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

[Gadianton]

Easy. The witnesses to the supposed "longer scroll" didn't describe any unique features that aren't in the papyrii that we still have. The only supposedly unique feature was that the scroll was "long." Now, "long" is an extremely subjective descriptor.

As I remember it, and my memory is way worse than your memory of Tarzan, but High Nibley's book The message of the Joseph Smith Papyri claimed that there were other features besides length, namely, multi-colored ink. I'm I mixing something up?

[Fence Sitter]

Easy. The witnesses to the supposed "longer scroll" didn't describe any unique features that aren't in the papyrii that we still have. The only supposedly unique feature was that the scroll was "long." Now, "long" is an extremely subjective descriptor.

As I remember it, and my memory is way worse than your memory of Tarzan, but High Nibley's book The message of the Joseph Smith Papyri claimed that there were other features besides length, namely, multi-colored ink. I'm I mixing something up?

The extant scrolls do have multi-colored ink.

See here, for example.

[Kishkumen]

So if an author’s two works are boring, then that accounts for why everyone magically remembers the names “Nephi” and “Lehi” even though they didn’t actually exist in the first one?

Please explain the connection, ‘cause I don’t see how.

I think the connection is pretty obvious. Their knowledge of the Book of Mormon, which contains that information, was fresher and connected to a more sensational set of claims than their knowledge of Spalding’s work, which was tedious and connected to nothing remarkable at all, at least aside from the claim about its connection to the Book of Mormon.

John Spalding:

I have recently read the Book of Mormon, and to my great surprize I find nearly the same historical matter, names, &c.; as they were in my brother's writings.

Martha Spalding:

The lapse of time which has intervened, prevents my recollecting but few of the leading incidents of his writings . . . .

I have read the Book of Mormon, which has brought fresh to my recollection the writings of Solomon Spalding

Henry Lake:

I left the state of New York, late in the year 1810, and arrived at this place, about the 1st of Jan. following. Soon after my arrival, I formed a co-partnership with Solomon Spalding, for the purpose of re-building a forge which he had commenced a year or two before. He very frequently read to me from a manuscript which he was writing, which he entitled the "Manuscript Found," and which he represented as being found in this town.

* * * *

Some months ago I borrowed the Golden Bible, put it into my pocket, carried it home, and thought no more of it.

Oliver Smith:

This was the last I heard of Spalding or his book, until the Book of Mormon came into the neighborhood. When I heard the historical part of it related, I at once said it was the writings of old Solomon Spalding. Soon after, I obtained the book, and on reading it, found much of it the same as Spalding had written, more than twenty years before.

It seems clear to me that these folks had a recollection of the basic story of Spalding, and then it was modified by recent contact with the Book of Mormon. Martha Spalding is the most interesting in this regard.

[Dr. Shades]

I think the connection is pretty obvious. Their knowledge of the Book of Mormon, which contains that information, was fresher and connected to a more sensational set of claims than their knowledge of Spalding’s work, which was tedious and connected to nothing remarkable at all, at least aside from the claim about its connection to the Book of Mormon.

It's like you paid no attention to anything I typed. You still think "Spalding's Work" is the Oberlin Manuscript and not Manuscript Found.

It seems clear to me that these folks had a recollection of the basic story of Spalding, and then it was modified by recent contact with the Book of Mormon. Martha Spalding is the most interesting in this regard.

I imagine you read one or more books in 2023. Think of your favorite one of those. Now, think of a book you read 22 years earlier, back in 2001. When you read the more recent one, did it contaminate your memory of the one from 2001, to the point that you thought the former's principal characters had the same names, that any groups or populations had the same names, that they traveled from the same points to the same other points, and that an error in the former appeared in the latter as well? Did you also falsely remember the same distinct phraseology in the latter (if any) as being in the former, too?

If not, why not? And if you're immune from it happening to you, what makes you think the Conneaut Witnesses had less cognitive acumen than you?

I still doubt that you read Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? If you had, you'd remember that there are many more accounts of people familiar with Solomon Spalding and what they had to say than those affidavits from Mormonism Unvailed that I copied-and-pasted. For yet another example, when Orson Hyde and Philastus Hurlbut were preaching in Conneaut and began reading from the Book of Mormon, remember how Nehemiah King blurted out, "Old Came-to-Pass lives again!"

Now why, in your opinion, did he say that?

[Kishkumen]

It's like you paid no attention to anything I typed. You still think "Spalding's Work" is the Oberlin Manuscript and not Manuscript Found.

"Spalding's Work" also includes the Romance of Celes, which Nielsen quotes in his HBMCP. He ought to have published that and let people judge for themselves what further resemblances to the Book of Mormon could be found therein. One thing I find a little humorous about Nielsen's discussion of this manuscript is his enthusiasm over the appearance of the term Urim and Thummim in the RoC, not recalling, I suppose, that the word never appears in the Book of Mormon, and, if I recall correctly, was introduced into Mormonism by Oliver Cowdery.

I imagine you read one or more books in 2023. Think of your favorite one of those. Now, think of a book you read 22 years earlier, back in 2001. When you read the more recent one, did it contaminate your memory of the one from 2001, to the point that you thought the former's principal characters had the same names, that any groups or populations had the same names, that they traveled from the same points to the same other points, and that an error in the former appeared in the latter as well? Did you also falsely remember the same distinct phraseology in the latter (if any) as being in the former, too?

If not, why not? And if you're immune from it happening to you, what makes you think the Conneaut Witnesses had less cognitive acumen than you?

You do know that this would be a pointless exercise. You can't just choose two random books read 20 years apart and ask whether you would conflate the two. In my experience as a person who, perhaps unlike you, struggles with a flawed memory, it is only when things have some kind of significant resemblance that I conflate them. Just last evening my wife and I were discussing a film that involved an elderly person taking a long journey, and we found that I had conflated the movie she was talking about with another film, and she realized she was conflating it with yet another.

So, I run into this kind of problem all the time. It could be that you have an uncannily accurate memory, and so for you this would not be an issue. You look at the Spalding claims in light of your own excellent memory, and you simply can't imagine conflating memories in this way. In my experience, this kind of thing is a routine part of life for those with a flawed memory.

I still doubt that you read Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? If you had, you'd remember that there are many more accounts of people familiar with Solomon Spalding and what they had to say than those affidavits from Mormonism Unvailed that I copied-and-pasted. For yet another example, when Orson Hyde and Philastus Hurlbut were preaching in Conneaut and began reading from the Book of Mormon, remember how Nehemiah King blurted out, "Old Came-to-Pass lives again!"

Now why, in your opinion, did he say that?

Uh, because it is found in the Bible. Luke 5:1. So, two authors used the phrase a lot in their works. It could be that Joseph Smith read A Spalding manuscript that did the same. We do not know and cannot test whether the Book of Mormon is just a plagiarism of that manuscript. Until that manuscript is found, the one that has all of the elements these witnesses claimed, we will not know whether Joseph simply plagiarized Spalding or not.

I do not think it is impossible. It could be the case.

But here's the thing, when I see something like the Romance of Celes and read what Nielsen has to say about its contents, I become less persuaded that Smith simply plagiarized Spalding. I can definitely see the possibility of Spalding influence, sure, but Spalding lards his writing with learned material that is so obviously bookish, whereas Smith, for the most part, sticks to the Bible, the Clarke commentary, and Josephus. Mentioning the Urim and Thummim in the Romance of Celes is a great example. If Smith had read that, then why did he not talk about the Urim and Thummim in the Book of Mormon instead of "interpreters" or a "Liahona"?

I am completely convinced that Smith and Spalding are products of the same intellectual and spiritual ferment. But that is obvious. Unfortunately, it is still insufficiently grasped, appreciated, and utilized in interpretations of Smith's work. Both Spalding and Smith wanted to write an American epic that drew from the epic tradition of the Old World. In a sense, both are using the Classics and the Bible. Spalding's debt to the Classics is much more obvious. Smith did not know them so well, and he did not utilize them so obviously. Still, in narrative terms, the Book of Mormon is the Aeneid (roughly speaking) and the Bible mashed together with a much more disturbing, amped up, and Revelation-style-apocalyptic ending than the Aeneid. The Aeneid is about the birth of a people and its civilization. The Book of Mormon is about the obliteration of both a people and its civilization.

Now, I am not reducing the Book of Mormon to being either just an Aeneid or a Bible. The influence of the Bible is so obvious that it requires no comment from knowledgable readers who are not biased by a faith investment in the Book of Mormon's origin myth (which is a magnificent one, by the way). The Aeneid is one of the most important milestones in Western epic. It brings together the journey of Homer's Odyssey in its first part (think migration of Lehi and family from Jerusalem and voyage to the New World), and the war and destruction of the Iliad (think of the destruction of the Nephites at the end of the Book of Mormon), but with the goal of explaining the origin of the Romans from the uniting of two peoples, Trojans and Latins, who had fought each other (think of the Book of Mormon's goal of explaining the origin of the Native Americans from the division of one people into two and the complete destruction of one of the two).

Once we appreciate everything the Book of Mormon does as a piece of literature, its diamond-in-the-rough genius becomes clear, as does its place in the Western literary tradition. I have a hard time seeing that all of this is just Spalding. And, even if we were to find a Spalding manuscript that was significantly similar to the Book of Mormon, I doubt that it would be the Book of Mormon we have in any of the details that matter. That said, we have to be open to the fact that Smith did not think twice about plagiarizing and lightly modifying text, as is clearly the case with the Biblical passages he cribs. I still think his choices in this are significant, but this does open up the possibility that he did the same with Spalding.

I am just too far from being persuaded that this is what happened though. At this point, I am much more comfortable thinking about Spalding's work being part of the same cultural ferment as the Book of Mormon. I am much less persuaded of the idea that Smith got ahold of Spalding and just copied his work. I do not dismiss these Spalding witnesses, but I do think there is a pretty natural explanation for their claims that does not require Smith to have plagiarized a Spalding manuscript. I am not saying it is impossible that he did that. I just see significant hurdles to making a case for it. The Romance of Celes doesn't really help. If anything, it hurts the case.

[Physics Guy]

Those recollections claiming to remember the names Nephi and Lehi do make me think that Smith might well have done some cribbing from Spalding.

On the other hand I gather that lots of people had notions about ancient Jews populating the Americas. I think that for a long time European Christians couldn't believe that the ten northern tribes of Biblical Israel could just have assimilated into the Middle Eastern landscape, but instead assumed that since they were still part of the Chosen People they must have stayed together and gone somewhere. Guessing where was a popular game; British Israelism was even a thing. Since no ten lost tribes had actually left any discernible trace in any places with history known to Europeans, the guess that the tribes had slipped out of Old World history by going to the New World was an inspiration that struck many people.

It was enough of a meme, in fact, that it's quite plausible that multiple people had the further idea of getting rich by writing popular historical fiction about it. If you're going to do that, you'll probably have some characters with names that try to sound Hebraic. So I can imagine that Spalding and Smith independently wrote stories about New World Israelites and that people who read Smith's fake Hebrew names decades after having read Spalding's confused them as being the same. Spalding's hero was definitely Nephi or Shmephi or Levi or something—oh no, it was Jephathaniah, dang that interviewer's gone now. Could have been that way as well.

Even if these memories were actually right about Spalding's lost book having had the same names and plot as the Book of Mormon, they seem to agree that Spalding's story had no religious component. If you strip all the religion out of the Book of Mormon, it's a much shorter book. So even on the most pro-Spalding theory, it seems that Smith expanded Spalding's book quite a lot, to reimagine it as a Biblical Apocrypha rather than a secular epic.

[Kishkumen]

Those recollections claiming to remember the names Nephi and Lehi do make me think that Smith might well have done some cribbing from Spalding.

On the other hand I gather that lots of people had notions about ancient Jews populating the Americas. I think that for a long time European Christians couldn't believe that the ten northern tribes of Biblical Israel could just have assimilated into the Middle Eastern landscape, but instead assumed that since they were still part of the Chosen People they must have stayed together and gone somewhere. Guessing where was a popular game; British Israelism was even a thing. Since no ten lost tribes had actually left any discernible trace in any places with history known to Europeans, the guess that the tribes had slipped out of Old World history by going to the New World was an inspiration that struck many people.

It was enough of a meme, in fact, that it's quite plausible that multiple people had the further idea of getting rich by writing popular historical fiction about it. If you're going to do that, you'll probably have some characters with names that try to sound Hebraic. So I can imagine that Spalding and Smith independently wrote stories about New World Israelites and that people who read Smith's fake Hebrew names decades after having read Spalding's confused them as being the same. Spalding's hero was definitely Nephi or Shmephi or Levi or something—oh no, it was Jephathaniah, dang that interviewer's gone now. Could have been that way as well.

Even if these memories were actually right about Spalding's lost book having had the same names and plot as the Book of Mormon, they seem to agree that Spalding's story had no religious component. If you strip all the religion out of the Book of Mormon, it's a much shorter book. So even on the most pro-Spalding theory, it seems that Smith expanded Spalding's book quite a lot, to reimagine it as a Biblical Apocrypha rather than a secular epic.

That's a fair assessment of the situation, in my opinion.

[TexasTurtleSnap]

Those recollections claiming to remember the names Nephi and Lehi do make me think that Smith might well have done some cribbing from Spalding.

On the other hand I gather that lots of people had notions about ancient Jews populating the Americas. I think that for a long time European Christians couldn't believe that the ten northern tribes of Biblical Israel could just have assimilated into the Middle Eastern landscape, but instead assumed that since they were still part of the Chosen People they must have stayed together and gone somewhere. Guessing where was a popular game; British Israelism was even a thing. Since no ten lost tribes had actually left any discernible trace in any places with history known to Europeans, the guess that the tribes had slipped out of Old World history by going to the New World was an inspiration that struck many people.

There are still some people who try to latch on to this theory.

I have a politically conservative coworker who believes he is Jewish, despite no lineage, despite genetic testing saying he is not. He is a "Messianic Jew" or a "Hebraic Christian" - the Jews for Jesus type, except he's not really Jewish.

His evidence for being Jewish?
* He has red hair, which he claims originated with the Jews.
* His last name, he claims, is affiliated with the tribe of Dan (that he believes settled in Britain)
* Genetic tests are more likely to give false negatives than false positives, so it's probably a false negative.

It was enough of a meme, in fact, that it's quite plausible that multiple people had the further idea of getting rich by writing popular historical fiction about it. If you're going to do that, you'll probably have some characters with names that try to sound Hebraic. So I can imagine that Spalding and Smith independently wrote stories about New World Israelites and that people who read Smith's fake Hebrew names decades after having read Spalding's confused them as being the same. Spalding's hero was definitely Nephi or Shmephi or Levi or something—oh no, it was Jephathaniah, dang that interviewer's gone now. Could have been that way as well.

You mean that fads and copycats existed in the 1820s, not just 2020s TikTok?

[Failed Prophecy]

Those recollections claiming to remember the names Nephi and Lehi do make me think that Smith might well have done some cribbing from Spalding.

Why does either name need an explanation at all? Nephi is from Judges. Lehi is from 2 Maccabees https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/2- ... pter-1/#36

I guess this thread has me thinking, what is this book trying to explain at all? Sure, I guess more background information about the context in which the Book of Mormon was written is nice, but it's pretty well established already. You don't need to talk about 17th century Catholic Jesuit scholars to understand how someone in Joseph Smith's time would have this information.

I guess if Spalding theory people want to theorize about a missing document, go ahead. The Q Source people have doing this for decades.

This reminds me a bit like the big dust up surrounding the Late Great War. It's a nice detail, another brick in the wall. I have nothing against it, and if someone finds it interesting, good for them. But in terms of understanding the Book of Mormon composition, it's not added much to the data or debate in hindsight. I'm guessing in a few years, this book will be about the same.

[TexasTurtleSnap]

You don't need to talk about 17th century Catholic Jesuit scholars to understand how someone in Joseph Smith's time would have this information.

Absolutely. I think it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity when trying to explain the data.

When I saw the cover of the book had a Jesuit, my first thought was of Jack Chick and Alberto Rivera's comic book "The Enchanter," where Mormonism (like everything else Chick hated) was a Jesuit plot.

Nielsen's theory is nothing like that, but I find it equally unconvincing.