The Spalding Enigma: Investigating the Mysterious Origin of the Book of Mormon

By Wayne L Cowdrey, Arthur Vanick and Howard A Davis

Readers' Edition

Where did The Book of Mormon come from?  Who was Solomon Spalding and what connection did his manuscript have with Joseph Smith?  To answer these questions, this book critically examines key historical documents, personal testimonies, and records of 19th-century Mormon history to examine this

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Polycarp Publishing House
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947707269

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cover-image, The Spalding Enigma - Investigating the Mysterious Origin of The Book of Mormon

The Spalding Enigma

Investigating the Mysterious Origin

of The Book of Mormon

Readers’ Edition

Wayne L. Cowdrey – Arthur Vanick – Howard A. Davis

With a Foreword by Dr. Gene Edward Veith

The Spalding Enigma

Investigating the Mysterious Origin of The Book of Mormon

by Wayne L. Cowdrey, Howard A. Davis, and Arthur D. Vanick

Readers’ Edition

(Expanded Scholars’ Edition Also Available)

Originally Published 2005 by Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO, under the title:

Who Really Wrote The Book of Mormon? – The Spalding Enigma.

Significantly expanded, revised, edited, and corrected, 2007-2018.

Copyright (c) 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018 by Wayne L. Cowdrey, Howard A. Davis, Arthur Vanick, co-authors; Wm. Moore, ed.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 1-947707-26-4

ISBN-13: 978-1-947707-26-9

Library of Congress Control Number:  2018933170

Published by St. Polycarp Publishing House

www.stpolycarppublishinghouse.com

[e-mail]

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

Respectfully dedicated to Solomon Spalding, M.A. (1761-1816), that he may finally rest in peace; and to the many good people, both past and present, whose words and deeds have made this work possible.

He who sets out to find signs and omens will find enough of them. He that expects visits from angels will find them as abundant as he who in the age of witchcraft found a witch in every unseemly old woman.

- Alexander Campbell

I have here only made a collection of culled facts, and have brought together nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.

- Montaigne

And if God had not spoken, if the angel of God has not appeared to Joseph Smith, and if these things are not true of which we speak, then the whole thing is an imposture from beginning to end. There is no half-way house, no middle path about the matter; it is either one thing or the other.

- Mormon Apostle John Taylor (Journal of Discourses 21:165)

The only thing new in the world is the history you never knew.

- Harry S Truman.

A saint is a dead sinner, revised and edited.

- Ambrose Bierce

Matilda-McKinstry-c1880

Solomon Spalding’s Daughter, Matilda Spalding McKinstry

January 17, 1805 – September 17, 1891

Probably taken at Washington, D.C. c.1880

CONTENTS

Foreword

By Dr. Gene Edward Veith

This book is an updated, expanded version of Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), with the authors adding more evidence and answering the counter-arguments of Mormon apologists [Editor’s note: Dr. Veith is referring, in particular, to the Expanded Scholars’ Edition of the book]. This new version actually consists of two books: a Readers’ Edition, which makes the case that Solomon Spalding’s novel about the ten lost tribes of Israel in the Americas was a major source of the Book of Mormon; and an Expanded Scholars’ Edition, which lays out the evidence in meticulous detail.

As such, The Spalding Enigma makes important contributions to the history of Mormonism, though it will prove disconcerting for Latter-day Saints who believe that their sacred text was inscribed on golden plates and translated from Reformed Egyptian by Joseph Smith using seer stones. But the research given here—the painstaking sifting of correspondence, newspaper accounts, city directories, and other primary records—makes important contributions to American history as a whole.

As the authors trace the comings and goings of Solomon Spalding, the pioneering Mormons Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery (a distant relative of one of the authors), as well as the witnesses who heard the novel being read, the printers who handled the manuscript, and other principals in the interwoven stories, the early days of the American republic come vividly to life.

America was a nation of entrepreneurs. Nearly everyone whose life is chronicled here was taking advantage of this land of opportunity, starting one venture after another, failing but starting over, moving from place to place to what they optimistically expected would be ever-greener pastures.

Solomon Spalding, for example, was born and educated in Connecticut, where he fought in the Revolutionary War. He then became a Congregational preacher, but after he got married he moved to Cherry Valley, New York, where he operated a general store, preached on the side, and served as a school principal. He then started a land speculation business, which led to a move to Conneaut, Ohio. That led to financial difficulties, so he started an iron foundry. That did not go so well either, so then followed a sojourn in Pittsburgh selling pictures and then a move to Amity, Pennsylvania, where he and his wife ran an inn.

Spalding’s big dream, though, was to be a novelist. He wrote several works, including the ambitious Manuscript Found depicting the adventures of ancient Hebrews in the New World, written in King James English. Once his books were published, Spalding thought, they would make enough money to solve the financial problems that dogged him throughout his life. He gave Manuscript Found to a Pittsburgh publisher, but he lacked the funds to subsidize the printing and then the publisher lost the manuscript for a while. Unfortunately, before his literary ambitions could come to fruition, Spalding got sick and died. But he had entertained his family, friends, and customers by reading his manuscript out loud. Years later, when Mormon missionaries came spreading the new religion, the stories from their new Bible—including characters with the names Nephi and Lehi—sounded familiar. Though the manuscript disappeared, a number of people told about hearing or reading Spalding’s novel, noting its similarity to the Book of Mormon.

The authors try to establish that the similarly ambitious and well-traveled intimate of Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, knew Spalding, was in Pittsburgh when he was, frequented the publishing house where the manuscript was submitted and was a close friend with one of its employees. In doing so, they piece together indications that Rigdon copied the manuscript, added in his own religious convictions, and gave it to Smith, who turned it into a sacred text for a new religion.

Indeed, America was a land not only of business entrepreneurs but also religious entrepreneurs. A key to the spirit of innovation and invention was the way Americans looked at their country and the new culture they were founding. America was seen as the New World, in stark opposition to the Old World, with its tyrannies, corruption, and worn-out traditions. Freed from the stifling social, economic, and cultural order of the Old World, the New World was fertile ground for new ideas and new ways of life, including new religions.

Americans in the early 19th century were innovative, forward-looking, and freedom-loving; but this in no way conflicted with the fact that they were also highly religious. The First Great Awakening of the 18th century took place primarily in the context of traditional churches and traditional theologies. The Second Great Awakening in the first half of the 19th century was spread by revivals that took place throughout the nation and all the way to the frontier. Largely disconnected from traditional churches, these revivals gave rise to an intensely personal and distinctly American kind of piety, one that was highly individualistic and subjective, stressing a direct experience with the supernatural.

Many of the spiritually awakened believed that the Old World churches of Europe and their American counterparts, with their archaic rituals and dogmatic creeds, whether Catholic or Protestant, were spiritually dead, even apostate. But now God by His providence has raised up a novus ordo seclorum, in the words inscribed on the Great Seal of the United States of America, a new order of the ages. This climate was ripe for the formation of new churches, new theologies that stretched the definition of Christianity, and new religions.

Curiously, much of this religious innovation emerged out of a single, miniscule region out of all the vastness of America: the western arm of New York state, a mere 17 counties, located roughly between the Finger Lakes and Lake Erie, a span of 124 miles. This region was called the Burned Over District by evangelist Charles Finney, so scorched it was by the Holy Spirit.

This epicenter of the Second Great Awakening would gave us the Millerites, who were convinced of Christ’s imminent Second Coming, a movement that branched off into the Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This region also gave us the Shakers, who foreswore all sexual activity, and the Oneida Community, which practiced group marriage. The Burned Over District was also the birthplace of the Spiritualist movement, with its séances and mediums who professed to channel the dead. This was also the home of Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel, which sought to save not souls but society by building a politically-progressive Kingdom of God on earth. Also from this region was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the pioneering feminist. It was in this same district of western New York that Joseph Smith lived and is said to have received his revelations and discovered the golden plates on which were written the Book of Mormon.

I was surprised to see the ties between Mormonism and another movement: the Restorationists, also known as Campbellites, which would become a mainline Protestant tradition, including a conservative denomination (The Christian Church), a very conservative denomination (The Church of Christ), and a liberal denomination (The Disciples of Christ). The Restorationists—who began not in western New York but in Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania—sought to unite all Christian churches by applying the principle no creed but the Bible. (I myself grew up in the Disciples church, with its liberal theology, its social gospel, and its ecumenical priorities. Later, I would embrace the Old World theology of Lutheranism.)

Although the Restorationists would become part of the mainstream of American Christianity with particularly strong ecumenical interests, for the 19th century pioneers of this movement, a corollary of no creed but the Bible was that the historic creeds were symptomatic of the church having drifted away from the Bible and from the model of Apostolic Christianity. Christianity had become obscured in the Old World, but it would be restored in the New World with the creation of a new America-based church.

Sidney Rigdon had been a Restorationist preacher, working hard to create this new church, until he took all of this much, much further, becoming one of the original Mormons and perhaps its first theologian. Instead of restoring Christianity to a more primitive ideal, he would promote a new kind of Christianity altogether, one so different from that of all other churches that it would constitute a different religion altogether. This new faith would be distinctly American, not only in its allegiance but in its claim that Jesus Christ appeared to ancient Israelites on American soil. No longer would Rigdon preach the Restorationist goal of returning to the model of the apostles. His new faith would have new apostles. Going beyond no creed but the Bible, Rigdon would find—or, if this book is correct, would devise—a new Bible.

To read The Spalding Enigma is to join the researchers as they dig through dusty archives, peruse newspapers from two centuries ago, pore over yellowed letters written by people long dead, and, in so doing, reconstruct the past. Historical scholarship is like detective work. It has to do with assembling clues, sifting evidence, weighing competing explanations, and coming to conclusions. Each fact recovered is a piece of a larger puzzle. The historian or detective must assemble all of these pieces, all of these facts, so that they fit with each other and come together to form a larger picture.

To be sure, this processing of evidence requires interpretation and logical analysis, so different researchers might arrive at different inferences. But historical research operates in the realm of facts, not opinions; the goal is not formulating subjective positions but finding objective truth. The authors of The Spalding Enigma take the readers along with them in this search for truth. Laying out their evidence in such detail allows us readers to make our own inferences and draw our own conclusions.

At any rate, all agree that uncovering the Book of Mormon takes digging. Joseph Smith dug into a mound in Western New York and claimed to have unearthed a set of golden plates. The authors of The Spalding Enigma dig into the historical record and claim to have unearthed a very different kind of fabrication.

Preface

The past can never be empirically proved, it can only be reconstructed.

- Bart D. Ehrman

Imagine it is evening and you are standing on the bank of a wide river. Being familiar with the area, you know there is a large house located some distance away on the other side of the water, even though you cannot see it due to intervening foliage. When you look in the direction where you know that house is located, you see a bright glow on the horizon and a large pall of smoke rising. Even though you cannot get to the house because there is a river between you and it, you recognize there are two reasonable probabilities that would explain what you are seeing: either the house is on fire, or its owner is burning a large heap of trash in his yard. The probability that you are seeing a house on fire and not just a pile of burning trash increases with the brightness of the glow and the size of the plume of smoke.

The historical evidence we have presented in this volume might therefore be likened to the bright glow and the distant pall of smoke. Most readers will probably find it sufficient to warrant the explanation we have suggested, while others, unwilling to concede the destruction of a beautiful house without more convincing proof, will continue to believe (or hope) that the evidence of fire has been greatly exaggerated.

More than a dozen years have passed since the predecessor to this volume, Who Really Wrote The Book of Mormon? – The Spalding Enigma, was published in 2005. Afterwards, through on-going research, the authors continued to accumulate new material until, at last, it is possible to bring forth this fully revised, expanded, corrected, and updated edition that you are now reading. This is not merely an old work in new clothes; this is a new work clothed in old finery and settled comfortably in newly refurbished rooms.

As new information came to light over the years, it inevitably brought with it new insights and new perspectives. Naturally it goes without saying that some of these have necessitated the revisions of old hypotheses in order to avoid conflicts and promote consistency.

The issue here is not the writers, nor is it the many millions of good, industrious, and productive people for whom faith in Joseph Smith and his Church is an ongoing way of life. We are dealing with history here, not religion. Our concern is not dogma, but rather about stitching together past events, and in so doing, making a scholarly effort to place them into a reasonable perspective so they may be better understood by those of us whose lives are half-a-dozen or more generations removed from the events themselves. Under the best circumstances, reconstructing history is not easy. It becomes vastly more difficult when those who played key roles in important events have actively sought to conceal the truth from posterity.

Naturally, there will be some who claim that much of this work goes beyond the available documents -- a fatal flaw in historical texts according to some writers, as exemplified by Barbara Tuchman in Practicing History, (NY: Knopf, 1981), 18. While such criticism is no doubt valid under ideal circumstances, there are certain occasions -- the early life of Oliver Cowdery, for example -- when the available documentation is so sparse that stitchometry and logical deduction are often the only recourse. Consider, for instance, the question of how and where Oliver obtained enough training to be considered a journeyman printer. Although everyone accepts the fact that he was well versed in the art by the time he arrived at the newly established Mormon colony at Kirtland, Ohio in 1831, not a single piece of documentation has yet been uncovered that unequivocally reveals the source of his proficiency. The logical conclusion voiced herein, that his cousin, Benjamin Franklin Cowdery, was most likely the one responsible, came only after a long and tedious process of collecting disparate pieces of information, then carefully eliminating possibilities. The same process eventually led to the determination that Solomon Spalding's Manuscript Story - Conneaut Creek and his A Manuscript Found must have been two different compositions.

Certainly speculation and conjecture do not constitute history in and of themselves. Yet no one can doubt their effectiveness in stimulating the research necessary to transform today's conjecture into tomorrow's reality or, alternatively, to consign it to history's dust bin. With the publication of this volume, much new ground has been broken. Although much work remains to be done, everything presented in this volume deserves to be carefully considered. In the words of Prof. Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The past can never be empirically proved, it can only be reconstructed.

To those who will acknowledge that we have presented much new information, but with a distinctly anti-Mormon tone, let it be said that we are not anti-anything -- we are pro-history. Our purpose is to stimulate further inquiry into a subject that has long cried out for attention. As such, this work should be considered a beginning, not an end; and even devout Mormons in search of the truth should welcome it.

The Spalding theory for The Book of Mormon’s authorship did not begin as a conjectural hypothesis, but rather as the positive assertions of some of Solomon Spalding’s old associates, who recognized that the Saints’ new scriptures resembled some of Spalding’s unpublished fictional writings.

- Dale R. Broadhurst, historian

Interpretation of Frequently Used Terms

In addition, many of the quotations which appear in this volume incorporate nineteenth century words or phrases which are now archaic or obsolete. In such cases, every effort has been made to inform the reader of their intended meaning in modern terminology.

Dramatis Personae

Short Biographies of the Major Characters in the Enigma

Solomon Spalding, M.A. (1761-1816)

A Revolutionary War veteran, ex-preacher, small-time land speculator and inn-keeper who, in 1812, began to compose a novel entitled A Manuscript Found, but died before he could arrange for it to be published.

image-1.png

Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844)

A believer in things esoteric and occult whose youthful activities led to his arrest and conviction as a con-artist in 1826 and who was widely regarded by his neighbors as a person of ill-repute. In 1827 he claimed to have been contacted by an angel named Moroni who allegedly provided him with plates of gold upon which the text of The Book of Mormon was supposedly inscribed in hieroglyphics. In 1830, he, along with a number of family members and a few close associates, founded a new religious movement which would ultimately become known as Mormonism.

image-2.png

Rev. Sidney Rigdon (1793-1876)

A controversial renegade Baptist clergyman who preached throughout western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. In 1814, he quietly borrowed Spalding’s A Manuscript Found from the Pittsburgh publisher to whom Spalding had entrusted it, and surreptitiously made a copy of it. In 1826 he provided that copy to Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith but remained under cover during the process of coverting Spalding’s manuscript into The Book of Mormon. In 1830 he openly joined the Mormons and quickly became one of the leaders of the new religion.

image-3.png

Oliver Cowdery (1806-1850)

A cousin of Joseph Smith who, in his youth, was an itinerant peddler of pamphlets and scribal services throughout western New York as well as a dabbler in the art of printing. In 1826, while visiting Ohio, he obtained a copy of Spalding’s A Manuscript Found from Sidney Rigdon and he, Rigdon, and Smith became partners in a venture to rewrite the manuscript and publish it as The Book of Mormon. In 1830, he became co-founder and Second Elder of the Mormon movement which eventually evolved into today’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Rev. Robert Patterson, Sr. (1773-1854)

A pioneer Presbyterian minister who, in 1812, joined with his brother Joseph to form the Pittsburgh printing and publishing establishment of R & J Patterson. It was there that Solomon Spalding took his novel, A Manuscript Found, in hopes of having it published.

Jonathan H. Lambdin (1798-1825)

In 1812, at the age of fourteen, he became a clerk in the R & J Patterson establishment. While there, he met and was befriended by Sidney Rigdon and almost certainly (although perhaps innocently) assisted Rigdon in obtaining and copying Spalding’s manuscript.

Eber D. Howe (1798-1885)

A prominent editor, printer, and newspaper publisher from Painesville, Ohio, who became one of the earliest and most vocal critics of Mormonism. In 1834, he published Mormonism Unvailed, in which he presented a body of evidence asserting that The Book of Mormon had been derived from Solomon Spalding’s unpublished novel A Manuscript Found.

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Doctor Philastus Hurlbut (1809-1883)

After joining the Mormons in Ohio in the spring of 1833, Hurlbut was dispatched on a missionary journey to northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania. There he encountered some of Solomon Spalding’s former friends and neighbors who informed him that The Book of Mormon was actually Spalding’s old novel A Manuscript Found, with which they were familiar because Spalding, who had lived at Conneaut, Ohio, before moving to Pittsburgh, had shared portions of it with them while writing it. This discovery soon led to Hurlbut’s leaving Mormonism and embarking on an extensive investigation aimed at discovering and exposing the real origin of The Book of Mormon. In early 1834, he turned his findings over to Eber Howe, who published them later that same year in his book Mormonism Unvailed.

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David Whitmer (1805-1888)

A friend of Oliver Cowdery who became one of the earliest adherents to Mormonism and one of the so-called Three Witnesses (along with Cowdery and Martin Harris, below) to the authenticity of The Book of Mormon.

Martin Harris (1782-1875)

A prosperous, but gullible, farmer whose supreme credulity led him inextricably into Joseph Smith’s orbit until he was finally conned into financing the printing of The Book of Mormon. Eventually fleeced of his wealth, he was dumped by Smith in Ohio where he lived in virtual poverty for many years until, in extreme old age, he was resurrected to prominence by Brigham Young and moved to Utah, where he died.

Dr. Warren Cowdery, MD (1788-1851)

Oliver Cowdery’s eldest brother, with whom he kept in close contact for the rest of his life. Dr. Cowdery began to practive medicine in western New York in 1816. The records of his medical practice as well as his correspondence with his brother have offered valuable contributions to this volume.

Benjamin Franklin Cowdery (1790-1867)

A cousin of Oliver Cowdery and one of western New York’s pioneer printers and editors. It was he who, between 1822 and 1828, taught Oliver much of what he knew about printing,

William Morgan (1774-1826?)

A shady and mysterious character who appeared in Rochester, NY, in the early 1820s claiming to be