Mark Hofmann - Influence

Influence

A master forger, Hofmann deceived a number of renowned document experts during his short career. Some of his forgeries were accepted by scholars for years, and an unknown number of them may still be in circulation. But it is Hofmann's forgeries of Mormon documents that have had the greatest historical significance. In August 1987, the sensationalist aspects of the Hofmann case led Apostle Dallin Oaks to believe that church members had witnessed "some of the most intense LDS Church-bashing since the turn of the century." A student of Mormonism, Jan Shipps, agreed that press reports "contained an astonishing amount of innuendo associating Hofmann's plagiarism with Mormon beginnings. Myriad reports alleged secrecy and cover-up on the part of LDS general authorities, and not a few writers referred to the way in which a culture that rests on a found scripture is particularly vulnerable to the offerings of con-artists."

According to the Ostlings, the Hofmann forgeries could only have been perpetrated "in connection with the curious mixture of paranoia and obsessiveness with which Mormons approach church history." After Hofmann's exposure, the Church tried to correct the record, but the "public relations damage as well as the forgery losses meant the church was also a Hofmann victim." Robert Lindsey has also suggested that Hofmann "stimulated a burst of historical inquiry regarding Joseph Smith's youthful enthusiasm for magic did not wither after his conviction".