Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_Roger]

Glenn:

Like I said, you get an A for persistence but the case you are trying to make just simply isn't there. I assume you are reading Dale's posts, so I don't need to repost his words. If you are truly reading Dale's posts I don't see what point you think you have here?

Again, the chronology of the development of the Spalding/Rigdon authorship claims are very important to keep in mind.

The idea that Hurlbut invented a connection to Rigdon is simply incorrect. There is no evidence that Hurlbut even knew about a possible Rigdon connection until he met with Spalding's widow. The first public accusation naming Rigdon (that we know of) as the likely mastermind behind the Book of Mormon occurred in 1831 before any of what we are discussing was known. It was simply a logical deduction that at that time had no supporting evidence.

But once Hurlbut met with Spalding's widow in late 1833, he had a primary suspect: Rigdon. But even at that point, he had no way to tie Rigdon to the manuscript other than the suggestion of Matilda Spalding.

It took subsequent interviews and research to bring us to the point we are at today and it could have gone another way. It might have turned out that indeed Rigdon had never gone to Pittsburgh before 1822, for all anyone knew in 1833. But evidence shows he was there, and as Dale points out, he was likely there quite often.

The latest piece of evidence (the mail-waiting notice) wasn't even discovered until recently. But it is extremely important because it provides proof that Rigdon was receiving mail in Pittsburgh and it supports Rebecca Eichbaum's testimony.

The opportunity is there Glenn. It doesn't take much time to slip a manuscript in a leather bag. You acknowledge that:

That he could have and indeed probably did go to Pittsburgh at various times is a given. I don't think that any LDS is arguing the case. The farm, by all reports was maybe twelve miles from Pittsburgh. There was no rural mail delivery at the time. I doubt that there were any grocery or hardware stores at Peter's creek. Sidney would have had to visit Pittsburgh to obtain supplies and mail. But all reports also indicate that he lived on the farm and worked it until 1818.

So then what is your point? At any of those times he could have purloined a manuscript, brought it home, copied it and then returned it the next time he went to Pittsburgh.

Maybe that is all you need. If that were all needed to convict a person, just about everyone ever put on trial would be found guilty.

As I noted in an earlier post, Rigdon also had the opportunity to perform robberies in Pittsburgh during that period of time. There are many times between 1810 and 1818 that we do not know Rigdon's whereabouts. Robberies did occur in Pittsburgh during that period of time. Therefore, Rigdon performed some of those robberies. The ones that were not solved, of course.
We actually have more evidence that Rigdon performed some robberies for pecuniary gain than we do that he stole a manuscript. We have historical evidence for the robberies. We have no evidence that the manuscript was ever stolen.

Glenn with all due respect, this argument is just silly. You are purposely overlooking the rest of the case. We are not convicting Rigdon merely because he had multiple opportunities to commit the crime. That's just nonsense. There is additional supporting evidence that even you had to acknowledge in the form of his theology and philosophy in the Book of Mormon. Remember that?

Beyond that, there is the suggestion of Matilda Spalding herself that Rigdon had gotten a hold of her husband's manuscript. There is the fact that Rigdon rose from a nobody to second in command in record time. There is the fact that the Book of Commandments proclaims that Rigdon "wast sent forth, even as John, to prepare the way for me, and before Elijah which should come, and thou knew it not." There is testimony of those who knew him before his (fake) conversion to Mormonism that he knew a book matching the description of the Book of Mormon would be coming out soon. There is the fact that Rigdon unsuccessfully attempted to take control of the church. There is the fact that Rigdon claimed to know the content of the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon and even gave us a translation thereof. There is the fact that Rigdon instructed his wife to burn all his papers upon his death which she did. There is testimony by his own grandson that his involvement in Book of Mormon production was a family secret. And then there is his confession (!) to a fellow in St. Louis at a time when he was angry with the Latter-day Saints.

All of this is above and beyond the fact that Rigdon certainly had ample opportunity to commit the crime.

Eichbaum does not give the times she purportedly saw Rigdon and Lambdin together. Was it in the 1813 to 1814 time frame? When Lambdin was fifteen and sixteen years old? Rigdon would have been about twenty or twenty-one. That was the time period when the manuscript was with Engles. But it was returned because the Amity witnesses heard and saw Spalding reading from it. Was Rigdon already into his religious ferver then? He was not baptized until May of 1817.

So what? In the first place all he has to do at that point is borrow a manuscript he finds interesting, copy it and later return it.

If Eichbaum saw Rigdon and Lambdin together after that time, it is irrelevant because the manuscript was not anywhere around the Patterson or Lambdin offices, according to the historical information we have.

And if he copied it earlier, your whole point is irrelevant.

Eichbaum was not involved with the post office in 1816 and 1817 according to her own statement. That is the time frame that Solomon's widow would have brought the manuscript to Patterson, and retrieved it.

So what? If he had already copied it, what is the point here?

Patterson does not indicate that he even showed it to Engles, but let it lay around, most likely in his office until he determined not to publish it. Lambdin was not associated with the Book Store. According to Patterson, the widow retrieved. She left the area in 1817 which would probably delineate the end time frame.
As I said, there is more evidence that he stole into establisments unawares and stole cash from the tills than there is that he purloined a manuscript. There is historical evidence that unsolved robberies occurred. There is no evidence that the manuscript was ever purloined.

See above.

Dale's textual evidence has no scientific or literary basis. Have you been following the Ben McGuire series with Dale?
Until you start using evedentiary methods that pass the common rules of preponderance of evidence and when you start using accepted methods of literary science, you will have a small audience. Of course, when you start using those methods, the S/R theory is ashes.

Who wrote Shakespeare? Has that debate been solved using the scientific method? Or are books still being sold proposing the next possible suspect?

SOMEBODY(IES) wrote the Book of Mormon. The list of most likely suspects isn't that long. The fact is you (and Ben) are demanding higher than realistic standards because you have a vested interest in the outcome. Ben will no doubt complain at that suggestion, but the fact is we are not in a classroom attempting to sort meaningless parallels from meaningful ones. WE ALREADY HAVE CLUES BEFORE WE EVEN GET TO THAT POINT THAT THERE IS A CONNECTION BETWEEN RIGDON/SPALDING AND THE Book of Mormon and Ben flatly refuses to acknowledge the value to ANY of that but instead insists the parallels are meaningless from the start because he can find others like them. But he can't. He can't find parallels that come with the pre-existing historical criteria these carry with them. That is virtually impossible which makes these completely unique. Like you, he simply rejects all of this out of hand and insists we see things his way and ignore the historical context that sets these parallels apart from others. That is his choice and that is your choice, and that is fine, but the world doesn't work that way. If you want to ignore and downplay the supporting evidence, that is your choice, but we are not bound to follow the rules you attempt to impose on our investigation.

All the best.

[_Roger]

Ben wrote:

And you are not seriously accepting Joseph Smith's version of events or presenting them as one of the options here.

It's pretty difficult to accept Joseph Smith's version of events when accepting them requires the belief that the original language, for which there is no evidence, was a real, spoken and written language. It's pretty difficult to imagine what the Book of Mormon might have read like in that completely unknown language. The fact is all we have to go on is Joseph Smith's English rendition--which is itself a strike against taking any of his claims seriously.

What do you suggest we do to remedy that conundrum?

[_Uncle Dale]

...
So then what is your point? At any of those times he could have purloined a manuscript, brought it home, copied it and then returned it the next time he went to Pittsburgh.
...

There is some testimony from the Amity area, saying that Spalding suspected
Sidney Rigdon of having taken a manuscript he had submitted for publication.

But that testimony is not very strong, and is only supported by one "Conneaut"
witness (Leffingwell). I'm inclined to think that The Spaldings knew the Rigdons,
because Sidney's aunt Mary Rigdon lived very near Mr. and Mrs. Spalding. And
Solomon may have been unable to locate his submitted manuscript for a period
of time -- but there is practically no reliable evidence showing that he then
accused young Sidney of having stolen the document.

There is a much simpler possibility -- that Sidney Rigdon spend some time in
Pittsburgh copying pages from a Spalding manuscript story, and that Sidney
was unable to replace the document in its usual resting place in Engles'
print-shop, for a matter of days or weeks.

There was not much crime involved, if that is truly what happened. Young
Rigdon was a self-educated scholar, but a poor one who could not afford to
buy books. Quite likely he fell into the habit of hand-copying reading material
he discovered to be interesting. Pittsburgh was a paper making center and
Sidney could have obtained scraps of writing paper almost for free. If he did
take the trouble to hand copy pages from books, he was doing nothing very
unusual. Rigdon's later mentor, Alexander Campbell, was wealthy enough to
purchase all the books he needed -- but was also enough of a penny-pincher
to admit to copying down whole volumes, instead of buying them.

Life was a slower-paced experience back in those days, and the task of
copying a hundred pages from a manuscript story was probably not so
daunting and tedious an effort as we today might think it. I can easily
picture Sidney Rigdon, secreted in some nook of the Pattersons' paper
warehouse, hand copying pages from a Solomon Spalding story that
interested him very much.

If he was unable to replace the original document on the shelf in Silas
Engles' print-shop for a few weeks, the "crime" seems very minor to me.

On the other hand, I'm also inclined to believe that Sidney Rigdon later
obtained far more than a few dozen hand-copied pages from Spalding's
writings. I do not picture him stealing any manuscripts -- but I do hold
open the probability that Rev. Williams was correct in saying that Rigdon
later obtained an abandoned manuscript of the late Spalding from Lambdin.

None of which matters, really.

Sidney Rigdon had opportunity to see, copy and otherwise obtain the
unpublished writings of Mr. Spalding. That is enough for us to know.

The Mormons can argue all day long that we cannot PROVE that Rigdon
ever did any such thing. But I see no reason to try and prove it anyway.

UD

[_Uncle Dale]

...
What do you suggest we do to remedy that conundrum?

We could simply conclude that Joe Smith was a fraud, liar, charlatan,
con man, knave, and criminal -- and bypass any of his alibis.

But there will always be folks who believe that Smith was reliably truthful.
I came from a church whose entire premise for existence was that Smith
was reliably truthful in his Nauvoo era denials of polygamy -- and that his
brother William was an equally honest monogamist, deserving of high status
in the Reorganized Church.

Speaking of that institution; one of its foremost educators and administrators,
Elder Wayne Ham, reviewed my initial report on the Oberlin manuscript back
in 1980 in Omaha. One of his arguments against the possible historical value
of that document was a linguistic one.

Elder Ham verbally compared the two texts (Spalding's Roman story and the
RLDS edition of the Book of Mormon), informing me that it was impossible
that the writer of the "Droll Tom nonsense" in the former text could have
written the latter "most correct book... a marvelous work and a wonder."

It appeared that he was qualified to make textual comparisons and render
authoritative pronouncements regarding authorship -- but I was not.

Again, just last year, a disciple of Sandra Tanner informed me that he/she
had read both texts and agreed with Mrs. Tanner that Spalding could not
have written a narrative containing many occurrences of "wherefore." That
was an argument from vocabulary comparison -- but my opponent went
one step beyond that, in citing story plot, and agreeing with Mrs. Tanner,
that Spalding could have never written the book, because it clearly spoke
of Joseph Smith, Jr. as a "choice seer," whom Spalding never met.

So -- it seems that advocates of the Nephite origin of the Book of Mormon
may cite vocabulary and phraseology comparisons as evidence against my
studies. And it seems that the advocates of a Joseph Smith origin of the
book can also cite textual comparisons.

But, as for myself, I seem to have difficulty convincing the Mormons that
any sort of comparative language study has a place in our discussions.

Perhaps I should start advocating evidence for a translation from Hebrew
idiom in the Mormon book. I suspect that I would then collect quite a happy
following of latter day head-nodders and textual comparisons proponents.

UD

[_GlennThigpen]

SOMEBODY(IES) wrote the Book of Mormon. The list of most likely suspects isn't that long. The fact is you (and Ben) are demanding higher than realistic standards because you have a vested interest in the outcome.

Negative. We are only demanding established standards of evidence and literary science. You have produced no evidence that meets those standards. You ignore the evidence of witness tampering that has been produced by Ben and others over the years in the case of the Conneaut witnesses.

You have produced no contemporaneous evidence for a second manuscript, on which the S/R theory absolutely depends. All of the assertions that a second manuscript ever existed came after Hurlbut obtained the manuscript now in residence at Oberlin College and found that "it did not read as expected".

Even if Rigdon had copied a manuscript, (which evidence you have failed to produce), found in one of the offices of Lambdin or Patterson, it would still be a copy of the Oberlin manuscript. That is the manuscript delivered once to Engles and rejected because Spalding could not come up with the surety to cover the cost of printing, and delivered next to Robert Patterson Sr. by Spalding's widow with the offer to give Patterson half of the profits if he would print it. The manuscript was returned to the widow and placed it in the trunk where the daughter reported seeing it in, naming the year as 1817.

You also ignore the results of the word print studies which over the years have consistently shown that Spalding and Rigdon are not viable candidates as authors of the Book of Mormon, which includes the extended NSC method.
There are murmurings that the use of King James English spoils those results, but have produced no scientific evidence for such. And have ignored the finding by Royal Skousen that the Book of Mormon is not written in King James English (seventeenth century), but in fifteenth century English.

You also have ignored the vast amount of research that has been produced on the Book of Mormon over the years. Some of it includes semitic word structures and literary devices in the Book of Mormon of which there are more than a few, far too many to have been there just by coincidence.

Ben will no doubt complain at that suggestion, but the fact is we are not in a classroom attempting to sort meaningless parallels from meaningful ones. WE ALREADY HAVE CLUES BEFORE WE EVEN GET TO THAT POINT THAT THERE IS A CONNECTION BETWEEN RIGDON/SPALDING AND THE Book of Mormon and Ben flatly refuses to acknowledge the value to ANY of that but instead insists the parallels are meaningless from the start because he can find others like them. But he can't. He can't find parallels that come with the pre-existing historical criteria these carry with them. That is virtually impossible which makes these completely unique. Like you, he simply rejects all of this out of hand and insists we see things his way and ignore the historical context that sets these parallels apart from others. That is his choice and that is your choice, and that is fine, but the world doesn't work that way. If you want to ignore and downplay the supporting evidence, that is your choice, but we are not bound to follow the rules you attempt to impose on our investigation.

All the best.

You have yet to provide Ben with any scientific basis for accepting your parallels. He has shown you two or three for every one that you have produced, and has invited you to do a little reading on the subject matter with some suggested starting points. As I said before, you have a small triad of true believers here. In the previous post, Dale came close to bearing his testimony.

Glenn

[_Roger]

UD wrote:

There was not much crime involved, if that is truly what happened.

Agreed. I only use the term "crime" because it's simple and generally understood within the context of solving a mystery. That is not to suggest, however, that either of us think Rigdon was a completely honest fellow, never stretching the truth to serve his purposes. It is only to suggest that at that point in his life, copying a manuscript was not much of a "crime."

None of which matters, really.

Sidney Rigdon had opportunity to see, copy and otherwise obtain the
unpublished writings of Mr. Spalding. That is enough for us to know.

The Mormons can argue all day long that we cannot PROVE that Rigdon ever did any such thing. But I see no reason to try and prove it anyway.

Agreed. They cannot prove he didn't. They cannot prove the Book of Mormon was dictated. They cannot prove a Bible was not used. They cannot prove plates ever existed. They cannot prove Nephi was a real person, that he lived in a real city and wrote in a real language. I'm not terribly concerned about what they perceive to be weaknesses in S/R.

All the best.

[_GlennThigpen]

Agreed. They cannot prove he didn't. They cannot prove the Book of Mormon was dictated. They cannot prove a Bible was not used. They cannot prove plates ever existed. They cannot prove Nephi was a real person, that he lived in a real city and wrote in a real language. I'm not terribly concerned about what they perceive to be weaknesses in S/R.

All the best.

So, now you have fallen back to the "they can't prove a negative" defense. And on that note, you certainly are correct.

On the dictation aspect, it has not been proven, but expert textual analysis indicates that it is a dictated document. But I forget, you seem to disdain the scientific over "I believe". <grin>

The reality of the Nephites, Bible usage, existence of the plates, etc. is irrelevant to the S/R theory.

Glenn

[_Roger]

Glenn:

I should be doing other work, but the mental challenge you put me through in responding is surely worth the exercise.

Negative. We are only demanding established standards of evidence and literary science. You have produced no evidence that meets those standards. You ignore the evidence of witness tampering that has been produced by Ben and others over the years in the case of the Conneaut witnesses.

If that is all you are doing, and if the "established standards of evidence and literary science" back you up then, "literary scientists" the world over should agree with you that Nephi was a real person.

You have produced no contemporaneous evidence for a second manuscript, on which the S/R theory absolutely depends.

Which is not likely to occur (as you know) given that it was very likely destroyed by those who had an interest in making sure it never became public.

All of the assertions that a second manuscript ever existed came after Hurlbut obtained the manuscript now in residence at Oberlin College and found that "it did not read as expected".

Not correct, but we've been through this before and you still don't accept it. A reasonable definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results. Your mind is set.

Even if Rigdon had copied a manuscript, (which evidence you have failed to produce), found in one of the offices of Lambdin or Patterson, it would still be a copy of the Oberlin manuscript. That is the manuscript delivered once to Engles and rejected because Spalding could not come up with the surety to cover the cost of printing, and delivered next to Robert Patterson Sr. by Spalding's widow with the offer to give Patterson half of the profits if he would print it. The manuscript was returned to the widow and placed it in the trunk where the daughter reported seeing it in, naming the year as 1817.

That is also not correct and we've been over that before as well and you continue to ignore the response. Your mind is set.

You also ignore the results of the word print studies which over the years have consistently shown that Spalding and Rigdon are not viable candidates as authors of the Book of Mormon, which includes the extended NSC method.
There are murmurings that the use of King James English spoils those results, but have produced no scientific evidence for such. And have ignored the finding by Royal Skousen that the Book of Mormon is not written in King James English (seventeenth century), but in fifteenth century English.

You also have ignored the vast amount of research that has been produced on the Book of Mormon over the years. Some of it includes semitic word structures and literary devices in the Book of Mormon of which there are more than a few, far too many to have been there just by coincidence.

See above.

You have yet to provide Ben with any scientific basis for accepting your parallels.

Nor do I have an interest in doing so.

He has shown you two or three for every one that you have produced,

Oh come on. You're losing credibility.

and has invited you to do a little reading on the subject matter with some suggested starting points. As I said before, you have a small triad of true believers here. In the previous post, Dale came close to bearing his testimony.

At least that made me chuckle!

Dale & MCB, we are now "a small triad of true believers" in S/R! I suppose we should start planning missions. I bear testimony that the said Broadhurst has got the parallels of which he speaks and these parallels and the great significance thereof has been shown to me, not by the power of LDS apologists, neither by the great wisdom of the learned Vogels, Metcalfes or Kids from California, but by my own visionary eyes after much instruction on what I should be looking for by the only true and living prophet of S/R, uncle Dale!

Conversation with you is never dull, Glenn!

All the best.

[_Uncle Dale]

...They cannot prove the Book of Mormon was dictated.
...

I'm entirely open to the possibility that a substantial portion of the original
Book of Mormon manuscript was dictated by Smith -- first of all to Harris,
and then to a couple of members of the Hale family, before Oliver publicly
turned up at Harmony. But what we have extant seems mostly to be pages
in Oliver's handwriting, and some of those pages seem to retain the artifacts
of the dictation process.

There is ample evidence to show that Smith dictated many of his "revelations."
Whether he did that as a result of true Divine epiphany, or through extemporaneous
mental textual creation, or via a very good application of memorization of written
compositions, I know not --- but Smith was experienced in dictation.

The textual "artifacts" I mentioned are subject to controversy, of course. The late
Ted Chandler argued that he could point out evidence for a copyist's hand, at
certain points in the preserved Book of Mormon manuscript pages.

Which brings me back to the subject of there having been at least two drafts
of Spalding's Roman story. The evidence for this fact can be found within the
sewn signatures of Mr. Spalding's own holograph -- in the form of re-used pages
from an earlier draft, the inadvertent repetition of words from one line to the
next, as a copyist does his work -- and in the contrast between the even, careful
hand of a writer knowing exactly what his next word will be, contrasted with the
creative writing of an author in the throes of literary creation and adjustment.

Matt Roper has considered this evidence and has also concluded that Spalding
wrote more than one draft of the Roman story. Solomon's brother, Josiah,
provided a summary of a very similar novel, but with a few differing details and
with the belief that it was finished.

Still, our resident apologists and polemicists refuse to admit even that much. I
wonder what they would have to say, if next week a different, finished draft
of Spalding's 1813 Roman story was discovered in a Pittsburgh attic, with
Joseph Patterson's attached note of acceptance and recommendation for
publication, upon the receipt of the printing costs from Mr. Spalding?

My guess -- they would triumphantly hail the document as proof of their own
explanation of Book of Mormon origins, unless the finished draft happened to
include a name like Teancum or Helorum -- upon which discovery, it would be
immediately dismissed as some sort of forgery.

Solomon Spalding was reported revamping a manuscript story in the home of
Hugh Wilson of Washington, Pennsylvania, during what must have been the
winter of 1813-14. At about the same time, Redick McKee examined a Spalding
story about ancient Canaan. Robert Patterson said that the story he got was
written in the biblical style, and William Leffingwell said he helped correct that same
biblical-sounding Spalding creation.

But, if thinking Solomon only ever wrote one piece of fiction makes it easier for
people to sleep soundly at night (and to happily pay their tithing) then so be it.

UD

[_Dan Vogel]

Roger,

I wish I had time to respond point-by-point, but I don’t. Basically, you keep repeating the same logical fallacies, with some new ones. Your arguments don’t have any force with me because I recognize them fallacies. I can’t keep trying to simplify them, because you take my simplifications as overstatements. Here’s the newest restatement of your position:

No. You are jumping the gun. I am saying since we agree that a Bible was used BUT WAS NEVER MENTIONED what reason is there to suspect that nothing else besides the Bible was used? …

I am saying we agree that:

A. A Bible was used but no witness ever mentioned it

therefore we should also agree that:

B. there is no good reason to conclude that nothing else could have been used….

Now you are trying to get me to prove a negative. It’s not up to me to prove something wasn’t there; the burden is yours to demonstrate something else was there. You can’t do that.

The reason I suspect that nothing else besides the Bible was used is that that would have raised suspicions and would have defeated any use of the stone and hat. Use of the Bible didn’t raise the same suspicion that a MS would have. Everyone knew the Bible was quoted in the Book of Mormon.

I regard the Mormon testimony as historically superior and more reliable than the Spalding testimony. You have tried various ways to escape the clear implications of the Mormon testimony, but in my view not successfully.

The Spalding theory thrived largely because Joseph Smith’s method of translation was not widely known. When the theory came to their attention, witnesses dismissed it based on what they observed. Descriptions of Joseph Smith’s method were given by many witnesses, both in Harmony and Fayette, over many years. They weren’t special witness, but either casual observers or scribes. This type of evidence historians regard as primary source material. The Spalding witnesses are subject to a great deal of skepticism, largely due to the nature of their memories and because their statements were not supported by the MS when found.

You claimed Whitmer claimed that every word came through the stone, which proved he was intentionally withholding information about use of the Bible. But you seem to back out of that claim, giving the excuse that he wasn’t a coconspirator and didn’t have all the information. In its place you give me a rather historically weak statement from Knight. Joseph F. Smith makes a similar statement, but it is rather useless historically. Knight was probably making a statement he thought was accurate, and generally it is. At some point you are going to have to deal with Whitmer’s statement that there were no Manuscripts in the room.

Some of your arguments rest on the assumption that the stone was not used when the Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah. I think this is wrong. You mentioned that you read Wright’s essay on Isaiah in Book of Mormon, and so I assumed you understand that the Book of Mormon contains variant readings from the KJV. Where did these variant readings come from if not from the stone? That would mean that in some way the Isaiah text in the Book of Mormon was also translated by the Urim and Thummim. Note that when Joseph Smith later worked on his Inspired Version of the Bible (1830-33), it was called a “translation”. So it’s possible that Joseph Smith either had Cowdery copy from Isaiah and then added the variant readings above the line, or he added the variant readings to a Bible, which Cowdery then copied. In any case, the variant readings in the Book of Mormon doubtless carried the same claims to inspiration as the rest of the text. So I think you are making assumptions of contradiction when Joseph Smith and others claim the Book of Mormon was translated through the stone and didn’t qualify it by mentioning the Bible.

Your personal memory test hardly duplicates what the Conneaut witnesses were asked to do. First, you chose the book. What if you chose one for which your memory was dimmer? What do you think would happen if someone read passages to you from a book they said was the book you had read fifteen years earlier but in reality was a different book with similar plot? Would your mind play tricks on you?