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Podcast Transcript:
In 1831, Alexander Campbell wrote that the Book of Mormon “is without exaggeration, the meanest book in the English language … It has not one good sentence in it … It is as certainly [Joseph] Smith’s fabrication as Satan is the father of lies….” Campbell captured well the general feeling among critics of the Book of Mormon soon after its publication — it was considered literary trash, and critics agreed that trash was all that Joseph Smith had the skillset to produce.
Campbell also wrote, “There never was a book more evidently written by one set of fingers, nor more certainly conceived in one cranium since the first book appeared in human language, than this same book. … And as Joseph Smith is a very ignorant man … I cannot doubt for a single moment that he is the sole author and proprietor of it.”
In 1830, Joseph’s own hometown newspaper called him a “spindle-shanked ignoramus.” The next year, the same newspaper wrote, “[Joseph’s] mental powers appear to be extremely limited, and from the small opportunity he has had at school, he made little or no proficiency … We have never been able to learn that any of the family were ever noted for much else than ignorance and stupidity.” The paper also called the Book of Mormon the “most clumsy of all impositions.”
Even as far as 1841, one source claims that Joseph Smith “bore the reputation of a lazy and ignorant young man … [The Book of Mormon] is perhaps one of the weakest productions ever attempted to be palmed off as a divine revelation. It is mostly a blind mass of words, interwoven with scriptural language and quotations, without much of a leading plan or design. It is, in fact, such a production as might be expected from a person of Smith’s abilities and turn of mind.”
To be fair, even Joseph’s friends and family agreed that he, indeed, was not the brightest bulb in the box. In 1832 Joseph himself even wrote that he and his siblings “were deprived of the bennifit of an education suffice it to say I was mearly instructtid in reading and writing and the ground <rules> of Arithmatic which constuted my whole literary acquirements.” And if you could see the actual original written quote in front of you, you’d see that it’s riddled with spelling errors.
But after a while… people started to take a closer look at the Book of Mormon, and they started to realize that it wasn’t as simplistic as they thought. After all, there are hundreds of internally consistent geographical references; multiple consistent timelines from 3 different migrations of people; multiple internally consistent calendar systems; and realistic Hebraisms; different narrators have measurably unique writing styles, resulting in more voice diversity than what even Charles Dickens was able to create — the list goes on.
After a few years, people started to realize that Joseph Smith simply did not have the brains to write the Book of Mormon, and a new theory was popularized by the 1834 exposé, “Mormonism Unveiled.” The book asserted that the religious stuff in the Book of Mormon was actually written by Sidney Rigdon, and the historical stuff came from a lost, unpublished story by Soloman Spaulding. Even Alexander Campbell, who was so sure that Joseph was the author in 1831, changed his tune in 1839.
The only problem was that Joseph and Sidney had never met before the publication of the Book of Mormon, and Soloman Spaulding’s unpublished manuscript was discovered in 1884, and it didn’t look anything like the Book of Mormon. So, that theory eventually lost popularity, and a smattering of others emerged. Over the next several decades, theories ranged from mental illness to automatic writing, but the theory that came out on top and that is the most popular today is, ironically, once again, the idea that the Book of Mormon was the product of Joseph Smith’s own intellect.
But now, people recognize that the Book of Mormon really is a formidable literary work. It’s complex and intricate. Author Daniel Walker Howe wrote,
“True or not, the Book of Mormon is a powerful epic written in a grand scale with a host of characters, a narrative of human struggle and conflict, of divine intervention, heroic good and atrocious evil, of prophecy, morality, and law. Its narrative structure is complex…. The Book of Mormon should rank among the great achievements of American literature.”
Thus, many critics today necessarily say that since the Book of Mormon is such a complex work, Joseph Smith was actually a whole heck of a lot smarter than we thought — that the people who actually knew him, whether friend or enemy, were totally wrong about him.
Apparently, when Joseph wasn’t working on the farm, he was hittin’ the books. He was studying rare and obscure maps of Arabia to make Lehi’s journey look super authentic. He was carefully analyzing Hebrew grammar and literary techniques. He was painstakingly crafting individual literary voices. And he somehow apparently did all of this and more in secret.
When it came time to actually dictate the book, critics seemed to disagree on how Joseph was able to accomplish it. Some might believe that he secretly memorized a pre-written manuscript, which he then recited to his scribe at a rate of about 8 pages a day, with no notes and his face in a hat. At the same time, there’s no evidence of any kind of pre-written manuscript, so perhaps he simply planned the 531-page book out entirely in his head and then was somehow skilled enough to dictate it in one seamless draft. Of course, that also seems somewhat superhuman. Thus, some others, like critic Dan Vogel, believe that Joseph’s talents were such that he didn’t need to plan anything at all. The Book of Mormon was “more-or-less [a] stream of consciousness composition,” recited “mostly impromptu and without the aid of notes.”
Each of these theories is riddled with challenges, and requires a skillset that Joseph simply doesn’t seem to have had. You guys, At the end of the day, it seems to me that both sides of the aisle are running on faith. Latter-day Saints have faith that Joseph was telling the truth and that the Book was translated by the gift and power of God. Others have faith that, despite a lack of evidence, Joseph somehow had the compositional skills, or accomplices, or mental illness, or sleight of hand, or access to demons, or whatever—to produce the Book of Mormon. As I have looked at the various theories that have been proposed over the last nearly 200 years… frankly, it’s just easier for me to believe that Joseph was telling the truth. Perhaps the Book is just miraculous and beautiful and true. I’ll let you and God figure that one out. Thanks for listening, and hey, if you learned something new from this episode, I’d appreciate it if you left us a review. I read every single one. Thanks for your support. Have a great day!