Morris. “A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon” (reviewed by Cheryl L. Bruno)

Review

Title: A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon
Author: Larry E. Morris
Genre: Scriptural Studies
Oxford University Press, January 2019
Pages: 573
Cover: Hardcover
Price: $39.95

Reviewed by Cheryl L. Bruno for the Association for Mormon Letters, Feb. 27, 2019.

It takes a skilled oceanographer to plumb the depths of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Replete with treasure-diggers, angels, seer stones, and a bloody pirate, the wildly varied accounts can baffle even the most unruffled researcher. The assortment includes items from the sea’s epipelagic zone, such as the official 1839-1841 history now canonized in the Pearl of Great Price. This is juxtaposed with creatures from the abyss, carrying Masonic and mystical overtones seldom encountered by modern Latter-day Saints.

Given that the Book of Mormon has made such a significant contribution to nineteenth-century American development, a thorough examination of the writings documenting its appearance is important. Larry E. Morris has brought together many foundational and representative pieces of this puzzle despite the fact that they don’t always fit together to make a coherent whole. His collection of key documents fits into the following categories related to the origin of the Book:

The Angel’s visit to Joseph—32 accounts
Joseph’s reception of the plates—26 accounts
Martin Harris’s venture to Eastern scholars—14 accounts
Initial translation work—15 accounts
Loss of 116 manuscript pages—9 accounts
Seven-month interval with claims and testimonies—9 accounts
Translation work April-May 1829—16 accounts
Translation work June 1829—16 accounts
The three witnesses—33 accounts
The eight witnesses—37 accounts
Publication of the Book of Mormon—24 accounts

Morris’s introduction, a five-page chronology, and a map of relevant locations ground the reader in the scenes of early church history as well as the author’s commitment to be honest, balanced, and self-critical. With the assurance that he will include “candid expressions” whether friendly or hostile and give priority to “documents closest in time, distance and person” to pertinent events (p. 4), we set off on our turbulent expedition.

Each chapter’s preface functions as a net, gathering the floundering narratives into a cohesive school. Chapter 1 serves as an interesting and informative example of these prefaces, especially in its discussion of nineteenth-century magical thinking. Morris uses the work of several authors, including historian Alan Taylor, to show that magic was linked with Christianity as an inseparable and natural ally. “Treasure-seekers were neither fools nor deceivers,” but in cultural context their activities were “part of an attempt to recapture the simplicity and magical powers associated with apostolic Christianity” (p. 10).

Morris shows flaws in the arguments of four prominent Mormon historians who postulate that “Joseph initially told a tall tale of a treasure guardian in a magic world that eventually evolved into a testimony of an angel in a religious world” (p. 11). Using source criticism, Morris argues that this hypothesis favors “third-hand accounts over second-hand recitals from the likes of Lucy Mack Smith, her son William, Joseph Knight,” and non-believer Henry Harris (p. 12). “Conclusions about what story Joseph first told and how that story may have changed over the next few years reach beyond the documentary evidence,” Morris states. Theories that Joseph Smith’s treasure guardian was changed into a divine angel “fail to specify the exact difference between the two” in a magical/Christian paradigm (p. 12). Finally, several details are confirmed by their repeated appearance in thirteen early sources.

These details favor a magical Christian perspective: the plates disappearing when Joseph tried to pick them up, Joseph being shocked by a supernatural force, instructions to Joseph to return the next year, a divine commission, and the mention of an angel. Following this detailed and insightful introduction to the chapter, the reader has been primed to understand the issues and enjoy the recitations in the original accounts.

The preface to Chapter 10 highlights the differences between the Testimony of Three Witnesses—which Morris considers “beyond the scope of academic analysis” by virtue of its nonempirical details—and the Testimony of Eight Witnesses. This latter document is the subject of Chapter 10 and seems to Morris to be less faith-based and more “legalistic,” focusing on literal handling of the plates and visual observation of the engravings thereon (pp. 415, 423). Thus Morris finds the accounts pertaining to the experience of the eight witnesses “subject to full historical explication” and source criticism (p. 416). In this chapter preface, Morris confronts the work of Fawn Brodie, Dale Morgan, Dan Vogel, and other historians who have relied upon what Morris considers “hearsay evidence.” The primary offender is a statement by Thomas Ford, discounting the testimony of the eight. Morris writes:

“Ford does not identify his informants, much less call them ‘intimate’ acquaintances. These unnamed individuals—whose background, motives, and honesty remain shrouded—reportedly heard Joseph confess that he duped the witnesses, and they passed their second-hand information to Ford, making his third-hand and anonymous, essentially a rumor (p. 417).”

Though two sources suggest that all eleven witnesses saw the plates “in vision” or imagination, others corroborate the more literal testimony of the eight. Morris believes that a critical approach must allow the eyewitnesses to speak for themselves. Morris quotes historian Terryl Givens to support his argument:

“What emerges as alone indisputable is the fact that Joseph Smith does possess a set of metal plates. Dream-visions may be in the mind of the beholder, but gold plates are not subject to such facile psychologizing (p. 422).”

This line of reasoning leads to the possibility that the eight witnesses could have been fooled by counterfeit plates. To address this idea, Morris brings up the Kinderhook plates to “prove conclusively that creating a convincing set of ‘ancient plates’ in early nineteenth-century America was not at all out of the question” (p. 422). Morris stops short of providing evidence that many Latter-day Saints, possibly including Joseph Smith, incorrectly identified the Kinderhook plates as ancient. Nor does Morris suggest the implications his comparison might have to counterfeit Book of Mormon plates. But the readers’ curiosity is certainly piqued as they move on to the document transcripts in this chapter.

One of the shortest prefaces is that which begins Chapter 8. Crisp and economical in its wording, it nevertheless captures the collective mood of the accounts therein, which span the final month of the translation work. Quoting the Whitmers’ hired girl Sarah Heller Conrad, the author describes how Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery and others would “come down from [the] translating room several times when they looked so exceedingly white and strange.” Inquiring of Mrs. Whitmer why the men had such an unusual appearance, she received the answer that the power of God was so great in the room above that they could hardly endure it (p. 342).

The accounts themselves are well chosen and well organized. For each account, Morris provides a source note and an editorial note, followed by the document transcript. The source note is invaluable to researchers, sometimes noting several places the document appeared. For example, the source note to an 1829 article provides the original citation as well as a more modern blog post in which it is found:

“Cornelius C. Blatchly, ‘The New Bible,’ Gospel Luminary 2, no. 49 (December 10, 1829), 194, brackets in original, in Juvenile Instructor (blog) http://juvenileinstructor.org/1829-mormon-discovery-bro ght-to-you-by-guest-erin-jennings (p. 493).”

In other cases, the source note provides important details about the document’s provenance, as in the June 1829 Revelation which appears in LDS D&C 15:

“Chapter XII, Book of Commandments, 33, typeset circa early 1833. This is the earliest extant version of this revelation because the copy made in Revelation Book 1 by John Whitmer is no longer extant (p. 358).”

Editorial notes to each document range from one sentence to several paragraphs in length. A representative example explains the importance as well as the limitations of Lucius Fenn’s 1830 letter to Birdseye Bronson:

“This letter was written in Covert, New York, a hamlet near the west side of Cayuga Lake about twenty-five miles south-southeast of the Peter Whitmer farm. Although the narrative of the Book of Mormon it relates is somewhat garbled, it is an important historical artifact because several details are accurate and because ‘it is the oldest known contemporary evidence, other than newspaper notices, of the rumors that preceded the appearance of the Book of Mormon itself.’ [Mulder and Mortensen, Among the Mormons, 27]

“Not only that, but other than the testimony of the three witnesses itself (which would not appear in the published Book of Mormon for another six weeks) this letter includes the first-known reference to an angel appearing to three men (p. 383).”

The document transcripts range from one sentence to several pages in length. They often consist of pertinent extracts from longer works, such as Mormonism Unvailed, Joseph Smith’s History, or Lucy Mack Smith’s Reminiscences. Whether short or long, the transcripts are always intriguing and often mesmerizing. Some burst bubbles of traditional analyses of the Book of Mormon, such as an 1829 article in The Reflector (Palmyra, New York):

“We understand that the Anti-Masons have declared war against the Gold Bible.— Oh! how impious (p. 491).”

Some of the documents are poetically rapturous:

“At length the family retired, and he, as usual, bent his way, though in silence, where others might have rested their weary frames ‘locked fast in sleep’s embrace;’ but repose had fled, and accustomed slumber had spread her refreshing hand over others beside him—he continued still to pray—his heart, though once hard and obdurate, was softened, and that mind which had often flitted, like the ‘wild bird of passage,’ had settled upon a determined basis not to be decoyed or driven from its purpose. …on a sudden a light like that of day, only of a purer and far more glorious appearance and brightness, burst into the room (p. 27).”

Others are full of poorly-cloaked disdain:

“Jo and his father were all the time telling of hidden things, lead, silver and gold mines which he could see. I called him Peeker. About the spring of 1828, Jo came in front of my house where several men were pitching quoits. I said, ‘Peeker, what have you found?’ He said he had found some metal plates which would be of great use to the world. He had them in a box in a handkerchief which he carried in one hand. I said, ‘Let me see them’ (p. 216).’

Readers will especially enjoy accounts which are engaging in their colloquialism, such as the following 1882 letter from Stephen S. Harding to Thomas Gregg:

“It was now time to begin the reading of the manuscript, and we retired to the room we had occupied…Cowdery commenced his task of reading at the table, the others sitting around. The reading had proceeded for some time, when the candle began to spit and sputter, sometimes almost going out, and flashing up with a red-blue blaze. Here was a phenomenon that could not be mistaken. To say that the blaze had been interrupted by the flax shives that remained in the tow wicking, would not do; but Martin Harris arrived at a conclusion ‘across lots:’ ‘Do you see that,’ said he, directing his remark to me and the old lady, who sat beside him. ‘I know what that means; it is the Devil trying to put out the light, so that we can’t read any more.’ ‘Yes,’ replied the old lady; ‘I seed ‘im! I seed ‘im! as he tried to put out the burnin’ wick, when the blaze turned blue.’… (p. 484).”

The footnotes inserted in the accounts are located at the end of the book and are therefore laborious to peruse. However, they are interesting, well researched and apropos to the text. In Chapter 1, for example, a footnote follows the controversy as to the identification of the angel as either Nephi or Moroni. We learn that James Mulholland’s Joseph Smith, History Draft, ca. June 1839-ca. 1841 was “the earliest extant text identifying Nephi as the angelic messenger.” An unidentified editor later changed “Nephi” to “Moroni,” identifying the original word as “a clerical error.” Earlier sources had named the angel as Moroni, but the appellation “Nephi” was repeated in 1842 editions of the Times and Seasons and the LDS Millennial Star (pp. 511-512, note 98).

No other source contains in one volume such a comprehensive view of all the relevant documents to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Larry E. Morris has provided an invaluable resource for researchers and interested parties. For the price of a small family’s trip to the aquarium, one can embark on one’s own voyage of discovery into the fascinating depths of the Latter-day Saints’ profoundest sea—the story of the Book of Mormon’s origin.

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