Joseph Smith Sr's Dream Compared To Lehi's Dream.

[_Trevor]

I don't think it fits in well at all.

It is rough, but there is an over-arching mythos that is maintained fairly well.

The authors were the same as Solomon Spalding?

No, indeed. Spalding didn't write the Book of Mormon.

[_CaliforniaKid]

I am champing at the bit to see Don Bradley's stuff come out. He has pretty decisively proven that the authors were the same. Unfortunately, it is not my place to spill the beans.

I didn't know about this. Yet another thing to wait for Don to finish...

Somebody kick him in the pants and tell him to hurry up, will ya?

[_Roger]

Trevor:

He has pretty decisively proven that the authors were the same.

The authors of what? The Book of Mormon and the 116 page replacement section? Please clarify. And if Don Bradley has indeed proven what you claim he has proven I am very interested in seeing the data. I hope he will post some more information on that here.

Also, I believe MCD is serious and may have a point. I believe Dale is working on that at the moment.

No, indeed. Spalding didn't write the Book of Mormon.

Of course he didn't. No one claims he did. What is credibly claimed is that a no-longer extant Spalding manuscript (in addition to other material including a KJVB) was very likely used by whoever did write the Book of Mormon. I doubt that Moroni or Mormon had access to either.

[_Ray A]

One thing that is crystal clear to me is what the Book of Mormon isn't. It isn't history. Theories as to how it was written are secondary to this. So the Spalding apologists, and the Mormon apologists, can spend 100 years trying to prove their theories, and in the end it still all means the same to me.

The one thing the Spalding Theory could do, if ever proved, is probably lead me to conclusively decide that it's a fraud. Historical religious fiction isn't necessarily fraud, in which case the Qur'an and the Baghavad Gita would be frauds too, and most parts of the Bible. The apocrypha and pseudepigraph would also be "frauds". So how many non-Mormon scholars have assigned the Book of Mormon to pseudepigrapha? At least 10 or 11, and even some "insider" scholars. How this can be any clearer, I don't know. You can take an apologist to the water, but you can't make him drink it.

I'm not sure what Don is trying to establish.

[_Roger]

Ray wrote:

So the Spalding apologists, and the Mormon apologists, can spend 100 years trying to prove their theories, and in the end it still all means the same to me.

If the Mormon apologists are correct, the Book of Mormon is the word of God and should be treated as such. If the Spalding apologists are correct it isn't--or God works in really mysterious ways.

[_beastie]

If Lehi's dream was based on a dream of Smith Sr., then what does that do to the chances that the Spalding Theory is correct?

I haven't studied this enough to feel comfortable making aggressive assertions, but I do tend to lean towards the Rigdon theory. My impression is that Rigdon spent some time putting together a serious religious document, which at least partly depended on the Spalding manuscript, which he knew he could never pass off, due to his past failures. So he wanted to find a charismatic personality to pull it off. (I'm reminded of Karl Rove who, when first meeting the charismatic George W. Bush, said "I can make him president".) During the "translation" process, however, Joseph Smith felt free to add his own bits and pieces, which were mainly designed to tie himself and his family into a prophetic tradition. Lehi's dream could be an example of Smith's own ideas, without necessarily destroying the premise that Rigdon was involved.

However, like Ray, I view this is a secondary issue, and could be persuaded by either camp with sufficient evidence.

[_Roger]

Trevor wrote:

If Lehi's dream was based on a dream of Smith Sr., then what does that do to the chances that the Spalding Theory is correct?

It doesn't hurt them, if that's the question. The S/R theory is compatible with material coming from Joseph Smith. A common problem with criticism of S/R is to oversimplify it as though it's all or nothing; ie. Spalding wrote the Book of Mormon, or Rigdon wrote the Book of Mormon or Smith did. That is not what the S/R theory postulates.

The idea is that a Spalding manuscript was used in Book of Mormon production (in addition to other materials). Not that Spalding wrote the Book of Mormon or that Rigdon did. Rather Rigdon purloined an unpublished manuscript and greatly embellished it while adding his own material consisting mainly of religious dogma. But after he placed it into the hands of Joseph Smith; Smith was then at liberty to add his own material. At first Smith probably didn't add a lot to the text, but after the loss of the 116 pages, I'm sure Smith had realized the opportunity of writing himself into prophecy.

Lehi's dream may have come from Smith. Or there may be another explanation. Either way it has no negative impact on the S/R theory.

beastie wrote:

My impression is that Rigdon spent some time putting together a serious religious document, which at least partly depended on the Spalding manuscript, which he knew he could never pass off, due to his past failures. So he wanted to find a charismatic personality to pull it off.

With the exception of "due to his past failures," I agree. I could be wrong, but I don't think Rigdon was conscious of his past failures or even saw them as failures--as opposed to weakness or blindness of everyone else. Rather, I think he was smart enough to know that if he were to come forth with the Book of Mormon people would almost instantly connect it with Spalding. Rigdon was living in OH, just a few miles from Conneaut. As it is, people began making the connection anyway, even though Rigdon had gone to pains to find a "prophet" in another state and then fake conversion. He was smart enough to know that a restoration based on a new Bible connected to Solomon Spalding through him was not going to be successful. If I'm right about that, then despite many failures, he, nevertheless, succeeded dramatically--even in spite of eventually being discovered.