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PROOF OF THE BOOK OF MORMON
It is reasonable to suppose that with so many varied nationalities of peoples, many of whom were more righteous than the Hebrews, that only one nationality should have had dealings with our all just Father, and that they should have been the only peoples to make it manifest in writing those dealings? It seems logical for me to suppose that God must have had more than one people to look after particularly, and that there must have been at least one other nation to have written a history similar to the Bible.
Possibly you wish to know how their skin came to be read as the original Israelites were white. It was probably the same way that there came to be Negros, as recorded in the Bible. God colored their skin for becoming wicked & placed that curse upon them.
[LJAD, LJA Speech, ca. 1933, with some corrections]
The time, more than anything else, convinced me that you had tried to reach me all afternoon.
I hold in my hands (metaphorically speaking) your beautiful gift. I have wanted the Book of Mormon for years and never knew how to obtain one. Somehow I have never had a Mormon friend before—they being almost non-existent in New England—and the privilege now of owning so readable a volume is filled with delight for me. Thank you a thousand times. Can you come over for tea late some evening, when your work is done and before you say “farewell” for the term?
Gratefully and “remorsefully” yours
Ken
I hope your book is making progress. I am pegging away at mine and hope to have it out this summer.
[LJAD, note from Kenneth Walter Cameron, Dep’t of English, State College, Raleigh, NC, late 1942-early 1943, probably early December 1942]
Last night Grace and I went to Cannon-Hinckley. Speaker was Ernie Ludlow, a principal advocate of the Central Utah Reclamation Project. We happened to sit at the same table with Dr. Ernest Wilkinson, Jr. and Marjorie, who had earlier returned from attending the Area Conferences in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Dr. Wilkinson had gone along as President Kimball’s personal physician and as physician for the entire group. They told us a number of things about the tour which is worthy to record.
At the opening session of the conference in Mexico City, attended by 25,000
Saints, President Kimball stated that when he went to Mexico City as a visiting
General Authority in 1946 things were not in good condition. There was little leadership, the Saints did not have a good place to meet in, the Mexican people were not responsive to the Gospel, the government was uncooperative, the Saints were divided and lackadaisical. He did not feel good about the situation. He was troubled in his heart. That night in his room he found it difficult to sleep. In the middle of the night he was awakened by a light. At first, he thought he was having a dream; later he felt it to be a vision. He saw the past of the peoples of Mexico pass before his eyes. Then the future. And he saw a condition emerging in which the number of Saints were multiplied many times, they were better dressed, better fed, they were better educated, they were becoming leaders in industry and in the government; they were influential and faithful. He declared that now, 1977, the vision was mostly fulfilled. By the time he comes next, he said, it will be fulfilled.
When the party reached Santiago, Chile, they had previously arranged for an audience with the president of Chile, Pinocet. But he had gone to his residence some distance away, on the seacoast, at Vina del Mar. They telephoned his secretary who said the president still wanted to see President Kimball. He said he’d send his personal helicopter to pick them up at a designated place. There were four seats on the helicopter, so President Kimball, Dr. Wilkinson, and two others went along. (Dr. Wilkinson did not say which others.) After the helicopter landed President Kimball said he wanted to take a brief walk before the conference, so he took along Dr. Wilkinson. The latter felt his legs might be cramped and he wanted a few minutes of exercise. As they walked along, the sea on one side, mountains on the other, lovely shore and plain on a broad expanse, the president grew thoughtful. He said, very reverently, “We are walking on sacred soil. This is the Land Bountiful of the Nephites.” I asked Dr. Wilkinson whether he indicated this was the result of a vision, or inspiration, or study, or a speculation. Dr. Wilkinson said the president told him he had been impressed on earlier visits to Chile that this was the Land Bountiful, he had studied the matter, he was now impressed to say definitely that this was the Land Bountiful. I asked Dr. Wilkinson whether he had told this publicly; he said no, but he had told it to at least one other person on the tour and possibly others.
Later, in the conference, Bruce McConkie had been called upon to speak. He had always used notes in his talks, but this time he had left his totes on his chair and had gone to the pulpit such moved. He became very emotional, so much so that he sobbed almost uncontrollably at the pulpit. He prophesied that Chile would get a temple, that there would be seventy times the seven stakes they have, the Saints would be leaders in the government, and so on. A very moving experience for all. Brother McConkie had also told some in the tour, I’m not clear whether this was in his talk or privately, that in the Church Archives was a manuscript revelation of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and up in the corner, without any seeming connection with the revelation, someone had written–one assumes someone of Joseph Smith’s day–the phrase “Land Bountiful approximately 30 degrees latitude.” Perhaps written at the direction of Joseph Smith. He had then looked up the location of Vina del Mar and it was 29.9 degrees latitude. So a confirmation from Joseph perhaps of President Kimball’s declaration. (My map would suggest that it is about 33 degrees latitude.)
[LJA Diary, 20 Apr., 1977]
The theory has been advanced that twelve pages among the 140 pages of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon in our possession are in the handwriting of Solomon Spaulding, a person who died in 1816. The twelve pages in question are from First Nephi chapter 4, verse 20, to First Nephi chapter 12, verse 8.
The theory is completely untenable. It would require us to believe that Spaulding had written twelve pages in his copybook, that those twelve pages somehow drifted fourteen years later into the hands of an unrelated young farm hand a long distance away, that this young man while dictating the Book of Mormon inserted those twelve pages into his manuscript part of the way through his narrative, and that those twelve pages matched exactly the size and texture of the paper which is just ahead of it and after it in the manuscript, and that they match the ink and the language style and content of what the young man had dictated before and after those pages in 1829. The whole idea is preposterous.
Even if all these coincidences were overcome, how does one explain the fact that the handwriting appearing on the twelve pages of the manuscript in our vault also appears on the headings of pages which precede it? Other handwriting on those same pages is clearly identified as that of Joseph Smith’s scribe Oliver Cowdery. There is another problem with this theory. The handwriting of a revelation written in 1831 is unquestionably the same as the handwriting of the Book of Mormon pages in question. Clearly Solomon Spaulding, who died in 1816, could not have written that. The whole theory is ridiculous. (We think the unidentified scribe of the 12 pages is either Reuben Hale, brother of Emma Smith, or Martin Harris, but it will be difficult to prove which until we have sufficient samples of their handwriting.)
The pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript examined this afternoon by the gentlemen who cane in from Los Angeles bear indication of a consecutive run both before and after the twelve pages in question. The only conclusion one can reach from our manuscript is that the speculations released last week to the press are untenable. This is only another in a long series of attempts to involve Solomon Spaulding and others in the writing of the Book of Mormon. We have unshakeable confidence that the Book of Mormon was written by scribes in 1829 as it came from the lips of Joseph Smith.
[Statement of LJA, LDS Church Historian; 28 Jun., 1977]
Two weeks ago there appeared in Christianity Today an article about some Mormon apostates in LA who are writing a book on who wrote the Book of Mormon. They haven’t a leg to stand on. An LA Times writer prepared an article on them and their work, telephoned me for a statement which I gave and which he used, but gave a false impression of their importance and of the backing of the handwriting specialists they had employed. They came up yesterday and looked at some pages of our original manuscript. Their handwriting expert, a man 86 years old, was senile and spent 5 minutes examining the manuscript and 1 hour and 30 minutes disclaiming what the newspaper had said. Church Communications held a news briefing for the media and I read a statement and gave answers to questions they asked. Wasted the whole day. Anyway, the affair was ventilated on TV last night and in the papers today. I hate to be in a controversy of this type, because I don’t know how my superiors in the church react to my responses. But I feel good about it anyway and couldn’t see any alternative. The California people are nuts and there is nothing to their allegation—absolutely nothing.
[LJA to Children, 29 Jun., 1977]
The media issue of Dialogue came this week. I hope you two subscribe and have your copy by now. It’s a great issue. Many articles you’ll be very much interested in, and enjoy reading. Paul Swenson’s article on the Deseret News is great–sort of behind-the-scenes look. So is Fred Esplin’s article on the church radio and TV network. Just great. Lots of other interesting things. The next issue is already printed, but they are holding it up to put in an article on the Book of Mormon Spaulding controversy. We’ve cooperated in furnishing them materials, and it will appear under Lester Bush’s name. It will be a good article, I’m sure, and will be one of the first to discuss the issue in some detail. Mary Bradford was here this past week and we had a good talk with her. She’s doing a good job, with Lester Bush’s help. And others, of course.
[LJA to Carl & Chris, 29 Jul., 1977]
Elder Durham also brought up the matter that I had taken to him earlier about the passage in Nephi in the Book of Mormon which in the first and second editions used the phrase “white and delightsome” and in the third edition “revised by the prophet” used the phrase “pure and delightsome.” Elder Packer was delighted to note this as did Elder Hinckley, and they both plan to take it to the Twelve and see if the Twelve would agree to making that change in the current edition of the Book of Mormon.
[LJA Diary, 8 Aug., 1978]
This morning Davis Bitten brought me a copy of “Book of Mormon Difficulties” by B.H. Roberts. He had obtained two copies from a friend; I did not ask him who the friend was, and he did not tell me. He was able to obtain one copy for me and one for himself. This document was apparently prepared by Roberts in 1921 and represents perhaps 300 pages. The pages are numbered as far as 280 and it looks like about another 100 or 150 pages after that.
None of us have heard of the existence of this document until the last few weeks. As far as we are aware, it is not in our vault and we’ve never heard it mentioned in the vault of the First Presidency or the Joseph Fielding Smith safe. Last fall, about a year ago, Michael Marquardt telephoned to ask if I’d heard of it; I told him no. He said it does exist and he had seen a copy. Several months later he phoned again to say that he had seen the copy of Brigham Roberts, grandson of B. H., and that as a condition for studying it closely he had promised he would not make a copy. But according to the story now being told, Brigham Roberts loaned the document to someone else, unspecified, who made a copy and sent it to Reverend Walters. The copy here reproduced says on the front “Property of Reverend W. P. Walters, Orissa, Illinois,” so it was Walters who took upon himself the responsibility of distributing a few copies to what he regards as “Mormon scholars;” among these, as Davis was informed, were the Tanners, Michael Marquardt, the Lutheran scholar from Kentucky who has worked on Joseph Smith, and perhaps others. It is interesting that he did not see that copies were sent to the persons we regard as Book of Mormon scholars: Dean Jessee, Richard Bushman, Richard Anderson, Davis and myself, Jim Allen, etc. It is also significant that he did not send copies to W. Martin and group, and John L. Smith. These he does not regard as Mormon scholars and has nothing but contempt for them. According to Davis’s information, some 20 copies were made up so we have two of the 20. I do not propose to put my copy in the vault. We’ll see whether Don, through his various sources, such as Wilf Clark, obtains a copy independently. This may happen. Davis was not informed of the cost and will inform me if he is asked to pay for the copies.
In connection with what we had heard earlier from Michael Marquardt and attributed by him to Brigham Roberts the grandson, this was supposed to have been done near the end of his life and Roberts was about to leave the Church because his testimony had been destroyed as the result of this study. It is very clear that this could not have been the case. The study was made in 1921–the possibly reached over into 1922. B. H. Roberts wrote The Truth, the Way, and the Life in the 1920s and it is in this book that he bears his most fervent and extended testimony of the truth of the gospel. Moreover, he quotes extensively from the Book of Mormon. It was after this study that he served as president of the Eastern States Mission, and it was during that period that he did his most valiant service in preaching the gospel and bearing his testimony. Moreover, Davis, for his own satisfaction, went through the last seven discourses of B. H. Roberts which gave absolutely no hint that he was having trouble with his testimony or with the Church. So it is reassuring to know that the reputed Brigham Roberts story could not possibly be correct.
I have not had a chance to look through the publication, of course, but Davis has and he is impressed with two things: 1. B.H.’s absolute honesty in pursuing the difficult questions, with courage and determination. 2. That he came to grips with every aspect of it and did not hesitate in coming to conclusions warranted by the evidence despite what they might do to traditional beliefs. For example: he admits quite candidly that the Book of Mormon could have been the production of one mind.
There are in the back of the book some memos, one to Bob Roberts from Mark Cannon–no date–and three memos of Michael Marquardt written last fall. Chapter 13 of the book is missing for some reason not explained except that it is mentioned as being missing in the document obtained from Brigham Roberts the grandson. The title of the chapter was “The Messiah in the New World-Quetzcoatal.” The document gives every appearance of being authentic. The typing is the same as on The Way, the Truth, and the Life manuscript and there are many marks in the obvious handwriting of Roberts-very similar to those in The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Nothing seems to have been added or subtracted from the original document originally in the possession of B. H. Roberts.
[LJA Diary, 19 Sept., 1978]
I informed Mike Quinn this morning about the copies of the B.H. Roberts study of the Book of Mormon which are currently being circulated by Michael Marquardt and others. He said that he had run across mention of the study in the diary of George F. Richards, member of the Twelve. After the study had been completed, apparently Bro. Roberts read it to the Twelve in sessions each morning and each afternoon for several days. So the study is not to have been regarded as secret; it was done by Brother Roberts under characteristic circumstances in which he attempted to present the strongest arguments that people would offer against the Book of Mormon and then provide some responses to them. This is his nature, as it was the nature of President J. Reuben Clark, Jr. many years later: first, offer the strongest arguments against, then see what responses there are. The church apparently chose not to make any response. One gets the impression from Apostle Richards’ diary that Roberts attempted to impress the Brethren with how serious these objections were and he seemed to feel that we should make an effort to prepare adequate responses. Brother Richards seemed not to agree, and apparently this was the attitude of most of the Brethren. This explains why there was no attempt to publish any of it.
[LJA Diary, 22 Sept., 1978]
I have mentioned earlier in this diary the Book of Mormon study done by B. H. Roberts in 1921-22. I now learn that Bob Roberts allowed Michael Marquardt to use his copy under the agreement that Michael Marquardt would not duplicate a copy or distribute it to others. Michael Marquardt agreed to this and followed it. Shortly after, Bob Roberts loaned a copy to Sterling McMurrin, presumably because he wanted to get McMurrin’s advice on publishing the manuscript, and presumably he made the same requirement with Sterling; but if he did, Sterling did not live up to the agreement. At any rate, Sterling duplicated a copy which ended up in the hands of Wesley Walters; Walters then agreed to have copies duplicated and these were made available to the following people: Michael Marquardt; Jerald and Sandra Tanner; Hal Houghey, of the Utah Tract Society; Olive Wilcox, who is chairman of the Church of Christ Temple Lot in Independence, Mo.; Reverald Hullinger, the Lutheran Book of Mormon student; Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton; and one other person, whose name has not been revealed to me. He is presumably the person that arranged for me and Davis to get copies. Presumably he is “in good” with this group so that he is able to pass on to us things they say and distribute, but at the same time he regards himself as a faithful and loyal Church member. This group has no respect for the Fundamentalists, Fred Collier, and that group and so they did not furnish copies to any of them.
[LJA Diary, 25 Sept., 1978]
Dear Children,
I have just had a tremendous intellectual experience and want to share it with you. I learned recently that John Sorenson, professor of anthropology at BYU and a good personal friend (formerly worked for Rand Corp. in Santa Barbara, California) had finished, as the result of a lifetime of labor, a study of the Book of Mormon, entitled “An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon.” He used the same kind of anthropological insights that be had used under government contract in studying groups in Vietnam, Africa, and elsewhere.
Excitedly, I wrote to ask him how I could get a copy while it was being considered for publication. He generously sent me one, and I spent the long Veterans Day weekend reading it.
It was a great intellectual experience. All of the intellectual problems I have had with the Book of Mormon have now been put to rest as the result of reading that book. My understanding of New World history and archeology is now perfectly reconciled to the Book of Mormon accounts. I am so grateful to him for this work of scholarship.
I shall get you all a copy as soon as that is possible. I have no doubt that it will be welcomed by you as it was by me.
[LJA to Children, 13 Nov., 1978]
One gross mistake was allowing the presentation of a paper by George D. Smith on the Book of Mormon. This was an obvious plant by Michael Marquardt and the Gerald and Sandra Tanner–Wesley Walters crowd, and was very unfortunate. Smith, a son-in-law of Carolyn Eyring Miner from San Francisco, reviewed Roberts’ 1921 study of the Book of Mormon and presented all of the “problems” without discussing the solutions to those “problems” advanced by Roberts. So it was a negative paper and raised questions that surely disturbed some in the audience without answering them. Davis sat on the same row as Michael Marquardt and noted that Michael had a copy of the paper in front of him. This suggests to us that Marquardt probably sent a copy of the B. H. Roberts study (which was stolen from Sterling McMurrin and then returned to him later after it has been copied) to George Smith and had suggested to George that he offer to present a paper at the symposium. Once the paper is presented, it may be quoted by the Tanner people as not based on the document they stole but from a paper presented by a person not identified with them (George Smith) at the Sunstone symposium. This will not help Sunstone’s reputation, and it accomplishes nefarious purposes of the Tanners. I’m going to suggest to Allen or Peggy as soon as I see one of then that they inform George Smith that he will have to modify his paper on the basis of the comments of the critic before they will publish it. The critic was John Sorensen, and he made only a short comment, but it was highly critical, and this would give Sunstone a basis for not publishing the paper unless it presents the positive side of the issue as well.
[LJA Diary, 27 Aug., 1979]
Jan [Shipps] said that Robert Hullinger, the Lutheran minister who was at Concordia Lutheran College in Kentucky, is now a minister in St. Louis or thereabouts. He called her one day to say he was in trouble. He had earlier prepared an article on why Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. It was complimentary to Joseph Smith, but still was an interpretation based on the assumption that Joseph Smith wrote it; and the reason he wrote it, Hullinger said, was in order to show further evidence to the divinity and relevance of Jesus to contemporary America. Jan replied in her note to him at that time as follows: “If you assume that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, and if you assume that he was influenced by contemporary thought, this seems to be a sound approach.” In the years afterwards as we had known, Hullinger had expanded that article into a little book entitled Mormon Answer to the Skeptics: Why Joseph Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon. It was accepted for publication by the Lutheran Press. At Hullinger’s suggestion, the press had placed on the back of this paperback book an abbreviated quote from Jan Shipps, which said simply, “I believe this is a sound interpretation of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.” Signed, Jan Shipps, President of MHA. Hullinger had finally realized he ought to have her permission to do this. She said under no circumstances would he have her permission and it must be removed. He said unfortunately the book was already out, and they would have to redo the back page, which would cost several hundred dollars–and he was putting up the money. She said that it must be removed, there was no way out of it. When he discovered he couldn’t persuade her otherwise, he asked her to get in touch with the publisher. She phoned her university lawyer, who told her to try to persuade them to change it–in a nice way. If unable to do so, she should mention an injunction against them selling the book, but to hold that threat in reserve. She talked to the lady at the press, who was so upset that she was crying, but Jan pointed out it would have to be removed. She regarded herself as an intermediary between the Mormons and non-Mormons, and she was furthermore the president of the Mormon History Association and she could not possibly lose her standing and credibility and the confidence and trust in her by Mormon historians. And so it would simply have to be removed. They finally agreed to do it, and she didn’t have to mention the threat of an injunction. So the book is now out and you can tell from the back page that something has been blotted out but it doesn’t appear there.
[LJA Diary, 14 Feb., 1980]
On Thursday morning Grace and I had breakfast, then Ken took us to the temple where we spent a couple of hours touring the grounds of the temple, touring the temple itself, and touring the newly completed information bureau building. At the temple we met President and Sister Pratt, who are uncle and aunt of Dale Beecher. At the Information Center we visited with Richard Owens, the son of W. W. Owens that used to be director of Extension at USU. He and his wife, who had lived in Berkeley many years, are now retired and on this mission. Knowing we were historians, he asked us a number of questions abut the script they were given to memorize, as to its accuracy. There is the implication, apparently insisted on by Elder Petersen, that Hagoth of the Book of Mormon ended up in Hawaii and was the same person as Hawaiiloa, the historic person who founded Hawaii. Ken and I told him he ought to say that not in a dogmatic way but suggest that it was a theory of some people, and not proven.
[Report on trip to Hawaii; LJA Diary, 6 Aug., 1980]
Davis informed me that he had chatted this morning with Everett Cooley about plans to publish the Roberts Book of Mormon transcript. Apparently this has been a special obsession of George D. Smith, who has–
1. Written to some twenty nationally known scholars asking what they think about the Book of Mormon.
2. Submitted the manuscript to various publishers and finally got an approval from the University of Illinois Press.
3. Got Jan Shipps to urge Richard Wentworth of University of Illinois Press to publish it.
4. Got Sterling McMurrin to write an introduction.
5. After trying two or three people, got Brigham Madsen to edit it for publication.
Davis and I both feel that this is a great mistake, that this will be a disservice to Roberts, to the Book of Mormon, and to the Church, as well as to Mormon scholarship generally. We are surprised that Brig Madsen would do it, but now that he has agreed to do so, we will chat with him about trying to put the matter in proper context and trying to be fair to B. H. Roberts, the Book of Mormon, and the Church. The need is to have the volume as balanced as possible, and we will advise Brig to do this.
Part of the problem is the failure of Truman Madsen and Bookcraft Publishers to have anything to say about this. If Truman had put in the chapters on it, obviously the book never could have been published and it would have answered in advance the criticisms.
[LJA Diary, 21 Apr., 1981]
I found time over the weekend to read the very important article in the new Dialogue on the Book of Mormon. By Blake Ostler. Up to now the scholars have tended to view it either as a pious fraud written by Joseph Smith from information available in his environment, or as a legitimate ancient scripture. Ostler, in a sixty-page article offers a theory of the Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith’s expansion of an ancient work by building on the work of ancient prophets to answer nagging problems of his day. The result is a modern world view and theological understanding superimposed on the Book of Mormon text from the plates.
It is an exciting new approach which allows one to believe in the gold plates, as I have done (the evidence is overwhelming that they existed), and in the evidences of ancientness in the text (there are lots of those), and at the same time have a suitable explanation of the modernisms (and there are certainly some of those). It also fits in with a view of revelation which the historian is almost forced to accept, which he calls the creative co-participation theory of revelation.
It is, as I say, an important article, takes care of nearly all of the problems that have arisen, and helps believers like myself reconcile with scholarly problems. I am glad to have it. To my way of thinking it ranks with Lester Bush’s article of a few years ago on Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine, as one of the great articles in Dialogue. What a brilliant piece of work!
[LJA to Children, 16 Mar., 1987]
I also read through most of a book analyzing modernisms and ancientisms in the Book of Mormon. Scholars are now pretty well in agreement that there are some of both, and they explain this by the assumption that Joseph Smith felt free to put things in the language of his culture in conveying the sense of the ancient message.
[LJA to Children, 3 Oct., 1987]
I have belonged to the History Book Club for several months and have purchased through them a book each month or so. My last purchase was The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America by Brian Fagan. I started to read it the day before I went to Colorado and finished it on the plane, going and coming.
I had wanted to read a book like this for several years in order to find out what archeologists were saying about America’s ancient peoples. Fagan reports each of the important studies and what they suggest. It is clear that archeologists and anthropologists are in wide disagreement. They vary from those who think humans were in the Western Hemisphere 200,000 years ago to those who think it was as recent as 10,000 years ago. They are also in wide disagreement on where the peoples came from and how they got here. Fagan forms a general conclusion based on the preponderance of studies and evidence. Basically, he concludes that the first humans came to North America about 12,000 B. C., across a strip of land along the Bering Straits. They spread out and moved south very quickly and were in the southern tip of South America by 8,500 B. C. He thinks there were three migrations from different parts of northern Asia–the first around 12,000 B. C. The second a couple of thousand years later and the third perhaps another couple of thousand years later. The last group were the Aleuts and Eskimos. Next to last group were the Navajos, Apaches, and Algonquins. The first were the rest.
Because of the wide disagreement among the scholars one can feel confident in disagreeing. My general feeling–really an opinion I have had for quite a long time and I see no reason to change–is:
1. Humans have been in the Western Hemisphere far longer than he suggests.
2. Peoples have come here from a variety of places–perhaps by boat from Africa to Brazil; perhaps by boat from south Asia to Chile, Argentina, or Ecuador; perhaps by boat from the Near East to Central America; perhaps even from Europe to Eastern North America.
Whatever the truth of these impressions, the prehistoric life of the Americas was remarkably complex. Even with the simplest of bone and stone technologies people were capable of colonizing and building advanced civilizations in a vast continent. There was brilliant cultural achievement. And there was wide diversity.
[LJA to Children, 28 Oct., 1987]