An Open Letter To Trent Horn - By Stephen Smoot

Dear Trent,

It was with the greatest interest that I watched your August 22 debate with Jacob Hansen on the question of whether the Book of Mormon is inspired of God. I have watched several of your debates before—my favorite being your debate earlier last year with the streamer Destiny on the question of abortion. You are a skillful debater and an engaging advocate for the Catholic faith. I appreciate your willingness to reach across ideological lines to debate those with sometimes wildly different worldviews than your own.

By way of introduction, I am a lifelong, faithful Latter-day Saint. I have pioneer ancestors on both sides of my family line who joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1830s and settled Utah in the 1840s. I grew up in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, served an LDS mission, attended BYU, was married in an LDS temple, and pretty much every other Mormon stereotype you can think of short of enjoying green Jello (which I personally find inedible). I am also a friend of Jacob who was rooting for him in the debate (just to be perfectly transparent about my own biases). Like Jacob, I also have plenty of sympathy for the Catholic Church. As a matter of fact, I am a doctoral candidate at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. and have studied the Bible under excellent Catholic professors alongside bright, thoughtful seminarians. To paraphrase one of our Articles of Faith written by Joseph Smith, there is much in Catholicism that I find to be “virtuous, lovely, of good report [and] praiseworthy,” and I confess a bit of holy envy for some aspects of the Catholic tradition.

With that said, I was a bit disappointed in some of the arguments you employed in your case against the Book of Mormon, because I know they’re beneath your caliber as a debater and apologist. If I may offer some friendly unsolicited advice, I would advise you retire these arguments that you employed in your debate with Jacob, since they’re fairly weak and misrepresent the historical data.

David Whitmer’s Separation from the Latter-day Saints. By my count, you quoted no less than four times a line from David Whitmer’s 1887 booklet An Address to All Believers in Christ, to wit: “If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon; if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that . . . God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens, and told me to ‘separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints’.” This quote you brought up to catch Jacob in a contradiction: if Jacob believes Whitmer’s testimony of the Book of Mormon, then why doesn’t he believe him when he said God told him to abandon the Church? This, however, is a misreading of Whitmer’s comment. Here is the quote in its full context:

Then let no man judge hastily as to my authority, lest he judge wrongly and continue in error; but go to God in prayer and fasting, and find out the truth, for the Holy Ghost will guide you into all truth. If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon; if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens, and told me to "separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints, for as they sought to do unto me, so should it be done unto them." In the spring of 1838, the heads of the church and many of the members had gone deep into error and blindness. I had been striving with them for a long time to show them the errors into which they were drifting, and for my labors I received only persecutions. In June, 1838, at Far West, Mo., a secret organization was formed. Doctor Avard being put in as the leader of the band; a certain oath was to be administered to all the brethren to bind them to support the heads of the church in everything they should teach. All who refused to take this oath were considered dissenters from the church, and certain things were to be done concerning these dissenters, by Dr. Avard's secret band. I make no farther statements now; but suffice it to say that my persecutions, for trying to show them their errors, became of such a nature that I had to leave the Latter Day Saints; and, as I rode on horseback out of Far West, in June, 1838, the voice of God from heaven spake to me as I have stated above I was called out to hold the authority which God gave to me.

The context here is important. Whitmer was excommunicated from the Church on April 13, 1838. According to this passage, Whitmer said God told him in June of 1838 to separate himself from the Saints in Far West, Missouri. Why? Specifically, to avoid what he felt was persecution coming from the Danites, a Mormon vigilante/paramilitary group that had been threatening and harassing dissenters like Whitmer. This says nothing about God telling Whitmer to leave the Church itself; he had already been excommunicated. Rather, it was God telling Whitmer to leave Far West, Missouri, to avoid further persecution from the Danites. There is no difficulty or contradiction in saying that God could have both born witness to David Whitmer of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and warned him to flee for his life by leaving Far West in 1838.

Joseph Smith’s “Amusing Recitals”. During the debate, you quoted Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith’s mother, to make your case that Joseph was a clever storyteller who possessed the requisite imagination to produce the Book of Mormon. The quote in question comes from her 1845 memoir:

During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined: he would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent; their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, and their buildings, with every particular; he would describe their <​mode of​> warfare, as also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them.

At first glance, this quote appears damning. However, once again, the context is important. A KnoWhy article published by Scripture Central on September 2, 2020, has explored this quote and its context at length. Lucy’s comment about Joseph’s “amusing recitals” to the family is presented not as Joseph telling the family idle campfire stories, but rather Joseph relating things he learned from the angel Moroni as he informed the young prophet more about the Book of Mormon. As the KnoWhy article explains:

Lucy explicitly couches these “amusing recitals” in the context of Joseph receiving instruction from the angel about the coming forth of the record. In her recounting, this reality is taken for granted. Never does Lucy hint that her son was an imaginative storyteller spinning yarn with the family. Rather, the family interpreted Joseph’s accounts as a sign that he was truly inspired of God.

“We were now confirmed in the opinion,” wrote Lucy, “that God was about to bring to light something upon which we could stay our minds; or, that would give us a more perfect knowledge of the plan of salvation.” This, she indicated, “caused [the Smith family] greatly to rejoice.” Indeed, the word Lucy used to describe this time for the family was “peculiar,” since up to that point her son, while “much more given to reflection and deep study,” “had never read the Bible through by course in his life” and “was less inclined to the study of books than any [of the Smith] child[ren].” For Lucy, the entire affair with the angel and the plates was a miraculous reality.

Now, if you want to believe Joseph had a wild imagination, you’re free to do so. But you cannot enlist Lucy Mack Smith or her memoir as evidence for such. She, like the rest of the Smith family, was absolutely convinced that young Joseph was telling the truth and was a lifelong believer in her son’s prophetic mission.

The Handwriting of the Witnesses’ Statement. You also brought up the fact that the earliest extant copy of the testimony statement of the Three and Eight Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, including the witnesses’ signatures, is the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery, and not in the handwriting of each individual witness. Jacob responded to this briefly during the debate, but I think it is worth emphasizing what a particularly weak argument this is. 

The manuscript in question is what’s called the Printer’s Manuscript, so-called because it is the manuscript prepared by Oliver Cowdery between August 1829 and January 1830 for the printing of the first edition of the Book of Mormon. The manuscript is available online on the Joseph Smith Papers website. At the back of the manuscript is where the witnesses’ statement appears. The fact that it is in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery is simply because he was the scribe who prepared this particular manuscript copy of the Book of Mormon. The portion of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon where the witnesses’ statement appears is not extant, making Cowdery’s manuscript the earliest surviving copy. David Whitmer recalled that each of the witnesses themselves either signed their name to the original statement directly or had Oliver Cowdery sign for them. What’s more, if any of the witnesses felt the printed testimony misrepresented their views, they had plenty of opportunity to publicly retract their endorsement on the statement, but they never did. On the contrary, there are multiple accounts where witnesses independently reaffirmed the original printed testimonies. It is thus entirely irrelevant that the earliest copy is in Cowdery’s handwriting and is in no way refutation of the statement’s authenticity.

For more on the Book of Mormon witnesses generally, I’d recommend you peruse a recent article published by the Mormonr.org website that answers common questions about the witnesses and provides a useful database of primary source documents.

The Composition of the History of the Church. Finally, I wish to briefly address your argument that the composition of the multi-volume History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is somehow evidence of Joseph Smith’s capability to produce long, complex literary works. In fact, the Book of Mormon and History of the Church are not at all comparable. There is universal consensus that Joseph Smith dictated the text of the published Book of Mormon (minus the 116 pages lost by Martin Harris in the summer of 1828) in the course of about three months in the spring and early summer of 1829 (from April 5 to the middle of June 1829). Even skeptics are forced to acknowledge the historical data strongly indicates the Book of Mormon was a rapidly-dictated text that was produced in this short period. However, the History of the Church series is something entirely else. It is not the product of a rapid dictation in the course of a few short weeks. Rather, it is a composite, edited work that incorporated a variety of documentary sources under the supervision of Joseph Smith and a team of clerks and secretaries. The Joseph Smith Papers has given a detail overview of the history of the composition of this series. It is simply erroneous to assume, as you did in the debate, that the History of the Church series was the result of a single dictation by Joseph Smith the way the Book of Mormon is. The two are simply not analogous.

Besides these, there are also a few points you raised in your case against the Book of Mormon that I wish to briefly respond to with some additional perspective, for whatever it may be worth.

The Book of Abraham. In your opening statement you cited the Book of Abraham as an example of Joseph Smith producing a pretended translation of an ancient document that calls into question his prophetic credibility. I will not go into the particulars here, since I believe this is a separate question from the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. If I may be so immodest as to recommend something I’ve written, I would encourage you to take a look at A Guide to the Book of Abraham, a special issue of the peer reviewed academic journal BYU Studies. This I cowrote with three colleagues who, like me, have graduate level academic training and expertise in Egyptology. A Guide to the Book of Abraham represents the most recent, cutting-edge scholarship on the Book of Abraham and should provide you with plenty of material to reconsider some of the issues you raised pertaining to the production, historicity, and teachings of this book of Latter-day Saint scripture. Although I doubt it will convince you to rethink your position entirely, hopefully it will give you a better sense of what current Latter-day Saint scholarship on this topic is saying. 

Book of Mormon Names. In response to Jacob raising the point that the Book of Mormon contains authentic ancient Hebrew names that were only discovered in the epigraphic record after the publication of the Book of Mormon, you suggested Joseph Smith may have fabricated these names by imitating biblical names or by drawing from sources such as Josephus or Richard Laurence’s 1821 translation of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch. I won’t say much more than how Jacob responded, because I believe his response was effective, other than to ask if you could point to specific names which you believe Joseph Smith was cribbing from Josephus or from the Book of Enoch. It won’t do to simply point to these books as potentially available to Joseph Smith, which they conceivably were even if we don’t have evidence for such a proposition. Rather, you need to demonstrate specific examples of where Joseph Smith may have been stealing from these or any other source. What’s more, how does this theory account for the fact that Joseph not only captured authentic Semitic names in the Book of Mormon, but also produced narrative and theology in the Book of Mormon that thematically capture the proper meaning of the name? Matthew Bowen, a Latter-day Saint biblical scholar, has written extensively on this. He points out that the Book of Mormon engages in paronomasia (play on words) surrounding the meaning of the name and the broader narrative or theological context in which the name is situated. It simply beggars credulity to suggest that Joseph Smith could have done that by simply mashing up random names together or inventing them out of whole cloth.

The Size of the Plates. Finally, a word on your argument that the reported physical dimensions of the plates would not have been able to contain the translated English text of the Book of Mormon. You brought this up both in your opening statement and in your cross examination of Jacob. In fact, Latter-day Saints have been addressing this point for a century. Janne Sjodahl conducted experiments in 1923 that were able to yield almost six chapters of the Book of Mormon in Hebrew onto a simple 7x8 inch sheet of paper. Another researcher, Jerry Grover, has concluded that “the Book of Mormon gold plates as described at the time of Joseph Smith are consistent with metallurgical properties and techniques known in the Old World prior to 600 BC and in the New World prior to AD 400, and are consistent with metal plates created to be both capable of supporting ancient engravings and to be preserved without corrosion.” Are you familiar with these studies? How did they inform your claims that the Book of Mormon is metallurgically impossible? You should also be aware that there is forthcoming work (including actual metallurgical experimentation and reproduction) demonstrating beyond question the feasibility of the physical dimensions of the gold plates and the writing thereon as described by Joseph Smith (and others). I don’t fault you for not knowing about this forthcoming work, but you should be on the lookout for it if you wish to continue using this line of attack in the future.

My point here isn’t to rehash the debate you had with Jacob. Nor is to try to change your mind on the inspiration of the Book of Mormon or the prophethood of Joseph Smith, since I figure the odds of that are pretty low. Rather, I just hope to offer some correctives and perspective so that the next time you engage with a Latter-day Saint on these topics, you may be better informed and may avoid some of the pitfalls you ran into previously. 

Thank you again for your willingness to engage in a good-faith debate on this important topic and for your continued presence online as a voice against the growing secularism of our world. I look forward to watching you in future discussions.

Cordially,

Stephen O. Smoot