Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?: The Spalding Enigma [Paperback]

Wayne L. Cowdrey (Author), Howard A. Davis (Author), Arthur Vanick (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 558 pages
• Publisher: Concordia Publishing House (July 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758605277
• ISBN-13: 978-0758605276
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #78,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Mormonism

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130 of 144 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Let The Title Fool You, March 26, 2007

By 

William Moore (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?: The Spalding Enigma (Paperback)

Don't let the title fool you. Even though it's called Who Really Wrote The Book of Mormon? and it's published by a religious publisher, this is NOT a religious book; it's a book ABOUT a religious book. The historical mystery here makes for a fascinating tale, even for readers who have no interest in religious books and care nothing about Mormonism. Indeed, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself would have been hard-pressed to come up with a better detective story, or a more colorful set of characters to go with it.

As the story goes, on the night of the autumnal equinox in the year 1827, young Joseph Smith, Jr. encountered an angel. According to Smith, this angel, whose name was Moroni, gave him an ancient book written in strange hieroglyphics on sheets of gold. Later, after Smith had translated these hieroglyphics by miraculous means, and after this translation had been duly recorded by a carefully chosen scribe, the angel came again and took the original back. Smith's translation, which he called The Book of Mormon, was published in 1830 and shortly thereafter became the a cornerstone of a new religion. Today that religion is known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--the Mormons--and Joseph Smith is the man they revere as their prophet. The inherently theocratic nature of Mormonism coupled with its obvious financial strength and political influence in today's world, explain why it might be useful to inquire further into the obscure historical origins of a faith which few, even those who are part of it, know much about.

Did Joseph Smith really get The Book of Mormon from an angel, or did it perhaps have some other, more mundane, origin? Although Smith is unquestionably one of the more important figures in 19th century American history, the nagging question of Who Really Wrote The Book of Mormon? has never really been laid to rest except by those willing to accept Smith's version of events on strength of faith alone. In exploring the mystery, and the controversy surrounding it, the authors weave a fascinating tale of intrigue and conspiracy.

Let us begin with poor old Solomon Spalding, a well-educated but pathetic once-reverend who, amidst ill health and profound doubts about his faith, foresook his western New York ministry shortly after 1800 to speculate in real estate along the shores of Lake Erie--an area then on America's wild frontier. Perhaps he would have prospered, had it not been for the callous maneuverings of a nefarious partner with political ties to president Thomas Jefferson, or the general havoc wreaked upon his land and its tenants by the coming of the War of 1812. Unable to absorb the financial shock of this one-two punch, Spalding found himself not only broke, but in declining health. Up to that time, he had often occupied himself with writing for amusement. Now, apparently out of sheer desperation, he decided to compose a novel in hopes that the money raised from its publication could provide for his family once he was gone. He would call his fanciful work A Manuscript Found, and it would chronicle, in semi-Biblical style, the pre-Columbian settlement of the New World by jews from the Holy Land. The fate of the Lost Tribes of Israel and the ethnic origins of the American Indians were hot topics in those days.

Towards the end of 1812, under increasing pressure from creditors and fearing imminent invasion by the British from across Lake Erie, Spalding took his wife and daughter to Pittsburgh, where he again took to working on his novel while making ends meet as best he could. During this time he had dealings with the firm of R & J Patterson, which expressed interest in publishing his book and made suggestions concerning its completion. The high cost of city life being a burden, Spalding moved his small family to nearby Amity, PA in 1814, where he continued to write while managing the local roadhouse as a "temperence tavern." At the time of his death two years later, Spalding's novel seems to have been complete, or nearly so, but remained unpublished. Afterwards, the manuscript mysteriously disappeared.

According to the authors, this is where the Spalding Enigma begins; for it is their assertion that Spalding's historical romance eventually fell into the hands of Joseph Smith who, with secret help from two of his associates, clandestinely transformed it into the allegedly scriptural Book of Mormon, the text of which now comprises the backbone of the Mormon faith. Who Really Wrote The Book of Mormon? The Spalding Enigma painstakingly sets-forth the story of how this could have happened, carefully examines the lives of those who seem to have been most closely involved with it, and postulates that this was perhaps one of the most successful hoaxes of all time.

As already noted, Conan Doyle, himself no stranger to Mormonism, could hardly have created a more colorful batch of characters. Foremost among these, of course, is Joseph Smith himself. While many may recognize his name, few are aware that he had been arrested, tried and convicted of con-artistry only four years before he founded Mormonism, or that he is on record as having told no less than three very different stories about the origin of The Book of Mormon. Did God really choose Smith and send an angel to him as alleged, or, like so many others before him, was Joseph just another clever human tempted by the lure of power and money?

Joseph Smith lived in western New York. The manuscript of Solomon Spalding's unpublished fiction lay on the shelves of the Pittsburgh firm of R & J Patterson some 300 miles distant. According to the authors, the person responsible for bringing Spalding's manuscript to the attention of Joseph Smith was the Rev. Sidney Rigdon, a colorful, somewhat notorious, mentally unbalanced, renegade Baptist preacher who was so convinced he was doing God's work that he had no qualms about the ends justifying the means. Perhaps Rigdon really did believe he was God's warrior in the movement to restore primitive Christianity to mankind, but to most of those around him, he was the sort of person everyone loved to hate--a process that usually began not long after they got to know him. According to Mormon history, Rigdon did not meet Smith until the fall of 1830. According to Who Really Wrote...?, the two had already known each other for several years by then, but had managed to keep it a secret. Naturally Rigdon had other secrets as well. Among them were that he had personally known Solomon Spalding, that members of his family also lived in Amity just a few doors from Spalding's roadhouse, and that among his closest friends was a clerk who worked for Spalding's intended publisher, R & J Patterson, during the same years Spalding was dealing with them. Indeed, a lady who had been the desk clerk at the Pittsburgh post office between 1812-16 later testified that she had known both Spalding and Rigdon during those years, and that Rigdon was well-known at the time as someone who was always hanging around the Pattersons' printing establishment. Although Rigdon denied having lived in Pittsburgh prior to 1822, the authors produce proof that both Rigdon and Spalding received their mail through the same Pittsburgh post office between 1812 and 1816.

This takes us to the third man in the triangle of early Mormonism--Joseph Smith's enigmatic cousin, Oliver Cowdery, a man about whose early life almost nothing was known until Who Really Wrote...? was published. As it turns out, Cowdery appears to have been the person responsible for first introducing Smith to Rigdon, and then secretly acting as their go-between. Later, he would play the role of Smith's scribe during the "translation" of The Book of Mormon in preparation for its publication. Although Smith and Cowdery have both recorded that their first meeting took place in April of 1829, the authors of Who Really Wrote...? present compelling evidence that these two cousins had known each other since at least 1822, if not earlier. They also reveal that the real reason the events of Cowdery's early life had to be omitted from Mormon history was because Smith and Cowdery had conspired to work a con-job on wealthy Martin Harris in order to induce him to cough-up $5,000 to finance the printing of The Book of Mormon. In order to accomplish their goal, Smith and Cowdery had to make Harris believe that they had been total strangers prior to 1829, and that God had only brought them together because he knew Joseph was in need of a scribe to complete "the work." Among Cowdery's other secrets were the fact that he had a brother and other relatives living in close proximity to Rigdon in Ohio, and that he himself had first met Rigdon while visiting these relatives in the mid-1820s.

Many of these troubling details would probably never have come to light had it not been for the efforts of Joseph Smith's prime antagonist, a man with the unlikely name of Doctor Philastus Hurlbut. (Doctor, by the way, was his name, not his title.) Shortly after joining the Ohio Mormons in 1832, Hurlbut was sent on a missionary journey to the area of Erie, PA. There he began to encounter people who seemed to be aware of the contents of The Book of Mormon even though they had never seen a copy. Upon inquiring, Hurlbut quickly learned that all of these folks had one thing in common--some of them were members of Solomon Spalding's family, and others were his friends and neighbors from the time he had lived in the area nearly 20 years before. All of them expressed familiarity with the fictional novel Spalding had been writing, and all said it was the same, or much the same, as Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon.

Suspicious that Smith was a prophet for profit, Hurlbut deftly maneuvered to have himself tossed out of the church, and then set off on a quest which would take him first to New York, where he... Read more ›

132 of 154 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As intriguing as a mystery novel, as engrossing as a courtroom drama, October 17, 2005

By 

Dr. Shades - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?: The Spalding Enigma (Paperback)

I have read *ahem* my share of books on Mormon history, and this is one of the very best, hands-down.

The authors examine tax records, census records, poll tax documents, county histories, family histories, etc.--seemingly no stone is left unturned as they carefully trace which key player in the Spalding-Rigdon controversy was where and was in a position to know what.

Most discussions of the Spalding-Rigdon theory center around the Conneaut Witnesses, the people who knew Solomon Spalding and identified his story when they heard the Book of Mormon preached to them. I was amazed to learn of the hundreds of additional witnesses whose statements had remained forgotten or undiscovered until now, especially a man to whom an embittered Rigdon "spilled the beans" after his loss to Brigham Young for the leadership of the church.

The authors painstakingly trace the Spalding Manuscript from its genesis to its final incarnation as the Book of Mormon, and all the twists and turns in between. They deal with every objection to the theory ever raised since the very beginning--such as the reliability of Hurlbut, the witnesses' accuracy, and the manuscript taken from Mrs. McKinstry's trunk, for example--and thoroughly analyze and disect them point-by-point using counterexamples, eyewitness accounts, and other sources.

Mormon apologists have long been challenging critics to a) come up with a more plausible account of the creation of the Book of Mormon than their official one, and b) come up with original material. This book succeeds masterfully at both.

I'd always had nagging questions about how the Book of Mormon came to be, but this book answered each one of them clearly and decisively. In my opinion, if you only read a single book on Mormon history, this is DEFINITELY the one. Highly recommended!

47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?: The Spalding Enigma, February 7, 2007

By 

H. Bawden "HB" (Utah) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?: The Spalding Enigma (Paperback)

I finished the book tonight. I was enthralled with the subject matter, and I read it with enthusiasm. I am as much a product of mormonism as anyone. I challenge anyone to claim more pioneer ancestry than myself. I split with mormonism, for my own purposes, at the age of 19. I probably don't need to explain to most why I was compelled to make a decision at this point. Anyhow, I was most receptive to the material in this book. Yet, living with my parents, I hid the book in fear of sparking holy jihad if you know what I mean. To date, my doubts have mostly been gut feelings. With the reading of this book and "Losing a Lost Tribe" I am beginning a process of methodical analysis of evidence. To say that there is any fully unbiased view on this subject probably isn't realistic. Obviously, the name Cowdrey in the list of authors is a give away that perhaps at least one of these authors carries it in their blood.

To those who vehemently discredit this book, it is completely understandable and acceptable. Your right to your faith is respected by the authors of this book in the afterword. They accept that you won't be dissuaded from your beliefs, and I firmly believe that this isn't their intent.

I started this book with the full understanding that history is an imperfect science at best. With the recent explosion of multimedia access to historical information, one may deduce from study that very few things in history are known for certain. The authors concede that the challenges of mormon history, assuming a conspiracy, are daunting due to the fact that those involved wouldn't want their history known. This same type of dilemma dates even to the time of Julius Caesar.

My enthusiasm for this book is admittedly fueled by my background. The names and places are part of my tutelage. I am admittedly a skeptic. This allowed me to read the full volume without fuming or turning red. To say this volume is disorganized is probably asking a bit much of mormon history. One must certainly try to be in more than one place at once to see all the nuances. The authors simply put the reader in several times and places. It's their style. I felt comfortable by the end of the book that I understood the conclusions the authors had come to. I knew when they were theorizing. It was easy for me to spot. I felt the book was well presented.

Certainly this book is best appreciated by one who is thoroughly interested in American religious history. It most certainly will not be appreciated by faithful Latter day saints. Don't even try reading it unless you are an official apologist, or you know that the material won't offend to the point of an apocalyptic rampage. I noticed 2 reviewers on this list to whom I wouldn't recommend the book. I don't know why you wanted to read it unless you care enough to make objective retorts. If you are happy with your faith, then stay away from this material!

I seek the truth. As long as mankind is able to think, they will demand evidence for historical occurences. It is the job of historians to present material such as is found in this book. I thank the authors of this book for their painstaking research; it's an obsession. I appreciate that most of their argument is theoretical. They acknowledge this. I choose to accept their theories as quite plausible.

Good luck to both "mormon" and "non-mormon" alike in your search for truth, knowledge, and peace of mind.