The Spalding-Rigdon theory is fairly compelling, in my opinion. Although, I know that many reject it for various reasons. What is the argument (evidence?) AGAINST the Spalding-Rigdon theory?

Unnecessary complexity.

Joseph and Oliver could have just made it up the way they claimed to make it up. They didn't need Rigdon. That said I find the Spalding/Rigdon theory of authorship to be compelling.

One of the main reasons the theory is rejected is because they are comparing the Book of Mormon to the official publication titled "Manuscript Found" by Spalding. There are very little similarities between this publication and the BofM.

What many of the Spalding-Rigdon theory critics don't realize is the theory is based on an allegedly LOST document, also written by Spalding, that was titled "Manuscript Found". The officially published book actually recieved the title "Manuscript Found" several decades later even though it was not the real Manuscript Found--- and I believe it was the LDS church who gave it that title...Hmmmm.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2013 12:40PM by hangar18.

I believe this, and unnecessary complexity, as Jacob mentioned, are the main arguments. However, there is plenty of evidence, including authorship studies, that tie Rigdon to the BoM.

When Joe described meeting Oliver, he made a point of saying something like, "...this being the first time I had ever seen him in my life." If I remember correctly, he wrote something similar when discussing his first meeting with Rigdon. Others claim that they saw both men around Palmyra before these described meetings. I don't recall Joe making similar statements when he described his meeting other early converts for the first time. Seems like a deliberate, though poorly planned, cover-up.

Great point, who when first meeting someone, says I never met this person?

Weren't Oliver and Joseph cousins? And they didn't see each other until their 20's?

They weren't first cousins. They might have been second cousins...I'm not sure.

Chump Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They weren't first cousins. They might have been
> second cousins...I'm not sure.

Third cousins once removed. Oliver Cowdery's great-great-
grandparents, John Fuller and Mehitable Rowley were also Joseph
Smith's great-great-great-grandparents

This qualifies as "distant cousins." It's very probable that
they were unaware of this relationship. How many people here
can name their any of their 32 great-great-great-grandparents?

baura Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> This qualifies as "distant cousins."
> It's very probable that they were unaware
> of this relationship. How many people here
> can name their any of their 32
> great-great-great-grandparents?

On the other hand, Mother Lucy Smith seems to have been
very keen on knowing her family's genealogy, back several
generations. I am one of her relatives, in that I share
a descent from her grandmother. I think that Lucy would
have been aware of past generations, even if Oliver had
not been much interested in such things.

Joe Smith once remarked how marvelous it was that so
many of the Mormons were all the descendants of a single
man -- probably some Mayflower passenger. While that
does not prove that Smith knew his own genealogy back
several generations, it at least highlights the fact
that many early converts to Mormonism shared ancestry
in Puritan New England, where fairly decent records had
been kept in family bibles, government records and in
the documents of the Congregational churches.

Oliver Cowdery lived with Joe Smith's parents for several
months before Oliver went to Harmony in April of 1829.
Evenings in the Smith cabin were no doubt spent in
discussions of various topics of mutual interest, such
as New England money-digging, the religious views of
Oliver's famous uncle, Rev. Nathanel Emmons, etc. It is
not unreasonable to assume that Lucy and Oliver would
have soon determined that their ancestors came from the
same New England villages, had migrated to Vermont, etc.

I think it was probably likely that Joe and Oliver knew
that they were from "the same people" who had been
Yankee Puritans a couple of generations back. They may
have figured out that they were distant cousins.

UD

Do you have a reference you can point to for Joseph's first meeting with Oliver?

I believe there are other accounts as well, but JSH 1:66 says "On the 5th day of April, 1829, Oliver Cowdery came to my house, until which time I had never seen him." The priesthood restoration story follows. This, of course, was written almost 10 years after the events supposedly took place. If I remember correctly, the priesthood stories were first told in 1834, and the original BoC sections were revised so that the 1835 D&C mentioned the restoration and separate priesthoods.

Oliver had to have been in on the con considering the late addition of these stories. He was also the author of the 1835 history of the church that was included in the Messenger and Advocate, of which he was the editor. The Messenger and Advocate account of Joseph's first vision states that he was praying to know if God existed in 1823, an angel appeared in his bedroom, etc... Oliver saw how that story changed over time. You could say that he was shocked by the changes and this lead to his disaffection, etc..., but there's plenty of other evidence to show that he was in on it from the beginning.

"...Oliver Cowdery came to my house, until which time I had never seen him."

Right, and why did Joseph feel compelled to mention that fact? It reminds of what he says later in JSH 1:74 in reference to the invented-after-the-fact restoration of the priesthood stories:

"In the meantime we were forced to keep secret the circumstances of having received the Priesthood and our having been baptized, owing to a spirit of persecution which had already manifested itself in the neighborhood."


Strange that they would need to "keep secret" from their friends, family, and fellow believers; and then not even introduce the concept of the higher priesthood to the church until 1831.

hangar18 wrote: "One of the main reasons the theory is rejected is because they are comparing the Book of Mormon to the official publication titled "Manuscript Found" by Spalding. There are very little similarities between this publication and the BofM."


I think you meant "Manuscript Story".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2013 04:23PM by facsimile3.

Correct. The only title this manuscript bore was "Manuscript Story" in pencil. It was never called "Manuscript Found" until the church published it. Why did they rename it to "Manuscript Found?" You decide.

Years ago I asked several noted historians of Mormonism
why the Spalding-Rigdon explanation for Book of Mormon
authorship was an impossibility. Here is a compilation
of answers received from generally thoughtful and well
intentioned "experts," most of whom were non-Mormons.

1. There is no need for the theory. Conspiracies are
almost always non-historical. Amateurs who know nothing
about how to "do" history resort to conspiracies as
explanations for a past they do not understand. Even a
conspiracy of two proto-Mormons is very, very unlikely.
A conspiracy of three or more of them is impossible.

2. Solomon Soalding's "Msnuscript Found" was discovered
and fully verified by two respected non-Mormons in 1884.
They both issued affidavits proving that Spalding's
writings had absolutely no similarities with the LDS book.

3. The earliest "witness" statements were obviously
forgeries, concocted by D.P. Hurlbut, in an effort to
persecute innocent Latter Day Saints. None of the eight
witnesses featured in Hurlbut's 1834 book even lived
in Conneaut, Ohio when Spalding was there -- a fact that
can be verified by consulting the 1810 federal census.
Over the years, after Hurlbut's book appeared, persecutors
of the benign Mormon religion manufactured affidavit upon
affidavit and testimony upon testimony promoting the
Spalding lie. This fact can be verified by inspecting
these so-called witness statements, which knowingly build
one upon another, in a chain of escalating accusations.

4. If there had been a multiple authorship of the book,
the first Mormons would have necessarily had to create
a cover-up and whitewashing of their pre-1830 activities.
There is absolutely no evidence of such an LDS cover-up.
It's reasonable to accept the early testimony that Smith
dictated the entire Book of Mormon, while his face was
buried in a hat. There was a slight effort to cover-up
that one fact, by resorting to claims for a magical Nephite
breastplate with attached goggles, but that small cover-up
merely whitewashed the true fact, that Smith made up the
narrative of the book, off the top of his head, while
he was dictating to his scribes. He obviously wrote it.

UD

"If there had been a multiple authorship of the book,
the first Mormons would have necessarily had to create
a cover-up and whitewashing of their pre-1830 activities.
There is absolutely no evidence of such an LDS cover-up."

Absolutely no evidence? I'd say we have positive proof that the first vision and priesthood restoration stories were late falsified additions, and that Oliver was at least in on it. We know for a fact that "revelations" were changed. I don't think Joe was dumb, but I don't think he was smart enough to pull this off by himself...I don't see the single authorship theory as the most simple explanation.

It would be very interesting to talk face to face with Doctor Hurlbut and hear his side of the story. Just looking into this a bit most of the information that is available comes from the Church.

Excommunicated for sexual relationships with young girls, tends to make one believe he really was in the inner circle and crossed Joseph Smith.

Proving something by the lack of appearance in an early census does not really prove anything.

All of these arguments seem to be ad hominen, strawman, redherring type nonesense practiced by apologists.

BG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> Excommunicated for sexual relationships with
> young girls, tends to make one believe he really
> was in the inner circle and crossed Joseph Smith.
...

He had a girlfriend (Huldah Barnes) while he was on his
mission in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Many Mormon missionaries
during those early days came home with convert wives,
including Brigham Young, who picked up a certain Mrs. Cobb
in Boston.

The difference? Brigham was already married. Hurlbut was
still a bachelor when he wooed Miss Barnes. I know that
sounds weird, but there was a Mormon justification for
the seeming doctrinal inconsistency.

Hurlbut eventually gave up on Miss Barnes and none other
than Heber C. Kimball picked up the "damaged goods" and
eventually took her to remote southern Utah, where she
learned to "keep her trap shut."

Hurlbut also tried the same seduction on F. G. Williams'
daughter, as I recall. Both Williams and Hurlbut were
"root doctors," so perhaps Hurlbut thought marriage to
Williams' daughter was a natural fit. But he failed at that.

It was evidently his bedding of Miss Barnes that supplied
a convenient means for the Mormon leaders to bring charges
against Hurlbut. He was subsequently forgiven, but the
leaders heard that he was still up to no good and they
cut him off permanently.

Why not just force Elder Hurlbut to quietly marry the
Barnes girl and forget about the matter? I think that is
what the Mormons back in Huldah's branch were suggesting.
Her sister did just that, and ended up in what eventually
became a secret plural marriage with her missionary beau.
But the case of Elder D. P. Hurlbut was something different
than the usual missionary indescretion of those days.

Hurlbut was pushed out of the Mormon fellowship for some
reasons that still have not been made clear, after all of
these years. I don't think that it was his interviews with
Solomon Spalding's old neighbors that first got him into
trouble -- I think it was something else.

UD

There is no compelling argument against the SR-theory. At least not if you compare it to the official version as currently taught by the church.

Every "problem" in the SR-theory pales in comparison to the problems associated with angels, seer stones and Reformed Egyptian inscriptions on gold plates.

So what if we don't have evidence that Joe and Sidney knew eachother before they said they did? These guys were pathological liars after all.

rt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> So what if we don't have evidence...

This brings to mind a dispute I had with a neighbor, who,
although born a Mormon, was actually a lapsed member.

Three mornings running I found his dog's droppings on my
front lawn, right next to the mailbox, where I was wont
to step, without looking downward very carefully.

After the third unhappy coating of my shoe soles, I
confronted the neighbor. He denied it was his dog. Denied
that there was even any "evidence" (which I'd cleaned up).

In his mind, my complaining was just a tactic meant to
bother him. Since I could not exhibit the absolute proof,
in a photo of his dog, doing the dirty work on my lawn,
then nothing had happened -- I must be imagining things.

UD

There was a document that was lost, authored by Spaulding that many say was similar to the BOM. But it is lost, so there is only conjecture now. I do think there is a good chance that this is how the BOM came to be, but it is only my feeling or opinion as proving it is not possible now.

Linkster Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/josephsmithsplagia
> rismchapter9spalding.htm


Somebody ... I can't recall just who ...
issued a response to that chapter 9.

I think it was here:
http://solomonspalding.com/Lib/Tanr2010.htm#comments

UD

the mormonleaks site has heaps of information.

Ironic that Manuscript Story is considered by "experts" to have no relationship with the Book of Mormon when it is the source of the data used by both Uncle Dale and the authorship studies that link Spalding to the Book of Mormon. It was not the direct source for the book, but swathes of the BoM were written by the same author as Manuscript Story.

While the SR/Gold Bible Company theory is more complicated than Smith Alone, it has more explanatory power; it explains more of the data than Smith Alone, while still covering everything tha Smith Alone explains. Invoking Ockhams Razor to prefer the simpler theory in this case is wrong; it can only be invoked when the two theories have the same explanatory power. That doesn't apply here as the GBC theory explains a LOT more of the historical and textual data than Smith Alone can.

1. I do not believe there is compelling evidence that JS and SR met prior to the official initial encounter in Kirtland. Rigdon family members have adamently denied such a meeting, even after both SR and JS were dead and there was no connection of the family with Mormonism.

2. I do not believe that the original, dictated version of the BoM would have had so many gramatical and punctuation errors had Rigdon written the book.

3. I believe that the wordprint studies often cited on the board as evidence for Rigdon authorship are inconclusive based upon the limitations of these studies. I have written about this before and do not want to rehash it again here. (Note: I do applaud these efforts and find them interesting, and my personal opinion is not meant to be a criticism of the authors of the study, except to the extent their interpretation of the results might be deemed to be more conclusive than is warranted by the evidence.

4. Most importantly, I do not believe that SR's personality would lend itself to taking a second position in Mormonism, and eventually being ostracized almost completely, had he been so profoundly involved with the production of the BoM.

5. Finally, I think there is a tendancy to underestimate the ability of JS to write the book. Although I agree that the scope of the book is impressive for someone of JS's educational limitations, we know from the other dictated "revelations" that he had enough oral language ability to fain divine influence. JS was a very smart guy, and the BoM is a good example of what can happen when ignorant but smart people attempt to deceive gullible people in a context where they are already programed to be deceived, as in the religious context.

The above impressions were formed some time ago. I am not a scholar on the JS-SR authorship theory, and would welcome any rebuttals to the above, but so far, I am not convinced.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 1. I do not believe there is compelling evidence
> that JS and SR met prior to the official initial
> encounter in Kirtland. ...

Perhaps it would be best to approach this topic by
breaking it down into a few component parts:

1. What were Joe Smith's most compelling denials of never
having known anything about Rigdon prior to that man and
his friend Partridge showing up on Joe's doorstep in
Kingdon, NY in December of 1830? If both his friends
and his enemies agreed upon certain facts, then probably
they are more likely to actually be true historical facts.

2. What were Sidney Rigdon's most compelling denals of
never having known anything of Joe Smith, his gold bible
or Mormonism, before Oliver Cowdery and friends showed
up at the Rigdon cabin in Mentor, Ohio in November, 1830?

Once we have examined and considered the alibis these
two men have offered in their own defense, then it might
be worthwile to begin to examine the circumstantial reports.

3. When do the Spalding-Rigdon proponents say that Joe Smith
and Sidney Rigdon met, personally, to work on their purported
conspiracy to produce a latter day bible? If the ostensible
answer is "Ohio, in mid-1826," then what evidence supports
such a conclusion and what evidence can be put forth to
prove that Smith was elsewhere, doing other things, then?

4. What do the members of Rigdon's various congregations
in Ohio say about him and his activities prior to his
November, 1830 conversion to Mormonism? Considering the
fact that some of these parishioners remained Campbellites,
while others joined the Mormons, can we disover any consensus
reports regarding Rigdon's possible knowledge of Mormonism
before the fall of 1830?

This sort of information does exist. An objective investigator
who has no pet theories to promote, could assemble the old
reports, historical records, etc. necessary to answer the
questions. Perhaps Rigdon could thus be vindicated, as having
been an honest and sincere Christian who just happened to
have been deluded by the Mormon missionaries who presented
him with the gold bible in the fall of 1830.

If so, that would end the controversy for most of us, and
the serious students of early Mormon hidstory could move
on, to concentrating their investigations to more important
matters and other possible discoveries.

UD

Uncle Dale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>...What were Joe Smith's most compelling denials
> of never having known anything about Rigdon prior
> to... 1830?

This report is only second-hand, but it will serve as a
beginning, until we can locate some first-hand Smith
responses to accusations made against him:


>...on January 27, 1840, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith
>reportedly appeared before a large audience of
>prominent persons in Washington D. C. and delivered
>a prophecy concerning an eminent Protestant minister
>who had been preaching sermons in the nation's
>capital against the Mormons and their self-proclaimed
>sacred writings.
>
>Dr. Robert D. Foster, physician to the Mormon leaders
>then visiting Washington, recalled that President
>Martin Van Buren [etc.] were present when Joseph Smith
>prophesied utter doom and destruction against the Rev.
>George Grimston Cookman, Chaplain of the U. S. Senate.
>
>Among the disputed opinions that Rev. Cookman is alleged
>to have preached to his Washington parishioners that
>winter were his condemnation of Joseph Smith as an
>"arch impostor"... Joseph Smith "did not believe in
>the Bible, but had got a new one, dug up in Palmyra,
>New York; and that it was nothing but an irreligious
>romance, and that Smith had obtained it from the widow
>of one Spaulding, who wrote it for his own amusement."
>
>In his rebuttal to Rev. Cookman, Joseph Smith is said to
>have stood before that distinguished Washington audience
>and "uttered a prophecy, one of the most wonderful
>predictions of his life." The Mormon Prophet declared
>Chaplain Cookman's preaching against the Mormons to be
>"willfully and wickedly false, and that if he, Cookman,
>did not take it back and acknowledge that he had dealt
>falsely of him... he should be cut off from the face of
>the earth, both he and his posterity...
>
>...not long thereafter Rev. Cookman made ready to sail
>to England, and, "Both he, his wife, and all his
>children went on board the steamship President, and
>neither the ship nor a soul is left to tell what was
>their sad end. But the prophecy is fulfilled to the letter...

No doubt there are better, more succinct denials from
Smith on record, but this was the first one that came to
mind, when I thought back over that matter.

UD

I am having trouble finding it now, but didn't Rigdon instruct his congregation prior to the Mormon missionaries arriving that he was simply preparing the way for a greater restoration (or something like that)?

If that is the case, then I have a VERY difficult time thinking that Rigdon was not somehow involved. If that is not the case, then maybe I was influenced by some later Mormon myth.



P.S. The grammatical errors may have been deliberate to bolster the case that it was translated by an unlearned man. It seems like Oliver Cowdery el al would have been able to clean up the grammar had they wanted to do so.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2013 06:45PM by facsimile3.

facsimile3 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am having trouble finding it now, but didn't
> Rigdon instruct his congregation prior to the
> Mormon missionaries arriving that he was simply
> preparing the way for a greater restoration (or
> something like that)?

A good place to begin reading is with the statements
left by Rigdon's own Campbellite parishoners:

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/features/RigSmth3.htm

See especially the links that lead to my comments
on the Whitney family of Kirtland:

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/LDS/ldsnews2.htm#090178

"we marveled greatly; but from that moment we knew that
the word of the Lord was coming to Kirtland."

Of course we might expect that the earliest Mormon converts
were prone to exaggerating their pre-Mormon experiences, as
including marvelous signs and wonders, leading them to Joe
Smith and his gold bible. --- Still, if you read enough of
these early testimonies, along with contemporary reporting
in newspapers, journals, etc., it is easy to conclude that
Sidney Rigdon was already preaching the same religion that
he found printed in the 1830 Book of Mormon that Cowdery
and Pratt used to "convert" him.

Rigdon was looking for spiritual manifestations and divine
revelations foreshadowing the onset of the Second Coming
and the thousand-year millennial reign of Christ on earth.
Whether or not he helped write the gold bible, he obviously
discovered the answers to his prayers within its pages.

UD

Thanks once more, Dale. Sadly, I am not a big fan of late reminiscences. I was hoping there was a contemporary newspaper clipping that mentioned Rigdon's preaching predicting a "new revelation" or something of the like.

facsimile3 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks once more, Dale. Sadly, I am not a big fan
> of late reminiscences. I was hoping there was a
> contemporary newspaper clipping that mentioned
> Rigdon's preaching predicting a "new revelation"
> or something of the like.

This one is earlier:

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/VA/harb1830.htm#020731

SIDNEY RIGDON.

It was with mingled emotions of regret and surprize that we have learned that Sidney Rigdon has renounced the ancient gospel, and declared that he was not sincere in his profession of it: and that he has fallen into the snare of the Devil in joining the Mormonites. He has led away a number of disciples with him. His instability I was induced to ascribe to a peculiar mental and corporeal malady, to which he has been subject for some years. Fits of melancholy succeeded by fits of enthusiasm accompanied by some kind of nervous spasms and swoonings which he has, since his defection, interpreted into the agency of the Holy Spirit, or the recovery of spiritual gifts, produced a versatility in his genius and deportment which has been increasing for some time. I was willing to have ascribed his apostacy to this cause, and to a conceit which he cherished that within a few years, by some marvelous interposition, the long lost tribes of Israel were to be collected, had he not declared that he was hypocritical in his profession of the faith which he has for some time proclaimed. Perhaps this profession of hypocrisy may be attributed to the same cause. This is the only hope I have in his case.

He acted in this instance more like one laboring under some morbid affection of mind, than like one compos mentis. He first believed in Smith's three witnesses, and then went to see Smith in pursuit of the evidence. He found ample evidence of Smith's honesty, and returned in the full assurance of faith that Smith is some prophet which was to come. 'Tis true he has not yet found that promise in the book of God which authorized the expectation of Joseph Smith the junior, as the restorer of the Jews and the founder of the New Jerusalem. Smith promised the Holy Spirit in its special gifts to all who have faith in his mission. He told them to pray to God and they should know whether he was divinely sent. While Sidney and Cowdery, the Magnus Apollo of Smith, were in conclave... [he] yielded to the suggestion to pray. Whereupon one of his fits of swooning and sighing came upon him, he saw an angel and was converted.

I've never been a big fan of the Spalding or Rigdon theories.

JS really didn't need Spalding or View of the Hebrews for that matter.

A whole bunch of people thought Indians were lost Israelites and went along with the basic plot outlines.

But I don't think the wordprint studies can be dismissed out of hand.

Finally, even if the Smiths did not know that Cowdery was a distant relative, the senior Smiths and Cowderys quite possibly knew each other from the Wood Scrape in New England. Uncle Dale would have more information on this.

lulu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...
> Finally, even if the Smiths did not know that
> Cowdery was a distant relative, the senior Smiths
> and Cowderys quite possibly knew each other from
> the Wood Scrape in New England.

Oliver's own use of a revelatory divining rod almost
certainly traces back to his childhood experiences
in and around Middleton, Vermont, where the Woods
family promoted the use of the same kind of rods for
locating buried treasure and for determining which
Israelite tribe a member's lineage came from. I do
not suppose that absolute proof has been found to
directly connect Oliver's father with the Woods,
but he was there at the time and was reported to have
shared some involvement with a counterfeiter who was
associated with the Wood Scrape.

Oliver's father lived in Ontario county, New York years
before Oliver moved to the Palmyra-Manchester area.
The foster family which more or less raised Oliver
during part of his childhood moved to the next county
to the west, along with Oliver's brother. Another
brother lived in Wayne County, within walking distance
of Palmyra. The opportunities for the Cowdery family
and the Smith family to cross paths, in Vermont and
later in New York, were varied and numerous.

We cannot be certain that Oliver's grandfather treated
the Smiths as a country doctor, when he lived immediately
south of them in Vermont -- but folks in sparsely
settled rural areas generally know the local physician.

It really doesn't matter much, if the two families were
closely linked, or if their major connection consisted
of Joe and Oliver. What is strange is that from the time
Joe's mother wrote her famous book, onwards, Mormon
writers have been reluctant to explore those possible
early associations and report back with their findings.

I, for one, would like to see some extensive research
conducted into this hazy pre-Mormon history.

UD

It lacks parsimony.

It relies way too heavily on affadavits. (Affadavits are not magic lie detectors).

And, it requires an ad hoc adjustment to the theory in the face of contrary evidence: the idea of a second manuscript. This idea was proposed _after_ the original manuscript was shown to be bunk.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2013 09:15PM by archytas.

"This idea was proposed after original manuscript was shown to be bunk."

Actually, this is not true, unless you are referring to the earliest origins of the theory back in the 1830s. Even Howe's 1834 "Mormonism Unvailed" explained that the putative orginal manuscript must exist elsewhere because Hurlbut was only able to retrieve the unrelated romance (Manuscript Story) from the widow's chest.