Jersey Girl wrote:Shades wrote:According to Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? The Spalding Enigma by Cowdrey, Davis, and Vanick, that third party was most definitely Oliver Cowdery, who was Smith's second cousin and who was employed for a time by Sidney Rigdon before the Book of Mormon came to be.
Thanks. I actually know the answers to most of the questions I've posed. I pose them based on previous discussions here where objections to the S/R theory were to a lack of connection between Rigdon and Smith. Typically, the demand is for evidence of a meeting between Rigdon and Smith prior to Rigdon's conversion. While a meeting may have taken place, the theory doesn't require a face-to-face meeting.
Wasn't Pratt a disciple of Rigdon?
My guess is that Pratt was Rigdon's foremost disciple -- one who believed Rigdon to
be a new Elijah, sent to prepare the way for the coming prophet of the last dispensation.
In other words, I suppose Pratt fully endorsed the D&C section that identifies Rigdon
as preparing the way for Joseph Smith.
Orson Hyde was another such Rigdonite -- but it is Pratt whose "word-print" the Stanford
researchers believe they have found in the Book of Mormon (along with that of Cowdery).
So, if we are looking for clandestine middle-men, Pratt and Cowdery are possibilities.
However, I speculate that Rigdon might have encountered Joseph Smith, Jr., more or less
accidentally, on one of Rigdon's various excursions across the country, visiting Baptist
congregations. While a member of the Redstone, Grand River and Mahoning associations,
each of those groups sponsored Rigdon's trips to represent them in visits to Baptist
congregations/associations at a distance.
In 1824 Alexander Campbell published an account of visionary manifestations reportedly
accompanying a notable religious revival in upstate New York. From other sources, I think
we can establish that Campbell was speaking of a revival centered in Palmyra, NY -- He said:
I read, some time since, of a revival in the State of New-York in which the Spirit of God was
represented as being abundantly poured out, on Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. I
think the converts in the order of the names were about three hundred Presbyterians, three
hundred Methodists, and two hundred and eighty Baptists. On the principles of Bellamy, Hopkins,
and Fuller, these being all regenerated without any knowledge of the Gospel, there is no difficulty
in accounting for their joining different sects. The spirit did not teach the Presbyterians to believe
that "God had foreordained whatsoever comes to pass;" nor the Methodists to deny it. He did not
teach the Presbyterians and the Methodists, that infants were members of the Church and to be
baptized, nor the Baptists to deny it. But on the hypothesis of the Apostle James, viz. "Of his own
will begat he us by the word of truth." I think it would be difficult to prove that the spirit of God had
any thing to do with the aforesaid revival.
Enthusiasm flourishes, blooms under the popular systems. This man was regenerated when asleep,
by a vision of the night. That man heard a voice in the woods, saying, "thy sins be forgiven thee."
A third saw his Saviour descending to the tops of the trees, at noon day." ...
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/VA ... htm#030124
Of course the rationalist Campbell dismissed such stories of men in the woods, hearing divine
assurance that their sins were forgiven -- of divine personages descending earthward to visit
New Yorkers, etc. But Sidney Rigdon (who most certainly read Campbell's report) was a visionary
fellow who was himself subject to such ecstatic epiphanies --- I assume he would have been
very much interested in such reports -- perhaps interested enough to finagle one of his periodic
trips to visit far-off Baptist congregations.
There was a Baptist church in Manchester, NY, with a chapel located a little south of the
Smith residence there -- ministered to by Elder Shay. Here's an interesting note on that:
In his Jan. 1948 article, "The Baptist Church at Manchester" (The Chronicle X:1, pp. 17-30),
Mitchell Bronk quotes from the journal of early member Daniel Arnold and other sources, and
reports: "the Smith family lived in our town... Joe occasionally attended the stone church;
especially the revivals, sitting with the crows -- the 'sinners' -- up in the gallery. Not a little
of Mormon theology accords with the preaching of Elder Shay. It is significant that immersion
became the form of baptism practiced by the Saints..."
http://sidneyrigdon.com/books/2006Smth.htm#errata
My speculation is that Sidney Rigdon could have traveled to Manchester in 1824 to
investigate the strange stories of "men in the woods, hearing divine assurance that their
sins were forgiven -- of divine personages descending earthward to visit New Yorkers."
While in that region of the country, the natural place for him to stop and visit with
fellow Baptists, would have been Elder Shay's congregation, which Smith attended. Thus
Rigdon might have formed a passing acquaintance with the Smith family, almost by
accident, in 1824. At least he might have written a letter from Pittsburgh to Shay in
Manchester, requesting more details regarding local claims to divine manifestations.
At that time, the chief Campbellite doctrine was uniting all of the various churches ---
that tenet would gradually slip out of sight, when their effort to "restore the ancient gospel"
became a more important concern. But in 1824 you might have best distinguished a
Campbellite by his message calling for Christian unity.
One last relevant point:
What did Lucy Mack Smith have to say, in her son's biography, of a preacher coming into
the Palmyra area at that time? -- a man who was trying to unite the Christian churches?
Why did she not supply the name of that traveling preacher who so caught her attention?
Dale
.
