Paine’s Influence

Davis Bitton has this to say concerning the “Mormonism of the nineteenth century”:

For the Mormons the Bible was only one among several scriptures; its message was often described as applicable to a certain time and place in the past, with modern problems requiring new revelation; it was seen as having been corrupted, distorted, and inaccurately translated, . . . The Mormons could scarcely be charged with Bibliolatry, and it is perhaps understandable that Protestant ministers saw Mormon criticism of the Bible to be essentially the same as that of the rationalists. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Autumn 1966, p. 113)

In a footnote on the same page, Davis Bitton states: “J. B. Turner, . . . argues rather convincingly that Mormons were so convinced of the inadequacy of the Bible and the apostate condition of Christianity that, if they ever abandoned Mormonism, they were almost inevitably agnostic toward all religion.” Although Davis Bitton does not feel that Mormons were as radical in their criticism of the Bible as some others, he does feel that “rationalists such as Thomas Paine had furnished valuable ammunition” for the Mormon attack on the accuracy of the Bible.

Thomas Paine’s book, The Age of Reason, undoubtedly had an influence on Mormon thinking. This book, written in the 1790’s, caused a great deal of controversy and was therefore well known in Joseph Smith’s time. While Paine was a brilliant man and raised a number of important questions in his book, he wrote with such sarcasm that his work was very offensive to a Christian. In one place he talks of “the stupid Bible of the church, that teacheth man nothing” (The Age of Reason, reprinted by The Thomas Paine Foundation, New York, p. 189).

Joseph Smith has been accused of reading Thomas Paine’s book before he wrote the Book of Mormon. Now, while this is possible, it must be conceded that the Book of Mormon for the most part appears to be diametrically opposed to Paine’s ideas.

For instance, Paine claimed that the first five books of the Bible were not written by Moses. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, states that they are “the five books of Moses, . . .” (1 Nephi 5:11). The Book of Mormon does contain a rather subtle attack upon the Bible, but whether this could be linked to Paine’s book would be debatable.

Thomas Paine was very critical of the account of the creation found in Genesis. The first verse of this account reads: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Paine made this comment concerning this matter: The manner in which the account opens shows it to be traditionary . . . Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, “The Lord spake unto Moses, saying.” Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the Creation, I am at a loss to conceive. (The Age of Reason, p. 20)

An examination of Joseph Smith’s “inspired” translation of this portion of Scripture, leads us to believe that he was answering Thomas Paine’s argument: ...the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: . . . in the beginning I created the heaven, and the earth upon which thou standest. (Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses 2:1)

Notice that Joseph Smith adds the exact words that Thomas Paine said should be in Genesis to prove that it was written by Moses. The Mormon scholar Richard L. Anderson has recently brought forth some new information which shows that the Smith family were well aware of Paine’s book. According to Dr. Anderson, Lucy Smith’s manuscript for her book contained some information which never appeared in the published version. He states:

. . . about 1803 Asael strongly disapproved of Methodism, . . . Lucy Smith, Biographical Sketches, p. 54. Lucy’s preliminary manuscript here adds the further detail of Asael Smith’s demonstrating disapproval of the Methodist interest of his son Joseph Smith, Sr. Asael “came to the door one day and threw Tom Paine’s Age of Reason into the house and angrily bade him read that until he believed it. (Joseph Smith’s New England Heritage, 1971, p. 207)

Thomas Paine felt that the Bible could not be trusted as “the word of God” because of the problems involved in translation: But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could speak but one language, which was Hebrew, . . . and as to translations, every man who knows anything of languages knows that it is impossible to translate from one language to another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; . . . human language, . . . is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information, and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man. (The Age of Reason, pp. 31-32)

It is interesting to note that Joseph Smith also cast doubt upon the translation of the Bible, for in “The Articles of Faith,” he wrote: 8. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. (Pearl of Great Price, The Articles of Faith)