Word: mormon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...huge and prosperous empire of Mormonism is all built upon a single rock: the claim that Joseph Smith Jr. was a prophet of God who miraculously discovered and translated long-lost holy scriptures. Ever since the Book of Mormon was published in 1830 it has been embraced by his Latter-Day Saints (current worldwide membership: 3.8 million) and scoffed at by outsiders. Now four California researchers, relying on the sometimes shaky science of handwriting analysis, say they have evidence that the book is a hoax...
...angel named Moroni had showed him some golden tablets that had been buried near Palmyra, N.Y. The tablets were in an unknown language, "reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics," and Smith could read them only by peering through two miraculous stones* that the angel gave him. The 522-page Book of Mormon declares that the New World's Indians were actually Jews who sailed from the Near East in the 6th century B.C., and that they were later visited by Jesus Christ after his resurrection...
Spalding is not a new name in disputes over Mormonism. As early as 1833 one apostate Mormon argued that there were similarities between Smith's scriptures and an unpublished Spalding novel about the origins of the Indians. The missing Spalding manuscript was supposedly filched from a Pittsburgh publishing house by an itinerant preacher who gave the papers to Smith...
...test the authenticity of Smith's manuscript for a book they are preparing, the researchers gave photocopies of sample pages from the Mormon archives and known specimens of Spalding's writing to three handwriting experts: Henry Silver, William Kaye and Howard Doulder. All three have broad credentials for such work (though Silver and Kaye reached opposite conclusions about whether Howard Hughes wrote the so-called Mormon will). Working independently and not knowing about any tie to the Book of Mormon, all three decided that the same man had written both sets of documents...
...Lummis in Houston. Rather than battle the family, Davis suggested that Lummis become temporary sole stockholder of the estate, and that he join the Summa board. In August 1976, Lummis became Summa chairman at $180,000 a year. Summa Executive Vice President Frank William Gay, who commanded Hughes' Mormon Mafia of personal aides and was a Davis ally, was given the post of chief executive officer. Davis remained chief counsel and a board director...