Lars Nielsen's "How the Book of Mormon Came to Pass"

[huckelberry]

Rivendale, perhaps you could clarify your comment a bit for those of us who have not followed this particular theory. What papers do you mean being hidden, by whom, and when? What previous attempts of what fit in here?

Yes I have heard of a speculated Spaulding manuscript purloined by Rigdon from a printing office and secreted to Joseph Smith who somehow had a full plan of what to do with this odd gift.

I think Dr. Steuss’s observation about ideas mixing around in the general atmosphere are a better fit for the puzzle.

Sure. Most of the information Lars gives is not new except for the Kircher parallels. Athanasius Kircher was an eccentric French writer and apparent promoter of parlor tricks that focus on measuring spiritualism. Things like (hidden) magnetic movements of objects according to a persons spirituality. He wrote several fictional writings that had the word Mormon and Nephi in them. Some stories had parallels to the Book of Mormon in which BYU apparently bought and locked them in their vaults. (Apparently spending a lot , before they were wealthy) The main problem is establishing connections between Rigdon and Smith early on and his theory requires several people involved which is borderline conspiracy theory. Kircherisms, is his term that is used to make connections between the Book of Mormon and the original writings. It seems more likely Joseph was influenced by people who were influenced by Kircher. The church hid the first vision accounts and bought fake Hofmann papers simply to hide them.edit words

Thanks Rivendale , I can see what you are saying clearly now. I do wonder if the purchased papers are still hidden or have become public. Well I would be surprised if they really proved much one way or the other. I imagine diffusion of themes of interest remains far more likely as you point out

[Fence Sitter]

Weird how the Church tries to hide documents that don't prove Smith made stuff up.

[Rivendale]

All of this is similar to the Mosiah priority. Smith had no idea where the lost pages were so he became very nervous. Same thing now. Church leaders are vigilant for source materials that can create doubt and will go through grat lengths to hide them. Not destroy but hide.

[Nevo]

If you want to see what Kircher documents the Church has "hidden" in BYU Special Collections, you can find the list on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/athanasiusk ... 1/mode/2up

[Failed Prophecy]

So, started to read the book today, and, again, I am unimpressed. Sure, it is fun, but it basically raises interesting coincidences and possibilities. There is nothing that convincingly connects Kircher, Monmaur, John Smith, and Joseph Smith. I don’t see that apologists have much to worry about here, and I really hope no one loses their faith because of this book. Honestly, it’s just not that good. It is a fun read, kinda, but it has nothing earth-shattering to say. It just says, what if? Or, how could this be a coincidence?

Thank you for the "return and report." I generally don't like to prejudge a book based on interviews an author has where the author cannot fully explain their arguments and evidence. Asking them to explain all of that would eliminate the need to buy the book. Your description is about what I would expect from the interviews.

[Kishkumen]

Thank you for the "return and report." I generally don't like to prejudge a book based on interviews an author has where the author cannot fully explain their arguments and evidence. Asking them to explain all of that would eliminate the need to buy the book. Your description is about what I would expect from the interviews.

One of the closest possible links between John Smith and Kircher is the appearance of Kircher’s work in a list of books in the Dartmouth library from about 1850. So it may be that Kircher’s work was available for John Smith to read and maybe he read it. Maybe.

[Nevo]

One of the closest possible links between John Smith and Kircher is the appearance of Kircher’s work in a list of books in the Dartmouth library from about 1850. So it may be that Kircher’s work was available for John Smith to read and maybe he read it. Maybe.

That mention in Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review in 1850 (when the Dartmouth College library had about 6,400 volumes) is Nielsen's only piece of evidence to link Smith to Kircher.

But Nielsen is dissembling here, because he knows that the Dartmouth College library didn't contain Kircher's 3-volume Oedipus Aegyptiacus or any other works by Kircher during Smith's lifetime (when it had less than 2,900 volumes).

I know that he knows this because he said in last week's Mormonism LIVE! podcast that he'd found "Spalding Lectures" listed in the 1809 catalogue. That catalogue, which was published the year Smith died, also showed that the library didn't contain any books by Kircher. There were no books by Kircher in the library in 1775, when Smith started teaching at Dartmouth, and there were no books by Kircher in the library in 1825, years after his death. The student society libraries didn't have any books by Kircher either (see here and here).

Not only does Nielsen claim that John Smith "read, translated, and studied the works of the immortal encyclopaedist," in last week's podcast appearance he also stated that "Solomon Spalding went deep on the life and works of Athanasius Kircher. He may have even written his master’s thesis on Kircher—this is speculation—which volume appears in the 1809 catalog of books maintained by Dartmouth College, where Professor John Smith was also the campus librarian. That book, however, is now missing, unfortunately."

Again, Nielsen is making stuff up and he knows it. Solomon Spalding never wrote a master's thesis. His master's degree was conferred automatically 3 years after graduation upon payment of $5, which was the custom at the time. After earning his bachelors degree in 1785, Spalding studied for the ministry. He didn't stay on at Dartmouth doing "graduate work" in Egyptian Coptic and studying Kircher. This is all make-believe.

Pressed by RFM to say more about the missing "Spalding Lectures," Nielsen elaborated:

In the 1809 catalog it’s called the Spalding Lectures. But we don’t have any metadata on the contents, and we know that it’s missing. And I dug, and I asked people at the Rauner Special Collections at Dartmouth, and we hoped that it was misfiled. Couldn’t find it anywhere. More work might reveal something but it looks like it’s lost. Maybe it’s possible, but that book wouldn’t have been something like a prelude to the Book of Mormon or a first draft or something like that. That book would have been his master’s thesis.. . . . It’s possible that if that were to be discovered, and I’ve got lots of things that are on my list that I would invite people to chase down, how nice would it be if were to find that book somewhere and see that there were Kircherisms in it or evidence that Solomon Spalding had learned about Kircher to the level of detail that we see in the Book of Mormon. That would be a great find.

LOL. Yes, that would be a great find. If only there were some way to locate this mysterious book, which Nielsen hasn't been able to find "anywhere" despite years of research in dusty basements and talking to archivists. (On cue, commenters on the video suspected it must have been intercepted by Mormon agents and locked in a vault somewhere.) I don't know if Nielsen has dissociated from reality, is an incompetent researcher, or is straight-up lying, but the book was still in the Dartmouth Library in 1825 and can be read online here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= ... 8902&seq=9

[Kishkumen]

One of the closest possible links between John Smith and Kircher is the appearance of Kircher’s work in a list of books in the Dartmouth library from about 1850. So it may be that Kircher’s work was available for John Smith to read and maybe he read it. Maybe.

That mention in Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review in 1850 (when the Dartmouth College library had about 6,400 volumes) is Nielsen's only piece of evidence to link Smith to Kircher.

But Nielsen is dissembling here, because he knows that the Dartmouth College library didn't contain Kircher's 3-volume Oedipus Aegyptiacus or any other works by Kircher during Smith's lifetime (when it had less than 2,900 volumes).

I know that he knows this because he said in last week's Mormonism LIVE! podcast that he'd found "Spalding Lectures" listed in the 1809 catalogue. That catalogue, which was published the year Smith died, also showed that the library didn't contain any books by Kircher. There were no books by Kircher in the library in 1775, when Smith started teaching at Dartmouth, and there were no books by Kircher in the library in 1825, years after his death. The student society libraries didn't have any books by Kircher either (see here and here).

Not only does Nielsen claim that John Smith "read, translated, and studied the works of the immortal encyclopaedist," in last week's podcast appearance he also stated that "Solomon Spalding went deep on the life and works of Athanasius Kircher. He may have even written his master’s thesis on Kircher—this is speculation—which volume appears in the 1809 catalog of books maintained by Dartmouth College, where Professor John Smith was also the campus librarian. That book, however, is now missing, unfortunately."

Again, Nielsen is making stuff up and he knows it. Solomon Spalding never wrote a master's thesis. His master's degree was conferred automatically 3 years after graduation upon payment of $5, which was the custom at the time. After earning his bachelors degree in 1785, Spalding studied for the ministry. He didn't stay on at Dartmouth doing "graduate work" in Egyptian Coptic and studying Kircher. This is all make-believe.

Pressed by RFM to say more about the missing "Spalding Lectures," Nielsen elaborated:

In the 1809 catalog it’s called the Spalding Lectures. But we don’t have any metadata on the contents, and we know that it’s missing. And I dug, and I asked people at the Rauner Special Collections at Dartmouth, and we hoped that it was misfiled. Couldn’t find it anywhere. More work might reveal something but it looks like it’s lost. Maybe it’s possible, but that book wouldn’t have been something like a prelude to the Book of Mormon or a first draft or something like that. That book would have been his master’s thesis.. . . . It’s possible that if that were to be discovered, and I’ve got lots of things that are on my list that I would invite people to chase down, how nice would it be if were to find that book somewhere and see that there were Kircherisms in it or evidence that Solomon Spalding had learned about Kircher to the level of detail that we see in the Book of Mormon. That would be a great find.

LOL. Yes, that would be a great find. If only there were some way to locate this mysterious book, which Nielsen hasn't been able to find "anywhere" despite years of research in dusty basements and talking to archivists. (On cue, commenters on the video suspected it must have been intercepted by Mormon agents and locked in a vault somewhere.) I don't know if Nielsen has dissociated from reality, is an incompetent researcher, or is straight-up lying, but the book was still in the Dartmouth Library in 1825 and can be read online here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= ... 8902&seq=9

That’s pretty bad, Nevo. Yikes. If this is the level of scholarship in the book, then it would be a complete waste of time to spend any time with it. I already found it completely unconvincing with a cursory reading. This information raises questions about the competence and/or integrity of the author. Extremely disappointing. I enjoy honest speculation, as long as everyone is clear about its limits. I don’t think anyone benefits from grossly incompetent or dishonest pseudo-scholarship.

I hope someone starts to address these problems in a more public and accessible forum.

[Kishkumen]

Probably the friendliest accurate take on this book is a review I read on Amazon.com:

If you loved Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code and your favorite chapter of An Insider's View of Mormon Origins was "Moroni and The Golden Pot," you'll enjoy this whodunnit spanning nearly three centuries and two continents. There are lost manuscripts, hidden caves, mysterious strangers, secret meetings, and Jesuits. Lots of Jesuits. Did you always feel like the Spalding-Rigdon theory was too parsimonious an explanation for the Book of Mormon? Gird your loins for a deep dive into the Kircher-Smith-Spalding-Rigdon-Pratt-Smith theory! The author clearly had fun writing this. Looking forward to the sequels.

I love this because it is exactly what I thought of: Dan Brown.

So what are we to make of Nielsen's trigger warning?

This book is not written for true-believing Mormons (TBMs). If you are a TBM and you do not yet have a robust support system outside of the Mormon Church, do not read this book. If you continue to read it, you accept the responsibility of managing your immediate or eventual faith crisis in a way that will not result in harm to yourself or others.

Is Nielsen a conspiracy theorist? He has to be. The question is what degree of self-consciousness and sincerity exists in his conspiracy-theorizing. Am I to understand that Nielsen lost his faith in the LDS gospel because of this "research"? Or did he lose his faith and then decide to go completely down a rabbit hole pursuing this line of speculation? Based on the date of his initial departure from Mormonism, 2010, I am guessing it was the latter.

I am bursting with questions, and none of them are particularly flattering of Nielsen's decision both to publish this book as a self-avowed "student of Mormon history" and to add the above trigger warning. One would hope that Nielsen's own decision to leave the "Mormon Church" was grounded in something more serious than conspiracy theories. How does he feel about passing off a conspiracy theory as the kind of history that will likely lead people to leave their faith? Honestly, I would be interested to see what he has to say about this.

I mean, this trigger warning, fixed at the beginning and on the back cover of a work of sloppy scholarship, fictional recreation, and conspiracy theory, lends the book a disingenuous kind of faux-gravitas that suggests he and everyone else should accept such writings as a reasonable basis for making important life decisions. Indeed, he is inviting his reader to do exactly that: leave the LDS Church because of his conspiracy fairytale.

My guess is that there is a deep level of cynicism underlying these decisions. He must think that it is OK to produce false history in response to something he views to be false history. As long as he can help his reader see the similarities between Kircher and Smith, then the fact that he completely fails in establishing any real relationship between them is OK so long as his reader comes to the conclusion that Smith, being a latter-day Kircher, is a fraud and leaves Mormonism over it.

I can't say there haven't been times when I was tempted to fight fire with fire, as it were. You know, kinda tempted to come up with a Q conspiracy theory that completely undermines Q's evolving mythos, vel sim. I really hope Nielsen did not spend too much time on this project, however. He probably did, though, and I guess I can sympathize with the hurt that may have motivated him to do so. It is a matter of wounded pride. Who would want to be the person who was taken in by a bargain-basement Kircher, or even Kircher himself?

Page 227 provides some interesting insights into Nielsen's psychology:

I daydreamt that I might be the first person in the modern era to discover the true meaning of other proper nouns like 'Nephi.' (Hey, some dreams do come true!) Needless to say, I was shell-shocked to learn that in Egypian 'mon' does not mean 'good,' nor does 'more' (or "the contraction" 'mor') mean 'more.' I was genuinely baffled at why Smith would try to pass off an English-Egyptian compound word as the given name of someone who was born a thousand years after Nephi, a Hebrew-speaking Jew, had [sic] landed in America around 600 BCE. Then I looked up mormo, and my heart sank further into my stomach. Had Smith made up the word 'Mormon' from the Greek monstress as a way of mocking his future readers and followers? Might he have hoped all along that in becoming a prophet he could suck the tithing and lifeblood from his converts? Did he continue to mock them by coming up with a transparently ridiculous English-Egyptian explanation to which he signed his prophetic name? Or was he really that thick?

All of this in a book that posits a completely ridiculous explanation for the origins of the Book of Mormon.

OK, yes. I mean, I sympathize. Sure, many of us have been there. We were told how amazing Joseph Smith was, and then we see evidence that seems to call this into question. For curious and intelligent minds who had youthful thoughts of explicating the Mormon mysteries, that has to be a huge letdown. But I am not seeing anything new in Nielsen's answers. It is more of the "how dare Joseph Smith" followed up by trashing of the people who took it all seriously into an adulthood benefited by education in applicable disciplines. The "how dare he" part consists of a lot of unanswered questions and very little attempt to understand anything. False etymology has a long history. Joseph Smith did not invent it, and those who engaged in it were not, ergo, charlatans.

I find Nielsen's feelings in his conversion away from Mormonism to be genuine and moving, but I do not think he does himself a lot of favors in revealing to the world in such a book where all this seems to have led him. He is either deeply cynical or not very good at critical thought. The trigger warning is in really poor taste. He either believes this research should lead people out of the faith--more fool him--or he put it there to try to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. I can't see publishing anything like this in good faith.

He should have finished the novel. As history it is garbage.

[Res Ipsa]

Thanks for the review, Reverend. I think I'll give it a pass.

The take home may be that whatever makes a person a "true believer" persists through a change of belief.