Book of Mormon Evidence: Joseph Smith's Education

Early critics of the Book of Mormon tended to characterize it as a mundane and poorly written book, one which clearly reflected its having been composed by an unskilled author, which was typically assumed to be Joseph Smith himself.¹ In recent decades, however, numerous studies have demonstrated that the book is much more complex, sophisticated, and believably ancient than early critics (or believers, for that matter) ever seemed to notice. This article reexamines whether the twenty-three-year-old Joseph Smith likely had the skills and ability in 1829 to fabricate a text like the Book of Mormon,² as we understand it today.

Joseph Smith’s Education

The historical record of Joseph Smith’s schooling opportunities is patchy and difficult to calculate. One scholar has estimated that Joseph likely obtained more education than is commonly believed, perhaps as many as seven years of formal academic instruction.³ Yet even if he could possibly have attended that many years of school (the calculation is only an estimate), it is impossible to demonstrate whether or not he actually did attend during those years. Several historical reports indicate that Joseph was involved in activities that conflicted with his schooling.⁴

It should also be remembered that rural educators in early 19th-century America often had little education or ability beyond the subject or grade level that they were teaching.⁵ So Joseph’s formal years of schooling, however many they were, would likely not measure up to the quality and standards expected by most modern education systems.

Joseph’s non-formal educational opportunities should also be taken into account. He apparently read the family Bible with at least some diligence,⁶ attended Sunday school, participated in a debate club, and was possibly instructed by parents and siblings who had better educational backgrounds.⁷ Yet, as demonstrated in the following statements, whatever advancements these informal learning opportunities offered, in addition to his limited formal education, they weren’t enough to overshadow Joseph’s relative ignorance.

Testimonial Evidence from Believers

In 1832 Joseph Smith wrote with his own hand that he was “deprived of the bennifit [sic] of an education suffice it to say I was mearly [sic] instructtid [sic] in reading writing and the ground rules of Arithmatic [sic] which constituted my whole literary acquirements.”⁸ Reports from Joseph’s family members and close acquaintances are consistent with this claim.

Joseph’s mother remembered that he was “less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children” and said that at “eighteen years of age” he had “never read the Bible through in his life.”⁹ His wife, Emma, explained that at the time of the translation, he “could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter; let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon.”¹⁰ 

Martin Harris similarly declared that Joseph was “a poor writer, and could not even draw up a note of hand as his education was so limited.”¹¹ David Whitmer described him as “illiterate,”¹² a “man of limited education,” and “ignorant of the Bible.”¹³ The story of Joseph’s surprise at learning that Jerusalem was a walled city shows up in several accounts as an example of his relative ignorance.¹⁴ Other accounts state that during the translation, he sometimes stumbled when trying to correctly pronounce difficult words or names.¹⁵

Testimonial Evidence from Non-believers

Lest one assume that such reports were only given by believers to promote their cause, there are records of critics and neutral observers alike remarking upon Joseph’s lack of refinement. In 1834 Isaac Hale, Joseph Smith’s father-in-law, recalled his first impressions of Joseph: “I first became acquainted with Joseph Smith Jr. in November, 1825. … His appearance at this time, was that of a careless young man—not very well educated.”¹⁶ 

When asked if Joseph was educated at the time of the translation, John H. Gilbert, who typeset the Book of Mormon, replied, “Oh, not at all then.”¹⁷ Michael Morse, Joseph’s brother-in-law, stated “that he first knew Joseph when he came to Harmony, Pa., an awkward, unlearned youth of about nineteen years of age.”¹⁸ When asked whether Joseph was “sufficiently intelligent and talented to compose and dictate of his own ability the [Book of Mormon] written down by the scribes,” Morse responded in the negative, explaining that “he was confident that he [Morse] had more learning than Joseph then had.”¹⁹ 

Joseph Smith apparently attended William E. McLellin’s high school in 1834. Concerning Joseph’s mental capacity, McLellin remarked, “he had one of the strongest, well balanced, penetrating, and retentive minds of any whom I ever formed an acquaintance.” Nevertheless, McLellin further noted that “when I took [Joseph] into my school, he was without scientific knowledge or attainments.”²⁰

Eber D. Howe, a well-known critic of Joseph Smith stated in 1834 that he believed “it to be a fact” that “the common advantages of education were denied to [Joseph Smith], or that they were much neglected.”²¹ The Palmyra Reflector remarked in 1831 that Joseph’s “mental powers appear to be extremely limited, and from the small opportunity he has had at school, he made little or no proficiency.”²² Many more such descriptions could be cited.

Textual and Manuscript Evidence

We have few examples of Joseph Smith’s personal writings that date close to the publication of the Book of Mormon, but what we do have is consistent with the above lines of evidence.²³ For example, as assessed by literary scholar Robert A. Rees,

[Joseph’s] handwritten account of the First Vision written in 1832 is ungrammatical, is written with little sense of punctuation or compositional structure, and, though sincere and authentic, shows little evidence of stylistic or compositional competence or confidence. Certainly there is evidence of the beginnings of an eloquent voice, but that voice is tentative and immature.²⁴

Joseph’s 1832 account of his history was produced a few years after he had translated the Book of Mormon, completed significant portions of his inspired translation of the Bible, and received many other revelations.²⁵ So it seems reasonable to suppose that if he was literarily unrefined in 1832, he was likely more so in April of 1829 when he began translating the portions of the Book of Mormon that we have today. Even after Joseph “gained more confidence as a writer,” notes Reese, “he continued to rely on the words and rhetorical styles of others more than on his own.”²⁶

Conclusion

No matter how many years (or seasons) Joseph Smith attended school, or how helpful his supplemental educational opportunities may have been, or how quick he was as a learner, or how sharp his memory, or how creative his imagination, it doesn’t change the fact that he and those around him—both friend and foe—considered him as being relatively unlearned at the time of the Book of Mormon’s translation. These historical reports are consistent with the limited data available concerning his educational opportunities. They are also supported by textual and manuscript analysis of his early writing. Together, the evidence strongly points to his having a limited education and only rudimentary literary abilities when he translated the Book of Mormon in 1829.

This situation has proven to be a stumbling block for theories which cast Joseph as the primary author of the Book of Mormon. One early detractor described the text as “mostly a blind mass of words, interwoven with scriptural language and quotations, without much of a leading plan or design. It is in fact such a production as might be expected from a person of Smith’s abilities and turn of mind.”²⁷ Such views were still held even into the 20th century. In 1930 another commentator described the Book of Mormon as “a yeasty fermentation, formless, aimless, and inconceivably absurd.”²⁸ Yet such critiques backfire in light of 20th- and 21st-century textual studies, which demonstrate the Book of Mormon is anything but jumbled or unintentional.

As assessed by Melvin J. Thorne, 

The Book of Mormon deals with hundreds of individual characters, at least three dating systems, three migrations from the Old World to the New, and a number of subgroups and splinter groups, all without contradiction. It presents complex geographical data that is internally consistent, so that places are always in the same relationship with each other. The book itself is structurally complex; for example, there are complicated sets of prefaces and summaries before and after a large number of significant sections, in which the editor gives the reader a forecast of what is coming and then summarizes what has been read. … In addition to this structural complexity, the Book of Mormon presents detailed sets of religious doctrines that are expressed in a variety of historical settings, sometimes with different emphases and different terminology but with remarkable consistency.²⁹

Historian and literary scholar Grant Hardy offers a similar summary in his careful analysis of the text:

Not only are there more than a thousand years of history involving some two hundred named individuals and nearly a hundred distinct places, but the narrative itself is presented as the work of three primary editor/historians—Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. These figures, in turn, claim to have based their accounts on dozens of preexisting records. The result is a complex mix that incorporates multiple genres ranging from straightforward narration to inserted sermons and letters to scriptural commentary and poetry. It requires considerable patience to work out all the details of chronology, geography, genealogy, and source records, but the Book of Mormon is remarkably consistent on all this. The chronology is handled virtually without glitches, despite several flashbacks and temporally overlapping narratives; there are only two potential geographical discrepancies (at Alma 51:26 and 53:6); and the narrators keep straight both the order and family connections among the twenty-six Nephite record keepers and forty-one Jaredite kings (including rival lines).³⁰

Can these types of complex features really be ascribed to Joseph Smith’s creative literary talent in 1829? Daniel C. Peterson thinks not. “The intricate structure and detailed complexity of the Book of Mormon,” he argues, “seem far better explained as the work of several ancient writers using various written sources over the space of centuries than exploding suddenly from the mind of a barely educated manual laborer on the American frontier.”³¹

While some may understandably doubt the miraculous story of the Book of Mormon’s translation, skeptical readers have been hard-pressed to come up with an alternative explanation for its authorship and origins. This is largely because the available historical documentation overwhelmingly indicates that Joseph himself dictated the entire text to his scribes between April 7 and June 30, 1829.³² All efforts to confidently pin the text’s authorship on others have come up empty-handed.³³ 

Perhaps someone will someday provide a historically supportable alternative theory. Until that day, readers are left with only Joseph Smith himself and a text that was almost undoubtedly beyond his natural ability to create, especially under the circumstances described by the witnesses.³⁴ This situation invites belief in Joseph’s repeated claim that he translated the Book of Mormon by the “gift and power of God,”³⁵ rather than by his own literary talents.