SOT LitnerStandard of Truth listener companion
Grab some popcorn
S3E13 · What Documents Should the Church Keep Private?
0:00 / 59:36
14 chapters
← All episodes
Standard of Truth · Season 3 · Episode 13 · 59:36

What Documents Should the Church Keep Private?

The two early letters President Hinckley mentioned in a 1985 Ensign article aren't in the Joseph Smith Papers for a simple reason: Mark Hofmann forged them.

Press play above. The page follows along.
The question ·
The real question they, I, have concerns the supposed hiding or covering up of the church's past. They ask, why all of a sudden do we know this? Or why did it take so long for the Joseph Smith papers to be published for the world?
Taylor (listener)

After Richard's tale of the LeDuc family landing in Montreal in 1655, Carl from Canada reports slipping on the ice while laughing at the podcast. Then Dan asks about two early letters from a 1985 Ensign article, and Taylor asks why the church kept documents hidden until the Joseph Smith Papers. Gerrit explains that every institution, from the CIA to Coca-Cola, keeps some records private, and that tithing records and sacred material should stay that way. He describes how the church has put more into history in the last 20 years than in the 200 years before, and how the Mark Hofmann forgeries changed the way documents are checked. Gerrit lands on the idea that more access is a good thing, and that a testimony comes from asking God, not from archives.

Who comes upJoseph SmithGordon B. HinckleyMark HofmannDenver SnufferMartin HarrisW. W. PhelpsRussell M. Nelson
Now playing · 0:45

Grab some popcorn

Richard opens with an unexciting pitch for an episode about archives.

Chapters

Tap a chapter to jump there

Transcript

189 moments · tap a time to play from there
Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.
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. In this episode, we're going to talk about archives and sources, so go ahead and sit down, grab some popcorn, and enjoy. You really sell that hard.
Gerrit You decided to stop selling. Richard's obviously done. This is the beginning of the end of the podcast. When you look back and say, hey, how come it went off after three seasons?
Richard Well, I just see Andrew throwing his life away, pursuing, after his mission, of course, pursuing a life of history, possibly English.
Gerrit Possibly English.
Richard Possibly English.
Gerrit Yeah, I mean, I think he said burning money.
Richard Yeah, yeah. Of course we're teasing. We love all of our history and English listeners.
Gerrit My mom was an English teacher. But my mom would also say it was not the way to a million dollars.
Richard No, no, no, but it's a noble profession. So we have a-
Gerrit Noble, very opaque.
Richard So we start off with an email from a Canadian listener. First of all, I have a tremendous affinity for the great country of Canada. My family came to, you know, where we are now, eventually, from Canada, through France to Canada, and then here. We came, Jean LeDuc in 1655. He was granted an acre of land in Montreal.
Gerrit A whole acre.
Richard Whole acre. So this is in the, but this is in an urban center of Montreal?
Gerrit No, no, there's no, in 1655.
Richard 1655-ish. What's the population of Montreal in 1655, or Canada in general?
Gerrit The population of New France, which isn't just Canada. New France is everything, all the way down to where New Orleans is. Every part of North America is considered New France.
Richard Okay, so it's a pretty sizable chunk of land, so I'm guessing 40, 50 million people?
Gerrit Think of the Louisiana Purchase. All of that land, plus all of the land that the French once had in Canada, which is far exceeds just the area of Quebec today. All of that was owned by France at the time. So the entirety of New France, all of that, we are talking literally millions and millions of acres. There are 2,000 people that live in all of that combined. Now, caveat, there are hundreds of thousands of Native Americans, but the French aren't counting them. There are 2,000 French living in all of North America in 1655.
Richard So the one acre that Jean is granted.
Gerrit Well, first of all, I realize today, prices for real estate are pretty high in Montreal.
Richard I'm gonna look and see what an acre in Montreal would cost.
Gerrit Well, in the city itself, I'm sure it'd be a lot. At the same time, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that land prices were not sky high in New France in 1655. Granting someone an acre of land in New France in 1655 is probably the equivalent of the give a penny, take a penny that you would get at a holiday station. Yeah, where you can put a penny in, you can say, oh, I need an extra two cents to complete my purchase. Because, yeah, land was everywhere, and they don't yet have anything called central heat. So there's a lot of land. How your ancestors somehow wrangled an entire acre to his own, who granted it to him, does it say?
Richard Let's see, it was granted by the lords of the island of Montreal.
Gerrit Oh, so by the people running the town, basically. So he showed up as an immigrant, and they said, you know what, we just got so much land, we're giving it away, really? A whole farm? Eh, I mean, it depends on what you think you can grow in our gigantic, lengthy, Canadian growing season here in Montreal.
Richard Anyway, so I love Canada, from, well, not from there, but I have great affinity for it, as my people are from there. So this is from our, a Canadian listener. It's a subject, Canadian complaint to the extreme danger of listening to your podcast, warning required. Message, dear almost Dr. Dirkmaat, or Dr. Dirkmaat, almost Dr. Dirkmaat.
Gerrit I've lost my title.
Richard Dear almost Dr. LeDuc, by the way, I met with my dissertation chair yesterday. I think I'm further away from it than I thought that I was. I think he's at this point saying almost ABD LeDuc.
Gerrit He went for that name.
Richard Being pseudo-Canadians, Idaho is close. I should not have to make you aware of the extreme weather available to us in the far north, but alas, it seems I do. In Canada, we frequently have cold snaps of negative 40. Notice I did not specify Celsius or Fahrenheit, or in this case, potentially Kelvin, as it does not matter at that temperature. Additionally, it can snow on any day of the year, and I mean any day. I recall 12 inches of snow. I translated that for you. By the way, that's 30.48 centimeters. Translating that back. On the 23rd of August one year, I digress. So back to my complaint-
Gerrit Does he live in Yellowknife?
Richard Where is he? I think he's in Alberta province, I believe.
Gerrit But he's not like in none of it. No, he's got 30 inches in August.
Richard I digress. So back to my complaint. Earlier this week, and we assume this email was sent, I don't know, a year ago. I don't know. We were really behind on the reading of these emails. Earlier this week, I took a stroll around my neighborhood, and he spelled it with an unfamiliar U, by the way, floating somewhere in the middle.
Gerrit His neighbor-hood.
Richard Yeah, neighbor-hood. Okay, I'm not going to translate everything, he says, parenthetically. As I usually do every evening, since retiring, I find it necessary to keep up my activity by walking, to try to keep off the kilograms or pounds. And we appreciate you not using stones. And, by the way, all of this conversion talk, I love a good conversion.
Gerrit You like it when people convert.
Richard I love it. So a stone is about 14 pounds. So we're going to have a little quiz game here to Garniff Dirkmaat. So stone is 14 pounds. Do you know how much a smidgen is?
Gerrit I'm assuming the little last bit of cake that you're trying to get.
Richard So it's one 32nd of a teaspoon.
Gerrit A 32nd of a teaspoon.
Richard One 32nd of a teaspoon. It's a smidgen. It's a smidgen. It's a real unit of measure.
Gerrit Makes a lot more of the insults I've received in the past.
Richard So now we're going... Some of my favorite units of measure relate to wine. Of course.
Gerrit Of course. Especially with the incredible wine they grow in Yellowknife.
Richard So, Hog's Head of Wine.
Gerrit Oh, Hog's Head. Well, that's good American.
Richard It's about how many gallons of wine?
Gerrit I would guess 60.
Richard Really? 63 gallons of wine.
Gerrit So that's because I'm going off of Hog's Head of Tobacco, the same barrel size for when they were shipping tobacco in early America.
Richard How about that?
Gerrit All right.
Richard We've come back. Come back to your wheelhouse.
Gerrit Yeah. There's my wheelhouse.
Richard How about a buttload of wine?
Gerrit A what?
Richard A buttload of wine. It's a legitimate term.
Gerrit I feel like now we have to put an explicit reference on our podcast.
Richard This isn't a butt of wine.
Gerrit Can you spell that for me?
Richard B-U-T-T-L-O-A-D, buttload of wine.
Gerrit Please use it in a sentence.
Richard I drank last night, I drank a buttload of wine.
Gerrit That's the same kind of sentence that I receive when I was in college with all of my roommates, but I don't actually think they were referring directly to the exact standard of measurement.
Richard Well, so this is very important. And so usually-
Gerrit Cultural term.
Richard Our wives who sit in as we record these episodes are asleep. And my wife woke up and frantically shook her cell phone in front of me as to point out that the unit for both a hog's head or a butt of wine, I mean, they do vary.
Gerrit Vary, yes.
Richard So 15th century measurement, maybe 63 gallons, today, maybe 79 gallons.
Gerrit And frankly, the more wine that you drink, the less you can tell how much is left in the barrel anyway.
Richard Yes. And so also then a butt of wine or a buttload of wine would be 132 to maybe 120 to 132 gallons. You know, what's 12 gallons among friends?
Gerrit Well, you know what? It only matters when it's the last 12 gallons.
Richard So, manpower compared to horsepower, how many men for one horsepower?
Gerrit Seven.
Richard Ten. Close. You're very close. And the last, this one I loved, an oath is a unit of odor.
Gerrit Smell that one for me.
Richard OLF. OLF is a unit of odor. So a person that practices good hygiene, that showers frequently, they would be at a standard of one OLF, somebody that would be exercising, maybe five OLFs, a subway train in France, three million OLFs.
Gerrit Angie and I have ridden that train into Paris.
Richard It's rough. In the summer, it is...
Gerrit It was very hot and it was very... It was...
Richard It was OLFy.
Gerrit It was OLFy.
Richard Heavy smoker, 25 OLFs. That's just to give you a range.
Gerrit Interesting. I've never heard of that before.
Richard Back to the email.
Gerrit I feel like Richard's inventing things. We're going to need to do... We've had several people offer to take his place. We're going to actually have to start... We're going to have to start with auditions.
Richard I usually enjoy listening to your podcast during the peace and quiet of my walk. However, this week, a cold front and a snowstorm blew in just before the apex of my route. I live in a hilly area spitting distance from the rocky mountains. I was merrily listening to... No one has ever said that they were merrily listening to us, even the Christmas episode.
Gerrit Until he reaches the valley, oh.
Richard Laughing and crying as I went, I was so distracted by the story of Dr. Dirkmaat's name that I failed to reduce my speed on the descent home. In my own defense, I must state that my vision was obscured now by my freezing tears. The ice had already formed beneath my feet and I began to pick up speed. Normally, this would not be a problem as I am properly attired and very well adept at negotiating slippery terrain. However, it was a perfect storm, literally. Obscured vision, black ice and a sharp downhill run, with a turn at the end leading to a multi-lane road. I frantically kept it together, arms flailing in the air for balance, all the while, or all the way to the multi-lane road, whereupon my feet slipped out from under me, and I cracked my head on the ice laden road. Blackness ensued. When I woke up, not sure how long I was out, I was happy to be alive.
Richard I don't know why that's funny.
Gerrit It's a little morbid on your part that you read it, you're like, he cracked his head open. I'm over here thinking, oh my gosh, I hope he's okay.
Richard Happy to be alive, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's hilarious.
Gerrit You are lucky to be alive because I'm reading your email.
Richard I am told that lying in the middle of the road late at night can be hazardous to health, even in a socialist medical state. Oh man, that's funny. Alberta's medical costs are paid by the oil slush fund.
Gerrit Boy, he's trying to incite a war right now.
Richard That is so great. Sorry, I lost my place. Oil slush fund, I slowly and carefully made it to the rest of the way home. Writing this email in my head, my phone also cracked on the ice. It was in my back pocket, causing it to malfunction, so I had to stop listening. Don't worry. I downloaded again on my computer when I got home, so your numbers should be okay. First of all, before we're glad you're okay, thank you for two downloads for that episode. So we're very grateful, Carl. So as a suggestion, please include a warning for all Northern climates to listen to the podcast in bad weather at their own risk. Thank you, Carl. PS, sorry, I have no question, only the complaint. I do continue to enjoy the podcast tremendously and have even used some of your material in Sunday School and the elders quorum. Keep up the good but potentially dangerous work. This is great, Carl. We really appreciate it. Safety First on the Standard of Truth Podcast. For our Canadian listeners, we're huge in Finland, all of Scandinavia, some of Denmark, part of Iceland.
Gerrit We have zero listeners in those places.
Richard Yeah, you can do it direct. So how many members of the church? And then we have a smidgen of that listenership, essentially, is where that is. So another reason, so first of all, Carl, thank you again. That was a wonderful email, very funny. We're glad you're okay. We assume you're okay. We're glad you're okay.
Gerrit We hope you're okay.
Richard We hope you're okay.
Gerrit Although maybe, you know, long-term damage, we hope not.
Richard Dear President Dirkmaat and General LeDuc.
Gerrit You just keep getting better and better titles.
Richard I do. I've been sitting here for almost half an hour trying to compose some witty and hilarious introduction to catch your attention and increase my odds of getting my questions read and answered. I give up. I'm just not that funny or creative. So here goes straight up.
Gerrit You know what? Right to the point.
Richard That worked.
Gerrit Honesty.
Richard In an Ensign article from September of 18, 1985, Gordon B. Hinckley writes a masterful piece from 38 years ago that is wonderfully apropos for today. My questions come from that article. President Hinckley mentions a letter from Joseph Smith to Josiah Stoll, dated 1825, which would make it the first communication we have in Joseph's own hand. Also mentioned is a letter from Martin Harris to WW. Phelps, dated October 1830. President Hinckley says that the Church is in possession of these documents. I'm pretty sure in your research that you have read these letters. President Hinckley implies that the contents of the letters have been used by unscrupulous writers to try to undermine Joseph and the Book of Mormon. Can you please tell us more about said letters and how they fit into early Church history? Needless to say. Actually, it's not needless to say. It is needed to say. I love your podcast and look forward to each Thursday's drop.
Richard There's also a Monday drop. Dan, we recommend the premium content, as well as the free newsletter that comes out once a month, like the ghost of Christmas future in his own good time. Needless to say, I love your podcast. Look forward to each Thursday's drop. God bless the significant work you are doing and how it blesses us sincerely. Dan, thank you, Dan.
Gerrit Okay, well, that's a great question, but I think we have another question that's similar and related. So let's read that one too, so we can kind of answer them all together, because I think that they're symbiotic in a way.
Richard I agree. Dear Richard, I've written in multiple times, I've tried my darndest to be heard.
Gerrit Wow, this is... So we had a couple where people just, they know they're not going to be heard.
Richard Yeah, and by the way, the strategy is Dear Richard, because it stands out, and I'm more likely to read it, because I have a huge unquenchable ego.
Gerrit Yes.
Richard I've tried...
Gerrit He just passed right over that. I have a huge ego. Yes, he does.
Richard I try my hardest to be heard, only asking you questions and totally leaving out Dr. Dirkmaat. I've tried humor. I'm out of tax... taxics?
Gerrit You're never out of taxes. Taxes will be there. Death in taxes.
Richard I'm out of tactics. I've decided to just ask a sincere question that has really bothered me lately. Here you go. Anyway, I have some friends who have all but left the church. They are snufferites. And they follow his tenets and believe him to be inspired. I've had several discussions with them, and I've realized that they have the same problems others have with early church history. It's difficult. They don't have context, and there are a lot of crafty writers out there. The real question they, I, have concerns the supposed hiding or covering up of the church's past. They ask, why all of a sudden do we know this? Or why did it take so long for the Joseph Smith Papers to be published for the world? Yeah, Gerrit, why did it take you guys so long?
Gerrit We're not very good at what we do.
Richard They see this flow of information from church vaults, archives, histories or whatever as somewhat secretive in the past. And now that the church has been exposed in quotation marks, they decide to let it out. I feel somewhat incapable of answering some of these questions. I understand the budgetary limits, time constraints and even technological problems. But I guess I need help developing this rebuttal more. I guess it would be nice for your co-host, Dr. Dirkmaat, you know what? I'll ask him to discuss his experience with Joseph Smith Papers. How did he uncover new documents? What happens when a new document was discovered? Further examination of some Joseph Smith paper documents led to date changes on some revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants as an example. What archives did he use? What was the process to compile, edit, publish a volume? How did the Church archives work? How does the First Presidency have it open to papers and archives?
Richard It's kind of an overload, but any clarification on the matter would be helpful. Sincerely, he didn't write sincerely, but I assume he meant it.
Gerrit He was pretty angry he hadn't responded to them before.
Richard Avid Hawaiian listener, Taylor.
Gerrit Taylor, I think in order for us to answer your emails, you have to invite us to stay at your house with our families.
Richard Gerrit will bring all of his papers. It's just bundles of papers.
Gerrit I'll just bring papers, we'll spread them out around the floor, but there is that caveat. It's as if Zoom doesn't exist. If you're a Hawaii listener, this has to be in person. We have to come, all of us, and of course you'd have to welcome us with open arms.
Richard 100%. Carl, we'll Zoom you in Canada.
Gerrit Carl, Zoom happens to work to Alberta. It doesn't work to Hawaii. Nothing says, I want a winter vacation more than, you know what, what if we headed up to Calgary?
Richard Carl just sent us an email, and we slipped and cracked his head. We'll see you in July, maybe.
Gerrit Yeah, which is still probably 30 to 40.
Richard Yeah, they got 30 centimeters of snow in August.
Gerrit Yeah, yeah, it was incredible. Was that a metric ton? Anyway, so they're related questions, right? Because one is about these early documents, and then the other is, you know, really kind of this antagonistic argument against the current leadership of the church. Now look, many people listening might not even be familiar. With Denver Snuffer and his movement. And that's fine. I'm not inviting you to go, you know, let's hurry and download everything he has to say. But he's a leader of essentially this offshoot group of people that claim that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but that after that, the church lost its way. And luckily, luckily, we all have him to help lead us back. It's lucky for all of us, honestly. We're just so lucky that he has the true answers.
Gerrit But the following is fairly robust. There are thousands of people who have essentially left the church, not because they are, you know, they can't handle the church's stance on a social issue or because they just don't believe Joseph Smith's truth claims, but because they believe that the church after Joseph Smith went astray. And part of the way that they do that is by making claims about later things in Latter-day Saint history. And so it is a fairly common tact from some of these groups to claim that the church is, it's very funny, that they will claim that the church is hiding things, that people don't have access to them. And then when the church provides access to them, to discredit the things for which the access was provided, right?
Gerrit So here we're going to produce this journal that hasn't been made published before. And instead of saying, great, now we know what so-and-so had to say, the response is instead, why did it take so long for it to become public? Now, I understand why that question is had. And frankly, look, every archivist and every historian knows that every repository, every archive has restrictions on its use. And some items that are just simply not, they are not available. When I was going to my Ph.D. school, one of the people that I was with was writing a history of Coca-Cola, which sounds like that's awesome, right? And Coca-Cola, when I was there, when I was working on my Ph.D. like Richard isn't right now, when I was working on it, those archives are not open archives.
Gerrit Now, there are some things you can get from their archives, but they aren't necessarily letting people come in and get the secret formula. So one thing that historians understand, though we're often frustrated by it, that the general public does not understand, is that all archives, all document collection repositories, have some items that are simply off limits. Now, sometimes that's because they're brittle or frail. Sometimes it's because they are of a personal nature. And when they are religious archives, more often than not, a lot of things are off limits. It's not just a Latter-day Saint issue. Now, if you're a Latter-day Saint, or affiliated with the Latter-day Saints, or a following Denver snuffer, then every single thing that is not publicly available suddenly becomes nefarious. Then it's just nefarious.
Gerrit But that's just simply not the case. I mean, for instance, I was at a diplomatic historians' conference years ago, and the person who came to speak to us was the director of the CIA. Well, that's kind of a big deal, right? And the historians there, they went after him pretty hardcore because one of the things they were asking was about, why can't we have access to the presidential daily briefings? So what's the presidential daily briefing? Well, the presidential daily briefing is the daily briefing that's given to the president, as the name implies. Yeah, oh, tell me more, Gerrit, about the presidential daily briefing. You want that in metric? How many hogshead is that?
Richard Yeah, it's a buttload of briefing.
Gerrit It's a lot of hogsheads, let me tell you that. Well, because, but the nature of the briefing is it's different than any other interaction with the president. The nature of it is presenting him, especially with national security issues and having incredibly candid conversations about them. So there's a fear in the American intelligence community that were those conversations ever to become public, once that happened, even if it was for a president 50 years from now, that the current president would no longer be as forthcoming with what he actually thinks, knowing that at some point it was going to be public. Now, you might be listening to this thing like, no, no, it should also be public. I mean, look, at some point, yes, those things obviously have to become public. But he was making this argument to these historians who were there, were like, look, the nature of the briefing, its existence is so that it's never public.
Gerrit It was created so that it would never become public. Its purpose is that it's not public. It wouldn't exist if there was a public version of it. It exists to have a version that will never be public so that there is no worry about what someone's potential, you know, what is my legacy going to say about how much money we should commit to this or not to that? It's a straight up conversation without any eventual circumstances at all. And so, look, you can dispute that. Someone can say, well, I still think they should all be public. You know, he shouldn't be saying one thing behind closed doors and one thing in public. Well, we should probably have a whole other podcast on, you know, how much information is made public by the government. But the point is, this is not a question for Latter-day Saint archivists and historians alone.
Gerrit It is a question of corporate institutions that have archives like Coca-Cola. It is a question of civic institutions. You know, is the Red Cross going to make all of their archives available to literally anyone who wants to look at them? Now, someone again might, listening might very cavalierly say, well, yeah, of course they should. Really? Because all of the Red Cross' records include things like the names of people that are donating blood. Did they sign up for that? Did they say it's okay to release their name? Right? You see what I'm saying? Like, in general, we say things like, oh, you should just make it all public. Now, we say that right up until someone tries to make our information public. And then we say, wait a minute, that's different. So that's not to say that there, you know, you couldn't have more things that have public access, but it's important to understand the nature of archives in and of themselves. They are primarily repositories.
Gerrit And the earlier an institution is in its life, the more they are dumping grounds rather than places of analysis, right? So for the first, you know, 60 years of the church, there's no church historian's office. I mean, there are people that are called to be the church historian, but what's the church archives? It's Willard Richards' dresser. That's the archives. He's got a collection of papers in his bureau. And no, he's not cataloging them and assigning them numbers and allowing people to come and research them and set them aside. Clearly, an organization is not professional as its history the moment that it's created. Frankly, and this is going to go back to our, back to Andrew from last podcast, you wouldn't think it, but when people are forming an organization, a company, a charity, a religion, it is not the first office that they fill that of historian.
Gerrit I imagine that we have some entrepreneurs listening. Richard teaches entrepreneurs, in fact.
Richard I do.
Gerrit How many of them, as their business plan, have a corporate historian?
Richard They're just trying to keep their head above water.
Gerrit And so they hate history.
Richard I don't know that they hate it.
Gerrit They're trying to hide history.
Richard They're hiding all of the history.
Gerrit Right. Well, I mean, at least from the IRS.
Richard No question about that. It's a separate class.
Gerrit Different class. Richard doesn't teach that one. But the point is, history, by its nature, is something that organizations come to late. They come to it late because you don't even know that you have an organization worth talking about its history until it's been around a long time. You know, Coca-Cola doesn't need a company historian the month they're founded, right? But there were documents created the month they were founded, right? So now what happens to those documents? So a lot of the process that goes on in an archive is legitimately processing documents that have been there forever. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of people, missionaries, volunteers, employees, whose job it is at the church archives to go through not just things that they already have, which is legion, right?
Gerrit There are so many things that they already have, but they are constantly getting new acquisitions. People are showing up with pickup trucks of boxes and said, Hey, my dad was a University of Utah professor, and he talked to so-and-so. Do you guys want the boxes of his letters? Well, how do we know whether or not the box? You literally have no idea what it is. And so you have to evaluate those. Then you have to determine the access level. Okay, so someone donates a box of level, a box of letters to the archives. Well, what if in a bunch of those letters, someone is, you know, in those documents, someone is, for instance, a bishop, and in their journal, they record in their journal confessions that people have made to them so they can keep track. Now, they never intended that document to ever be public, but they're writing things down like met with sister so-and-so, you know, she's going to be disfellowshipped for a few weeks, but then she's going to come back, and I hope to see her back on the road, right?
Gerrit Should that document, which was never intended to be public, which is certainly very, very, very interesting, should it be public? There are all kinds of records which will likely never be public, like the cancellations of ceilings and things like that. Those are by definition created to be private. So there's lots of things in the Church Archives that are sacred, things that might involve, say, a temple ceremony or a confession. They are private, or they're confidential.
Richard What about to the argument that, okay, all right, so I'm not saying all of the things, but some things have been released, why were those kept from view for as long as they were? Because to the point, critics are saying that they're only releasing them now, because they have to, but they would have kept them under locking key before.
Gerrit Right. Well, so when someone makes that argument, they're making an argument for which there is no way to determine that you're doing a counterfactual history. You're saying, well, yeah, but if they didn't, if this didn't happen, they wouldn't have released it. Well, you literally have no idea, actually, right? Unless you have someone, again, with a document, that's, by the way, probably not public, writing in their journal like, I guess we'll release these because we have to, right? Much more so what's going on is an evolution in the way we treat our history. It starts, you know, in the 20th century, there starts to be the early glimmers of a more professionalized history. But think about that. At that point, there's almost 100 years of documents, letters, things like that, that there's no public access. Today, there's a nice giant Church History Library that is designed with the idea of having some things with public access.
Gerrit But that wasn't always the case. In fact, when I did my research for my dissertation, I went to, I think it was the fourth floor of the church office building, which was dedicated to the archives. And that's how I called documents when I was researching and transcribing. And now back then, you didn't have the ability to just pull out your cell phone and take a snapshot of things. And many archives believe that taking photos of documents, even of itself, even without the flash, could potentially damage the documents. And so they wouldn't let you take photos of any kind of them. And so you had to longhand write it out. I longhand wrote some things out, not just from there, from other archives where, okay, they let me see it, but they wouldn't let me take a picture of it. They wouldn't let me, they would let me transcribe it, but that's it. And no, I couldn't take my computer in there, you know, such as they were, such as the, you know, the 15 hogshead of weight computer that I took in.
Gerrit I couldn't simply sit down and transcribe. Many of them wouldn't allow an electronic device at all. Even today, there are archives that will not allow you to take a computer in. And you're thinking, well, why? Because you're just trying to hide everything? Well, documents are very big business. They're a gigantic business. In fact, they're so big that there has been a skyrocketing number of document thefts from archives all over the country. Because those documents are worth all kinds of money. And so people, I'm not telling anyone how to do this. Don't do what I'm telling you to do. No, I'm not telling you to do it. I'm telling you that there are cases where people will go in with their computer. They will get a bunch of letters. They will be there transcribing them. And then they will take one of the letters, put it inside their computer, close the laptop case, right?
Gerrit And you're walking out with your computer. No one can see that there's a letter in there. And there's a letter in there. And now I'm going to go sell it for $100,000. Because it's a letter from Daniel Boone or something like that, right? So archival theft and it's really it's brother or sister that is, you know, ill named forgery are these two aspects surrounding archival and library life. That you have documents that you're trying to preserve and that you're trying to protect and that people want to steal. On the other hand, you have documents that people are forging and trying to get you to accept or other people to accept as legitimate. Because if they do, suddenly it's worth so much money. There have been, when I was at the Church History Library, it seemed like almost every other year, there or several times a year, there were people who said, oh, look, I found a new photo of Joseph Smith.
Gerrit I found this early photo of Joseph Smith. Here it is. Or I found this early photo of Joseph and Brigham together. Now, whenever those were analyzed, the determination was made by the researchers there that they weren't actually Joseph Smith, or at the very least, they could not in any way be determined that it was. But had they been, suddenly this photo that someone found on the bottom of a trunk goes from being worth very little, unless it happens to be your family member, to being worth possibly hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars. And so forgery is a very big business as well. When you're dealing with a church, now you're dealing with not only the idea that there are certain things, like confessions that you want to keep private, like sacred ceremonies that you want to keep private, like financial records that especially, for instance, the church does not ever intend to make your tithing donations public.
Gerrit And most people listening would say, yeah, they better not ever make my tithing donations public. So then you also accept that there are some things that should never ever ever be public. And you're right, Richard, that some people say, yeah, well, so you can't do some things, but there's other things you could do if you have processed those materials and if you know what's inside them. So if someone makes a donation, hey, here's WW. Phelps' letters. Okay, how do I know what's in them? Do I just say, I'm sure it's fine? And then you find out, oh, here's where he copied down the temple ceremony when he was... So you have to go over them. Well, when you're getting thousands and thousands and thousands of donations, thousands of pages, you can't just simply go over them overnight. You don't even know what's there, and then there's all kinds of backlogs of things that happen there. Great example of this is the shorthand notes of the Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff sermons.
Gerrit You know, most people know those prophets because of the Journal of Discourses and those sermons that were published in the Journal of Discourses. But there were many, many, many other sermons that they gave that were never transcribed or published. And the scribe who was sitting there, copying down what they said as they said it, they copied it down in shorthand. Well, these shorthand notes are essentially illegible to anyone who hasn't been trained in Pittman shorthand. I mean, it looks like, you know, a completely different language. It looks like someone's got even worse handwriting than Willard Richards, which maybe his handwriting was so bad because he had so many pistols. Put a pistol down and then try to write a letter. You know what I'm saying? So he you have these hundreds of pages of manuscript that for all intents and purposes look like illegible scribbles. So as archivists are working through what they have, it's a pretty normal procedure to say, I have no idea what this is.
Gerrit Let's set it aside. And each successive one saying, I don't know what this is. I mean, it looks important, but I don't know what it is. Only when you get someone who's a shorthand specialist who sees it and says, that's shorthand. We should figure out what that is.
Richard Is there a reason that so much then has been coming just relatively recently within the last 10 to 20 years?
Gerrit Sure, the church has devoted more resources to history in the past 20 years than the entirety of the 200 years prior to that combined.
Richard Really professionalizing their history department?
Gerrit Yeah, I mean, look, you did have some professional history. Look, there's always, again, with religions, there's always a tension between the drive of the scholar to want to make more things accessible so that people can write a complete history and the drive of the religion or the other institution to want to keep some of its inner workings private because they are private. Because again, just like we had the conversation at the Presidential Daily Briefing, well, if there were verbatim records of, say, the Quorum of the Twelve having a conversation about something, now, the curiosity that I would have over that would be, I desperately want to know what it is. I would love to hear the back and forth, right? But if those things regularly became public, would that change how open people are in the discussion? Of course. It would have to. Look, anyone who says that it wouldn't for you has never had a conversation with your children about a topic that they really shouldn't be talking to you about, right?
Gerrit So when your six-year-old asks you where babies come from, you probably didn't say, well, you know what, let's start first, and just broke it all down to them. You probably gave them a little bit of a something because audience matters. And that is to say that more and more things are becoming public. I get asked all the time, well, where do the Josephine Papers come from? I mean, how are they published in the mall? Did we go out and find them all? Where did they come from? Well, most of them were already in the possession of the church. Many of them had already been published in some format or another. What hadn't they been? They had not been chronologically organized, verified with their text, researched and annotated at the highest levels, and then provided with historical context, and then published in a collection and a format. Now, because they're publishing so many of them online, you can go to josephsmithpapers.org right now, and you'll find literally thousands, well over 10,000 documents that are full text transcribed online that you can look at.
Gerrit When someone says, well, why didn't they do that before? I mean, I can't answer the answer specifically, but I can certainly say that the resources to do what people are saying, when someone says, well, why don't you just do it, it's an enormous amount of time, enormous amount. Anyone who thinks that you just grab a letter and you can type that and throw it up on the internet in five minutes and that's fine, is doing a pretty shoddy job, right? There's a lot of work that goes into it. The church is making more and more and more things available. For instance, there are some documents that contain sacred things where someone's writing in their journal and they copy down temple ceremony stuff because it's their journal. They don't think it's ever going to be public, but they also have some other really cool stuff in there. And so it used to be that when there was something like that, that the journal was just completely closed to the public. Well, in recent years, they've tried to find ways. Okay, we know there's stuff in here that's not for public consumption, but there's a lot of stuff in there that could be fine for public consumption.
Gerrit What if we provide a redacted version that cuts out the things that are sacred that are not for public eyes, but allow people to use the document for the other research purposes? And that's been going on more and more, and I assume that that's going to continue to go on more and more. When someone says, well, how come this wasn't done before? I think it just demonstrates a lack of institutional history in the resources that were assigned to it. I mean, certainly, are there people in the church who believe that the more you study history, the greater chance there is that you're going to lose your testimony? Yes, you meet those people all the time. And certainly, there are people who were of the opinion that archives should be primarily to keep and preserve things, but not to make them public. Again, there are archives like that all over the world. The point of them is so that the record exists, not so that you can go down on a Friday and do some research for your family history.
Gerrit So certainly, there's been an ebb and flow where there's a very funny sign from the early days of the Church History Library, from the church archives, where it says, church archives, no admittance. That idea was, for a while, it was closed. And in fact, sometimes when it comes to things like the theft of documents, forging of documents, it makes people say, you know what, why are we making this public at all? So you will always have that kind of thing balanced back and forth. For your friends who say, I mean, I'm guessing some version of, well, the church is hiding everything, and they're only publishing a few things that they want to put out, that is all incredibly speculative, right? They actually don't have a way to prove what it is they're saying. What can they prove? That the church has made more public in the last 10 years that have been public in the 100 years prior to that.
Richard Therefore, they must have been hiding something in the previous 100 years.
Gerrit Or the internet didn't really exist, or the hundreds of people in some way working at or with the Church History Library and archives didn't work there before. The creation of the Church History Library was a big deal. The greater professionalization of, that's not to say that there weren't church history professionals, but there were very few. You've got one or two men or women trying to do the work of 30 people. No, they aren't getting to everything, right? And to think that they just should is ridiculous. The Joseph Smith Papers were made possible by enormous financial contributions from the Miller family. And that's the reason why they were able to hire so many professional archivists, professional historians, so many volunteers that help with the text and with research and with photographs. It was so much money that was spent to do this.
Gerrit And yes, as a result of that investment, you have an enormous amount of more documents that have come forward. It's not because some of those didn't exist, although some didn't. I mean, we found documents while we were at the Joseph Smith Papers. We found documents that people didn't know existed.
Richard This kind of goes into the point made by Dan around President Hinckley's article, right? Like, how do we know the validity or the source of a particular thing?
Gerrit Right, and so he cites to President Hinckley's talk, well, his article in September of 1985 that references these two documents. And Dan's like, well, why don't we know more about these? Where are these? How come I don't find them on the Joseph Smith Papers website? Well, because they are forgeries. Those two documents that he's referencing in that article are two of the Hoffman forgeries that the church acquired, not knowing they were forgeries, but they were made public and were used by enemies of the church to attack the church, who, of course, put them in whatever light they wanted to put them in. So the early letter, the Josiah Stoll letter, from June 18th of 1825, claimed to be the earliest Joseph Smith letter that would be in existence. And in fact, that's what President Hinckley says in that article, that if this were...
Gerrit In fact, you'll notice he does not say, he does not say this is a true... This is clearly a true copy of it. He caveats it. He writes in the article, if it's genuine, it's the earliest document. So you can see there's that hesitancy that's already there. This is also the famous Salamander letter, which is another letter that was acquired at the same time. Those are the two letters that he's referencing. Now, it will later be determined that those are actually forgeries from Mark Hoffman. Now, today, with the training that we have, with the skill set that we were talking about... Look, when I was at the Joseph Smith Papers, we had the FBI expert who helped catch Mark Hoffman come in and train us how to spot Hoffman forgeries. So that was part of my training to work there and work on the papers. And so today, it's a lot easier to recognize.
Gerrit But before you had dozens of people that were trained in that, before people knew the extent of Hoffman's forgeries and the type of forgeries that he did, they didn't know what to look for. And you're always back to the same thing of, well, why didn't they know X before they knew it? Well, no one knows anything before they know it. And yet, whenever we look back at history, we tend to judge them on the basis of, well, I think they should have known. Okay, yeah, I mean, that'd be great, I guess, if you did know. But they didn't. Now someone might say, well, shouldn't a prophet know? Well, I mean, I guess it depends on how much you think God intervenes in every single thing that the prophet does. I mean, does he go to buy Wheaties and he's directed to raisin bran? I mean, I don't know what someone's personal view of that is, but eventually these documents are found to be forgeries.
Gerrit When I was working at the Joseph Smith Papers, this goes back to the other question. Well, how do you know whether or not a document is legitimate? Well, in the wake of the Hoffman issue, look, first of all, Hoffman was the most prolific forger in American history. There are Hoffman forgeries, American history Hoffman forgeries that are floating all over this country because he did not just do Latter-day Saint stuff, he did all kinds of stuff. And if you look at, I mean, you can't see it, but if you were to look at the copy of this image that is there, it's on paper from the time period, and it does appear to be written in Joseph Smith's handwriting, or at least something that looks like Joseph Smith's handwriting. Now, the biggest giveaway to me reading it is, this is ridiculously better writing than anything else Joseph Smith wrote. I mean, most of the words are spelled correctly. I mean, you look at something he's writing seven years later, and it's riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. And this one has a couple, but not very many.
Gerrit So, but that would be something that you would look for with a more trained eye now, you know. When I was working at the Joseph Smith Papers, there was an early document that we considered because we didn't know its provenance. It was in the archives, but it had not been fully fleshed out and catalogued. And why did it matter to us? Well, because we were working on the earliest volume of the papers, which included 1830, 1831. So 1828, actually, 1831. And in this letter, it purports to be from somebody who runs into an early Latter-day Saint. This is July of 1831. He says, Last winter there was a revival of religion in this town. The Presbyterians were the principal actors. They had a Mr. Little John for their leader. I believe he made 18 or 19 converts that joined the Presbyterian church at the center of town. We were visited by a Mormonite, Mr. Smith, the brother of the leader.
Gerrit I declined to buy a gold Bible, but inquired how it was that his brother wrote it. He said that he would look under a shiny stone in the dark, and there he would see the words appear. Mrs. Webster and all of our families send their respects. Well, that's a pretty awesome document, if it's a real letter, right? It's a very early description of the translation of the Book of Mormon. It wouldn't be the earliest. The earliest is from the 1829. Palmyra Freeman, but it would obviously be a very early description of how are the saints describing the translation? That's what you'd get. Or at least how does this guy say that they're describing? Now, we went and did some historical research on it. And I have a colleague, Mike McKay, who spent a ton of time on this with some other researchers. And one of the things we found early on was, well, a lot of this stuff kind of checks out. This guy really did live in this town at this time. He really did have, you know, children this age.
Gerrit He really, you know, a lot of things seemed accurate. So now we're like, well, I mean, if this is a forgery, would Mark Hoffman go back to Pennsylvania and New York and do a bunch of archived and sense? I mean, this is before it was digital, I mean, because of the 80s. So how did he come up with all this information? As Mike McKay notes in his article that he wrote on this forgery, that one of the interviews Hoffman gives, he explains that one of his techniques is to take an existing letter. So one that's a real letter. It's a real letter. It already exists. Take paper from the same era and copy it over verbatim, only adding in the few sentences or people or places that now make it incredibly valuable. And it goes from just being a ho-hum letter that's worth, you know, it's worth something, certainly, it's age, to being worth thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Because now it's a letter on the translation of the Book of Mormon.
Gerrit Instead of, hey, I bought the teft farm, which is not as important to most people unless you happen to be the person who owned that farm. So there are processes whereby people try to determine the legitimacy. There's also chemical tests you would do to the paper, that you would do to the ink. You would do tests to determine whether or not it was legitimate. But we find new documents all the time. There are people listening to this podcast right now who probably somewhere in a dusty attic somewhere have letters from the early church period or documents that they just don't even know about. That's the nature of documents. They get tossed in a box, and that box gets tossed in another box, and another box, another box, and you know, 100 years later, oh wow, here's great grandmother's will. I mean, that's what happens. So there's no way to fully refute the allegations that are being made as far as, oh hey, these people are saying that things are just hidden. But I will say that we have more access to things archivally than we ever have before.
Gerrit Now that's a good thing, not a negative thing. And instead of looking at it as a good thing and trying to take into account all of the things that are there, the attempt is to make a negative argument that, well, they shouldn't have hid them for as long as they did. Certainly some things were never made public before the last 20 years. Some things are still not public now. There are documents that are not for public access, and they go through the range of different things. But my experience when I worked at the papers was when we needed certain documents in order to demonstrate the history of events that happened, we received those documents and we used them. And that, I think, is something that's happening more and more. In the end, whether the church has all of its documents released or none of its documents released, the only way that you're going to determine whether or not this is the true church and led by a prophet of God, or whether the church has become corrupt and we all need to follow Denver Snuffers through the Holy Spirit.
Gerrit If you listen to President Nelson and pray and ask God whether or not he's a prophet of God, my belief is that you will receive the witness that he is. And yes, will there be questions about our past that we can't fully answer? Of course, that's the case with literally every organization that exists. But if we maintain our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Book of Mormon, in the teachings of His prophets and apostles, in the current teachings of the prophet, then we're going to be, we're going to be okay, even if we don't have the answer to everything. So thank you so much for listening and hopefully this answered some questions.
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.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

Granting someone an acre of land in New France in 1655 is probably the equivalent of the give a penny, take a penny that you would get at a holiday station.

GerritBanter

Happy to be alive, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's hilarious.

RichardBanter

Yeah, and by the way, the strategy is Dear Richard, because it stands out, and I'm more likely to read it, because I have a huge unquenchable ego.

RichardBanter

Now, we say that right up until someone tries to make our information public. And then we say, wait a minute, that's different.

GerritInsight

It's Willard Richards' dresser. That's the archives.

GerritBanter

Sure, the church has devoted more resources to history in the past 20 years than the entirety of the 200 years prior to that combined.

GerritInsight

Well, no one knows anything before they know it.

GerritInsight

I mean, does he go to buy Wheaties and he's directed to raisin bran?

GerritBanter

Now, the biggest giveaway to me reading it is, this is ridiculously better writing than anything else Joseph Smith wrote.

GerritInsight

If you listen to President Nelson and pray and ask God whether or not he's a prophet of God, my belief is that you will receive the witness that he is.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
If the church keeps any record out of public view, it must be hiding something.
The church only released its documents because it got exposed and had no choice.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Every institution's archive keeps some records closed. Most of us want everything made public right up until someone wants to make our own records public.

Gerrit says the church has put more resources into history in the last 20 years than in the 200 years before, and more is public now than ever.

President Hinckley's 1985 article hedged on an early letter with "if it's genuine." Both letters he mentioned turned out to be Mark Hofmann forgeries.

Gerrit's closing point: whether every document is released or none is, you learn whether the Church is led by a prophet by praying and asking God.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Doctor inflationCarl writes to "almost Dr. Dirkmaat" and "almost Dr. LeDuc," Richard reports his dissertation chair now calls him "almost ABD LeDuc," and Dan opens with "Dear President Dirkmaat and General LeDuc" (5:19, 14:44).
Richard's units of measure quizA smidgen, a hogshead, a buttload of wine, manpower, and the olf, a unit of odor; a French subway train rates three million olfs (7:26, callback 25:35).
Carl's icy walkLaughing at the story of Gerrit's name, Carl slides into a multi-lane road and blacks out, then downloads the episode again so the numbers stay okay (11:34, callback 20:22).
We're huge in...For the Canadians: Finland, all of Scandinavia, some of Denmark, part of Iceland. Gerrit: "We have zero listeners in those places" (13:09).
Dear RichardTaylor addresses only Richard to get read, and Richard admits to a huge unquenchable ego (16:46).
Hawaii listeners get house callsZoom works to Alberta but not to Hawaii, so Taylor will have to host both families in person (19:39).
History and English majorsTeasing Andrew for throwing his life away on history, possibly English; Gerrit's mom, an English teacher, agrees it's not the way to a million dollars (1:07).
Willard Richards' pistolsShorthand looks worse than Willard Richards' handwriting, which may be bad because he had so many pistols (40:14).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Mark Hofmann, the most prolific forger in American history, and how an FBI expert trained the Joseph Smith Papers staff to spot his work (50:01).
The Pitman shorthand sermons of Brigham Young, John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff that never made it into the Journal of Discourses (40:14).
The 1831 "Mormonite" letter and the research that showed it was a real letter with forged sentences added (53:08).
How redacted versions of journals with sacred material are opening documents that used to be closed completely (44:12).
SOT Litner · S3E13.