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Sometimes when I read the Book of Mormon, I can almost hear the creative voice in Joseph’s mind whispering from the pages. I do see impressive insights and meticulous attention to doctrinal details, but I also see a rambling narrative that reads like frontier fantasy. Still, as flawed, sensational, and heavily dependent on other sources as the Book of Mormon is, it is, in my estimation, an amazing book. I don’t need faith to admit that much. Taken as a whole – considering its length and the speed in which it was produced, and assuming it wasn't secretly written by someone else like Sidney Rigdon, who had years of religious training and time to write it1 - it is a remarkable achievement Indeed, the faithful have embraced this fact as the greatest piece of non-spiritual evidence for the authenticity and divinity of the Book of Mormon. They ask themselves: How could a boy with very little schooling create such a complex book? This is a question for the ages, and one that I have grappled with many times. It belongs right there with history’s other perplexing questions: How did Handel create his intricate masterpiece, Messiah, in a mere twenty-four days? By what means was Nostradamus able to effortlessly compose his “Centuries” with all its predictions for the future of humanity, many of which, some scholars would argue, have come to fruition? How is it that Ellen White, a young prophetess of eighteen with only four years of formal education, could launch a prolific career that would produce over 2200 revelations and mountains of literature?
The reader may remember that Emma Smith, who was at one time a scribe for her husband, noted this very phenomenon when Joseph would resume translation after dealing with various distractions. We also know that despite the difficult circumstances he found himself in, Joseph dictated the bulk of the Book of Mormon in a little over two months, a rapidity reminiscent of similar works that have been produced by automatic writers. Admittedly, it’s only a theory, but there are certainly some compelling similarities between Joseph Smith’s sudden bursts of inspiration and the many well known cases of automaticity. As famed psychologist William James observed, “You will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms.”3 Psychotherapist Robert D. Anderson saw Joseph’s dictation process as a type of “free association.” In his book, Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith, Anderson breaks down the Book of Mormon section by section, and hypothesizes how traumatic events in the life of the young prophet, especially his excruciating leg surgery at age seven, were subconsciously confronted and repeatedly overcome through the characters, conflicts, and events in the book. Dan Vogel also approaches the enigmatic prophet from a psychobiographical perspective in his book, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.4 In conversation one evening, writer and Mormon scholar, Brent Metcalfe, offered still another possible explanation for Joseph’s amazing abilities. He pointed out that because the creation of the Book of Mormon was a feat that eludes our understanding and exceeds our own capabilities, so many of us naturally conclude that Joseph could not have produced it by his own means. But in his opinion, an achievement is not rendered impossible simply because many people think it is. From his point of view, Joseph’s “gift and power” may have been nothing more than an unusually developed cognitive potential – a more complete neurological connection between the subliminal and the conscious. All conjecture aside, there really is no definitive way to explain how Joseph accomplished this most daunting task. But the fact that we don’t yet fully understand how the Book of Mormon was produced doesn’t change the fact that Joseph Smith or some other 19th Century personality connected with him clearly did produce it. The internal and external evidence, in my opinion, is simply too overwhelming to say otherwise. Furthermore, there is little doubt that Joseph possessed extraordinary imaginative powers, as B.H. Roberts readily acknowledged. Joseph’s own mother, Lucy Mack Smith, would have agreed. She provided this small glimpse into the creative abilities of the boy-prophet, well before he took to the work of translating the plates: “During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them.”5 In summary, if the Book of Mormon truly spoke as a voice from out of the ground, it was ground made up of fertile, 19th Century soil. If it truly “spoke to our day,” that day was the Second Great Awakening that swept frontier America, and the intended recipients of this great message were, in all reality, the clergy, congregants, and general citizens of Joseph’s day. If the Hill Cumorah truly produced an ancient American civilization’s golden record – a ponderous, religious epic with tales of intrepid prophets, apocalyptic wars, and cataclysmic events - it was the Cumorah in Joseph’s enigmatic mind. And what of Joseph’s mind? Just like the hill, itself, it may have appeared as nothing special upon first glance, but upon “second sight,” it was as an open mountain filled with vast repositories of imaginative treasures!
1
I
have learned much more about the Rigdon/Spaulding authorship theory since
writing this booklet, and I find it compelling in many ways. While many scholars have
discredited it, new information has come forward in recent years to give the
theory more legitimacy. The definitive work thus far on the subject is, "Who
Really Wrote the Book of Mormon: The Spaulding Engima." See it on Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Really-Wrote-Book-Mormon/dp/0758605277/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237282013&sr=8-1
For a relatively succinct but meticulously detailed account of the evidences
for this theory, see
ttp://mormonstudies.com/criddle/rigdon.htm.
Read Tom Donofrio's work on Spaulding's plagiarism of
prominent Revolutionary War histories and how these borrowings end up in the
text of the Book of Mormon at http://mormonstudies.com/early1.htm. 3 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 2002 [1902]), p.520. 4 Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith, The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004). 5 Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, by Lucy Smith, 1853, p. 85, quoted in Salt City Messenger, Issue 107, October 2006.
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Conclusion:
How Did Joseph Do It?
There are at least a few scholars that have proposed theories to explain this
latter-day mystery. Scott
C. Dunn suggests that the descriptions of Joseph’s “translation” process
very much resemble known
cases of “automatic writing.”2
Automatic
writers are able to
channel subliminal forces and effortlessly dictate vast amounts of information
in very fluid and rapid
fashion. They have created poetry, fiction, and even “scripture,” and have been responsible for such
famous works as A Course in Miracles, The
Aquarian Gospel of
Jesus Christ, and the
novel, Jane Eyre. Some have the capability to withdraw mid-sentence,
turn their attention to some other conscious activity, and pick up exactly where they left off without so
much as a glance at the material they had just written.
