It's not news at all, no reason for me to care now versus any other time...

...But,

Part of being exmo to me is better understanding what Mormonism really is. It's not therapeutic to me to just say it's a cult (although it is a cult) and eff-it (although, yes, eff-it).

Also, I'm particularly interested in the Book of Mormon because it was the reason I both got and lost a "testimony" of Mormonism.

But I'm also interested in the mechanisms of apologetics, and the built-in acceptance and rejection biases in people...ie, what seems probable or improbable versus what actually is.

Maybe the "coincidence?" thread got me on it.

One thing I see a lot regarding the SRT are dismissals based on subjective improbability. It's called unnecessarily "elaborate", "complex", "contrived", and in other ways called far-fetched. It's regarded as a "conspiracy theory" (which, of course, is exactly what it is, but I've read it compared to UFOs and Bigfoot).

There's where my own subjective sensibility gets defensive. UFOs? Bigfoot? Really?

Here's me rebuttal to that: It's hyperbole in itself to call it a UFO or Bigfoot theory...even if it's wrong.

The SRT rests on a few points of objective evidence. Insomuch that the evidence is wrong, or that the SRT is a non-sequitur to it, then the SRT is wrong.

Fine.

But there's a whole phenomenon of calling it quackery, without specifying why.

Why is it quackery?

I once began to wade through all the pros and cons of the SRT but having spent so much time researching both sides of various reasons as to why Mormonism is wrong (which proved it beyond any doubt to be a fraud), I decided my energies were better placed elsewhere than trying to follow all the information.

I know the Tanner's don't support the SRT (or at least they did not believe there was enough evidence to support). They are very careful in their research into these matters.

I just tired of following all the ins and outs and couldn't be bothered. But they are a good place to find out the objections to it.

Mormonism is wrong, independent of all of the reasons it is wrong. Another way of looking at it is that the symptoms are not the illness, they are a representation of the illness.

Each piece of evidence by itself is insufficient. It is the preponderance of evidence that smashes the shelf. That is my reason for not parsing the problems of Mormonism.

I have hundreds of problems with Mormonism. If one of them proves to be not a problem I still have hundreds of problems. SRT may or may not be a thing, but the Book of Mormon's problems are so great that it doesn't matter.

The biggest problem with the SRT should be obvious:

"Manuscript,Found" has never been found. So we can't compare it to the Book of Mormon.

We can compare "Manuscript Story – Conneaut Creek," copies of which exist (and that Spalding work is *not* the same as "Manuscript, Found")...results from that comparison have been mixed. The 2008 Jockers study ( http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/465.abstract ) concludes that Spalding was one of the primary BoM authors (along with Rigdon and Cowdery). That study was done using "Manuscript Story" as the baseline for Spalding work.

Some other studies (not done by mormon apologists) have reached different conclusions ( http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1099&index=12 ).
I should note that even though that latter one was done by a TBM, non-mormon colleagues participated, and it's not obviously flawed.

Most of the support for the SRT comes from "testimony," much of it given 5,10,20, even 40-50 years after the events in question.

So while there are some compelling aspects to the claimed support for it, and good reasons to keep it under consideration, the bottom line (at least for me) is that without "Manuscript, Found" it will be very hard to reach any kind of final conclusion.

As jacob pointed out, though, there doesn't need to be absolute "proof" of HOW the BoM was produced to know it's made-up 19th century writing. More than ample evidence already shows it's made-up 19th century writing. It's a fallacy that mormons are quite fond of to say, "If you can't prove how it was written, then it happened like JS said." Which of course isn't the case at all. :)

Jacob,

I must disagree with you on the claim that we have to be able to see and inspect "Manuscript Found" in order to decide on the merits of the Spalding-Rigdon Theory. It's like requiring a murder weapon for conviction when there is plenty of other evidence implicating the murderer.

I also don't know how you can compare the Hilton study with the Jockers et al. 2008. You are incorrect when you say that there are no "obvious problems" with the Hilton study. There were some big problems with it. But before I explain what those problems were, I have to admit that I am biased on this issue because I was a co-author on the Jockers et al study.

Having made that clear, I would like to point out that we reviewed the Hilton study as part of the Jockers et al study.

Here is what we wrote regarding the Hilton study :

"In a paper from around 1988, Mormon investigator John L. Hilton claimed that his group had significantly improved Larsen’s techniques and that their results reconfirmed his conclusion that the Book of Mormon is a work of multiple, though ancient, authors. For his analysis of the Book of Mormon, however, Hilton chose to analyze subjec- tively grouped and edited selections from the Book of Mormon put together in the form of 5,000 word blocks of text. Like Larsen, Hilton assumed that characters such as Nephi and Alma can be viewed as candidate authors, and he selected blocks of text from what he referred to as ‘didactic’ sections for the characters ‘Nephi’ and ‘Alma’. He then followed Larsen in assuming that each selection could only be the work of a single nineteenth century author, not the work of multiple nineteenth century authors. At best, one might hope to conclude from such an analysis that the chosen selections are not by the same author, but the methodology used does not exclude the possibility of multiple nineteenth century authors. Hilton’s methodology thus did not address a key aspect of the Book of Mormon authorship question.

In Appendix 3 of his essay, Hilton identifies the sources for his compilation: not a single manuscript, or the published 1830 version of the Book of Mormon, but instead, a composite compilation of selections from four sources based upon what he and his team judged to be the oldest. The provenance of this material is questionable. Also problematic is that Hilton’s compilation of old Mormon manuscripts did not include significant sections and direct quotations from the King James Bible — sections and quotations that are an acknowledged part of the 1830 Book of Mormon. Most importantly, Hilton’s analysis neglected to include a comparison with the work of Rigdon. This omission is difficult to understand given the other potential authors whose work Hilton analyzed."

Hilton's failure to include text from Sidney Rigdon is an obvious flaw. Considerable historical evidence implicates Rigdon as co-author. In fact, Rigdon was named as a likely contributor to the Book of Mormon before anyone knew about his connection to Solomon Spalding.

In the Jockers et al. 2008 study, we used a large amount of text written by Rigdon, and we say his signal throughout the Book of Mormon, but especially at the beginning and end.

The biggest weakness of our 2008 study was that we lacked documents that we knew were written by Joseph Smith. This was because he used so many scribes to write for him.

Since the 2008 study, Matt Jockers and Daniela Witten identified were able to identify some text that was likely Smith's or mostly Smith's. A group of us has since used that text to reassess the authorship patterns for each chapter of the Book of Mormon. The results indicate that Smith was likely a contributor, howbeit a minor one.

These results are now summarized at

http://mormonleaks.com

At mormonleaks.com, we also show there that Rigdon was the likely mastermind for the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants.

In a coming episode, we'll show authorship patterns for additions to the King James Bible in the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, which includes the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price.

You can probably guess who the most probable author is (here's a hint: it isn't Joseph Smith).

Craig

.

Yeah, I figured that :)

Thanks for the additional info on the Hilton study. I don't agree with its conclusions, and you can criticize their choices for starting points (which you have done well). Not including Rigdon was probably intentional, but since they didn't test for Rigdon it's hard to fault them for not concluding he had something to do with the BoM :)

I look forward to your upcoming new results.
I'll stand by, however, my conclusion that we can't reach any firm conclusion about Spalding unless either "Manuscript, Found" is actually found, or "Manuscript Story" can be shown to be the same as "Manuscript, Found" (which to me doesn't seem likely). Without that manuscript, which is the one purported to be the Spalding source for the BoM, we can only guess at Spalding influence (since we don't know if its style was anything like "Manuscript Story").

Rigdon's contribution, however, is something else altogether...

Quick question: aren't Spalding and Rigdon somewhat "exclusive" in terms of authorship? Meaning...if Rigdon's signature is clear and present, doesn't that diminish the odds of Spalding's manuscript being the source? And vice-versa? Or is the assumption that Rigdon "re-wrote" "Manuscript, Found" in play?

Thanks for doing the work, by the way, on this!

Thanks for your comments, ificouldhietokolob.

Manuscript Story is clearly NOT Manuscript Found, but we can extract Spalding "fingerprints" from Manuscript Story and use them to identify chapters in the Book of Mormon that Spalding likely wrote. These textual "fingerprints" can be frequently used non-contextual words that are unconsciously used by writers at different frequencies (this would include words like "the","to", "be","for","of", etc.). Other fingerprints include words that Spalding uniquely used in Manuscript Story (words not by any other other candidate authors in their published works), phrases uniquely used by Spalding, proper nouns created using the method that Spalding used in Manuscript Story. We can then compare different chapters to see where these multiple different fingerprints appear at the same time. This kind of compounding of evidence gives us a clear idea where Spalding likely contributed to the Book of Mormon. See Episode 2 at mormonleaks.com.

You ask: "aren't Spalding and Rigdon somewhat "exclusive" in terms of authorship? Meaning...if Rigdon's signature is clear and present, doesn't that diminish the odds of Spalding's manuscript being the source? And vice-versa? Or is the assumption that Rigdon "re-wrote" "Manuscript, Found" in play"

As a young man, Rigdon worked as a tanner and provided leather bookbindings to the Pittsburgh printshop where Spalding submitted Manuscript Found for publication. Several lines of evidence indicate that Rigdon made a copy of the manuscript then later modified it to suit his purposes. He then used Smith to reveal it to the world.

CC

Craig C Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for your comments, ificouldhietokolob.
>
> Manuscript Story is clearly NOT Manuscript Found,
> but we can extract Spalding "fingerprints" from
> Manuscript Story and use them to identify chapters
> in the Book of Mormon that Spalding likely wrote.

I get that.
I'm just skeptical about the value of that, since all the witness statements who mention "Manuscript, Found" say it was written in a style completely different from Spalding's other work. So I'm not sure how much using one Spalding manuscript can tell us about derivations from another.

> As a young man, Rigdon worked as a tanner and
> provided leather bookbindings to the Pittsburgh
> printshop where Spalding submitted Manuscript
> Found for publication. Several lines of evidence
> indicate that Rigdon made a copy of the manuscript
> then later modified it to suit his purposes. He
> then used Smith to reveal it to the world.

Got it.
The thing is, the more Rigdon modified it, the less it would sound like Spalding (and more like Rigdon).
Right?

Thanks for the reply.

ificouldhietokolob wrote:

> I'm just skeptical about the value of that [text analysis], since all the witness statements who mention "Manuscript, Found" say it was written in a style completely different from Spalding's other work. So I'm not sure how much using one Spalding manuscript can tell us about derivations from another.

Experts in authorship attribution have shown that authors who write in different styles or who attempt to immitate another author's style have little ability to change their usage of frequently used words, and they can therefore still be identified by text analysis methods. We cite evidence for this in our Jockers et al (2008) paper. Also, as I already pointed out, when we have different text atttibuton methods or different metrics for a given text all pointing to the same author, we have a compounding of evidence, and we can be increasingly confident that we have identified the true author or mix of authors, as the case may be (see next question)

> The thing is, the more Rigdon modified it, the less it would sound like Spalding (and more like Rigdon).
Right?

Yes, exactly! And that's precisely what we see when we do text analysis of the Book of Mormon. When Rigdon is the highest probability author, the second most probable author is typically Spalding; when Spalding is the most probable author, Rigdon is typically the second most probable author.

Craig C Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > The thing is, the more Rigdon modified it, the
> less it would sound like Spalding (and more like
> Rigdon).
> Right?
>
> Yes, exactly! And that's precisely what we see
> when we do text analysis of the Book of Mormon.
> When Rigdon is the highest probability author, the
> second most probable author is typically Spalding;
> when Spalding is the most probable author, Rigdon
> is typically the second most probable author.

Interesting.
I'll go read the Jockers paper again (it's been some time).
And will watch for your future updates.

Now if only somebody would find a "Manuscript, Found" in a dusty chest somewhere...if it really did have the BoM names in it, that would be a slam dunk! :)

To ificouldhietokolb:
Good points, here's my casual thoughts on them:

<you>"The biggest problem with the SRT should be obvious:

"Manuscript,Found" has never been found. So we can't compare it to the Book of Mormon."


<me> Yes it's a huge problem that MF has never been found, because according to the SRT it is practically the source manuscript for the BoM. Even if it showed up it would have to be well-proven to be authentic.
However, there is independent evidence it existed, and that MS is not it. So it's missing, but it's not made up.



<you> "We can compare "Manuscript Story – Conneaut Creek," copies of which exist (and that Spalding work is *not* the same as "Manuscript, Found")...results from that comparison have been mixed. The 2008 Jockers study ( http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/465.abstract ) concludes that Spalding was one of the primary BoM authors (along with Rigdon and Cowdery). That study was done using "Manuscript Story" as the baseline for Spalding work.

Some other studies (not done by mormon apologists) have reached different conclusions ( http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1099&index=12 ).
I should note that even though that latter one was done by a TBM, non-mormon colleagues participated, and it's not obviously flawed."

<me> I agree. Mixed results, suspect methods. So I am left with a net neutral. So I read MS (and the BoM) myself, and my personal amateur opinion is that there are both stark coincidences between parts of them and stark un-relatedness between parts of them.

<you> "Most of the support for the SRT comes from "testimony," much of it given 5,10,20, even 40-50 years after the events in question."

<me> I agree, but some of the witness testimony can be objectively corroborated. The SRT is not entirely subjective. Or, at least, objective evidence needs to be accounted for in counter-theories.

<me again> Inasmuch as the SRT seems improbable, I find counter-improbabilities in a primarily-Smith scenario too.

The crime is well established by forensic study. Now it becomes a whodunit. It looks like a clique of Joe's treasure digging club put one over on the other members.

Evidence from "The Late War" and "View of the Hebrews" are cooked into the BoM. Without Spalding's source documents, it's hard to say. However, Rigdon's association with Spalding looks mighty suspicious.

Did the burglar blow the vault with TNT or C4? If you can't say which, that doesn't patch the big hole in the door.

Babyloncansuckit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did the burglar blow the vault with TNT or C4? If
> you can't say which, that doesn't patch the big
> hole in the door.

Great analogy :)

"The crime is well established by forensic study. Now it becomes a whodunit."

I think we know whodunit. What we need to learn is howdunit and whendunit.

To Babyloncansuckit

you wrote: "Rigdon's association with Spalding looks mighty suspicious."

Rigdon to me is a highly improbable figure outside the SRT. If we discount to SRT, then we are left with what I think are mighty coincidences that Rigdon:
1. Had dealings with Spalding
2. Swept right into Mormonism heroically and "miraculously" (Rigdon's associate Pratt's miraculous story of getting off the canal barge, walking miles into the countryside and finding the Hamblin place and a BoM by "chance", and becoming converted to the BoM literally overnight, is SO fake).
3. Had met both Cowdery and Smith before the BoM, which they denied.

In my opinion, Rigdon was as transparent a fake and charlatan as Smith was!

So much for my Spalding Gray theory.

I don't know what the SRT is, nor do I care. The BoM is fiction. How that fiction came to be created may be interesting, but that it is fiction, and not what JS claimed it to be is the relevant fact.

"I don't know what the SRT is, nor do I care. The BoM is fiction. How that fiction came to be created may be interesting"

That's just the thing--it IS interesting. Exactly how the BOM was created is the kind of mystery that researchers and detectives love to solve. We Ex-Mormons know that the BOM is fiction, but if we can get to the bottom of *exactly* how it came about, that will make a lot of Mormons realize that it's fiction, too.

I don't dismiss the SRT -- I lean towards it. I definitely believe Oliver Cowdrey was more than just the scribe for the Book of Mormon. I think he was behind it just like Joseph Smith. I'm inclined to believe Rigdon was in on it in some way because his conversion was way too convenient. I don't think this requires a Spalding manuscript as the basis for the Book of Mormon, but it certainly could have contributed to the ideas in the Book of Mormon some way if Rigdon had an acquaintance with Spalding. The Book of Mormon was not original -- many of its ideas came from other sources.

To Justin
"...[Cowdery]...[Rigdon]...[were] way too convenient"

Yes. IMO Cowdery and Rigdon are both independently transparent charlatans and fakes on their own.

The most successful cults--Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, etc.--build themselves around one or more works of fiction. That's because human beings are drunk on our own literacy. We think if something's written down it's hot shit. We think we're bad-ass because we can read. My cats can't read; I can, so I must be "better" than my cats are.

I'd argue the reverse: species without the false promise of literacy live more normal, environmentally friendly, less neurotic existences. They live with less delusions of the past and future, with less fear of dying.

I like fiction. But, then again, I also like prescription pain meds. I try to stay away from the latter, although I admit I'll dabble in the former from time to time.

I have nothing to offer but wonder if anyone has ever done an analysis of the writings of Joseph Smiths mother, to determine if she was involved.

Years ago I was reading some of her writings when it just hit me that although the words were different, it sounded like the B o M.

...need to explain why Joseph Smith's 1838 account of how he found the golden plates in the stone box is so similar to the introduction of Spalding's "Manuscript Story":

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1813523,1813703#msg-1813703

Spaulding:

"Near the west Bank of the Coneaught River there are the remains of an ancient fort. As I was walking and forming various conjectures respecting the character situation and numbers of those people who far exceeded the present race of Indians in works of art & inginuety I hapned to tread on a flat Stone. This was at a small distance from the fort; & it lay on the top of a small mound of Earth exactly horizontal -- The face of it had a singular appearance. I discovered a number of characters which appeared to me to be letters -- but so much effaced by the ravages of time, that I could not read the inscription. With the assistance of a leaver I raised the Stone -- But you may easily conjecture my astonishment when I discovered that its ends and sides rested on Stones & that it was designed as a cover to an artificial cave. -- I found on examining that its Sides were lined with * * * built in a connical form with * * * down -- & that it was about {MS-002} eight feet deep -- Determined to investigate the design of this extraordinary work of antiquity -- I prepared myself with necessary requisites for that purpose and decended to the Bottom of the cave -- Observing one side to be perpendicular nearly three feet from the bottom, I began to inspect that part with accuracy; Here I noticed a big flat Stone fixed in the form of a doar. I immediately tore it down & lo a cavity within the wall presented itself -- it being about three feet in diameter from side to side and about two feet high. Within this cavity I found an earthen Box with a cover which shut it perfectly tite -- The Box was two feet in length one & half in breadth & one and three inches in diameter. My mind filled with awful sensations which crowded fast upon me would hardly permit my hands to remove this venerable deposit but curiosity soon gained the ascendancy & the box was taken & raised to open * * * When I had removed the cover I found that it contained twenty eight sheets of parchment. & that when * * * * * * {MS-003} appeared to be manuscripts written in an eligant hand with Roman Letters & in the Latin Language."

Was it just an incredible coincidence that Joseph Smith's story is so similar to Spaulding's? Or is this passage a smoking gun which indicates that Smith had a Spaulding manuscript which he worked from? And doesn't this similarity corroborate the testimonies of the Conneaut, Ohio citizens who said in 1832 that the BOM resembled the writings of the late Spaulding?

The Tanners address that on their site:

"While there are similarities regarding a hidden record in a stone enclosure, it was a common idea of the day that the Indians at one time had some sort of record of their people but it had been lost. There were also accounts of stone boxes. Researcher Dan Vogel explains:

Joseph Smith was certainly not the first to claim the discovery of a stone box, metal plates, or an Indian book. It was known that the Indians sometimes buried their dead in stone boxes similar to the one described by Joseph Smith. In 1820, for example, the Archaeologia Americana reported that human bones had been discovered in some mounds "enclosed in rude stone coffins." A similar stone box, described by John Haywood of Tennessee, was made by placing "four stones standing upright, and so placed in relation to each other, as to form a square or box, which enclosed a skeleton." Stone boxes of various sizes and shapes had reportedly been found in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, New York, and other places.

According to various accounts, some of the North American mounds also contained metal plates. Plates constructed by the Indians were usually made of hammered copper or silver and were sometimes etched. Plates made of other metals were most likely of European manufacture. In 1775 Indian trader James Adair described two brass plates and five copper plates found with the Tuccabatches Indians of North America. According to Adair, an Indian informant said "he was told by his forefathers that those plates were given to them by the man we call God; that there had been many more of other shapes, . . . some had writing upon them which were buried with particular men." . . .

Perhaps such discoveries of metal plates encouraged the persistent legend of a lost Indian book. The legend, as related by Congregational minister Ethan Smith [in his 1825 book, View of the Hebrews] of Poultney, Vermont, held that the Indians once had "a book which they had for a long time preserved. But having lost the knowledge of reading it, they concluded it would be of no further use to them; and they buried it with an Indian chief."[23]

In discussing the similarities between Spalding's story of a record hid in a cave covered by a stone and Smith's account of finding the plates in a stone enclosure, Richard Van Wagoner explains that both could have drawn from the Masonic "Legend of Enoch":

In this saga, Enoch, the seventh patriarch, the son of Jared, and the great-grandfather of Noah, according to Masonic tradition, became disgusted with wickedness surrounding him. Fleeing to the "solitude and secrecy of Mount Moriah" . . . the Shekinah (sacred presence) appeared to him with instructions to preserve the wisdom of the antediluvians to their posterity. He then made a gold plate and engraved in characters the true, ineffable name of Deity. The plate was then placed in a specially prepared subterranean vault, along with other treasure, and covered with a stone door. Enoch was then only allowed to visit the site once a year.[24]

Thus we see that Joseph Smith did not need Spalding's manuscript to come up with the idea of a hidden record."


Smith's story is "so similar" to a number of stories popular in his time.

http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/josephsmithsplagiarismchapter9spalding.htm

The other problem with that is that the story comes from the Conneaut manuscript, not "Manuscript, Found." The Conneaut manuscript wasn't published until long after Smith's death, and wasn't the manuscript that Rigdon supposedly stole from the printer to use as the basis for the BoM.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2017 10:10AM by ificouldhietokolob.

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The other problem with that is that the story
> comes from the Conneaut manuscript, not
> "Manuscript, Found." The Conneaut manuscript
> wasn't published until long after Smith's death,
> and wasn't the manuscript that Rigdon supposedly
> stole from the printer to use as the basis for the
> BoM.


I agree with everything you cited from the Tanner's. Good stuff, and the SRT OUGHT to be considered an uphill battle.

But this last quote doesn't factor, because it's not when it was published that matters, rather when it was written. Spalding died in 1816, so any manuscript predated Smith regardless of when it was extant.

Amos90 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But this last quote doesn't factor, because it's
> not when it was published that matters, rather
> when it was written. Spalding died in 1816, so any
> manuscript predated Smith regardless of when it
> was extant.

Let me explain:
The manuscript that was left at the printer, which Rigdon is thought to have stolen (after Spalding's death) is not the one given above with the "documents in a stone box" story. THAT manuscript wasn't published until long after Spalding's death, it was never left at the printer for Rigdon to steal, and there's no evidence Smith or Rigdon ever saw it.

Yes, it predated the BoM. But there's nothing to show Smith or Rigdon ever saw it.

Here is an interesting read from Dale Broadhurst a few years back:
http://www.olivercowdery.com/hurlbut/HCrisis0.htm

A question addressed is did Hurlbut possess more that just the Conneaut manuscript after visiting the home of Jerome Clark in Hartwick, NY, late in 1833, or did he have more writings of Spalding? If there had been more, and if some of what Hurlbut brought back to Ohio ended up in the hands of the mormon leaders, this could have included writings more strikingly similar to the BoM, or anything else that may have been preserved in Spalding's 'trunk of manuscripts' (see http://www.solomonspalding.com/docs/1880Dick.htm). The only document we can be sure he recovered was the Conneaut manuscript given to E.D. Howe and later discovered in Hawaii. Anything else that may have been in that trunk appears lost to history, so far as we know.

Adherents to the Spalding authorship claims don't necessarily have to go down this hole (and I'm sure some would find it far-reaching that additional documents transfered from Hurlbut to the mormons), but if mormon leaders did end up with additional Spalding writings around the end of 1833 from Hurlbut, then they could have had some sort of discovery story penned by Spalding at their disposal earlier than 1838.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2017 02:35PM by jeffh.

ificouldhietokolob wrote:

> In discussing the similarities between Spalding's
> story of a record hid in a cave covered by a stone
> and Smith's account of finding the plates in a
> stone enclosure, Richard Van Wagoner explains that
> both could have drawn from the Masonic "Legend of
> Enoch":
>
> In this saga, Enoch, the seventh patriarch, the
> son of Jared, and the great-grandfather of Noah,
> according to Masonic tradition, became disgusted
> with wickedness surrounding him. Fleeing to the
> "solitude and secrecy of Mount Moriah" . . . the
> Shekinah (sacred presence) appeared to him with
> instructions to preserve the wisdom of the
> antediluvians to their posterity. He then made a
> gold plate and engraved in characters the true,
> ineffable name of Deity. The plate was then placed
> in a specially prepared subterranean vault, along
> with other treasure, and covered with a stone
> door. Enoch was then only allowed to visit the
> site once a year.

I agree that the Royal Arch Masonry of Enoch was likely the inspiration for the Manuscript Story account of Spalding and for the gold plates account of Smith.

In our upcoming episode at mormonleaks.com (Episode 7), we link Spalding to Royal Arch Masonry and to the extract of the prophesy of Enoch in the Book of Moses (Pearl of Great Price). We also show that the Masonic story of Enoch -an account about Canaanites- links directly to the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon- an account about Jaredites.

The evidence suggests that Rigdon et al. added the Book of Ether to the Book of Mormon after the lost 116 pages incident, perhaps because they needed to add some filler.

In December 1830, they then "revealed" the Masonic prequel to the Book of Ether - the extract of the prophesy of Enoch. This textbwas later incorporated into the Book of Moses of the Pearl of Great Price (part of the revision of Genesis in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible).

CC

Perhaps a slap in the face with a codfish might convince us wed been fished...if thats what it takes i think well look forever for that empirical evidence to pin it down...OJ skated cuz a glove soaked in blood shrunk...was he guilty...id say so...this is the same..evidence has even been destroyed by tbms protecting their precious church....more evidence lies hidden behind vault doors...the big wheels in the church have much to lose if the wrong info becomes public...it is a family gig after all...they werent pissed at mike quinn cuz he wrote a few books...they were pissed cuz he exposed info they wanted secret...can you say mark hofman...yeah i know its likely spelled wrong...but you know who i mean dontcha...these pieces of the puzzle are the same...together they create the picture of guilt and falsehood...for me thats good enough...but some do need a cod in the face to feel fished...or fetched as it were..as always i admire the scholarship displayed here daily...BRAVO!!