JUST ONE MORE RELIGION BASED ON MYTH

In the later part of the 18th century there lived an itinerant Presbyterian minister by the name of Solomon Spaulding who used to travel from town to town on horseback. To supplement his meager income he wrote of thing’s that he had seen during his travels. One novel was about an ancient Indian burial ground, and the deserted fortifications left by the French after the revolution. He decided to write a romance about these sights as an explanation of there existence. His thought was to use the language of the “King James Bible” to give it plausibility that he thought would be taken as real history. It is a romance of the bible known as “the book of mormon”.

Hoping for publication, Spaulding brought his romance novel to a printer in Pittsburgh. When he moved to another town he left his manuscript at the printers.

Spaulding had a friend by the name of Sidney Rigdon who had a love of history. Rigdon, who had always seen himself as a "visionary" became enthralled with Spaulding's novel. After Spaulding moved to another town his manuscript “disappeared’ from the print shop. Spaulding told a friend he suspected Rigdon of the theft. After Spaulding’s death in 1816 it surfaced as the "manuscript found", one of the most important in the myth making of the church.

After Rigdon’s marriage he was ordained as a minister of the First Baptist church of Pittsburgh. Rigdon’s Baptist ministry was short lived because he was teaching irregular doctrine (visionary). Circumstantial evidence seems to point to the period immediately following this as the time when Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith met.

From the Baptists, Rigdon moved to the “Disciples of Christ” (Campbellites) and preached for them until shortly before he was "converted" to Mormonism in 1830. There is conclusive testimony showing that Rigdon possessed Spaulding's manuscript until this period, that Rigdon knew Joseph Smith, and through numerous visits to New York he gave the contents of the manuscript to Smith and his friends, who made some modifications to the text and subsequently published The book of Mormon. And the rest is history.


                                                                                                           Newton Joseph, Ph.D.

FROM: http://www.atheistfellowship.com/