hall@vice.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) (09/20/90)
In article <Sep.17.03.11.28.1990.17306@athos.rutgers.edu> emory!dragon!cms@gatech.edu writes: > I have a copy of a Book of Mormon Critical Text, however, I am >hunting for a critical text of the Pearl of Great Price. Does anyone >know where I can obtain such a copy without (cough) encouraging >further mailings from the Mormon Church? Thanks in advance. As far as I know no such thing exists. Even the critical text for the Book of Mormon is not in any way official but is put out by an organization totally independent from the church. If you have specific questions about the PoGP I will attempt to answer them but I do not consider myself any sort of textual critic. > Also, someone earlier discredited the Spaulding theory saying that >his manuscript had been found and did not bear any relation to the >Book of Mormon. This is patently false. The most serious and >earliest proponents of the Spaulding theory never claimed that the >manuscript in their possession was the manuscript upon which the Book >of Mormon was based. Rather, it was their opinion that the manuscript >was a major revision of a since-lost earlier work and it is this >earlier work upon which the Book of Mormon is based. The theory is >_not_ discredited. Well, you are partly correct. The current "Spaulding theory" claims that the BoM is based on a still lost manuscript. However the original theory found in E.D. Howe's book _Mormonism Unveiled_ specifies by name Spaulding's _Manuscript Found_ (hereafter abbreviated "MF") as the source. That is the same title on the Spaulding manuscript found in Hawaii. Since MF is obviously nothing like the BoM the original theory is clearly discredited. Current Spaulding theory holds that there was another manuscript called, as I remember, _Manuscript Story_ that formed the basis for the BoM. Perhaps a summary of this theory would be in order. (My main source is volume 2 of Kirkham's _A New Witness for Christ in America_ p122ff. This book includes many original letters and other documents bearing on the issue.) E.D. Howe ran an Ohio newspaper and was an enemy of the LDS Church. It appears that he was in collaboration with D.P. Hurlburt who had been excommunicated from the church for immorality. It is not clear which of the 2 formulated the theory published in Howe's book. The theory is: 1. Spaulding left MF with a printer, attempting to get it published. The printer however did not publish it. (This much is quite certain, records indicate that it is true. Also now that we have MF we can understand why it was not published, it was not likely to sell many copies.) 2. Sidney Rigdon obtained MF from the printer and used it as the basis for the BoM which he intended to have published by the same printer who had provided him with the manuscript. 3. The printer died so Rigdon started looking for some other way to publish without him. He heard of Joseph Smith in upstate New York (all this was happening in Ohio) and contacted him. 4. Rigdon provided the manuscript to Smith in installments and Smith added his "fertile imagination" to get it printed. There were confusing claims as to the fate of the actual manuscript. There is an existing letter from Hurlburt indicating that he obtained it from Spaulding's widow and carried it to Howe without so much as opening it to read any of it. Others claim he sold it to the church for $400 and it was then burned. Since the manuscript exists today, the latter claim is obviously disproven. This theory already has a couple of severe problems: 1. Why did neither Howe nor Hurlburt make public the contents of MF? If, as they claim, it formed the basis of the BoM prompt publication would have been the best way to achieve their avowed aim of debunking the BoM. 2. How did Rigdon hear of Joseph Smith? Although there are published references to his vivid imagination (as well as conflicting accusations that he was dull and unimaginitive) they all date from after the time he announced the forthcomming BoM. Ohio was a long way from upstate New York and only particularly newsworthy events in NY would have been known in Ohio. The first reliable record we have of contact between Rigdon and Smith is well after the publication of the BoM. Anyway, this was the Spaulding theory until MF turned up in Hawaii in the hands of a former newspaperman from Ohio. (I believe he came across it looking through some papers he had mostly on slavery.) At that point the BoM critics concluded there must be another Spaulding manuscript. This is the second Spaulding theory, the one proposed today. I know of no believable evidence in its favor, it seems to me to be a desperation measure resorted to when the first theory failed. I think it suffers from both problems listed above plus the fact that we now have a long sample of Spaulding's writing to compare with the BoM. The 2 works simply do not show evidence of common authorship. I think that any literary critic examining the BoM and the Spaulding work we have would agree that they are not by the same author. Wordprint analysis also gives a very low probability that the BoM is by the same author as the known Spaulding manuscript. (See _The Book of Mormon, New Light on Ancient Origins_, article by Larson and Rencher.) I conclude that the original Spaulding theory is totally discredited and that the second theory has no evidence in its favor and significant evidence against it.