Evidence Seventy: Joseph Smith a “Skilled Writer” at Age 23?©

101 Reasons Why I Believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God.

Evidence Seventy:

Joseph Smith a “Skilled Writer” at Age 23?© 

Last week I re-read Elder Tad Callister’s October 2017 Conference address titled “God’s Compelling Witness: The Book of Mormon.” There are many things in it which could be the subject of a blog in this series, and I may deal with some of them individually, and some I have addressed in previous blogs. Today I want to concentrate on a statement he made following comments about one of the popular theories of the Book of Mormon critics, that Joseph was a “creative genius” and an eclectic one at that, so he took advantage of all of the alleged sources of his ideas that were supposedly readily available in the gigantic library of Palymra, New York in the late 1820s. To mine, winnow, and integrate all of these sources into something coherent and then dictate it without a note would require as Elder Callister says, a “photographic memory of prodigious proportions.”(1) Incidentally, none of his contemporary critics credited him with such a memory. Elder Callister went on to say, that the critics would also have to consider Joseph Smith a theological genius because of the many doctrinal ideas found in the Book of Mormon. Then he said...

But even if we suppose that Joseph were a creative and theological genius with a photographic memory—these talents alone do not make him a skilled writer. To explain the Book of Mormon’s existence, the critics must also make the claim that Joseph was a naturally gifted writer at age 23. Otherwise, how did he interweave scores of names, places, and events into a harmonious whole without inconsistencies? How did he pen detailed war strategies, compose eloquent sermons, and coin phrases that are highlighted, memorized, quoted, and placed on refrigerator doors by millions of people, phrases such as, “When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2:17) or “Men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). These are messages with a heartbeat—messages that live and breathe and inspire. To suggest that Joseph Smith at age 23 possessed the skills necessary to write this monumental work in a single draft in approximately 65 working days is simply counter to the realities of life.(2)

To me one of the things that makes the idea of Joseph Smith being a skilled writer important is the fact that his wife Emma, who early on helped him temporarily as a scribe while he dictated the manuscript of the Book of Mormon said in her final testimony, “Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter; let alone dictat[e] a book like the Book of Mormon.”(3) Of course she was referring to his ability as her young husband at the time. Though she went on to say that being an “active participant” and “present during the translation” and having “cognizance of things as they transpired, it is marvelous to me ‘a marvel and a wonder,’ as much so as to anyone else.”(4) She, a dutiful and faithful young companion finds the ability of her husband “marvelous.” Besides immediate family, who knew him any better at that time?  

Nor was he a good speller, and this is not insignificant in light of what Emma told Edmund C. Briggs:

When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it, as he dictated each sentence, word for word, and when he came to proper names he could not pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out, and while I was writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct my spelling although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time. Even the word Sarah he could not pronounce at first, but had to spell it, and I would pronounce it for him.(5)

We will shortly see evidence of his poor spelling in 1832-33, three or four years after the Book of Mormon was translated. Though he improved through his life, he was never a good speller. That is not necessarily a mark of a poor education or low intellect.  The first American dictionary was published in 1828. Most Americans of Joseph Smith’s day and earlier, educated or not, wouldn’t pass muster in a 5th grade spelling bee these days.

There is other interesting evidence of his lack of literary prowess. In 1957, John A Widtsoe published a study of Joseph Smith.  Chapter twelve is titled: “The Vocabulary of Joseph Smith.”  He found that the Book of Mormon is composed of  2,800 “general words,” 245 person’s names and 166 place names. This is about 1,439 fewer “general words” than in the New Testament, and about 585 more than in the Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph’s vocabulary fares poorly against the 7-8,000 words vocabulary of John Milton and perhaps 18,000 of Shakespeare.  Widtsoe notes a well educated man in the 1950s used about 8,000 words.(6) To me, for Joseph Smith to produce what he did in the Book of Mormon with such limited word resources, is truly phenomenal. He, like Nephi and Moroni, seems to have gloried in “plainness.”

It is interesting to do a little reading in his earliest holographic journals.  By 1832, he could write a coherent sentence, but there is evidence of lingering weakness in his grammar, syntax, punctuation, and spelling.  His journal entries illustrate visually in part, at least, what Emma said. Here are two examples from his earliest journal, a year apart in late 1832 and 1833:

1) 29 November 1832: “November 29th this day road from Kirtland to Chardon to see my Sister Sopronia and also came to see my Sister Catheri and found them all ... [well?]

    this Evening Brother Frederic Prophcyed tha next spring I should go to the city of PittsBurg to establish a Bishopwrick and within one year I should go to the city of New York the Lord spare me the life of thy servent Amen.(7)

2) 12 October 1833:   “...held a meeting at Brother Ruds a had a great congregation paid good attention Oh God Seal our tetimony to their hearts Amen.”(8)

Compare those rough-hewn, apparently hastily written entries with two dictated passages from the Book of Mormon:

1) Mosiah 3:19: For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

2) Moroni 7:48: Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.

He did this very polished writing in a single draft, no rewrites, and without ChatGTP!! Coherent, logical, challenging, profound,  inspirational, and to me literarily beautiful.  And they are typical of hundreds of passages found in the text of the Book of Mormon. I agree with Elder Callister, when Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon the result was from a “skilled writer.”  So, if Joseph Smith did not have this native ability as his wife maintains and as some evidence confirms, how do we explain the difference?  If it was “creative genius” in 1828-29, according to the critics as he dictated the Book of Mormon text, what happened to that genius in his 1832-33 journal; and how did he produce the Book of Mormon with a vocabulary of less than half of that of a well educated man in 1957? To me there is one answer, and it comes from the pen of Joseph Smith in a letter to James Arlington Bennett:

    The fact is, that by the power of God I translated the book of Mormon from hierogliphics [sic]; the knowledge of which was lost to the world.  In which wonderful event, I stood alone, an unlearned youth, to combat the worldly wisdom and multiplied ignorance of eighteen centuries.(9)

Thank God for Joseph Smith!

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:  

1.  Tad R. Callister, “God’s Compelling Witness: The Book of Mormon,” Ensign (November 2017):  108.  Regarding the demands the 65-day timeline for the production of the Book of Mormon text would require of that memory, Daniel Peterson wrote: “Whether it is even remotely plausible to imagine Joseph Smith or anyone else memorizing or composing nearly 5000 words daily, day after day, week after week, in the production of a lengthy and complex book is a question that readers can ponder for themselves.”  Daniel C. Peterson, “A Response: ‘What the Manuscripts and the Eyewitnesses Tell us about the Translation of the Book of Mormon,” in Uncovering the Original Text of the Book of Mormon: History and Findings of the Critical Text Project, edited by M. Gerald Bradford and Alison V. P. Coutts, Provo, UT: FARMS, 2002, 69.

2.  Callister, “God’s Compelling Witness,” 108, emphasis added.

3.  Emma Smith, “Last Testimony of Sister Emma,” Saints’ Herald 26 (1 October 1879): 290, emphasis added.

4.  Ibid.

5.  Edmund C. Briggs, “A Visit to Nauvoo in 1856,” Journal of History, January 1916, 454, reproduced in, Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844, edited by John W. Welch with Erick B. Carlson, Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005, 129.  It is also cited in Russell M. Nelson, “A Treasured Testament,” seminar for new mission presidents, 25 June 1992, 3, which is where I think I first encountered it.

6.  John A. Widtsoe, Joseph Smith Seeker After Truth, Prophet of God, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1957, 67-71.

7.  Dean C. Jessee, et al., eds., The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals Volume 1:1832-1839, Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2008, 9.

8.  Ibid, 12.

9.  Joseph Smith to James Arlington Bennett, 13 November 1843, in Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford and Steven C. Harper, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press, 2011, xx.