Chapter Three -

(i)

It was in the June of 1829 that Joseph Smith presented himself at the office of Richard Lansing to register the title of The Book of Mormon, and to secure copyright for the work.  This he did as the Books author and proprietor, even though the title indicated that the Book was written by the hand of Mormon, not Joseph Smith.  The Book was a translation, but obviously no ordinary one.

If Joseph had entirely written the Book himself, he would have surely needed some inspiration for his "fictional" American history.  And indeed a common legend did persist in the Western New York district, one which Palmyra newspapers had a continuing interest of.  It was believed that the area had been the site of a terrible slaughter, and the Indian mounds, consisting of giant heaps of skeletons and ancient artefacts, dotting the landscape were said to be the cemeteries of an entire race of people.  It is interesting to note that in 1823 the Palmyra Herald stated "what wonderful catastrophe destroyed the first inhabitants is beyond the researches of the best scholar...." (Brodie 1971: 35).

Joseph was very much attracted to the mystery of the Moundbuilders often coming up with his own theories of who they had been and how they had lived.  His mother remarked on how imaginative he was.  This suggests that Joseph may have tried to write a history of the Moundbuilders.  His Book of Mormon was basically just the history of two warring races, one fair and delightsome, the other a "wild and ferocious and a bloodthirsty people", also "lazy and idolatrous" (Book of Mormon p. 165).  One theory of this lost race was that there had been one last great battle, and it seems that Joseph decided this could well have been in his own neighbourhood.  There was the hill near his home, later named Cumorah by the Mormons, which looked as though it may have been an immense Indian mound, rising alone and mysterious, in the gently rolling landscape.  From its summit Joseph could see for miles in all directions.  This would have struck the imaginative youth as an admirable site for a gigantic defensive battle.  Cumorah provided an excellent place to discover a record of the lost race.  

What Joseph and his contemporaries did not know however is that the Moundbuilders were the direct ancestors of some upper Mississippi Indian tribes, not a lost race of people.  Few then knew that the Indians made a practice of exhuming, collecting together, and reburying in mounds, all the bones of the recently dead.  

(ii)

The rumour of Joseph's finding of the golden plates began in 1827, but no two people have the same version of the story.  Peter Ingersoll claimed to be Joseph's confidant and had a very cynical story to tell.  Joseph is said to have told Ingersoll that he had taken home some fine white sand tied up in his clothing, and when his family asked him what he was carrying he claimed to have told them it was the golden Bible, for one such similar history had been discovered in a hollow tree in Canada earlier:

"I gravely told them it was the golden Bible ... they were credulous enough to believe what I said ... told them I had received a commandment to let no one see it ... I have got the damned fools fixed, and will carry out the fun".

Willard Chase claims a different version.  He said that Joseph had approached him telling him they existed but he was not allowed to view them.  Joseph wanted him to help build a box, or chest, in which they could be kept, but Chase, suspicious of the whole story, refused.

Joseph was extremely reluctant to speak about the plates.  His brother Hyrum pleaded that he tell the story of their discovery before a Church council in 1831, but Joseph claimed that it was not intended to tell all the particulars of the coming forth of The Book of Mormon, and it was not expedient for him to relate these things.  Yet, in 1838 when he began to write the official history of his Church, he was more generous with details.  So began his alleged visions of the Angel Moroni, who supposedly first appeared in 1823, and had already been referred to but in no elaborate detail.  Moroni, in this history, apparently appeared three times to Joseph on the night of September 21, to tell Joseph of the golden plates.  Joseph claims that while working with his father the next day, he fainted and Moroni appeared again to tell him to announce the visions to his father. This he did, but such detail is suspect when it is considered that in the 1826 court trial, Joseph's father was called as a witness and said that "... His constant prayer to his Heavenly Father was to manifest his will concerning this marvellous power [the seer stone] ...".  He would not have taken this line had he already known that Joseph had been commissioned by an angel to find and translate scripture from pre-Columbian America.

Joseph claimed that he was not permitted to take the plates home until 1827, but of the four years that elapsed between the vision of 1823 and this event, Joseph was known to have been at his most intense with his money digging activities.  If he already knew he had a future as a divine translator there would have been no reason for him to still be involved with this.

(iii)

With the plates Joseph found the Urim and Thummim and a breastplate.  It is not impossible that Joseph had discovered a breastplate, and there are plenty of witnesses to say that he had one in his possession.  Copper breastplates were frequently being found in the Indian mounds.  The definition given for the Urim and Thummim are that they were objects of a now unknown nature which were worn in, or on, the breastplate of the Jewish High Priest.  They are Hebrew words meaning "Lights and Completeness" (McConkie: 818).  There are numerous references to these objects, presumably used to mean yes or no, in the Book of Mormon, suggesting that Joseph was in high esteem of them.  In the Old Testament there appear to be just seven references. It seems that Deuteronomy could have been the starting point for Joseph's apparent fascination with them, for in chapter 33:8 it says: "Your [God's] thummin and urim belong to the man you favoured".  Therefore if Joseph could claim to be in possession of these Godly relics, it would be assumed that he was the chosen one, favoured by God.

The Book of Mormon describes the Urim and Thummim to be twin interpreters and it was claimed by Smith that they were set in silver bows, said to resemble spectacles.  But the are no eyewitness accounts of Joseph using twin stones, or wearing spectacles, to translate the Book of Mormon.  Although she had never actually seen him do it, it was only Emma, his wife, who stated that Joseph had used the Urim and Thummim to translate, and then only for the first one hundred and sixteen pages.  After this he was to use the seer stone which he had first discovered whilst well-digging. Apparently this was the only stone which would work, which seems to be rather strange when it is considered that God had provided the Urim and Thummim intentionally for the purpose that Joseph use them to translate the plates.  Martin Harris, one of Joseph's scribes, substituted Joseph's prized seer stone for a pebble resembling it well.  According to Harris' account Joseph found it impossible to continue translating until Harris returned the original.  If this is true then it is probable that Joseph was put on guard by a subtle change in Harris' behaviour.  It is also likely that the two men were in conspiracy together (both for the fame and money they could achieve) and made up the story to answer those who had accused Joseph of dictating each day what he had memorized the night before.  

(iv)

The plates that Joseph was alleged to have translated were written in what Joseph described as a 'Reformed Egyptian' script.  But there is little evidence, if any, of the use of Egyptian writing systems in the New World, even less for a Mesoamerican practice of engraving histories on metal plates.  Joseph may have chosen Egyptian as the language because he had read, or heard, of Indian inscriptions being hieroglyphic records and paintings.   Also, Egyptian writing was popularly believed, at the time, to be indecipherable, for it was not until 1837 that the grammar worked out by the Rosetta stone was first published.  Therefore Joseph knew that he could not be held responsible for the accuracy of the characters, especially if they were 'reformed'.  

Harris insisted on taking a copy of the characters to a Charles Anthon, Professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia College.  Harris claimed that Anthon had declared the script to be ancient shorthand Egyptian, something Anthon vigorously denied.  He said the he believed they seemed to have been prepared by some person with a book containing various alphabets such as Greek, Hebrew, and Roman, in front of him.  If what Anthon said is to be believed, it could be credible that Harris, whether he had faith in Joseph or not, decided that the Book was a lucrative money spinner.  He is said to have told Joseph that Anthon wrote a statement to the effect that the characters were genuine Egyptian, Chaldiac, Assyriac and Arabic.  But when Harris had told him of the angel and the golden plates he had torn up his paper in disgust (Brodie 1971: 55).

(v)

There is one incredible fact that I feel does suggest the Book of Mormon was indeed a fabrication.  When Harris moved to Harmony in 1828 to relieve Emma of the job of taking Joseph's dictation, he took with him his wife.  She was suspicious of the whole story, and having turned the house upside down in her attempts to discover the hiding place of the plates, she was eventually persuaded to return home.  After two months of working with Joseph, Harris returned home with the one hundred and sixteen pages of manuscript so far translated.  Here it seems that his wife stole it and presumably destroyed it, for it has never reappeared.  According to his mother (p. 121), when Joseph learnt of what had happened Mrs Harris is said to have taunted him with the words: "If this be divine communication, the same being who revealed it to you can easily replace it".

If fantasy it was, it would have been impossible for Joseph to even think about retreating from it.  This would inevitably destroy Emma's faith in him, and his family were counting on sales of the Book to prevent the loss of their farm.  If the whole of the pages had been made up there is no way that Joseph could remember exactly what he had dictated and therefore he would lose face and the Book revealed as a sham.

It appears that it wasn't difficult for Joseph to think of a feasible solution.  And the fact that Mrs Harris had stolen the manuscript may have been what prompted Joseph to write a religious account, rather than the political version of the first, lost, pages of translation.  Through the Urim and Thummim Joseph claims to have received two revelations, his first, by which God provided him with a set of small plates, called the plates of Nephi, which covered exactly the same period in history as the lost manuscript, although these new plates were infinitely more religious.  God forbid him to retranslate the first part of the plates he ahd originally found because apparently the devil would make sure the stolen version would be published in altered form.

At this time Joseph was attending the Methodist Church of Harmony, and if the Book was made up it is not impossible to assume that he was attending for the mere reason of learning more about the Bible.  Parts of the Book are very similar to parts of the Old Testament, and it has been suggested that Joseph copied out whole sections of one and into the other.

The aforementioned revelations were to mark a turning point in Joseph's life.  He changed the wording of the Book from what might have begun as only an ingenious historical speculation, into a genuinely religious Book.  Joseph now had the beginnings of a new Church, and plans for its organization were already evolving in Joseph's mind, when eleven months later the Book was completed.  Although she may never have realised it, Lucy Harris probably had some participation in the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Conclusion -

In conclusion I would like to say that all the evidence seems to point to Joseph Smith, Jr., being a fraud, indeed a mythmaker of prodigious talent.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could have been established quite by accident, as the more Joseph embellished his ideas and theories, the easier it became for him to suggest that he was a chosen man.

In chapter one I discussed the first vision of Joseph.  Revivals were commonplace in the early nineteenth century and many of Joseph's contemporaries, such as Ann Lee, were successfully acquiring followers.  This could have been a starting point for Joseph.  It is known that his paternal grandfather had foretold that there would be a "prophet" born into the family.  This, couple with his mother's high expectations of her son, and the visions his own father and fellow contemporaries claimed to have received, may have led Joseph to fabricate his visions.  Obviously it cannot be said that he had no visions, but that they may have been unimpressionable and fuelled by the religious mania around him.

If Joseph did have a vision in the spring of 1820 it could not have struck him as a major event at the time, and the same can be said of the 1823 vision of Moroni.  They were probably left to whet the vivid imagination of his mind, until they had cause to resurface in later years to assure that his story was more convincing.  There were too many discrepancies in the various accounts of Joseph's first vision for the reader to assume that this vision was true as one from God.  Each account became more elaborate, not in style but in content, and yet there was no reason for Joseph not to mention the two personages, the angels and the apostasy of all the churches in his first account of 1832.

This vision could have been created, along with the 1823 vision of the Angel Moroni, to gain the status the over-ambitious youth required in his family.  Perhaps even there was an hallucination, thought by Joseph to have been a vision, and interpreted differently as time passed and he saw its significance for his career as prophet and translator.

Money digging was another aspect of which Joseph knew much about.  There is no doubt that he knew of the many legends of buried treasure.  Since he also knew of the legend of the lost [American] race, this would have provided ample ammunition to fire his imagination.  There can be no denying that he did discover a [copper] breastplate for it was not uncommon for these to be unearthed.  The one thing making the story suspect is that he allowed no one to see the plates, nor did he allow anyone to see him 'translating' them into the Book of Mormon.

If the whole story of the beginning of the Mormon Church is a hoax, why did it happen?  The expectations placed on Joseph from a very early age were immense.  His background was one of poverty, and if his desire was to break out of this into an affluent future, the young Joseph needed something that would be significant and make him stand out.  To use his imagination as a tool to help him was the obvious solution, and his theories on the lost race were great.  What better way to help with the family income than to 'translate' some golden plates, such as the ones he had heard were discovered in Canada, and in the Erie Canal in 1821.

His impressive knowledge of money digging and the seer stone would have provided him with enough scope to suggest how he had discovered the plates.  And because of the folk culture of his world, few would deny they existed.

What was it though that made him turn away from writing a 'factual', purely historical account of the lost race of Moundbuilders, and begin dictating an account that was religious in content, with many connotations of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament?  Magic and religion were very much interchangeable in the early years of the nineteenth century, and it was not uncommon for the ordinary lay person to believe that it was God who possessed divine authority over the diving rod and the seer, or peep, stone.  Not only was he in despair over which church to join (and there is no reason to doubt this) but he also knew that his own parents and many of his contemporaries were facing the same dilemma.  To create a totally new Church, one based on the lost race of the New World and their relation to the chosen people of Israel, would solve many problems and make him a vast amount of money.  There is no evidence to suggest that his parents knew what he was up to, and if they wanted to have faith in the grandfather's story Joseph could now give them the opportunity to do so.

What was it about the story that was to convert and recruit so many members for his Church, not least of all his own family and contemporaries?  The Book of Mormon must have been the deciding factor that captured them.  It was the actual creation, not the visions of the Father, Son or Moroni; not even the sacred Urim and Thummim which Joseph had in his possession and made him the chosen one.  The golden plates were a product of Joseph the necromancer.  The completed Book of Mormon was the creation of a newly developing and talented religious innovator. 

Bibliography -

Various books and journals were researched during the preparation of this dissertation.  These were the most helpful:

Brodie, FM No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet 1971

Backman, MV Joseph Smith's First Vision 1971

O'Dea, TF The Mormons 1975

Butler, J Magic, Astrology & the Early American Religious Heritage 1600-1750 (AHR, vol. 84, April 1979)

Hill, MS Money Digging Folklore & the Beginnings of Mormonism: An Interpretive Suggestion (BYUS, vol. 24, 1984)

Hill, MS The First Vision Controversy: A Critique & Reconciliation (Dialogue, vol. 15, Summer 1982)

St John Stott, G The Seerstone Controversy: Writing the Book of Mormon (Mosaic, vol. 19, 1986)

©E J Durrant 1996

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