Posted by:
spanner
(
)
Date: February 26, 2012 07:11PM
IIRC there was always a sealed portion. Under the Rigdon/Spaulding theory, the sealed portion represented future works that Rigdon had in the pipeline, apparently based on the remainder of Spaulding's manuscript. Rigdon to some extent stage managed the presentation of the manuscript to the public.
If you are unfamiliar with this theory, which has some considerable support, including published (peer-reviewed) quantitative authorship studies, Craig Criddle has a presentation here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utDU45lm210Uncle Dale Broadhurst has collected a massive amount of early information on the early church and the environment it developed in here:
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/An important thing to remember is that the theory does not overturn or invalidate other findings made under the assumption that Smith wrote the BoM alone, rather the S/R theory complements or illuminates them.
I started out sitting on the fence, but the quantitative authorship studies had me sold on the S/R theory. (So I am now biased). Uncle Dale's website collects the original material so you can check it out for your self.