Dale,
DID OLIVER COWDERY DELIVER THE SPALDING-RIGDON MS TO JOSEPH SMITH IN HARMONY?
This seems to be a necessary part of the Spalding theory. How else could Joseph Smith replace the lost 116 pages without Rigdon getting a replacement text to him in some manner? In this way, the theory become ever more cumbersome as it must multiply ad hoc assumptions to stay afloat. However, like Pratt's bringing the Book of Mormon to Rigdon, Cowdery meets Joseph Smith through a series of fortuitous events. It seems to me that Spalding advocates must deal with several key issues:--
1. If Cowdery's mission was to deliver Rigdon's revised MS to Joseph Smith, then why did he stop in Manchester and teach school during the winter of 1828-29?
2. Cowdery's meeting the Smiths and learning about the plates was by chance encounter with the Smiths in his capacity as a teacher in the district where Hyrum was the superintendent and a boarder at their home.
3. If Cowdery has the MS and already knows about the plates, why does he pursue Joseph Smith Sr. to tell him about them?
4. If Cowdery was an accomplice, why does he want to try his hand at translation?
5. If Cowdery had just delivered Rigdon's MS, why does the content of Mosiah seem to reflect aspects of Smith and Cowdery's relationship?
These are some of the issues to which Dale attempted to responded. But note that--as with Pratt--Dale's thesis interprets or dismisses the source, rather than the other way round.
If Cowdery is Rigdon's accomplice, why does he stop with the Smith's for the winter to teach school?
Like Parley P. Pratt's story, it was rather fortuitous that Cowdery's brother Lyman suggested to
Hyrum Smith that his brother teach in the Manchester school. It was also fortuitous for the Smiths
to offer Cowdery room and board -- by which means he was able to learn about the plates and get an
introduction to Joseph Jr.
Unfortunately all of this comes from a single source and is not reliable history. Until more confirmation
can be located in other old (preferrably older than the 1850s) sources, the choronology of events here
is provisional, at best.
Are you saying Cowdery didn't stop with the Smiths in Manchester and teach school? In 1845, Lucy recalled the circumstances of meeting Oliver for the first time about September 1828.
Soon after we returned there came a man into our neighborhood by the name of Lyman Cowdray[.] he went to Hyrum (as he was one of the principle trustees) and applied for the school. It was settled that he should have it and the terms were agreed upon--But the next day he brought his brother Oliver and requested them to receive him in the place of himself as buisness had arisen that would oblige him to disapoint them but he would warrant the prosperity and Good conduct of the school in oliver's hands if the trustees would accept of his services--All parties were satisfied and Oliver requested my husband to take him as a boarder at least for a little while untill he should become acquainted with his patrons in the school.
--Lucy Smith, "Preliminary Manuscript," 90, Frags. 1-10, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah. (EMD 1:373)
Lucy's history is not flawless, but it is generally accurate. She worked closely with Martha Coray on the MS, and is essentially a firsthand account. So I would be cautious about brushing it off as "not reliable history." Even if some of the details are inaccurate, she is not mistaken about Cowdery teaching school in Manchester and living with them in their home.
Cowdery's teaching school in Manchester was remembered by Ezra Pierce (EMD 2:84), John H. Gilbert (86, 546), Lorenzo Saunders (134, 213), and Oliver's step-sister, Lucy P. Young (397). John Stafford said Cowdery taught school in his house (87, 122-23). Sylvia Walker said: "I attended school to Oliver Cowdery with Carlos, Sam Bill, Catherine, and Lucy Smith" (190). Christopher Stafford said: "Oliver Cowdery taught school one winter" (194).
It was while living with the Smiths that Cowdery learned about the plates, and began asking questions about them. Lucy recalled:--
He had not been in the place long till he began to hear about the plates from all quarters and immediately he commenced importuneing Mr. Smith upon the subject but he did not succeed in eliciting any information from him for a long time. At length however he gained My husbands confidence so far as to get a sketch of the facts which relates to the plates [p. 90] (EMD 1:374)
It does not make sense that Lyman, who had an occupation of his own in the Lyons/Arcadia area, would have
gone so far afield as Manchester seeking part-time work, and leaving his family behind. So, I question the
notion that Lyman was first contracted to teach school in Manchester and then backed out, allowing his younger
brother to fill in for him. On the other hand, Mother Smith knew very well who Lyman was, since he soon after was in court, "persecuting" the earliest Mormons on behalf of Lucy Harris. Mother Smith may have some wires crossed here.
Lucy did know Lyman, so perhaps she knew things that made his employment as a teacher less perplexing. At most, you have unanswered questions. I think you exaggerate when you say he would have had to leave his family since Arcadia was the next township over from Palmyra. From the school house on the Canandaigua Road to Newark was less than ten miles, which on horseback would have been no problem.
Lyman was no stranger to the Palmyra/Manchester area. An entry in Cains C. Robinson's Day Book for 17 March 1825 provides evidence that he had visited Palmyra as early as 1825. Lucy Harris was familiar enough with him to hire him in March 1829 (a month before Oliver went to Harmony to meet Joseph Smith) to prosecute Joseph Smith in absentia. Lucy says Mrs. Harris "sent word to Lyman Cowdray requesting him to
Come to Lyons ..." (EMD 1:383). Between 1833 and 1836, he moved the Manchester. Arcadia was the next township over from Palmyra, so it's not like he would have had to leave his family.
Regardless of exactly how Oliver got the job teaching, the fact remains that he did teach in Manchester during the winter of 1828-29.
On your site you reproduce the
Western Argus for 7 Nov. 1832, why Lyman states that in "in the year 1828 I was appointed Marshal of the Court Marshal of the 39th regiment of Infantry, of which Col. Ambrose Salisbury was President"--which could be the reason for changing his mind about teaching. Yet, you observe in a note:--
Note: Lyman Cowdery, Esq. was one of Oliver Cowdery's older brothers. At this point in time he was living near Newark, in Arcadia township, Wayne county, NY, where he served as a lawyer, a constable, a marshal, and a minor judge of the County Court. It seems unrealistic to suppose that Lyman would have agreed to abandon this line of work to become a school teacher in Manchester township, Ontario County, for the 1828-29 winter term. However, it is indeed possible that Lyman used his social and political contacts in the Palmyra area to arrange for his brother, Oliver Cowdery, to be employed in that position during that period.
--
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/NY/wayn1832.htm
So, despite your skepticism regarding the exact nature of Lyman's involvment, you seem to understand that Oliver's introduction to the Manchester school district was a fortuitous event, which poses a problem for you theory.
David Whitmer (and others) say that Oliver was previously (1826-27?) a school-teacher in the Fayette/Waterloo
area. He was receiving mail nearby during that period, so it may well be that Oliver was already a teacher in
the area. This possibility should be checked out --- but do not expect Richard L. Anderson or Scott Faulring to divulge any of their findings on the subject very soon --- I doubt there will be much additional information in the Cowdery
volume due out from BYU later this year, as it will mostly reprise the "vanilla" Cowdery symposium papers.
I'm not sure how this possibility contradicts Lucy's account.
Lorenzo Saunders recalled Oliver having taught the winter before (1827-28?) at the next school-house south of
the Manchester school near the Smiths. If true, this would have put Oliver in the Stafford family's money-digging
realm (see Bushman). It is altogether possible that Oliver's divining rod skills brought him into contact with
both the Staffords of southern Geauga Co., Ohio and the much closer money-digging Staffords of Manchester, NY.
At least these things ought to be investigated. It is possible that additional sources mentioning Oliver in NY in
the 1820s may yet turn up.
The Saunders account to which you allude is problematic. In his interview with Kelley on 17 Sept. 1884, he said that Cowdery "took school near us, taught three <or four> days, then got an other teacher to take his place and he went over to write for Joe" (EMD 2:134). This part was deleted for the signed affidavit, dated 20 Sept. 1884. Saunders gave the following similar statement to Thomas Gregg in 1885:--
As respecting Oliver Cowdery, he came from Kirtland in the summer of 1826 and was about there [in Manchester] until fall [1826] and took a school in the district where the Smiths lived and the next summer [1827] he was missing and I didn't see him until fall [1827] and he came back and took our school in the district where we lived and taught about a week and went to the schoolboard and wanted the board to let him off and they did and he went to Smith and went to writing the Book of Mormon and wrote all winter. The Mormons say it want [was not] wrote there but I say it was because I was there.
--LORENZO SAUNDERS TO THOMAS GREGG, 28 JANUARY 1885, in Charles A. Shook, The True Origin of the Book of Mormon (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Co., [1914]), 134-35. (EMD 3:176)
The first thing to notice is that Saunders claims Cowdery wrote for Joseph Smith in Manchester, rather than in Harmony and Fayette. Saunders' memory seems a little fuzzy after about 50 years. So, he needs some help. Most likely Saunders observed Cowdery preparing the printer's MS at the Smith's home in Manchester.
Cowdery probably began copying the manuscript near the beginning of July. Printing began in August 1829, and Joseph Smith left Manchester to return to Harmony near the end of September. Apparently, had reached Alma 36 by 6 November 1829 (see III.G.2, OLIVER COWDERY TO JOSEPH SMITH, 6 NOV 1829). It is possible that Cowdery tried to resume his teaching for the winter session of 1829-30. Whether or not this is correct, Saunders tries to link Cowdery's second teaching with his copying of the printer's MS, which makes his first teaching during the winter 1828-29. So, apparently, Saunders is dating events two years too early (which, incidentally, probably also explains some of his confusion about when Rigdon first came to Palyra). When one makes this adjustment, then Saunders basically follows traditional chronology by having Cowdery come in the "summer" of 1828 (instead of 1826), taking a teaching job in the fall (and therefore through the winter of 1829-30). The next "summer" (1829) Saunders says Cowdery was "missing", which corresponds to his being in Harmony and Fayette until the end of June 1829. Then Saunders says he saw Cowdery again in the "fall" of 1829.
If Cowdery brought a revised MS with him containing a rewrite of the lost 116 pages (which according to
Criddle included Rigdon's new Walter Scott-inspired theology), why did Cowdery want to try his hand at
translation only to fail?
Again, this is a single-source account originating with Smith and Cowdery themselves. If there was a conspiracy
in process, involving the two of them, we cannot simply take their word as being the unvarnished truth. I think
it would be better to try and find out exactly what Cowdery's "translation" efforts consisted of. According to some
experts, he drafted the 1835 D&C section on monogamous marriage, as well as the earlier EMS/BoC section on
the Articles of the Church. Did Cowdery himself write any of the Book of Mormon text? I would not close the door too fast
upon that possibility.
You confuse me. You begin by doubting OC's attempt at translation. Then you speculate about his possibly adding material to the Book of Mormon. You even try to support this theory by reference to Cowdery's authoring the section on marriage in the 1835 D&C, which wasn't a revelation any more than were the 1834 minutes of the organization of the Kirtland High Council (D&C 102; 1835 Sec. V), or Lectures on Faith. Nor is his 1829 revelation an indication that he was a conspirator any more than Hiram Page's revelations. D&C 9 implies that he tried and failed--"Now, if you had known this you
could have translated."
As for Cowdery serving as a middle-man between Rigdon and Smith, that is pure speculation. It may be true,
but until some sort of reliable evidence surfaces in support of that idea, it cannot be relied upon as history.
Well, we agree about something. But this raises the question--How did Rigdon get his replacement text to Joseph Smith, either in Harmony or Fayette?
However, if Cowdery was involved in writing/editing some of the O-MS, (or even attempted to offer some
contribution that was refused) such a possible involvment on his part neither negates nor demonstrates another
contribution from Rigdon. The better "contra" argument in this case would be that Cowdery's "word-print" has
yet to be conclusively shown within the Book of Mormon text; and that, even if there were such indications, conspiracy
theories grow exponentially more improbable with the addition of each new conspirator after the first two.
Again, I agree with you here. So you would seem to disagree with Shades and Criddle about Cowdery's involvement. But without Cowdery's help, how did Rigdon get the replacement MS to Smith after the loss of the 116 pages?
When Smith and Cowdery sit down to translate, why does the text seem to reflect issues emanating from their
new relationship--rather than from Rigdon's world?
Probably so, because that was exactly the situation -- much of the provisionally "identifiable" material does
"seem to reflect issues emanating from their... world," and that should tells that theirs was the final redaction
of the narrative. None of which rules out an underlying contribution from Rigdon. It would be useful if some
investigator were to tabulate the purported Rigdonite contributions and the purported NY/PA-originating
stuff in the book. But that would call for a "fancy chart" and the results could be summarily dismissed over a
quibble about some "more part" of the text, I suppose.
If you think the "final redaction" came from Joseph Smith, then Spalding and Rigdon become unnecessary.
This last point needs some background. In my analysis of the Book of Mormon, there seems to be an interweaving of
the Book of Mormon's text with Joseph Smith's ongoing experiences in Harmony.
I think that is very possible. A student at my wife's highschool wrote a novelette called "Huck Finn in Hawaii."
She used a couple of chapters of the basic Mark Twain story, but changed the setting to Hawaii and interjected
a bunch of local culture and events from her own family life. The results were not terribly good, but then again
not too bad for a 13-year-old. I suspect that something along these same lines could have been accomplished
by Smith and Cowdery, working from a pre-existing source, which they had "permission" to edit to some extent.
Well, if that was how the Book of Mormon was put together, then it wouldn't have been very good either. If Rigdon was needed because Joseph Smith's talents weren't up to the task, then his contributions would stand out like a college freshman trying to plagiarize parts of a term paper.
...I have argued that this pre-Cowdery dictation was probably limited to King Benjamin's three-part speech.
The following is a probable reconstruction... Appealing to a sense of guilt for inadequacy, which was both
universally applicable and particularly relevant to Harris’’s loss of the manuscript, Benjamin declares:
““For behold, are we not all beggars? ... And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name,
and begging for a remission of your sins”” (Mos. 4:19, 20). The speech becomes even more specific: ““And
I would that ye should remember, that whosoever among you should return the thing that he borroweth,
according as he doth agree, or else thou shalt commit sin; and perhaps thou shalt cause thy neighbor to
commit sin also”” (v. 28). In most cases, it is the borrower who bears the guilt, but in this case the lender is provoked to sin as well (D&C 3:9).
All of which falls outside of the "Spaldingish" sections of the text -- and probably also outside of the Rigdonite
sections. Spalding was dead and could not have crafted the "contemporary" additions. Rigdon was probably
far away, and his imput in creating "contemporary" stuff is problematic but not impossible. Smith and Cowdery
were on the scene and are the most likely of the "likely suspects" for such stuff (assuming it to be an addition).
But your Spalding witnesses said the historical parts were just as Spalding had written. It is a historical section of the Book of Mormon we are talking about. Why immediately set the Rigdon-Spalding MS aside and begin dictating your own text? Doesn't it follow that if Joseph Smith can dictate this text, as well as the replacement text of 1 Nephi to Words of Mormon, that he doesn't need Rigdon? And how could he do it in a way that flawlessly matches Rigdon's language. If you think Joseph Smith redacted Rigdon's writing, then why have such an unnecessary and massive conspiracy at all? I Rigdon could do it without Joseph Smith, why would he pick someone with such a bad reputation to bring forth his book in a folk magical manner? Doesn't make any sense either way.
April 1829 -- Oliver Cowdery and Samuel Smith arrive at Harmony... [and the Book of Mormon translation is then] virtually
paralleling Joseph’’s own story of translating the gold plates and their history of a lost race, Ammon’’s words to
Limhi include subtle responses to Joseph’’s immediate environment. Ammon’’s words also helped to define the relationship between Smith and Cowdery. Shortly after the new scribe’’s arrival, it became apparent to Smith
that Cowdery had come with his own competent gifts, one of which was working with a divining rod. Perhaps through Ammon’’s exchange with Limhi, Joseph was asserting the superiority of his gift over that of Cowdery’’s, as if to say that ““a seer is greater than a rodworker.”” ... D&C 6 ... D&C 7 ... etc....
Indeed --- much of your interpretation of things at this point may be right "on the money," but that does not
mean that you have uncovered the full story.
Were I you, Dan, I'd hold open at least the slender possibility that there is more to the story than that,
and that (perish the thought!) you may even be wrong in a few of your historical re-interpretations.
Allow a .000001% chance for a pre-Dec. 1830 Rigdon contact, and you'll have no enemy in me.
It is when you get so adament that you are so correct that you can summarily dismiss alternative possibilities,
that I lose patience with you.
I haven't summarily dismissed the Spalding theory. I have given what I think are very cogent reasons for rejecting it. Of course, I can't say that all my interpretations of the text are "on the money," but I think the text makes more sense coming from Joseph Smith, than from Rigdon or Spalding. All Spalding advocates can do is point to a few general doctrines that sound like Rigdon's pre-1830 teachings. But Joseph Smith's biography explains all them and more. If Rigdon somehow got a replacement text to Joseph Smith, why is it about a family that is divided over religion, specifically the meaning of the father's dreams? Why is one of those dreams like one of Joseph Sr.'s?