Trevor wrote:
I was remarking to Don the other day that I was amused that the missing Book of Abraham manuscript arguments struck me as eerily familiar....similar to the Spalding/Rigdon arguments. Here we have a missing Book of Abraham manuscript (Spalding) that supposedly informed a purportedly later text, the KEP (The Book of Mormon), and the evidence that the missing Book of Abraham (Spalding) manuscript exists is clear in the anomalies found in the later KEP (Book of Mormon), which include what can only be quotations of an earlier text, the D&C (King James Bible/View of the Hebrews/Spalding novel). Hell, we have even been promised a computer word analysis (can anyone say Jockers?)!
No wonder marg and MCB were really digging on Will's paper. You slot in Rigdon as the author of the early Book of Abraham manuscript and there you go!!! Perfect fodder for conspiracy theorizing, which alone ought to give anyone pause.
Why should "conspiracy theorizing" for the Book of Mormon or for the Book of Abraham, be a cause for anyone to pause? We know a God wasn't involved with either. We definitely know in both cases it is not readily apparent how or who the creators are, or exactly how they went about the process. So we are left with figuring out in each case how those involved created the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. To some extent one must think like a con-man and not take at face value various claims of participants. There are some things a con man has control over and others not. For example in the case with the Book of Mormon, had Smith been the sole author he would have likely spent some time on his own writing, preparing in advance, in previous years what he would write and others would likely have observed this. That is something he couldn't really control. It would be hard for him to hide his preparatory work. So this works against the Smith only theory. Had he been the sole author and simply dictated the Book of Mormon without any material prepared in advance he would likely have needed to review, rewrite portions but evidence doesn't indicate that either. So the assumptions that Smith must be the sole author isn't supported by how it would have typically played out had he truly been the sole author. This is why the presumption that Smith worked alone and was the sole author for the Book of Mormon doesn't hold. So it is reasonable to assume a conspiracy was involved in the production and creation of the Book of Mormon given the evidence.
As far as the Book of Abraham...I haven't looked at the technical details and I'm not interested in going down that rabbit hole. To me it makes no difference whether those involved in its creation assigned meaning to the papyri characters and then composed the Book of Abraham or instead first wrote the Book of Abraham and then assigned meaning to the characters after. Whether Smith was the only one who created the contents of the Book of Mormon or others were involved makes little difference as well. It just seems to me the easiest way to go about a con of claiming one could translate Egyptian papryi would be to first write the storyline text and then assign meaning to the characters as opposed to the reverse. In addition, if I were Smith I might try to leave evidence which would confuse those later trying to figure how I did go about it. So it's quite possible that all this evidence everyone on these boards are trying to analyze will lead them to the wrong conclusion if they fail to take into account the mind of a con man/con men who deliberately plant misleading evidence.
Talking about this in terms of whether or not Smith (and/or anyone else) believed he truly received a revelation from a God is in my opinion naïve. The presumption should be he was a con man, since he fully admitted to that in his pre Mormon days and the evidence supports that as well.
Anyhow my main point Trevor is that the evidence supports a conspiracy for the Book of Mormon. Whether Smith acted alone for the Book of Abraham and the KEP, or in a conspiracy I don't have an opinion on, since I haven't spent much time looking into it and don't intend to either.