I'm opening a new post here that will examine very closely the origins of the Book of Mormon (BoM). Most of this information is taken from the book "Who Really Wrote the BoM. Spalding Enigma" by authors Wayne Cowdrey, Howard Davis and Arthur Vanick. The book is loaded with the testimonies of the people that lived in around Smith, Rigdon and Cowdery at that time.. I suggest that you buy a copy of this book to see how the BoM evolved...
"Who Really Wrote the BoM, The Spalding Enigma"
This book I believe is the key to understanding the Book of Mormon's origin..
To get started, I will give you a brief overview to the history of the BoM and the Spalding account.. In 1812 (a number of years before the Book of Mormon was ever written) Reverend Solomon Spalding wrote a novel about a group of ancient sailors who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean only to land in America and build an ancient civilization there. Doesn't this sound familiar?? Spalding however died later in 1816 and his manuscript was never published. However some years later in March of 1830 came the Book of Mormon showing some of the exact same parallels as the Spalding manuscript. How did this happen?
Some of these parallels can be found at the following website The Dale R. Broadhurst "Spalding Papers":
http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/SCIOTA/Bown01a.htm
or
http://www.geocities.com/lds_research/s ... lding.html
To get to the meat of the book and understand its purpose, here is one excerpt form the book called "Who Really Wrote the BoM."
"Once the basic facts of the Spalding Enigma have been set forth, it becomes clear that the issue is whether evidence supporting a conspiracy by Joseph Smith and others to transform Solomon Spalding's manuscript into The Book of Mormon is strong enough to overcome the inevitable question of reasonable doubt. With that in mind, let us begin by noting that present Mormon objections (in red) to the Spalding Enigma can be effectively reduced to a list of four basic points:
Objection 1. Sidney Rigdon was neither employed by nor otherwise connected with any print shop in Pittsburgh. In fact, no evidence exists to indicate he was ever in Pittsburgh prior to his having moved there in 1822, six years after Spalding's death (though his son, John Wycliffe Rigdon, does admit his father visited the city as early as 1818). Moreover, Sidney Rigdon denied any involvement in the Spalding Enigma in a strongly worded letter written in May 1839, in reply to allegations made by Spalding's widow.
Counter - New evidence has been uncovered to show that Sidney Rigdon did indeed frequent Pittsburgh during the years 1812-16, thus putting the lie to more than 150 years of often vehement Mormon denials.
Objection 2. The origin of the so-called Spalding Enigma can be traced to the vindictive designs of one Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, who engineered the entire myth as part of a personal vendetta against the Mormons for their having excommunicated him in 1833. Indeed, all of the statements of non-Mormon witnesses collected by Hurlbut and others like him between approximately 1830 and 1900 are unacceptable as evidence because of their antiMormon bias.
Counter - New evidence shows that Doctor Hurlbut was clearly not the originator of the Spalding theory. At worst, he was merely the first person to attempt to investigate it in a sincere effort to determine whether it held the key to uncovering the true origin of The Book of Mormon.
Objection 3. Although The Book of Mormon was published in March 1830, no credible evidence exists to show that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had dealings with each other prior to December of that year, thus ruling out all possibility that Rigdon could have supplied Smith with the text for that work.
Counter - There is now compelling evidence that Rigdon did in fact visit Joseph Smith from 1827-1829 just prior to the BoM publication in March 1830. There are eight different people who seem confident in asserting that Rigdon and Smith were together in New York on what appear to have been at least six or seven different occasions between the spring of 1827 and the summer of 1830. All of these people offer what they clearly believe to be either reliable memories or equally valid information received from others.
Objection 4. Finally, comparisons of The Book of Mormon to an earlier Solomon Spalding work called Manuscript Story-Conneaut Creek, a copy of which was recovered in 1833 from an old trunk in Hartwick, New York, show no similarities whatsoever between the two works. In addition, Mormons have consistently argued that no credible evidence exists to suggest Spalding ever wrote anything else, that Manuscript Story-Conneaut Creek and A Manuscript Found are one and the same, and that this alone is sufficient to dispel the Spalding Enigma.
Counter - A considerable body of evidence exists indicating that Solomon Spalding wrote a second novel entitled A Manuscript Found, which disappeared prior to 1833.
Summary - In order to properly present Solomon Spalding's case, and to demonstrate that all of the above objections are historically deficient, it will be necessary to examine these points individually and to carefully consider the facts surrounding each of them."
I'm going to be examining this book very closely. Anyone who wants to join in please do... I'm going to start with Objection 1 and work my way down to the other objections. Please note, some of the information I will be providing has been gathered from the other posts in this forum as well..
