A Critique of Chapter ___, "______"
As stated in Article 2, the Spalding theorists have asserted that in the early 1800's (c. 1810 - 1812) Solomon Spalding, while living at Conneaut, Ohio, wrote a manuscript that is the same (if not exactly the same) as the historical parts of the Book of Mormon, which was later published in 1830 at Palmyra, New York, by Joseph Smith.
This assertion is vital because it provides the foundation upon which the core premise and conclusion of the theory rests--i.e. that the coconspirators (Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery) plagiarized heavily from Spalding's manuscript while writing the Book of Mormon, and thus Spalding is the real author of the Book of Mormon.
In order to make this assertion, the Spalding theorists have had to account for the only extant Spalding manuscript (found over approximately a half-century ago)--which, as will be demonstrated in article 4 of this treatise, is far from "the same as" the historical parts of the Book of Mormon. This they have done by proposing that there are two different manuscripts, which they have delineated as the "Manuscript Lost" and the "Manuscript Found". Ironically, and confusingly, the manuscript they have designated as the "Manuscript Lost", is actually the manuscript that has been found, and the manuscript they have designated as the "Manuscript Found", is actually the manuscript that has been lost and is yet unaccessible for comparative examination (the method in the seeming madness of these backwards designations will become apparent when we begin to examine the evidence). And, naturally, they have claimed that the lost "Manuscript Found" is the one that is "the same as" the historical parts of the Book of Mormon.
However, if it can be demonstrated that there are not two different manuscripts, and/or that the so-called "Manuscript Found" and "Manuscript Lost" are one-and-the-same, and given that the extant manuscript is not "the same as" the historical parts of the Book of Mormon (to be discussed further in Article 4), then the foundational assertion, and the core precept and conclusion of the Spalding theory, fatally collapse.
Last updated 6/30/01