In May 1985, a letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune posed this question: “In keeping with the true spirit (no pun intended) of historical facts, should not the angel Moroni atop the Mormon Temple be replaced with a white salamander?”2 Of course, the pun was intended. The “Salamander Letter”—which later turned out to have been created by document forger Mark Hofmann—was at the height of public attention at this time. Allegedly penned by Martin Harris, a confidant of Joseph Smith during the translation of the Book of Mormon, the letter has Harris describing the angel Moroni as taking the shape of a white salamander in the stone box holding the golden plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated. When Joseph Smith opened the stone box, this salamander transformed into the spirit guardian of the plates and struck Smith three times. This letter and other...
Joseph Smith's Folk Beliefs and Treasure Seeking Practices as Book of Mormon Background: A Review of Literature
Mark Ashurst-McGee is a senior historian in the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and serves as the senior research and review editor for the Joseph Smith Papers Project, where he specializes in documentary editing methodology and document analysis. He is a coeditor of several volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers (2008–), coeditor, with Robin Scott Jensen and Sharalyn D. Howcroft, of Foundational Texts of Mormonism: Examining Major Early Sources (2018); and coeditor, with Michael Hubbard MacKay and Brian M. Hauglid, of Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity (2020). He is also the author of several articles on Joseph Smith and early Mormon history published in various scholarly venues.
Mark Ashurst-McGee; Joseph Smith's Folk Beliefs and Treasure Seeking Practices as Book of Mormon Background: A Review of Literature. Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 1 July 2022; 31 176–209. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/23744774.37.09
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