Origin of The Book of Mormon - One of Smith's Colleagues As Author

One of Smith's Colleagues As Author

According to this family of theories, someone else wrote the book and allowed Smith to take credit for it. Sidney Rigdon and Oliver Cowdery have been posited as possible authors or co-authors. Both Sidney Rigdon and Oliver Cowdery had more formal education and either could have helped Smith author the book. In this case, the Book of Mormon would be considered a collaboration between Smith and his scribes, primarily Oliver Cowdery.

Sidney Rigdon and Oliver Cowdery both denied having written the book, and in fact Cowdery was one of the Three Witnesses to the Golden Plates. He became disaffected with Joseph Smith's leadership and with the church and was excommunicated in 1838 on a variety of charges but even so, stayed true to his original claim to have seen the Golden Plates.

There is little extant evidence that Joseph Smith knew of or was in contact with Sidney Rigdon until after the Book of Mormon was published, although many witness accounts place Rigdon in upstate New York in 1825 and 1826; roughly the time that Cowdery became close friends with Smith. Most histories state that Parley P. Pratt, a member of Rigdon's congregation near Kirtland, Ohio, was baptized around September 1830 in Palmyra. Soon after, Pratt returned to Ohio, which is when Rigdon reportedly learned of Smith and the Book of Mormon and was baptized. According to these accounts, Rigdon first met Smith in December 1830, nine months after the Book of Mormon's publication. Rigdon's son John, discussing an interview with his father in 1865, states:

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 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 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."

This account, however, sharply contrasts Rigdon's later claim that he knew the contents of the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, which he only could have accessed during the years leading up to the Book of Mormon publishing. Mormons would respond by saying that he could easily have ascertained the contents of the sealed portion through a description by Joseph Smith or a divine experience.