Spalding–Rigdon theory of Book of Mormon authorship

The theory is that Spalding's manuscript was stolen by Sidney Rigdon, who used it in collusion with Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to produce the Book of Mormon.

[5] It is a historical romance "purporting to have been translated from the Latin, found on 24 rolls of parchment in a cave, on the banks of the Conneaut Creek".

[4] An 1885 book printed by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now The Community of Christ) said it contained the wording of the original, previously unpublished work, and was a "verbatim copy of the original now in the Library of Oberlin College, Ohio; including correspondence touching the Manuscript, its preservation and transmission until it came into the hands of the publishers.

After considerable media attention, Silver and Kaye clarified that they would need to see more original manuscripts of Spalding's work to "definitely come to a conclusion".

[10] In 1832, Latter Day Saint missionaries Samuel H. Smith and Orson Hyde visited Conneaut, Ohio, and preached from the Book of Mormon.

Spalding's widow told a similar story, and said, "the names of Nephi and Lehi are yet fresh in my memory, as being the principal heroes of his tale.

[15] James Gordon Bennett, who had visited the Palmyra–Manchester area and interviewed several residents, also proposed Rigdon's authorship in an August 1831 article.

"[18] In 1873, Darwin Atwater said: "That [Rigdon] knew before of the coming of The Book of Mormon is to me certain, from what he said the first of his visits to my father's some years before [at about the close of January 1827] [...] He gave a wonderful description of the mounds and other antiquities found in some parts of America, and said they must have been made by the aborigines.

Rigdon sometimes borrowed the manuscript and read it to his co-workers for their amusement; he was fascinated by its oddity, but thought it sounded vastly like truth, with all its absurdities.

For those who are unwilling to believe Joseph Smith's explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon but who still cannot see the ignorant Palmyra plowboy as responsible for its contents, some variation of the Spalding theory with its mythical "Manuscript Found" may be the best fiction they can contrive.

[12] In 1840, Benjamin Winchester, a Mormon defender who had been "deputed ... to hunt up the Hurlbut case",[27][better source needed] published a book rejecting the Spalding theory as "a sheer fabrication".

[28] Of Rigdon's alleged involvement, Rigdon's son John recounted an interview with his father in 1865: My father, after I had finished saying what I have repeated above, looked at me a moment, raised his hand above his head and slowly said, with tears glistening in his eyes: "My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of [the Book of Mormon] is true.

Your mother and sister, Mrs. Athalia Robinson, were present when that book was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin of [the Book of Mormon] was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all of my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but one story.

"[29] Peterson also argues that the Spalding–Rigdon theory must be placed in the larger historical context of the advent of Mormonism, asserting that "[e]ven so, it doesn't even begin to explain the Witnesses, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and a host of other matters.

Early wordprint or computer studies led by the Mormon Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research claimed the Spalding–Rigdon theory had little support from such analysis.

In their own study (Schaalje et al., 2009), these critics from Brigham Young University found that an open set of candidate authors "produced dramatically different results from a closed-set NSC analysis.

The Schaalje study, also published in the Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing, critiqued the methodology used by Jockers et al., claiming that the closed-set analysis forced the choosing of a winner while excluding the possibility of an author outside the set.