If I weren't the rational person I am, daughter of a chemist/electronic engineer father, I might think I'm being haunted by my (distant) ancestor, Solomon Spalding, whose fantasy novel Manuscript Found is suspected by many to have been the "historical" text appropriated by Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery to establish a "miracle" that would convince good but gullible Christians of Smith's claim he'd been chosen by God the Father and Jesus Christ to restore their true church upon earth.
In fact, such a spiritually bankrupt system of belief was exactly what these co-conspirators planned to establish; anyone naive enough to believe that God, Jesus, and angels had appeared to Smith and had helped him uncover golden plates hidden in a hillside in New York by a dying member of the lost tribes of Israel and that this illiterate man had translated them with the help of a peeping stone and magic hat would prove themselves excellent marks. Such believers, they suspected and soon knew as fact, would give up their monies, possessions, religious heritage, common sense, and souls to follow someone who represented their deepest desire for a concrete sign of God's existence and, more important, His love for them.
Thus my semi-ancestor's historical imaginings, having been stolen and then augmented by these three with their self-serving theories about divine matters along with plagiarized portions of the Holy Bible, unwittingly (I hope) became the foundation for an epic pyramid scheme that makes Bernie Maddoff's efforts look like child's play. For years, I chose to keep my views mostly to myself, knowing that airing them would hurt the good LDS members I personally know and, in many cases, love, and that has never been something I've wanted, but now I have compelling and overwhelming reasons to do so.
LDS leadership has spent great sums of tithe-payers' dollars manufacturing rebuttals to and destroying evidence of these claims. A big part of their "proof" is that the only extant version of Spalding's writings on the lost tribes of Israel whom he imagined settled in the Americas does not match the Book of Mormon other than in a few vague similarities that were put forward by many amateur historians at the time.
But as I've learned in the well-researched and well-written Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?, convincing evidence exists that reveals the LDS bait and switch for what it was and is. Solomon Spalding abandoned an early version of Manuscript Found and started over with a somewhat different approach, including writing this newer account from the point of view of a last white tribe member in the Americas named Mormon. He told of the wars among these settlers, half of whom had been cursed for their iniquity with the mark of Cain (dark skin) but whom eventually managed to kill off all the good (i.e., white) warriors except this last man standing, who managed to write hundreds of pages and bury them deeply in the earth before succumbing to his injuries.
Solomon Spalding (allegedly but very likely) wrote that Mormon secreted the tablets upon which he recounted this centuries-long history, along with other artifacts of his vanquished society, in a hill NOT in Palmyra, New York, as Joseph Smith claimed, but in an Indian burial mound that had recently been opened by American explorers on the American frontier--then Ohio and western New York and Pennsylvania. Solomon himself lived in far-west Amity, Pennsyvlania, where in his last years his family ran their Temperance Inn while he busied himself with this literary, or more precisely entertaining, work.
When Solomon learned of these burial mounds, he shared the belief among his compatriots that the Indians, those pesky and violent savages, could never have had the intelligence and civilization to create the artifacts found buried in these mounds. This mystery piqued Solomon's imagination; he was a scholar of the classics, a Dartmouth graduate, and a previously ordained reverend of the Congregational Church before leaving the ministry for business ventures on Western Reserve land, all of which had failed to date. And so he gave rein to his fertile imagination and dreamed up a society that might have deposited those items in those mounds but who mysteriously had, by then, disappeared without a trace.
Numerous witnesses contemporary to Smith and Rigdon, et al., testified that the missing second manuscript not only existed, but was written in knock-off King James Versionese with a preponderance of sections beginning with the lines "And thus it came to pass ...." In fact, Solomon's critics ridiculed him and giggled behind his back, calling him "Mr. Now it Comes to Pass." Anyone who has read the Book of Mormon, as I have many times, knows this phrase is repeated ad nauseum in the text.
Evidence in favor of the "Spalding Enigma," as the LDS labeled it, is historical and thus not entirely verifiable as truth, but nevertheless remains extremely likely given the sheer number of witnesses to this manuscript's having been written by Solomon Spalding, the respectability of these witnesses, and their apparent lack of material gain for coming forward--not to mention a researched and documented timeline that corrects a version of events LDS leaders have altered and whitewashed, suppressed and lied about from the beginning until today, as one must conclude when comparing their statements to those that can be verified in the historical record.
Rather than supernatural powers from the Godhead leading Joseph Smith to golden plates buried in a hillside, one must conclude that a far more pedestrian explanation exists for the origin of the Book of Mormon. If supernatural beings did give Smith and his followers the gift of tongues and other metaphysical wonders, I have to question where those beings originated--with God the Father and Jesus Christ? Really? Would Jesus Christ and his Father, God Himself, establish a church built on lies and deceit? Would Jesus Christ and God Himself sanction their so-called spokesman on earth's taking other men's wives and daughters--one of them a child of merely fourteen--to add to his stable of wives, as did Joseph Smith?
Though it has taken me "lo these forty years" to put the whole sordid tale together, its slow unfolding has finally revealed to me the stinking rot at the center of this influential and powerful cult just on the cusp of a U.S. election that deeply threatens the fiber of our democracy should one of its members be anointed our leader.
True, only a few days remain until the national election, so the likelihood is small that I'll reach a significant number of voters before our next President is named. But in the event Mitt Romney, the Mormons' native son, manages to fool a majority of U.S citizens and electoral college members of his sincere wish to benefit all Americans with economic growth, this story only becomes that much more relevant and necessary before voices like mine are silenced entirely by the Mormon juggernaut. That Mitt's advisors have taught him how to manipulate the good but gullible among us should be no surprise, given the empire that has evolved from a few deluded followers of Smith, Rigdon, and Cowdery in the dawn of U.S. Manifest Destiny, when most Americans believed they were God's chosen people but felt confused about which of the numerous Christian religions was Christ's true church.
What is certain is that Solomon Spalding did not write his romance with the intention of using it to deceive trusting Christians; in fact, it started as a diversion to while away the hours as his health and ability to do manual labor declined in his latter years. He told everyone in the last year or so of the 55 he lived that Sidney Rigdon had stolen his manuscript from the printer in Pittsburgh where it had been left for publication as a work of fiction. He'd seen and spoken with Rigdon there many times, though the LDS deny Rigdon was in Pittsburgh at that time (mail records refute their version), and evidence shows that Rigdon also had a relative who lived right next door to the Spaldings' Temperance Inn in Amity, Pennsyvania, and that Sidney visited there from time to time. The availability of the Inn to be rented by the Spaldings may well have come from Rigdon's machinations.
I dearly hope that, in despair over the unfulfilled promises of the printshop in Pittsburgh, Solomon was not tempted by money to sell the manuscript to Rigdon or one of his co-conspirators, but even if he did so he continued to call out Rigdon as a thief until the day he died. Either way, if he has any awareness of what has since ensued, he's undoubtedly extremely ticked off that his work, meant only for fun and entertainment, has been co-opted for such a devious purpose and has made millions, nay, billions, of dollars for the descendants of thieves while he himself died poor and nearly, but not quite, forgotten.
As a former convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I have much to say on this subject. I am particularly struck by coincidences that suggest I am not entirely done with the Mormon Church--but not the way they hope when they harass me with visits from missionaries and cards from Relief Society after I've asked them to stop. I can easily guess their thinking--I was naive enough at one time to fork over 10 percent of my earnings, so I'm susceptible to doing so again. Perhaps after a few of them see this blog they will realize the error of that idea, at the very least.
A tiny religious movement that began in 1830 now tallies over 14 million members worldwide and is the fastest growing religion on earth. Just think--all those millions who remain in good standing fork over a full 10 percent of their earnings to an organization that uses that money for a few charitable causes but mostly to line the pockets of its leaders through so-called religious businesses for which no taxes must be paid.
Brilliant. Mormons are good businessmen, everyone knows. They just don't know HOW good, nor that the whole empire is built on greed and fraud.
Not only do members slice 10 percent off their earnings (before taxes) and send it to Salt Lake City, they are required to buy all their underwear from the church. That's right. Underwear. Sacred garments of polyester with weird symbols on the nipples and navel and knees, underwear they're told will save them from bullets and fire as long as they remain true to the church (i.e., tithe-paying). You'd better watch out if your check's in the mail when your house catches fire, cuz you're a goner, sacred underwear or not!
Brilliant. Not only do members do both those things, they are told they need to store a year's worth of food in their homes for the apocolypse, and guess where they buy these stores? You bet. The LDS church owns massive amounts of acreage in many parts of the world; it also owns businesses that process this food and businesses that process the storage containers the food goes in before sending to believers or putting on their own stores' shelves.
Brilliant. LDS "modest clothing"; LDS scriptures--four holy books, some in special sets, engraved with members' names; LDS self-help books; LDS fiction for teens and lonely housewives; Mormon Tabernacle Choir (a big money maker even with the "Gentles," as non-Mormons are known); LDS popular music; LDS movies; LDS lies, sex, and videotape.
Scientologists make members fork over all their money right up front; the LDS church has more insidious methods, but before too long that's exactly what members end up doing for the Salt Lake juggernaut.
The good, honest, well-meaning, and otherwise intelligent members of the LDS church have no idea that so much evidence exists that lays bare this deception at the hands of a ragtag group of known con artists. Not long before the Book of Mormon's publication in 1830, Joseph Smith was arrested, fined, and run out of town for bilking gullible followers of some $10,000. How? With the seeing stone he'd retrieved from a neighbor's well that revealed where in the hills gold was buried, but despite his believers' hours and hours of digging, no gold was ever found. Funny that part of the "Urim and Thummin" he used to translate those golden heiroglyphics was a seer stone.
These good LDS members are forbidden to read anything the church does not sanction, or risk their temple recommend and, hence, their ticket to walk through the pearly gates into heaven. They are forbidden to explore their faith, as any religion worth its salt would encourage its members to do, because these monomaniacal deceivers engineered an absurd alternate universe. They knew that anyone gullible and desperate enough to believe this manufactured "proof" that God exists and that their lives are guided by a loving divinity would willingly give up their money, goods, wives, and daughters and be thankful to their betrayers as they did so. (Would a loving divinity sanction the blood atonement at the heart of Mormon beliefs? Ask the fathers, mothers, and children slaughtered at Meadows by Mormons disguised as Indians who wanted their wagon train's food, weapons, and ammunition and didn't want non-Mormon neighbors. Future blog on that.)
"The Mormons consist of two types--the Deceivers and the Deceived," [attribution soon to follow].
What I write on this blog comes from my own personal experience as a baptized, temple-endowed, sacred garment-wearing former Mormon along with study of sources I consider highly reliable. Yes, I was hoodwinked once, you may say, so why should anyone believe me now?
I was fourteen when I became a Mormon, driven by hormones and cute guys who told me stuff that sounded really cool. I'm fifty-three now and a whole lot wiser to the ways of the world. Trust me, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this church is false.
Today's post is supported in large part by Who Wrote the Book of Mormon, mentioned above, a fine work of scholarship with traceable and available historical references (except a few that, since its publications, Mormons have managed to remove from libraries and other respositories). I will reference that book on every post or page in which I quote or paraphrase what it authors assert and convincingly support with evidence.
Who Wrote the Book of Mormon is available at Amazon.com and at many other retailers, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to LDS members, persons thinking about becoming a Mormon, those planning to vote this November 6, and anyone who is curious about a strangely private but proselytizing organization founded not in the distant past when Lao-Tzu, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and the multiple gods of Hinduism, among others, allegedly originated our major world religions, but a mere 200 years ago in this very land--a past recent enough that anyone wishing to reconstruct what most likely actually happened can fairly easily do so.
From my own experience, I can state that, with open-minded diligence in researching this question, questors will find strong evidence to suggest Spalding's authorship and little to no evidence to support the LDS assertion that the Book of Mormon has divine origins. While faith, by definition, means believing in things that can't be seen or known first-hand, faith utterly dependent on falsehood and connivery cannot be faith in a good and loving God's plan for us, but faith in something else entirely.
In the end my hope is not for personal gain or fame but simply to add to the body of work refuting the divine origins of Mormonism and to promote these views until no one other than the most deranged can escape the obvious truth. Far too many, including myself for many years, have bought the sanitized version of these events for a "pearl of great price"--not just our money, but with our fidelity to Jesus Christ co-opted by an infidel cause despite the good faith and piousness of nearly all of us outside the inner circle of LDS leadership.
Helping to finally stop this epic scam would give my life the meaning I've always sought, though I don't care about making a splash in the public eye. I've simply always wished to be an instrument of succor and relief to those suffering in this world, but have never known quite how I was meant to do so.
But now that the LDS church has inserted itself so forcefully into U.S. politics and has presented one of its own to head our nation, I can no longer keep what I know and highly suspect to myself. In the interest of our nation's economy and the fortunes of all families and nations worldwide, I fervently join those trying to end this madness. It makes me more than a little angry that this colossal lie has so much power in our world today.
I also hope, by so doing, poor Solomon Spalding will finally give up the ghost and rest in peace under his grave marker just an hour and a half from where I write this today.
Stay tuned for much, much more on this "marvelous work and a wonder" that began with a simple act of plagiarism, and if you are still in doubt before you vote a week from Tuesday, do some googling of your own to find other reputable sources. I will add a list of those--and the ones put out by LDS leaders so you can compare and contrast--as soon as I can. In the meantime, there's plenty of it available just by googling the subject.
_____________________
References:
Cowdery, Wayne C., Davis, Howard A., and Vanick, Arthur. 2005. Who Wrote the Book of Mormon? St. Louis: Concordia. ISBN 0-7586-0527-7. Available at many libraries, Amazon.com, and other retailers and worth every penny spent for it.
Recommended:
Broadhurst, Dale. solomonspalding.com and other sites to be linked with soon - I did not directly quote Mr. Broadhurst, but his site is a wealth of documentation that backs up what I'm reading now in the next resource, as I am reading that book slowly and carefully, absorbing everything as deeply as I can, though I know I'll be reading it many more times in the future. I have also spent a little time on Mr. Broadhurst's excellent sites, but I haven't yet had the pleasure of perusing them slowly and carefully.
In fact, such a spiritually bankrupt system of belief was exactly what these co-conspirators planned to establish; anyone naive enough to believe that God, Jesus, and angels had appeared to Smith and had helped him uncover golden plates hidden in a hillside in New York by a dying member of the lost tribes of Israel and that this illiterate man had translated them with the help of a peeping stone and magic hat would prove themselves excellent marks. Such believers, they suspected and soon knew as fact, would give up their monies, possessions, religious heritage, common sense, and souls to follow someone who represented their deepest desire for a concrete sign of God's existence and, more important, His love for them.
Thus my semi-ancestor's historical imaginings, having been stolen and then augmented by these three with their self-serving theories about divine matters along with plagiarized portions of the Holy Bible, unwittingly (I hope) became the foundation for an epic pyramid scheme that makes Bernie Maddoff's efforts look like child's play. For years, I chose to keep my views mostly to myself, knowing that airing them would hurt the good LDS members I personally know and, in many cases, love, and that has never been something I've wanted, but now I have compelling and overwhelming reasons to do so.
LDS leadership has spent great sums of tithe-payers' dollars manufacturing rebuttals to and destroying evidence of these claims. A big part of their "proof" is that the only extant version of Spalding's writings on the lost tribes of Israel whom he imagined settled in the Americas does not match the Book of Mormon other than in a few vague similarities that were put forward by many amateur historians at the time.
 |
| "I'm Solomon Spalding, and I'm VERY ticked off." |
When Solomon learned of these burial mounds, he shared the belief among his compatriots that the Indians, those pesky and violent savages, could never have had the intelligence and civilization to create the artifacts found buried in these mounds. This mystery piqued Solomon's imagination; he was a scholar of the classics, a Dartmouth graduate, and a previously ordained reverend of the Congregational Church before leaving the ministry for business ventures on Western Reserve land, all of which had failed to date. And so he gave rein to his fertile imagination and dreamed up a society that might have deposited those items in those mounds but who mysteriously had, by then, disappeared without a trace.
Numerous witnesses contemporary to Smith and Rigdon, et al., testified that the missing second manuscript not only existed, but was written in knock-off King James Versionese with a preponderance of sections beginning with the lines "And thus it came to pass ...." In fact, Solomon's critics ridiculed him and giggled behind his back, calling him "Mr. Now it Comes to Pass." Anyone who has read the Book of Mormon, as I have many times, knows this phrase is repeated ad nauseum in the text.
Evidence in favor of the "Spalding Enigma," as the LDS labeled it, is historical and thus not entirely verifiable as truth, but nevertheless remains extremely likely given the sheer number of witnesses to this manuscript's having been written by Solomon Spalding, the respectability of these witnesses, and their apparent lack of material gain for coming forward--not to mention a researched and documented timeline that corrects a version of events LDS leaders have altered and whitewashed, suppressed and lied about from the beginning until today, as one must conclude when comparing their statements to those that can be verified in the historical record.
Rather than supernatural powers from the Godhead leading Joseph Smith to golden plates buried in a hillside, one must conclude that a far more pedestrian explanation exists for the origin of the Book of Mormon. If supernatural beings did give Smith and his followers the gift of tongues and other metaphysical wonders, I have to question where those beings originated--with God the Father and Jesus Christ? Really? Would Jesus Christ and his Father, God Himself, establish a church built on lies and deceit? Would Jesus Christ and God Himself sanction their so-called spokesman on earth's taking other men's wives and daughters--one of them a child of merely fourteen--to add to his stable of wives, as did Joseph Smith?
Though it has taken me "lo these forty years" to put the whole sordid tale together, its slow unfolding has finally revealed to me the stinking rot at the center of this influential and powerful cult just on the cusp of a U.S. election that deeply threatens the fiber of our democracy should one of its members be anointed our leader.
True, only a few days remain until the national election, so the likelihood is small that I'll reach a significant number of voters before our next President is named. But in the event Mitt Romney, the Mormons' native son, manages to fool a majority of U.S citizens and electoral college members of his sincere wish to benefit all Americans with economic growth, this story only becomes that much more relevant and necessary before voices like mine are silenced entirely by the Mormon juggernaut. That Mitt's advisors have taught him how to manipulate the good but gullible among us should be no surprise, given the empire that has evolved from a few deluded followers of Smith, Rigdon, and Cowdery in the dawn of U.S. Manifest Destiny, when most Americans believed they were God's chosen people but felt confused about which of the numerous Christian religions was Christ's true church.
 |
| The Spaldings' Temperance Inn in Amity, PA |
I dearly hope that, in despair over the unfulfilled promises of the printshop in Pittsburgh, Solomon was not tempted by money to sell the manuscript to Rigdon or one of his co-conspirators, but even if he did so he continued to call out Rigdon as a thief until the day he died. Either way, if he has any awareness of what has since ensued, he's undoubtedly extremely ticked off that his work, meant only for fun and entertainment, has been co-opted for such a devious purpose and has made millions, nay, billions, of dollars for the descendants of thieves while he himself died poor and nearly, but not quite, forgotten.
As a former convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I have much to say on this subject. I am particularly struck by coincidences that suggest I am not entirely done with the Mormon Church--but not the way they hope when they harass me with visits from missionaries and cards from Relief Society after I've asked them to stop. I can easily guess their thinking--I was naive enough at one time to fork over 10 percent of my earnings, so I'm susceptible to doing so again. Perhaps after a few of them see this blog they will realize the error of that idea, at the very least.
A tiny religious movement that began in 1830 now tallies over 14 million members worldwide and is the fastest growing religion on earth. Just think--all those millions who remain in good standing fork over a full 10 percent of their earnings to an organization that uses that money for a few charitable causes but mostly to line the pockets of its leaders through so-called religious businesses for which no taxes must be paid.
Brilliant. Mormons are good businessmen, everyone knows. They just don't know HOW good, nor that the whole empire is built on greed and fraud.
Not only do members slice 10 percent off their earnings (before taxes) and send it to Salt Lake City, they are required to buy all their underwear from the church. That's right. Underwear. Sacred garments of polyester with weird symbols on the nipples and navel and knees, underwear they're told will save them from bullets and fire as long as they remain true to the church (i.e., tithe-paying). You'd better watch out if your check's in the mail when your house catches fire, cuz you're a goner, sacred underwear or not!
Brilliant. Not only do members do both those things, they are told they need to store a year's worth of food in their homes for the apocolypse, and guess where they buy these stores? You bet. The LDS church owns massive amounts of acreage in many parts of the world; it also owns businesses that process this food and businesses that process the storage containers the food goes in before sending to believers or putting on their own stores' shelves.
Brilliant. LDS "modest clothing"; LDS scriptures--four holy books, some in special sets, engraved with members' names; LDS self-help books; LDS fiction for teens and lonely housewives; Mormon Tabernacle Choir (a big money maker even with the "Gentles," as non-Mormons are known); LDS popular music; LDS movies; LDS lies, sex, and videotape.
Scientologists make members fork over all their money right up front; the LDS church has more insidious methods, but before too long that's exactly what members end up doing for the Salt Lake juggernaut.
These good LDS members are forbidden to read anything the church does not sanction, or risk their temple recommend and, hence, their ticket to walk through the pearly gates into heaven. They are forbidden to explore their faith, as any religion worth its salt would encourage its members to do, because these monomaniacal deceivers engineered an absurd alternate universe. They knew that anyone gullible and desperate enough to believe this manufactured "proof" that God exists and that their lives are guided by a loving divinity would willingly give up their money, goods, wives, and daughters and be thankful to their betrayers as they did so. (Would a loving divinity sanction the blood atonement at the heart of Mormon beliefs? Ask the fathers, mothers, and children slaughtered at Meadows by Mormons disguised as Indians who wanted their wagon train's food, weapons, and ammunition and didn't want non-Mormon neighbors. Future blog on that.)
"The Mormons consist of two types--the Deceivers and the Deceived," [attribution soon to follow].
What I write on this blog comes from my own personal experience as a baptized, temple-endowed, sacred garment-wearing former Mormon along with study of sources I consider highly reliable. Yes, I was hoodwinked once, you may say, so why should anyone believe me now?
I was fourteen when I became a Mormon, driven by hormones and cute guys who told me stuff that sounded really cool. I'm fifty-three now and a whole lot wiser to the ways of the world. Trust me, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this church is false.
Today's post is supported in large part by Who Wrote the Book of Mormon, mentioned above, a fine work of scholarship with traceable and available historical references (except a few that, since its publications, Mormons have managed to remove from libraries and other respositories). I will reference that book on every post or page in which I quote or paraphrase what it authors assert and convincingly support with evidence.
Who Wrote the Book of Mormon is available at Amazon.com and at many other retailers, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to LDS members, persons thinking about becoming a Mormon, those planning to vote this November 6, and anyone who is curious about a strangely private but proselytizing organization founded not in the distant past when Lao-Tzu, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and the multiple gods of Hinduism, among others, allegedly originated our major world religions, but a mere 200 years ago in this very land--a past recent enough that anyone wishing to reconstruct what most likely actually happened can fairly easily do so.
From my own experience, I can state that, with open-minded diligence in researching this question, questors will find strong evidence to suggest Spalding's authorship and little to no evidence to support the LDS assertion that the Book of Mormon has divine origins. While faith, by definition, means believing in things that can't be seen or known first-hand, faith utterly dependent on falsehood and connivery cannot be faith in a good and loving God's plan for us, but faith in something else entirely.
In the end my hope is not for personal gain or fame but simply to add to the body of work refuting the divine origins of Mormonism and to promote these views until no one other than the most deranged can escape the obvious truth. Far too many, including myself for many years, have bought the sanitized version of these events for a "pearl of great price"--not just our money, but with our fidelity to Jesus Christ co-opted by an infidel cause despite the good faith and piousness of nearly all of us outside the inner circle of LDS leadership.
Helping to finally stop this epic scam would give my life the meaning I've always sought, though I don't care about making a splash in the public eye. I've simply always wished to be an instrument of succor and relief to those suffering in this world, but have never known quite how I was meant to do so.
But now that the LDS church has inserted itself so forcefully into U.S. politics and has presented one of its own to head our nation, I can no longer keep what I know and highly suspect to myself. In the interest of our nation's economy and the fortunes of all families and nations worldwide, I fervently join those trying to end this madness. It makes me more than a little angry that this colossal lie has so much power in our world today.
I also hope, by so doing, poor Solomon Spalding will finally give up the ghost and rest in peace under his grave marker just an hour and a half from where I write this today.
Stay tuned for much, much more on this "marvelous work and a wonder" that began with a simple act of plagiarism, and if you are still in doubt before you vote a week from Tuesday, do some googling of your own to find other reputable sources. I will add a list of those--and the ones put out by LDS leaders so you can compare and contrast--as soon as I can. In the meantime, there's plenty of it available just by googling the subject.
_____________________
References:
Cowdery, Wayne C., Davis, Howard A., and Vanick, Arthur. 2005. Who Wrote the Book of Mormon? St. Louis: Concordia. ISBN 0-7586-0527-7. Available at many libraries, Amazon.com, and other retailers and worth every penny spent for it.
Recommended:
Broadhurst, Dale. solomonspalding.com and other sites to be linked with soon - I did not directly quote Mr. Broadhurst, but his site is a wealth of documentation that backs up what I'm reading now in the next resource, as I am reading that book slowly and carefully, absorbing everything as deeply as I can, though I know I'll be reading it many more times in the future. I have also spent a little time on Mr. Broadhurst's excellent sites, but I haven't yet had the pleasure of perusing them slowly and carefully.
