By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
On June 25, 1977, the Los Angeles Times reported a very sensational story relating to the origin of the Book of Mormon:
Three Southern California researchers say they have new evidence that challenges the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, . . .
Based on the opinions of three handwriting experts, the researchers have declared that portions of the Book of Mormon were written by a Congregationalist minister and novelist who died more than 10 years before Joseph Smith is said to have received the revelations from God through golden plates.
Since we do not believe in the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon, nothing could have pleased us more than to have seen the conclusion of the Californian researchers verified. Nevertheless, we had grave doubts about the new find, and after an examination of the documents we were forced to the conclusion that the discovery would not stand up under rigorous examination. In an article published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, David Briscoe wrote the following:
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — One of Mormonism’s longstanding critics has joined the church in discounting conclusions of California researchers that the Book of Mormon was pirated from the writings of a 19th Century novelist.
Jerald Tanner, a Salt Lake City anti-Mormon publisher, says he was allowed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) on Thursday to see documents that convinced him novelist Solomon Spaulding could not have written part of the Book of Mormon manuscript. . . .
Tanner accompanied one of the Californian handwriting experts, William Kaye, to church headquarters Thursday, where they were allowed to see the original Book of Mormon manuscripts held by the church.
Church spokesman Don LeFevre said Kaye also examined a document which is the basis of part of another Mormon scripture, the Doctrine and Covenants.
That manuscript is clearly dated 15 years after Spaulding’s death in 1816 and appears to have been written in the same hand as the disputed Book of Mormon manuscript, Tanner said.
He acknowledged not being a handwriting expert but said there are significant differences in the handwriting between the Book of Mormon manuscript and the Spaulding document that a layman can spot. . . . (Ogden Standard-Examiner, July 8, 1977)
After publishing Did Spalding Write the Book of Mormon? in July, 1977, we received a great deal of criticism for not waiting until the California researchers finished their book before making an attack on the new theory. It was felt that after we examined all their evidence we might change our minds about the matter. The book was delayed for some time but finally appeared in November, l977 under the title, Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? After reading this book carefully, we must report that our feelings have not changed. In fact, we are more convinced than ever that we made the right decision. The evidence against the new Spalding theory now seems to be overwhelming, and the California researcher’s failure to deal with some of the basic criticisms leads us to the conclusion that they have no real answers to the objections raised. Although we have received some sharp criticism because of our stand on the Spalding matter, we feel that it is based on very strong evidence and that it would be dishonest for us to compromise our position just to discredit the Mormons. We feel that all work against Mormonism should be based on reliable evidence which will meet the test of time.
When we made our first statement on the Spalding matter, we felt almost like we were alone. The researchers were claiming their three noted handwriting experts had examined photocopies of the documents and all three agreed that twelve pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript were actually written by Solomon Spalding. We felt better, however, on July 9, 1977, when the Salt Lake Tribune reported that
One of three handwriting experts hired to check authenticity of the Book of Mormon has withdrawn from the assignment. . . .
He said he decided to withdraw after published reports that he agreed 12 pages of the Book of Mormon were written by . . . Spalding, . . .
“That is not true,” Mr. Silver said. “I have told news representatives that I could not say that without examining the original writings of Solomon Spalding, not just the photocopies . . .”
The California researchers have implied that Henry Silver withdrew from the case because he feared for his life, but in a letter dated January 12, 1978, Silver himself stated:
As far as I am concerned I have never had any threat what-so-ever thrown at me in connection with the case, nor have I ever had a threat against me any time in my life. I never made at any time or any place any statement or even suggested a fear of being killed, in connection with the case, . . .
William Kaye, the second handwriting expert, supported the researchers in his letter of September 8, 1997, but one week after Mr. Kaye issued his statement, a big blow fell on the researcher’s case. This was the final opinion of the third handwriting expert, Howard C. Doulder. In a letter dated September 15, 1977, Mr. Doulder stated: “It is my conclusion the handwriting in the name of Solomon Spalding is NOT the author of the unidentified pages, . . . of the Book of Mormon.” The Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1977, reported that when Howard A. Davis, one of the three researchers, was asked about Doulder’s statement, he said:
“I kind of expected he (Doulder) would go negative on the thing because there have been so many death threats.”
Asked if his life had been threatened during his investigation of the Mormon manuscripts, Doulder replied: “Not at all.”
The researchers claim that Doulder’s “second opinion contradicted his own first report” (Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? page 175). Now while it is true that Mr. Doulder gave an opinion supporting the Spalding theory before his final report, we must remember that he had only examined photocopies of the documents and had made it clear that this was not a final verdict. In a report dated March 4, 1977, Doulder stated:
Because I have examined machine copies and photographic enlargements and NOT the originals, I can only render a qualified opinion. . . .
A positive conclusion can be rendered only after an examination of all the original documents. (Ibid., page l80)
The researchers have used the statements of the handwriting experts in a very clever way. They have photographically printed both the preliminary statements and the later statements. To the uncritical reader it would appear that they have five statements supporting their conclusion and only one against it. Actually, what they have is four preliminary statements (Henry Silver gave two preliminary opinions) and only two later opinions by those who have examined the original documents. What it boils down to, then, is that they have only one favorable statement by a handwriting expert made after he had seen all the documents. Two of the three handwriting experts no longer support their conclusions, yet in the face of this the researchers boldly assert that the “overwhelming weight” of the handwriting evidence supports their conclusion (Ibid., page 176). Although we do not profess to be handwriting experts, we certainly cannot agree with the researchers on this matter. We feel that the evidence is strongly against their theory.
In their book the California researchers try to show that Sidney Rigdon stole Spalding’s manuscript from Patterson’s Print Shop in Pittsburgh and that Rigdon visited Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York, before the Book of Mormon was printed. Although Fawn Brodie feels that “The tenuous chain of evidence accumulated to support the Spaulding-Rigdon theory breaks altogether when it tries to prove that Rigdon met Joseph Smith before 1830” (No Man Knows My History, page 453), the California researchers claim to have new evidence on this matter. On page 119 of Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? we find a very surprising assertion:
1829 (June/July)
Gap in Rigdon’s o.i.
David Whitmer (founding Mormon)
testifies that Smith and Rigdon were together.
As soon as we read this statement we became suspicious that the researchers had nothing to back it up. When an inquiry was made, one of the researchers claimed that this statement had appeared in the book by mistake and that it would be corrected in the next printing. David Whitmer had not actually said Rigdon was present, but in a book by Preston Nibley, Whitmer had described a stranger and the description seemed to fit Rigdon. This story is found in The Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, pages 70-71:
When I was returning to Fayette, . . . all of us riding in the wagon, a very pleasant, nice-looking old man suddenly appeared by the side of our wagon and saluted us with, “Good morning,” . . . We returned the salutation, and, by a sign from Joseph, I invited him to ride if he was going our way. But he said very pleasantly, “No, I am going to Cumorah.” . . . as I looked around inquiringly of Joseph, the old man instantly disappeared, . . . He was, I should think, about 5 feet 8 or 9 inches tall and heavy set, about such a man as James Vancleave there, but heavier; his face was as large, he was dressed in a suit of brown woolen clothes, his hair and beard were white, like Brother Pratt’s, but his beard was not so heavy. . . . It was the messenger who held the plates, who had taken them from Joseph just prior to our starting from Harmony.
Since Sidney Rigdon was only 36 years old at the time, we do not think that he could be described as an “old man.” At any rate, David Whitmer (one of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon) would never have testified that Smith and Rigdon were together in 1829. In his booklet, An Address to All Believers in Christ, page 11, David Whitmer plainly stated:
Neither Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris or myself ever met Sydney Rigdon until after the Book of Mormon was in print. I know this of my own personal knowledge being with Joseph Smith, in Seneca County, N.Y., in the winter of 1830, when Sydney Rigdon and Edward Partridge came from Kirtland, Ohio, to see Joseph Smith, and where Rigdon and Partridge saw Smith for the first time in their lives.
The Spaulding manuscript story is a myth; there being no direct testimony on record in regard to Rigdon’s connection with the manuscript of Solomon Spaulding.
[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]
If the researchers had been able to back up their assertion that David Whitmer testified Smith and Rigdon were together in 1829, we would have been very impressed. As it is, however, we are only left with statements which were made by other people many years after the events described. We do not think that this testimony is of any real value.
On pages 190-199 of their book Who Realty Wrote the Book of Mormon, the California researchers use Dee Jay Nelson and Wesley P. Walters as witnesses against the truthfulness of Mormonism. It is interesting to note, however, that both these men reject the idea that Spalding actually penned 12 pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript. In fact, Wesley P. Walters, one of the most noted researchers on Mormonism, has come out with a very critical review of Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? He has provided us with a copy, a version of which is published in Contemporary Christianity, Winter 1977-78. We extract the following from Wesley Walter’s review of the California researchers’ book:
This work brings together a great deal of painstaking research, collecting evidence from hard-to-find books and old newspapers to build a circumstantial case for the 140 year-old theory that the Book of Mormon is traceable to a now-missing manuscript written by a Congregational minister named Solomon Spalding. . . . The case is built entirely upon circumstantial evidence from testimonies of persons who had knowledge of events at various stages in the proposed chain linking Spalding to Rigdon to Smith. In general, the later the testimony, the more detailed and specific it becomes in affirming these connections, the witnesses’ memory apparently improving with age.
A new feature in the research team’s presentation of the theory is that there were two lost manuscripts of Spalding’s novel instead of one. According to the older theory it was thought that Rigdon had simply copied the manuscript left by Spalding at the printer’s and that it had subsequently been returned to the Spalding household where his wife and daughter reported seeing it in the family trunk after his death in 1816. On the basis of a very late testimony . . . the authors of this book maintain that there was a second copy of Spalding’s work, one which had been prepared for the printer and which, according to Miller, needed only a title page and a possible preface to ready it for publication. They further maintain that Rigdon actually stole this copy from the printer’s office and gave it to Joseph Smith who used it to produce the Book of Mormon. . . .
This theory seems apparently confirmed with the sensational discovery by the researchers that twelve pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript appear to be in the handwriting of Spalding himself. . . . When looked at carefully, however, this discovery raises so many knotty problems and conflicts in regard to the theoretical reconstruction in the first part of their book, that it actually tends to discredit it. . . . While the handwriting appears quite similar to Spalding’s there seem to be some obvious differences to anyone who looks at it carefully. Furthermore, the manuscript of one of Joseph’s revelations is in the handwriting of a scribe whose writing, to the layman’s eye, looks more like the Book of Mormon portion attributed to Spalding than the undisputed samples of Spalding’s handwriting itself. This shows that someone whose handwriting was very much like Spalding’s was one of Joseph’s scribes in the 1830 period. . . . If the Book of Mormon manuscript does contain the actual handwriting of Spalding, then the facts preclude identifying that manuscript with the printer’s copy stolen by Rigdon. This is evident from the fact that the twelve manuscript pages attributed to Spalding are part of twenty pages on identical paper stock. The four pages that precede the “Spalding” block of material and the four that follow are in the known handwriting of identified scribes of Joseph Smith, Jr. This would mean that at least eight pages without text were sent to the printer by Spalding along with his manuscript. What is even more inexplicable is that two of the four pages immediately before the twelve “Spalding” pages have page-titles, summarizing the page’s content, in the same apparent “Spalding” hand, while the content of the pages themselves is written in the known handwriting of those serving as Joseph’s scribes in 1829. Why would Spalding send a printer blank pages with page-titles at the top of two of these, followed by twelve pages of manuscript, the first page of which starts in the middle of a sentence (viz., “and I commanded him in the voice of Laban . . .” =l Ne. 4:20c)? This makes no sense at all and can hardly be regarded as a printer’s copy. Moreover, Joseph Smith must be regarded as having composed and dictated the material on the blank pages sent by Spalding, and or having done this in the same vocabulary and style as the “Spalding” portion. Furthermore he succeeded in filling these blank pages with no indication of either crowding or coming up short and even connected smoothly into the incomplete sentence of Spalding without a hint of discontinuity. Anyone that clever could just as easily have composed the entire content himself. In any event, the fragmentary nature of the alleged Spalding material makes it impossible to connect this with any printer’s copy that might have been stolen by Rigdon.
There is one final consideration that is really fatal to the identification of the twelve pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript as being the actual writings of Spalding himself. When Joseph was producing the Book of Mormon he met with a very disasterous event. Mrs. Harris, the wife of his financial backer, managed to get hold of 116 pages of the opening portion of the Book of Mormon manuscript and never returned them to Joseph Smith. Had Joseph been dictating from a manuscript provided for him by Rigdon, it should have been easy for him simply to have read off the same portion again. Likewise, even if he had read his translation from the words God had caused to appear on his Seer Stone . . . it should also have been no problem for God to restore the lost pages in identical words. However, it seems more likely that Joseph had simply dictated his material as it came to his mind. This meant that he could not reproduce word-for-word what he had already dictated on those 116 missing pages. The way out of this embarrassing predicament was given in a “revelation” in which he was informed that there was a second set of plates and that the Lord knew that those who had taken the 116 pages had altered the words so that, even if Joseph had been able to give the identical wording, they now would not agree with his original copy (it is not explained how such changes could be made on a pen and ink page of that period without being detected). Therefore, the Lord instructed him to take the second set of plates that had been provided for just that situation and translate the material covering the same period from them. References to that second set of plates appear, therefore, in the part of the Book of Mormon which replaced the purloined manuscript, explaining that it was for “a wise purpose” that this second set was being made. One of the passages mentioning this second set of plates that rescues Smith from his problem occurs right in the middle of the section said to be in the handwriting of Spalding (=1 Ne. 9). This makes sense if Smith dictated it, but there is no explanation why Spalding should introduce a second set of plates into his story where it serves no purpose.
The writers have failed to explain how these facts correlate with the theory they present in the first part of their book. How can the preoccupation with religious topics in these twelve pages be explained when Spalding’s novel was said by the earliest witnesses to have had little religious content? How can twelve manuscript pages preceded by blank pages with only page-titles over two of them be considered a part of a completed printer’s copy? . . . Why should Spalding introduce, with no apparent need for it in the plot, a second set of plates, just where Joseph would need so badly a second set of plates to avoid being discredited by his inability to reproduce the identical words of the missing 116 pages? Until the researchers can provide some reasonable and satisfying correlations, backed by some kind of dependable evidence, their book will continue to make interesting reading but their proof must be regarded as highly questionable.
Wesley P. Walters
We feel that Wesley Walters’ arguments against the new Spalding theory are irrefutable, and we cannot understand how the California researchers can continue to cling to their idea in the face of Walters’ criticism and the evidence we present in Did Spalding Write the Book of Mormon? We feel that all those who are using the new Spalding theory in dealing with Mormons should be open-minded enough to examine the other side of the question. In Did Spalding Write the Book of Mormon? we not only provide photographic evidence that Spalding did not pen twelve pages of the Book of Mormon, but we also reprint Spalding’s only extant manuscript so that the reader can compare its style and story with the Book of Mormon.
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