Hey guys! So one of the latest tactics of
critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints is to expose members
to controversial topics in unexpected
ways. For example, recently I inherited a
dollar bill with the words "white
salamander letter" written on it which is
a reference to a forged letter written
by a man named Mark Hofmann. So I figured
that'd be a fun topic to talk about
today. Cue the music.
Mark Hofmann was born in 1954 in Salt
Lake City to a stalwart Latter-day Saint
family. He served a mission and even got
married in the temple, though he later
say he really lost his faith in the
gospel by the time he was about fourteen.
By his early 30s, as New York document
dealer Charles Hamilton said, Hofmann
became unquestionably the most skilled
forger this country has ever seen. He
forged all sorts of stuff, he sold
documents bearing the names of George
Washington, John Adams, Mark Twain, Abraham
Lincoln, Paul Revere, John Hancock and
many others.
Hoffman also forged many documents
relevant to Latter-day Saint Church
history. "I think it's exciting just to
think that apparently this piece of
paper was copied by Joseph Smith's own
hand just straight from the gold plates
 right there." Many were trivial but
some were created to embarrass the
church or to cast doubt on aspects of
our history. His forgeries included a
blessing in which Joseph Smith names his
son as his successor, the antón
transcript and pages from the original
Book of Mormon manuscript. His most
notorious Latter-day Saint forgery is
the salamander letter. So a little
background. Joseph Smith claimed the
angel Moroni appeared to him and told
him about the buried ancient record that
would later become the Book of Mormon.
The salamander letter is a letter from
Martin Harris to William W Phelps, which
claimed that Joseph actually learned of
the ancient record from a white
salamander who transformed into a spirit.
The intent of the letter was to cast
doubt on Joseph's spiritual experience
by associating it with traditional folk
magic practices and some people did
indeed leave the church because of it. In
1987 the church said they'd acquired 48
documents from Mark W Hofmann, 7
documents for a total cash purchase
price of 57 thousand one hundred dollars $57,100, others less valuable by donation
or trade. The salamander letter was
initially purchased from Hofmann for
$40,000 by a Latter-day Saint collector
Steve Christensen who also worked as a
financial consultant.
"After I received a brief review from a
expert person as you can get in Utah
that it was authentic, but I went ahead
and purchased the document." He then
donated the letter to the church but
despite Hoffman's success in the forgery
business by 1985, he'd racked up over a
million dollars in debt to help pay his
creditors. He planned to sell the church
a collection of papers purportedly
written by William McClellan including a
land deed that connected Joseph Smith
with Solomon Spalding. The church wanted
Steve Christensen to authenticate the
collection but Hoffman needed to buy
himself some more time to create the
collection so he made a few bombs. "Boy
that escalated quickly." "You jumped up a
notch." "It did, didn't it?" On October 15,
1985, one of those bombs killed Steve
Christensen. To throw investigators off,
Hoffman sent another bomb that was meant for
Steve's boss Gary Sheets. Instead it
killed Gary's wife, Katherine. The next
day as Hoffman prepped a third bomb
while in his car near Temple Square and
the church office building, it exploded.
Hoffman survived but the jig was up.
Authorities found ample evidence of
forgery in his basement and Hoffman has
been in prison now for over 30 years. Now
some people are upset with the church
for supposedly suppressing some of these
documents before they knew they were
forgeries because they supposedly kept
them in the first Presidency's vault. On
that subject, John Tvedtnes said, "placing
an historical document in a safe place
hardly implies suppression. Burning the
document would have been a safer way of
getting rid of negative evidence." Back in
87
Dallin H Oaks said, "Are documents ever
acquired by the church and then closed
to the public? Of course. This is true of
most large archives, as any well-informed
person should be aware." It's pretty
normal for an organization to not
immediately publish every newly acquired
document. Just look at the Joseph Smith
papers project. Surely the church has
owned these documents for decades and
it's not until now that they're making
them totally available to the public.
Hoffmann duped the country's best
experts with his forgeries.
He also duped church leaders. Some people
are confused by why our church leaders
were not able to discern Hoffman's
forgeries and the simple answer is
because they're normal people who can't
read minds. "Square!" "Good guess but wrong."
Gordon B Hinckley said, "I frankly admit
that Hoffman tricked us. He also tricked
experts from New York to Utah. However, we
bought those documents only after the
assurance that they were genuine and
when we release documents to the press,
we stated that we had no way of knowing
for sure if they were authentic. I'm not
ashamed to admit that we were victimized.
I'm sorry to say that sometimes it
happens." In Doctrine and Covenants 10, the
Lord even says but as you cannot always
judge the righteous or as you cannot
always tell the wicked from the
righteous therefore I say unto you hold
your peace until I shall see fit to make
all things known unto the world
concerning the matter
and certainly Hoffman's exploits have
been made known unto the world so if you
ever come across a dollar bill that says
white salamander letter on it now
know what that means. Check out the link
from the description and have a great
day.
