The Book of Mormon and Its Relationship to TWL

Clearly, the scientific, theological, and philosophical currents of his day helped form the intellectual backdrop for TWL and for many of B. H. Roberts’s other writings. This was true of his works on the Book of Mormon, including three manuscripts compiled in 1921, 1922, and 1927 that were not intended for publication but represented his continuing efforts to recognize and seek responses to the challenges presented by some forms of higher criticism. Despite whatever questions he may have considered, he retained his faith in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and he let it guide much of what he said in TWL, which he completed after those three manuscripts. He also concluded his final testimony to the world, given in his last discourse in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, by reminding his listeners that God gave to Joseph Smith “power from on high to translate the Book of Mormon, and thence followed all which brought forth the New and Last Dispensation.” He listed the translation of the Book of Mormon among the many events “and numerous revelations to the Prophet which brought forth a development of the truth, that surpasses all revealed truth of former dispensations.”

On the morning of August 7, 1933, less than two months before his death, Roberts received a visit from Wesley P. Lloyd, a seminary teacher and one of Roberts’s former New England States missionaries. During the conversation, Roberts said some things that seemed surprising to Lloyd, who recorded them in his journal. Partly on the basis of that journal entry, Roberts’s continuing faith in the Book of Mormon has sometimes been questioned. This issue has been thoroughly examined elsewhere, but because the Book of Mormon is so important to the spiritual and intellectual integrity of TWL itself, it seems essential to comment briefly here about Roberts’s lifelong work on the Book of Mormon as part of the story of TWL.

Long before he began work on TWL, Roberts was pursuing all the intellectual problems relating to the origins of the Book of Mormon. He began his intensive studies as early as the 1880s, partly in response to the numerous challenges to that volume’s authenticity based on secular scholarship and higher criticism. The result was his New Witnesses for God, largely a defense of the Book of Mormon, published in 1903. Later (1909–11) it appeared as a three-volume work. In August 1921, Elder James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve received a letter from William E. Riter, who asked some very searching questions about a few of the apparent inconsistencies and anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. Elder Talmage, in turn, asked Elder Roberts to prepare a response.

Roberts’s work on this assignment raised issues he had not considered before. By the end of December, he had put together a 141-page manuscript entitled “Book of Mormon Difficulties: A Study.” He asked for an opportunity to present his findings at a meeting of all the General Authorities, hoping that through their collective wisdom and the inspiration of the Lord they could find solutions that would “maintain the reasonableness for the faith of all in the Nephite scriptures.” He was given that opportunity in two long days of meetings, January 4–5, 1922. At the end of the manuscript he expressed his major concern: “how shall we answer the questions that arise from these considerations of American archeology?” Silence, he pleaded, was not the answer, for it would be an acknowledgment of defeat. “Most humbly,” he said, “but also most anxiously, I await the further development of knowledge that will make it possible for us to give a reasonable answer to those who question us concerning the matters herein discussed.”

The Brethren did not think it was time to pursue the matter further, even though they allowed Roberts another meeting on January 26 and formed a short-lived committee to pursue the matter with him. In that connection, Roberts completed a 450-page manuscript, “A Book of Mormon Study,” which he also planned to present to the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve. In the cover letter he intended to send with it he made a significant comment:

Let me say once [and] for all, so as to avoid what might otherwise call for repeated explanation, that what is herein set forth does not represent any conclusions of mine. This report . . . is what it purports to be, namely a “study of Book of Mormon origins,” for the information of those who ought to know everything about it pro et con, as well [as] that which has been produced against it, and that which may be produced against it. I am taking the position that our faith is not only unshaken but unshakable in the Book of Mormon, and therefore we can look without fear upon all that can be said against it.

In April 1922, however, Roberts was called to be a mission president. Given the choice as to where in the United States he wanted to go, he chose the Eastern States Mission, which encompassed all the area relating to the origin of the Book of Mormon and the Church. He was set apart on May 29 and promptly dropped the matter of the manuscript.

Roberts was an ardent, hard-working mission president. Despite the still-not-answered intellectual questions relating to its origins, he had complete faith in the Book of Mormon and used it as his most important missionary tool. “It has survived all the ridicule and mockery of those who have scorned it,” he wrote to his missionaries. “Its voice is testimony of the Christ as Eternal God.” He also spent a little time in 1922 in libraries doing some additional research on how much was known about American antiquity prior to the time the Book of Mormon was published. This research eventually resulted in a few changes, minor in nature, in the 450-page manuscript he had prepared before he left on his mission.

After his five-year mission, Roberts made another attempt to bring about a discussion among the General Authorities of the problems relating to the Book of Mormon. He never delivered “A Study of the Book of Mormon,” but in October 1927 he sent to Elder Richard R. Lyman an eighteen-part “Parallel” between the Book of Mormon and Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews. He wrote to his daughter in 1932 that he had made “one feeble effort” to get the larger manuscript considered. He called it an “‘awful’= book” but said it contained facts the General Authorities ought to know.

Roberts had thus produced three manuscripts, none of which were intended for publication. He hoped, rather, that they would be the means of helping prepare the Church to address the problems he believed defenders of the faith eventually would face as scholars examined the Book of Mormon more critically. As he wrote to Richard R. Lyman in 1927, “Such a question as that [that is, whether Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews might have provided a structural outline for the Book of Mormon] may possibly arise some day, and if it does, it would be greatly to the advantage of our future Defenders of the Faith, if they had in hand a thorough digest of the subject matter.”

The teachings of the Book of Mormon were still central to Roberts’s theological understanding and remained so throughout his writing of TWL. Nevertheless, his determination to leave no stone unturned in his quest for truth allowed him to raise the kinds of questions he did and to seek solutions for the problems.He realized that the Book of Mormon could not be held up to the world as the “strongest evidence we have of Church Divinity.” Instead, he told Wesley P. Lloyd in 1933, it was “the one which needs the most bolstering.” This statement hardly meant that he had lost faith in the book. Rather, his scholarly proclivities suggest that he meant exactly what he said: the Book of Mormon needed more “bolstering,” more scholarly efforts to answer the questions he or others raised. Roberts also told Lloyd that “his greatest claim for the divinity of the Prophet Joseph lies in the Doctrine and Covenants.” If that is true, then there is just that much more evidence for the Book of Mormon itself, for the Doctrine and Covenants is replete with affirmations of the Book of Mormon.

That Roberts maintained his faith in the Book of Mormon, even while exploring in depth all the possible problems, is consistent with his personality. He was firmly convinced of the truth of all the principles of the restored Church, especially as he presented them in TWL, his magnum opus. There he frequently and unequivocally referred to the Book of Mormon in terms such as an “ancient” volume of American scripture (21, 152, 259) or as a book that “contains the revelations of God to the ancient inhabitants of America” (275). At the same time, Roberts’s deeply ingrained commitment to scholarship made him a “disciple of the second sort” who was always open to new information and willing at least to entertain new ideas and suggestions. This did not mean that Book of Mormon “problems” convinced him that the book was not what Joseph Smith said it was.It only meant that he was willing to look at every possible challenge while maintaining his long-time convictions.

The statements recorded by Lloyd can easily be interpreted as reflecting Roberts-as-intellectual, raising questions and recognizing the hard realities of scholarly studies. Clearly, some of the statements in Lloyd’s journal do not portray the events of the 1920s quite accurately, though one cannot know whether this was the result of Roberts’s memory being unclear or Lloyd’s misunderstanding of what was said. Nevertheless, it is the nature of people like Roberts to maintain faith even while being willing to seriously investigate questions that could alter some implications of that faith. Roberts’s greatest disappointment was in the fact that he could not get his brethren to take his concerns more seriously, a fate that would also befall some of his doctrinal expositions in TWL.