wcsa@cbnewsc.att.com (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, noone has attempted to create a critical text of the _Pearl of Great Price_ or the _Doctrine and Covenants_. However, quite a few textual comparisons have been done. Those individuals who are interested in variations in the text and their origins ususaly refer back to those studies. If you want a bibliography, send me some e-mail and I will try to compile such a list for you. > 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. The Spalding Theory (the added 'u' is not a correct), its origin, its variations, its support structure, and its continued popularity is a subject that could easily fill a monograph. Many years ago I wrote a summary that covered those areas, and it ran 98 pages. The Multiple manuscript approach to the Spalding Theory is not as simple as you would like it to be. Let me summarize: D.P. Hulbut, the real originator of the theory, heard a rumor concerning the work of one Solomon Spalding (lately deceased), he visited his widow, learned about a manuscript which he had written, and received permission from his widow to borrow the manuscript. Hulbut was so sure that he had the "source" of the BoM, that before he read anything he scribbled a note on the back stating that this was THE manuscript of Solomon Spalding and that was backed up by the statements of X, Y, and Z (where X,Y, and Z were the names of people who had signed statements linking the manuscript with the BoM). When he got the manuscript back to Ohio, Hulbut and E.D. Howe discovered that the manuscript didn't resemble the BoM at all, but they didn't have enough money to sponser another trip back to see his widow, so they *proposed* the existance of another text. Several decades later, people went back to Spalding's widow and daughter to interview them, and they always said that there was only one manuscript which Hulbut took and never returned. The single manuscript theory was pushed by a distant relative of Spalding named Ellen Dickinson, who wrote a number of articles on the subject for _Harper's Monthly_ in the early 1880s and later wrote _New Light on Mormonism_. The catch is that Dickinson collected a number of statements that directly supported a single manuscript (which she later suggested was stolen by Hulbut and sold to the Mormons for $300 dollars - Irony of Ironies). But in 1884, the manuscript which Hulbut had "borrowed" was rediscovered among the papers of the man who had purchased E.D. Howe's printing shop. After Spalding's manuscript was published in 1885, Dickinson recanted and the multiple manuscript theory came back into vogue, but the damage was already done. Today it is rather amusing to see the proponents of the Spalding theory either highly edit or creep around the problems raised by Spalding's widow, daughter, and Dickinson's work. As for whether or not the theory has been discredited, that is simply a matter for each individual to decide. -- Willard C. Smith att!iwsgw!wcsa wcsa@iwsgw.att.com "It's life, Captain, but not as we know it."