“The Book of Mormon at year’s end”

My final column of 2016:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865670052/The-Book-of-Mormon-at-years-end.html

In a reader’s comment following my column, one of the Usual Suspects “bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old” (compare Matthew 13:52).

His old treasure is the venerable Spalding Manuscript Theory, which was first proposed during the lifetime of Joseph Smith himself but which, for very good reasons, no reputable historian — whether believer or unbeliever — has advocated over the past roughly one hundred years.  (Even Fawn Brodie rejected it.)

Here’s an introduction to the Spalding Theory:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Authorship_theories/Spalding_manuscript

His new treasure is the notion that the Witnesses never actually saw or handled anything, but that, instead, they “saw” imaginary places only with their “spiritual eyes,” which is taken to mean that the plates were mere hallucination.  He seems not to have noticed that I had expressly provided a link in the article itself that deals with the “spiritual eyes” claim and that suggests further reading still.

I recall an instance from roughly three years ago in which one of the Usual Suspects who comment virtually every week on my columns was obliged to admit that, prior to writing and sending his response, he had only read the title and the opening lines of the column with which he was taking issue.  I suspect that this is fairly common procedure for several of the Usual Suspects.  More than a few times they’ve faulted me for failing to address a topic that, in fact, I had addressed directly and explicitly in the very column to which they were allegedly responding.

Human nature can be amusing.  Or discouraging.  Depending on your mood.