Mormon History
Plagiarism of the BOM - 1879
The Salt Lake Daily Tribune – April 17, 1879
"THE DEAD REVIVED AGAIN."
________
In Howe's
History of Mormonism, ("Mormonism Unveiled,") it is not claimed, as stated by
the News, the "the manuscript fraud" of Spaulding was "a romance
purporting to have been translated from the Latin, found on twenty-four rolls of
parchment in a cave," but written in modern style, giving "a fabulous account of
a ship being driven upon the American coast, proceeding from Rome to Britain a
short time previous to the Christian era -- this country being inhabited by the
Indians."
There is evidence, however, that Spaulding did originally design a voyage of
another people to this continent, in the year 1, (or thereabout,) and that the
"twenty-four rolls of parchment," descriptive of the migration of his Latin
colony from Rome to this continent, were afterwards transmitted by the writer of
the Book of Mormon into "twenty-four plates of gold," from which came the Book
of Ether, chronicling the migration of certain Jaredites from the Tower of
Babel, and their very Romish "secret oaths and combinations." Secret oaths and
combinations, in his own time, were ever according to the widow Spaulding, a pet
aversion with the ingenuous Solomon.
What were the Spaulding writings which Hurlbut procured from Mrs. Davison at
Monson, in the year 1834? What became of this valuable document? We shall see.
It is well attested that Spaulding wrote several works in a vein of historical
fiction, thus following -- at a long interval -- the immortal Gulliver, Sir
Thomas More, Defoe and others, in a legitimate and pleasing exercise of the
imagination. Spaulding never pretended that he wrote under divine inspiration;
he never pretended that his writings came, or were to be received as having come
from seers or prophets inspired. He never assumed for his fanciful chronicles
which
Amazed the gaping rustics gather'd round.
that they
contained a message of salvation (or damnation) to the human family, or that
they were revealed and dug out of the earth by the ministration of angels. There
is a difference as wide as the antipodes between what he did, and what he (or
they) who manufactured the Book of Mormon from his writings did.
The only plausible point made by the News for non-critical readers in its
editorial, "the
Dead Revived Again," is in this: "Any one who has read the Book of Mormon
can easily see that it is impossible to eliminate the religious from the
historical part of the work, each being identified with growing out of and
essential to the other, forming one harmonious and consistent whole."
This is not the experience of intelligent readers of the Book of Mormon. To the
careful and patient reader the "more history parts" and its "more ministry
parts," so boldly noted and distinguished in the book itself, strike the
key-note that the one was not originally and organically "identified with
growing out of and essential to the other, forming one harmonious and consistent
whole." It was undoubtedly the labor of years for a later hand nicely to
dovetail the "more ministry parts" into Spaulding's "more history parts." As
done, it shows some dexterity in the doing. But what is done may chance to be
undone; what is so deftly knit may be unraveled and both parts of the wonderful
record revert to their rightful authors.
Note 1: The Tribune writer anticipates the source critical analysis of
later scholars like Clark Braden and William H. Whitsitt, in attempting to
"unravel" the presumed editorial splicings within the Book of Mormon text. The
writer, however, under estimates the demonstrated ability of Solomon Spalding to
himself create pseudo-scriptures and fictionally chronicle the utterances of
"seers or prophets inspired." With the subsequent disclosure (in 1884-85) of the
contents of the Spalding manuscript discovered in Honolulu, it became clear that
its writer was very much interested in pretending "that he wrote under divine
inspiration" -- or, at least that some of his fictional characters in that story
concocted sacred records and made oracular pronouncements and attributed their
motivation to such inspiration. Clearly, Solomon Spalding had within him a
strange fascination with the effects of religion and religious fraud upon the
minds of "gaping rustics gather'd round." As he says in his story discovered in
Honolulu: "multitudes of astonished Spectators... declared that when he
[Spalding's fictional ancient American prophet Lobaska] took these excursions
[into the heavens], his extraordinary wisdom & knowledge was communicated to
him... no wonder that he managed an ignorant people as he pleased."
Note 2: The Tribune writer makes one important mistake, when he speaks of
Spalding's "twenty-four rolls of parchment" being the literary eqivalent of the
Book of Ether's "twenty-four plates of gold." The text of the Oberlin Spalding
manuscript actually reads: "twenty-eight rolls of parchment... written in
eligant hand... on a variety of Subjects." Spalding's "rolls" can only be
compared with the Book of Mormon's "plates" in general terms. Both purport to
contain the records of otherwise unknown ancient American chroniclers; both are
lost for centuries; both are later discovered and translated, etc., etc. Clark
Braden and William H. Whitsitt both make a place for the Book of Ether in their
respective theories of how the Book of Mormon text was developed over time. In
this they have somewhat of a meeting of the minds with the Tribune
reporter (who, again, was probably influenced by the opinions of the local
literary affectionado James T. Cobb). It may well be that Solomon Spalding was
among those New Englanders who, in the late 1790s, grew increasingly
antithetical to freemasonry and European illuminism -- at least E. D. Howe's
unverified report, allegedly obtained from Spalding's widow, presents this
picture of him. However, in the case of the Book of Mormon text, it appears that
its own "pet aversion" to "secret oaths and combinations" spoke mainly to
readers of the early 1830s who were caught up in the anti-masonic fervor
resulting from the "William Morgan affair." At the very least, a textual analyst
who attempts to trace the Book of Mormon's aversion for "secret oaths and
combinations" back to the pen of Solomon Spalding, must take into consideration
the proximity in time and space of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and
the advent of the Morgan affair.