Now, all of a sudden, Joseph is a skilled, creative writer with genius intellect. This of course, is a total flip-flop, a 180-degree reversal from the original argument that Joseph Smith was incapable, too ignorant to write such a book. So, let’s now discuss the current and real argument being made by the critics, namely, that Joseph Smith was a creative genius who read numerous books and copied ideas and stories from them, such as View of the Hebrews and The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain. ” The problem with that argument is that there exists no credible evidence that Joseph Smith had a mental disorder, and even if he had, no evidence that such a disorder magically bestows upon an untrained writer such as Joseph, the ability to suddenly become a skilled writer. a mind characterized by the symptoms of the most prevalent of mental diseases of adolescence – dementia praecox. Harry Beardsley, a Chicago journalist wrote, “The Book of Mormon is a product of.
It was that Joseph Smith suffered from a mental disorder which somehow endowed him with the skills to write the Book of Mormon. Rice and James Fairchild (then president of Oberlin College), knowing of the plagiarism argument, compared the manuscript with the Book of Mormon and wrote: “ compared it with the Book of Mormon, and could detect no resemblance between the two, in general or in detail.” Thus, another explanation for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon was discredited. In the year 1884, however, the manuscript was found in the historical papers of Eber Howe, one of the critics who had previously claimed the manuscript had been lost. But ever-so conveniently, the critics claimed the manuscript was lost and therefore no comparison could take place. It is a fictional account of ancient Romans sailing for England who were blown off course and landed in North America. The easy response to this argument of plagiarism was to just compare the two books and decide for yourself. With the certain demise of the foregoing arguments, a new argument arose. Joseph Smith allegedly copied the Book of Mormon from the Solomon Spaulding Manuscript, an unpublished account written by a minister named Solomon Spaulding in the year 1812. He said, “I wrote, with my own pen, the entire Book of Mormon (save a few pages) as it fell from the lips of the Prophet Joseph Smith, as he translated it by the gift and power of God. That book is true.” In addition, he was true to his testimony as one of the three witnesses to the very end, that he saw the angel and the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith, not himself. The critics must have forgotten, however, that he was the self-admitted scribe to Joseph Smith. After all he was well-educated, a schoolteacher, and later an attorney. Accordingly, this argument carries little weight today.Īnother candidate who supposedly wrote the Book of Mormon was Oliver Cowdery. This is but one of the multiple historical evidences we have that Sidney Rigdon never came in contact with the Book of Mormon until after it was published. He read it and examined it for about an hour and then threw it down and said he did not believe a word in it.” Of course, he later did believe it and joined the Church. She would later write, “I saw them hand the book,” meaning the Book of Mormon, “and I am as positive as can be that he never saw it before. Nancy Rigdon Ellis, the daughter of Sidney, and age seven at the time, was a witness of this event. In other words, Sidney was converted by the very book he was supposed to have written. Pratt preached the gospel for the first time-to whom of all people-Sidney Rigdon (his former minister) and bears testimony to him of the Book of Mormon. In order to understand the supreme irony of this argument, however, one needs to remember that the Book of Mormon was published in March of 1830, the Church was organized in April of 1830, and then in October of 1830 (6 months later) Parley P. After all, he was a minister, a theologian and an orator- certainly a likely prospect. One of the proposed candidates was Sidney Rigdon. Therefore, someone far more intelligent and skilled than he must have done so. This was based on the premise that Joseph was only 23 years of age at the time that he was unlearned and uneducated and thus incapable of writing it. The initial argument of the critics in this respect was that Joseph Smith could not have written the Book of Mormon- it was just too comprehensive and complex.
Accordingly, at some point the critics must answer the question-how did the Book of Mormon come forth? Was it man-made as claimed by them or God-inspired as claimed by us? I do believe that the Book of Mormon, combined with the Spirit, is the greatest witness we have of the truthfulness of the Church.
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