In the Joseph Smith History it says "On the 5th day of April 1929 Oliver Cowdery came to my house, until which time I had never seen him."
I have heard that Cowdery was actually a relative of Joseph and they knew each other.
So my question: Is Joseph Smith lying about never having met Cowdery before he appeared at his house to help him translate? Or am I mistaken and they were not acquainted or related?

JSH: they're still publishing that trash? How many changes/ 'corrections' has it gone thru?

I'd love to compare a current one with the one I peddled (67-69)!

Are you talking about the History of the Prophet Joseph
Smith written by Lucy Mack Smith?


https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheProphetJosephSmithByHisMotherLucyMackSmith

Or this one?

https://archive.org/details/HistoryOfTheChurchhcVolumes1-7original1902EditionPdf

They were cousins.

Third cousins once removed. Oliver Cowdery's great-great-
grandparents, John Fuller and Mehitable Rowley were also Joseph
Smith's great-great-great-grandparents

This qualifies as "distant cousins." It's very probable that
they were unaware of this relationship. How many people here
can name their any of their 32 great-great-great-grandparents?

Me!

That being said. I could not name the hundreds of cousins.

JS is lying about it. Oliver Cowdery's father and Joseph Smith's father did money digging together with their sons in tow according to Peter Ingersoll. The reason JS lies about it is because Oliver has a very bad reputation and has been accused of selling plagiarized pamphlets and such. If that is found out, JS doesn't want to admit knowing him.

see Mormonleaks.org for a detailed argument of the Spalding-Rigdon theory (SRT) of Mormon origins, which I find persuasive.

It would have been inconsequential that Cowdery had met Smith before or not. The very statement "until which time I had never seen him" is superfluous. Why mention it. It's because when Smith wrote this "history", the church was on a deliberate campaign to deny accusations of fraud. Always has been.

But, Cowdery reportedly had a relationship with the Smiths besides being a distant cousin, like kolobite said. According to the SRT, Cowdery recruited Smith into Rigdon's scheme. Cowdery was sent by Rigdon to get Smith back on track after the 116-lost-pages debacle.

Rigdon himself lied about never having met Smith. He was also reportedly associated with the Smith's treasure scam.

They were cooking up the BoM as early as 1826, an idea (and probably source material) Rigdon got from the dying Spalding a decade earlier.

Baura is likely correct that they probably didn't know that they were distantly related, but it seems far fetched that they didn't know each other before the meeting that Joe describes. The fact that he even uses the words "until which time I had never seen him" makes the story seem a little fishy. He had been boarding with the Smiths BEFORE this meeting, so there was probably some family tie there.

There are multiple other verifiable lies in the JSH, so I don't know why anyone would trust any of it.

It does sound like a case of "methinks he doth protest too much."

Anyone ever heard anything about Cowdery boarding with the Smith's when he was younger? I've heard something like that before.

Wouldn't a more natural sentence formulation be: "I met Oliver Cowdery on the 5th day of April, 1829, when he came to my house"?

It appears Joseph Smith is trying to discredit rumors going around that the two had been longer-term associates cooperating on the BoM project.

Any insight out there?

From Wiki:

Early life[edit]
Cowdery was born October 3, 1806 in Wells, Vermont. His father, William, was a farmer who moved the family to Poultney in Rutland County, Vermont when Oliver was three.[3]
On September 3, 1809, Oliver's mother Rebecca Fuller Cowdery died.
Cowdery was reared in Poultney. During his youth, Cowdery had engaged in hunting for buried treasure and had used a divining rod.[4]
Early life in New York[edit]
At age 20 (circa 1826), he left Vermont and moved to the state of New York, "where his older brothers were married and settled". He clerked at a store in New York for several years.
In 1829, he took a position as a school teacher in Manchester.[5] Cowdery lodged at different houses in the Manchester area, including that of Joseph Smith, Sr., who was said to have provided Cowdery with additional information about the golden plates of which he had heard "from all quarters."[6]
Book of Mormon scribe and witness[edit]
Cowdery met Joseph Smith, Jr. on April 5, 1829—a year and a day before the official founding of the church—and heard from him how he had received golden plates containing ancient Native American writings.[7]
Cowdery told Smith that he had seen the golden plates in a vision before the two ever met.[8]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2014 09:43AM by Stumbling.

Thanks for all the help. So it looks like Cowdery and Smith were related but not closely and it is possible that they were unaware of this. It is also possible that they hadn't met but probably knew about each other through Joseph Smith Sr.

Joseph Smith might have been trying to make it sound like they were complete strangers who just happened to meet but the truth is there was more going on. Maybe the wording in Joseph Smith's history was a way for him to technically be telling the truth but not divulge all the details. For example "I never seen him" but I knew who he was.

Verse 74 in JSH is equally revealing (caps emphasis mine):

74 Our minds being now enlightened, we began to have the scriptures laid open to our understandings, and the true meaning and intention of their more mysterious passages revealed unto us in a manner which we never could attain to previously, nor ever before had thought of. In the meantime WE WERE FORCED TO KEEP SECRET THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HAVING RECEIVED THE PRIESTHOOD and our having been baptized, owing to a spirit of persecution which had already manifested itself in the neighborhood.


Riggghhhtttt. It is no coincidence that Oliver assisted Joseph in the manufacture of the John the Baptist + Peter, James, and John priesthood ordinations in 1834/1835. This after-the-fact invention is good proof that Oliver was a co-conspirator, which is why the JSH includes these two obvious signs of cover-up.

I am so tired of "persecution" being the go to excuse for every lie and rewrite.

In my experience, people almost always have a "tell" when they are lying. Offering more information than necessary when explaining something is definitely one of those tells. They offer this unasked for information because they know they are lying and see the encounter from this perspective. They expect the hearer to be suspicious (because they should be!) and question what the liar is saying. The liar offers the info they think will persuade the hearer before the hearer even shows any skepticism.

There are other examples of this in Joseph Smith's writings and words. The testimony of the eight witnesses, which Smith wrote and asked the "witnesses" to sign, offers the defense "and we lie not." After I learned how Martin Harris let the cat out of the bag that the 8 did not see anything real and were reluctant to sign the statement, I went back and reread it. The words "and we lie not" practically punched me in the face-such an obvious lie! If someone says they are not lying before you ask if they are lying, they are probably lying.

Here's one line: O Cowdery and JS were acquainted from way back and together plotted the bom; don't believe this? try:
JS found some golden plates as directed by and angel, who later took them with no one seeing them. Is this better?