texts by Pratt in 1 Nephi, as well as strong matches with texts by Cowdery in the middle section of Alma and slight matches in texts of similar content from Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews.

The study by LDS experts, which also appeared in the Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing , criticized that Jockers et al. propose the most likely author of the group of authors with their methodology - even if the author is not among them With the known authorship of the Federalist Papers with the exclusion of Alexander Hamilton as a candidate author, Jockers et al. Choose Rigdon, whereas the methodology of Schaalje et al. Name Hamilton as an author if he has been preselected - and no author if Hamilton is excluded.

Using Joseph Smith's own handwriting, the Schaalje methodology found that stylometric evidence does not support either Smith's authorship or that of Spalding-Rigdon.

References

  • JH Beadle: Life in Utah or the Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism, being an expose 'of the Secret rites and ceremonies of the Latter Day Saints, with a full and authentic history of polygamy and the Mormon sect from its origin to the present time. National Publishing Company, Phildelaphia, PA 1870.
  • Fawn M. Brodie: No Man Knows My History. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1971, ISBN 0-679-73054-0 .
  • Wayne L Cowdrey; Howard A Davis; Arthur Vanick (Ed.): Who really wrote the book of Mormon? : the Spalding enigma . Concordia Publ. House, St. Louis 2005, ISBN 0-7586-0527-7 (English).
  • Eber D. Howe: Mormonism Unvailed. Telegraph Press, Painesville, Ohio 1834.
  • Robert Patterson: Who Wrote the Book of Mormon. LH Everts & CO, Philadelphia 1882, ISBN 978-1-332-21205-7 .
  • Matthew Roper: The Mythical "Manuscript Found". In: FARMS Review. Volume 17, No. 2, Maxwell Institute, Provo, Utah, 2005, pp. 7-140.
  • Solomon Spaulding, Rex C. Reeve (Eds.): Manuscript Found: The Complete Original "Spaulding" Manuscript. Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 1996, ISBN 1-57008-297-9 .
  • Benjamin Winchester: The origin of the Spalding story, concerning the Manuscript Found; with a short biography of Dr. P. Hulbert, the originator of the same; and some testimony adduced, showing it to be a sheer fabrication, so far as in connection with the Book of Mormon is concerned. Brown, Bicking & Guilbert, Printers, Philadelphia 1840.
  • Dan Vogel: Early Mormon Documents. Volume 2, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, Utah 1998, ISBN 1-56085-093-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthew Roper and Paul Fields: The Historical Case against Sidney Rigdon's Authorship of the Book of Mormon . Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
  2. ^ L. Ara Norwood: Book of Mormon Authorship: A Closer Look . Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University. Retrieved April 6, 2012.
  3. ↑ Who wrote the book of Mormon? Forgotten Books, 2015, ISBN 978-1-332-21205-7 (English).
  4. ^ JH Beadle: The "Golden Bible" . The Salt Lake Daily Tribune. April 7, 1888. Retrieved February 8, 2018: "Sidney Rigdon's Grandson Says Their Family Understood it to be a Fraud."
  5. ^ A b Matthew Roper: The Mythical "Manuscript Found" . Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
  6. ^ Daniel Peterson: Joseph Smith's account of the Restoration is difficult to counter . Deseret News . Retrieved April 28, 2012.
  7. ↑ a b Rebuttal to Jockers . Retrieved April 28, 2012.