Counterfeiting Scholarship Part 2

Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.

Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.

Richard Hello, Gerrit. And when last we left you, the last episode we were speaking about a book about secret combinations and early Mormon counterfeiting in the 1800 to 1847, a book by Kathleen Melonakos. And so, Gerrit, you set the table a little bit about sources and publishing and a couple of different things. And so we wanted to get into that, but before we did, you had a text that you wanted to read.

Gerrit We're going to a different type of mailbag, one of, one electronically sent to you.

Richard Versus the emails that we received. Very different.

Gerrit Yeah, no, this was a text that I received from someone that they started off by saying, hey, today's podcast was amazing. And this was in reference to the podcast that we did on both the prosperity gospel, and then also in our discussion about the kind of, the meme about Joseph Smith polygamy that was being misappropriated.

Richard So it was, I think, prosperity theology, two and a half, and other bad arguments.

Gerrit Other bad arguments, yeah, that was Richard's naming of that. We get more and more creative as we go, and since they're not indexed, eventually you'll be able to find nothing. Anyway, he actually has an experience because he has some family members who've actually been affected by some of those bad arguments. So he had sent a text saying that the story of the dad with Julie Rowe was essentially what happened with our family members. Fortunately, when I confronted them, they stopped bringing it up with us. But it's crazy how much hold she has on people. It's very scary. And I said, you know, thank you, you know, for this. But he said, I love the fact that you tackle things head on. You don't let people go on these false ideas without some actual knowledge. It honestly continues to strengthen my testimony and I can't thank you enough. Obviously, testimony comes from the Spirit. But I believe what you do is a godsend because we need the tools to beat off the misconceptions that the anti-side brings because they are just so smart in quotes.

Gerrit He puts it in quotes. You do this in such a way that you connect with many. As people are really confronted with true scholarly resources, they have to question their sources. And I believe it scares people. It's really easy to follow someone because they are smarter. But you are showing that they actually have no idea what they are talking about. Honestly, what you are doing is such a blessing to my life and my family. I also know all of those that I've got listening to the podcast feel the same way. I'm glad to know you and be able to call you my friend. You are changing lives. So that's very, very kind of my friend, Jesse, to send that. And it really kind of goes along with the theme of what we're talking about. So we set the table. So if you, for whatever reason, if this is the first time that you've listened to the podcast is right now, you need to go listen to the other episode first.

Richard Well, we say we're in acquired taste. It's about, you need to listen. Give us seven years of straight listening every week. And then by then you'll be numb and we'll be okay.

Gerrit I mean, it's what worked for Dave in Springville. He's like, I listened the first time, I hated it. The second time hated it, third time hated it, fourth time hated it, fifth time. I'm still going through it. Yeah. So yeah, that's where we're at.

Richard So just a little bit. So an email who wrote in about family members that were persuaded by YouTube video from this author Kathleen that talked about her book and some of her arguments. You talked about the importance of sources. You talked about the importance of publishing and having reputable publishers that are at least vetting some of these things. And so there was a lot of setup in that episode. And now in this episode, we're going to talk specifically about some of the arguments.

Gerrit We also talked about the importance of going to original sources. We gave a very good example in our own church history where sometimes people unintentionally get the source wrong. And it can lead to pretty massive consequences like thinking Emma Smith had more children than she did. That's a pretty big difference. So one of the key arguments that is made by this person, she presents it as a, she presents it as a new argument, as something that she's discovered. And certainly that's the way it was in her YouTube videos that she did on this podcast, this other podcast, that this is something brand new that she tracked this down. What you find as you go through the book, in fact, is that this is not brand new really at all. And now I knew before I ever read this book and before I ever listened to her interview, I knew about this story myself because more than a decade ago, one of my friends, when we were working together on the Joseph Smith Papers, when we were working for the Church History Department, actually went to go track down some of these claims.

Gerrit So as I said, as we left last podcast, one of the claims that's made is that there's an easy explanation for how it is that Joseph came up with the ideas and thoughts that he came up with. Much of her book is what I like to call unisom anti-Mormonism. It's because it's what helps you sleep at night. There's a reason why the sourcing is very poor and very derivative. And in many cases, there's no source at all, because the point is to try to provide an explanation for where Joseph Smith's revelations and his ideas came from. You're kind of, you know, you're working kind of both sides of the street, right? When you talk about how Joseph Smith is, is, you know, a liar and a thief and desperate to try to make money any way that he possibly can, but also so industrious and so brilliant that he's able to write a book that's far beyond any of his writing abilities, but he's able to do that and do it so well that he convinces everyone that it is.

Gerrit I mean, it, you know, he's the answer to everything is Joseph Smith's a liar essentially in her worldview. But there are some things that are just, well, frankly, they're just sloppy. So for instance, she writes, since the Smiths first claimed the Book of Mormon was translated from golden plates and began selling it, people have been trying to figure out who wrote it. To this day, Mormons are told that Joseph Smith could not have written it, as he was young and unlearned when he got the plates. Thus, it had to have come through supernatural means, as he claimed. Then the last sentence of that paragraph is, but others believed he could have written it. Extensive investigations into these questions have revealed more and more about what probably happened. Now, notice already, there's already some weasel words in there. I have definitive proof that that's not how the Book of Mormon came about.

Gerrit Here's what probably happened. It turns out that many of the ideas that ended up in Mormonism can be traced back to the social and intellectual ferment that emanated from early Dartmouth College community. Joseph and Lucy Smith lived in the vicinity of Dartmouth from before their marriage on January 24th, 1796 until they left for New York in 1816. Their second son, Hiram, whose name was spelled H-I-R-A-M at the time. Now, she makes this point in her interview, too, because she's trying to draw a comparison between the Mormon's affiliation with Masonry, and she's very anti-Masonic, by the way, and claiming that that's all part of this conspiracy, and that in fact, the Mormons had been named, they even named Hiram with an I as a tribute to Masonry. I have to tell you, as a Joseph Smith historian, I have no idea how they think they know that Hyrum Smith's name was once spelled with an I and then was later spelled with a Y, and let alone the reason why they changed the name.

Richard Well, so they, very specifically, she calls out that it was with an I and then in 1826, it was changed because of the anti-Mason movement.

Gerrit And the sources that she has for that are no sources. Now, what do you have? You have Hiram's name spelled variously differently in many ways in his early days, which is actually a fairly normal thing. Joseph Smith does, in fact, spell Hiram's name differently. In a letter that he writes to Hiram in 1831, but he spells it H-Y-R-A-M. So I guess he actually changed it another time. That must have been when he was shifting into the deeper Masonic stuff that he decided.

Richard Well, that's how deep it goes.

Gerrit That's how deep it goes. The reality is finding someone's name spelled one way on one form and then one way on another form and then making a big deal out of it is essentially the anti-Mormon version of what Latter-day Saints have done in some cases in arguing that the reason why Simon's writer, you know, apostatized and left the church was because his name was spelled wrong on a revelation. We'll talk about that someday, but that entire argument comes from a Disciples of Christ minister at his funeral trying to explain away the fact that Simon's writer at one point became a Mormon and then left. But, you know, that's where we get that argument. But in fact, we see writer himself variously spells his name various different ways. People spell it various different ways all throughout his life. It's a weird thing to the 21st century person who thinks, no, there's only one way to spell someone's name and that's the only way you spell it. I just finished doing research on a very educated man and family and his name is Minor Deming.

Gerrit And his name, Minor, is a very weird name, right? And when he writes it, he spells his name M-I-N-O-R. But on his tombstone and in various other documents, it's spelled like he's a minor, 49er, oh my darlin, Clementine, you know, that it's M-I-N-E-R. Well, now imagine making an argument about that, right? That, well, you know, the reason why Minor spelled it with an O and that later his descendants spelled it with an E was because they knew that he'd been accused of committing murder. And so they wanted to separate themselves from him. So they decided that they were going to change the O to an E to make sure that no one connected the son who had the same name with the dad who'd been accused of murder. Now, I just told you a nice little fairy tale that sounds kind of convincing, and there are literally zero sources to back it up.

Richard And so this isn't a small thing that she's saying that Hiram changed the spelling of the name. Because she's connecting the Smith family counterfeiting to their connection to masonry, and that his spelling of his name shows how deep they were in with masonry.

Gerrit They were so deep into masonry that they named their son Hyrum after the founder of masonry. Well, according to Masonic lore, all the way back to the builder of Solomon's temple, Hiram Abiff. Of course, it's a very popular name, actually, in American. It's not just masons who are naming their children that. But the claim is that they later changed the name in order to kind of cover up some of the masonic elements. Well, again, do you have anyone who says that? Do you have anyone credible who says it, even if someone does say it? If someone 80 years later says, yeah, the reason why they changed their name was to hide their masonic roots, well, that's not credible, even if someone does say it. And so the argument that's going to be put forth here is that the Book of Mormon could have been written by Joseph Smith or his compatriots and in fact was.

Gerrit So here's one of the things that they're going to make the argument. Professor John Smith and the Culture War at Dartmouth College. Now, first of all, very important to understand. Dartmouth College is brand new in the time period. You saw it like if I say Dartmouth to you right now, you're thinking Ivy League and they probably just lost to Princeton in that basketball game because. Oh, Princeton, they've got a great person just owns everybody. I mean, it's like no one's ever like I'm going to take. Well, Harvard's been OK.

Richard They are, but no one works a shot clock like Princeton.

Gerrit Well, that's the thing. Princeton's like, you know, oh, what is the shot clock? 25. Well, we figured out actually by a Pythagorean theorem how to get the ball to the corner right at the last second before the shot clock goes off. But so when you think of a university, you're thinking of it as booming, right? You're thinking of it as thousands of students in a sprawling campus. In fact, there's 32 students enrolled in one of the years there in the mid 1820s. So that's not what you would call a gigantic university, right? It's brand new. It's just starting. So part of the argument that's going to be made is that the Latter Day Saints, well, Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith steal a bunch of the ideas that they'll use both in the Book of Mormon and in the later theology of the church from a very certain university professor at Dartmouth.

Gerrit Professor John Smith. This is the statement in the book. It is little recognized that Joseph Smith Senior was directly related to Professor John Smith of Dartmouth College. Now that's period full stop. So it's very little recognized this fact. Professor Smith was the best friend and trusted colleague of Dartmouth president John Wheelock. And again, saying Dartmouth president makes it sound like it's a huge important deal. It's a guy with 30 students. It's brand new. You need to think of this more of like an extension of an extension of an extension of a community college. This is not a giant campus. Professor John Smith was the son of Joseph Smith and Elizabeth Palmer, both cousins of Aisle Smith and Mary Duty, the paternal grandparents of Joseph Smith Jr. And now there's a footnote there.

Gerrit And that footnote goes to an article that was published in 2006. So first and foremost, this claim that this is brand new information that she discovered is clearly not terribly brand new because this book's published in 2016 and this article is published in 2006. That article is called Dartmouth Arminianism and its Impact on Hyrum Smith and the Smith Family by Richard K. Barron. It was published in the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal in 2006. The John Whitmer Historical Association is the historical association of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is now known as the Community of Christ. And the article is published by a non-historian. Barron himself is not a historian.

Gerrit He's a Dartmouth graduate. And I think because he's a Dartmouth graduate, he's very interested and you know, it was very close to where the Smiths were living. What is the connection between the two? Well, first and foremost, there's one thing that's already very troubling to me. Notice the sentence I just read. Professor John Smith was the son of Joseph Smith and Elizabeth Palmer, both cousins of Aisle Smith and Mary Duty, the paternal grandparents of Joseph Smith Jr. Mary Duty grew up in Rowley. Rowley?

Richard Rowley. Boy, we even searched that out.

Gerrit Rowley.

Richard Rowley.

Gerrit Rowley.

Richard Rowley.

Gerrit It was Rowley.

Richard It was Rowley.

Gerrit We apologize to everyone in Massachusetts. There's only three people listening there, and that's mainly because your wife's traveling.

Richard It was Rowley.

Gerrit We apologize to everyone in Massachusetts. There's only three people listening there, and that's mainly because your wife's traveling.

Richard My wife is currently in Massachusetts with my brother.

Gerrit So again, I'm still reading from her book. Mary Doody grew up in Rowley, Massachusetts, so it is quite certain that she knew her mother's first cousin, Elizabeth, and her young son, John. Okay, so that's from the book. Now it cites to the article, but here's the problem that is already a scholarly conundrum here. Again, let me just read it again one more time. Professor John Smith was the son of Joseph Smith and Elizabeth Palmer, both cousins of Aisle Smith and Mary Duty, the paternal grandparents of Joseph Smith Jr. Here is the article that she's citing. John Smith was born December 21st, 1752 in Raleigh, Massachusetts to Joseph Smith and Elizabeth Palmer, both cousins of Aisle Smith and Mary Duty, the paternal grandparents of the Prophet Joseph Smith. She plagiarized that sentence. That's not in quotes in her book. She wrote it like she wrote it and then cited to the source, but it's word for word the same, except for the date being given of when he was born.

Gerrit Let's read the next sentence. Mary Duty grew up in Raleigh, Massachusetts. So you have that. What's the next sentence in this article? Since Mary Duty grew up in Raleigh, where her family lived for generations before her marriage to Aisle and subsequent moved to nearby Ipswich, it's quite certain that she knew her mother's first cousin, Elizabeth John's mother. From the book, Mary Duty grew up in Raleigh, Massachusetts. So it's quite certain. It's almost like this is the exact same words being used. That she knew her mother's first cousin, Elizabeth. Back to the article that she knew her mother's first cousin, Elizabeth. This level of plagiarism is actually something that would be caught on turnitin.com from my students. Now, someone might say, well, it's not plagiarism because she did cite the source. Actually, if you're saying that, then you're not an English professor. And it is plagiarism. Because even if you provide a citation, and by the way, there isn't a citation to that second part, that second part where the sentence is essentially copied, the footnotes before that sentence, even if, even if you are citing the source that you use, if you don't put in quotes the phrases and the sentences that you are taking from that source, you are falsely claiming it as your original writing.

Gerrit When you have a footnote somewhere and there's no quotes, that footnote is saying, I wrote with my own mind and creativity a sentence using this information from this source. In this case, I copied nearly all of this word for word from the article that I'm using. We could go on and find that that's what most of this is. From the article, John, however, was sent off to Drummer Academy in Byfield near Topsfield and Rowley, Massachusetts, soon after his parents died when he was a young boy. And then we go back to the book. As a young boy, John Smith attended the first boarding school in America, Drummer Academy near Topsfield where the Aisle Smith family lived. So it's likely he knew his cousins. Now that's at least a bore originally written, even though some of the words are the same. But notice again, oh, that he knew his cousins if he went there.

Richard He likely knew them.

Gerrit Yeah, he obviously did, right? Because he went there. Because we know that he went there, right? Or do we know that they're his cousins? What exactly do we know here? At any rate, the argument is going to go on that John Smith, who is this cousin of Joseph Smith, essentially at this point, what is it? A second cousin, three times removed or whatever, that he is teaching some radical things at Dartmouth and that those radical things just so happen to make their way into what Joseph Smith will later teach in his revelations that he'll receive as a prophet. The argument that's clearly being made is that Joseph, when you say Joseph wouldn't have been capable of coming up with those things on his own, aha, he didn't.

Gerrit A religion professor who just so happened to be his cousin came up with them. Now, there are several problems with this argument. The first and foremost is, although this author, Barron, claims that they are cousins, I don't think that they are. At the very least, it certainly isn't definitive that they are. You can go back and trace, go to your family search, go back to your family tree there and trace Aisle Smith's relatives. And you won't find a second cousin three times removed that is John Smith. You're not going to find that among the descendants. Now, it's not definitive in Family Search that not everything's right in there. But there isn't a John Smith that's related to Aisle Smith. Certainly not the one that's a doctorate of divinity that is teaching at Dartmouth.

Gerrit In fact, when you go to John Smith's actual line, it's actually very hard to track because we don't even know who his grandparents are. And if we don't know who his grandparents are, I don't know how we would know that he was second cousin, three times removed from from Joseph Smith. I don't know exactly where this author got this information. But actually, like I said, I have personal firsthand knowledge of this because my colleague actually went out to Dartmouth to research this when the author of this article, you know, told him of this connection. And my colleague came home very disappointed and actually a little angry because when he got there, what he found as he went through documents is, in fact, these that Joseph Smith is not related to John Smith. I mean, look, everyone's related if you go far enough back to England, right? But but not not second cousins, not close. So why does that matter?

Gerrit Because the entire argument you're building is that, well, he must have talked with his cousins. He must have known them unless they weren't his cousins, in which case there's no connection at all. You're just saying that people lived somewhere and people did this.

Richard So but there's additional parts of the argument that are also interesting in that this John Smith, who she claims has these and there's no actual there's no actual link to any of his actual teachings in the book, right? There's a link to this article that mentions some of his teachings, but there's no actual discussion of what his actual teachings are. But John Smith, and first of all, the fact, I don't know who my second cousin is three times removed. I don't know who my second cousin is. So the idea that, you know, second cousin that they're boys is interesting. But John Smith dies in 1809.

Gerrit Right. And for those of you up on your Joseph Smith birth dates, Joseph Smith was four.

Richard So, but they say that Joseph Smith didn't, but Hyrum attended a school that John, that was affiliated with Dartmouth, and that he would have learned the teachings from John Smith there.

Gerrit Right. And that argument, again, you know, we're going down a lot of rabbit holes there. I mean, the reality is, Hyrum attends a school that was actually designed for Native American education that was founded by the same person who then founds Dartmouth College. And so they are connected in that regard, but that's, it's certainly not the same thing as saying, look at all of these same things. And again, when Hyrum would have been there, I mean, that would he have been, you know, obviously he learned these things from his cousin, you know, several times removed, John Smith. So there's multiple things that this author summarizes in their article, and these are all the sources that are pointed to. You know, those familiar with Mormon theology will notice many defining concepts in these summary of things. And so it lists a whole summary of things that all come from this article.

Gerrit Now, the article suggests that this is new and interesting. When I first started reading the list, I was like, oh, so you mean Platonic philosophy is what he's teaching, because things that might sound new and crazy and weird or similar to Latter-day Saints, much of it actually can be attributed to that. At any rate, the argument is being made to undermine Joseph Smith's own claim to how he received revelations and how the Book of Mormon was actually produced. So like I said, we could spend a ton of time on each of these issues, but the reality is the statement was made, few people know how connected Joseph Smith Sr. is to John Smith. Well, perhaps one of the reasons why few people know it is that they aren't connected, and that might be one of the reasons why.

Gerrit Now, why does that matter? You're thinking, well, that just might be a mistake that Barron's made and that then this author, you know, unwittingly, you know, made. Well, because you're using it as a vehicle to prove that Joseph Smith lied about the origins of the church. So if you're using it as a vehicle to prove something historically, then you better find out whether or not it's actually the case. Again, people make mistakes. But if you're going to make the argument that this is proof of X, this conspiracy goes that deep, well, then you may want to take a trip out to Dartmouth and do some genealogical research on your own, rather than just taking a single statement in a 10-year-old article that is made by a non-historian.

Richard It might seem like you say, it might seem like a small deal, but it is a pivotal part of her argument.

Gerrit That it's from the very beginning, that's where these things come from. Now, further on that point of where the Book of Mormon come from, the book starts off essentially arguing, look at all these things about Joseph Smith and money digging, but it eventually kind of devolves into just your standard, fair, anti-Mormon, you know, piecing together terrible arguments. At one point, there are multiple citations to anti-Mormon publications, not as examples of arguments against Joseph Smith, but as definitive factual sources. In fact, Lighthouse Ministries, the noted anti-Mormon group in Salt Lake City that was founded by Gerald and Sandra Tanner, their publications get cited in this book, not as an example of people responding to Joseph Smith's truth claims, but as factual evidence, something that you're not going to find in the publication of a history of Mormonism from a non-Latter-day Saint PhD historian, because there are rules when using historical writing.

Gerrit So one of the things, I mean, Richard and I as we talked about this, one of the things that comes up, it's kind of the same question that always comes up, and that is, let's say, you know what, maybe, maybe we just can't find it in any connection that we can see, but maybe John Smith really is related to the Smiths as their second cousin three times removed. Okay, so let's say she's right about that. Let's say she didn't plagiarize those sentences that really is...

Richard That really is a bee in your bonnet.

Gerrit It is really bad form. I'm telling you right there. It makes you more upset than almost any of us. The problem is when you're just copying someone else's work uncritically, it actually becomes a very easy thing to do because you aren't thinking through the argument because you're just stealing the argument. And then sometimes you start stealing the words. Anyway, let's just grant that. Let's say that, okay, she's right. Actually, it is second cousin, three times removed. And as you pointed out, I don't think anyone listening even knows who that is unless you have, I bet, you know what? Bill will email us. I'm a second, I don't know why second cousin three times removed is.

Richard If anyone does RE number one does, no question.

Gerrit What about the second RE? I feel like we need the second RE to write. It's the second RE in the world.

Richard You know, there is.

Gerrit Stop listening to us.

Richard Well, yeah, of course he did. But I will say, I will say that one of the things that's funny is that RE gets fan mail from other fans of the podcast. It's hilarious.

Gerrit We have so many people who love RE all the time. Yeah, they love it. Yeah. So anyway, so if I granted you, okay. So he is related to him. Let's say that John Smith is teaching unique things at Dartmouth, not just things that are actually being discussed in multiple other places throughout the United States at the time. For instance, there's she attempts to make a big deal in her book about the fact that and what did they have at Dartmouth? They had something called the School of the Prophets. Where do you think Joseph Smith got the idea? School of the Prophets? I'm guessing it's in that deeper lower voice. Well, the reality is schools of the prophets are what you call religious education of people in divinity schools all over the place. It's long been known among actual historians of Latter-day Saint history that the term School of the Prophets is a pretty ubiquitous term for people learning religious teachings in early America. So I know it sounds like a conspiracy when you're either a talking to people who don't know that or B just found out yourself, but it's not actually a conspiracy.

Gerrit It's just it's more like trivia. It's more like, hey, where the term School of the Prophets come from. That was a pretty ubiquitous way of talking about people learning things in a religious school setting or it was part of a Masonic plot to destroy the world starting with Daniel Morgan. I mean, like the reality is when someone presents you information that you haven't heard before, they then get to set the narrative of what that information means. So always be careful when people present you information, try to separate out what it is they're saying, what the what the what the source says from what their explanation of what that source means. Right? So even if I granted you that, even if I granted you that that all of those things were true, and they were really connected and Hiram really was going to Dartmouth, even though he apparently was only going to an affiliated school designed for Native Americans only for a couple of years.

Gerrit But even if all of that was true, where does the Book of Mormon come from? Because John Smith giving a lecture on a pre-existent life doesn't actually create a Book of Mormon. Where do those 600 pages come from? Well, like many people who are antagonists, they, she, she provides part of an argument. And that argument is that it actually comes from people like Sydney Rigdon. She claims that there's a gold Bible company where they're all going to get together. Their plan is to write a best-selling book so they can make money off of it. Now, she, in her interviews, she, she tries to highlight the fact that the Book of Mormon is sold. That just shows that it was a design to try to make money off of it. Now, of course, that was standard practice for religions distributing Bibles at the time, too, but hey, we wouldn't want to tell people that because, you know, that, that would make it sound like it was normal.

Gerrit This argument here about the writing of the Book of Mormon comes at page 207 in the book. Against tremendous odds, the Smith brothers and the Gold Bible Company, she, she has that capitalized, by the way, the Gold Bible Company, as if that was an LLC taken out with the state of New York that there again, you know, what's the source for that? Oh, wait, there's not a footnote there. That's just what I'm calling it. They obtained a copyright in June 11th, 1829. Copies were ready March 1830. They had already been giving out revelations, building anticipation for the Bible and making converts in their new church slash fraternity. I don't know why they call it a fraternity, given the fact that it's not just men. There are many women who believe, but hey, just let's throw whatever castigating things we can. And while we're writing, since we're not being accurate to begin with, they probably spent notice again, they probably spent considerable time practicing their public speaking skills during the next year.

Gerrit You will notice that there is no footnote at the end of that sentence. Again, what are we trying to do? We're trying to get around the fact that by all accounts, they're not educated. By all accounts, she's trying to remind us over and over and over again, they're the lowest dregs of society and everyone despises them and everyone hates them. And yet at the same time, they're really, really persuasive when they speak. Well, how did they become persuasive? I know they started practicing speaking. So let's look at the footnote where they're practicing. Oh, there's not a footnote there. That's because we don't have any evidence of that. So why do we say that they probably practice public speaking? You know, the thing about public speaking is that there's if you're doing it in public, there's there's witnesses to it. That's that's the funny part about public speaking that I've always found that when you do it in public, people are there and can hear it. People said that they were awkward speakers at first, but improved as time went along.

Gerrit People said there's not a footnote to that either. So these people, which is it possible that someone did say that? Sure. In the 1880s and 1890s. So I'm sure they remember the the the secret secretive Smith public speaking school while that was going on. Then we get to we get to the bombshell. Somewhere during the process, the eloquent and crafty Reverend Sydney Rigdon joined the new venture. There were some witnesses that said he joined in secret meetings as early as 1827. But the official story is he joined in 1830. In any case, in in any case, well, you that's a pretty big in any case to just throw out there. He either joined them before there was a church and help them create the Book of Mormon before that. Or he joined in 1830, you know, take her to leave it one way or the other. In any case, his particular band of Christian primitivism found its way into the book, possibly through the sermons brought back from Rigdon's home in Ohio by traveling book peddlers, Oliver Cowdery and Parley Pratt by traveling book peddler.

Gerrit You know, but no, don't worry, I'm not putting a heavy hand on there at all. The argument is going to be that Sydney Rigdon helped write the book. And if you go to the footnote, the footnote is to a website where someone argues that Sydney Rigdon secretly actually helped write the book. And that when there's one reference to a secret of to an unknown traveler visiting the Smiths, that that was obviously Sydney Rigdon. There's a reason why that argument isn't in Daniel Walker Howe's, you know, what hath God wrought Oxford history of the United States that covers this time period. While he devotes multiple pages to history of the Latter Day Saints, he doesn't say, well, Sydney Rigdon came and secretly wrote most of the Book of Mormon.

Richard Did he not have enough time or space?

Gerrit Well, you know, I just think he wasn't qualified enough writing the Oxford history of the United States. If only he had known about the John Smith connection, then he would have already he would have guessed that Sydney Rigdon obviously must have been there. The reality is, what do you have? You do have later people in the 1880s and the 1890s and 1870s claiming that there was a Sydney Rigdon connection. But do you have any sources that demonstrate that Sydney Rigdon was actually part of this? You just don't. There's a reason why reasonable historians who are not members of the church have concluded that Joseph Smith is not a charlatan. He is not someone claiming that he saw God and that he translated a book, but he never even thought about God and was actually just trying to bilk people out of money.

Gerrit Anne Taves is a well-respected professor of religious studies who is very much not a Latter-day Saint. She has devoted her life, at least in part of her academic career, to demonstrating where the Book of Mormon actually came from and explain how it is that Joseph could still believe that he really was called by God. She comes up with an argument that Joseph might have fallen into a trance-like state and not really been conscious of what he was doing. Other people who fall into trance-like states were able to dictate through auto-writing things that were completely beyond his ability. Now, why does she make that argument? She makes it because the weight of the 12,000 Joseph Smith documents that we have, the dozens of private reflections and letters, the hundreds of thousands of words that we have from Joseph Smith, all demonstrate one thing that Joseph really believed that he was called by God, and not just for public consumption, not just so that people could think that he was called by God, but to himself and to Emma and to his so-called co-conspirators like Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, where they personally and privately write to one another with their fears that they have about displeasing God, about trying to make sure that they follow the commandments of God.

Gerrit It's not a credible argument. I understand why someone who is not a Latter-day Saint would make the argument that maybe Joseph Smith just thought he saw God. And that's the reason why he so doggedly held to his testimony. And you know what? I very much respect that idea. I understand why someone might say, look, I don't even know if I believe in God. So maybe Joseph just thought he saw something or really felt like he was being talked to by God. I respect that argument. I understand why someone makes it. It is an entirely different argument to claim. Not only was Joseph just confused about whether or not God was talking to him, but the entire religion, every revelation, the Book of Mormon and the entire creation of the church itself was merely a scheme to try to bilk money out of people.

Gerrit And that it was then shrouded in the claim of, oh, religious persecution, religious persecution, as if religious persecution didn't actually exist. What you find with Latter-day Saint history is its detractors seem to think that the persecution of Latter-day Saints is justified. That while we would be shocked and in horror at the murder of little children for any other reason, well, if their parents were Mormons and it was Hans Melamy, what do you expect? They deserve that. I've literally heard PhD historians say things like, well, they deserved it. A six-year-old deserved it. A six-year-old deserved to be murdered. I think whenever you want to check your biases to figure out if you've gone too far down the road of whatever it is you believe, if ever you are justifying the murder of a six-year-old, you've gone too far.

Gerrit That's a good way to check your biases.

Richard Well, so, Gerrit, we do have our crack research staff here.

Gerrit The Cleansing Game must be over.

Richard It is over. They covered. So, no, my wife doesn't think that's funny ever when I say it.

Gerrit She wants him to never talk about that again. Or actually be on the podcast.

Richard Through that as well. So, this isn't by Lyrical Productions, but it is by the Yale University Press. So, Dartmouth School of the Prophets, obviously, that was stolen by Joseph Smith later. But it goes back even further than that. Yale College, 1701 to 1740, School of the Prophets.

Gerrit Yeah, the School of the Prophets is a very common way to designate. You have to remember that all these schools are religious schools to start with. Yale and Harvard, they are all divinity schools. They're all founded by religious groups. And their primary purpose is that they turn out pastors at first, right? They're designed to train the clergy. And so that was the way you called it the School of the Prophets, because that's how you were creating these people. And so does that mean that Joseph Smith didn't really see God and Jesus and that all the members of the School of the Prophets in Kirtland, who said that they saw God and Jesus, that that didn't really happen because there were other things in the country called School of the Prophets at the time? It's a perfect example of how someone is using shock to make an argument. It's not that we can't comprehend of the idea of calling something the same thing that everyone else calls it, right? We didn't come up with a different name for our church benches.

Gerrit We call them pews.

Richard Well, Sunday School, that's unique. No one's ever called anything.

Gerrit You know what? The sacrament. No one's ever used the term sacrament. Baptism, we invented that. I mean, the reality is the tactic is to say, here's something that you don't know. And then on the basis because you don't know it, I am now going to argue a nefarious reason why you don't know it. When the point of the matter is, there are a lot of things we don't know. If you are living your life always at the mercy of someone knowing more about the past than you do, well, we are all in for a disappointment because there's always someone who knows more than we do. In her interview, there were a couple of things that were so sloppy and so overstated that even the antagonistic anti-Mormon interviewer who's interviewing her has to pull back and say, well, wait a minute, there...

Richard Well, so Joseph Smith DNA testing, that was a perfect one.

Gerrit Yeah, a perfect example. As they started to talk about plural marriage...

Richard Because it always comes back.

Gerrit Yeah, look, if you're going to make an anti-Mormon argument, you better start, end and begin with plural marriage. You better, you know, the middle is plural marriage. It's essentially like what my daughter does when she makes a Nutella sandwich. You need some modicum of bread and then seven or eight tablespoons of Nutella. I mean, it's oozing out of the sides of it. That's what polygamy is to any anti-Mormon argument. But as their discussion is progressing, you know, he says to her, well, you know, there's no known children from any of, you know, definitive, no definitive children from any of Joseph Smith's plural marriages because they're talking about the sexual aspect of them. And she disagrees with them. Well, well, no, there are. And he's like, well, I mean, DNA wise, there aren't, because there are DNA studies on these multiple families that claim to be descendants from Joseph Smith, and none of them are definitively from Joseph Smith.

Gerrit In fact, all of them are definitively not. There's one that could possibly go a different way because you don't have as good of a line, but it's certainly not definitive. In fact, it appears not to be the case, or at least it's inconclusive. But what was her response to that? Well, I think there still are one or two that are. That was her response. So I care a lot about facts, except when I don't care about facts at all.

Richard Which is all the time.

Gerrit Which is all the time, which is why I self-published this book. There's another place that really bothered me in the interview that really stuck in my craw, I guess, and that is in the discussion about plural marriage and why it caused apostasy. She made a definitive statement that was completely false and not just one that was false. One that she had to know was false because she was quoting from the very source that said the opposite thing of what she was saying. And this is talking about William. Look, if we ever if we ever talk about polygamy, which we won't, our little dalliance into it has just taught me we'll never talk about it again. But if we ever do definitively talk about it, which we're just not going to, we'll ask Angie whether or not we should and she'll say no. And then we just won't.

Gerrit If we ever do definitively talk about it, one of the things that happens is that there are all kinds of claims made that lead up to the apostasy of William Law, who was a member of the First Presidency, and the claims that are made for what Joseph was doing wrong at the time. And she states, Richard, what did she say?

Richard Well, so kind of a paraphrase, not an exact word.

Gerrit Now you're worried about it.

Richard Well, now I am, right. I'm not definitively saying anything. But so she says that William Law didn't want to give his wife to Joseph Smith. And that was too far for her.

Gerrit Right. So in the interview, she says that Joseph Smith's practice of plural marriage, it wasn't just the practice of plural marriage. It was that Joseph demanded that William Law give him his wife to marry. And so she says it very matter of factly, right?

Richard William Law didn't want to give his wife to Joseph Smith.

Gerrit He didn't want to give his wife to Joseph Smith. And that was too far. Now, that sounds very powerful. And it sounds like, you know what? I wouldn't be giving my wife to anybody either. And you're right. No wonder William Law left. The problem is we have William Law's words. And in fact, the anti-Mormon Wilhelm Wymetal, who was trying to write his own anti-Mormon work in the 1880s, wrote multiple letters to William Law. And William Law wrote back to him. And after some of those were published, and after the book was published, William Law actually wrote back to Wilhelm Wymetal. And he actually specifically pointed out something that he thought was false. On page 108, you speak of swapping wives and state that you have it from one who knows.

Gerrit Now let me say to you that I never heard of it until I read it in your book. Now look, William Law hates Joseph Smith. He does initially found his own religion, but he will eventually, his own breakaway Latter-day Saint sect, but then he will abandon that and reject Mormonism altogether. Okay, so we're not talking about someone who's, in fact, all of his letters are attacking Joseph Smith, Joseph's bad, Joseph's horrible, and yet he thought it important to call out this error in this anti-Mormon book. On page 108, you speak of swapping wives and state that you have it from one who knows. Now let me say to you that I never heard of it till I read it in your book. Your informant must have been deceived or willfully lied to you. Joseph Smith never proposed anything of the kind to me.

Gerrit So that argument is something that he completely rejects. So who exactly is our source on this? If we're saying that William Law left the church because Joseph Smith tried to marry his wife and William Law says that didn't happen, why are we saying it? Why can't we just say what William Law did say? He's got a problem with plural marriage. He also has a really big problem, as we talked about back in the martyrdom issues. He has a really big problem with Joseph Smith's teaching that God progressed to become God and that people, you and I, had the ability to progress to become like God. He mentions that almost as many times as he mentions plural marriage in his publications. It really bothers him. It bothers him as something that's totally anathema to religion. And so it's a perfect example of something that was stated matter of factly that someone listening would be like, Oh my goodness gracious, Joseph Smith tried to marry William Law's wife.

Gerrit I mean, no wonder he left. And yet William Law, the person who actually left, is so irate at that inaccuracy that he writes a letter of his own volition to the author of the book in which someone claims that in order to say, you are so wrong that someone must have lied to you because I've never, the first time I ever heard about that was in your book. Now, I think that this author, I think she knows about this source because she talks about this source. So why is she perpetrating the argument that's not in there? It's really interesting that by the time the interview got over, the interviewer, even though very antagonistic towards the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, kind of provided a little bit of pushback and was like, you know, I kind of felt like you were, you know, you were you were trying too hard to prove the point.

Gerrit And that certainly becomes the case later on. I mean, we're talking about the early counterfeiting of things. But by the time we get to, you know, the last parts of of Joseph Smith's life, it is something that's really just kind of like throwing every anti-Mormon thing at the wall that's ever been published. Right. So we've gone from here's the things I found in the early dusty archives that I apparently didn't visit because I'm publishing things that were published by other people. And instead I get to I get to this this account of the martyrdom. And I'm I'm making the same types of arguments that are made just not by historians, but in a standard anti-Mormon kind of fair. For instance, this is what we have as you get later in the book.

Gerrit Anti-Mormons repeatedly denied that the religious prejudice drove their actions when they lynched the Smiths. That's surprising given the fact that they formed a convention called the Anti-Mormon Convention of Hancock County. That has nothing to do with religion, though. It's interesting. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a race called Mormons. So I'm guessing that the only way that you could have an Anti-Mormon Convention of Hancock County is if you are opposed to the religion. Now, you might say, well, I'm only opposed to them on economic grounds. I'm only opposed to them on this. I'm only opposed to them on that. Just think about what you're saying, though. When you say something like, I hate all Mormons because of X. However justified you think you are, you just created a group that's primary purpose is to be antagonistic to a single religious group.

Gerrit Now you can say, well, it has nothing to do with what they believe. It's just the only way I categorize them is by what they believe. Uh-huh. That's a very, very, it's a very powerful argument. What a great argument you've made that has nothing to do with their religion. It's just the only way I categorize them. And that's the reason why these same anti-Mormons will state that when the saints leave, every saint, mongrel or whole blood will have to leave. Yeah, that's nothing to do with them at all, though. There's nothing to do with it at all. Anyway, we can go on and read more garbage. But in all of their statements, the anti-Mormons emphasized that they were seeking justice and the protection of the duly instituted laws and what they did. Technically, it could even be argued that the anti-Mormons were justified in shooting Joseph and Hyrum under Illinois law because the brothers were legally charged with multiple felonies, but they resisted arrest.

Gerrit This person is so far down the line in their arguments that they just wrote into this book that it was right to murder Joseph and Hyrum because they initially resisted arrest by fleeing into Iowa. Well, I don't know what Illinois law she's citing to. There isn't a footnote there. It's very interesting. But no, no, there isn't an Illinois law that says after people who initially resisted arrest are incarcerated in a jail for multiple days, it's okay to gather a mob and murder them because they initially resisted arrest, even though you aren't part of the duly deputized sheriff or posse or in any way official capacity, but you have the right to shoot and kill people.

Gerrit That's ridiculous. And frankly, she's ridiculous. You listening to her interviews, it was very clear that she didn't have a very good grasp on even 19th century American history. What she had a grasp on was a wide ranging wild eyed conspiracy theory, which if it was a really good argument, someone else would make it. Someone with a PhD, someone from a university press, someone who actually looked at the sources. I don't like I don't like doing this. I don't like bagging on on on these various authors. Like I said, they might be wonderful people. But the moment you cross over into the realm of claiming that you're doing history, well, then don't write sentences that say things like they were legally justified in murdering the Smiths, right? Well, she of course didn't say murder because that would imply wrongdoing.

Gerrit I'd like to get a list from her of who are the people that it is okay to kill. Since since we know now that there are certain people that it's just okay to kill. I mean, I mean, I was stopped for a traffic violation a few years ago. I'm wondering if now someone could break into my house and kill me because you immediately drive to Iowa.

Richard Perhaps.

Gerrit Well, if I what if I was thinking about it, though? I mean, I think even if you're thinking about it, that's also resisting. I mean, there's just there's like I said, I could go through. I could go through, you know, eventually the conspiracy has has gone so far that any unexplained death that takes place on or around the last years of Joseph's life or the first part of Brigham's existence. Oh, yeah, that was probably because he was poisoned. Yeah, I mean, there isn't the same thing when any Latter-day Saint dies. It's very interesting, right? When it when they die at the hands of the mob, you know, that there's there's never a conspiracy to kill them, only a conspiracy among the Mormons. You know, I think it's very obvious that she, you know, she once was a member of the church and she touts her Mormon heritage. It's it's actually one of the most frustrating things to me ever. When someone claims that they have special authority to talk about the history of the church because they're from Heber C.

Richard Perhaps.

Gerrit Well, if I what if I was thinking about it, though? I mean, I think even if you're thinking about it, that's also resisting. I mean, there's just there's like I said, I could go through. I could go through, you know, eventually the conspiracy has has gone so far that any unexplained death that takes place on or around the last years of Joseph's life or the first part of Brigham's existence. Oh, yeah, that was probably because he was poisoned. Yeah, I mean, there isn't the same thing when any Latter-day Saint dies. It's very interesting, right? When it when they die at the hands of the mob, you know, that there's there's never a conspiracy to kill them, only a conspiracy among the Mormons. You know, I think it's very obvious that she, you know, she once was a member of the church and she touts her Mormon heritage. It's it's actually one of the most frustrating things to me ever. When someone claims that they have special authority to talk about the history of the church because they're from Heber C.

Gerrit Kimball's lineage. What in the world are you talking about? That because you are from grandparents who believed that people should listen to what you have to say? I don't understand even what the argument is. It's an appeal to authority. But the authority is because I've been in the church a long time in my family with people in the past that aren't here anymore. It's frankly another way to seem like I'm an insider. I know things that other people wouldn't know. Well, frankly, my dad's side of the family hasn't been in the church for generations and generations and generations. But I did go get a PhD in history, which demonstrated to me right away that you aren't following the rules of history. So, I mean, I don't know whether that comes from good Mormon stock or not. You know what? Actually, according to your argument, because Mormons are such good counterfeiters, maybe it is part of your stock.

Gerrit You got to the point where it was built into the DNA, and that's why there were some plagiarized sentences in there.

Richard You brought it back around.

Gerrit Yeah.

Richard You brought it back around.

Gerrit Yeah.

Richard Way to go.

Gerrit Yeah.

Richard Way to go.

Gerrit Yeah.

Richard That's very funny. It's a frustrating argument from my side as well. I come from a family of recent converts, and so when people apply to a sense of authority because of something and then attempt to try to bring down the church, it is an eye roll to the max for me.

Gerrit I mean, it happens inside the church too, where people claim authority. I have a colleague who was in a discussion and an argument with another colleague many, many years ago. So if you're trying to figure out who this is, you have no idea. You'll never figure it out.

Richard It was last week.

Gerrit Yeah, it was just today. And one of these people, in order to make the point, because they were very certain on their point of doctrine, they appealed to the fact that they were very closely descended to some of the prophets and apostles. And they said something to the effect of, well, I have the blood of prophets running through my veins. And I think this is right. Well, while that sounds like a good argument, it's also not an academic one. And, you know, I think the reason why these things frustrate me so much is you can come across as an expert just by regurgitating other people's writings onto a page, by pointing out things that stand to reason, and by saying, oh, look at this. I bet you haven't heard of this.

Gerrit But you aren't actually trying to educate people, because if you were trying to educate people, you wouldn't make an argument that in Illinois law, it was okay for a mob to go in and murder people who are already duly arrested in a jail. You would try to help people understand what was going on. You can present your sources and your evidence, but you wouldn't make conclusions that were always, always, always in opposition to the church. And again, the argument that Joseph Smith is a charlatan is an argument that is not made by the historical community. So why are you making it? Well, because I think you're making a religious argument. I think she's making a religious argument that she doesn't believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, and she's trying to prove her religious argument via a very convoluted, poorly sourced, poorly argued, and poorly defined conspiracy theory involving masons and counterfeiters, involving murders and secrecy, involving secret signs and tokens and temple ceremonies that are all lead ups to secret murders as well.

Gerrit And frankly, it's the tired, tired argument of people in the majority to attack minority groups, to claim that they are in a conspiracy, that they actually have more power than they actually do. And I hope that we, as Latter Day Saints, we don't ever do the same thing to other minority groups. It is essential that we judge people individually. However desperately our human natures try to get us to judge people on the basis of the group they are affiliated with. Remember that your Savior judges you individually. Even if you are from a group that he doesn't like. Even if you are, you know, I don't know what political persuasion he is, you know, right, but the reality is your Heavenly Father loves you individually and judges you individually.

Gerrit And your Savior died for you individually. I know that I've made a lot of historical arguments over the course of these two, these two podcasts. But I'm very upfront with the fact that I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I believe it despite everything that's in that book. In fact, in some cases, I believe it even more because of how badly it was written. But I believe because the Holy Spirit has told me that. It's the same reason why I know that Jesus is our Savior. I can't know that through historical means. I know it because the Holy Spirit has told me that Jesus died for my sins. And so like I've tried to say a few times in other podcasts, if you are struggling with difficult questions, if you have a family member that's presented something that you don't know anything about that you've never heard of, and they're saying, well, it stands to reason and it's really troubling you.

Gerrit I just really encourage you to go back to the source of all of this, to the Book of Mormon. Go back to read it and ask God whether or not that comes from God. Antagonists will always, always have arguments that they will make. Well, what about this or what about that? But ultimately, a testimony and faith can only come through your individual communing with God and the Holy Spirit. I can answer emails all day long, poorly as the case might be. But once you receive that indelible imprint from the Holy Spirit, it's transformative. That doesn't mean we stop our learning, but it does mean that we are not so easily pushed around by every weak argument made by a detractor. And when someone presents something that we don't know, we say, you know what, I don't know about that, but I'm going to go find out more instead of panicking and saying, oh my goodness, this whole thing must be a fraud because the Holy Spirit isn't a fraud.

Gerrit And when you feel the Holy Spirit working in your life, when you feel the forgiveness of your sins, when you feel that power of testimony, that's not a fraud. And I would submit that the people who are trying to convince you that it is a fraud are themselves the fraud because you know what you felt. So thank you so much for joining us and we will talk to you again next week.

Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

Counterfeiting Scholarship Part 2

Chapters

Transcript

Quote board

Source shelf

Text message from Gerrit's friend Jesse

Kathleen Melonakos, Secret Combinations: Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting, 1800-1847 (2016)

Joseph Smith letter to Hyrum Smith, 1831

Funeral sermon for Symonds Ryder by a Disciples of Christ minister

Records of Minor Deming

Melonakos, Secret Combinations, on Professor John Smith of Dartmouth

"Dartmouth Arminianism and Its Impact on Hyrum Smith and the Smith Family," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, 2006

FamilySearch and Dartmouth archival research by a Joseph Smith Papers colleague

Publications of Gerald and Sandra Tanner (Utah Lighthouse Ministry)

Melonakos, Secret Combinations, page 207, on the "Gold Bible Company"

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (Oxford History of the United States)

Ann Taves's work on the origins of the Book of Mormon

Yale University Press history, Yale College, 1701-1740, "School of the Prophets"

William Law to Wilhelm Wyl, 1880s

Melonakos, Secret Combinations, on the martyrdom

Anti-Mormon Convention of Hancock County statements, 1844

Episode quiz

What does Gerrit call books that explain away Joseph Smith with weak sources?

Fun with Numbers

From 1701 to 1847

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words

More from this episode

Claim check

Take it to class

Banter bin

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Go deeper

Counterfeiting Scholarship Part 2

A text, not an email

Text message from Gerrit's friend Jesse

Kathleen Melonakos, Secret Combinations: Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting, 1800-1847 (2016)

Joseph Smith letter to Hyrum Smith, 1831

Funeral sermon for Symonds Ryder by a Disciples of Christ minister

Records of Minor Deming

Melonakos, Secret Combinations, on Professor John Smith of Dartmouth

"Dartmouth Arminianism and Its Impact on Hyrum Smith and the Smith Family," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, 2006

FamilySearch and Dartmouth archival research by a Joseph Smith Papers colleague

Publications of Gerald and Sandra Tanner (Utah Lighthouse Ministry)

Melonakos, Secret Combinations, page 207, on the "Gold Bible Company"

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (Oxford History of the United States)

Ann Taves's work on the origins of the Book of Mormon

Yale University Press history, Yale College, 1701-1740, "School of the Prophets"

William Law to Wilhelm Wyl, 1880s

Melonakos, Secret Combinations, on the martyrdom

Anti-Mormon Convention of Hancock County statements, 1844

What does Gerrit call books that explain away Joseph Smith with weak sources?

From 1701 to 1847

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words