George D. Smith argues the historical record is mixed on whether B. H. Roberts lost his testimony; cites statements from former missionaries.

Date
1984
Type
Academic / Technical Report
Source
George D. Smith
LDS
Critic
Hearsay
2nd Hand
Late
Secondary
Reference

George D. Smith, "'Is There Any Way to Escape These Difficulties?': The Book of Mormon Studies of B. H. Roberts," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17, no. 2 (1984): 102–111

Scribe/Publisher
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
People
Truman G. Madsen, B. H. Roberts Jr., George D. Smith, Mark K. Allen
Audience
Reading Public
PDF
Transcription

After reviewing the archeological issues that Roberts raised in 1921, one can see that the ensuing sixty years may have added more information but they have not fully resolved these questions. Whether Roberts was personally concerned or whether he was playing devil’s advocate, his written conclusions leave little doubt that he was indeed concerned.

How did he deal with these questions? Madsen presents an extensive summary of Roberts’s Book of Mormon-related activities and several quotations which suggest that Roberts accepted the authenticity of the Book of Mormon until his death. In recollections given to Madsen about fifty years later, one former missionary remembered how often Roberts said, “I have come to know the book is true”; another friend recalled Roberts concluding shortly before his death in 1933 that, “Ethan Smith played no part in the formation of the Book of Mormon.”[46]

However, several missionaries and close associates of Roberts recalled a possible change of mind on the Book of Mormon. Mark K. Allen, secretary to the Eastern States Mission presidency just after Roberts, remembered his saying, “We’re not through with the Book of Mormon. We’ve got problems. I could do Volume III of New Witnesses for God the other way and be just as convincing.”[47]Another missionary in the Eastern States under Roberts remarked that Roberts had recommended that missionaries not talk about the Book of Mormon; that Roberts had instructed him “to use the Bible, to approach converts in their own language and avoid the criticism that so often arose from using the Book of Mormon.”[48] These interviews both affirming and denying Roberts’s continuing faith in the Book of Mormon were recalled years later.

. . .

While these statements do not establish definitively that Roberts no longer believed the Book of Mormon to be the literal record of an ancient people, they clearly indicate a deepseated ambivalence on the subject which seemed to increase toward the end of his life. As recorded in his two critical studies, Roberts’s concerns with the Book of Mormon were substantive.

. . .

Certainly it is not possible to determine beyond all question what Roberts himself believed about the Book of Mormon as his life drew to a close. Evidence about both positive affirmation and private doubts coexists. The scholarly evidence of the times did not present him with a great range of options and, despite the advances of the ensuing sixty years, impartial archaeological research has not made the “difficulties” disappear although it has supplied additional evidence and produced additional hypotheses—even though these hypotheses are not without their problems.

Roberts began his quest for truth armed with “unshakable” faith, but the issues he raised concern the foundation of the Church. Did Joseph Smith translate the Book of Mormon from gold plates that held the authentic record of an ancient people? After years of research on the Book of Mormon, this tenacious General Authority found serious “menaces” to its authenticity. Many of the questions that deeply concerned Roberts in these two incisive studies still remain without satisfactory answers.

Citations in Mormonr Qnas
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