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Show Book of Mormon manuscripts upheld by noted historian "All of the original draft of the Book of Mormon was taken down from the lips of Joseph Smith by a series of scribes, and there is absolutely nothing to the idea that Solomon Spaulding wrote any part of the manuscript," Dr. Leonard J. Arrington, Church Historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), said today. Dr. Arrington, former president presi-dent of the Western History Association, and also Lemuel Hardison Redd Professor of History and director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University, made his comment in response to an article appearing in the July 8 issue of "Christianity Today," and a story based on that article distributed by the Los Angeles Times. In his statement, Dr. Arrington Ar-rington said: "There is absolutely nothing noth-ing to this idea. All of the original draft of the Book of Mormon was taken down from the lips of Joseph Smith by a series of scribes. "We have more than 100 pages of this material in the Church Archives and the writing of all but one of the scribes has been clearly identified. The one scribe who remains unidentified follows on the same page and precedes on another page material written by scribes who can be identified, and all of these pages are clearly torn from a scribe's tor'- j "We think the unidentified scribe was the brother of Emma Smith, the wife of Joseph Smith, oui e have no sample of his writing to compare it with. "The 'Spaulding' theory is preposterous and cannot be possible because of the manner man-ner in which the material was taken down. "We have compared this writing in the Book of Mormon manuscript with the' handwriting handwrit-ing of Spaulding which was made more than 20 years earlier and there is absolutely no resemblance." Solomon Spaulding died in 1816, never having known Joseph Smith, first prophet-president prophet-president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was born on December 23, 1805. The Book of Mormon was first published early in 1830. The Book of Mormon, translated from ancient records rec-ords by Joseph Smith, is an abridged history of people who came to the Americas from the Middle East at three different times centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. It recounts also the ministry of Jesus Christ in the Americas following his resurrection, and is a witness with the Holy Bible that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world nd Redeemer of all mankind. "Christianity Today" said three handwriting analysts had compared photocopies of several original manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon with some of Spaulding's handwriting and concluded that .Spaulding had wriltcn the material they examined. |
