Ernest H. Taves, an atheist and critic of the Book of Mormon, offered the following criticisms of the Spaulding theory of Book of Mormon origins:
The question of the authorship of the Book of Mormon has been around since the day of its publication . . . [with respect to the Spaulding theory of Book of Mormon origins] is a questionable procedure.
The obvious first step here is to check Manuscript Found against the Book of Mormon . . . a manuscript in Spaulding’s hand was located . . . and it didn’t much resemble the Book of Mormon . . . The proper names in the two books are quite different. As will be seen later in this chapter, this is a matter of significance. In the Book of Mormon there is a pronounced tendency for such names to begin with Mor, and to end with on or an approximation to on. Mormon, Morianton, Moroni, for example. Names in the Spaulding manuscript sound altogether different, generally, and Spaulding’s tendency was to end names with a: Talanga, Sciota, Baska, Lobaska, Lamesa, and so on. Even more significant is that in this manuscript Nephi is nowhere to be found [contra those who claimed Spaulding contained “Nephi” and other BOM names] . . . It has been suggested that there was another Spaulding work, that the manuscript Hurlbut unearthed was not what everyone was referring to as Manuscript Found. This is, of course, a possibility, but the question might seem, at first glance, irrelevant. If there was another Spaulding manuscript would it not be stylistically similar to the one Hurlbut found, and thus have little in common with the Book of Mormon? Only a skillful writer indeed—a gifted parodist, for example—can significantly alter his way of writing. The signature is there, as with a thumbprint. Whatever else can be said of Joseph Smith and Solomon Spaulding, neither was a skillful writer. It suffices to read a page or two o Joseph Smith and of Spaulding to understand that those pages were written by different writers. The same would probably apply to any other manuscript written by Spaulding.
Hurlbut must have understood, and with great disappointment, that the manuscript he found was, in respect of supporting his thesis, worthless.
This still leaves us with questions about the affidavits. How could they be so far off the mark? First, we must agree with Brodie [in her biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History] that they were written by Hurlbut—and here we again invoke stylistic considerations. The affidavits have the tone of common authorship. Further, there is the almost universal insistence upon the “and it came to pass” phraseology, and upon the proper names of Nephi and Laman. Hurlbut put thoughts into the minds of his respondents, and words into their mouths. The Book of Mormon was fresh in their minds while their memories of Spaulding’s reading from his manuscript reached decades into the past. One would like to know more of Hurlbut here. We must suspect that he was not without his own manipulative abilities as he pursued what he was after. He was grinding an important ax, and his respondents were certainly also motivated: The manuscript of their brother, relative, and friend had been plagiarized—in what they considered to be a blasphemous cause—and they would have vengeance. So they remembered what Hurlbut suggested, thus giving birth to the Spaulding-Rigdon theory four years after Joseph had completed his manuscript. It made a stir for a time, but the theory cannot be supported.
That is, I believe, a fair statement of current argument against the Spaulding-Rigdon theory. It is not my intention here to attempt to reestablish that theory, but there are a number of questions that have been insufficiently addressed.
Brodie amassed so much data on this theory that she relegated it to an appendix so as not to impede the flow of her narrative. She concluded that, although the evidence seems impressive, the theory cannot be sustained.
Her main reasons are these:
1. Joseph Smith did have both the wit and learning to write the Book of Mormon.
2. The style of the Book of Mormon is alien to the “turgid rhetoric” of Rigdon’s sermons, while that style is consistent with Joseph’s later writings. (This is indeed the case—so much so that in a charming and ingenuous moment, in an attempt at autobiography, Joseph wrote that he had been “born of goodly parents”—phraseology identical to that of the first paragraph of the Book of Mormon.)
3. The only evidence supporting a meeting or meetings between Joseph and Rigdon prior to Rigdon’s conversion in 1830 is the testimony of two eyewitnesses—Abel Chase and Lorenzo Saunders. Chase said, fifty-two years after the event, that, as near as he could recollect, in 1827, when he was a boy of twelve or thirteen, he saw a stranger at the Smith’s house who was identified as Rigdon. Lorenzo Saunders said, fifty-eight years after the event, that he had seen Rigdon at the Smiths’ both in 1827 and 1828. Brodie’s supposition is that both men were remembering Rigdon’s appearance in Palmyra after his conversion. (Ernest H. Taves, Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon [Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1984], 52, 53-55, italics in original, comments in square brackets added for clarification)
Further Reading
